Natalia, your designs for the fairy castle are so good!” Gianpierre praised.

But the little girl held up Gianpierre’s design in front of her and held her head cocked to the side as she assessed it with squinting eyes. Finally, she let the paper fall back to the table and said with definitive certainty, “Yours is better. I want that castle.” She poked her finger at it.

Leaning forward, Gianpierre looked over his design with a fresh eye. It had spires, a curving staircase that travelled up the side of a cliff, a winding road, a moat with a working drawbridge, an inner and outer courtyard, a dragon’s nest, a hidden entrance, and a wizard’s tower. He had to admit, it was a rather ambitious undertaking. “Do you think we can do it?” he asked her with a conspiratorial wink, earning a giggle from the little girl.

She nodded her head emphatically while dancing in place in excitement.

Gianpierre nodded his agreement. “I think so too. Let’s do this.” With the clock ticking down to his departure and the work hours at the resort ramping up, he knew that they had no time to waste.

The nanny, Signora Esposito, was working out better than he’d ever imagined. Natalia was happier and his darling Luciana was looking more rested. The two of them even got the chance to sneak away to the rooftop for some private time many of their evenings together. They were discreet about the relationship that was evolving between them. It was almost as if they had an unspoken agreement to keep what they were becoming to each other private. Since it was temporary, there was no reason to involve anyone else, least of all Natalia. She didn’t need the confusion. As ever, the clock was ticking and Gianpierre was leaving. Every day the inevitable drew that much closer.

Gianpierre heard the apartment door open and close and then he heard the familiar steps of Luciana. With her arrival, a tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in his shoulders left him. It happened every time. He would realize she was near, and his body would relax. He’d never experienced anything like it before with any other woman he’d been involved with. Always before, they would walk into the room and his neck would tense or he would need to get up and aimlessly pace the room. It was as though he’d been afraid of being trapped, but that wasn’t how it felt being with Luciana. She put him at ease. She made him glad to be where she was.

“Hi, honey,” Luciana said in greeting as she stroked Natalia’s strawberry-gold hair and kissed her head.

“Look, Mama!” she said, holding up the drawing of the fairy castle that she and Gianpierre had plans to build.

“Very nice!” Luciana exclaimed but flicked her gaze to Gianpierre from the corner of her eye.

Understanding her concern, Gianpierre assured, “We’ll make it happen.”

“Sweetie, why don’t you go help Signora Esposito. I hear her in the kitchen.”

“She’s making dinner,” Natalia announced with an abundance of enthusiasm.

“We are in for a treat then! Okay,” she said, steering Natalia to turn around and then giving her a gentle send-off push to get her moving. “You head on in there and I’ll be in to help in a few minutes.”

Gianpierre felt as though he was being called into the principal’s office at school when Luciana sat down in the chair adjacent to him. He had the distinct feeling that he was in for a “talk.”

“I spoke with Gerald Clement. He said that he’d heard back from you and that you’d told him that we were going in another direction at this time. You told him that he wasn’t the right fit to take over the Romano del Mare renovations on the courtyard, cellars and catacombs.”

“So,” Gianpierre said, shrugging his shoulders. He knew what was coming next, but he would not make it easier on her. If she wanted to berate him for being picky on who he handed the job over to, that was her problem and not his. He didn’t care if he only had two and a half weeks before he had to report to Dubai, yet had four and a half months’ worth of repairs to work through at the resort. The Romano del Mare was his family’s most indelible legacy, and he would not turn over its restoration to a hack.

“Gianpierre,” Luciana hissed in an agitated whisper as she leaned forward, “he is one of the best medieval architects in the world! How could he not be a good fit? He’s worked on more medieval monasteries than anyone else, even you!”

Gianpierre’s temper flashed at the implication that there was someone to whom he might be second best, but he kept it in check. “He wasn’t right for the job. He would have come in and done everything to his own vision. He would not have listened to the Romano del Mare and asked her who she wants to be. He is too heavy handed in his restorations. He is too autocratic. Everything would be his way or no way at all.”

Luciana arched her brows at him. “Really. He’s too autocratic?”

Gianpierre grunted and waved off her challenge but then watched as her shoulders sagged and she took a deep breath then let it out as if she were defeated. It made him regret his hard headedness, yet he could not back down. He had to go, that was true. He had to be in Dubai, but he could not bear the thought of seeing another man in his place… with Luciana standing at his side. She would have her little computer tablet ready to jot down anything he said, and she would hang on his every word. That image… that thought, it was eating him alive.

“I cannot. He is wrong for the job. I’m sorry, Luciana, but I cannot leave”—he paused, stopping short of saying that he could not leave her but swallowed that down and said—“the Romano del Mare to anyone else’s care.”

Luciana threw up her hands. “That’s it then. Let’s call the project a wrap and shut the whole thing down. We’ll cover the holes with tarps, put caution tape around the entire courtyard, and tell the tourists next year that those sections are out of bounds. It will still be here when you get back in four to six years.”

Luciana’s expression was stony, harsh even, and her words made him ashamed of the position he was putting her, his brothers, and the Romano del Mare in. Yet, he wasn’t able to make himself budge.

“I’m sorry, Luciana. Gerald Clement is a good man but he’s not right for this job.” He stood up from the table. “Keep looking. There’s someone who can take over, I’m sure.” Just as long as that someone was, say, an eighty year old woman and not anyone who could ever replace him in Luciana’s life.

* * *

Half a week had passed and Gianpierre had watched as Luciana scoured the globe in search of a medieval architect who could replace him. Time after time, she crossed the person off her list all on her own without any input from him as she recognized that their skill was not of a quality needed to continue the work that he had started.

There were few people left in the world who would have the necessary qualifications to even be considered for the position, and he sympathized with her predicament. She needed a way to continue to pay her bills, and she wanted their part of the Romano del Mare restoration to continue uninterrupted. He wanted her to stop pushing him away and rushing him out the door. He knew he had to leave, but she had begun treating him like he’d already gone. Most hurtful was the way she always found excuses for Natalia to go and be somewhere else when he was around.

But he had come up with a solution, and it was a brilliant one. He would be able to leave for Dubai and she would be able to continue in her role as Project Manager. He’d arranged it all. He would leave Paolo behind to lead the team with which Gianpierre had worked with for years. They knew the job. They understood the techniques. Starting on the enormous new project in Dubai without his personal team by his side to help oversee the activities of hundreds of others would be far less than ideal, but it would be doable. Meanwhile, Gianpierre would guide Paolo in how to proceed at the Romano del Mare through video calls, photographs, schematics and any other tools necessary to get the job done. He would even fly back to oversee the project in person every chance he got. In fact, he would continue to sublet the room from Luciana in his—in her, he corrected—apartment. Nothing had to change. Now all he needed to do was to find her and tell her the good news.

“Luciana!” he called as he rounded a corner to walk down yet another corridor within the body of the Romano del Mare’s main buildings. “Luciana! Where are you?” The inside restoration team had told him that she’d gone this way.

A door halfway down the hall opened and Luciana stepped out and closed the door behind her. Seeing her, Gianpierre broke into a jog, but she did not seem pleased to see him when he reached her.

“What?” she asked, keeping her voice unusually soft.

“Why are you whispering?” He took a step back and looked Luciana over from head to toe. “And why are you dressed this way?” Gone was her loose fitting clothes suitable for the dirt, grime and sometimes dangerous conditions within which they worked. Instead, she wore a snug pencil skirt with a high slit and a silky blouse with a plunging neckline. To make matters worse, she even wore a necklace that hung low on her chest to draw the eye to her flawless skin and the swell of her softer, more generous parts. “What are you doing? And why do you have on pumps? You won’t be able to walk in the courtyard in those.”

“Gianpierre,” Luciana said, firmly but calmly, “I’m busy. Can we do this later?”

Gianpierre stared at her, then noted the way that she stood protectively in front of the closed door. “Who’s in there?” he asked, his voice dropping dangerously low. She was interviewing someone for his job, he knew it. But this wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. She had to stop.

“Gianpierre—”

“Tell me,” he said, cutting her off, and then tried to reach past her to the doorknob but the shift of her hip kept him from his goal.

“Gianpierre, let’s talk a moment.” Her voice had taken on a desperate, pleading tinge that set Gianpierre’s nerves on alert all the more. His hands were on her shoulders the next moment, and he physically moved her out of his path. Throwing the door open, he stepped into the doorway and stared at the man who sat in the room before him.

“No!” Gianpierre’s voice boomed. “Not him!” It was Silas Grantzky, a man every bit as tall as him with the rugged look of a battle-worn Viking. If it could be said that Gianpierre had an arch nemesis, that person would be Grantzky. Every single elite job that Gianpierre had ever been a contender for, he’d had to fight to win it over Silas Grantzky. And half the time, he lost. He’d almost lost the Dubai job to him, and Gianpierre was sure that Dubai had the man on speed dial in the event that he didn’t show up in another two weeks. “Not him,” he said again, intoning the words with the same vehemence as Moses telling the red seas to part.

“Gianpierre,” Luciana said, grabbing his arm with a firm ownership that only a lover would use, “he’s all that’s left. If not him, then the restoration of the Romano del Mare’s courtyard gets shut down for years!”

“I’m fine with that,” he said before tearing his arm free of her hold. “And what is this? All of this?” He indicated her clothes with the wave of his finger up and down. “You think he’ll keep you on if you turn his head?”

Luciana’s eyes flew wide as she gasped. Then her eyes narrowed and her open palm shot up toward Gianpierre’s face but he caught her wrist in mid-air before her slap could connect.

Gianpierre leaned in so that he could almost feel her heat on his skin. “You’ll mean nothing to him.”

“Just like I mean nothing to you?” she shot back without hesitation.

Out of the corner of his eye, Gianpierre could see Grantzky’s amused grin. That there was more between him and Luciana than an employer-employee relationship was painfully obvious, and Gianpierre was sure that the man would love his chance to try to best him in that arena as well.

In contrast to Grantzky’s relaxed demeanor, Luciana looked ready to disembowel Gianpierre. Her teeth were bared and her eyes all but glowed with the embers of her rage, but it only made Gianpierre want her more. His head pounded as it was battered with images of Luciana and Grantzky working together as Grantzky wore her down, day after day, romancing her until finally Gianpierre became replaced in every sense of the word. The thought was more than he could bear. While it was true that he could lose her to somebody else, it wouldn’t be while she worked the job that she’d done with him. “Get out,” he growled at her. “You’re fired.”

“No!” It was her turn to rip her arm free of his hold. “I quit.”