7. Controlled Distance
CONTROLLED DISTANCE
RILEY
By breakfast, Luca had already turned avoidance into an art form.
He stood at the far end of the kitchen island in a crisp white dress shirt, the sleeves shoved to his forearms, one hand braced beside his laptop and his phone pressed to his ear.
Sunlight caught the dark ink beneath his cuffs, the hard line of his jaw, and the mouth that had almost ruined me more than once.
He didn't look at me. Not when I came in with Ava's folded beach towel. Not when I set her purple water bottle beside her plate. Not when Ava said, "Riley made banana pancakes because the bananas were going freckly."
"Good," he said, eyes on the screen. "Eat before they get cold, piccola."
Ava studied him over her orange juice. "You're talking in your serious voice."
"I have a serious call."
"You always have a serious call."
His thumb paused against the trackpad. "Not always."
Maria moved around us with practiced quiet, smoothing over the silence before it could harden. "Miss Riley, Mr. Santoro said I can take Ava to swim this morning if you need time to review the activity schedule."
I blinked. "Oh. I thought I was taking her."
Luca's gaze finally flicked up.
There it was. One second of dark, controlled attention, and my body betrayed me by remembering the heat of his hand at my back, his voice near my ear, the way his restraint felt more dangerous than another man's recklessness.
Then he looked away.
"Maria knows the instructor," he said. "It's easier."
Easier. Apparently, I had become the human equivalent of an unnecessary calendar notification.
Ava's fork hovered over her pancakes. "But I want Riley to watch the cannonball part."
"I can come," I said, keeping my voice bright. Ava heard everything, especially what no one said aloud. "I think I'd love the cannonball part."
Luca closed his laptop halfway, not enough to stop working, only enough to draw a line. "You have the event proposals Bianca sent over. Donny will be here this afternoon. She'll need you prepared."
The dismissal was polite. Professional. Nearly flawless.
Which somehow made it worse.
I nodded as if this was normal. As if yesterday he had been Luca—the man whose attention made the air feel too small—and today he wasn't Mr. Santoro again, all distance and directives.
"Of course," I said. "I'll review them."
Luca gathered his phone, laptop, and coffee in one efficient sweep. "I'll be in the office. If Ava needs anything, Maria can get me."
Not me. Maria.
He walked out before I could decide whether to be relieved or wounded.
Ava watched the doorway after him. "Daddy forgot blueberries."
I looked at the little glass bowl near his place setting. Something in my chest pulled tight.
"Maybe he's saving them for later," I said.
But even as I smiled, I knew better. Luca Santoro had not forgotten the blueberries. He had remembered too much.
I reviewed Bianca's proposals in the breakfast nook because it was the one place in the house where I could still see the water and pretend I was not waiting to hear Luca's office door open.
My laptop was propped between Ava's abandoned pancake plate and a stack of glossy sample menus Bianca had sent over: Resort gala. Private wedding. Investor cocktail reception. All the kinds of events I had spent years imagining myself near, if not exactly inside.
Normally, I would have been vibrating with excitement, taking notes in three colors, bookmarking vendor lists, mentally arranging flowers and seating charts like my life depended on it.
Instead, I read the same sentence four times.
"Passed hors d'oeuvres should reflect elevated coastal simplicity."
Great. Perfect. I was very familiar with coastal simplicity. I was currently drowning in it.
From somewhere outside, Ava shrieked with laughter. A second later came the splash, huge and dramatic, followed by Maria's delighted scolding in Spanish. I smiled before I could stop myself, then immediately felt ridiculous for being hurt that I was not out there.
It was swim time. A morning routine. Not a declaration of emotional exile.
Except it felt like one.
I clicked open another file and forced myself to focus.
Luca was my employer. Ava was my responsibility for the summer.
This house was not a fairytale castle with a scarred, brooding prince hiding in the west wing.
It was a job. A very complicated, very temporary job that came with ocean views, a little girl who liked her sandwiches cut into triangles unless it was a square day, and a man who had made it clear from the beginning that control mattered to him more than impulse.
He had already proven he could walk away mid-heat.
The memory flashed hot and sharp. His body close. My breath gone thin. That second when want had become something almost physical between us. Then Luca stopping, pulling back, choosing restraint like it cost him nothing.
Maybe that was what I kept forgetting. Men like him could want and still leave. Wanting did not mean staying. Wanting did not mean softening. It definitely did not mean he had lain awake thinking about it afterward the way I had, replaying every word until I felt foolish in my own skin.
My phone buzzed beside my coffee.
"Maddie: You alive or have you been eaten by rich people?"
I huffed a small laugh.
"Me: Alive. Barely. Rich people have many folders."
"Maddie: Sounds dangerous. Any updates on Mr. Hot Single Dad?"
I stared at the message until the screen dimmed.
Mr. Hot Single Dad was thirty feet away behind a closed office door, delegating me out of his life before I had technically entered it.
"Me: No updates. He's my boss."
The three dots appeared immediately.
"Maddie: That was not an answer."
I turned the phone facedown.
Outside, Ava laughed again. Inside, Luca's office door clicked open.
My pulse did something humiliating.
He stepped into the hall, speaking low into his phone, his expression carved into that unreadable calm that made investors hand over millions and former opponents regret ever stepping into his ring. He didn't glance toward the breakfast nook. Not once.
He moved past me toward the stairs, close enough that I caught the clean scent of his soap beneath coffee and salt air. Close enough that my fingers tightened around my pen.
"Send the revised contract to legal," he said into the phone. "No, today."
Then he was gone.
I looked down at the proposal in front of me and realized I had drawn a small, angry line through the words "elevated coastal simplicity."
"Professional," I whispered to myself.
My voice sounded too bright in the empty nook.
I picked up my pen, smoothed the page, and made myself write a useful note in the margin.
Because Luca Santoro could be cold if he needed to be.
And I could be smart enough not to chase warmth from a man who had built his whole life around surviving without it.
Donny arrived after lunch carrying two iced coffees, a paper bag of guava pastries, and the kind of smile that made it clear he had never once entered a room quietly in his life.
"Where's my favorite tiny dictator?" he asked.
"Pool deck," I said, accepting the coffee. "She's teaching Maria the correct way to judge a splash."
"Terrifying. Santoro women and their standards."
I smiled because he made it easy, but his gaze sharpened on my face. Donny noticed too much for a man who treated everything like a punchline.
"Where's Luca?"
"Office."
"Of course he is."
Something in his tone made me look up.
He set the pastry bag on the counter and headed down the hall before I could warn him that Luca was in full do-not-approach mode. Not that Donny would have cared. His knuckles hit Luca's office door twice, and then the door opened without permission.
I should have gone outside. I should not have stayed near the breakfast nook with my laptop open and every nerve angled toward the hall.
Then Donny said, "You done acting like an idiot, or is this your new personality?"
The office went silent.
Luca's reply came low. "Close the door."
Donny let the door hang open. "No. Fresh air might help. You've got the whole house holding its breath."
My fingers stilled on the keyboard.
"This isn't your business," Luca said.
"Everything in this house becomes my business when Ava starts watching people like she's waiting for them to disappear."
Luca hadn't braced for that one. He said nothing.
Donny's voice dropped, losing its teasing edge. "You think you're protecting her by pulling back every time someone gets too close? You're not. You're teaching her that caring about someone means watching them pull away."
A chair scraped faintly across the floor.
"Careful," Luca said.
"No. You be careful. That kid already lost her mother. She doesn't need to start believing every person she loves eventually disappears behind a closed door."
My throat tightened.
"Riley works for me," Luca said.
"Yeah. Keep telling yourself that's why you won't look at her."
Heat rushed into my face. Another long silence stretched between them. When Luca spoke again, his voice was quieter. Rougher. "You have no idea what I'm trying to keep from spilling onto her."
Donny answered just as softly. "Maybe ask Riley whether she wants protecting before you treat her like collateral damage."
The office door shut then, hard enough to make me flinch.
I looked down at my screen, at the neat lines of Bianca's proposal blurring in front of me, and pretended I had not heard every word.
Pretended I did not wish Luca had left the door open a little longer.
Ava found me twenty minutes later on the back terrace, where I had gone to breathe like a normal person and not like someone who had just been accidentally handed pieces of a man she had no business collecting.
She stood in the doorway with her wet hair combed flat from swimming, one hand wrapped around the strap of her noise-canceling headphones.
"Maria said snack is ready," she said.
"Perfect timing," I said. "I was starting to become one with the patio furniture."