Читать книгу Under The Tuscan Sun... - Michelle Douglas, Jennifer Faye - Страница 17
ОглавлениеHER RETURN TO the restaurant was as joyous as a celebration. Emory grinned. The waitresses fawned over her. The busboys grew red faced. The chefs breathed a sigh of relief.
Annoyance worked its way through Rafe. Not that he didn’t want his staff to adore her. He did. That was why she was back. The problem was he couldn’t stop reliving their meeting in Rome. He’d said everything that he’d wanted to say. That he’d missed her. That he wanted her back. But he’d kept it all in the context of business. He’d missed her help. He wanted her to become the face of Mancini’s. He didn’t want anything romantic with her because he didn’t want to hurt her. He’d been all business. And it had worked.
But with her return playing out around him, his heart rumbled at the injustice. He hadn’t lied when he said he didn’t want her back for himself, that he didn’t want something romantic between them. His fierce protection of Mancini’s wouldn’t let him get involved with an employee he needed. But here at the restaurant, with her looking so pretty, helping make his dream a reality, he just wanted to kiss her.
He reminded himself that she had a fiancé—
A fiancé she admitted was not the perfect guy.
Bah! That fiancé was supposed to be the key weapon in his arsenal of ways to keep himself away from her. Her admission that he wasn’t perfect, even the fact that she was considering staying in Italy, called her whole engagement into question. And caused all his feelings for her to surface and swell.
She swept into the kitchen. Wearing a blue dress that highlighted her blue eyes and accented a figure so lush she was absolutely edible, she glided over to Emory. He took her hands and kissed the back of both.
“You look better than anything on the menu.”
Rafe sucked in a breath, controlling the unwanted ripple of longing.
Dani unexpectedly stepped toward Emory, put her arms around him and hugged him. Emory closed his eyes as if to savor it, a smile lifted his lips.
Rafe’s yearning intensified, but with it came a tidal wave of jealousy. He lowered his knife on an unsuspecting stalk of celery, chopping it with unnecessary force.
Dani faced him. “Why don’t you give me the key and I’ll open the front door for the lunch crowd?”
He rolled his gaze toward her slowly. Even as the businessman inside him cheered her return, the jealous man who was filled with need wondered if he wasn’t trying to drive himself insane.
“Emory, give her your key.”
The sous-chef instantly fished his key ring out of his pocket and dislodged the key for Mancini’s. “Gladly.”
“Don’t be so joyful.” He glanced at Dani again, at the soft yellow hair framing her face, her happy blue eyes. “Have a key made for yourself this afternoon and return Emory’s to him.”
She smiled. “Will do, boss.”
She walked out of the kitchen, her high heels clicking on the tile floor, her bottom swaying with every step, all eyes of the kitchen staff watching her go.
Jealousy spewed through him. “Back to work!” he yelped, and everybody scrambled.
Emory sauntered over. “Something is wrong?”
He chopped the celery. “Everything is fine.”
The sous-chef glanced at the door Dani had just walked through. “She’s very happy to be back.”
Rafe refused to answer that.
Emory turned to him again. “So did you talk her into staying? Is her fiancé joining her here? What’s going on?”
Rafe chopped the celery. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if she’s staying?”
“She said her final two weeks here would be something like a trial run for her.”
“Then we must be incredibly good to her.”
“I gave her a raise, a title. If she doesn’t like those, then we should be glad if she goes home to her fiancé.” He all but spat the word fiancé, getting angrier by the moment, as he gave Dani everything she wanted but was denied everything he wanted.
Emory said, “I still say something is up with this fiancé of hers. If she didn’t tell him she’s considering staying in Italy, then there’s trouble in paradise. If she did, and he isn’t on the next flight to Florence, then I question his sanity.”
Rafe laughed.
“Seriously, Rafe, has she talked to you about him? I just don’t get an engaged vibe from her.”
“Are you saying she’s lying?”
Emory inclined his head. “I don’t think she’s lying as much as I think her fiancé might be a real dud, and her engagement as flat as a crepe.”
Rafe said only, “Humph,” but once again her statement that her fiancé wasn’t the perfect guy rolled through his head.
“I only mention this because I think it works in our favor.”
“How so?”
“If she’s not really in love, if her fiancé doesn’t really love her, we have the power of Italy on our side.”
“To?”
“To coax her to stay. To seduce her away from a guy who doesn’t deserve her.”
Rafe chopped the celery. His dreams were filled with scenarios where he seduced Daniella. Except he had a feeling that kind of seducing wasn’t what Emory meant.
“Somehow or another we have to be so good to her that she realizes what she has in New York isn’t what she wants.”
Sulking, Rafe scraped the celery into a bowl. Why did he have to be the one doing all the wooing? He was a catch. He wanted her eyelashes to flutter when he walked by and her eyes to warm with interest. He had some pride, too.
Emory shook his head. “Okay. Be stubborn. But you’ll be sorry if some pasty office dweller from New York descends on us and scoops her back to America.”
Rafe all but growled in frustration at the picture that formed in his head. Especially since she had said her fiancé wasn’t perfect. Shouldn’t a woman in love swoon for the man she’s promised to marry?
Yes. Yes. She should.
Yet, here she was, considering staying. Not bringing her fiancé into the equation.
And he suddenly saw what Emory was saying.
She wasn’t happy with her fiancé. She was searching for something. She’d gone to Rome looking for her foster mother’s relatives—family! What Dani had been looking for in Rome was family! That was why she was getting so close to the staff at Mancini’s.
Still, something was missing.
He tapped his index fingers against his lips, thinking, and when the answer came to him he smiled and turned to Emory. “I will need time off tomorrow.”
Emory’s face fell. “You’re taking another day?”
“Just lunch. And Daniella will be out for lunch, too.”
Emory caught his gaze. “Really?”
“Yes. Don’t go thinking this is about funny business. I’m taking her apartment hunting. Dani is a woman looking for a family. She thinks she’s found it with us. But Mancini’s isn’t a home. It’s a place of business. Once I help her get a house, somewhere to put down roots, it will all fall into place for her.”
Rafe’s first free minute, he called the real estate agent who’d sold him his penthouse. She told him she had some suitable listings in Monte Calanetti and he set up three appointments for Daniella.
When the lunch crowd cleared, he walked into the empty, quiet dining room.
Dani smiled as he approached. “You’re not going to yell at me for not going home and costing you two hours’ wages are you?”
“You are management now. I expect you here every hour the restaurant is open.”
“Except my days off.”
He groaned. “Except your days off. If you feel comfortable not being here two days every week, I am fine with it. But if something goes wrong, you will answer for it.”
She laughed. “Whatever. I’ve been coaching Allegra. She’ll be much better from here on out. No more catastrophes while I’m gone.”
“Great. I’ve lined up three appointments for us tomorrow.”
She turned from the podium. “With vendors?”
“With my friend who is a real estate agent.”
“I told you we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves.”
“Our market is tight. You must be on top of things to get a good place.”
“I haven’t—”
He interrupted her. “You haven’t decided you’re staying. I get that. But if you choose to stay, I don’t want you panicking. Getting ahead of a problem is how a smart businessperson staves off disaster.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Good. Tomorrow morning, Emory will take over lunch prep while you and I apartment hunt. We can be back for dinner.”
* * *
Sun poured in through the huge window of the kitchen of the first unit Maria Salvetti showed Rafe and Dani the next morning. Unfortunately, cold air flowed in through the cracks between the window and the wall.
Dani eased her eyes away from the unwanted ventilation and watched as Rafe walked across a worn hardwood floor, his motorcycle boots clicking along, his jeans outlining an absolutely perfect behind and his black leather jacket, collar flipped up, giving him the look of a dangerous rebel.
For the second time that morning, she told herself she was grateful he’d been honest with her about his inability to commit. She didn’t know a woman who wouldn’t fall victim to his steel-gray eyes and his muscled body. She had to be strong. And her decision to stay at Mancini’s had to be made for all the right reasons.
She faced Maria. “I’d have to fix this myself?”
“Sì. It is for sale. It is not a rental.”
She turned to Rafe. “I wouldn’t have time to work twelve-hour days and be my own general contractor.”
“You could hire someone.”
She winced as she ran her hand along the crack between the wall and window. “Oh, yeah? Just how big is my raise going to be?”
“Big enough.”
She shook her head. “I still don’t like it.”
She also didn’t like the second condo. She did have warm, fuzzy feelings for the old farmhouse a few miles away from the village, but that needed more work than the first condo she’d seen.
Maria’s smile dipped a notch every time Dani rejected a prospective home. She’d tried to explain that she wasn’t even sure she was staying in Italy, but Maria kept plugging along.
After Dani rejected the final option, Maria shook Rafe’s hand, then Dani’s and said, “I’ll check our listings again and get back to you.”
She slid into her car and Dani sighed, glad to be rid of her. Not that Maria wasn’t nice, but with her decision about staying in Italy up in the air, looking for somewhere to live seemed premature. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize quite yet.” He pulled his cell phone from his jacket and dialed a number. “Carlo, this is Rafe. Could you have a key for the empty condo at the front desk? Grazie.” He slipped his phone into his jacket again.
She frowned at him. “You have a place to show me?”
He headed for his SUV, motioning for her to follow him. “Actually, I thought Maria would have taken you to his apartment first. It’s a newly renovated condo in my building.”
She stopped walking. “Your building?” She might be smart enough to realize she and Rafe were a bad bet, but all along she’d acknowledged that their spending too much time together was tempting fate. Now he wanted them to live in the same building?
“After Emory, you are my most valued employee. A huge part of Mancini’s success. We need to be available for each other. Plus, there would be two floors between us. It’s not like we’d even run into each other.”
She still hesitated. “Your building’s that big?”
“No. I value my privacy that much.” He sighed. “Seriously. Just come with me to see the place and you will understand.”
Dani glanced around as she entered the renovated old building, Rafe behind her. Black-and-white block tiles were accented by red sofas and chairs in a lounge area of the lobby. The desk for the doorman sat discreetly in a corner.
Leaning over her shoulder, Rafe said, “My home is the penthouse.”
His warm breath tickled her ear and desire poured through her. She almost turned and yelled at him for flirting with her. Instead, she squelched the feeling. He probably wasn’t flirting with her. This was just who he was. Gorgeous. Sinfully sexy. And naturally flirtatious. If she really intended to stay in Italy and work for him, she had to get accustomed to him. As she’d realized after she’d spoken to Paul, she would need discipline and common sense to keep her sanity.
He pointed at the side-by-side elevators. “I don’t use those, and you can’t use them to get to my apartment.”
His breath tiptoed to her neck and trickled down her spine. Still, she kept her expression neutral when she turned and put them face-to-face, so close she could see the little flecks of silver in his eyes.
Just as her reactions couldn’t matter, how he looked—his sexy face, his smoky eyes—also had to be irrelevant. If she didn’t put all this into perspective now, this temptation could rule her life. Or ruin her life.
She gave him her most professional smile. “And I’d be a few floors away?”
“Not just a few floors, but also a locked elevator.”
Dangling the apartment key, he motioned for her to enter the elevator when it arrived. They rode up in silence. He unlocked the door to the available unit and she gasped.
“Oh, my God.” She spun to face him. “I can afford this?”
He laughed. “Yes.”
From the look of the lobby, she’d expected the apartment to be ultramodern. The kind of place she would have killed to have in New York. Black-and-white. Sharp, but sterile. Something cool and sophisticated for her and distant Paul.
But warm beiges and yellows covered these walls. The kitchen area was cozy, with a granite-topped breakfast bar where she could put three stools.
She saw it filled with people. Louisa. Coworkers from Mancini’s. And neighbors she’d meet who could become like a family.
She caught that thought before it could take root. Something about Italy always caused her to see things through rose-colored glasses, and if she didn’t stop, she was going to end up making this choice before she knew for certain that she could work with Rafe as a friend or a business associate, and forget about trying for anything more.
She turned to Rafe again. “Don’t make me want something I can’t have.”
“I already told you that you can afford it.”
“I know.”
“So why do you think you can’t have it?”
It was exactly what she’d dreamed of as a child, but she couldn’t let herself fall in love with it. Or let Rafe see just how drawn she was to this place. If he knew her weakness, he’d easily lure her into staying before she was sure it was the right thing to do.
She pointed at the kitchen, which managed to look cozy even with sleek stainless-steel appliances, dark cabinets and shiny surfaces. “It’s awfully modern.”
“So you want to go back to the farmhouse with the holes in the wall?”
“No.” She turned away again, though she lovingly ran her hand along the granite countertop, imagining herself rolling out dough to make cut-out cookies. She’d paint them with sugary frosting and serve them to friends at Christmas. “I want a homey kitchen that smells like heaven.”
“You have that at Mancini’s.”
“I want a big fat sofa with a matching chair that feels like it swallows you up when you sit in it.”
“You can buy whatever furniture you want.”
“I want to turn my thermostat down to fifty-eight at night so I can snuggle under thick covers.”
He stared at her as if she were crazy. “And you can do that here.”
“Maybe.”
“Undoubtedly.” He sighed. “You have an idealized vision of home.”
“Most foster kids do.”
He leaned his shoulder against the wall near the kitchen. His smoky eyes filled with curiosity. She wasn’t surprised when he said, “You’ve never really told me about your life. You mentioned getting shuffled from foster home to foster home, but you never explained how you got into foster care in the first place.”
She shrugged. Every time she thought about being six years old, or eight years old, or ten years old—shifted every few months to the house of a stranger, trying unsuccessfully to mingle with the other kids—a flash of rejection froze her heart. She was an adult before she’d realized no one had rejected her, per se. Each child was only protecting himself. They’d all been hurt. They were all afraid. Not connecting was how they coped.
Nonetheless, the memories of crying herself to sleep and longing for something better still guided her. It was why she believed she could keep her distance from Rafe. Common sense and a longing for stability directed her decisions. Along with a brutal truth. The world was a difficult place. She knew that because she’d lived it.
“There’s not much to tell. My mom was a drug addict.”
He winced.
“There’s no sense sugarcoating it.”
“Of course there is. Everyone sugarcoats his or her past. It’s how we deal.”
She turned to him again, surprised by the observation. She’d always believed living in truth kept her sane. He seemed to believe exactly the opposite.
“Yeah. What did you sugarcoat?”
“I tell you that I’m not a good bet as a romantic partner.”
She sniffed a laugh.
“What I should have said is that I’m a real bastard.”
She laughed again. “Seriously, Rafe. I got the message the first time. You want nothing romantic between us.”
“Mancini’s needs you and I am not on speaking terms with any woman I’ve ever dated. So I keep you for Mancini’s.”
She looked around at the apartment, unable to stop the warm feeling that flooded her when he said he would keep her. Still, he didn’t mean it the way her heart took it. So, remembering to use her common sense, she focused her attention on the apartment, envisioning it decorated to her taste. The picture that formed had her wrestling with the urge to tell him to get his landlord on the line so she could make an offer—then she realized something amazing.
“You knew I’d love this.”
He had the good graces to look sheepish. “I assumed you would.”
“No assuming about it, you knew.”
“All right, I knew you would love it.”
She walked over to him, as the strangest thought formed in her head. Maybe it wouldn’t take a genius to realize the way to entice a former foster child would be with a home. But no one had ever wanted her around enough to figure that out.
“How did you know?”
He shrugged. His strong shoulders lifted the black leather of his jacket and ruffled the curls of his long, dark hair. “It didn’t take much to realize that you’d probably lost your sense of home when your foster mother died.”
She caught his gaze. “So?”
“So, I think you came to Italy hoping to find it with her relatives.”
“They’re nice people.”
“Yes, but you didn’t feel a connection to Rosa’s nice relatives. Yet, you keep coming back to Mancini’s, because you did connect with us.”
Her heart stuttered. Even her almost fiancé hadn’t understood why she so desperately wanted to find Rosa’s family. But Rafe, a guy who had known her a little over two weeks, a guy she’d had a slim few personal conversations with, had seen it.
He’d also hit the nail on the head about Mancini’s. She felt they were her family. The only thing she didn’t have here in Italy was an actual, physical home.
And he’d found her one.
He cared about her enough to want to please her, to satisfy needs she kept close to her heart.
Afraid of the direction of her thoughts, she turned away and walked into the master bedroom. Seeing the huge space, her eyebrows rose. “Wow. Nice.”
Rafe was right behind her. “Are you changing the subject on me?”
She pivoted and faced him. He seemed genuinely clueless about what he was doing. Not just giving her everything she wanted, but caring about her. He was getting to know her—the real her—in a way no one else in her life ever had. And the urge to fall into his arms, confess her fears, her hopes, her longings, was so strong, she had to walk away from him. If she fell into his arms now, she’d never come out. Especially if he comforted her. God help her if he whispered anything romantic.
“I think we need to change the subject.”
“Why?”
She walked over to him again. For fifty cents, she’d answer him. She’d put her arms around his neck and tell him he was falling for her. The things he did—searching her out in Rome, making her general manager, helping her find a home—those weren’t things a boss did. No matter how much he believed he needed her as an employee, he also had feelings for her.
But he didn’t see it.
And she didn’t trust it. He’d said he was a bastard? What if he really was? What if he liked her now, but didn’t tomorrow?
“Because I’m afraid. Every time I put down roots, it fails.” She said the words slowly, clearly, so there’d be no misunderstanding. Rafe was a smart guy. If she stayed in Italy, shared the joy of making Mancini’s successful, no matter how strong she was, how much discipline she had, how much common sense she used, there was a chance she’d fall in love with him.
And then what?
Would she hang around his restaurant desperate for crumbs of affection from a guy who slept with her, then moved on?
That would be an epic fail. The very thought made her ill.
Because she couldn’t tell him that, she stuck with the safe areas. The things they could discuss.
“For as good as I am at Mancini’s, I can see us having a blowout fight and you firing me again. And for as much as I like the waitstaff, I can see them getting new jobs and moving on. This decision comes with risks for me. I know enough not to pretend things will be perfect. But I have to have at least a little security.”
“You and your security. Maybe to hell with security and focus on a little bit of happiness.”
Oh, she would love to focus on being happy. Touring Italy with him, stolen kisses, nights of passion. But he’d told her that wasn’t in the cards and she believed him. Somehow she had to stop herself from getting those kinds of thoughts every time he said something that fell out of business mode and tipped over into the personal. That would be the only way she could stay at Mancini’s.
When she didn’t answer, he sighed. “I don’t think it’s an accident you found Mancini’s.”
“Of course not. Nico sent me.”
“I am not talking about Nico. I’m talking about destiny.”
She laughed lightly and walked away from him. It was almost funny the way he used the words and phrases of a lover to lure her to a job. It was no wonder her thoughts always went in the wrong direction. He took her there. Thank God she had ahold of herself enough to see his words for what they were. A very passionate man trying to get his own way. To fight for her sanity, she would always have to stand up to him.
“Foster kids don’t get destinies. We get the knowledge that we need to educate ourselves so we can have security. If you really want me to stay, let me come to the decision for the right reasons. Because if I stay, you are not getting rid of me. I will make Mancini’s my home.” She caught his gaze. “Are you prepared for that?”
