1
Luciana
“No, no, no,” Luciana Vivaldi murmured as she took in the text message on her phone.
Daycare: Natalia had another nightmare during nap time. And a parent reported their child cried last night, afraid to go to bed. Please come right away to meet with the director.
“Noooo,” Luciana whispered to the sky as she squeezed her eyes shut and held the phone against her chest. The message had been code for, “Get a new daycare.” It would be the third daycare her niece had been asked to leave in less than a month, and it meant begging off a job Luciana had only just started in order to leave early. She didn’t know how she would manage it.
“Luciana!” a man’s voice called, tearing her attention away from the message. It was the voice of her new boss, Gianpierre, one of the three Romano brothers who had inherited the broken-down Romano del Mare resort. He was a world-renowned structural engineer specializing in the restoration of medieval structures like this one.
For the millionth time since she’d come to Sicily a month and a half ago, Luciana wished she could ask her sister—Natalia’s mother, Sophia—how to take care of her new young charge while also holding down a job, but unless she was willing to suspend all the beliefs of her Catholic upbringing and hold a séance, that wasn’t going to happen. Her sister was gone. Natalia’s mother was gone.
In a heartbreaking instant, Luciana had gone from the distant aunt and godmother to brand-new mother of a five year old little girl. It was a role she had not been ready to take on, but who ever was?
“Will the bricks be delivered on time, Luciana?” Gianpierre demanded, his impatience showing itself more than usual today. Wearing a sleeveless white cotton tee above jeans that had given up the fight to hold their own form and instead showed off every curve of Gianpierre’s muscular body, the man stood with his powerful arm propped on top of a shovel’s upright handle. Worn and weathered boots that probably still carried the dust of Prague, Austria and Romania clad his feet, and the gloves he wore on his hands were sure to have worked to restore medieval buildings in more countries than Luciana had ever visited.
He has to have competed, Luciana thought to herself as she did her best to ignore Gianpierre’s stage-ready, weight-lifter body. She was long legged and slender, but being around Gianpierre made her feel soft and flabby. She enjoyed a long jog infinitely more than lifting anything heavier than a bag of sugar—and she did love sugar. She suspected that Gianpierre had never let a morsel of the sweet stuff pass those beautiful, kissable lips of his to mar the perfect temple of his body.
“Uh,” Luciana said, tucking her phone into the pocket of her khakis before fumbling with her tablet to check the schedule of deliveries. She’d been distracted today. Adding to the issue of finding Natalia a new daycare was the fact that she’d missed another house showing and had had to reschedule for a second time, and all the while little Natalia’s nightmares were getting worse. The little girl needed a new space where she could focus on the joy of making new memories rather than the pain of old memories that held her trapped in a constant state of mourning.
“Luciana,” Gianpierre chided in a way that made her name sound like music on his lips, “we need those bricks. I need those bricks. They can?
?t come from just anywhere. They have to match perfectly. Buildings like this cannot be restored with the materials of today. They need to be created with the same processes in order to have the same look… the same texture.”
“Yes, sir,” Luciana said, walking toward him with her head down as she flipped through the screens of her tablet to find the information she needed. She’d only had this job for two weeks. Gianpierre’s previous Project Manager had quit to manage celebrity parties. It had left Gianpierre in the lurch, but it had been the perfect opportunity for Luciana. She needed this job. Really needed it. Burying her sister had been expensive, and raising her sister’s daughter was proving to be even more expensive.
“Ahhh,” Luciana said, walking with her nose still down and her eyes focused on her tablet.
“Luciana…”
“They will be here the day after tomorrow.”
“Luciana…”
“They need an additional day to cure.”
“Luciana!”
Luciana stopped in her tracks to find Gianpierre standing right in front of her with his work-roughened hand on her bare arm. He’d taken off his gloves and the heat of his skin on hers made her heart quicken. Then, when she looked up into his ice-blue eyes that were made more startling for being framed by his sun tanned skin, her breath moved high into her chest as if to swell her heart with longing. The change made her breasts rise and fall as if in invitation for him to look at them.
Gianpierre’s gaze flicked down for just a second, but a second was all it took. Luciana’s cheeks flooded with heat and her nipples tightened. The effect that Gianpierre had on her was like pouring water onto a gas flame. His presence amplified her every sensation to explosive levels that she struggled to contain.
I shouldn’t feel this way. Sophia’s dead. Life isn’t about my wants anymore. She had her niece to think about now. She couldn’t jeopardize her job by getting involved with her boss, no matter how much she craved him.
Guilt sat heavy in Luciana’s heart that she was alive and her sister wasn’t—even though it had meant the end of Luciana’s life as well, or rather life as she had known it. In a literal heartbeat, she’d gone from being a visitor of Sicily to a new resident. She’d quit her job in America by email and had put her house on the market. A neighbor shipped some of her belongings to her, then sold the rest and sent her the money. That money plus her small savings had come in handy to tide her and Natalia over, but it was running out fast. Too fast.
“Luciana, walk with your eyes as well as your feet,” Gianpierre gently chided as he guided her to step a little to the side. She’d been about to walk into the yellow hazard tape that encircled a sunken section of the Romano del Mare’s inner courtyard. The spot was three feet across and about six inches deep. It wasn’t very impressive to look at, but it spoke volumes about the state of the tunnels beneath the medieval monastery-turned-resort. There were miles of tunnels under there and some of them had not seen a stonemason’s chisel since the days of their construction over 870 years ago.
Luciana fumbled. “Sorry, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“What is this ‘sir’?” The big man’s stern expression transformed into a bright smile. “You Americans, so formal. Call me Gianpierre.”