An Exquisite Challenge

by Jennifer Hayward

“A launch event is a launch event, fratello, not the second coming of Christ. Get it done. Don’t let yourself get in the way of your success.”

  Old animosities surged to life—charged, destructive forces that skimmed just beneath the surface. If he’d inherited his father and grandfather’s wine-making brilliance and the ability to play with the chemistry of a wine until it melted on the tongue, Riccardo had mastered the ability to see the big picture. It was the one trait, Gabe was sure, that had catapulted his brother over him to CEO, aside from the fact that Riccardo was the eldest, and Antonio was traditional to the hilt.

  He scowled. “Are you questioning my judgment?”

  “No,” his brother said matter-of-factly. “I’m saying we’re treading close to the line.”

  Which was true. He’d seen the latest profit-and-loss statements for the Napa operations and they weren’t pretty. They weren’t meeting profit targets they’d established at launch eight years ago and there were reasons for that, yes, like the fact that The Devil’s Peak and his other star wine had matured faster than they’d expected and he’d invested in bringing them to market. But the board didn’t know they were about to reap huge financial rewards. To them, he was a number.

  He let out a long breath. “These risks we’re taking—they’re going to pay off. You know that.”

  “There isn’t a doubt in my mind.”

  The quiet confidence in his brother’s reply made him sink his head back against the headrest. “Dispiace,” he murmured. “It’s been quite a week.”

  “Get yourself laid. It’ll help.”

  “I’m too busy to get laid.”

  “A man is never too busy to get laid.”

  The gospel according to Riccardo. Gabe shook his head. “Do you have a problem with me hiring Alex?”

  “I’m staying out of this particular discussion,” his brother returned dryly. “Better to leave it to your impartial judgment rather than face my wife’s wrath. But I will say, I’ve heard she is the best in the business.”

  Gabe wouldn’t describe his attitude toward Alex as impartial, particularly after last night. But this wasn’t personal, it was business.

  He and Riccardo debated which quarterback would prevail in the weekend’s football game, arranged to talk after Gabe’s meeting tomorrow with a restaurant chain they’d been courting and signed off.

  Traffic started to move. He put his foot down on the accelerator and forced himself to focus on the decision at hand. Hiring Alex was the right thing to do. She might be the only person who could save him. The fact that she made his blood pressure rise by about ten points just by being in the same room shouldn’t have anything to do with it. And yet...the feel of her soft, lush mouth under his last night slammed into his brain with a force that was distinctly off-putting. The hazy desire in her big blue eyes when she’d pulled away. That was what was making him hesitate. Alex’s ability to get under his skin.

  She was the type of woman you took to bed once, got out of your system then banished from your head forever. But given their familial ties, he couldn’t do that. He had to see her on a regular basis. So he’d restrained himself. Until that night in Lilly and Riccardo’s garden. Until last night. And even though he’d now assured himself she’d be spectacular in bed, she was off-limits. It pained him to admit it—but he needed her. In a couple of hours she’d be working for him. And if there was one thing he never did, it was mix business with pleasure.

  * * *

  Alex was two large coffees into an official snit when Gabe deigned to make an appearance at his airy warehouse office space in downtown San Francisco. It had surprised her at first, the modernity of the building, given De Campo’s historic lineage, but Gabe, his chatty PA Danielle had told her, was contemporary both in his design taste and in the way he chose to make his wines in Napa, using a blend of new and old-world techniques.

  She sat up straighter in the cream-colored leather chair, her senses switching to high alert. Gabe was dressed in another of those beautifully tailored suits, this time a charcoal-gray that made his green eyes pop, and it took her pulse from zero to fifty in a second flat.

  His gaze slid over her. “Scusa. Traffic was murder.”

  She bit her tongue. “No worries.”

  “Buongiorno,” he murmured to Danielle, requesting an espresso and for her to move his next meeting, before waving Alex into his office, an equally large, open space that offered a superb view of the city.

  She sat down in the chair he pointed to and took in the hard line of his jaw. “You’re not going to give me the job.”

  He shut the door, walked around the desk and sat down opposite her. “I want to get a few things straight before I give you my answer.”

  She felt the need for a preemptive strike. “If it’s about the kiss, I—”

  “Are you even capable,” he asked harshly, stripping off his jacket, “of muzzling that mouth of yours while I lay this out?”

  Whoa. Someone had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning... His face was all hard lines and tense mouth, his broad shoulders ramrod straight under the crisp light blue shirt. “Okay,” she agreed carefully, “I’m a mute until you tell me I can speak.”

  His eyes flashed and she had the feeling he would have taken that comment elsewhere had he not been so focused on the subject at hand. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the desk. If that was supposed to intimidate her, it didn’t. “I will let you manage these events on four conditions.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to snap back that he needed her as much as she needed him, but she pressed her lips together and sat back in the chair.

  “One,” he began, “I brief you today, you put an idea I like on my desk by Monday and you’re in.”

  She nodded. She was nothing if not good under pressure.

  “Two. If for any reason creative differences make it impossible for us to work together, I can fire you at any time.”

  Hot anger singed her veins. “You are too much.”

  He held up a hand, an icy, calm expression on his face. “You’re a mute, remember?”

  She was going to be a killer in a second.

  “Three,” he continued. “You have nothing to do with Jordan Lane. He is the competition and you will not do work for him. And four—” he trained his gaze on hers “—what happened last night doesn’t happen again.”

  “You started it,” she burst out like a three-year-old.

  “And now I’m ending it.” His lips tilted downward. “This is the most important launch of De Campo’s modern history, Alex. There is a ten-million-dollar ad campaign behind it. We don’t get to screw up.”

  No kidding.

  He pushed her portfolio across the desk. “I looked at this. You’re incredibly talented.”

  She glowed at that. “Thank you.”

  “I want you to work on the events. I know you’re right for this. Which means,” he added grimly, “we need to learn to work together. We need to put our personal differences aside. Put this inconvenient attraction we have for one other aside. And get this done.”

  Inconvenient attraction? She supposed that’s what it was, but she didn’t like the distasteful way he said it. As if she were a bug running across the gleaming wooden floor he wanted to crush.

  His gaze was on her, expectant. She lifted a brow. “Am I allowed to talk?” He nodded. “Sooo,” she began, “I’m all for that.” She had precisely one month’s office rent in reserve and she’d like to pad that, not kiss him again. “I also have no interest in working for Jordan Lane.”

  “Bene.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, his dictatorial terms secured. “This is the way it’s going to work. You show me the theme—I approve. Then I see everything at every step in the process. Invitations, decor, suppliers.... Any major decision—I approve it.”

  Alarm bells started to ring in her head. “Look, I know you had a bad experience with the last agency and the pressure is on, but that’s no
t how I work.”

  “It is now.”

  She reined in the urge to tell him he’d lost touch with reality. “We have three and a half weeks to pull these events together, Gabe. We’re going to have to move at lightning speed and even then, it’s going to be a minor miracle if we pull it off.”

  His face was hard, implacable. “Tell me now if you can’t do it.”

  “I can do it,” she barked, leaning forward and resting her palms on the desk. “But I think it’s nuts. You’re the vice president of De Campo Group. You have a wine to get out the door in a few weeks. You really want to be approving catering menus?”

  “I’m creating a brand,” he returned harshly. “Everything depends on first impressions. So if I want to approve a catering menu, I will.”

  “What about one of your marketing people back in New York? Surely they can work with me?”

  “They’re not close enough to the ground.”

  “Then get them here.”

  His scowl grew. “This launch is mine, Alex. The culmination of years of blood, sweat and tears. I want to be intimately involved. You play by my rules or you don’t play at all.”

  She pressed her lips together. “Do I need your approval to go to the bathroom, too?”

  “Scusi?”

  “Nothing.” She tapped her fingernails on the desk in a staccato rhythm. “Those poor buggers,” she muttered under her breath, feeling sorry for the last agency. But maybe it should be poor her. Because she was going to have to spend the next month of her life working for him.

  “What did you say?”

  She looked up at him, the tilt of her chin defiant. “I said, ‘poor buggers.’ As in I feel sorry for the old agency to have had to work with you. Are you sure they didn’t quit?”

  His eyes glittered. “Are you sure you want to talk to your boss like that?”

  “You’re not my boss yet.” She threw his words from last night back at him, wishing that didn’t put her head squarely back on that kiss. “I haven’t signed the contract yet. You realize I could walk out of this office right now and you’d be screwed, right?”

  “But you aren’t going to do that.” He waved her portfolio at her. “I thought it was odd you weren’t booked solid, so I did some homework this morning. You just lost your biggest client, Alex. Swallowed up by a multinational. You need me.”

  Her stomach dropped. “It had nothing to do with our work.”

  “I’m sure it didn’t. Your reputation is exemplary.” He threw the portfolio down on the desk. “What remains are the facts. It’s me or Jordan Lane, and I can guarantee you, you want to pick me.”

  She could guarantee that, too. She stared mutinously at him, hating nothing more than being boxed into a corner, but unfortunately, that’s exactly where she was. “You know what they say about great leaders, Gabe? They surround themselves with good people, they don’t get caught up in the minutia and they let their disciples make them look good.”

  His gaze cooled. “Earn my trust, then. Although something tells me you are far from trainable.”

  She held her hands up in the air in mock surrender. “You’ll get every menu. You might want to consider joining us at the hip, though.”

  Her attempt at a joke didn’t seem to have the intended effect and she wondered if she’d hit a nerve with the leadership thing. “Elena has a room ready for you at the house,” he said abruptly. “It makes more sense for you to be there where you’ll have much more access to me.”

  And why did that sound like a very, very bad idea? The kiss from last night flashed through her head again. Her burying her hands in his shirt and begging for more. Him walking away. Sure, it would be more convenient for her to stay at the winery, given the event was going to be held there, but her and Gabe in the same house? Was that asking for trouble?

  “I can stay in one of the bed-and-breakfasts,” she suggested. “So I’m not underfoot.”

  “You’ll stay at the house.” He pointed to the conference table. “Shall I walk you through the brief?”

  She nodded. They moved to the table and Gabe took her through the brief he’d given the other agency. Five hundred people, an outdoor venue where weather could be a factor, VIP tours of the winery and a press junket to see the wine-making process. Oh, and no theme in existence.

  Totally doable in three weeks, right?

  She almost turned around and ran out the door. Except the desire to conquer was stronger. And maybe the urge to show Mr. Perfection she was a whole lot more than he thought she was.

  She might have been describing her entire life.

  CHAPTER THREE

  HOW COULD SHE be freezing now?

  Uttering a string of purple prose that would have made a trucker proud, Alex got up from her PC before she did something crazy, like throw it across the room. She stalked to the window and looked out over the vineyard, lush and green on a hot summer day. The sunroom Gabe had given her to work in was a wonderful, quiet space, but right now it felt like a prison. She’d said she wouldn’t leave until she had a theme. But it wasn’t coming. At all.

  The only thing she’d been able to spew out thus far was a lame idea about how the rich boldness of De Campo’s new wine, The Devil’s Peak, was a feast for the senses.

  Ugh. Clichéd. Boring. Done. It could have been coffee for all its originality. Which she’d had more than enough of by now, by the way.

  She rubbed her fatigue-stung eyes. Of all the moments for her to have a total creative meltdown, this was not the one she would have chosen. She had forty-eight hours left to conjure up an event theme that would have De Campo on the lips of every wine lover on the East and West Coasts, but nothing was coming.

  She picked up her bottle of water and abandoned her office for outside. The De Campo homestead was done in an open-concept, New England–style design that blended in perfectly with the beautiful countryside. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows let in the gorgeous Napa light, bounded by a wraparound porch, terrace and pool area. Up the rolling hill in front of her sprawled the vineyard. Maybe some sunshine and a walk into the vines would inspire her. Impart some fantastic oh, my God idea into her brain.

  She walked up the hill and into the Cabernet vines, which stretched all the way up to the edge of the escarpment. A band of green topped by the pure blue Napa sky. Harvest, Gabe had told her, would be the end of summer or early fall, but the grapes on the vines already looked like perfect replicas of the most glorious still lifes. Smaller and more perfectly rounded than a supermarket grape, they were a vibrant, luscious purple. Inspirational, certainly.

  Channeling hard, she tried the word-association games they used to brainstorm at the agency. Nothing came. Nada. She was officially in a slump. A ninth-inning slump, at that. A building sense of panic tattooed itself through her veins. It was Saturday. The invitations had to go out by Tuesday, latest, if they were to get into people’s busy summer calendars. Which meant Gabe had to approve a theme and invites by Monday. She had confidence in her graphic designer’s ability to turn a concept and invitation around in twenty-four hours. He was brilliant. But she needed to give him something to work with.

  “A feast for the senses” was just not going to cut it.

  She plopped herself down in the middle of a row, drew her jeans-clad knees up to her chest and propped her elbows on them. The Devil’s Peak, Gabe’s star wine, was a Cabernet blend. Cabernet was the most popular grape in Napa, compromising a whopping 40 percent of the harvest. Complexity, Gabe had said, the way the varietals were blended together, was the key to this wine. But what the hell did complexity mean?

  That was what was freezing her brain. She didn’t understand the product. Didn’t understand what she should be brainstorming about. What was The Devil’s Peak’s key differentiator?

  Gabe found her there a half an hour later, still staring glumly at the beautiful purple grapes. Her fried brain took him in. Clinging T-shirt plastered across a muscular chest, dirt-stained jeans and a sweaty, man-working-hard look prov
ided more inspiration than the last half hour had in total.

  He gave her a once-over. “You look like hell.”

  “Thank you.” She pushed a self-conscious hand through her hair. Too bad she didn’t rock the disheveled look like he did.

  “Elena said you were up before her.”

  At five, to be precise. One rose with the birds when severely agitated. “I have to nail this theme.”

  He held out a hand. “Looking for inspiration?”

  She could have said he was doing just fine in that department, but that would have violated their nothing-personal rule. So she curled her fingers around his palm instead and let him drag her to her feet. Unfortunately, his perspiration-covered, hard-packed abs were now staring her in the face. Looking down or up wasn’t an option, so she stepped back instead.

  “I think I’m getting sunstroke along the way.”

  He frowned down at her. “Have you had enough water?”

  She held up her bottle. Took a deep breath. “I don’t understand what makes this wine special. I need to know what its key differentiator is to come up with a theme, and to me a Cabernet is a Cabernet.”

  He looked down his perfect, aquiline nose at her, as if to ask why she hadn’t said something sooner. “You were with Pedro in the winery,” she said defensively. “I didn’t want to bug you.”

  His frown eased. “On a scale of one to ten, how much do you know about wine?”

  She winced. “Three.” That might actually be pushing it.

  He sighed. “You need to understand the process from beginning to end if you’re going to understand what makes the wine special.” He glanced at his watch. “I can give you a tour before my call and shower later. I just need to grab some water from the house.”

  They started the tour in the rows of De Campo’s prize Cabernet vines. Maybe it was the passionate way Gabe spoke about the growing process or maybe it was because one of the hottest men on the planet was delivering the information, but wine was getting more fascinating by the minute. This Gabe, the relaxed, visionary version of the man she’d never seen before, was darn near irresistible and it was doing strange things to her ability to focus.