ead whirling. Never in her life had she ever had a full-blown panic attack. But she knew all about them, a colleague of hers suff

way her mother had treated his father. If she was strictly honest with herself, she didn't feel she had the right to a

t men and marriage that she herself had used a pretend pregnancy to trap her Italian boss into marrying her; that she'd never really loved the man; that she'd been willing to do anythi

oved difficult-there was no mention of him on the internet-but she'd finally managed with the help of a private investigator, only to discover Alberto was close to death in a Milan hospital. Guilt

she'd gone to his funeral instead. In disguise, of course. She hadn't wa

her, then the service could

's palpable grief and wondering if her mother was indirectly guilty of his father's death. It was often said that stress could cause c

, she realised he'd been amazingly patient with her, not a virtue one often associated with teenage boys. Sergio had only been fifteen when her mother had married his father, she a rather silly and very precocious t

the time, a very skinny thirteen, the only girl in her class not to have hit puberty. She'd only seen Sergio three times a year after that, at Easter and

the two of them had had together, swimming

, Sergio had gone to Oxford for further studies and she'd been on her way to Broadway, and stardom. Their relationship- which she'd imagined had been close-had suddenly no lon

e, at an after-concert party in London. She hadn

yes like that. So dark and so beautiful, and she'd felt unsettled by the hardness in his gaze. It hadn't taken her long t

tears of wretchedness and remorse. She knew that she should have contacted both him and his father after the divorce. Should have shown some regret and gratitude. Some decency! But she'd been too caught up at the time with the sudden bur

at all. His compassionate and unexpectedly generous gesture had threatened the last of her emotional control, so when a very attractive redhead had come up to t

ho she knew down deep didn't have her best interests at heart. They only wanted what they could get out of her, which was why they kept pressuring her to take on more and more work. Bella had acquired a lo

ir cut. All wanted

o time for a personal life. N

oller-coaster ride that never stopped. She never

to stop

ivered coward and ring Sergi

red her suddenly pounding heart,