by Lucy Monroe
Audrey understood then. To Giovannu, the children were no more than the key to accessing more money for his profligate lifestyle.
“I am severely offended you would accuse me of wanting to take the children in some effort to control their inheritance. They deserve two parents, not one workaholic uncle who understands making money and nothing of the human condition.”
And that explained why the man wanted Audrey gone. The argument held no water if Vincenzo was paying attention to the children, and in Giovannu’s mind that was only happening because Audrey was around.
Vincenzo shook his head. “Coming from anyone else, those words might hurt. From you? They are nothing more than the braying of the ass Audrey called you.”
Giovannu made as if to come into the room, but Vincenzo blocked his entry. “Your things and your car will be leaving my property in…” he looked down at his watch. “…fifty-four minutes. If you do not leave with them, you will be walking, but you will leave.”
Then Vincenzo shut the door on his astonished father before making a beeline for the drink Devon had poured. He tossed it back like a shot.
Audrey winced in sympathy for his throat and nasal passages. Expensive whiskey like that was not meant for shots.
“Do you want another?” she asked, though.
He shook his head and turned to face her. “You waited up for me.”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Was there something particular you needed?” he asked, in what she’d come to think of as his business voice.
“At the risk of providing fodder for your father’s fantasies of my aggressive sexual behavior, I was sort of hoping for a kiss good-night.”
“Is that all you were hoping for, biddùzza?”
“Tonight?” She nodded. “Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I have to be up early to cook.”
“I do have a chef on staff.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t know how to make Toby’s favorite sweet potato pecan pie. And I’m not giving up my recipe for stuffing, so that means I make it.”
“You are serious about this? You are not teasing me?”
Audrey shook her head. “Some things have to be done out of love. Holiday food is one of them.”
“So, stuffing and pie?”
“And maybe a green-bean almond casserole. Danny’s mom loves it.”
“So they agreed to come for dinner?”
“Yes. Thanks for inviting them.” When Toby had told Vincenzo that he and Audrey had a tradition of sharing Thanksgiving with Danny’s family, her billionaire had insisted they be included in tomorrow’s festivities as well.
“Danny will be staying the rest of the weekend, too. According to Toby, both boys are ‘totally psyched.’”
“Toby told his friend about the indoor pool?”
“And your gym. Apparently it’s sick.” She grinned.
“I am glad it passes the teenager test of worthiness.”
Audrey walked over to Vincenzo and laid her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry about your dad.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“You never believed him for a moment. About me making a pass at him.”
“Even if I had not known how little regard you have for my father after last weekend’s visit, I am in the premier position to judge the likelihood of you behaving aggressively sexually.”
“Yes? I think I could become aggressive with you.”
“That is good to know.”
“Is it?”
“Sì.”
“What about the control thing?”
Suddenly it was his hands on her arms, and she was standing so close she could feel Vincenzo’s heat.
“What about the control thing?” he asked in that darkly seductive voice she’d heard so much of on Saturday night.
She tilted her head back, her lips parting as she tried to think of what to say, but she could not remember what they were talking about.
His kiss was full of promise, heated desire and restraint. Vincenzo ended it much too quickly. “Any more of that and you won’t be leaving my bed until Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow.”
She nodded and then shook her head, seriously discombobulated.
He laughed softly, the frustration of dealing with his father no longer etched so deeply into his expression. “I will walk you to your room.” He kissed her again, outside her door, and then smiled down at her. “I like your pajamas, by the way.”
“They’re not sexy.”
“Define sexy.”
“You know.”
“I do know. You have me hard and seriously tempted to ignore your need to rise early to show your love for your family through cooking. Definitely sexy.”
She was smiling when she closed her door with Vincenzo on the other side.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
VINCENZO HAD NEVER experienced a family Thanksgiving dinner like the one Audrey orchestrated.
He’d worked this holiday and pretty much every other one each year since taking his first job at the bank. The American branch of the Tomasi family did not do traditional holidays.
He’d had to take a call from Europe early that morning, but the rest of the day was clear and Enzu enjoyed it. Audrey and Toby’s friends were a warm and boisterous family, the love between parents and children obvious and genuine.
They were all relaxing in the living room now that they’d eaten their feast. Danny’s youngest sister and Audrey were playing with Lego on the floor with Franca. The teen’s mother cradled a sleeping Angilu in her arms while the remaining children and their father played Monopoly.
Enzu didn’t even know he had board games, but Devon had brought a stack of them on Audrey’s request.
“She’s a natural mom,” Toby said as he sidled up to Enzu. “Audrey’s got a nurturing streak as wide as the Grand Canyon and just as deep.”
“Sì?” As if Enzu did not know.
It was one of the things he found most intriguing about Audrey Miller. She was so completely different than any woman of his acquaintance. Even Gloria, while an estimable PAA, could not be accused of being remotely family-centric.
“It’s how I knew…” Toby let his voice trail off.
But Enzu thought he knew what the teen meant. “That you could go to her when your parents failed so spectacularly at their job of caring for you?”
“Yes.” Toby’s shoulders drooped and then he made a conscious effort to straighten them. “You know, I never looked at it as a failure on their part.”
“Audrey didn’t fail you, but they did.”
“You’re right. It cost her so much, though.”
Vincenzo thought that was something Audrey would never count. “She’s made it clear to me that she considers the cost worth it.”
Toby shook his head. “I was just a kid, you know? I kept thinking they were going to change their mind and everything was going to be okay again.”
“It was a reasonable expectation.”
“Was it?” Toby asked.
“Audrey’s actions should tell you how reasonable. She is a very good stick by which to measure sincere family behavior.”
“She is, isn’t she? I never want her to think her sacrifice has been wasted.”
“It has not and I know she agrees with me.”
“I’m just glad she’s found you.”
Vincenzo felt an odd sensation in the region of his heart. “Why?”
“I may not be going to MIT, like we dreamed, but I am going away to college.” Toby had a very adult, very Audrey-like expression on his youthful face. “I didn’t want to leave her alone.”
“No?”
“She doesn’t know it, but I applied to universities in New York, too. I’ve been accepted.”
“I thought you and your friend planned to go to school in Massachusetts?”
“Not if it means leaving her on her own.”
“You are a good man, Toby.”
“Thanks. I think you are, too, Mr. Tomasi.”
&n
bsp; “Enzu.”
“You sure? Audrey drilled polite behavior into me even more strictly than Mom and Dad used to.”
“Sì. One day soon we may be brothers.”
“You think?” Toby asked, excitement barely contained in his tone.
“I do, but you will not say anything to Audrey.”
Vincenzo’s decision was made, but he felt completely alien nerves about informing her of that fact.
“My lips are zipped.” Toby made a zipping and locking gesture across his closed mouth.
Enzu grinned. “Good man.”
*
Later that night, after the children were in bed and the extra dinner guests had left for home, Enzu surveyed the scene he had set with a critical eye.
Everything was ready for the final seduction of a very sensual virgin. Except one thing.
There were too many shadows cast by the clusters of candles on the tables on either side of his bed and the large chest of drawers against the wall. Enzu wanted to see more than their flickering radiance would afford when making love to his biddùzza.
He turned on the recessed ceiling lighting, adjusting it to a muted glow.
Better.
Audrey wouldn’t even realize the luminescence from the multiple small flames had been augmented.
Casting a final glance at the king-sized bed piled high with pillows and covered with fresh crimson rose petals over the royal-blue silk sheet, he went to answer the soft knock on his suite’s door.
Audrey stood on the other side, wearing her pajamas and robe from the night before. Her chocolate gaze reflected unmistakable trepidation and anticipation.
“You remembered slippers tonight,” he said by way of a greeting as he stood back to allow her entrance to his personal sanctum, this one even more off-limits to others than his jungle paradise.
She nodded, making no move to come inside.
“Are you having second thoughts?”
Audrey shook her head, her lovely brown hair rippling and sliding against her robe.
He reached out and guided her inside, lust spiking in his belly from the simple touch of his hand against her silk-clad shoulder. She didn’t balk but came without hesitation, despite her clear inability to take this step of her own volition.
Just as it had in the pool last week, her instinctual compliance intoxicated him more than the champagne waiting in the other room ever could. She gave herself so beautifully and completely to his desires. She ensnared him with bonds he could not hope to break.
And in her innocence she had no idea.
“I would like you to leave your slippers, robe and pajama bottoms here.” He waited to see if she would comply, his atavistic instincts certain of her reaction even as logic insisted the connection between the two of them could not be that deep and elemental.
Against all rational expectation of her reaction, his words seemed to relax her as an undeniable air of tension surrounding Audrey bled away.
She toed off the ballet-style black slippers, managing to place them neatly to the side of the rose petals creating a path from his door, through the suite to the bed in the other room. She surprised him by removing the bottoms first, folding them and dropping them on top of the slippers.
When she went to untie her robe he reached out and gently took over the task without any previous plan to do so.
That lack of fore-planning should bother him. He always planned every action in the bedroom. His control thing, as Audrey called it, didn’t just extend to his partners. Enzu demanded total restraint of himself.
Since his very first foray into sex Enzu had never once lost his self-mastery. Until the previous Saturday night, when he had kissed without thought and come within inches of burying himself inside Audrey’s untried body.
It had been his knowledge that to do so would cause her unnecessary pain that stopped him, not his own willpower or plan.
“Enzu?” Audrey looked up at him with inquiry, but no mockery.
He’d lost himself in his thoughts and she was not amused by it, did not tease him about losing control of the situation.
“You are a very good match for me, più amato.” The endearment slipped out, but he would not take it back. Best beloved.
He also had no intention of telling her what it meant if she asked.
She didn’t, only observed, “Not on paper.”
“Externals are not important Not here. Not between us.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No.”
“We are almost polar opposites.”
He slid her robe from her shoulders and then dropped it over the back of a nearby armchair. “Perhaps that is what we both need.”
“Yes.” She smiled, a mischievous light shining in her brown eyes. “I don’t think you’d find it nearly as much fun with someone as bossy as you are.”
He chuckled, but cupped her cheeks, making sure their gazes met and she could read the sincerity and challenge in his. “I do not believe you would enjoy yourself as much with an overly civilized partner, either.”
“I’m not even sure I would have ever been open to another sexual partner,” she admitted painfully.
“You have not been tempted in the past six years?”
She shook her head. “At first I was too hurt by the betrayal of the most important men in my life to trust anyone else enough to even go on a date.”
“You were busy trying to keep a home together for you and Toby while finishing your schooling as well.”
“Yes, but…” She swallowed, trying to turn her head from his gentle hold.
He would not let her. He sensed there was something important here he needed to know. “But what?”
“If I’d been open to it, I could have dated.”
“You weren’t.” She’d already said so. “What is it you think is so important you need to hide it from me?”
Her eyes widened as if his insight shocked her. He almost laughed. Did she not realize he expended more effort reading her than he did his strongest business rival?
He thought back over their words, looking for a clue to what Audrey was trying to keep from him. “You said at first.”
Fear skittered across her expression.
“What came next?” Had she had a bad experience?
“Toby started high school and he did really well, academically, socially—he was well-adjusted all around.”
“And he needed you less?”
“Yes, so I thought I should maybe start dating.”
His gut clenched. “What happened?”
“I saw you.”
It was so far from what he’d expected to hear Enzu dropped his hold on her face. “What?”
“You were visiting the bank. I saw you in the hall.” Clear discomfort colored her voice. “You turned to say something to Gloria and I saw your face full-on.”
“There is a portrait of me in the lobby of the bank building.” She had to have seen his face before that.
“Yes. I’d looked at it a lot. Only not really consciously, you know?”
“No, I do not know.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would.” She turned away and went to one of the huge bouquets of crimson and white roses that he’d had flown in to fill his suite.
“Audrey…” he prompted, his tone letting her know he would not drop this.
She reached out and ran a fingertip over one velvet blossom before leaning over to inhale the fragrance of the perfectly open blooms.
Her action wasn’t necessary. The heady perfume permeated the suite from sitting room to bathroom and the bedroom in between.
She was stalling.
“What did catching a glimpse of your employer have to do with your dating?” he asked, thinking a more specific question would get her talking again.
She turned back to face him, the picture she made in the silky pajama top that just brushed her upper thighs nearly making him forget their conversation all together.
“I didn’t see my employer
in that moment.”
“That makes no sense.” Even when she’d worked at the bank, as its president Enzu had ultimately been her employer.
“I saw a man.”
Not for the first time in this woman’s presence, Enzu found himself speechless.
“A man I wanted.”
“That was four years ago.”
“Yes.”
“So you did not date in hopes of one day catching my eye?” he asked in disbelief.
“No. I never thought I’d come under your notice. But it didn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t generate interest in other men.”
“Even though you knew there was no chance you would have me?”
“It was so stupid, and I was determined to break the pattern once Toby had gone away to university.”
As illogical as it might be, Enzu did not like hearing that. “You were going to date?”
“I’d even created a profile on one of those online dating sites.”
“That needs to be taken down immediately.”
“I deleted it before it ever went public.”
“Good.” He did not examine the relief he felt at that assurance. “So, what you are saying is that you’ve had a celebrity crush on me for four years.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
“What else could it be?”
“Love.”
“What? You cannot love someone you do not know.”
“No, you can’t be in love with a stranger. But the spark of love can be ignited. You’ve fanned it into a raging flame since that first day in your office.”
He crossed to her, putting both hands on her shoulders, his urge to kiss her strong. “You are saying that you love me?”
“Yes. Isn’t it stupid?”
“I have no experience with the emotion, but I do not think it is stupid, no.”
“You don’t?”
“No.” Perhaps these feelings she had for him explained how stunningly she gave herself to him.
“You don’t mind?”
“That you love me?”
“Or that when I came to you the first time I obviously had ulterior motives for approaching you?”
“If not for Toby, would you have approached me otherwise?”