Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
S HE HAD INDEED had food brought up, and a bottle of scotch. Though Serena had moved to take the tray herself, Luciano had swept in and smiled charmingly at Pierro, who had uncharacteristically delivered the tray himself.
It had been clear he hadn’t wanted to relinquish the tray to Luciano and that he was…checking on her, she supposed. But she’d smiled and inclined her head, a nonverbal Give him the damn tray .
Just so this could all be over with.
Luciano had taken it, closed the door rather pointedly, then taken it over to the bed. He’d poured himself a glass, made himself up a plate of the elegant snacks, then settled himself back into her bed.
Her bed . She knew he did it to annoy her. Perhaps even to shock her. So she was working very hard to pretend like it didn’t matter.
But it grated. The way his long body made her large, soft bed look small. The way that it was now too easy to picture him there, where she slept . It brought to mind the books she loved to read where a couple who hated each other were stuck at some inn somewhere with one bed. And the end result was always…
Well, she was not going to think about that right now. Not with him in her bed.
Since he’d taken the bed, and she had no intention of being anywhere near him, even if she was hungry, she settled herself at her desk. She opened the drawer that held her notebooks. For this endeavor, she’d chosen one decorated in scorpions. An apt reminder. While she liked to use a variety of colorful pens in her note-taking, for the Valli-Ascione merger she used a scathing black. She’d drawn a little cover page with her own rendition of scorpions, snakes and rats with red eyes. It made her chuckle every time she opened it.
A necessary levity in this otherwise nightmare endeavor, that only seemed to become more nightmarish as time went on.
She began to flip the pages until she found the first blank one. She smoothed out the paper, letting the act soothe her. Any difficult problem could be solved if she put pen to paper. This had always been true, and she refused to acknowledge this problem might be too complex and fraught.
She would find a way. She labeled one side of the page Expectations and the other Rules . She was so intent on writing each letter precisely so it would be aesthetically pleasing, a physical representation of the perfection she sought, that she did not notice Luciano had gotten up and come to stand behind her.
Until he spoke, making her jump and accidentally draw a harsh line across the corner of the page.
“What is this?” he asked.
“My notes,” she replied, staring at the ugly line. Ruining her perfection. Just like him . Because of course Luciano Ascione had never had to be perfect.
“On paper?”
“I find I think best when I can write everything longhand,” she replied loftily. Later, when she was blissfully alone, she would rip out this ruined sheet and rewrite all her notes quite carefully. But for now, she would have to make do.
“You are a far stranger creature than I could have ever given you credit for, Serena.”
She did not like the way he said her name. He seemed to linger on the consonants, drawing it out. Unnecessarily, in her estimation.
She was tempted to write under rules, Do not say my name . But that was ridiculous and petty.
Perhaps in the back, when he wasn’t here, she’d make a ridiculous and petty list. Just for her own amusement.
For now, she would focus on building the scaffolding she needed to survive this without resorting to violence.
“I feel it should go without saying, and I’m sure you were just jesting before, but obviously we will not share a bed.”
“Metaphorically or literally?”
She gritted her teeth at the silky way he spoke. No doubt it worked on whatever targets he actually wanted to talk into bed, but when it was aimed at her, it just felt like… Something sharp and confusing. He was jumbling her up purposefully, but she felt out of her depth because she did not understand this kind of…jumble.
“Both.” Then, in her precise, careful script, she wrote it down.
Will not share a bed—literal/figurative .
When he snorted, she did not glare at him. She moved down to the next line and wrote the number two .
“Number two, I should think, would be to not flirt with a CEO in the camp of our enemies.”
She could not understand why he kept harping on that. “There is professional flirting and then there is private flirting. One is necessary, and no one will think twice about it. Particularly coming from me.” She’d never considered it flirting so much as…stroking the male ego. And none of the businessmen she’d encountered had ever taken it as more than that.
Perhaps Luciano did not understand this because he was so handsome and charismatic, because he wanted that kind of attention. Men simply did not look at her that way and she knew it was a combination of how she handled herself and how little… spark she had. Her mother had been explaining that to her since she’d been a child.
“Is this so? You will have to explain to me the difference between professional flirting and personal flirting.”
She sighed. No doubt all the flirting he did was meant to lead to the bedroom, so he could not understand the fine art of actually doing business. Wooing clients. Soothing concerns. “Professional flirting is like manners. No one thinks it’s leading anywhere. It’s…friendly. A little ego boost for the party who needs it.”
“And how is this magically construed as different than private flirting?”
“It’s simply part of the professional interaction. No direct invitations made.” She looked down at the paper rather than him looming over her. “Private flirting is probably anything you do,” she muttered irritably. She’d seen him do it. Maybe he’d dialed it down at the event, pretended to aim all that charm at her instead of the kind of woman he usually had on his arm.
And thinking of that frustrated her, because she understood just how potent and effective it could be if you believed in an Ascione scorpion.
Luckily she would not. She was too smart to think a little flutter, a little eye contact that had her pulse scrambling, mattered. Even if she could still feel all those things right now.
“Perhaps you could be more specific?” He was closer then, somehow, and he lifted her to her feet by the elbow, then turned her so that they stood face to face. Then he smiled. And it didn’t look like malice . It looked like intent, which even she knew was different.
Not that she trusted it.
“Show me,” he said, his hand still cupped there on her elbow, and even though she was wearing a sweatshirt she could feel the heat of his palm through the fabric.
She found herself having to swallow in order to speak. He was toying with her, and she had prepared herself for all the ways he might test her, but she hadn’t counted on…this, she supposed. She knew she was smarter, more determined, far more professional than this man, but he knew how to zero in on the things she was not confident in.
Mainly…this strange magnetic pull. She could not call it charm , because she was not charmed by him. It was something darker, more illicit. Seduction…but at least she knew it was only meant to embarrass her. She had no interest in him, nor he her, so it wasn’t as though she was afraid something untoward might happen. More…
She simply did not know how to box it up, control it, undercut it. She could not seem to control her body’s odd, unfamiliar responses. Frustrating, but not the end of the world. She would learn.
Serena always learned.
“It is not anything that requires a demonstration,” she told him, using her best haughty managerial voice. She did not jerk her arm away, no matter how much she wanted to. In a test of wills, she would always, always win. But she did not dare look directly into his dark, amused eyes. She fixed on a strand of dark hair that swept across his forehead. “Laughing at a terrible joke, complimenting someone. These are all harmless flirtations. Business flirtations. Private flirting involves touch. The brush of a hand. Knees touching under a table. It is physical and promises something physical in return.”
“So, what you are saying is, for our audience to believe in our little fiction, we must engage in the promise of something physical?” He let that sit there between them. A silence that settled in her throat like some kind of blockage, as his mouth curved ever so slightly, the look in his dark gaze downright piratic. “In public, that is,” he added, with a feigned innocence that did not suit the scorpion tail in his smile at all.
Or the way his hand moved from elbow to waist. Curled there, in a strangely possessive touch. And for a moment, that touch—not at all different from when they’d danced tonight and she’d been wearing much less —seemed to do something to drain all the thoughts from her brain.
Which, she thought, was the point . And if she could focus on the fact he was playing some kind of… Luciano Ascione game with her, she would not be felled by…whatever this was.
“I suppose, if you think it necessary.” It irritated her that her voice sounded lower , but she did not let it show. “But you know what else would suffice?” she replied, pleased with her cool tone this time, even if she could feel the heat on her cheeks betraying her.
“What?”
“A ring. Expensive. Gaudy.” She held up her left hand, wriggled the ring finger. “For all to see.” She carefully dislodged herself from his grasp, because she didn’t know how much longer she could hold on to that detachment when the feel of him seemed to brand himself there on her skin.
No one could accuse her of scrambling away. For that she would be proud. She fixed him with an indulgent smile, meant to grate. “No public groping necessary.”
“I have never been accused of groping , cara .”
She made a considering sound, making it clear she didn’t believe him without coming out and saying it. Then she settled herself back in her desk chair. “Now, what other rules should we commit to paper?”
* * *
She’d come up with ten more. Luciano couldn’t even remember them. She yammered on like the most boring of school lecturers, and he’d settled himself on her bed where he’d determined he would sleep. If only to watch her splutter like an offended nun.
After she took what seemed like a million years to meticulously put away everything in her desk, she turned to him with that cool look, a small smile in place. “Now, we must discuss sleeping arrangements.”
He didn’t discuss it. He slept in her bed. He had offered to share it and enjoyed doing so. She had so icily declined, it had delighted him. Particularly when she’d stalked over to the closet, pulled out some linens, then made herself a little bed on the window seat. Her tiny demon cats had hopped up and made themselves comfortable on her blankets, blinking at him in ways that felt…threatening.
Which was ridiculous, of course. Neither of them were much bigger than his hand .
In the morning, he’d woken in her surprisingly comfortable bed to find her gone from the window seat. Any bedding she’d used had clearly been put away.
The man who seemed to run the staff had met Luciano in the kitchen when he’d found his way there and told him coolly that Ms. Valli was indisposed and that he was welcome to leave whenever he saw fit.
Reading between the lines, Luciano read that as now , but he’d taken the offered coffee instead, overstayed his welcome to all and sundry before waltzing out of the place and to his car.
In the midmorning light, Luciano drove back to his apartment in the city. He noted the photographer hiding in a curve of the drive up to Serena’s home, but pretended he did not.
The stories would be abuzz in their circles by lunchtime. He would no doubt start hearing from his father’s stalwart advisors who would love to oust him if they could figure out how.
This would certainly ignite their ire, but no one would be able to fault him for what this would do for the company. The attention would put their name in circles where the Americans had been dominating. It would have their on-the-fence customers interested enough to take meetings again.
Two wealthy people from families long known to be in a feud would indeed be gossip fodder. Not new to him, considering the company he tended to like to keep was very interested in press and any kind of publicity they could drum up, but it would be new to Serena.
In some ways, she had a far better plan than he could have come up with. And in other ways, he didn’t think she had the slightest clue what she was getting herself into.
He supposed that dichotomy was why he had such a difficult time pushing thoughts of her away as he went about his day. It was the only possible reason, really.
Besides, what modern woman in their twenties kept a drawer full of colorful notebooks and markers and used them? What kind of young woman lived in a castle decorated with the strangest animal themes?
Pigs on her headboard. It was insanity.
He couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it. About how the oddness suited her, interested him, charmed him. For all her attempts to be average and customary on the surface, she was anything but underneath.
As he arrived at Ascione, he told his assistant he would be indisposed until after lunch. To hold his calls, allow no one in. Then he’d let himself into his father’s office.
His office.
He’d redecorated, finding it necessary to not spend his time in his father’s oppressive style. Luciano didn’t mind the heavy handed opulence his father employed like a power move, he simply didn’t think it was necessary.
He much preferred everyone to underestimate him. So everything was simple. Expensive, of course, but sleek lines and minimalism as a direct contrast to his father’s maximalism. It suited his purposes here and, even better, Luciano knew his father would have hated it. So there was satisfaction in that.
“I hope there is a view from hell,” he murmured to the line of portraits on the wall. The one thing he hadn’t been able to get rid of. The line of Asciones who had built this company, built the wealth he’d used as a jumping off point for his own. This row of bastards who’d treated everyone around them like a pawn or an enemy.
Because Luciano might have disdain for them all, but he knew he was one of them. He had tried to be good, noble. Tried to be a protector.
And never managed.
This was his legacy, his blood. Might as well remember it.
He moved for his desk, pushed away all thoughts that weren’t next steps. He went over all the information Serena had sent his pretend man of affairs again. Her plan was thorough, but not complete. She was looking for stability. Shoring up foundations. The attention their union, their merger, would draw would be huge and it would no doubt win some of their lost customers back. But that was all she’d planned for. Getting the old back.
Per usual, he thought bigger. Not just setting themselves up for what they’d had , but destroying the American interlopers in the process and giving themselves the opportunity for more.
As she’d said the other night: billionaires never needed an excuse for wanting more.
So, in his own document, he used the foundation of her plan to make a bigger one. No doubt hers stopped short of bigger , because she had plans for what would happen after.
Once they vanquished their common foe, they would become enemies once again, even if they were legally wed. He would need to have a plan in place to come out on top then . She clearly did.
So, he would. But he would need some…subterfuge. A distraction. Last night had started the seeds of that plan, and going over all this, adding to it, made it clear—the only thing that would work against Serena was the one thing she was so sure wouldn’t.
He would simply have to seduce her.
He ignored the troubling wriggle of doubt in the back of his mind, because it did not stem from doubt , but rather how little the prospect bothered him. It would be no hardship, because there was a bloom of something under all that ice. A fire he seemed well adept at bringing out.
That concerned him. His own physical reaction to it. A shade too eager for his liking. But that only required control, and he knew how to wield it when it was necessary.
Besides, if he felt it, so did she. He had never seen her falter, except the few times he’d managed to have his hands, no matter how chastely, on her.
She was innocent, clearly, but not immune. His biggest hurdle would be convincing her that one didn’t need to like the other person for the physical match to be enjoyable.
So perhaps she was due a lesson.