“Have Gianni GianCarlo call me to set up our dinner date,” I told Valentine, matching the nonchalance of the demon sitting across the massive black oak desk.

In the ferocious fencing match that went on between our eyes, neither of us surrendered even one step of retreat.

“No need,” he replied, “I've already arranged everything.”

Of course he had. Why had I imagined I would ever be allowed any autonomous decision in my destiny. “Be ready Wednesday at six.”

“Fine.”

I would not let my boss see that I gave a damn. In the tension of the showdown between us, I would match him in not being vulnerable and being utterly one thousand percent unattached.

Even if it ripped me up underneath the facade.

Since the evening we spent alone together at his penthouse, where Valentine had allowed me access to the real guy beneath the emotional straitjacket, we'd drawn two-fisted foils at every attempt to communicate. It might have been amusing had both of us not been suffering so much. I was sure he was, just as much as me but he’d never admit it. It would be easy to assume I was projecting my own angst at the overwrought tension between us onto my boss and that he truly was unaffected. But I now believed it was the other way around.

Jay Valentine had seen me, plucked me, groomed me in an effort to reduce me to his submissive pet. That feeling he'd noted, the rise of something through the crowd at the New York design event had thrown him so off balance, he needed to reel me in and get me under control.

Like an African big game hunter stalking his ultimate prey, one that had the power to destroy him, I was the one that could not be allowed to get away. And like every hunter, he'd become infatuated with the emotional heat between us. The game had to continue, because like any great story, you didn't want the characters living in the world of illusion to ever come to an end.

Every time we stared into the bottomless wells of each other's eyes, we were confronting ourselves in the hallucination.

I knew Valentine’s only drive was to gain dominance over me. Because that was the only way to maintain control over himself. What remained unfathomable was what my real desire would turn out to be. I thought I'd discovered it with Josh and that pipe dream proved that there was always another layer to emotional connection. I knew Jay Valentine had uncovered an endless onion of needs in me that had been dormant. Repressed by me but also by society that laid out the norms of what a woman should want out of her short existence.

“Will that be all?” I rose to leave, purposely not waiting for his permission.

“No, that is definitely not all” he replied, frowning and setting his lips in a thin line. As much as he fought to repress his words, the urge to speak was plainly bursting from him.

Instead of sitting down and pursuing my obsession with studying him like a therapist with an interesting specimen on the couch, I crossed to the bank of tall french doors behind his chair. Surely that was a wince I detected in his back as I moved past him.

Marc Chapelle and the three male assistants he was training as the estate's winemakers, loomed large in the vineyards on the other side of the full length windows. They were so close, framed in the glass and my eyes were drawn to Marc's courtly thick fingers, how they plucked and tweaked the tiny massed buds thrusting forth on the vines. He lifted the large heart-shaped leaves as tenderly as a virgin's petticoats, to reveal the pearl hiding beneath.

Then his fingertips delved into the fleshy orbs, probing and caressing until each grape was swelling ready to burst. I had a feeling this year was going to provide a sumptuous vintage under his stimulus. I almost envied the stupid fruit.

Why couldn't I fall in love with a man like Marc? He was easier than Valentine, less contorted without being boring. I’m certain he’d be phenomenal in bed if his prowess in a first class airplane seat was anything to judge by, talented and gorgeous in a rough Gallic way. I could see myself living in the southern part of France. The Europeans were always at the forefront of design. The French had commissioned that amazing courthouse in Bordeaux, a group of wooden pods on stilts like a futuristic African village.

I turned to look at Valentine again and was jolted by the realization that he'd moved from the desk to stand beside me. He too had been closely observing my meander through a joyful fantasy field of poppies where I was partner to a hunk who would encourage me to explore everything in life. Who would want to make every discovery at my side. My guilty secret ice cream and PJ movie was always one of those Indiana Jones, Mummy's curse movies where the feisty heroine is drawn into a rollicking adventure with a gruff hunk who melts under her special sauce.

Stupid I know, but I was searching for some semblance of that in my own life. Adventures, discoveries, but as the cherry on top, I might have to admit to wanting a man to fall in love with me for me. God he was so divinely handsome, my boss's perfect sculpted face sent shivers through my skin every time I looked at him. But right at that instant, catching my wistful gaze at Marc's expert fingers, his eyes were stone cold.

“You're craving them on you again?” he asked, making it sound more like a statement.

“On me, in me, everywhere,” I snapped. Fuck you.

“Perhaps you'd like to experience all four of those talented gentlemen caressing their hands across your ravishing body.”

Rage rose through my chest. It instantly replaced my daydream of Valentine and I as partners, replacing it with reality. We were trapped in our separate cages and examining the other, desperate to remain in safe self-protection, even if doing so was destroying our chances of happiness. Only fury toward him dominated and filled my breasts, then surged higher to fire across my cheeks. How dare this arrogant ass read my desires like he owned me? What in hell did I have to do to demonstrate that I was not Jay Valentine's personal property?

“My thoughts about your employees or anyone else, are none of your business. Stop trying to get inside and decipher me,” I hissed. Accusing him of doing exactly what I was to him. “Just leave me alone.”

“You have no idea how that kind of talk inflames me.”

“I am not interested in your feelings. In fact I'm fairly convinced that you aren’t capable of experiencing an actual emotion.”

“Ah, you return to your expert analysis of my character flaws,”he said sarcastically. “But, dear doctor Cannon, your judgment would be termed projection in any clinical setting.”

Triple arrgh. His smugness drove me crazy, mostly because he was right and I didn't want to admit it.

“I meant to share that it wouldn't be at all surprising for you to desire multiple male attention, after being denied multiple orgasms last night,” he continued. “And I can tell you haven't relieved yourself of the impulses lighting up your body.”

“How about we call a truce,” I offered with equal sarcasm. “I'll stop analyzing your personality defects if you stop picking my sexuality to bits.”

“I don't think I can commit to that,” he replied.

“There's a surprise.”

It was a low blow- weak, and I knew it but I always got snippy when edging close to the cusp of being hurt. I had to hold that shield up on my feelings. He didn't want me, he was tossing me out for dinner dates with other men and was now even joking about offering me up for a gangbang with his field workers.

He was beyond unbelievable and still I could not get across to him that he did not own me. This date with the billionaire Italian might be the only thing that I could use to get Jay Valentine to stop taunting me. It could be my free ticket out of the hell of living at Valentine Winery.

“I have to get to work now, if that's all.”

Valentine nodded minutely, his jaw gripping and releasing as he stared at his rows of vines bearing swollen luscious fruit for as far as the eye traveled.

Instead of going to the tasting rooms to supervise the construction crew, I turned the opposite direction and emerged into the golden syrup sunshine.

“Can I help?” I asked Marc as he tweaked a nub of hard fruit.

“Long time wizzout seeing you.” He looked up and smiled with genuine pleasure. I adored the way his mouth scrunched when he tried to say an English “th” and it came out “zz”.

“I've missed your composure,” I said, leaning in to learn about teasing grapes into abundance.

“You 'ave put a chicken in the coop of the master,” he said and grinned. “Is dat how you say it?”

“What the fuck is it with him? Is it a mother thing?” I asked, feeling as though my heart might explode inside me from utter hopelessness.

“What is that?” Marc looked up, a flash of distaste on his usually handsome face.

Our heads were so close together, buried under the leaves we could have pressed lips.

“You told me not so long ago that we Americans like to blame our parents. Is that what this is? His need to control women because of his evil unloving mother?”

“I believe he's rather fond of his mother.”

“Where is she?”

“Is this about all your American psychos?” Marc deflected. “Do many men murder ze mother?”

“Don't you have psychos in France?”

“Like the American Psycho, our best literary characters are rooted in nature.”

This was so fun, flirting under the guise of reading matter. I hoped Valentine was observing us from his gloomy office, he might learn how to make a woman a friend. I actually loved talking to Marc, his intelligence merged with a double entendre of sexuality that made my pussy pulsate with mini thrills. Aside from being super sexy with confidence in his experience that came from maturity, he was completely unaffected by everything that happened around him. He didn’t need to throw up walls at every hint of invasion.

Another surge of wanting to throw myself into his embrace lurched through me, to have him tug me into his solid chest and surround me with his wiry strong arms. The curling tendrils of dark hair starting to sprinkle with tones of gray called to my daggering fingers.

Just to touch him. To touch another human being in a manner that didn't involve punishment. I needed love, yearning like a hiker in the outback would kill for a taste of cool wet moisture, I wanted a moment of affection.

“He demands implicit trust and loyalty but is incapable of giving it,” I murmured, half to myself. My mind forever drawn back to thoughts of Valentine. “He must have experienced betrayal somewhere in his childhood that he withholds love so hard.”

“I know he had a woman he loved once.”

“And what happened to her?” My interest leapt, eager for insight.

“You are correct in deduction- she betrayed him.”

I looked at Marc, my eyes round, willing him to divulge more.

“She had him and his brother fighting over her.”

“And who won?”

“Neither, in the end. I think she died.”

“Oh shit, how? What happened?”

“I 'sink it was a drowning accident but no one is quite too sure.”

Later I realized that, like Valentine, Marc was brilliant at diversion during a conversation. I was examining my body for damage in the antique mirror, so massive, at least a dozen men would have been required to lift it up the stairs to my room. I thought we'd shared truth, but Marc had deflected all my other questions about our employer. I still knew nothing about him other than an ex had slept with his brother.