Seduction on the CEO's Terms

by Charlene Sands

  This morning, as he walked into the front doors of Carlino Wines, noting that Georgia Scott wasn’t at her desk, Joe’s mood lifted a little. He’d come to resent the woman who wasn’t Ali. Yet as he approached his own office, he slowed when he reached the doorway. His heart rate sped, and hope that he never thought he’d feel again surged forth. Ali sat in his office. Her back was to him, and she sat erect, holding her head up high, her beautiful long auburn hair flowing in curls down her back.

  He entered quietly. “Ali?”

  The woman turned her head and looked at Joe with stunning jade-green eyes. She smiled Ali’s smile, but she wasn’t Ali. “I’m Justine Holcomb, Ali’s mother. You must be Joe.”

  Shocked by the resemblance, Joe took a second before acknowledging her. “Yes, Joe Carlino.”

  She put out her hand, and Joe took it, giving a gentle shake. “Please, if I may have a minute of your time. I came a long distance to speak with you.”

  Her soft, gentle voice surprised him. She didn’t sound like Ali, but she sure as hell looked like her—a slightly older version but Justine Holcomb was every bit as beautiful as Ali.

  “Of course.” Joe took a seat at his desk and waited.

  “I can see why Ali loves you,” she began, not mincing words. “And by the hope in your eyes before you realized I wasn’t Ali, I think you feel the same way.”

  “If you came all this way, to tell me how I feel—”

  “No, Joe. I didn’t. I came to tell you how I feel.”

  And Justine Holcomb poured out her heart to him, explaining how she’d grown up poor and wanted so much from life. She told him how her becoming a beauty queen might have been the worst thing that could have happened to her. That she floundered in relationships, never being satisfied, always looking for something that she could never quite attain.

  “I wasn’t a very good role model for my daughter. Lord knows, I’ve finally come to realize that now, in my older years. I’m extremely proud of Ali, Joe. Unlike me, she knows what she wants in life. She’s decisive and smart, and she’s never wanted to climb social ladders. Believe me when I tell you it’s the very last thing on her mind. I know she fears living the same kind of life I’ve led. She’s done everything in her power not to be like me, but I know she wants love in her life, Joe. She wants a home and a family.”

  Joe didn’t know what to say to that.

  She watched him with assessing eyes. “I see you’re thinking this through. That’s good. Don’t make snap judgments. I’ve done that all my life, and look where that got me? Finally, after five husbands, I’ve found true happiness, and it took a near-fatal heart attack for me to see how much I love my husband. Ali’s smarter than me. She only wants one good man in her life.”

  He let go a deep pent-up breath.

  “And if you don’t believe that and think she’s just like me, let me share this with you. Since leaving your employ, she’s been approached by two of your most formidable competitors to come work for them. Both have offered her great opportunities with more money and frills than she received working for you, if I might add. Ali turned them both down. My daughter is beautiful, and if I might say, she could have her choice of a dozen rich wealthy men, if that were her goal. She doesn’t want that—or them. She only wants you.”

  Justine rose from her seat and smiled. “Think about it, Joe. Think about Ali and what she really means to you.”

  Joe stood up. “I will. Thank you for coming by. I know it wasn’t easy for you.”

  “Oh, but it was. For my daughter, I’d do anything. I have a lot of making up to do where Ali is concerned.” She cast him a sad smile. “Don’t wait too long, Joe. Ali plans on moving back to the East Coast.”

  And with that, Justine turned and left, again with her head held high.

  Joe shuddered as he watched her go.

  “I knew that guy was a jerk,” Royce said, helping Ali move some heavy boxes into her living room. The movers were coming tomorrow. It had been two weeks since she’d seen Joe on the best and worst night of her life. Two weeks and he hadn’t called. Apparently his mind was made up.

  “He’s not a jerk,” Ali said in Joe’s defense. “He’s just, well, I don’t know what he is, but he’s not a jerk.”

  Royce grumbled a reply, but Ali wasn’t listening. She focused on her move back to New York. A teeny, tiny part of her thought she should confront Joe and talk it through with him before she left Napa for good, but Ali wasn’t sure she could take another rejection from him. The past two weeks had been nightmarish for her. She’d spent all of her tears and had moved on to self-recriminations. She was angry with Joe, but she was even angrier with herself. She should have never concocted that scheme, yet her real anguish came each minute of every day when she realized that they weren’t meant for each other.

  He doesn’t want the real you.

  After Royce left to go to work late in the morning, Ali kept busy packing up boxes with her clothes and kitchen items. At noon, when her doorbell rang, she called out, “Coming,” and grabbed her wallet for the pizza she’d ordered.

  “How much do I owe you?” she asked, opening the door and fumbling with her cash.

  “Not a thing. I owe you.”

  A sharp gasp escaped when Ali recognized Joe’s deep voice.

  He stood on her threshold, dressed in blue jeans and a black polo shirt, looking more delicious than hot fudge melting over a mound of rich vanilla ice cream.

  He smiled, and his dark eyes gleamed; Ali thought she’d be melting soon. “What are you doing here?”

  Joe peered over her shoulder, taking note of the boxes she had stacked up. “I owe you two things, Ali. The first one is an apology. I wasn’t happy with you the other day. In fact, I was disappointed and well, pissed. No one likes to be made a fool.”

  “Joe, I said I was sorry. It was a big mistake,” she implored. At the very least she wanted him to know she regretted how she’d tried to trick him.

  “I know, Ali. But I shouldn’t have reacted that way. I didn’t let you explain. Instead, I assumed the worst about you. I shouldn’t have said those things about your mother, either. She’s actually a very honest woman.”

  Ali put her hands on her hips and ignored the hope that filled her heart. “And you know this how?”

  “We spoke.”

  “You spoke…on the phone? Did my mother call you?” Ali’s heart raced.

  Oh, God, Mom, what did you do?

  “No, she didn’t call me. She came to see me. Yesterday. She gave me a lot to think about.”

  “She was here? In Napa? I didn’t know,” she said, shocked and fearful of how that encounter went. “I didn’t put her up to it, Joe. You have to believe me. I understand how you feel about me. I know we’re incompatible. We’re different as night and day and you don’t want—”

  Joe leaned close and put two fingers to her lips. “Shh, Ali.” His touch caused a quake to rumble through her body. “You don’t know how I feel.”

  When Joe removed his fingers, she opened her mouth to reply, then clamped it shut.

  “I said I owed you two things. The first one is my apology. And I hope you accept it.”

  Ali nodded. “I do.”

  “And the second one is our bike tour. I regret not following through on that. I owed you that much for all your help, and I keep my promises.”

  Her heart could have been swept aside with a broom. All the hope she didn’t dare count on faded to nothingness. “It’s okay, Joe. As you can see, I’m moving. I don’t need to see Napa anymore.”

  “But you do. At least let me take you to one place that’s very special to me.” Joe moved away from her door so she could see the two touring bikes with helmets on the seats, waiting for them.

  Ali furrowed her brows. He seemed so adamant, and what did she have to lose? At least, maybe the two of them could wind up as friends. Okay, maybe not friends. But they could end their relationship on a better note. It would just about kill her to be with him today,
but Ali had always been a fool when it came to Joe.

  “Fine. I’ll put my tennis shoes on.”

  And five minutes later, Ali, dressed in her moving clothes, a tank top, workout pants and a slick red-striped helmet followed Joe down the highway. It was a road she’d seen a zillion times. An occasional car whizzed by them, and Joe looked back to make sure she was okay. They’d gotten only a few miles from her condo, when Joe pulled off the road by a white wooden fence that separated two properties. Green grass, with vineyards in the distance, sloped down to a little clearing. There, Ali saw a blanket laid out, with champagne cooling in a bucket and flowers set in a little vase.

  Joe removed his helmet and got off his bike. Ali did the same. He approached and led her to the blanket just a few feet off the road. “Joe? What is this?”

  “It’s the only stop on our bike tour, Ali. Come, have a seat.”

  Joe waited for her to sit on the blanket and then he took a place next to her. Ali looked out, but all she saw was the road ahead of them and vineyards in the background. Confused, she shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

  Joe took her hand, and a jolt of electricity coursed between them. Ali knew it wasn’t one-sided. She could tell by the gleam in Joe’s eyes that he felt it, too. “Neither did I for a long time. After our fight the other night—”

  “You mean, the night you walked out on me after we nearly burned up the sheets in bed?”

  Joe appeared chagrined. “Yeah, that night. I walked and walked and thought. I was angry and hurt. And all sorts of things entered my mind. But the one thing that kept coming back to me, over and over again, was that I was so angry with you because I’d fallen in love with you. It was here, right here, as I waited for Nick to pick me up, that I figured it all out. I was ready to tell you that night, but then…”

  “I blew it,” Ali said softly.

  Joe squeezed her hand. “I was burned really badly with Sheila, and I didn’t want to even consider another relationship, much less one with my very best personal assistant. Maybe, I’d been a little obtuse about it.”

  “You think?” Ali said with a grin, her whole world looking much brighter now.

  “Yeah, but I’d always liked you. Maybe too much. That’s why I couldn’t bring myself to fall for you. I held back, but if you think I didn’t notice you, you’re dead wrong. I noticed. How could I not? You’re smart and fun and gorgeous, Ali. I noticed it all. But I was protecting myself. It wasn’t so much that you’d changed that drew me to you. It was that I’d changed. I was ready to give us a chance, finally. It took me a long time, I know. So sue me. I’m slow on the uptake.”

  “You make up for it, though. In bed.” Ali smiled sweetly, and Joe’s eyes widened. Then he chuckled.

  “Ali, I don’t think I can live without you. You and I are like night and day, but who said that’s a bad thing? Opposites attract, sweetheart. And life would never be boring. I love you, Ali Pendrake. Marry me. Be my wife, the mother of my children and please,” he pleaded, “come back to work for me.”

  Ali threw her head back and laughed, her heart filling with joy. “I want a raise.”

  “You got it.”

  “And a house of our own.”

  “You got that, too.”

  “And children, right away. I’m not getting any younger.”

  “Right away?” Joe cast her such a loving smile that her nerves tingled. “I’m for that.”

  “I love you, Joe. With all my heart.”

  Joe leaned over and brushed a soft kiss to her lips. “I love you, Ali. Just the way you are.”

  Ali’s heart warmed, believing that her mother had finally come through for her this time, and that compounded her joy.

  Joe poured champagne, and they toasted to new beginnings. Cars continued to whiz by, but Ali sat back on the blanket off the side of the road in Napa Valley and thought it was the most romantic proposal a woman could ever hope to receive.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-6019-5

  SEDUCTION ON THE CEO’S TERMS

  Copyright © 2010 by Charlene Swink

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  *Suite Secrets

  †Napa Valley Vows