Then he pushed open the conference room door and fed her straight to the wolves.
CHAPTER FOUR
THREE HARD WEEKS and two days later, Kathryn boarded the Castelli family private jet on the airfield outside Rome, this time in her capacity as the most hated employee in Luca’s office. She marched up the folded-down stairs with her back straight and her head high—because that title, of course, was an upgrade compared to her previous role as the most hated stepmother in Castelli family history.
She thought she had this being-loathed thing under control.
It was all about the smile.
Kathryn smiled every time conversation halted abruptly when she entered a room. She smiled when her coworkers pretended they didn’t understand her and made her repeat her question once, then twice, so she’d feel foolish as her words hung there in the air between them. She smiled when she was ignored in meetings. She smiled when she was called on to answer questions about past projects she couldn’t possibly know anything about. She smiled when Luca berated her for allowing unrestricted access to him and she smiled brighter when he let his people in and out the side door of his office himself, so he could do it all over again.
She smiled and she smiled. The benefit of having been splashed across a thousand tabloids and held to be so good and so self-sacrificing was that she found she could use Saint Kate as a guide through each and every one of her chilly office interactions. Especially because she was well aware that the less she reacted, the more it annoyed her coworkers.
Luca, of course, was a different issue altogether.
She ducked into the plane and made her way into the upgraded living room space, smiling serenely as she took her seat on the curved leather sofa that commanded the center of the room. Luca was already sprawled out at one of the tables to the side that seated three apiece in luxurious leather armchairs, one hand in his hair as usual and the other clamping his mobile to his ear.
He eyed her as he finished his conversation in low Italian, and didn’t stop when it was done.
“You’re still here,” he said. Eventually.
She smiled brighter. “Of course. I told you I wouldn’t leave.”
“You can’t possibly have enjoyed these past few weeks, Kathryn.”
“You certainly went out of your way to make sure of that,” she agreed. She showed him her teeth. “Much appreciated.”
He frowned, and she smiled, and that went on for so long, she was tempted to turn on the big-screen television and ignore him—but that was not how an employee would behave, she imagined.
“You were at the office when I arrived this morning,” he said gruffly.
“Every morning.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m at the office when you arrive every morning,” Kathryn said mildly. “Your assistant can’t be late the way I was that first day, can she? It sends the wrong message.”
She didn’t expect him to admit that he’d deliberately kept her waiting that day, simply so he could chastise her for tardiness. He didn’t disappoint her, though there was a gleam she didn’t quite understand in his dark eyes as they remained level on hers.
“Surely you have other things to do with your time.” He waved a hand at her, as if she was displaying herself in a tiny string bikini rather than wearing another perfectly unobjectionable blouse and skirt, chosen specifically to blend in with everyone else and be unworthy of comment. “Trips to the places rich men frequent, the better to identify your next target, for example.”
“I had that all planned for this weekend, of course,” she said in her sweetest, most professional tone, “but then you scheduled this trip to California. I guess the gold digging will have to wait.”
He didn’t speak to her again until the plane reached its cruising altitude and the single, deferential air steward had set out trays of food for their dinner on the dark wood coffee table that sprawled in the center of the jet’s deeply comfortable and faintly decadent living room. Kathryn’s stomach rumbled at her, reminding her that she’d worked through lunch. And breakfast, for that matter, not that her dedication ever seemed to make a difference in Luca’s slippery slope of an office, where she literally could do no right.
You’re used to that, aren’t you? a voice inside her asked—but she shoved it away. Her mother’s disappointment in her hurt, yes, but it wasn’t invalid. Kathryn was well aware of her own deficiencies, and not only because she’d heard about them so often.
If she hadn’t been so deficient, she reminded herself, she wouldn’t have found marrying Gianni to be such a perfect option for her. She’d have excelled at her MBA the way she’d been supposed to do.
“Tell me the story,” Luca said after they’d eaten in silence for a while, surprising her.
He had a plate on the table before him and was lounging in his leather armchair as he picked languidly at it, but his seeming nonchalance didn’t make her heart beat any slower. Nor did it help matters that they were trapped in a plane together, and Kathryn couldn’t seem to make herself think about anything but that. All the gilt edges and wood accents and noncommercial setup and decor in the world couldn’t change the fact that she and Luca were suspended above the Atlantic Ocean in the dark, with no buffer between them.
Alone.
That hit her like a punch then slid down deep into her belly and pulsed there, as worrying as it was entirely too hot.
She had never actually been alone with Luca before.
There had always been someone else around. Always. Gianni. Some other member of the Castelli family. Staff. All the people in his office, especially because they all lived to catch her out in a misstep as she muddled her way through her first weeks on the job. Rafael and his family the week of the funeral, never more than a room or two away, liable to walk in at any moment.
This was the first time in over two years that it had ever been just the two of them.
There’s a pilot, she told herself as her heart slowed, then beat too hard against her ribs. You’re not really alone.
But she knew even as she thought it that it didn’t mean anything. Neither the pilot nor the air steward would disturb Luca unless he summoned them himself. She might as well have stranded herself on a desert island with the man.
That, she reflected helplessly, her mind suddenly full of images of a half-naked Luca gleaming beneath some far-off tropical sun, is not a helpful line of thought.
And there was a certain hunger in that dark gaze of his that made her think he was entertaining the same rush of images that she was.
“What story?” she asked, and hated how insubstantial her voice was. And the way his dark gaze sharpened at the sound, as if he knew why.
“The lovely and touching fairy tale of how an obviously virtuous young woman like yourself fell passionately in love with a man who could easily have fathered your parents, of course. What else?”
That was meant to insult her, Kathryn knew. But he’d never asked her that before. No one had. The entire world thought they knew exactly why a younger woman had married a much older man—and that wasn’t entirely untrue, of course. There were reasons, and some of those reasons were financial. But that didn’t mean it had been as cold or as calculated as Luca was determined to believe.
“It wasn’t a fairy tale,” she told him, tucking her feet up beneath her on the butter-soft leather sofa and smoothing the edges of her skirt down farther toward her knees. She frowned at him. “It was just...nice. I met him very much by accident at a facility that caters to seniors and people with degenerative health challenges.”
He didn’t quite snort at that. “How touching.”
“Surely you know that your father wasn’t well, Luca.” She shrugged. “He was visiting a specialist. I was in the waiting area and we got to talking.”
“You were there,
one assumes, to gather some extra polish for your halo and crow about it to the tabloids?”
Kathryn thought of her mother, and the way her body had betrayed her, growing so old and knotted before her time. She thought of the gnarled hands that had scrubbed floors to give Kathryn every possible chance—I had plans for my life, Kathryn, Rose had always said in that sharp way of hers, but I put them aside for you.
How could Kathryn do anything less than the same in return for her?
“Something like that,” she said now, to this man who didn’t deserve to know anything about her mother or her struggles, or the choices Kathryn had made to honor the sacrifices that had been made for her, no matter how badly she’d done at that sometimes. “I do so prefer it when my halo shines, you know.”
Luca laughed—and it was that laugh. That famous spill of light and life and perfection, illuminating his face and making the air between them dance and shimmer for a long, taut moment before he stopped himself, as if he hadn’t realized what was happening.
But she could hoard it anyway, Kathryn thought, feeling dazed. She could hold it close. An unexpected gift she could take out and warm herself with during her next sleepless night—and this was not the time to ask herself why she thought anything this man did was a gift. Not when she knew he’d hate her even more for thinking such a thing.
“And a driving, inescapable passion for a septuagenarian overtook you in this waiting area?” he asked, his voice darker than before, his gaze much too shrewd. “I hear that happens. Though not often to young women in their twenties, unless, of course, you were discussing his net worth.”
“I liked him,” Kathryn said, and that was the truth about her marriage, no matter the extenuating circumstances. She shrugged. “He made me laugh and I made him laugh, too. It wasn’t seedy or mercenary, Luca, no matter how much you wish that it was. He was a good friend to me.”
A better friend than most, if she was honest.
“A good friend.”
“Yes.”
“My father. Gianni Castelli. A good friend.”
Kathryn sighed, and set her plate down on the coffee table, her appetite gone. “I take it you’ve decided in your infinite wisdom that this, too, must be impossible.”
Luca’s laugh this time was no gift. Not one anyone in her right mind would want anyway.
“My father was born into wealth, and his single goal was to expand it,” he told her harshly, the Italian inflection in his voice stronger than usual. “That was his art and his calling, and he dedicated himself to it with single-minded purpose from the time he could walk. His favorite hobby was marriage—the more inappropriate, the better. Do not beat yourself up. Most of his wives misunderstood the breakdown of his affections and attention.”
“I don’t think you knew your father very well,” Kathryn suggested. She lifted up her hands when Luca’s eyes blazed. “Not in the way I did. That’s all I mean.”
“You’re speaking of the two years of your acquaintance with him, as opposed to the whole of my life?”
“A son can’t possibly know the man his father was.” She lifted a shoulder then dropped it. “He can only know what kind of father he was or wasn’t, and piece together what clues he can about the man from that. Isn’t that the history of the world? No one ever knows their parents. Not really.”
She certainly didn’t know hers. Her father had buggered off before she was born, and her mother had given up everything that had mattered to her so Kathryn wouldn’t have to bear the weight of that. Kathryn knew the sacrifice. Her mother reminded her of what she’d left behind for Kathryn’s sake at every opportunity, and fair enough. But she still couldn’t say she understood the woman—much less the way she’d treated Kathryn all her life.
A muscle leaped in Luca’s lean jaw.
“I knew my father a great deal longer than you did,” he gritted out after a moment. “He had no friends, Kathryn. He had business associates and a collection of wives. Everyone in his life was accorded a role and expected to play it, and woe betide the fool who did not live up to his expectations.”
“Is that what this has been about all this time? All the hatred and the nastiness and the threats and so on?” she asked. She tilted her head to one side and said the thing she knew she shouldn’t. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “You...have daddy issues?”
The crack of his temper was very nearly audible. If the plane itself had been thrown off course and sent into a spiraling nosedive toward the ocean, she wouldn’t have been at all surprised—and it took Kathryn a long, tense, shuddering moment to understand that the jet they sat on was fine. The plane flew on, unaffected by the minor explosion that had taken over the cabin—and the aftershocks that were still rolling through her.
The only steep and terrible free fall was in her stomach as it plummeted to her feet.
Luca hadn’t moved. It only felt as if he had.
She watched, as fascinated as she was alarmed, as he tamped that bright current of fury down. He still didn’t move. He stared back at her as if he’d very much like to throttle her. One hand twitched as if he’d considered it. This suggested to her that she’d been more on target than she’d imagined when she’d said it.
But then he blinked and the crisis passed. There was only the usual force of his dislike staring back at her. That and the leftover adrenaline trickling through her veins, making her shift against the sofa cushions.
“Why me?” he asked, his dark voice a spiked thing as it slammed into her. “I’ve made no secret of my opinion of you. What sort of masochism led you to throw yourself in my path when you must know you’d have had a much better time in another branch of the company?”
“Is that a thinly veiled way of asking if I’m pursuing you for my usual gold-digging ends?” she asked, unable to tear her gaze from his and equally unsure why that was. Why did he invade her like this? Why did she feel as if he had more control over her than she did?
“Was it veiled, thinly or otherwise?” he asked, his voice soft. If no less harsh. “I must be doing it wrong.”
Kathryn’s smile felt forced, but she didn’t let it fade. She had the wild notion, suddenly, that it was all she had.
“I considered working for your brother, of course,” she said quietly. “I doubt he’s particularly fond of me, but there’s certainly none of...this.” She waved her hand between them, in that too-thick air and that taut electric storm that charged it. “It would have been easier, certainly.”
“Then, why?” Luca’s mouth curled into something much too dark to be any kind of smile, and the echo of it pulsed inside her. “To punish us both?”
“The fact is that your brother maintains the business and he’s very good at it,” Kathryn said. “He will make certain the Castelli name endures, that no ground will be lost on his watch. He’s a very steady hand on the wheel.”
“And I am what?” Luca didn’t quite laugh. “The drunken driver in this scenario? I drive too fast, Kathryn. But never drunk.”
“You’re the innovator,” she said quietly. It felt...dangerous to praise him to his face. To do something other than suffer through his darkness. “You’re the creative force in the company. Never satisfied. Always pushing a new boundary.” She shrugged, more uncomfortable than she could remember ever having been around him before, and that was saying something. “My personal feelings about you aside, there’s no more exciting place to work. You must know this. I assume that’s why all your employees are so—” Kathryn smiled that little bit brighter, and that, too, was harder than it should have been “—fiercely protective.”
Luca looked thrown, which she might have considered a victory at any other time—but there was something about the way he gazed at her then. It seemed to sneak into her, wrapping itself around her bones and drawing tight. Too tight.
“Can you do that?” he aske
d, his voice mild but with that something beneath it. “Put your personal feelings aside?”
She met his gaze. She didn’t flinch.
“I have to if I want this job to mean something,” Kathryn told him, aware as she spoke that this might have been the most honest she’d ever been with him. As if she had nothing to lose, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. This was her only chance to prove that she could make something of herself without her mother’s input or directives. This was her only chance to honor her mother’s sacrifices—and also stay free. “And I do. Unlike you, I don’t have a choice.”
* * *
The Castelli château, the center of Castelli Wine’s operations in the States, perched at the top of Northern California’s fertile Sonoma Valley like a particularly self-satisfied grande dame. The vineyards stretched out much like voluminous queenly skirts, rolling out over the hills in all directions, seeming to take over this part of the valley all the way to the horizon and back. Tonight the winery gleamed prettily through the crisp winter night, bright lights in every window as a line of cars snaked down the long drive between the marching rows of cypress trees.
Luca loved the unapologetic spectacle of it—the high Italianate drama in every detail, from the epic sweep of the house itself to the grounds kept in a condition to rival the Boboli Gardens in Florence, delighting the tourists on their wine-tasting tours of Sonoma—despite himself.
Tonight was the annual Castelli Wine Winter Ball. This was the reason Luca had flown across the world, landing only a scant hour earlier, which he was sure Rafael would think was cutting it a bit close. He and Rafael needed to make it abundantly clear to all and sundry that nothing had changed since Gianni’s passing. That everything was business as usual at Castelli Wine.
And as with most things in life, the more elegant and relaxed and attractive the face of a thing, the more people were likely to believe it.
Kathryn, Luca thought grimly, certainly proved that rule. And so did he. He banked on it, in fact.
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