Defying the Prince

She yanked open the door and immediately the breeze from the sea lifted and flirted with her hair.

Matteo could have smoothed the situation easily. He had the skills. But he didn’t use them. He didn’t want things smooth. He didn’t want to encourage that chemistry. Nor was he prepared to give false flattery. No one, not even her own pa

rents, who should surely be her biggest supporters, could describe her as a serious musician.

And surely no one who put themselves up for public scrutiny in a show like Singing Star could still be sensitive. The show had been slated. She’d been slated.

And if she was offended and kept her distance from him, that would be a good thing.

Having rationalised his behaviour, he watched as she tugged on her shoes. ‘Dinner is at eight.’

She didn’t look at him. ‘I’ll eat in my room. Isn’t that what usually happens to prisoners?’ With that parting shot she stalked off towards the palazzo, leaving Matteo staring after her.

CHAPTER FIVE

MISERABLE, angry and totally humiliated, Izzy pulled on her pyjamas and curled up on her bed. It was all very well believing in yourself but what was the point in believing in yourself if everyone else just put you down?

Perhaps everyone was right. Her voice was rubbish, she had no talent and no one was ever going to take her seriously. She was kidding herself if she thought anything was ever going to change. There was perseverance and then there was being just plain deluded.

Perhaps she should follow Allegra’s advice, get a proper job and forget her dream.

Look at me, I’m not what you see …

Deep inside there’s part of me, longing to break free …

The song just wouldn’t leave her alone and she sat up and rubbed the tears from her cheeks, furious with herself for being so pathetic.

If she gave up she was definitely going to fail, wasn’t she? No one who gave up had ever succeeded, but sometimes people who had failed loads of times eventually made it. Just because you didn’t succeed the first time or the tenth, didn’t mean you wouldn’t on the hundredth.

Desperate for human comfort, she toyed with her phone.

She could ring her mother, but what would be the point of that? All she’d get was a bracing lecture on getting back up when life knocks you over when what she really wanted was a hug. And the yearning for a hug surprised her because Chantelle had never been tactile and Izzy had given up hoping or even wishing for a closer relationship. What chance was there of that when she wasn’t even allowed to call her ‘Mum’? It had to be ‘Chantelle,’ as if the use of her first name would somehow roll back the years.

Deciding that there was no lonelier feeling than looking at a phone full of contacts, none of whom you could call, Izzy flung her phone back in her bag.

Suddenly she was a young child again, sitting on her bottom in the dirt, crying and reaching out her arms to her mother—a mother who stayed at a distance and watched impatiently as her child struggled.

‘If I pick you up, Izzy, you’ll never learn to get up by yourself. Stop crying and stand up.’

Once in a while, Izzy thought miserably, it would be nice to at least have someone hold out a hand to help her up.

She thought about texting Allegra but then remembered that she wasn’t supposed to use her phone. And anyway, Allegra was probably still basking in the ecstasy of being engaged to a prince and Izzy didn’t want to ruin that.

There was no one she could talk to and the truth was there was no point. People didn’t understand her love of music, they never had and the fact that no one understood her was infinitely depressing.

Despite what people thought, it wasn’t about the attention. She didn’t sing because she wanted an audience. She sang because she had to sing. There was something inside her that made it impossible not to sing. Since she was tiny, she’d had tunes and words in her head. It had driven Chantelle crazy that she was always singing, but Izzy could no more stop singing than she could stop breathing. It was part of who she was.

And right now she didn’t like that part one little bit.

She almost wished she could give up so that she could stop being crushed by disappointment at regular intervals.

But of all the rejections she’d received in her life nothing had been quite so crushing as the prince’s total dismissal of her talent. Or maybe it just mattered more because it was him.

Izzy slid off the bed and wandered through to the luxurious bathroom. She removed her streaked make-up, splashed her face with cold water and looked in the mirror.

Her eyes were red, and without make-up her face was almost ethereally pale.

She looked a million miles from the successful singer she wanted to be.