Chapter Four
Antonluca had always hated Christmas. Whether it was memories of his unfortunate childhood or too many stressful kitchen environments during the holidays, who could say? The result was the same. He wasn’t a fan.
Yet every day he spent at La Paloma, the more contagious its Christmas spirit seemed to be.
He couldn’t say he liked that, either.
Especially when there seemed to be such a distinct link between the festive Christmas atmosphere in the hotel and the person responsible for making it that way.
One night, he found himself humming one of the Christmas carols that had been playing all day in the lobby and the rest of the common areas.
One moment he had been celebrating another long day of keeping his hands to himself with a Negroni before a late meal in his otherwise deserted castello.
The next he found himself entirely too close to singing about herald angels.
He told himself he was revolted that he should have been infected by such an earworm—
But if there was any such contagion, it was Hannah.
Antonluca had stopped pretending some while ago that he was looking for reasons to fire her again. There hadn’t been a particular moment that had tipped him in that direction, or not one he recalled. He simply…hadn’t considered terminating her. In ages.
He told himself this was simply good business. The truth was, she was excellent at what she did, as he had now seen firsthand. He had examined every possible detail of the hotel. He had monitored her for weeks now. There were no complaints to be made about her performance, because it was flawless.
She was flawless.
In fact, the only complaint Antonluca could really think of when it came to Hannah was that he hadn’t seen her naked again.
He could have complained about that at great length. And rather thought it spoke to his virtue that he did not.
Despite any lingering earworms to disturb his aperitivo.
“Are you listening?” she asked after one meeting, sitting there once again in the confines of her ruthlessly impersonal office, during which he had entertained himself with a particularly detailed memory of the night in New York.
“I am nothing if not the very picture of attentiveness,” he assured her.
Her green eyes lit with amusement. “Really. And yet, somehow, you have nothing to say about the kitchen’s notes on your suggestions.”
And Antonluca could not possibly admit, now, that he hadn’t been listening to what she’d been saying.
Perish the thought. He shrugged instead.
“I never have anything to say to notes,” he told her with only slightly exaggerated arrogance.
“I dismiss them immediately, with prejudice, and carry on as before.”
“I see.” But she looked as if she was trying not to laugh.
“If I were to comment on notes,” Antonluca continued, because he was suddenly seized with the need to actually see her laugh.
Just once. Surely that would…scratch this itch he didn’t understand inside of him.
“If I were to lower myself in such a fashion, I might point out that I did not make suggestions to the kitchen. I changed the menu. Input was not sought and will not be received.”
He saw a flash of her smile at that and it felt like a sharp, wild joy, the same way he’d felt—so long ago now—when he’d tasted something he’d made once he’d gotten it right. That brightness like a song within him, and not one involving angels, herald or otherwise.
“I will pass that on,” Hannah murmured in her appropriate, professional voice, though her eyes were gleaming.
And later, when he walked her out to her car as she left for the day—and did not question himself as to why he was dancing attendance on an employee—Antonluca found himself standing there on the old forecourt for some time after she drove away.
He had taken it upon himself to walk to and from the hotel every day now, as the land was all his.
And for other reasons, most of them involving getting his head on right and doing the closest thing to a cold shower without actually committing to one of those dreadful cold plunges.
And besides, a brisk tramp in the December cold was an excellent way to remind himself that while his trappings might be soft these days, he was not.
Tonight, as he walked down into the fields and then wound his way through vineyards nestled down for the winter, it occurred to him that he had never spent this much time with a woman he wasn’t related to without having sex.
It shocked him enough that he stopped walking for a moment, his breath making clouds against the dark.
Behind him, the hotel lolled about over one hillside, brightly shining into the night.
On another hill ahead of him stood his castle, with only the one beacon of light high up on the old stone walls.
And here he was caught in the valley between the two, the intensity of the winter darkness and that woman making him feel like a stranger to himself.
Again.
Antonluca had always enjoyed women, in the same way that he enjoyed other people’s food. He liked the taste, the experience. But he was always hungry again—and rarely for the same thing.
What he had never done was get to know a woman like this.
All this talking. All this sitting around together, studying things as one. All these conversations while they observed the way the hotel ran and exchanged their thoughts on it. If he recalled correctly, they hadn’t spoken much at all that night in New York.
There had been far too many other things to do.
Here, now, the night was wet and cold, and he welcomed it. It pressed against him as he moved, a bit like it was fighting back, and he welcomed that, too. The cold seemed to seep into his bones, despite the very warm coat he wore, and whether he welcomed that or not, it was familiar.
It reminded him very much of the way Hannah seemed to have crept inside of him. As if she’d taken up residence in his bones herself, and that hadn’t started when she’d walked into the hotel library.
He had thought about that night in New York…often.
Now, however, it was worse. The memories of that night haunted him. They kept him up at night. He would lie in his bed, staring at the ceiling, remembering every moment, every shift of their bodies, every breath and sigh.
Sometimes the ache was so intense that he would take his cock in his own hands and handle it himself.
And then, every morning, there she was again.
Bright. Gleaming. Seemingly completely unaffected by him in every way, and he couldn’t understand why that made him want her more.
There was something about that sleek, cool exterior of hers that made him long to get his hands on her.
To pull down that hair that she always kept in that subdued twist. To penetrate the armor of her elegant clothes, her carefully applied cosmetics—always a quiet enhancement, never a conversation piece.
He longed, with every part of him, to mess her up again.
Maybe it was because she had come to him that night in New York so emotional, so wide-open to whatever the night might bring.
To whatever happened between them, again and again and again.
This version of Hannah was far more circumspect.
It made him want to crack her open and find his way inside, any way he could.
He did not allow himself the pleasure. He vowed to himself that he would not. Mixing business and pleasure had never worked. Not for him when he was younger and tempestuous and far more foolish. And not for him with the woman he’d flown across the world to fire personally, either.
A wise man—like the one he aspired to be—would know better.
As the year wound down, his siblings began calling. They did not have the same feelings about the holidays as he did. But then, why would they? He was the reason their holidays had not been dire.
“When was the last time you came to Melbourne?” asked one of his sisters. “You’re well overdue a bit of a summer Crimbo, don’t you think?”
“Thank you for thinking of me,” he replied dryly. “But I believe I would rather swim to Australia and be eaten by sharks en route then engage in anything called Crimbo.”
His other siblings made similar demands. He ought to come to Los Angeles. He was welcome anytime in France and Germany.
It was perhaps unsurprising that his youngest sibling, Rocco, called for entirely different reasons. Rocco had been born when Antonluca was ten. By the time he was aware of the world, Antonluca was already successful. Rocco therefore hadn’t struggled like the rest of them. Or not as much, anyway.
“What is this about a hotel?” Rocco demanded from Rome, where he was tasked with managing the original restaurant. Emiliano’s. “Since when are we in the hotel business?”
“Are we in a business?” Antonluca asked, swirling his nightly Negroni in its tumbler as he glowered out his window at the hotel on the next hill. “You understand my confusion. I was under the impression that I ran a business and merely carry you all along with me, like so much ballast.”
Some of his other siblings would have taken offense at that. Or worse, been hurt. Rocco only laughed.
“I’ve been saying that we should expand into hotels for years,” he said stoutly, though Antonluca could not recall any instance of that occurring. Not in his hearing. “It just makes sense.”
It was another late night. Antonluca had taken his time walking home, because Hannah had been working one of the hotel’s events and had therefore been wearing an evening gown in place of her more typical daytime attire.
Now he did not need to remember the curve of her shoulder, the slope of her collarbone. Not from New York. Now he’d seen them again.
And yet had not been able to press his mouth to the pulse in her neck, or smooth his hands down the length of her body to cup her bottom, pull her close, and make them both groan—
The good thing about a call from Rocco was that it was distracting.