It felt as if she were being rapidly brought out of an anaesthetic, the antidote to surrender shooting through her veins, as a stunning woman walked towards them and the safe, warm feeling she had, so briefly, sampled was suddenly threatened. The bubble of bliss burst, and his arm, around her, squeezed suddenly tense shoulders.
‘I am Marianna...’ She smiled warmly to Santo, but it turned black when she greeted Ella. ‘Your replacement.’
‘Now is not a good time.’ Santo was extremely curt. ‘I do not do impromptu interviews. You can arrange a time with Ella for tomorrow.’
‘No...’ Ella just wanted it over and done with. She could hardly blame Marianna for jumping on a plane to convince the boss personally—hadn’t Ella done exactly the same? ‘You two go ahead, I need to...’ She didn’t even try to come up with an excuse. ‘Tomorrow you are busy with filming. It might be better if we can sort this all out tonight.’
Ella ignored Santo as he tried to call her back. Instead she pulled back the gate to the lift and headed to her room, horribly unsettled at the turn of events, but possibly glad for them.
She had been so close to telling everything, to opening up and pouring out her heart.
But for what?
She was leaving, moving to Rome in a few short weeks—what hope was there for them anyway? Santo couldn’t even manage longevity in a normal relationship, a long-distance one was surely an impossible ask.
Ella needed to think. She had sworn to never cry over him, to not give this playboy her heart, and she had just come dangerously close to doing so. She opened the door to her room and there was a huge bunch of flowers waiting there. They brought a very watery smile to her lips. Santo had been on and off the phone for a lot of the afternoon, and though she was touched at his thoughtfulness, as she opened the attached card, Ella braced herself for more of his endearments, reminded herself that Santo was a stunning flirter, yet she found herself frowning as she read the card.
You will be amazing.
See why I had to sleep with you before I told you?
Santo xxx
P.S. You’re fired.
She didn’t understand his cryptic message, but knew this evening she had been played, that, all day, sex had been on his agenda, that it had been an absolute certainty for Santo that the day would end in his bed.
And, had it not been for Marianna, it would have.
She poured herself some limoncello from the bottle Teresa had given her, tried to tell herself that she must calm down, tried to work out what his message meant. Not liking where her thoughts were leading, that once in bed he’d take away the problem of her working for him, no doubt, right now, he was giving Marianna the job.
How bloody convenient for him.
‘Ella...’ She had known that he would come to her room, that Santo would have to offer a rapid explanation for his message, and she was very tight-lipped as she opened the door. ‘You got the flowers....’ There was an attempt at a joke, when Ella really wasn’t in the mood for one. ‘Now do you see why I need a PA? Even flowers I manage to screw up.’
‘So you were going to fire me, after you slept with me.’
‘No, no, you have it all wrong.’
‘I was a dead certainty, was I?’
‘Yes.’ He made no apology about it. ‘I was certain that tonight I was going to make love to you.’
‘So, how was Marianna?’
‘She was everything that you said she was. Ella, please, will you just listen?’
‘You don’t want me to hang around and train her up?’
‘Ella...’
She didn’t let him get a word in.
‘Because it shouldn’t take long—I’ve streamlined the process....’
‘Really!’ Santo’s raised an eyebrow. He actually rather liked her angry. ‘How so?’
‘Well, you’re a full-time job, but not a very complicated one. She watched his tongue roll in his cheek. ‘I’ll just hand her the Santo Bag.’
‘The Santo Bag?’
‘It contains all the essentials.’
And she took the huge bag she’d been carrying around and adding to for four months now, and tipped the contents onto his bed.
‘New white shirt, grey tie, black tie...’ She glanced over and there was a very unrepentant smile curving on his lips. ‘You do seem to attend an inordinate amount of funerals.’
‘The company I keep,’ Santo said, because actors lived and played hard as well, ‘and I have a complicated family too.’
‘Headache pills,’ Ella said. ‘And sunglasses.’
Santo said nothing.
‘Condoms—you tend to run out an awful lot.’ Tears pricked at her eyes as she remembered a frantic 3:00 a.m. phone call from her boss, and she was so blisteringly angry with him, so completely furious with herself for loving him. Loathing him too, for all he had, however unwittingly, put her heart through, because it had killed to see him with others.
‘We shoot in strange locations.’ But he wasn’t smiling now, realising now the depth of her hurt, because until last week there hadn’t been any hint that she even liked him.
‘First aid kit and those amazing gel Band-Aids...’ She heard his breathing come angry and hard as she reminded him of one time. ‘Great for carpet burn.’
‘I get the message, Ella.’
‘Oh, I haven’t finished yet. Antiseptic...’ she continued. ‘Great for scratches.’
‘You were jealous.’ He was angry with himself for not seeing it, angry with her too, for all she had put herself through. ‘All that time...’
‘Jealous!’ She snorted. ‘I’m not jealous, Santo, I’m sick of it. You don’t need a PA following you around—you need a school nurse!’
And she hated him for smiling then, hated the stealth of his approach. Yes, she was jealous, had, even though she’d denied it, been hot, spitting jealous and even worse than that, now he knew.
‘Do you know what you need?’
He picked a condom up from the bed and then he tossed it. ‘Oh, that’s right, we don’t use them.’
‘Of all the arrogant—’ He hushed her with his mouth, pushed her against the wall with a kiss so violent there was a clash of enamel and she tried to push him off.
‘You do need it,’ Santo said, refusing to release her, his hands pushing up her skirt. ‘You need a quick reminder of how good we are. And then we’re going to talk.’
‘When you fire me?’ she spat out.
‘When I hire you.’ He reclaimed her mouth as he tore at her panties and—love him or loathe him, she didn’t know—all Ella knew was that she was kissing him back. She’d never had angry sex before, had never been caught in a row that came with pure passion. At the return of her kiss he lifted her and she found that he was backing her into another wall, his mouth still on hers as he spoke. ‘I was going to offer you a job....’
‘As what? Your on-set tart?’
Right now she’d take it. She was kissing him back and grappling with his zipper. ‘I hate you, Santo,’ she told him. ‘I hate that you planned this.’
‘You love it.’
He lifted her onto him, and she hated more the legs that so willingly wrapped around him, but then, he’d taken off that shackle. This was no threat to her job. As of now, she didn’t work for him, and she found herself feeling surprisingly free.
‘You love it, more than you want to admit to it.’ He was inside her and she was grinding down. ‘You are the most uptight woman I know,’ Santo said, ‘except in the bedroom.’ She was starting to come and trying to hold on to it. ‘Guess what?’ He was battering into her, not just her sex but her head. ‘I accept that...’ He went to say something more, but gave in. She could hear the neighbours banging on the wall as Santo switched to rapid Italian, heard her own moans and shouts as they locked into oblivion. He was right, she loved it. She was just petrified of loving him.
* * *
‘I have to change rooms.’ She was leaning on him, stunned and a bit dizzy, never wanting to face her neighbours again, but Santo lifted her chin to face him.
‘There’s something I came to tell you this afternoon.’ Ella looked up at him. ‘I fired Rafaele.’
He was an absolute gentleman. He took her shredded panties and put them in the bin, retrieved a wayward shoe and even smoothed her skirt for her as she processed the news. It was huge to fire a director mid-shoot and she didn’t dare hope, didn’t dare dream. He tucked in his shirt and did everything up, a strange attempt to separate this from the bedroom, except she could feel him trickling between her thighs.
‘Ella, I have given a lot of thought as to his replacement and I think you would make an amazing director.’
‘Santo.’ She ran a tongue over her lip, a lip swollen from passion and the bruising crush of his kiss. ‘I don’t know what to say. Is it because you can’t get anyone else?’
‘I have three people who can fly out tonight.’ He scuppered that argument with a flick of his wrist.
‘Then is it because...’ She couldn’t even bring herself to say it. ‘Santo, you’re right. I should never have considered you doing me a favour just because we slept with each other.’