Daring to Trust the Boss (Harlequin Romance) (7 page)

“No.”

Yet another thing added to the pile of reasons his attraction to her was ridiculous. “Well, don’t worry. Constanzo said his son was raised in the U.S., remember?”

Wind blew in through her open window and tossed strands of her hair across her face. Pulling them away, she asked, “Have you figured out what you’re going to say to him?”

“I’m going to flat out tell him who he is.”

She gaped at him. “I think that’s a mistake!”

And here was the real reason he wouldn’t kiss her, knew they’d never have a relationship, knew the taste of her lips that he longed for would only get him into trouble. If he wanted one route, she always wanted another. If that wasn’t proof his attraction to her was pointless, he didn’t know what was.

“I don’t think it’s a mistake. If my father had found me, that’s how I would want to be told. Up front and honest. I might be angry at first, but eventually I would mellow.”

“That just sounds wrong to me.”

“Of course it does.”

“What if Constanzo’s son’s not like you? What if he’s shy? Or quiet? Artistic types, as Constanzo’s file says his son is, aren’t like businessmen.”

“Oh, and you know a lot about this?”

She shrugged. “I know some. Everybody knows artists aren’t like businessmen. Otherwise, they’d be businessmen. They wouldn’t be artists.”

“Well, if he’s a shy starving artist who wears his heart on his sleeve, kick my shin and take over the conversation.”

“Me?”

“Hey, Constanzo wanted you here. Maybe this is why.” Which was the reason he couldn’t put her on his plane and send her back to the accounting department in the Inferno corporate offices in New York. Constanzo might pretend to be an easygoing, open book, but like any clever businessman he had his secrets, his ways of reading people. He’d seen something in Olivia that made him want her here. Tucker wouldn’t argue that. He’d use it.

She sighed and eased herself back to her seat. “I agree about kicking your shin, but if I do, you should just shift gears.”

“Let me assure you, Miss Prentiss—” he paused and sighed “—
Vivi
, if you kick my shin, you had better have a plan.”

The rest of the drive passed in silence until an isolated farmhouse came into view. Not renovated as Constanzo’s had been, Antonio’s run-down house had seen better days. The manicured grounds of Constanzo’s estate were replaced by fields teaming with tall grass and wildflowers.

“Obviously, the guy doesn’t own a lawn mower.”

“Or he likes nature.”

Tucker sniffed a laugh.

“What would you rather paint? A mowed lawn or a field of wildflowers against a blue, blue sky.”

Cutting the engine, Tucker rolled his eyes and shoved open his door. Vivi quickly followed suit. Behind Tucker, she picked her way up the loose stone walk. When they reached the door, he knocked three times in rapid succession.

Inhaling a big breath of fresh air, he glanced around. It really was quiet, peaceful, beautiful. He supposed he could understand why an artist would choose to live here. Especially if he’d come to Italy to get to know his mother’s country, to meet his extended family, and still have privacy.

The wooden door swung open. A man about as tall as Constanzo, wearing jeans and no shirt stood before them. “Yeah?”

“I’m Tucker Engle and this is my assistant, Olivia Prentiss.”

Vivi reached forward and extended her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. You can call me Vivi.”

The man cautiously took her hand, his dark eyes narrowing.

“Are you Antonio Signorelli?”

“Yes. Who are you?”

Tucker said, “Can we come in a minute?”

He started closing the door. “Actually, I’m very busy. And I don’t have time for sales people.”

Wedging his shoe between the door and its frame, Tucker laughed. “We’re not sales people. We’re here representing—”

Olivia kicked him in the shin. He yelped and jumped back.

She smiled sweetly at Antonio. “We’re representing a private collector who’s interested in sponsoring a showing of the artwork of someone new and fresh.”

Antonio visibly relaxed. “Really?”

“Look how he’s dressed?” She angled her thumb at Tucker and he glanced down at his suit coat and green tie. Sure he was a bit overdressed for the country. But he was a businessman not a hippie.

“I’m okay.” She rolled her eyes dramatically. “But he’s
obviously not a tourist and his clothes are too expensive for him to be a salesman. As I said, we represent a private collector.”

“And you want to show
my
work
?
”

Vivi stepped forward. “Well, we haven’t seen your work. Our client is an art patron, but he’s not a sap. Your work would have to meet certain standards.” She smiled. “We’d love to see it.”

As they waited for Antonio to take Vivi’s hint and let them in, Tucker scowled. She’d made fun of
his
clothes? Antonio had no shirt. Bare feet. Jeans that hung low on his hips. Sheesh. With his black curly hair tousled, the guy was a walking cologne ad. At least Tucker was fully covered.

Finally, Antonio opened the door wide enough for them to enter. “The place is a mess.”

Vivi put her hand on his forearm. “We’re not here to see the place. We’re here to see your work.” She glanced around. “I understand your primary venue is painting.”

“Yes.”

They entered a house desperately in need of updating. Lines in the plaster and a cracked window were the highlights of the room Antonio led them to. A half-finished painting sat on an easel. But many canvases leaned against the back wall.

The paintings lured Tucker into the room. Vivid colors and stark images dominated. He turned his head slightly and caught Antonio’s gaze.

“You have a unique way of looking at the world.”

Antonio laughed. “I had a unique upbringing.”

Tucker swung his gaze to Olivia. If ever there was an opening to tell him about his father, this was it. But she quickly shook her head.

He sucked back a sigh. She had better know what she was doing.

She turned to Antonio with a smile. “What was unique about your upbringing?”

He shrugged, walked to the stack of paintings where Tucker stood and flipped the first away from the second. “My mom died when I was young.” He took painting one and slid it aside so Tucker could more clearly see painting two. “I was raised in foster care.”

“So was I.” This time he didn’t look to Olivia for consent. This was Business Conversation 101. Identify with your client and have them identify with you. “Someone left me in a church.” He focused attention on the painting Antonio had bared for him. It was the proverbial field of wildflowers Vivi had talked about. Antonio had painted his backyard and it was stunning. He could almost feel the warmth of the sun, smell the flowers.

Antonio removed painting two, displaying painting three.

Olivia said, “So tell us more about yourself.”

“As I said, my mom died.” He slid it aside and stood beside Tucker again, patient, as if he’d had others view his work before and knew the drill. “I don’t know who my father is. But my mom was from around here. When I got old enough and had saved a few bucks, I came here to meet my relatives.” He laughed lightly. “And with landscapes like this to paint, you can see why I never left.”

Tucker reverently said, “I can.”

Olivia hung back. She didn’t have an artist’s eye, but she knew the paintings were good. Tucker, on the other hand, clearly thought they were magnificent. But it didn’t matter. Her brain had stalled on his quiet statement that he’d been left at a church, didn’t know his parents. Her heart broke a little bit picturing a tiny baby, wrapped in a blue blanket, alone for God knows how long in an empty church that had probably echoed with his cries.

But she forced herself to think about business. They’d opened a door for discussions about his parentage and one for displaying his work in a showing. She didn’t want to push too hard, too fast. It was time to go.

She stepped forward. “Mr. Engle will give you his cell phone number.” She smiled at Antonio, then Tucker. “And you can give us yours.” Antonio quickly tore a sheet from a drawing pad and scribbled his number before he handed it to Tucker. He tore off another sheet and offered it to Tucker to write his number too.

Instead Vivi’s boss pulled a business card from his jacket pocket.

“You’ll be hearing from us.”

Antonio beamed. “Great.”

The second they were in the car, Tucker turned on her. “What the hell was that all about? We could have stayed there for hours, asked a million questions. He loved us. He’d have done anything we wanted.”

“We’re supposed to be scouting, not hiring him on the spot. I wanted this to look real.”

“There were at least three chances for us to have ‘the’ real conversation. I could have easily told him who he was.”

“And he could have easily turned on us. He’s proud of his work. You seemed to agree with his assessment that it’s very good. We’ll go back to Constanzo’s, tell him my plan, see if he likes it. If he does, we ease into Antonio’s life over the next few days and ease Constanzo into the art show plan. When the moment is right, we’ll tell him.”

“Do you know how many ways that could go wrong?”

“Yes. But I also know that if we do it my way, give them a little time together before we drop the bomb, even if he freaks and heads for the hills, he’ll still know his dad and when he calms down he could come back.”

Tucker started the car. “You’d better be right.”

“I may not be.”

He gaped at her.

“But I think my plan is better than just dropping him in a pot of boiling water.” She peeked over at him. “You know the rule about cooking a live frog don’t you?”

His eyes narrowed.

“You put him in warm water, water he’s comfortable with and turn up the heat so gradually he doesn’t even realize the water is boiling until it’s too late.”

He shook his head, but didn’t argue.

Vivi relaxed. “So, how did you learn about art? Anything looks good to me. I mean, it was clear Antonio’s work was good, but I couldn’t tell you if it was exceptional. Yet you knew it was.”

“It’s in the eye of the beholder. If the technique is good, you just check your gut...did it touch you, say something?”

“And what did his work say to you?”

Tucker turned onto the country road again, heading back to Constanzo’s. Seconds ticked off the clock. Then a minute. Vivi wondered if he was going to reply to her question.

Just as she was about to ask again, he sighed. “His work tells me that he sees beauty even in an ugly world.”

“He thinks the world is ugly?”

“He
knows
the world is ugly. He was raised as a foster kid, remember? Even the foster parents who loved him probably gave him up from time to time, depending upon their own conditions. A foster dad can need heart surgery or a knee replacement. Sometimes they just can’t keep you. When he turned eighteen, government help ended. And it’s possible he might have suddenly found himself out on the street.”

He spoke with such confidence, such surety, that her heart melted a bit. She pictured the baby in the blue blanket, crying in the church again. “I’m guessing some of that happened to you.”

He sighed. “I’m not special and I’m not crazily depressed. Things like that happen to a lot of kids. Growing up as a foster kid isn’t easy.”

“But you made something of yourself.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And you still think the world is ugly?”

“I think the world is hard, not a sweet soft place like you do.”

She gasped. “Are you calling me a Pollyanna? I’m not a Pollyanna!”

He sniffed a laugh. “Right.”

“There are things in my past, too.”

“Uh-huh. The law suit.”

Her chin lifted. “It was humiliating.”

“And I’m sure it probably scared you. But I also know the kid dropped his suit. And I’m pretty sure your two parents cuddled you the whole way through it.”

“Well, you snob!”

His mouth fell open. “Snob?”

“Do you think everybody with parents had it easy?”

“Certainly easier than those of us who didn’t have parents.”

“Parents can’t fix everything.”

“And what happened to poor Miss Vivi that couldn’t be fixed? Boyfriend break your heart?”

“My boyfriend turned out to be nothing like everybody thought he was.”

“So you called him evil names, his parents sued and you ended up the bad girl.”

“Leave it alone.”

He sucked in a breath, suddenly so curious he couldn’t stop himself. All along he’d recognized there was something about her, something different, something important. And he
knew
it had something to do with that lawsuit. Yet she wouldn’t tell him. She pushed and pushed and pushed to hear everything about his life. And he’d coughed up one fact after another. Yet here she was refusing to tell him something he could probably find for himself.

“I could look it up.”

She blanched. “Don’t. This is painful for me, as painful as your past is to you.”

He pulled the car to the side of the road and cut the engine. “Seriously? You have some kind of teenage Romeo and Juliet thing happen to you and think you can compare it to being left in a church? Abandoned? Raised by people who only took care of you because the state gave them money?”

She licked her lips.

“Come on. You started this. You ask me questions all the time. Now I’m pushing you. What the hell did this kid do that was so bad you had to try to ruin his reputation and force his parents to sue you?”

She glanced down at her hands. “He attacked me. He would have raped me if I hadn’t been able to get away.”

Tucker froze for three seconds before regret poured through him like hot maple syrup. “Oh, my God. He attacked you?”

“And the thing I did that was so bad that his parents sued? I tried to have him prosecuted.”

He’d never felt this combination of remorse and fury before, and had no idea how to deal with it. For every bit as much as he wished he could take back his angry words, he also wanted to punch the kid who’d hurt her. “I’m so sorry.”

“We were dating. Everybody assumed we were doing it. After all, he was the star quarterback on the local college football team. Handsome. Wealthy. Every girl in town wanted to date him and he picked me.”