Jacey remained standing in the conference room, alone, head bent and palms resting on the Sylacauga marble conference table. She refused to look at her watch. It really didn’t matter how long she took to return to her desk. Luca was upstairs preparing to fire her the moment she stepped inside his office. She’d failed in her mission to atone for her past sins against his family. Woefully and miserably failed.

She was torn. Should she even attempt to wheedle him into giving her another chance? Or should she hurry upstairs and get the inevitable over with? Maybe it was time to admit defeat, take her marching orders, and run.

More than anything, she wished she could take back the news release she’d talked Alora into sending on her behalf. It was the first thing she’d done since Luca had hired her that smacked of outright dishonesty. It was exactly the sort of behavior he’d been expecting from her. Duplicitous and manipulative. Any progress she’d gained in the last two weeks toward securing his trust would be lost the moment he watched the news announcement.

The fact that he’d been the one to goad her into it didn’t make her feel any better. He’d backed her into a corner and left her with no choice but to come out fighting if she wanted to keep her job. Unfortunately, going to battle with the Calcagni family sort of defeated the whole purpose of coming to work for them. To atone for her past mistakes and make things right between them.

Her pulse pounded between her temples and her face burned so feverishly, she finally gave in to the temptation and took a seat. She laid her cheek against the stone tabletop and let its coolness soothe her aching head.

Through the cold stone, she also absorbed the harsh truth of what was really at stake here. At some point in the last two weeks, Luca’s thoughts and opinions had become important to her. She’d crossed the line of trying to secure his good opinion and had crossed a totally different line in her endless attempts to impress him. Lord help her, she cared for the man and wanted him to care for her in return!

I’m such a fool. She slowly turned her head and pressed her other cheek against the table.

It wasn’t because he was a nice person or easy to converse with or was comfortable to be around. He was none of those things. Yet she’d found herself taking more care picking out her clothes each morning before coming to work than she had for any of the dates she’d ever been on.

The truth was so simple it hurt. He was a brilliant human being. Arrogant and autocratic, yes, but he also challenged and stimulated her. And somehow in the midst of all his intense scrutiny, criticism, and demands during business hours, he’d managed to also make her feel like a beautiful and desirable woman again.

He wanted to be with her, and she wanted to be with him. They’d proven it to each other this afternoon, before she’d gone and ruined things between them like a silly high school girl. For the first time in her life, she’d exercised a caution she didn’t know she possessed. She’d been too afraid to take the next step, too afraid of ruining things like she always did.

Jacey moaned and threw an arm over her eyes. She had to be the worst sort of person. Crushing on the older brother of her husband so soon after his death. He was still grieving, and she was too. In a manner of speaking. Was it truly grieving to be mourning over what might have been if Easton had lived longer? If they’d had the chance to go to marriage counseling and save their dying relationship?

Her failed marriage was the one dark and dirty secret she would carry to grave, one she’d shared with no one. Not even Alora.

Five years of being invisible. Five years of taking second place to one tricked-out race car after another. Or third or fourth place. It had been unbelievably nice to feel appreciated again this afternoon in Luca’s arms. Appreciated as a woman. To be noticed again. To matter to someone.

Luca had never once told her she mattered, not in words. He didn’t have to. All the subtle tells over the past two weeks had given away his true feelings about her. The way his broad shoulders stiffened ever so slightly when she entered the room. The deliberate hard tenor of his voice when he was barking orders while caressing her with his eyes. The way he looked at her when he thought she wasn’t looking. The way he’d kissed her. And held her. And begged for her to tell him how to make things right between them.

She moaned again. In the deepest recesses of her mind, she inherently knew Luca would never ever ever ever be more interested in his car or career or anything else for that matter when she walked in the room. He was too aware of her as a person, as a woman. He just was.

“Jacey?”

Rhys’s voice jerked her from her pool of self-pity and recrimination.

“Are you alright?” He touched her shoulder, and she flinched. She preferred to wallow alone in her misery, but it probably wasn’t wise to tell the Chief Operating Officer of Genesis and Sons to go away.

She raised her pounding head and focused blearily on his features. It was difficult to scrape together her usual poise. She opted for full-out honesty instead. “Haven’t you heard? I failed my first solo presentation today. Lost the contract.”

His face was slightly narrower than Luca’s, his nose more aquiline though his jaw was equally heavy. He usually emanated the energy of a man in the middle of considering some monumental decision, but at the moment he looked more concerned than contemplative.

“You can’t win them all, Jacey.”

She stood, wincing at the pain knifing through her temples. “My boss doesn’t agree. I’m pretty sure he’s going to hand me a pink slip over it.”

She had no idea why she was confiding this in his brother, his partner in crime. There was simply something about Rhys that inspired confidences. Darn him for looking all grave and attentive in his designer dark chocolate suit and mahogany colored wingtips!

She tossed the remnants of her failed presentation in her wire basket.

“Here. I’ll carry that for you.” He reached for the handles of the basket, but she shook her head. Then she had to breathe through the fresh wave of pain created by the jarring movement before she could speak again.

“Thank you, but I can handle it.” If she brought an audience with her, Luca would see it as a weakness. Another attempt to manipulate him. She’d rather face him alone and look him in the eye while he said his piece. She was done with summoning outside assistance to sway his decisions where she was concerned.

She quickly moved toward the door with the basket clutched in front of her, but Rhys was quicker. He didn’t immediately open the door as she expected. “I really hope to see you back at work on Monday.”

It was the nicest thing anyone in his family had ever said to her. Why oh why did her heart skip with hope at his words when she knew there was no reason to hope? She drew a long, shuddery breath. “I didn’t just lose an account. I lost it to DRAW Corporation. Now, can you see the problem?”

He raised a single eyebrow. “A few weeks ago I might have answered yes. Correction. I would have answered yes, but that was before you told my grandmother something we don’t take lightly around here. I believe your exact words were, ‘This is my family now.’ If you truly consider us to be your family, Jacey Maddox, then I have no reason to want you gone. Not anymore.”

Wow! Maybe she’d managed to do a little atoning after all before their CEO gave her the boot. With one member of their family, at least.

She tried to smile her gratitude and couldn’t quite make her lips stretch far enough. Her headache was blooming in too many directions. Instead, she gave him a vague nod that required little movement and swept past him through the door he opened for her.

Waverly was waiting for her at the elevator. A silky blue-gray shawl draped her thin shoulders and did nothing to soften her folded-arms stance or the determined set to her wide, elegant mouth. She tapped the long, pointed toe of one gleaming black leather pump.

“I don’t suppose you know anything about the news release Luca supposedly sent out this afternoon? The one eulogizing his offer to apprentice you.”

There wasn’t any point in denying it. “Yes. I sent it.” And regret it already. Unsure how long she would be detained, Jacey set her wire basket on the floor and braced herself for the scorching of her life.

“Of course you did. My grandson was going to fire you this afternoon, and now he can’t. At least not immediately. It would be a PR nightmare for our firm.”

“If anyone can find their way around it, Mr. Calcagni can.” She was too close to tears to say more.

Waverly’s lids constricted to slits. “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult.”

She resisted the urge to fidget. “It’s a true statement either way. The fact that he despises me doesn’t make him any less brilliant. If he truly wants to fire me this afternoon, he will find a way to do it while insulating his family from the worst part of any public backlash.”

“Yes, he will.” The elderly woman cocked her head a fraction to the right, mouth pinched in concentration as she scoured Jacey’s soul with her eyes. “Why do you persist on remaining at a company where you clearly aren’t wanted?”

“Not everyone wants me gone. Byron in the lab called me sweet in an email this morning.”

The lines around Waverly’s mouth twitched as if she was fighting a smile. “Boy, do you have him fooled.”

“True. Then there’s Rhys. He stopped by the conference room a few minutes ago to say he hoped to see me on Monday.”

Waverly’s smile flat-lined, transforming all the papery lines around the edges of her mouth to rigid creases. “Point taken. I may not like what I’m hearing, but I’ll be the first to admit Rhys is nobody’s fool.”

“What about you, Mrs. Calcagni?” Every cell in Jacey yearned to know where she stood with the indomitable matriarch of the stalwart sons of Genesis. She was starting to like the woman. “A week ago you asked me to leave this building and never come back. I’ve thought a lot about what you said. And if you ask me again to leave — right now — I think I could finally do it.” Despite her efforts to the contrary, some of her inner weariness crept in her voice.

The straight line of Waverly’s lips disintegrated into a dozen or more spidery downward creases of disapproval. “Don’t you dare walk out on us now, Jacey Maddox! You started this infernal media nightmare, and you will stay and help us put it out.”

It was the last thing on earth Jacey had expected her to say. In her own crusty, hard-edged way, the woman wanted her to stay employed with them.

She gave the elder woman what she intended to be a mocking smile, but it ended up feeling tremulous. “How could I do otherwise? This makes you the third person today who insisted I continue working here.”

“You think I want you to stay?” A gallon of incredulity dripped from the elder woman’s words. “Oh, child! Don’t press your luck.”

Ha! She’d been pressing her luck since the moment she’d filed her job application at Genesis and Sons. “If you’ll excuse me, ma’am?” She picked up her basket, encouraged to have learned the heart and soul of the Calcagni clan was no longer gunning for her dismissal. At least not tonight. “I probably shouldn’t keep my boss waiting any longer.”

“If I were in your shoes, I’d pray all your stalling down here might have given him time to harness some of his temper.”

My stalling? You’re the one who waylaid me, woman. But that didn’t keep Jacey from shivering at her words. She tried to cover her apprehension by jiggling the wire basket. Better to come across as impatient than fearful.

Waverly turned to press the elevator button for her. Giving her another hard once-over, she clicked away in her low heels, every clack resounding down the hall like a death knell.

The elevator door rolled open to the top floor all too soon, and Jacey stepped out of it to face her nemesis. Luca was seated at his desk, but he didn’t look up. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t to be deliberately and completely ignored by him. There was none of the usual stiffening of his shoulders when she walked in the room. No flicker of increased awareness in his expression. Nothing at all. She would have preferred his indignation. His fury. Anything but his indifference.

She opted to keep silent, practically tiptoeing past his desk on the way to her own. She was anxious to set down the wire basket which was growing heavier with each step.

He allowed her to round the corner of his desk before speaking. “Where are you going, Ms. Maddox?”

She sucked in a breath and froze mid-step. So we’re back to addressing each other by our last names in private? It was say too bad, because she really, really liked the sound of her first name spoken with his faint Spanish accent.

“To my desk, Mr. Calcagni.”

He swiveled his leather chair around, confronting her at last with a gaze as frosty as frozen caramel pie. Accustomed to his quick mercurial outbursts, she found the glacial version of him far more disturbing.

“Before you get too comfortable over there, I’d like to discuss your two phone calls to DRAW Corporation today.”

She doubted it was possible for him to infuse any more derision and sarcasm into his voice.

“The ones you placed before you lost the Pillmeyer account for us,” he continued.

Okay, I get it. You’re never going to let me live this one down. “I spoke to my sister, Alora. Why?” She tried to muffle the defensive ring to her voice but failed.

He pounced on her words, his expression hardening further. “Everything that happens at Genesis & Sons is my business. What were you discussing?”

She shrugged as well as she could with the wire basket remaining in her arms. “I’m surprised you have to ask. Aren’t my calls recorded?”

“Answer the question, Ms. Maddox.”

“It was personal.” As if you don’t already know the topic we discussed.

“Well, then.” He rose and towered over her.

She was thankful for the basket between them. It provided a few precious inches of breathing room he would have otherwise snuffed out with his breadth and height and overwhelming presence.

“I must not be keeping you busy enough if you have so much time left to indulge in personal phone calls.” Some of the ice thawed in his eyes, but behind it seethed a raw fury that made her desperate to avert her gaze.

She managed to hold her ground though she wasn’t sure how much longer she would be able to hang on to the wire basket. Her arms were starting to tremble from the weight of its contents. “I don’t see how any of this matters since you plan to fire me today,” she countered softly.

“Oh no, Ms. Maddox. I don’t plan to let you go. Not any more.” His leer caused a thrill of razor fear to scrape its way around the base of her throat. “I’ve come up with a better idea. You mentioned you need the income, so I’m putting you in for overtime pay instead. How does that sound?”

Dizziness gripped her, and the basket dropped from her nerveless fingers. Whatever he was up to couldn’t be good. Not for her, by any stretch.

He caught the basket neatly with one hand, swiveled, and transferred it to his desk.

“You’re too kind,” she said cautiously.

“Don’t worry. You’ll be earning every minute of it.”

I never doubted it.

“Starting tomorrow morning.”

His announcement sucked the rest of the wind from her lungs. Tomorrow was Saturday, and she’d been wildly looking forward to sleeping in. Her energy level had dropped well off its peak the last few days. She was operating on little more than coffee fumes.

“What time would you like me to come in, Mr. Calcagni?”

“We’ll get an early start. How does seven o’clock sound? No need to burn through an entire Saturday.”

Seven in the morning? That would require getting up earlier than usual. Too discouraged to respond, she stepped around him and made her way to her desk.

“I emailed you the first set of files for the accounts we’ll be working tomorrow, so you can get a head start before you go home tonight.”

Your generosity knows no bounds.

“Don’t forget your first two weeks of employment were merely a trial period. We’ll be stepping up the pace from now on.”

Stepping up their pace? It wasn’t humanly possible unless she set up a cot behind her desk and worked around the clock. Even then, what he proposed still sounded and tasted and felt impossible. She took a seat, staring blindly at her computer screen. So this was to be her punishment for crossing him. Luca intended to work her into ground.