The Seductive One Read online

  “You’re going to have to put your personal life on hold until harvest is over.”

  She laughed. “That would only be a problem if I had one, which I don’t. I’m only interested in getting the winery up and running. Besides, I have my family around if I ever get lonely.”

  “You always did, but I was talking about something else. Haven’t you bothered replacing your husband with a boy toy?”

  “So not my style.” She tilted her head. “Actually, I don’t know that I have a style when it comes to men, but younger isn’t it. If there were a man in my life, I’d want him to be older. Experienced. What about you? Any potential Mrs. Nic’s around?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “So we’re both at romantic loose ends.”

  She opened her mouth, closed it, then slapped her hand against her forehead. “Forget I said that.”

  He would like to, but it was too late. Tension sparked to life, filling the room and getting his attention. A smart man would change the subject, or leave. Funny how he only wanted to explore the possibilities. Playing with fire?

  Not fire, he reminded himself. Fire would imply a need and he didn’t have that. Anything he felt was simply mild interest. Blood heated and stirred. Okay, mild sexual interest, but nothing more. He’d learned that lesson a long time ago.

  Brenna turned and moved to check the vat. Somehow Nic found himself on his feet, walking toward her. The smell of the grapes surrounded them, reminding him of all those times they’d made love in the Wild Sea Winery. They’d done it in this very room. Did she remember?

  She turned and found him standing next to her. Brenna didn’t jump, but she looked uneasy. He studied her eyes, searching for an awareness that matched his own. He found caution and desire.

  “It’s, um, really late,” she said. “You don’t have to stay and keep me company.”

  “I know.”

  He found himself wanting to push her. Or was he pushing them both? Was he testing to see how much attraction still flared between them? Was he trying to punish her?

  “Nic.”

  His name lingered on her lips, forcing his attention to her mouth. He reached for her and lowered his head at the same time. She could have backed away, but she didn’t. Instead she stood still as he kissed her, softly, gently.

  It was an innocent kiss. Their mouths remained closed and, except for his hand on her arm, there wasn’t any body contact.

  He waited for some hint of what had existed before. A flare of heat, a spark of some uncontrolled need. But there wasn’t any of that. Kissing Brenna felt—

  Hot, thick, and heavy desire slammed into him. He nearly staggered from the impact of the blow. A hunger so deep it gnawed down to his soul grew exponentially until it threatened his ability to maintain control. Aching need exploded, blocking out every thought, rational or not. He wanted with a fury that left him barely standing.

  He parted his lips and deepened the kiss. For a nanosecond he thought she wouldn’t respond, that he would be forced to take what he needed more than his next breath. But then she moved against him and her mouth opened. His tongue brushed against the sweetness of her lower lip before slipping inside.

  She welcomed him with a hot, aggressive kiss that told him she felt it, too. The taste, the fiery wanting building inside of him, the pressure of her body against him, were all familiar. Passion spiraled between them, as it always had—frantic, desperate, amazing. She clung to him, straining to get closer. He rested his hands on her back and explored her from shoulders to hips, relearning her body. At the second he dropped his hands to the curve of her rear, she flexed forward, bringing her belly in contact with his erection.

  His first thought was that they could do it on one of the chairs. He would sit down and she would straddle him. They’d done it that way before, and if his memory was anything to go by, it had worked like a charm. His second thought was that if she kept rubbing against him, he was going to lose it right there—something he hadn’t done since he was about fourteen. His third thought was what the hell was he thinking?

  Brenna pulled back at the exact second he released her. They were both breathing hard. He didn’t doubt that the fire flaring in her eyes matched the heat in his own. Her gaze dropped from his mouth to his hard-on, then made a quick return trip. She half turned away and cleared her throat.

  Nic found himself both aroused and furious. Not the safest combination. He knew why he wanted her, but he didn’t want to think about why he was pissed off. The anger surprised him. He didn’t want to know what it meant, so he ignored it.

  “I should go,” he said abruptly.

  Brenna nodded without looking at him.

  Nic headed for the door, then hesitated. He wanted to say something, but right now there weren’t any words. He swore under his breath and walked into the night.

  The hours after midnight had turned cold. He waited for the decrease in temperature to do something to ease his arousal, but blood continued to pulse painfully in time with his rapid heartbeat.

  Okay, the passion shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. It had always been there between them. As long as he was aware it was a possibility, he could control it. Would control it. Tonight he’d been caught off guard, but that wouldn’t happen again. The anger was something else, though. He should be over the past. He wouldn’t let it control him. Not ever.

  As he walked to the house, he reminded himself that he had a plan. That’s all this was. Playing with Brenna was a side benefit. He wouldn’t let it be more. He wouldn’t let her matter. Not again.

  7

  Why had Nic kissed her?

  As the question passed through her brain for the four thousandth time that day, Brenna found herself no closer to an answer. She didn’t know why he’d kissed her, and she sure didn’t know why she’d let him. It had been stupid. He was her…She hesitated. Not business partner, but something. The man had loaned her a lot of money. She shouldn’t go around kissing him. Their relationship had to be strictly business. Actually, in the best of all worlds they wouldn’t have a relationship at all. They would nod as they passed each other at the grocery store, nothing more.

  But last night she’d done a lot more than nod. If she hadn’t come to her senses when she did, she probably would have been ripping off her clothes and begging him to take her.

  She crossed to the large fermenting vat in the main building of the Marcelli Winery and checked the temperature of the pale liquid inside. After noting the number on her clipboard, she walked to the next vat.

  It didn’t mean anything, she told herself. It couldn’t. She and Nic were old news. Last night had been…a warning, she decided. That was it. He’d kissed her, she kissed him back, and that was certainly something they couldn’t do. Not if she was going to stay sane, not to mention safe. As far as she was concerned, Nic Giovanni was still dangerous. Pathetic, but true. She would avoid him and thereby avoid the problem. And should she find herself in his company—because she was spending a lot of time at his place—she would treat him like a co-worker. There would be no intimate conversations, no lip locking of any kind, and certainly no naked body parts pressing and slipping together in a way designed to make both people feel as if their entire—

  “Snap out of it,” she muttered as she walked to the next vat. “Work. Concentrate on work.”

  Easier said than done when the yeasty smell filling the room reminded her of making love with Nic. She sighed. Why couldn’t he have been a car mechanic? Then they could have made love in an auto shop instead of a winery. She could easily go the rest of her life without smelling motor oil. Wine and wine-making scents, on the other hand, were impossible to avoid.

  So why had he kissed her?

  Brenna nearly screamed out loud when she realized she’d mentally circled around to the damn kiss again.

  “Brenna? Are you in here?”

  “Yes, Grandpa.”

  A distraction, she thought. That was something.

  She wove
her way through the massive vats toward the door. Grandpa Lorenzo stood just inside the fermentation room. He held several sheets of paper in his hand. She recognized the brightly colored logo in the top corner and felt her need to scream increase. Judging from the look on the elder Marcelli’s face, this wasn’t going to go well.

  “I have the new label designs,” he said when she stopped in front of him. “For the Reserve Chardonnay.”

  She clutched her clipboard to her chest and vowed she would not react, no matter what he said.

  Despite his seventy-plus years, her grandfather stood straight and tall, several inches taller than she. He might have gray in his hair, but his dark eyes were still young and expressive. They could flash with anger and disapproval. Gee, they were doing it right now. She braced herself for the complaint.

  “What is this?” he asked, holding up the first design. “A horse? A goat? We now have animals on our labels?”

  Abstract designs in cool colors swirled together in the center of the label, before bleeding out into the mossy green of the border.

  “It’s not a goat,” she said. “It’s not anything. Just colors and shapes together.”

  He turned the paper around so he could squint at it, then shook his head. “No goats.”

  He flipped through the six remaining designs. “Too flashy. Too new. Why do we have to change the labels on the Reserve Chardonnay? The old labels work fine. People know what they look like. Simple. Marcelli Wines in big letters. Not this.”

  He flung the sheet with the picture of the arch over the entrance to the winery at her. Brenna caught it and set the paper on her clipboard.

  “We’ve been using the same label for five years, Grandpa. It’s time for a change.” She willed herself to be patient. “We discussed this. You agreed.”

  He dismissed her with a flick of his hand. “I wouldn’t agree to such nonsense. I hate them all. Who did you hire to come up with these?”

  Brenna’s teeth ached from grinding them together. “A firm in Los Angeles. I picked them because they were innovative and excited by the project.” She took the rest of the pages from him. “I happen to like what they’ve done.”

  He frowned. “Not the goat.”

  “It wasn’t my favorite, but I thought the others were great. Obviously you didn’t. I’ll phone them and have them send us out some more ideas.”

  “Tell them to make the new labels like the old ones.”

  “If you want them exactly the same, what’s the point in bothering with a new design?” She sucked in a breath. “I know our loyal customers recognize our label, but they would still find us with a new one, and we might attract new buyers.”

  “So now you know what our buyers think, eh?”

  “I’ve been reading up on marketing. I’ve given you several articles. Didn’t you look at them?”

  He shrugged. “I’m busy. Besides, what do they know? My father started Marcelli Wines from nothing. He took this earth and he created all that you see around us. When they respect that, we’ll talk.”

  Brenna wasn’t even sure who “they” were. Before she could ask, her grandfather sighed heavily and tossed the labels on the floor.

  “You need to respect the old ways.”

  Hardly a news flash, she thought as she gauged the distance to the door and wondered if running screaming into the afternoon would make her feel better. It wasn’t quite as good as running screaming into the night, but a woman had to make the best of what was available.

  “I respect the old ways,” she said, striving for calm. “I’m also interested in what the new ways have to offer.”

  He shook his head in obvious disgust. “Your brother, he would listen.”

  Brenna was so stunned, she nearly dropped the clipboard. “What? My brother? The guy you’ve never even met? How on earth do you know what he would do or not do? That is such an unfair thing to say to me. If Joe has any interest at all in this winery, it’s only for the money.”

  She would know. When she and Francesca had gone to meet Joe Larson, their long-lost brother, he’d shown little or no interest in the Marcelli family until he’d heard there was a winery worth about forty million dollars.

  Lorenzo drew his thick eyebrows together. “The wine is in his blood.”

  “I don’t think so. You can’t be serious about leaving everything to him.”

  Her grandfather shrugged. “I do what I have to do.”

  He turned and left.

  Brenna sank onto the floor and rested her head on her knees. “This is not happening,” she murmured. Her eyes burned, her chest hurt. There was no way her grandfather could really leave the winery to someone he’d never met. Blood or no blood. And doing it just because Joe was a guy?

  “This sucks,” she whispered.

  It more than sucked. It hurt down to her bones. Of course she’d known that having a brother changed things, but she’d hoped she’d been wrong.

  The designs for the labels lay where Grandpa Lorenzo had tossed them. Apparently her disagreements with him over the labels were the least of her problems. Things had gotten so difficult that she and her grandfather couldn’t go a day without arguing about something. Half the time she expected him to fire her. Except she was family and he couldn’t.

  But he didn’t have to keep her in charge. If he hated everything she was trying to do, why not hire someone who would hang on his every word and do things exactly as he wanted? He could also change his will, if he hadn’t already.

  “Just a reminder of why starting my own label was the right thing to do,” she told herself as she scrambled to her feet. “It doesn’t matter what he does. I’ll have my own winery to worry about.”

  But the words didn’t offer as much comfort as she would have liked. Nothing in her world was the way she thought it would be. Not her past and certainly not her future.

  • • •

  “Final figures,” Nic said when he entered Maggie’s office and slapped the folder on her desk. “Read them in awe.”

  She raised her eyebrows, then flipped through the pages. “As long as you’re not letting success go to your head.”

  “Would I do that?”

  “Answering that the way I want to would be unprofessional.” She closed the folder. “I’ll work up a projection based on these numbers. You’ll have it in the morning.”

  “Great.” He sat down in the chair in front of her desk. “What about the numbers for Marcelli Wines?”

  She flipped through a stack of papers by her computer and handed him several sheets. He read the estimations for gross sales, broken down by region.

  “That’s as good as we can do without looking at their books,” Maggie told him. “I had the sales guys nosing around, but they can only find out so much.”

  “This is good,” he said.

  The sales projections were even better than he’d thought. There was plenty of profit to be had. Once he’d modernized everything and streamlined operations he would—

  He glanced up and saw Maggie watching him. “What?”

  She shrugged.

  “You still disapprove of what I’m doing,” he said.

  “That’s too strong a word. I don’t like it, but liking it isn’t part of my job. I keep thinking about that loan to Brenna Marcelli. What are you going to do with her? Destroy her?”

  “That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?”

  Maggie shook her head. “Gee, Nic, you’ve loaned her a million dollars and given her the chance to start her own winery. She’s moving ahead with the belief that all her dreams are about to come true. Yet at any moment you could call the loan and pull the rug out from under her. I’m guessing when that happens she’s going to be a little broken up. What would you call it, if not destroyed?”

  “Interesting question.”

  “Do you have an answer?”

  “Not yet.”

  The callable note gave him options. Now that he’d seen Brenna in action, he knew that given time, she
could make a go of Four Sisters Winery. Maybe he would sit back and collect interest like one of the good guys. Maybe not. The only thing he knew for sure was that seducing her hadn’t been part of his plan, but since that damn kiss he hadn’t been able to think of anything else. Maybe it was time for a different plan.

  “You’re looking very predatory,” Maggie said. “I don’t want to know what you’re thinking.”

  He grinned. “You’re right.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “Maybe I’ll go meet Brenna Marcelli and see for myself what she’s like. If I hate her, I won’t feel so guilty about being a part of all this.”

  “You haven’t done anything but your job. You have no guilt in this.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  He knew he couldn’t talk Maggie out of her feelings. She’d always been a soft touch. “Suit yourself.”

  “Aren’t you going to warn me not to say anything about the secret plot to purchase her family’s winery?”

  Nic stood. “No. You work for me. You’d never be indiscreet. That would mean breaking the rules. Something you don’t do.”

  “You do it all the time.”

  “I know. That’s why I always win.”

  “In the past you’ve won without breaking the rules. Something tells me that this time is different. Be careful, Nic.”

  “Always,” he promised as they walked to the door.

  They both knew he was lying, but Maggie wouldn’t say anything. Had Brenna been privy to the conversation, she would have called him on it in a heartbeat. Of course if she knew about his plans for Marcelli Wines, she would have his head mounted on the fence dividing their property.

  Not something he wanted to think about. He would be fine just as long as Brenna didn’t find out the truth until it was too late to stop him.

  • • •

  It had been a good night’s work, Brenna thought sometime after midnight as she watched the last of the grapes move from the crusher to the presser. Her second load of Chardonnay grapes had arrived on time. The quality had been everything she’d hoped for—each bunch had been ripe and bursting with flavor and juice. She’d managed to put her latest fight with her grandfather behind her. She refused to think about him or her brother showing up and claiming everything. Even better, she was only thinking of Nic every forty-eight seconds, a marked improvement from earlier in the week. In a day or two she might work up to ten whole Nic-free minutes at a time.