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“Why are you whispering?” He took a step back and looked Luciana over from head to toe. “And why are you dressed this way?” Gone was her loose fitting clothes suitable for the dirt, grime and sometimes dangerous conditions within which they worked. Instead, she wore a snug pencil skirt with a high slit and a silky blouse with a plunging neckline. To make matters worse, she even wore a necklace that hung low on her chest to draw the eye to her flawless skin and the swell of her softer, more generous parts. “What are you doing? And why do you have on pumps? You won’t be able to walk in the courtyard in those.”
“Gianpierre,” Luciana said, firmly but calmly, “I’m busy. Can we do this later?”
Gianpierre stared at her, then noted the way that she stood protectively in front of the closed door. “Who’s in there?” he asked, his voice dropping dangerously low. She was interviewing someone for his job, he knew it. But this wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. She had to stop.
“Gianpierre—”
“Tell me,” he said, cutting her off, and then tried to reach past her to the doorknob but the shift of her hip kept him from his goal.
“Gianpierre, let’s talk a moment.” Her voice had taken on a desperate, pleading tinge that set Gianpierre’s nerves on alert all the more. His hands were on her shoulders the next moment, and he physically moved her out of his path. Throwing the door open, he stepped into the doorway and stared at the man who sat in the room before him.
“No!” Gianpierre’s voice boomed. “Not him!” It was Silas Grantzky, a man every bit as tall as him with the rugged look of a battle-worn Viking. If it could be said that Gianpierre had an arch nemesis, that person would be Grantzky. Every single elite job that Gianpierre had ever been a contender for, he’d had to fight to win it over Silas Grantzky. And half the time, he lost. He’d almost lost the Dubai job to him, and Gianpierre was sure that Dubai had the man on speed dial in the event that he didn’t show up in another two weeks. “Not him,” he said again, intoning the words with the same vehemence as Moses telling the red seas to part.
“Gianpierre,” Luciana said, grabbing his arm with a firm ownership that only a lover would use, “he’s all that’s left. If not him, then the restoration of the Romano del Mare’s courtyard gets shut down for years!”
“I’m fine with that,” he said before tearing his arm free of her hold. “And what is this? All of this?” He indicated her clothes with the wave of his finger up and down. “You think he’ll keep you on if you turn his head?”
Luciana’s eyes flew wide as she gasped. Then her eyes narrowed and her open palm shot up toward Gianpierre’s face but he caught her wrist in mid-air before her slap could connect.
Gianpierre leaned in so that he could almost feel her heat on his skin. “You’ll mean nothing to him.”
“Just like I mean nothing to you?” she shot back without hesitation.
Out of the corner of his eye, Gianpierre could see Grantzky’s amused grin. That there was more between him and Luciana than an employer-employee relationship was painfully obvious, and Gianpierre was sure that the man would love his chance to try to best him in that arena as well.
In contrast to Grantzky’s relaxed demeanor, Luciana looked ready to disembowel Gianpierre. Her teeth were bared and her eyes all but glowed with the embers of her rage, but it only made Gianpierre want her more. His head pounded as it was battered with images of Luciana and Grantzky working together as Grantzky wore her down, day after day, romancing her until finally Gianpierre became replaced in every sense of the word. The thought was more than he could bear. While it was true that he could lose her to somebody else, it wouldn’t be while she worked the job that she’d done with him. “Get out,” he growled at her. “You’re fired.”
“No!” It was her turn to rip her arm free of his hold. “I quit.”
12
Luciana
“What just happened?” Luciana asked herself as she stormed out the front door of the Romano del Mare. She was shocked by the sudden turn of events. She had set up a meeting with a man who was considered among most circles within the industry as Gianpierre’s closest peer. There were very, very few who could compete with Gianpierre’s level of expertise. Yes, there were those who excelled in specific areas, such as the most accurate way to mix mud-based binders equivalent to practices used in the summer of 539 in Sussex, England. But in terms of overall knowledge base, a solid argument could be made, as it had been made by many, that Gianpierre’s expertise beat them all. As for everyone else, they argued that Grantzky was the best medieval architect. It was a very argumentative and passionately split camp.
“He’s such a jerk!” she fumed, covering the ground to her car with long, sure strides. All she’d wanted to do was help him get to Dubai as early as possible… and out of her and Natalia’s lives. That wasn’t so bad, was it? He’d get what he wanted, and she’d get what she wanted. Correction, she’d get what she needed. The man was insufferable. He was stubborn, obsessive, bull headed, self-confident to a fault… charming, endearing, great with Natalia, and quickly winning Luciana’s heart. She couldn’t have it. She couldn’t risk setting Natalia up for that kind of loss so soon after losing her mother. Even if it meant breaking her own heart, she couldn’t allow Gianpierre to stay in their lives one minute longer than absolutely necessary. She had to get him out as soon as possible even if that meant going home, packing their bags, and taking her and Natalia to stay with some distant cousin for the next several weeks until he was gone. That way she’d at least still have his renter’s income. She needed it now that her job was gone.
“Luciana.” Gianpierre’s voice travelled to her ears from a distance. The strength of his voice as he called for her came and went, and he seemed to be searching rather than actually pursuing her, but it didn’t take long for all of that to change as suddenly his voice rang loud and unobstructed by the walls of the resort. “Luciana!”
Throwing a glance over her shoulder, Luciana saw Gianpierre break into a run from the resort’s wide open front doors. But she was a runner too, and even in high heels she was able to sprint the distance to her car. Throwing the car’s door open, she was inside and starting the engine by the time that Gianpierre reached her. But rather than try to pull her car door back open and beg her to not drive away, he instead leapt onto the hood of her car. There, he stood with legs wide and his hands on his hips. He looked like Superman. All he needed was the big, wind-swept cape, and Luciana couldn’t help but roll her eyes in exasperation. He was behaving like an over emotional teenage boy. She’d just been conducting an interview, for pete’s sake, and now she was fired… Quit, she quickly reminded herself. She’d quit. Her life was under her control.
Yet with her car in gear, Luciana hesitated. If she engaged the engine and started to drive, Gianpierre would most likely lose his balance and fall off. He could get hurt. His entire crew—and not just her—would be out of work. Besides that, she cared about him… more than she was willing to say. She didn’t want to see him get hurt.
Rolling down her window, Luciana stuck her head out and yelled, “Get off my car!”
“Hear me out, Luciana. Please.”
Oh God, he said please. She wanted to hit her forehead against her steering wheel rather than hear him out, but she couldn’t. If he had demanded, yelled or cajoled, she might have risked his wellbeing by putting the car in reverse and stepping on the gas. He’d have gone tumbling off her car’s hood and she and Natalia would have been packed and gone before he e
ver made it home.
On the hood, Gianpierre sank to his knees and looked forlornly through the glass of her windshield. But it was when he reached out a palm and pressed it to the glass, as if he were reaching out to touch her heart, that she gave in and turned the car’s engine off.
Opening her car door, she slid out, closed it, and then stepped to the side of her car’s hood. Gianpierre moved to sit on the hood’s edge with his legs dangling over the side. Reaching one long arm out, he hooked it around her hips and pulled Luciana into the space between his thighs.
“Please don’t quit,” he whispered, staring at her with eyes as blue as glacier ice. They weren’t cold, though. They were worried with crinkle lines that framed them in an expressive face that had a way of melting all of Luciana’s resolve. His hands were warm on her lower back, and she had to fight to keep herself from throwing her arms around his shoulders to be held close against his strong chest.
“I didn’t quit,” she said, recalling the sequence of events. “You fired me.” The words came out sounding more petulant than she’d intended, and much faster than she’d imagined it would, her anger slipped away. It didn’t seem to matter how hard she wanted to hold onto it. The man’s very presence made her inner-self happy with a lightness she had never known before he’d come into her life.
