Italian Billionaire's Unexpected Lover (The Romano Brothers 2)

To his surprise, Luciana took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and stepped closer until her body was only inches away from his.

There was nowhere else for Gianpierre to look except at her painfully beautiful face. It physically hurt him to look at her and not touch her. The only reason he’d put his gloves back on was to keep from caressing her porcelain skin. Her cheeks were high and her lips were full, and every time he saw her all he could think about was having her under him. He wanted to hear his name on her lips in those few sweet moments of life when everything else ceased to matter.

“I do deserve to be here,” Luciana declared. “I deserve to be here as much as any man.”

“Man… woman. I don’t care about these things,” Gianpierre countered, but his declared stance lacked the support of his actions. In truth, he didn’t care about the gender of the person working for him. He cared about results. It was all about the results, and the results he needed right now was for the reconstruction work at the Romano del Mare to be completed as soon as possible so that he could move on to his next job. He’d been offered a position in Dubai, and the window of that opportunity was closing with every tick of the clock’s hands. When that job went, so did his opportunity to be on the cover of Architectural Digest. Luciana’s presence was a siren’s wail to his focus and it put all his plans in jeopardy. He couldn’t have her here. God was having a fine joke to tease him with a precious gift he couldn’t bear to accept.

“It is my life, sir.” Luciana countered, her expression as hard as steel.

“Forgive me.” He wanted to tell her that he didn’t care if he was right or wrong, but he didn’t. “It is not my place to decide the lives of others.” Then, Gianpierre stepped closer so that with every breath she took, the crest of Luciana’s breasts came within a hair’s width of touching his chest. He stared down into her green eyes and willed himself not to dip his head to take her lips with his own. “This is your job. You have done it well, and you have earned the right to stay. I… worry.” His gaze flicked lower to her full lips before returning to her eyes. “I would not do well if harm came to you. The fall… it scared me.”

Luciana sucked in air in reaction to the naked truth of Gianpierre’s words. Looking to the side, she stepped away, putting distance between them and breaking the intimacy of their closeness. With anyone else, it was a line that Gianpierre would not have crossed, but he’d seen the way she looked at him. He’d seen how she wanted him.

Take her, then discard her. Get her out of your blood.

It wasn’t a new thought, yet there had been a sadness about her that had kept him away. Even before the accident they’d just faced, he had felt that it was as if the world had shifted under her feet and she was hanging on by only the tips of her fingers. She’d seemed too fragile for him to trifle with for the sake of scratching his own itch. Now he knew why.

“Will you—”

“I have to go,” Luciana said, cutting him off as she looked down at her watch. “The daycare texted. They’re not happy with Natalia. I need to go pick her up.”

Gianpierre had been about to ask Luciana to have dinner with him, but her words saved him. “They are not happy with her?”

Luciana nodded, continuing to inch further away from him. “It’s the nightmares. She has nightmares. It scares the other children.”

“Luciana…”

“It’s okay, though. I’ll go straight there. I’ll get her, leave her with the neighbor, and be back here in under an hour.”

“Luciana…”

“And I’ll work late to make up the time.”

“Luciana!”

She stopped, her expression fearful of what Gianpierre would utter next.

“You’re bleeding.”

“What?”

“Your leg. It’s scraped.”

Luciana bent and twisted. It seemed to be the first time she’d noticed that her pants were torn up the side of one thigh. The long, red scrapes caused by the fall had begun to weep. It wasn’t anything that a wash and a little ointment couldn’t take care of, but it might be scary for others to see—especially little children.

“Take the rest of the day off, Luciana. Take care of you and your family.”

“Take the rest of the day off? But your schedule?”

“No, no,” Gianpierre said. “Take tomorrow off as well.” He bit back the words telling her to take forever off, to never come back and to leave him alone so that he could get his work done without being constantly plagued with thoughts of her nearness.

Luciana took a step forward, and Gianpierre saw the panic in her eyes. “Sir, my job…”

3

Gianpierre

“I am saying sorry,” Gianpierre said, putting a hand over his heart. “Take off today. Take off tomorrow. Take care of your famigghia. I will see you Friday when you come back to your job.” At least it would give him a small respite from her.