Gianpierre stayed in the background and watched as Luciana knelt so that she was eye to eye with Natalia as she introduced the little girl to her new governess. Once he moved out, Signora Esposito could move in and take up residence in his vacated bedroom and be available regardless of Luciana’s schedule. It was yet another reason that he should move on as soon as possible. Signora Esposito had specialized training in dealing with childhood trauma as well as a strong educational background in the sciences and the arts. She would be an excellent tutor as well as a guardian and care provider. He’d miss the little girl—and her new mother—but him leaving was inevitable. It didn’t matter that a growing part of himself didn’t want to leave. He’d throw himself into his new job, and everything else would cease to matter. It’s how it always was for him. The people he left behind always faded in importance. Over the years he’d learned to accept that about himself.
Slipping into the back hallway, Gianpierre climbed the tucked-away staircase that led up to the roof. There, he leaned on the stone banister that lined the rooftop.
Night had fallen and blanketed the small town below him. Unseen in the distance, he could hear the Ionian Sea lapping against the shore and the gentle sounds of small-town life. Above him, the stars seemed to twinkle and blink, and he wondered what celestial bodies would be visible to him once he got to Dubai.
The sound of a door closing caused him to turn around. Still in her wrap-around dress that hugged her every curve and the strappy black stilettos she’d worn during her girl’s night out, Luciana appeared like a vision in the soft glow of the underwater lights that lit the long, narrow lap pool that he’d had installed.
“I’m sorry,” he said, beating her to the punch. He didn’t know if she’d come to the roof to fight, but she’d make a formidable foe and he didn’t want to take that chance. There were so many things he wanted to do to her at that moment, but fighting simply wasn’t one of them.
“For what? For looking out for us? Taking care of us?”
Gianpierre smiled. “Mmm, I am sorry for doing something that wasn’t mine to do.” It was a lie. He wasn’t sorry. He’d do it again… and again… and again. Whatever it took to take care of them, but those were not the words to say to a strong, smart, and independent woman such as Luciana.
With a slow walk that swung her round hips like a hypnotic metronome, Luciana closed the distance between them. “Natalia’s downstairs with one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen on her face, so I’m not sorry you took control. You did something that I couldn’t have done on my own, and I won’t deny the joy that brings her just to save my pride.” She stopped mere inches from Gianpierre’s chest. “Thank you,” she said, and then reached up on tip toes to put a kiss on his cheek. The next one graced his lips.
Gianpierre didn’t kiss her back, not at first. His heart pounded so hard and so loud he thought it was a wonder that she didn’t hear it, and he knew that he was standing on the edge of a cliff. One step. One slip. That was all that it would take to fall into Luciana’s arms and never be able to climb his way back up and away from her. But then the touch of her hand came to rest on his chest and she nuzzled her nose into his neck before kissing him there, and he knew he’d already fallen. He’d fallen weeks ago, but he’d been in too much of a delusional daze to realize it.
He’d lost his control to Luicana the moment she’d walked into his life… and he didn’t want it back. Ever.
10
Luciana
“I know we shouldn’t,” Luciana whispered as she rubbed her cheek against the edge of Gianpierre’s stubbled jaw. She was his employee, but he smelled good, of musk and earth, and she breathed him in as deep as her lungs would take him. She knew that he wasn’t going to stay, that he was going to leave and that it was going to be as soon as he could, but he was here tonight. It was enough.
“You are a bewitching vixen, but you are right. I can’t be this for you,” Gianpierre said, his hands someplace that was not on her.
“What? You can’t be my lover for a night?” Luciana teased as she dragged the tip of one nail down his shirt.
Gianpierre growled, but he still didn’t touch her. “Is that all you want? A night?”
Luciana went still as she looked up into his eyes. A part of her had felt empty since the day that her sister had died, but—somehow—that feeling had eased since getting the job with Gianpierre. When she wasn’t with Natalia, the job was her purpose and focus, plus Gianpierre’s presence had slowly become a comfort to her. All she had to do was be near him, and he had a way of eclipsing all of her fears with his calm strength. He could be so gruff, so dismissive, yet she’d never felt safer than when she was with him.
“What I want is for you to remind me what being a woman feels like.”
Gianpierre growled, and his chest vibrated beneath Luciana’s hand. It was then, finally, that he put his hands on her. Trailing them up the long line of her back, he sank the fingers of one hand into her thick hair and squeezed, pulling her head back and tilting her face up higher. “You could have any lover, anyone. Why me? Is it because I’m here, because I’m convenient?”
“Yes.” Luciana threw the word at him like she was throwing a knife and felt his fingers tighten even more in her hair. Of course, it wasn’t true. She didn’t want him because he was convenient. She wanted him despite how wrong he was for her. She wanted him because she hadn’t been able to bring herself to want anyone else. He didn’t need to know that, though. He didn’t need to know how special he was to her. She was setting herself up for heartbreak by inviting him into her bed—in a manner of speaking—and she hated him for that, but it didn’t stop her from wanting him.
“Then find another,” Gianpierre ground out through clenched teeth. In that instant, he released her hair and was gone, stepping away.
They weren’t on the restoration site but yet Luciana felt the earth shift beneath her feet. “What is this?” she demanded. “At first you’ll barely look at me, but now you live with me. You kissed me in the tunnels—without invitation—but now you push me away. What is your game?” The pain of being rejected by someone she wanted so much made her temples throb and made it difficult to think clearly. Even though he hadn’t done so, she felt as if she had been bodily shoved away from him with a violence that filled her with a venomous anger she’d never felt before. She’d been holding in so much since her sister had died, bottling it all up and making sure she was forever the strong one so that Natalia could feel secure and safe, but now all of her feelings of abandonment boiled their way to the surface and focused on Gianpierre’s retreating back.
Taking off her strappy sandals, she threw one of them at him and hit him square between his heavily muscled shoulders. “Look at me!” she yelled. “Don’t walk away from me! You don’t get to walk away from me!” Everyone left her. Everyone. And she couldn’t take it happening tonight.
Gianpierre whirled on her and stalked forward with long strides that devoured the distance between them. He came at her so fast that despite her demands that he give her his full attention, Luciana walked backwards until she hit the small, windowed shed that he’d constructed as a rooftop gym. His powerful hands were on her arms below her shoulders a second later, and his touch sent a jolt of electricity through her. His simple nearness did something to her. It made her defiantly happy to be alive.
“I don’t want you,” Gianpierre rumbled low in his throat with his head tilted and leaning forward as if ready to kiss her, and Luciana couldn’t tell if he was talking to her or to himself. She had the sense that he was fighting an internal war, one that he was losing, but then his face hardened. “You’re trouble. You’re a burden.”
Luciana gasped, and her hands shot out to slam her palms into his chest. She knew that it wasn’t enough to move him if he wasn’t willing to move, but her force pushed him aside all the same.
A burden… In the half-second of selfish grief after her sister had died, that was how she had seen Natalia—a burden that she wasn’t ready for and didn’t want—but she’d been wrong. Natalia was a burden that blessed her life every single second of every day.
Tears stung Luciana’s eyes as she marched back toward the door that would lead to the apartment below, but she never reached it. Gianpierre’s hand closed around her arm and turned her to face him.
Toe to toe, chest to chest, they stood with their faces mere inches from each other.
“I don’t want you,” Gianpierre said again, “but you have turned me into a man who has to have you. Before you, I’d been content. I’d been happy. But now all I do is want, and you’re always at the center of it.” Despite his angry words and tone, he brushed a tear away from Luciana’s cheek with a feather-light touch. “You and that little girl, you’re eclipsing everything I’ve worked toward in my life, and it’s killing me. I am not the man I was when I met you. You’ve replaced him and left a person who is torn in two. How can I be in Dubai doing what I must do and still be here with you, making love to you and living my life for you?”