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As one of three sons of the Romano family, inheritor of the Romano billions, and equal owner of the now defunct Romano del Mare resort, Gianpierre didn’t make Luciana nervous.
He terrified her.
She’d fudged her curriculum vitae—the European version of a resume—more than a little bit to appear more qualified for the job. Back in the US, she’d been the lead buyer for a large construction company. She’d overseen the material timeline and the needs of dozens of simultaneous construction projects. She had not considered that operating as the Project Manager on one single project would be very challenging, but it was. She was in a new area of the world, dealing with language and cultural barriers and specialty materials that were designed to match those made nearly a thousand years ago. It was hard, yet the hardest thing for Luciana at the moment was not stretching up on her tippy toes and leaning in to kiss Gianpierre’s luscious lips.
Why do I want him? she lamented. Her life was upside down, yet all she could think about every time she got near Gianpierre was how good he smelled. She wanted to lose herself in him. She wanted to forget how hard life was now that… everything had changed.
“Sorry, s—” She took a breath. “… Gianpierre.” She’d meant to say his name as a correction to almost having called him sir again, but it came out like a whisper in the dark between lovers. The heat in her cheeks deepened, and Luciana looked away and then stepped away, putting distance between them.
“Mmm,” Gianpierre said, turning his back on her without seeming to notice her reaction to him. He returned to where he had been originally standing, next to another section that had been taped off with hazard tape. “Look here. The stone that we get will need to be weathered or it will not blend in with the surrounding cobbles for at least a century.”
“Would you like me to obtain a report of the stone’s history, s—?” She cut herself off and did not try to correct herself this time.
“No,” he said, waving a hand in sharp dismissal. “It will work or it won’t. We will know when the shipment comes.”
With her attention back on her tablet, Luciana stepped forward… and the ground beneath her moved.
The world slipped, and Luciana fell through.
2
Gianpierre
Gianpierre heard Luciana’s scream, and his head whipped around. The heavy, carved stone bricks beneath her feet had given way to a cave-in within the tunnels below, and she was falling. She could be crushed and killed if she reached the bottom before the heavy stones. And, if she reached the bottom after them, she could easily fall upon the rubble and break her back or crack her head.
Gianpierre released the trowel in his hand and let it fall forgotten to the ground as he lunged for Luciana. He dove low and caught her around her ribs as she fell through the earth, then he rolled with her. The motion pulled her out of the hole mid-fall and moved them both away from the crumbling surface.
He’d done what he’d had to do to save her life, but what he no longer had to do was hold her as he was. Her long body was under him and he encased her in his arms, sheltering her with his head and shoulders, as if to protect her from a falling sky.
“Se ti fosse successo qualcosa…” The words—if something had happened to you—tumbled off Gianpierre’s tongue, but he was sure that the American beauty in his arms didn’t comprehend. She had only worked for him a couple of weeks, but he could tell already that it had been two weeks too long. He had to get rid of her. She’d been nothing but a distraction since the day she’d started.
As gently as Gianpierre could, he brushed Luciana’s silky brown hair from her forehead and said, “Sei licenziato,” before repeating in English, “You’re fired.”
Luciana’s eyes went as wide and as round as saucers before her pianist hands pushed hard against his chest in an attempt to throw him off.
“No no no no no! I need this job!” She got to her feet and gave no indication that she had noticed the huge tear down one leg of her khakis or the way her usually loose top was twisted and pulled tight to show off her normally camouflaged curves.
Luciana was stunning. She was a beauty that could grace the cover of any Italian magazine, and it had been a daily struggle for Gianpierre to stay focused on his work instead of her intoxicating presence.
He wasn’t the one who had hired her. He wouldn’t have hired her. That had been done by his departing Project Manager before he’d left. No, Luciana was a distraction Gianpierre didn’t need. He was racing the clock on a career-defining opportunity that could have him gracing the cover of Architectural Digest. He didn’t care if his decision to fire her was sexist. He couldn’t have her here messing with his head, and he couldn’t have her getting hurt. He wouldn’t risk it. He would shut the whole oper
ation down before he allowed it.
“Sir! Gianpierre, I need this job!” Luciana said as she held him in place by wrapping her delicate hands around his bicep. Her touch was light, yet she held him captive. “I didn’t do anything wrong. It was the ground. I wasn’t in the taped off area. It wasn’t my fault! Sir! My sister… my niece.”
Gianpierre wanted to shrug himself free of her grip. He wanted to turn his back on her and wave her off as he walked away, but he didn’t. “Then go home to your sister. Go home to your niece.”
Luciana’s expression transformed into stunned shock. She looked as though he had physically struck her and her grip fell away, leaving him to instantly miss her touch.
The murmur of his other workers and their awkward looks and shuffling had Gianpierre throwing his arms down as he exclaimed, “What?” His attention refocused on Luciana, and what he saw stopped him cold. Her once clear eyes had turned bloodshot though no tears were pooling. “What?” Gianpierre asked again, this time with a gentle voice and a fearful heart.
“My sister died a month and a half ago,” Luciana answered, “on her way to pick me up from the airport. I’m raising her daughter.”
Gianpierre looked back and forth between Luciana and his crew before exclaiming, “Why has no one told me?” Then to Luciana, he said without looking, “You stay.” He continued to silently fume as he shoved his hands back into his gloves. When he spoke again, he was calmer, although the anger was still there. “Here”—he pointed to the ground—“this is no place for you. This is no place for a woman.”
Luciana’s gaze shifted over to the three women who were on his medieval reconstruction crew before looking back at Gianpierre. Despite the dust on their faces and the work-worn clothes that adorned their bodies, they were definitely women. In fact, they were beautiful women.
“They don’t count,” Gianpierre said dismissively, flipping a hand into the air. “They go where I go. They don’t count. This job… it’s here today and gone tomorrow for you. It’s not your life. I don’t want you dying for it. It’s too dangerous. You don’t belong here.”
