Oceans Between Us (A Cinderella Romance) (17 page)

"Oh!" Maria's hand flew to her heart. She liked the place, could imagine working here, but still...it took a moment to gather her thoughts. "I thought I'd be sitting by the phone for ages before I heard."

"There's a company orientation course running next week. I'd like you to attend if you're going to join us."

"Next week!" Everything was happening so fast. "Where would I have to go?"

"The course takes place at the head office in London."

Maria bit her lip, her pulse racing. She had no reason to turn down such a good job, except her own resistance to change. She smiled and nodded. "Yes, Mr. Calder, I accept. I think I'll enjoy working here."

"Great! That's settled then. I'll get the official letter in the mail to you today. The training course starts at ten thirty on Monday morning at the Eden Bach Hotel in Mayfair, the chain's flagship hotel overlooking Hyde Park."

Maria's head spun. She had a new job. No, this change was more fundamental than that. She had a new life.

Chapter Eleven

Maria strode out of the Eden Bach Hotel in Mayfair and stared longingly across six lanes of traffic at the green oasis of Hyde Park. She had come up by train the previous evening and spent a nervous night in the luxury hotel. But everyone was friendly and the first morning of her training course had gone well.

She found a deli, bought a takeout sandwich and coffee, and waited at traffic lights to cross Park Lane. A red double-decker bus pulled up, its breaks squealing, and Maria's heart faltered at the advertisement plastered across its side: DINO ROSSI LIVE AT THE O2 ARENA. Dino and Rachel stood together in the photo, an orchestra behind them.

Maria stared dumbstruck as the bus moved away. Sweat prickled her skin on a flush of heat. The lights changed. Someone shoved her in the back, grumbling at her to hurry. Thoughts swirled as she dashed across the road with the crowd and stumbled through the gate into Hyde Park.

She found a vacant bench and dropped down, her sandwich forgotten. Dino was performing in London on the last day of her course. Her fingers gripped the small gold heart hanging around her neck. She could watch him perform live. No. This was crazy. What happened to her promise to move on? Memories and longings assailed her as strong and deep as ever.

Maria checked the time. She had only a few minutes to return to the meeting room. Flustered, she tossed her uneaten lunch in a trash can and hurried back. As the course tutor droned on about customer service principles, Maria's thoughts were all of Dino. She barely heard a word of the presentation.

As soon as the class ended, she hurried to her room and used her new company laptop to search the Internet for ticket agencies, and booked for Dino's performance.

The rest of the course passed in a blur. By the end of the week, she could hardly sit still with excitement and nerves over seeing Dino. Her new job felt like an irritation. She wanted the course to just hurry up and finish.

When the evening of the concert finally arrived, Maria changed into warm clothes and caught the underground to North Greenwich. It was only a short walk from the station to the O2 Arena. She didn't have any difficulty finding her way. Everyone seemed to be walking in the same direction. The roof of the arena soared high into the night sky, a huge dome speared with glowing metal spikes. The place resembled a flying saucer perched on the edge of the river Thames.

In the midst of the crowd, she was swept up to the gates and through the door into the building, past the shops and up an escalator to her seat. The inside of the place was huge, like a football stadium, with rows and rows of seats holding nearly twenty thousand people. She sat down and hugged her coat around her as others seated themselves. All these people had come to see Dino...her Dino. The man who had danced her around the kitchen, held her in his arms, made love to her.

She was so far from the main stage she had to squint to see the orchestra taking their places. Multicolored lights roamed over the crowd, flickering and flashing like fireworks. The chatter of expectant voices filled the arena. Seats rattled and footsteps thumped on the steps as the last people hurried to their places. The orchestra started playing. Every muscle in Maria's body was strung tight, her palms damp.

Then Dino strode out from the side of the stage, confident, smiling. Deafening applause rose from the crowd. Maria wouldn't have been able to see him clearly, but a huge LCD screen behind the orchestra showed him in close-up. He grabbed a microphone from a stand and raised his arms for silence. The clapping faded. "
Buona sera
! Good evening, London," Dino said. "How are you tonight?"

The crowd cheered again, but Maria stared mutely, her throat tight with emotion. She felt as though she had slipped into an alternate reality. The otherworldly feeling continued as Dino glanced at the conductor and nodded.

He sang the first song in Italian. Because she didn't understand the words, she concentrated on the beautiful tone of his voice, memorizing each note, each gesture, desperate to remember. As much as she had enjoyed hearing him sing
La Bohème
, these popular songs were the style of music that resonated with her most deeply.

Sometimes he paused his singing and danced for a few bars, his elegant, fluid movements so achingly familiar that tears ran down Maria's cheeks. Watching him live was a very different experience to seeing him on the screen in New York. This was exquisite torture, as painful as a blade sliding into her heart. She shouldn't have come. What had she been thinking?

Between songs, he talked to the crowd, mentioned other places he'd performed, joked about things that had happened. He had such charisma, the audience hung on his every word. How could she ever have thought in her wildest dreams that he would want her? Her mum had been right. She'd deluded herself.

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and told herself to leave, but she couldn't drag her hungry gaze off Dino. This must be the last time she saw him. Her heart couldn't stand it again.

Rachel sashayed onstage in a gold satin dress and performed three songs with Dino. Flickering lights danced over the eager upturned faces of the audience as Dino and Rachel held hands, stared into each other's eyes, and sang of love lost and found. The crowd erupted into ecstatic applause at the end. Grinning, Dino kissed Rachel's hand, just the way he had once kissed Maria's.

Maria buried her face against her sleeve as the adulation continued. She couldn't take much more of this. The clapping seemed to go on forever. When Maria finally raised her gaze, Dino and Rachel had left the stage, but the orchestra was still there.

The audience continued to clap, people drumming their feet on the floor, cheering for an encore. Part of Maria hoped Dino wouldn't answer the call, that this was the end and she could escape to lick her wounds. But her stupid heart ached for one last sight of him.

After what felt like an eternity, Dino walked onstage again and picked up the microphone. This time he was alone. "Ah, you Londoners, you are too demanding." He gestured in a familiar way. Then his smile faded, and he glanced down thoughtfully. "Now I will sing something that is special to me." As he spoke, he moved away from the orchestra, along an elevated walkway to a small stage in the center of the arena. The circular platform raised Dino ten feet high, and eager faces stared up at him.

Colored lights flickered over the crowd and the orchestra started playing softly. "A little while ago I met a woman," Dino said, his words echoing around the arena. He kissed the tips of his fingers and held them up, releasing the kiss into the air. "This song is for her."

Like everyone else in the arena, Maria was transfixed. A spotlight illuminated Dino from above, shining off his glossy dark hair, making him look almost surreal. Then he started singing and Maria forgot to breathe. She recognized the song immediately—"Maria" from
West Side Story
. She clamped a hand over her mouth. Tears spilled from her eyes as he sang her name, over and over, his voice laden with emotion.

This song must be for her. Even as her mind rejected the idea, her heart knew it was true. If he felt this way about her, why hadn't he contacted her? Not a phone call or a postcard since she came back from New York. Nothing to keep her hopes alive. It made no sense. And how could she ever get in touch with him to let him know she felt the same way?

***

The following day, Maria caught an early-morning train home. She watched the London suburbs slip past, gradually giving way to fields and villages. Her mum and dad had invited her grandparents over for dinner that evening to celebrate Maria's new job. She tried to think of the family celebration, the food she would prepare. But Dino filled her thoughts.

His rendition of "Maria" had left her more confused than ever. Why sing a song for her when he had no idea she was in the audience? Had it simply been a sentimental crowd-pleaser to end the performance? She didn't want to believe he was insincere. But if the sentiments he expressed in the song were true, surely he would have found time to stick a stamp on a postcard and send it her way?

This whole situation with Dino exhausted her, the emotional highs and lows, the uncertainty, the heartache. She should have stuck to her plan to put him behind her and move on. Then she remembered the agony of emotion on his face as he'd sung her name, and she knew that memory would be with her until her dying day.

When she walked out of Truro station, her sister's car was parked in the pickup area. As soon as Chris saw Maria, she jumped out. "You've got me! Mum and Dad are showing another couple around the guesthouse."

Maria's heart fell. She'd managed to put the sale out of her mind. "Why today when we've got a family get-together?"

"It was the only time they could manage." Chris hauled Maria's case into the back of her vehicle.

They set off, and Chris quizzed Maria on her course and listened with rapt attention to the details of the elegant London Eden Bach Hotel.

"You are so lucky. I'd love a shopping trip to London."

Maria laughed. "Has your credit card recovered from New York? Anyway, I wasn't shopping. I was at a training course."

"In one of the classiest hotels in London." Chris released a heartfelt sigh. "But I can't complain. I've got a good life."

"You certainly have. A husband who loves you and two lovely little girls." It was Maria's turn to sigh. Chris had everything Maria wanted.

"So if you had such a good time, why do you look like someone died?"

"I do not." Maria pulled down the sun visor and examined her face in the mirror. She did look a bit pale. She planned to tell her sister that the traffic noise had disturbed her sleep, but when she opened her mouth different words came out. "Dino was on at the O2 Arena last night."

"Oh, my God, Mari. Please tell me you didn't go."

Maria winced.

"Didn't you learn your lesson in New York?" Her sister gave her an exasperated glance, but after a few moments she relented. "Okay, spill. What was the concert like?"

Maria described the venue and the songs Dino had performed, but she didn't mention the encore. Although he'd sung "Maria" in front of twenty thousand people, the experience was too personal to discuss.

As soon as she arrived home, her mother recruited her for kitchen duty. "Granny and Grandpa will be here soon. They're staying tonight. I know it's crazy but there's snow forecast. I can't understand what's gone wrong with the British weather. We never used to get much snow in the South West and certainly not at this time of year. I don't know what's happened to the global warming they promised us. It feels more like a new ice age."

Maria started baking rolls and preparing vegetables. The pleasure of being in the kitchen and cooking soothed her tumultuous emotions.

For once, the weather forecast was right. By midafternoon, fluffy snowflakes started to fall. Her dad's parents arrived soon after, and she took a break from kitchen duties to welcome them. Granny Gardener was a fraction over five feet tall, but rather like a feisty small dog, she had the attitude of a rottweiler. "Let me look at you." She patted Maria's cheek. "Hmm, you're too pale and too thin. But I expect that's the fashion these days." Maria smiled as she hugged her granny. "What's this new job you've got then, poppet? I want to hear all about it."

Over a cup of tea, Maria gave a brief rundown of her assistant manager's job to everyone there and hoped she wouldn't be asked that question again. Although they were celebrating her new job, she didn't want to spend the weekend thinking about work.

"Well, I hope you enjoy it," Granny said. "It doesn't seem right to me, your mum and dad selling the guesthouse out from under you when you've worked so hard here."

"We've talked about this, Mum," Maria's dad said, tapping a finger against his lips for silence.

"Yes, well, I'm just saying, that's all. I'm allowed to have an opinion." Maria rubbed her granny's arm, grateful for the support, even though she knew the Crow's Nest was a lost cause.

At five thirty, Maria and her mother wheeled the heated trolley into the dining room and served the dinner. Including Chris, Eric, and the twins, there were nine of them. Most of the tables had been moved aside, leaving three pushed together in the center of the room.

Maria paused for a moment and, with a pang of longing, remembered the last time she had eaten in the dining room with Dino, remembered the sound of his laughter and his soft, melodic accent, the glint of warmth in his rich, brown eyes. That felt like a lifetime ago now.