Second Chance with the CEO

by Anna DePalo

  It was just... It was just... An image of Cole rose to mind.

  What had she been thinking? What had he? He’d kissed her in the storage room last week—and she’d kissed him back. And the memory of that kiss had lingered...replayed before she went to sleep at night, while driving to work and during breaks in the school day.

  The teenage Cole had nothing on Cole the man. He’d made her come apart in his arms, and it had both shocked and thrilled her. She’d been under the influence at the time, of course. Panic and proximity—mixed with the confession of long-held secrets—had made a heady brew while they’d been locked in together.

  Her mother glanced at her, her brows drawing together in concern. “You seem worried. Are you taking care of yourself?”

  The question was one that Marisa was used to. Ever since she’d been born a preemie, her mother had worried about her health. She gave a practiced smile. “I’m fine.”

  “Well, you were a fighter from day one.”

  Marisa continued smiling, and as she usually did whenever her mother’s worries came to the fore, she tried to move the conversation in a different direction. “Serafina found an apartment and is moving out tomorrow.”

  “I heard.”

  “I’ll have my apartment to myself.” Even before her cousin had moved in, she’d hardly felt as if she lived alone. She and Sal had been serious enough that he’d often been at her place or he’d been at hers.

  “You should get married.”

  Marisa bit back another sigh. She hadn’t succeeded in steering the talk to safer waters. “I was engaged. It didn’t work out.”

  Ever since her mother had met and then married Ted, she’d viewed marriage in a different light.

  “So?” Donna persisted. “He wasn’t the right man. You’ll meet someone else.”

  Marisa parted her lips as Cole sprung to mind. No. He was her past, not her future, even if he occupied her present. Get a grip. “Mom, I know you’re still a bit of a newlywed, so you’re looking at the world through rose-colored glasses, but—”

  Her mother sobered. “Honey, how can you say so? I may be newly married, but I haven’t forgotten the years of struggle...”

  Donna’s amber eyes—so like Marisa’s own—clouded, as if recollections of the past were flashing by. Marisa wondered what those memories were. Was her mother recalling the same things she was? The years of juggling bill payments—staying one short step away from having the electricity turned off? The credit card balances that were rolled over because Donna was too proud to ask relatives for a loan?

  “I know, Mom,” Marisa said quietly. “I was there.”

  Donna sighed. “And that’s part of my guilt.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t shield you enough. Your childhood wasn’t as secure as I would have liked it to be.”

  “You did your best.” Wasn’t she always telling her students to try their best? “I always felt loved. I graduated from a great school, got a college degree and have a great job.”

  “Still, I wish you had someone to lean on. I’m not going to be around forever.”

  “Mom, you’re only fifty-four!” In that moment, however, Marisa understood. While she’d worried about her mother, her mother had reciprocated with concern about her.

  “I wish I’d left you with siblings,” her mother said wistfully.

  “You could barely handle me!” Besides, she had cousins. Serafina for one.

  “You were a good girl. Mr. Hayes at the Pershing School even came up to me on graduation day to tell me so, and that I’d done a great job raising you.”

  Marisa smothered a wince and then walked over to the kitchen sink to wash and dry her hands. Naturally, Mr. Hayes had thought she was one of the good guys. She’d ratted out Cole... Marisa had kept her mother in the dark about that part of her life. She hadn’t wanted her mother burdened any more than she was.

  “How is your job at Pershing, by the way?” Donna asked. “Are the kids taking a lot out of you?”

  It wasn’t the kids who were responsible for her current turmoil, but a certain six-foot-plus former hockey player. “I’m in charge of the big Pershing Shines Bright benefit in May.”

  “Ted and I will be there, of course. We want to support you.”

  “Thanks.” Marisa eyed the pasta machine. “You’ve been busy.”

  “One of the benefits of having the day off from work. I made the pasta sheets for the lasagna from scratch.”

  Marisa picked up one of the sheets and set it down in a pan that her mother had already coated with tomato sauce.

  “Is the planning going well?” Donna probed.

  “It’s fine.” Marisa shrugged. “Cole Serenghetti of the New England Razors has agreed to headline.”

  Donna brought her hands together. “Wonderful. He’s so popular around here.”

  Tell me about it. “He’s not playing professional hockey anymore. He got hurt.”

  “Oh yes, I had heard that.” Donna frowned. “He was such a good player in high school... Well, until the incident that earned him a suspension.”

  Marisa kept her expression neutral. “He’s running the family construction business these days, though I’m not sure how happy he is about it. His father had a stroke.”

  Donna’s gaze was searching. “You do seem to know a lot about Cole.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” Marisa responded, setting down more sheets of pasta for the lasagna. “I also knew a lot about Sal before he dumped me. Once burned, twice shy.”

  “Dumped is such an ugly word,” Donna said lightly. “Fortuitously disengaged is the way I put it for members of my book club.”

  “Are you doing ad copy for the department store circular these days?” Marisa quipped.

  “No, but I did suggest to the book club that we read Dump the Dude, Buy the Shoes.”

  They shared a laugh before Marisa said, “You did not!”

  Actually she thought the title might not be a bad one for the autobiography of her mother’s life.

  “No, I was joking. But I did tell everyone that I got promoted to buyer for housewares.” Donna spooned a thin layer of ricotta cheese mixture on top of the layer of pasta that Marisa had created.

  “They must have been thrilled for you.” Before Marisa could say any more, she heard her cell phone buzz. Wiping her hands on a dish towel, she walked over to get the phone out of her handbag. When she saw the message on the screen, her heart began to pound.

  Told Dobson our meeting cut short b/c I had other business. Let’s reschedule. Dinner Friday @6. LMK.

  “Is everything okay?” Donna asked, studying her.

  “Speak of the devil,” Marisa said, trying for some lame humor. “No, not Sal. The other devil. Cole Serenghetti.”

  Donna’s eyebrows rose. “He’s texting you? So you do know each other well!”

  “First time. He must have a record of my cell number—” she paused to consider for a moment, thinking back “—because I had to call him to discuss something related to the fund-raiser and new gym.” She was not going to mention to her mother that she’d visited Cole’s offices. Because that might lead to mention of the incident in the storage room. And she was so not discussing that mishap. Especially with her mother. Even if she was thirty-three and an adult.

  “Well?”

  “He’s invited me to dinner.” As her mother’s eyebrows shot higher, she added, “A business dinner.”

  She should go. She was grateful that he’d covered for her with Mr. Dobson. She was also relieved he was willing to keep dealing with her about the fund-raiser and construction project. It wouldn’t look good if Cole announced he needed a different contact person at Pershing. And she had twenty questions about what he had to say—who wouldn’t?

  Dinner? Really?

  Still, it wasn’t as if they were having an assignation. As she’d told her mother, it was a business meeting. Pure business. The kiss last time notwithstanding. A blip on the radar never, ever to be repeated
.

  And now that Cole had agreed to the fund-raiser, she’d begun flirting with another idea—that is, until the storage room incident...

  Donna continued to regard her. “Honey, trust me, I’m acquainted with the attractiveness of professional athletes.”

  Marisa knew they were no longer talking only about Cole. They’d both been burned long ago by another man chasing sports fame, except he’d been a baseball player. “This is purely business, believe me.”

  Marisa wished she could wholeheartedly believe it herself. So she and Cole had shared a kiss. Given the unusual circumstances—her panic and his need to reassure and, uh, comfort—they had an excuse. One that her mother didn’t need to hear.

  As her mother searched her expression, Marisa stuck to her best Girl Scout face and walked back to the kitchen counter.

  Finally, seemingly satisfied—or not—Donna sighed. “We should find time to write that dude book together. Meanwhile, let’s finish this lasagna, and I’ll open a bottle of wine.”

  * * *

  “What’s this about, Cole?”

  “Dinner. What else?” He looked bemusedly at the woman sitting to his left—the one who had bedeviled more of his nights and days than he cared to count. He’d chosen Welsdale’s chicest restaurant, Bayart’s on Creek Road, and she’d proposed meeting him there—much to his chagrin. He’d gone along with her suggestion, even though he saw through it as the defensive move it was, because he knew he was still treading on fragile ground with Marisa. He’d ordered a bottle of Merlot, and the waiter had already poured their wine.

  Tonight she was in a geometric-print wrap dress that left no curve untouched. My God, the woman is set on torturing me.

  “I mean the subtext.”

  He raised his gaze to her eyes. “Subtext? You were always a stellar student in English.”

  “And you spent your time in the last row, goofing around.”

  “Charlotte Brontë wasn’t my thing.”

  “She was about the only female who wasn’t.”

  “She was dead.”

  “Don’t let that stop you.”

  He grinned. “That’s what I discovered I liked about you, Danieli. You’re able to serve it up straight when you want to. Back then, and now.”

  “I’m a teacher. It’s a survival skill.”

  “I liked you better than you think, you know.”

  “Well, that’s something, I suppose. Right up there with being someone’s sixth favorite teacher.”

  He laughed because he liked this more uninhibited Marisa—one who felt free to speak her mind. “Still feeling the effect of your confession last time? You’re letting it rip. It’s—” he let his voice dip “—enticing.”

  She got an adorable little pucker in her brow and toyed with the stem of her wineglass. “It wasn’t intended to be, but why am I not surprised you took it that way?”

  “I really did like you,” he insisted.

  “You’re just saying that,” she demurred.

  “Are you ready to talk about what happened in the storage room?” It was safer than focusing on the wineglass in her hand and imagining her fingers on him.

  They could have been on a date, from outward appearances, because Bayart’s candlelit interior invited intimacy. In keeping with the restaurant’s formality, Cole was still in the navy suit that he’d worn to the office. And Marisa was probably expecting tonight to be all business...

  “Wow, you’re direct.” Marisa blew out a breath. “Isn’t it obvious? We’re destined for close encounters in small spaces.”

  He smiled at her attempt at humor and deflection. “Try again.” When she still said nothing, he continued, “I’ll go first. I wonder what you saw in me while we were in high school. I was a jock and a jerk.”

  She joined him in smiling, and it was like the sun coming out. “That’s an easy one. I admired you. You were willing to take risks. On the ice, you took chances in order to win. And off the ice, you skated on the edge with your pranks. I was meek, and you were confident. I was quiet, and you were popular.”

  “I was a jerk, and you weren’t.”

  She blinked, and the curve of her lips wobbled.

  “Fat lot of good it did me, too. I ultimately wound up crashing and burning, on the ice and off.” It was his offer of a mea culpa—accepting guilt and responsibility. Fifteen years ago she’d called a halt to his pranks. And if he’d been a jerk in the aftermath, it had been for nothing. He’d still gotten a professional career on the ice, and when it had ended, it had had nothing to do with Marisa.

  “You know what they say. Better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all...”

  “You’ve never taken risks?” he probed.

  “Well, I did recruit you for the Pershing benefit. I guess you bring out the daredevil in me.”

  “Yeah,” he drawled. “The same way I tempted you to test out the theater department’s prop during senior year.”

  Marisa looked embarrassed.

  Before he could say more, the waiter came up to take their order. Marisa waffled on what to have, but settled on the Cobb salad.

  “You can’t choose a salad,” Cole said with dry humor. “It’s a sin in a place like this.”

  “It’s not,” she responded lightly. “I’m sure everything is delicious here.”

  Including her. He could tell she’d contemplated ordering a richer entrée, and he wanted to say he appreciated every inch of her lush curves, but he let it go. Maybe a salad was Marisa’s go-to choice on a date—not that she thought of this as a date, but certainly dinner with a man. Him.

  When the waiter had departed, the conversation turned to casual topics, but Cole was determined to shift gears back to what they had been discussing.

  At a lull, he said, “It must have given you some satisfaction to see me taken down a peg or two in high school. After all, we did have sex, and then I avoided you.”

  “It hurt.”

  “I wasn’t prepared to deal with what had happened between us. You were a virgin, and you caught me off guard. I might not have hurt you when we fumbled our way through sex, but I did in other ways.”

  She lowered her lashes. “We were both young and stupid.”

  “Teenagers make mistakes,” he concurred.

  She toyed some more with the wineglass, making him crazy. “It must have been an unwelcome surprise when we were first paired up to make a PowerPoint presentation in economics class.”

  “Not unwelcome,” he replied, shifting. “You were an unknown quantity.”

  “A nonentity at school, especially among the jocks.”

  He shook his head. “Sweet pea, you may be a teacher, but you still have no idea how most teenage boys think. The only reason the jocks didn’t know how big your breasts were is because you were always hiding them behind a bunch of books.”

  She stared at him. “You were looking at my chest?”

  He smiled wolfishly. “On the sly. And I wasn’t just looking. Do you think that whenever I brushed by you during our study sessions it was an accident?”

  Her eyes widened, and her hand fell away from the wineglass.

  “Definitely a C cup.”

  “I’m not a simple bra size!”

  He reached out and covered her hand on the table, smoothing his thumb over the back of her palm. Anything to avoid further arousal by her fingertips on a damn glass. “You’re right. I got to know the person beyond the teenage boy’s fantasy, and you scared the hell out of me.”

  “I did?”

  The look in her eyes was so earnest, it was all he could do not to lean in and capture her lips.

  Instead, he nodded. “I started out a little intrigued and a whole lot bored when I was assigned as your partner in economics. But then I got near you, and the hormones kicked in. A few study sessions staring into your eyes, and I was toast. You were nice, smart and interesting.”

  “I had a crush on you even before we were paired up to do an assignment,” she admitted.
“All it took was some casual contact, and I was hooked.”

  “I didn’t need a whole lot of convincing to ditch the books in favor of getting closer to you.” They had progressed from kissing to more the next time they were together. And then after a few encounters, they’d really gotten intimate...

  “But I bet I’m the first girl who got you involved with a theater department prop.”

  “I’ll never forget that velvet sofa.” As a scholarship student, Marisa had had a part-time job helping the custodial department clean the school, so she’d had access to a very convenient set of keys.

  “They still have it.”

  He raised his brows. “Then you’ll have to give me a tour when I’m at the school.”

  She parted her lips, but didn’t take the bait, so he slid back his hand.

  He angled his head, contemplating her. “You wanted me as badly as I wanted you, so I was surprised when it turned out to be your first time. Why did you do it?”

  She shrugged. “I was hungry for affection and attention. I wanted to fit in.”

  “You were a virgin. You’d gotten under my skin and seen beyond the prankster and the jock. It was too heavy for me, so I did the only logical thing for an eighteen-year-old guy. I avoided you.”

  “Right, I recall,” she said drily.

  “You were the first woman to proposition me.”

  “But not the last.”

  “For professional athletes, propositioning usually goes with the territory.”

  “So women like Vicki the Vixen are always throwing themselves at you in bars?”

  He bit back a smile at the moniker he was sure Vicki wouldn’t appreciate. “I’m not a hockey player anymore. These days I’m a CEO...and Pershing School’s knight in shining armor.”

  The waiter arrived with their food, and they dropped their conversation while plates were set before them and they exchanged polite niceties with their server. Then Marisa tucked daintily into her Cobb salad while Cole mentally shrugged and dug into his filet mignon and potatoes au gratin.

  After several moments Marisa took a sip of her wine. “You called yourself Pershing’s knight in shining armor.” She paused. “And I, uh, have another way for you to shine.”

  He searched her face, and she cleared her throat.