Dreaming Of... Italy: Daring to Trust the Boss / Reunited with Her Italian Ex / The Forbidden Prince. SUSAN MEIER
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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 hormones 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.”