What just happened?” Luciana asked herself as she stormed out the front door of the Romano del Mare. She was shocked by the sudden turn of events. She had set up a meeting with a man who was considered among most circles within the industry as Gianpierre’s closest peer. There were very, very few who could compete with Gianpierre’s level of expertise. Yes, there were those who excelled in specific areas, such as the most accurate way to mix mud-based binders equivalent to practices used in the summer of 539 in Sussex, England. But in terms of overall knowledge base, a solid argument could be made, as it had been made by many, that Gianpierre’s expertise beat them all. As for everyone else, they argued that Grantzky was the best medieval architect. It was a very argumentative and passionately split camp.

“He’s such a jerk!” she fumed, covering the ground to her car with long, sure strides. All she’d wanted to do was help him get to Dubai as early as possible… and out of her and Natalia’s lives. That wasn’t so bad, was it? He’d get what he wanted, and she’d get what she wanted. Correction, she’d get what she needed. The man was insufferable. He was stubborn, obsessive, bull headed, self-confident to a fault… charming, endearing, great with Natalia, and quickly winning Luciana’s heart. She couldn’t have it. She couldn’t risk setting Natalia up for that kind of loss so soon after losing her mother. Even if it meant breaking her own heart, she couldn’t allow Gianpierre to stay in their lives one minute longer than absolutely necessary. She had to get him out as soon as possible even if that meant going home, packing their bags, and taking her and Natalia to stay with some distant cousin for the next several weeks until he was gone. That way she’d at least still have his renter’s income. She needed it now that her job was gone.

“Luciana.” Gianpierre’s voice travelled to her ears from a distance. The strength of his voice as he called for her came and went, and he seemed to be searching rather than actually pursuing her, but it didn’t take long for all of that to change as suddenly his voice rang loud and unobstructed by the walls of the resort. “Luciana!”

Throwing a glance over her shoulder, Luciana saw Gianpierre break into a run from the resort’s wide open front doors. But she was a runner too, and even in high heels she was able to sprint the distance to her car. Throwing the car’s door open, she was inside and starting the engine by the time that Gianpierre reached her. But rather than try to pull her car door back open and beg her to not drive away, he instead leapt onto the hood of her car. There, he stood with legs wide and his hands on his hips. He looked like Superman. All he needed was the big, wind-swept cape, and Luciana couldn’t help but roll her eyes in exasperation. He was behaving like an over emotional teenage boy. She’d just been conducting an interview, for pete’s sake, and now she was fired… Quit, she quickly reminded herself. She’d quit. Her life was under her control.

Yet with her car in gear, Luciana hesitated. If she engaged the engine and started to drive, Gianpierre would most likely lose his balance and fall off. He could get hurt. His entire crew—and not just her—would be out of work. Besides that, she cared about him… more than she was willing to say. She didn’t want to see him get hurt.

Rolling down her window, Luciana stuck her head out and yelled, “Get off my car!”

“Hear me out, Luciana. Please.”

Oh God, he said please. She wanted to hit her forehead against her steering wheel rather than hear him out, but she couldn’t. If he had demanded, yelled or cajoled, she might have risked his wellbeing by putting the car in reverse and stepping on the gas. He’d have gone tumbling off her car’s hood and she and Natalia would have been packed and gone before he ever made it home.

On the hood, Gianpierre sank to his knees and looked forlornly through the glass of her windshield. But it was when he reached out a palm and pressed it to the glass, as if he were reaching out to touch her heart, that she gave in and turned the car’s engine off.

Opening her car door, she slid out, closed it, and then stepped to the side of her car’s hood. Gianpierre moved to sit on the hood’s edge with his legs dangling over the side. Reaching one long arm out, he hooked it around her hips and pulled Luciana into the space between his thighs.

“Please don’t quit,” he whispered, staring at her with eyes as blue as glacier ice. They weren’t cold, though. They were worried with crinkle lines that framed them in an expressive face that had a way of melting all of Luciana’s resolve. His hands were warm on her lower back, and she had to fight to keep herself from throwing her arms around his shoulders to be held close against his strong chest.

“I didn’t quit,” she said, recalling the sequence of events. “You fired me.” The words came out sounding more petulant than she’d intended, and much faster than she’d imagined it would, her anger slipped away. It didn’t seem to matter how hard she wanted to hold onto it. The man’s very presence made her inner-self happy with a lightness she had never known before he’d come into her life.

Gianpierre shook his head. “All of this, the work we do in there, you’ve grown your job so much and everything we do all revolves around you now. I couldn’t fire you. I could be replaced easier than you.”

Luciana stiffened and looked away for a long moment before meeting Gianpierre’s penetrating gaze again. “I wasn’t trying to replace you. I”—she hesitated—“was trying to let you go.”

“Luciana, I don’t want to be let go.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb, and it took all of her will power not to close her eyes and lean her cheek into the cup of his palm.

“Why not?” It was a hard question, but she needed to know. “You’re leaving anyway. Why not be replaced?” Then, when Gianpierre’s expression turned stony and he leaned slightly away from her, she quickly added with a soft voice, “I mean here at the resort. Not… you know.” It would probably be a long, long time before she invited another man into her bed.

“I don’t want to go.”

Luciana blinked, unsure of what she was hearing.

“I mean,” Gianpierre quickly amended, “I don’t want to leave this job undone.” His words seemed rushed and felt to Luciana as though they were not coming directly from his heart. He was covering how he really felt. There was more to it than he was saying.

“I can’t have you in Natalia’s life anymore,” she said. While Gianpierre’s words had not been a true reflection of what was going on inside of him, Luciana held nothing back as she let the blunt truth spill from her lips.

“What?” Gianpierre’s body went still.

“She adores you. She might even like you better than me, you and that damn fairy castle that you guys have been obsessing over. It’s all you do every second that you’re home and she’s awake, but you are going to leave and all that she’ll be left with is a pile of carved styrofoam and other mix-matched supplies. She’ll have a thing to remember you by, but she won’t have you. She’s already been through that, Gianpierre. All she has to remind herself of her mom are some short videos on her mom’s old cell phone. She needs more than that.”

“I can come back, maybe a weekend out of every month,” Gianpierre said. “I can video chat with her… and you. We can still…” His words trailed off.

“Still what?” She swallowed, feeling unsure of how far she wanted to sink the proverbial knife in. “Still be a family?” It was what they had begun to feel like. A beautiful, amazing, wonderful, happy family. The best she had ever known.

“Is that so awful?” he challenged.

“No.” She shook her head. “But I have to protect her better than that.”

“We can talk to her, explain that I’ll be leaving soon. Don’t end things yet.” He wrapped her in his arms, and Luciana melted against him. He was so strong, so steady, she couldn’t believe that they were talking about everything they had ending. “And I can come back and see you both every chance I get.”

“No,” Luciana said with a firm voice as she pushed herself away. “I don’t want you waltzing in and out of her life whenever it suits you. I won’t have her looking forward to your visits just to have you show up less and less.”

Gianpierre looked pained by her words, but he didn’t fight her by offering up a counterargument. Finally, he nodded. “Okay, once I go, I’ll be gone. But let me stay in Natalia’s life… and your life until then.”

“You’re not going to finish the job in time. We are going to have to tape everything off and abandon it as unfinished and unsafe. We need to bring in someone else to finish the job.”

“No.” It was Gianpierre’s turn for his back to stiffen and for him to declare an impasse. “I will get the job done. We will get the job done—me, you and the rest of the crew. I’ll hire on additional hands, and we’ll work round the clock. We’ll get it done on time, Luciana, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll run the crew from Dubai over video calls. This resort, it’s my family’s legacy. I can’t hand this over to someone else, especially not Grantzky. I can’t have his stamp on my family’s mark for centuries to come. I can’t do it.”

“You’ll finish it from Dubai?”

Gianpierre nodded. “Which means that I need your help more than ever. You would be my eyes, ears and compass. I’d leave Paolo behind to lead the crew and you would be the production manager, making sure all needs are met before anyone even realizes they need anything. I know it’s what you’re brilliant at. You jumped into this job, found your footing and then made the job your own. It’s what I was coming to talk to you about today when I found you with Grantzky.” He said the man’s name like it left a bad taste in his mouth.

Luciana laughed. “You know,” she said, dragging the tip of her finger down his chest between the valley of his incredible pecs, “Grantzky’s just as jealous of you. He sees you as the one to beat.”

“That arrogant blowhard?”

Luciana laughed harder. “Mmhmm, and that’s exactly how he feels about you, too.” She turned somber. “But we’ll do it without him. Me, you and that insane crew of yours. We’ll make this work. If anyone can do it, I know it’s you.” She said the words despite the heaviness in her heart. Never in her life had she been willing to work so hard to get rid of someone she cared so much about. It was tearing her in two, but in the center of it all sat a little girl who was worth any pain Luciana had to face in order to make things right.