by Meier, Susan
“Good evening, Miss Prentiss.”
Oh, Lord. He was dressing down for her. And casually, so he wouldn’t embarrass her. It was the sweetest thing, but she reminded herself they weren’t a good match. He might be the first guy she was attracted to since Cord, but he wasn’t interested in her. He was only being polite. A man who was interested wouldn’t call her Miss Prentiss.
“Good evening, Mr. Engle.”
He motioned toward a chair and she walked over. He pulled it out and she sat.
Ambling to the seat across the table from hers, he asked, “Do you know what Constanzo’s cook prepared?”
“This afternoon he told me she was making a lasagna as lasagna is supposed to be made.”
He laughed. “Leave it to him to be melodramatic.”
“If it tastes as good as it smells, I think he’s allowed a little melodrama.”
As servants filled their glasses with water, Olivia struggled to think of something to say. Thick with the protocol of servants and a long row of silverware, the scene reminded her yet again that she and Tucker Engle had nothing in common.
When the servants left, she took a quiet breath and said, “Constanzo beat me in four games of pool this afternoon.”
“It was kind of you to entertain him.”
“He says it’s boring for an old man to sit around his house with nothing to do. He says he should have grandkids and be teaching a little girl how to swim and a little boy how to hustle pretty girls in pool.”
He laughed.
Her chest loosened a bit. This wouldn’t be so bad. All she had to do was keep talking. “I think he was just distracting me with chitchat so I wouldn’t notice how badly he was beating me.”
Servants arrived with salad and bread and they dug in. For the next few minutes conversation revolved around how delicious the crusty bread was, then the table grew quiet.
She scoured her brain to think of something to say and couldn’t come up with anything. Seconds ticking off the clock felt like hours, reminding her yet again that she shouldn’t be attracted to a man with whom she had nothing in common.
The main course came. At the first bite they groaned in ecstasy and complimented the lasagna, but the conversation stopped again. The longer they were quiet, the more obvious it was that they had nothing to say to each other and that any attraction she felt for him was foolish.
When she finished her dessert, she looked at her watch. Not even nine o’clock.
Across the table, Tucker surreptitiously looked at his watch, too.
For two people with palpable chemistry, they were certainly eager to get away from each other.
Tucker rose from his seat, tossing his napkin to his empty dessert plate. “So how about if you and I play a few games of pool?”
Her head snapped up. “Really?”
“If we go to bed now, we’ll be up at four o’clock. Do you want to sit around with nothing to do for hours and hours?”
“I was kind of thinking if we went to bed now I’d sleep for hours and hours.”
He laughed. “Are you ready to retire for the night?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think your idea of staying up a few more hours might be better.”
“Great.”
They walked to the den in silence. As she chose her pool stick, Tucker racked the balls. With a nod toward the table, he let her break. She dropped one of the striped balls into the pocket but missed her second shot and Tucker took over. The den filled with the crack of his stick against the balls and the plop, plop, plop of ball after ball falling into a pocket.
In the face of the beating she was taking, she forgot all about the quiet. Why was it she could beat any group of guys in a bar, but not whip the butts of two billionaires?
“Okay. I wasn’t quite ready to play. Rack the balls again. This time I won’t be so easy.”
He laughed. “We’ll see.”
“Ah, smug, this time around?”
Tucker arranged the balls on the table. “Not smug. I just watched how you play. My technique is better.”
“Right.”
He motioned to the table as he walked behind the bar to pour himself a draft. “Go ahead. I’ll give you the advantage. Break again.”
She strolled up to the table, aimed her stick and broke with a resounding crack that echoed around them. Two solid balls dropped. She faced him with a grin. “I have you now.”
He leaned against the bar. “What? You think solid is going to be lucky for you?”
“Yes.” She walked around the table considering her next shot. When she found it, she bent across the table to take aim.
But Tucker shook his head. “Your form is all wrong.”
“My form is fine.”
“No. Look at your stick. It wobbles.” He walked behind her and leaned down with her so he could adjust her arm. “See? Isn’t that better?”
The feeling of his chest along her back sent waves of awareness flowing from her back to her toes. He stepped away, as if totally oblivious and, shell shocked, she took the shot.
Miraculously, the ball she aimed for fell. She jumped up with a whoop of joy. “I did it!”
He motioned at the table. “Keep going.”
She picked a shot and leaned over the table, but again he shook his head.
“Your stick still wobbles.” Positioning himself over her, he leaned down and straightened her arm. Then he froze.
The room grew quiet.
Warmth radiated from him into her and would have sent a shudder through her if she hadn’t ruthlessly stopped it. She turned her head slightly to catch his gaze. His green eyes smoldered.
Oh, boy. This wasn’t good.
* * *
Tucker stayed frozen. The woman was the softest thing he’d ever touched. Every hormone in his body awakened at the feel of her skin sliding against his. His hand itched to leave her pool stick and cruise along the curve of her waist, to turn her around, so he could kiss her.
The instinct was so strong, so natural that it shook him to his core and brought him back to planet earth. She was an employee. Smart executives did not kiss employees.
He stepped away and ambled back to the bar, pretending nothing had happened, confused that he couldn’t seem to get himself under control around her.
As he picked up his beer from the bar, Constanzo walked in.
“Great! I see I’m just in time! I’ll play the winner.”
Olivia took her next shot but missed this time. Without looking at him, she said, “Your shot.”
He licked his suddenly dry lips. Okay. That thing between them? He now had confirmation she felt it, too. But he could handle this. They could handle this. They’d just pretend it hadn’t happened.
He set down his beer, picked up his pool cue and walked to the table. He got two balls in then missed, surprising Olivia who quietly walked up to the table again. She hit the remainder of her balls into the pockets, beating him soundly.
“Looks like you and me, Vivi,” Constanzo said, happily rubbing his hands together.
But Olivia yawned. “You and Mr. Engle play. I think it’s time for me to go to bed.”
He didn’t know if she really was tired or trying to get away from him, but he breathed a sigh of relief.
Until Constanzo said, “Tucker will walk you to your room.”
The blood froze in his veins. He couldn’t walk her to her room! He was unstable around her. Confused. He wanted to be away from her, not walking down a dark corridor with her.
Olivia shook her head. “I’m fine. I know the way.”
But Constanzo said, “Vivi, you will not go upstairs alone. Walking a lady to her room is what a gentleman does.”
It was what a gentleman did and that reminder corralled Tucker’s hormon
es and got him back to reality. He was a gentleman and she was an employee. Worry that he couldn’t keep himself in line was ridiculous.
He set his beer glass on the bar. “Nonsense. You’re asleep on your feet. I’ll walk you to your room.”
They said goodnight to Constanzo who racked the balls again. Walking out of the den, Tucker heard the sound of silence left in their wake. Constanzo had put on the soccer game, and there was noise when he broke the balls on the pool table, but just beneath the surface of those sounds was a quiet nothing. And he suddenly understood why Constanzo wanted his son. When he retired, this would be his life. Entertaining an occasional visitor or two would fill the void, but mostly he would be alone. He wanted that “nothing” filled with the sound of his child, and maybe, someday, grandchildren.
“Why do you call me Miss Prentiss?”
They’d reached the end of the hall and were heading for the stairway in the front foyer. Focused on Constanzo, he hadn’t noticed how far they’d come. He’d also forgotten about his attraction. But the minute she spoke, his body reacted.
Still, she was an employee and he was a gentleman. He motioned for her to precede him up the stairs. “I call you Miss Prentiss because it’s your name.”
“So is Olivia. Or Vivi.” She stopped and peered back at him. “And I have to admit, sometimes it feels a bit weird having to call you Mr. Engle when everybody else is calling you Tucker.”
Just what he and his hormones needed, for another of the barriers between them to come tumbling down. “I’m always on a first name basis with people I do business with. You are an employee.”
“An employee who has to call you something different from what everybody else calls you.”
He should have been annoyed with her impertinence. Instead, he understood. They were two incredibly attracted people who, in any other circumstance, would be getting to know each other, probably pursuing this attraction. But she was an employee. And he was a gentleman.
He repeated it like a mantra in his head as they walked down the hall. When they reached her door, she stopped and faced him.
“Good night, Tucker.”
Damn it. He almost laughed. She could be such a smart-ass. Worse, he’d liked the sound of his name on her lips. He liked that she was so bold.
“You’re a brat.”
“No. I just don’t appreciate anyone trying to make me feel less than.”
Confused, he stepped closer. “You think that’s what I’m doing? Trying to make you feel less than me?”
She shrugged. “Isn’t it?”
“No!” All this time he was fighting an attraction to her and she thought he didn’t like her? “I’m just trying to keep a sense of dignity for my office. Decorum.”
“I don’t think it works.”
This time he did laugh. “Not with you.”
When she didn’t reply, the corridor grew quiet. But this quiet was different from what he’d felt as he left Constanzo in the den. This quiet hummed with electricity.
He liked her. He didn’t want to like her but he did. And he wanted to kiss her.
He took another step closer. She looked up at him, her blue eyes wide and unsure. Temptation whispered through him. Once, just once, be with somebody who might truly understand. Be honest. Be yourself.
Her eyebrows rose.
Was she asking him to kiss her?
His gaze dropped to her mouth then returned to her eyes. He could imagine the smoothness of her succulent lips, see every move he’d make in his mind’s eye. He wouldn’t be gentle. She wasn’t gentle. She was open, frank, honest. He would kiss her that way.
A second ticked off the clock. Two. Three. He couldn’t quite get himself to bend and touch his lips to hers. Not because he didn’t want to. But because he so desperately did. An aching need filled his gut, tightened his chest. No one had ever caused feelings like these in him. No one had ever made him want so badly he could see a kiss before it happened.
She whispered, “Good night, Tucker,” and turned to grab the doorknob, her fingers trembling.
When she disappeared into her room, a rush of relief swooshed through him. They were wrong for each other. Too different. Nothing would come of them kissing. Especially not a relationship. And without a relationship, a kiss was—unwelcome? Unwarranted? A smart executive wouldn’t open himself to the trouble kissing an employee would bring.
* * *
Early the next morning, they climbed into one of Constanzo’s cars and headed even farther into the hills. Tucker set the GPS on his phone to Italian and Vivi’s mouth dropped.
“You speak Italian?”
He risked a sidelong glance. This morning she wore scruffy jeans that caressed her perfect behind and a pink casual top that brought out the best in her skin tones. After the near-miss with kissing her the night before, his body reacted as if he had a right to be interested, attracted, aroused by her innocent, girl-next-door sexiness.
He told his body to settle down. Yes, she was attractive and, yes, he was interested in her, but only sexually. In every other way they didn’t mesh. She had to be off-limits. “You don’t speak Italian?”
“No.”
Yet another thing added to the pile of reasons his attraction to her was ridiculous. “Well, don’t worry. Constanzo said his son was raised in the U.S., remember?”
Wind blew in through her open window and tossed strands of her hair across her face. Pulling them away, she asked, “Have you figured out what you’re going to say to him?”
“I’m going to flat out tell him who he is.”
She gaped at him. “I think that’s a mistake!”
And here was the real reason he wouldn’t kiss her, knew they’d never have a relationship, knew the taste of her lips that he longed for would only get him into trouble. If he wanted one route, she always wanted another. If that wasn’t proof his attraction to her was pointless, he didn’t know what was.
“I don’t think it’s a mistake. If my father had found me, that’s how I would want to be told. Up front and honest. I might be angry at first, but eventually I would mellow.”
“That just sounds wrong to me.”
“Of course it does.”
“What if Constanzo’s son’s not like you? What if he’s shy? Or quiet? Artistic types, as Constanzo’s file says his son is, aren’t like businessmen.”
“Oh, and you know a lot about this?”
She shrugged. “I know some. Everybody knows artists aren’t like businessmen. Otherwise, they’d be businessmen. They wouldn’t be artists.”
“Well, if he’s a shy starving artist who wears his heart on his sleeve, kick my shin and take over the conversation.”
“Me?”
“Hey, Constanzo wanted you here. Maybe this is why.” Which was the reason he couldn’t put her on his plane and send her back to the accounting department in the Inferno corporate offices in New York. Constanzo might pretend to be an easygoing, open book, but like any clever businessman he had his secrets, his ways of reading people. He’d seen something in Olivia that made him want her here. Tucker wouldn’t argue that. He’d use it.
She sighed and eased herself back to her seat. “I agree about kicking your shin, but if I do, you should just shift gears.”
“Let me assure you, Miss Prentiss—” he paused and sighed “—Vivi, if you kick my shin, you had better have a plan.”
The rest of the drive passed in silence until an isolated farmhouse came into view. Not renovated as Constanzo’s had been, Antonio’s run-down house had seen better days. The manicured grounds of Constanzo’s estate were replaced by fields teaming with tall grass and wildflowers.
“Obviously, the guy doesn’t own a lawn mower.”
“Or he likes nature.”
Tucker sniffed a laugh.
“What would you rather paint? A mowed lawn or a field of wildflowers against a blue, blue sky.”
Cutting the engine, Tucker rolled his eyes and shoved open his door. Vivi quickly followed suit. Behind Tucker, she picked her way up the loose stone walk. When they reached the door, he knocked three times in rapid succession.
Inhaling a big breath of fresh air, he glanced around. It really was quiet, peaceful, beautiful. He supposed he could understand why an artist would choose to live here. Especially if he’d come to Italy to get to know his mother’s country, to meet his extended family, and still have privacy.
The wooden door swung open. A man about as tall as Constanzo, wearing jeans and no shirt stood before them. “Yeah?”
“I’m Tucker Engle and this is my assistant, Olivia Prentiss.”
Vivi reached forward and extended her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. You can call me Vivi.”
The man cautiously took her hand, his dark eyes narrowing.
“Are you Antonio Signorelli?”
“Yes. Who are you?”
Tucker said, “Can we come in a minute?”
He started closing the door. “Actually, I’m very busy. And I don’t have time for sales people.”
Wedging his shoe between the door and its frame, Tucker laughed. “We’re not sales people. We’re here representing—”
Olivia kicked him in the shin. He yelped and jumped back.
She smiled sweetly at Antonio. “We’re representing a private collector who’s interested in sponsoring a showing of the artwork of someone new and fresh.”
Antonio visibly relaxed. “Really?”
“Look how he’s dressed?” She angled her thumb at Tucker and he glanced down at his suit coat and green tie. Sure he was a bit overdressed for the country. But he was a businessman not a hippie.
“I’m okay.” She rolled her eyes dramatically. “But he’s obviously not a tourist and his clothes are too expensive for him to be a salesman. As I said, we represent a private collector.”
“And you want to show my work?”
Vivi stepped forward. “Well, we haven’t seen your work. Our client is an art patron, but he’s not a sap. Your work would have to meet certain standards.” She smiled. “We’d love to see it.”
