Gianpierre heard Luciana’s scream, and his head whipped around. The heavy, carved stone bricks beneath her feet had given way to a cave-in within the tunnels below, and she was falling. She could be crushed and killed if she reached the bottom before the heavy stones. And, if she reached the bottom after them, she could easily fall upon the rubble and break her back or crack her head.

Gianpierre released the trowel in his hand and let it fall forgotten to the ground as he lunged for Luciana. He dove low and caught her around her ribs as she fell through the earth, then he rolled with her. The motion pulled her out of the hole mid-fall and moved them both away from the crumbling surface.

He’d done what he’d had to do to save her life, but what he no longer had to do was hold her as he was. Her long body was under him and he encased her in his arms, sheltering her with his head and shoulders, as if to protect her from a falling sky.

“Se ti fosse successo qualcosa…” The words—if something had happened to you—tumbled off Gianpierre’s tongue, but he was sure that the American beauty in his arms didn’t comprehend. She had only worked for him a couple of weeks, but he could tell already that it had been two weeks too long. He had to get rid of her. She’d been nothing but a distraction since the day she’d started.

As gently as Gianpierre could, he brushed Luciana’s silky brown hair from her forehead and said, “Sei licenziato,” before repeating in English, “You’re fired.”

Luciana’s eyes went as wide and as round as saucers before her pianist hands pushed hard against his chest in an attempt to throw him off.

“No no no no no! I need this job!” She got to her feet and gave no indication that she had noticed the huge tear down one leg of her khakis or the way her usually loose top was twisted and pulled tight to show off her normally camouflaged curves.

Luciana was stunning. She was a beauty that could grace the cover of any Italian magazine, and it had been a daily struggle for Gianpierre to stay focused on his work instead of her intoxicating presence.

He wasn’t the one who had hired her. He wouldn’t have hired her. That had been done by his departing Project Manager before he’d left. No, Luciana was a distraction Gianpierre didn’t need. He was racing the clock on a career-defining opportunity that could have him gracing the cover of Architectural Digest. He didn’t care if his decision to fire her was sexist. He couldn’t have her here messing with his head, and he couldn’t have her getting hurt. He wouldn’t risk it. He would shut the whole operation down before he allowed it.

“Sir! Gianpierre, I need this job!” Luciana said as she held him in place by wrapping her delicate hands around his bicep. Her touch was light, yet she held him captive. “I didn’t do anything wrong. It was the ground. I wasn’t in the taped off area. It wasn’t my fault! Sir! My sister… my niece.”

Gianpierre wanted to shrug himself free of her grip. He wanted to turn his back on her and wave her off as he walked away, but he didn’t. “Then go home to your sister. Go home to your niece.”

Luciana’s expression transformed into stunned shock. She looked as though he had physically struck her and her grip fell away, leaving him to instantly miss her touch.

The murmur of his other workers and their awkward looks and shuffling had Gianpierre throwing his arms down as he exclaimed, “What?” His attention refocused on Luciana, and what he saw stopped him cold. Her once clear eyes had turned bloodshot though no tears were pooling. “What?” Gianpierre asked again, this time with a gentle voice and a fearful heart.

“My sister died a month and a half ago,” Luciana answered, “on her way to pick me up from the airport. I’m raising her daughter.”

Gianpierre looked back and forth between Luciana and his crew before exclaiming, “Why has no one told me?” Then to Luciana, he said without looking, “You stay.” He continued to silently fume as he shoved his hands back into his gloves. When he spoke again, he was calmer, although the anger was still there. “Here”—he pointed to the ground—“this is no place for you. This is no place for a woman.”

Luciana’s gaze shifted over to the three women who were on his medieval reconstruction crew before looking back at Gianpierre. Despite the dust on their faces and the work-worn clothes that adorned their bodies, they were definitely women. In fact, they were beautiful women.

“They don’t count,” Gianpierre said dismissively, flipping a hand into the air. “They go where I go. They don’t count. This job… it’s here today and gone tomorrow for you. It’s not your life. I don’t want you dying for it. It’s too dangerous. You don’t belong here.”

To his surprise, Luciana took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and stepped closer until her body was only inches away from his.

There was nowhere else for Gianpierre to look except at her painfully beautiful face. It physically hurt him to look at her and not touch her. The only reason he’d put his gloves back on was to keep from caressing her porcelain skin. Her cheeks were high and her lips were full, and every time he saw her all he could think about was having her under him. He wanted to hear his name on her lips in those few sweet moments of life when everything else ceased to matter.

“I do deserve to be here,” Luciana declared. “I deserve to be here as much as any man.”

“Man… woman. I don’t care about these things,” Gianpierre countered, but his declared stance lacked the support of his actions. In truth, he didn’t care about the gender of the person working for him. He cared about results. It was all about the results, and the results he needed right now was for the reconstruction work at the Romano del Mare to be completed as soon as possible so that he could move on to his next job. He’d been offered a position in Dubai, and the window of that opportunity was closing with every tick of the clock’s hands. When that job went, so did his opportunity to be on the cover of Architectural Digest. Luciana’s presence was a siren’s wail to his focus and it put all his plans in jeopardy. He couldn’t have her here. God was having a fine joke to tease him with a precious gift he couldn’t bear to accept.

“It is my life, sir.” Luciana countered, her expression as hard as steel.

“Forgive me.” He wanted to tell her that he didn’t care if he was right or wrong, but he didn’t. “It is not my place to decide the lives of others.” Then, Gianpierre stepped closer so that with every breath she took, the crest of Luciana’s breasts came within a hair’s width of touching his chest. He stared down into her green eyes and willed himself not to dip his head to take her lips with his own. “This is your job. You have done it well, and you have earned the right to stay. I… worry.” His gaze flicked lower to her full lips before returning to her eyes. “I would not do well if harm came to you. The fall… it scared me.”

Luciana sucked in air in reaction to the naked truth of Gianpierre’s words. Looking to the side, she stepped away, putting distance between them and breaking the intimacy of their closeness. With anyone else, it was a line that Gianpierre would not have crossed, but he’d seen the way she looked at him. He’d seen how she wanted him.

Take her, then discard her. Get her out of your blood.

It wasn’t a new thought, yet there had been a sadness about her that had kept him away. Even before the accident they’d just faced, he had felt that it was as if the world had shifted under her feet and she was hanging on by only the tips of her fingers. She’d seemed too fragile for him to trifle with for the sake of scratching his own itch. Now he knew why.

“Will you—”

“I have to go,” Luciana said, cutting him off as she looked down at her watch. “The daycare texted. They’re not happy with Natalia. I need to go pick her up.”

Gianpierre had been about to ask Luciana to have dinner with him, but her words saved him. “They are not happy with her?”

Luciana nodded, continuing to inch further away from him. “It’s the nightmares. She has nightmares. It scares the other children.”

“Luciana…”

“It’s okay, though. I’ll go straight there. I’ll get her, leave her with the neighbor, and be back here in under an hour.”

“Luciana…”

“And I’ll work late to make up the time.”

“Luciana!”

She stopped, her expression fearful of what Gianpierre would utter next.

“You’re bleeding.”

“What?”

“Your leg. It’s scraped.”

Luciana bent and twisted. It seemed to be the first time she’d noticed that her pants were torn up the side of one thigh. The long, red scrapes caused by the fall had begun to weep. It wasn’t anything that a wash and a little ointment couldn’t take care of, but it might be scary for others to see—especially little children.

“Take the rest of the day off, Luciana. Take care of you and your family.”

“Take the rest of the day off? But your schedule?”

“No, no,” Gianpierre said. “Take tomorrow off as well.” He bit back the words telling her to take forever off, to never come back and to leave him alone so that he could get his work done without being constantly plagued with thoughts of her nearness.

Luciana took a step forward, and Gianpierre saw the panic in her eyes. “Sir, my job…”