Page 28 of Saved by the CEO

A sound caught her attention. Looking across the room, she spied Nico talking to an employee by the wine cellar doorway. Almost as if he knew she was thinking about him, he stopped what he was doing to look in her direction. He smiled and, for a moment, Louisa swore the entire winery tipped on its axis. That makes you special...

Apparently, Marianna wasn’t the only one out of whack.

* * *

Louisa was upstairs asleep when Nico got home. He’d planned it that way. Following their embrace the day before, he decided it made sense for them to keep as much distance as possible, so he made a point of working as late as possible, along with heading into the fields before sunrise. The idea was for the long hours to make him too tired to remember the way her body had fit against his, allowing him to sleep without disturbance.

He didn’t count on Marianna stopping by and stirring up other disturbing thoughts.

His sister was having a baby, he thought as he poured a glass of Chianti. Despite knowing this for months, it hadn’t truly dawned on him until she’d called him Uncle Nico that she was starting a family of her own. Both she and his brother, Angelo, were moving forward with their lives, while here he was in the ancestral home maintaining the past. He, who was so determined never to repeat the madness of his parents.

Settling back on the sofa, he stared in the dim light at the dark square of the unlit fireplace. In his head, he could hear the sound of his parents laughing and clinking glasses. When they were happy, they laughed a lot, but when they stopped laughing... At least his father stayed in nice hotels when Mama threw him out.

All highs and lows, Carlos used to say. No in betweens. He never understood how that worked. How people could go from hot to cold to hot again in the blink of an eye. He once told Floriana that it was one thing to have passion in the bedroom, but it was quite another to have passion rule your life. Right before Floriana left, she told him that he had no passion, period.

She’d made a strong argument. He’d barely blinked when she’d said it.

He wondered what she would have said if she’d seen him throw that photographer off the balcony? Probably that she didn’t recognize him. Again, she would have a point; Nico barely recognized himself the past couple of days, he was behaving so out of character.

Maybe Louisa really was a siren like the tabloids said. The thought made him chuckle into his glass.

“Nico? Is that you?”

The object of his thoughts appeared at the top of the stairs, a backlit silhouette. It took about two seconds for Nico to become aroused. Another thing that was out of character for him was how he couldn’t seem to stop wanting her. Usually, when a woman said she wasn’t interested, he moved on. No sense knocking on a door that wouldn’t open. With Louisa, however, he didn’t want to just knock, he wanted to kick the door in.

“Sorry to wake you,” he said. “I was just having a glass of wine before bed.”

“Long day?”

“Harvest takes a lot of preparation. Did Mario get you home all right?” He’d ordered his intern to escort her in case there were photographers lying in wait.

“He did. I hope you don’t mind, but I got hungry and made some dinner. Puttanesca. There are leftovers in the fridge.”

The notion of her at home in his kitchen caused a curious end-over-end sensation in the center of his chest. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Good night,” she said. Her silhouette hesitated. “Will I see you at breakfast?”

He thought of how good she looked drinking espresso across from him, and the sensation repeated itself. “Afraid not. I have to be in the fields early.”

“Oh. Okay. I’ll see you at the winery then.”

Any disappointment he heard in her voice was pure imagination. As he finished his Chianti, he made a note to take the newspapers with him again when he left tomorrow. The “Royal Wedding Scandal,” as they were calling it now, continued to dominate the tabloids, and he wanted to protect Louisa from the exposure.

Is that the argument you’re using? Not that you don’t want her leaving town? The very thought of her getting on the bus made his heart seize.

Out of character indeed.

* * *

The newspapers were missing again. For the second day in a row, Louisa came down for breakfast to discover both Nico and the papers gone from the house.

Who did he think he was, censoring her reading material?

She tracked him down in the fields and asked him that exact question.

“Keep your voice down, bella mia,” he replied. “Unless you want people to know about our living arrangement.” He nodded down the row where a pair of farm hands were watching them with curiosity. “And to answer your question, I wasn’t aware I was ‘censoring’ anything.”

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