How dare he take away her ability to dream?
She felt as though she was drowning with no way to surface. Caught in a riptide of wanting to believe that anything was possible. Furious she couldn’t make the jump. Not once in her life had she ever let herself want anything as much as she wanted what was in front of her right now. Not with Jordan. Not ever.
She did not want to lose Gabe.
Burying her rational mind in a hope that somehow this could work, she kissed him. Trusted him with her heart. And prayed he wouldn’t break it like every other man in her life had.
She undid the buttons of his shirt with unsteady hands. Yanked it free from his pants and went for his belt. “Alex,” he muttered hoarsely, as if to slow her down, but she shook him off, freed him from his jeans and sank down in front of him. She wanted him as blinded as she was. As out of control. Then there was only the sound of his labored breathing, the feel of his velvet hardness beneath her fingers, his thighs shaking under her, his guttural groan of approval as she sent him over the edge and took back the power she needed.
When a calm stillness had settled over the room, he scooped her up off the floor and carried her to the big shower. If he noticed she was trembling under his hands, coming apart at the seams, he didn’t say anything. He stripped her of her clothes, picked her up and sat down with her on the bench under the spray. She felt exposed, as mentally naked as she was physically as he washed her. When he was done, he kept her there until the connection between them and the heat of the water calmed her, and when she was quiet in his arms he wrapped her legs around him and took her with a slow, soulful possession that healed a part of her she hadn’t even known was broken.
In that moment, her face buried in his shoulder, she knew she was deeply, irrevocably in love with Gabe De Campo.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
FLASHBULBS BOUNCED OFF the step-and-repeat banner at Zambia, De Campo’s hot new SoHo wine bar, as celebrity after celebrity arrived on a still-scorching summer night predicted to break heat records in the city. Alex had outdoor coolers blowing, but not even the heat could dampen the guests’ enthusiasm for De Campo’s big night. The buzz from Napa had trickled east and the inside scoop said the Devil’s Peak launch was not to be missed.
Lilly had pulled in some of her big-name athletes, Riccardo had tapped the racing crowd and, as luck would have it, there was an A-list Hollywood couple filming in town. Alex watched them work the cameras in front of the big De Campo logos and smiled to herself. The rumors that Davina Cole and David Murray’s on-screen romance was only half as tempestuous as their offscreen one looked to be true. Sparks were flying and high drama was in the air.
Matty helped Davina off the raised platform while David played to the cameras. Alex frowned. Did they know each other? How could she have missed that? Or maybe they didn’t and Matty was just being his usual flirtatious self. If there was a man in this world who could charm a Hollywood diva off a dais, date or no date, it was Matty.
She made a note of it as a future problem and disappeared inside. It would be at least an hour before that exploded and with most of the guests arrived, it was time to do the welcome toast.
Zambia was a modern dark-wood-and-exposed-brick masterpiece inside, designed by one of the city’s top architects. Thousands of bottles of wine lined the walls, highlighted by a massive glass jug-and-rope chandelier that cast a muted glow across the room. The perfect backdrop for the rich, beautiful vintages they were unveiling tonight.
She paused on the edge of the packed room. She liked to think the excessively alive, vibrant energy pulsing through her veins was due to the fantastic evening it was shaping up to be, but she was fairly certain it had more to do with the tall, dark hunk in a tux greeting guests near the entrance. Being with Gabe had added a whole new set of sensory perceptions to her toolbox. Everything felt richer, more layered when she was with him. It wasn’t just that he made a mean espresso in the morning; it was that it tasted better when she drank it with him.
Which she’d been doing a lot lately, she conceded. As in the last three mornings straight. And if that set off a panicky feeling that she had no idea what she was doing, that was to be expected. This was a whole new state of being she was experiencing—this complex set of stimuli Gabe engendered in her. One she was doing her best to master.
If she was honest—she never wanted it to end.
He must have felt her stare, because he looked up from his conversation and returned it. Electricity ratcheted through her as though she’d stuck her finger in a socket. Innate, all consuming, their connection had never been in question. But now it was more the kind of feel-it-down-to-your-toes, inescapable plunge that at times felt too intense to handle. She’d let him break her down. She had no choice but to go along for the ride.
Dipping her head, she wound her way through the crowd toward him. He ditched his conversation as she approached.
“You need to package that up and put it away for later,” he murmured, trailing his gaze over her.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” she came back innocently. “Just enjoying the scenery.”
“I like how you enjoyed it this morning.”
His smooth-as-silk, lightly accented words slid over her like a caress. “You can like it again tonight,” she purred. “If I’m still standing.”
“You most definitely don’t need to be standing, cara.”
An allover body flush crept across her skin. She turned to him and lifted a brow. “I don’t do blushing, Gabriele. You need to package that up and keep it for later.”
His eyes glinted at her use of his full name, which she used when she wanted to make a point. “I’m flying back to San Francisco tomorrow.”
Her hand froze halfway to her face. She’d known this was coming. Knew she lived in New York and he lived in Napa and he had two wines to get out the door. So why did she feel so distinctly off balance? “You changed your flight?”
“The ad agency wants to run some concepts by me tomorrow.” His gaze settled on her face with a single-minded intensity. “Come with me. Hang out by the pool. You deserve a break after all this.”
His offer soothed the tiny fissure he’d opened up inside of her, but she shook her head because it was impossible. “I’ve been on the West Coast for weeks. I have a million things to wrap up from the event and three new business proposals sitting on my desk.”
“Emily can handle the event stuff. Bring the proposals with you.”
She bristled at his imperious tone. “We live on opposite coasts, Gabe. We’re going to have to negotiate.”
His eyes turned a stormy, ready-for-battle sea-green. “I’m all for negotiating, angel. How about one a.m., my place, in my—”
“Gabe.” She slid a wary glance around them. “We are so not talking about this now. Can you round up Riccardo and Antonio? It’s time to do the toast.”
He gave her a look that said they would definitely pick this conversation up later and turned to find them.
“Oh,” she added. “Tell Matty to keep his hands off Davina Cole, will you?”
He turned around. “He had them on her?”
“Yes. Tell him to take them off. There’s enough sparks flying without adding him into the fray.”
* * *
Lilly joined her by the bar as the De Campos made their opening remarks. “Is there ever a non-intense moment between you two?” she murmured.
Alex surveyed the man who was systematically destroying her defenses one by one and pursed her lips. “Few and far between. What’s up with Matty, by the way? He’s distinctly not Matty.”
Lilly shook her head. “Nobody knows. It’s the big mystery. He won’t talk about it.”
“It’s a woman,” Alex concluded. Preferably the gymnast or some other female who was not Davina Cole.
She focused on Antonio, always a loose cannon at the best of times, as he began his speech. Surprisingly, he seemed to be on his best behavior, lavishing praise on Gabe and the Napa operat
ions. She studied him, trying to figure out whether he’d had a change of heart or was just acting for the crowd, but he appeared genuine. Her gaze flicked to Gabe. He looked as wary as she was. But the crowd was loving Antonio’s theatrics, eating it up. He might be a cranky old bastard, she acknowledged, but he could weave a spell when he wanted to.
Gabe spoke, and the party shifted into full swing. The city’s most influential embraced their chemistry matches with a good-natured enthusiasm that eased the tension in her shoulders, freeing Alex up to man a jam-packed schedule of media and blogger interviews with all three De Campo men. By the time she’d done the bulk of them, she knew the Angel’s Share was a hit. The wine columnists and bloggers tasted it in their exclusive cellar appointments, scratched their heads, tasted it again and almost unanimously declared it spectacular. Where it fit into the current market, they couldn’t say. But they had a smile on their face as they delivered the punch line.
It occurred to Alex as she led her second-to-last interview up the cellar stairs that maybe she could work from Napa this week. Yes, she had three new business proposals on her desk, but one was from Jordan, which she didn’t intend to accept, despite its multimillion-dollar value, and the other two were relatively straightforward. Ones she could do in her sleep. Which led to the thought of how feasible it would be to work bicoastal on a regular basis. Deciding that was descending into crazy talk, she snuffed it out of her head and shook the blogger’s hand.
“Ready for my last one,” she told Emily. “Please say it’s my last one.”
“It’s your last one. Marc Levine. Wine importer. Does a blog on the side. Attracts a hundred thousand visitors a month.”
“Impressive,” Alex murmured. “Who does he want?”
“Gabe.”
The blogger sounded familiar. Emily pointed him out—a tall, hook-nosed, blond-haired man standing at the far bar with a striking redheaded companion. She was far more attractive than him and younger, and for this reason Alex’s gaze lingered a bit longer than usual. She was lovely, dis— The thought jammed in her head. She was Cassandra Lane—Jordan’s ex-wife. The woman who had arrived home from France to find Alex and her husband in bed together.
How had she not remembered Cassandra was married to a wine guy?
She turned her back on the couple, her breath coming in short, staccato bursts, but not before the redheaded woman’s eyes flashed with a recognition Alex had dearly hoped to avoid. Dammit.
“Take this one,” she muttered to Emily, who gave her a confused look, but trotted off toward the couple. Alex walked straight into the kitchen and leaned against a wall, her knees trembling as she ignored the curious looks of the catering staff. Five years had passed since that night Cassandra had walked in on her and Jordan, but it felt like five minutes.
I didn’t know, she wanted to go out there and cry to Cassandra Lane. I never knew. But what good would it do now?
She emerged from the kitchen ten minutes later, as composed as she could make herself and intent on avoiding Cassandra at all costs. She was on her way to get another case of wine from the cellar when the redhead stepped away from the wall and into her path.
“Alex.”
The other woman wore a perfectly composed look, but she could sense the raw emotion pulsing beneath her alabaster skin. Her gaze moved over Alex as though she were studying a piece of art. “He always said you were nothing, but I have a feeling you were way more than that. I think he was in love with you.”
Alex felt the ground give way beneath her feet. The room whirled around her in a film strip of dark shadows that threatened to engulf her and never let her go. She could not go back there. She could never go back there.
Shrieking laughter jerked her head back. A woman to the left of them had had too much to drink. “Jordan told me you were divorced,” she said harshly. “I am so sorry.”
“How could you not know?” the other woman demanded. “How could you not know the man had a whole other life going on?”
“You were in France. Jordan and I both worked twenty-four-seven. It was—” she waved her hand in the air “—all over the place.”
“It was in our apartment,” Cassandra hissed. “Nothing clued you in? Not the fact he didn’t introduce you to his friends? To his children? That he didn’t bring you to the house in Long Island?”
The questions slammed into her, one after another, vicious blows to the solar plexus. It was the one thing she couldn’t get past. How had she not seen those signs? How, in six months, had she never experienced any of that? She pulled in a breath, but it was hard to draw in air. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to know. Maybe she’d been so happy to be loved she’d disregarded anything that didn’t fit.
“I should go,” she murmured. “Nothing good is going to come of this.”
“You’re damn right,” the other woman broke out, her voice rising. “I hope you were worth the thirty-million-dollar divorce settlement, Alex. I really do.”
“I’m sure I wasn’t.” She swung around and started through the crowd. The feeling that the past was chasing her chilled her skin, made her shoulder her way through the tightly packed collection of bodies at a half run. But she would never be able to run fast enough to escape the past. Her haunted gaze found Marc Levine and Gabe in front of her, returning from their interview. The fact that Cassandra could convince Marc to trash Gabe’s wine sent a wave of panic through her. If someone had created her worst nightmare, this would have been it.
“Grazie,” Gabe murmured to Marc, his gaze on Alex’s face. “Let me know if there’s anything else we can get you.”
They shook hands. The other man strode off into the crowd. Gabe moved to her side. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to talk to you.” Before she could back out of it, before she could convince herself she could bury it yet again. “In private.”
His gaze narrowed. “The cellar?”
She nodded. The cooler temperatures of the carved mahogany cellar made Alex’s already-frozen limbs tremble. Gabe stood, feet spread apart in front of her, arms crossed over his chest, a wary look on his face. “If this is about our conversation from earlier, I—”
“It’s not.” The stilted nature of her response sharpened his gaze. She pressed her palms against her thighs and stared down at them. Where to start? How to make him understand? “Jordan Lane was my client—you know that. Cassandra Levine, the wife of the blogger you just met, is his former wife.”
He lifted a brow. “I didn’t know that.”
She took a deep breath. “I was twenty-two when we took Jordan’s business on, extremely junior. He was very hands-on, wanted to be involved on all levels. His business was worth a small fortune to our firm, so when he asked for me to work on his account, they said yes even though I was far too inexperienced.”
“He wanted you,” Gabe said flatly.
She wrapped her arms around herself. How clear it was looking at it from the outside. “Yes.”
“I really don’t like where this is going, Lex.” The banked hostility she saw rise in his eyes made her insides tighten. She lifted a shaky hand and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “He was thirteen years my senior. Brilliant. We started spending a ton of time together working, and one night he asked me to meet him in his hotel suite.” She sank her teeth into her bottom lip. “We—”
“Tell me you didn’t sleep with him.”
She cringed. “I did.”
“While he was married?”
“I didn’t know,” she said forcefully. “He’d told me he was divorced. That his ex-wife was off working in France.”
“Maledizione, Alex.” He threw up his hands. “You know my history on this.”
“I know.” She took a step toward him. “That’s why I’m telling you. This wasn’t anything like it was with Darya, Gabe, I didn’t know he was married.”
“His wife being upstairs didn’t spur this little episode of honesty?”
She steeled herself against the panic that climbed he
r throat. “I wanted to tell you. I did. But when Lilly told me what Darya did, I didn’t think you’d understand.”
“I don’t understand.” His big body radiated fury. “All this week when I’ve been struggling with how to deal with Lane, you were keeping this from me?”
She pressed her hands to her temples. “I was scared.”
“You should have told me,” he bellowed, making her heart pound. “He stole my wine, Alex. He’s trying to destroy me. How do I know you aren’t a part of this? You came after me. You wanted this job.”
Her pounding heart stopped in midbeat. “You don’t mean that.”
He clenched his hands by his sides, nostrils flaring. “All I asked from you was honesty, Lex. The rest of your baggage I could deal with. But you couldn’t even give me that.”
“You don’t understand.” She begged him with her eyes to listen. “I almost lost my job over this. I was part of a thirty-million-dollar divorce settlement. My agency told me to keep my mouth shut and never speak a word of it.”
“You don’t work for them now.”
“Reputation is still everything in my business.” Frustration and despair edged her voice. “No one would hire me if I was associated with a scandal like that. My business wouldn’t survive. Dammit, Gabe, I was a stupid young girl who made a big mistake. I should never have gotten involved with a client, regardless of whether or not he was a married man.”
His jaw tightened. “Yet here you are again.”
Her mouth went dry. “You know this is different.”
“How do I know anything? You’ve been lying to me all along.”
“I have not been lying to you.”
“That’s right. You are an expert at the sin of omission.” He spun away and paced to the other side of the cellar, his broad shoulders ramrod straight. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me? Criminal records? Affairs with high-ranking politicians?”
Her breath caught in her throat. “You did not just say that.”
Silence stretched, chilling in its stillness. His voice, when it came, was dangerously quiet. “We were supposed to be a team, Lex. I trusted you with my livelihood. With the most important moment of my career.”
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