An Exquisite Challenge
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Jennifer Hayward
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18,2K
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Chapter One
IF LIFE WAS a glass of Cabernet, Alexandra Anderson wanted to live right in the lusty, full-bodied center of it. The thrill of the chase was paramount—the stickier the challenge, the better. If she wasn’t sure she could do it—that’s where she wanted to be. That’s when she got even better. That’s where she thrived.
As for the intricacies of that particular varietal versus California Zinfandel and Merlot? For a girl who’d grown up in the backwaters of Iowa tossing back beers with the undesirable crowd, it wasn’t something that kept her up at night. Who gave a toss as long as it tasted good and did something to alleviate the interminable boredom of yet another cocktail party that was all work and no play?
Certainly not the sentiment of the man who’d just strode into Napa Valley’s annual industry fundraiser for the homeless, a massive scowl on his face. Those grapes that made bubbly go fizz for her were an obsession for Gabriele De Campo, the visionary behind De Campo Group’s world-renowned wines. His raison d’être.
She stood watching him from her perch on the balcony overlooking the mezzanine of the Pacific Heights hotspot Charo, where the event was being held, with only one goal in mind: to indulge in one of those adrenaline-seeking ventures she so loved. To convince Gabriele De Campo to let her PR firm handle the two massive upcoming launch events for De Campo’s most important wine in a decade. It was her chance to finally win a piece of the internationally renowned winemaker’s communications portfolio, and she didn’t intend to fail.
She took a sip of the glass of wine she’d been nursing for an hour and a half while she’d schmoozed every key player in the California wine industry, doing every piece of reconnaissance she could to learn who was who, what made these people tick and what would make a knockout launch for De Campo.
A warning shiver snaked up her spine. Was she crazy to even be attempting this?
It had all happened in a rather mind-numbingly quick fashion. This morning she’d been sleeping off one too many martinis from her girls’ night out in Manhattan when she’d been woken at 6:00 a.m. with a panicked phone call from Katya Jones, the head of De Campo’s marketing department. An old colleague of hers, cool-as-a-cucumber Katya had sounded unusually flustered. Gabriele De Campo had just fired the PR agency handling his Devil’s Peak launch for its “atroce” ideas three and a half weeks before simultaneous kickoff events in Napa and New York. “I need you,” Katya had groaned. “And I need you now.”
Alex might not have been so inclined to drag her sorry butt out of bed for a chance to work for her sister’s brother-in-law if she hadn’t just lost her three-million-dollar-a-year diamond client this week in a hostile takeover. It had been a huge blow for Alex’s fledgling PR firm that had just taken over a ritzy new space on Fifth Avenue. If she didn’t find another big client soon, she’d be closing her doors before she even got started. So she’d shaken off her fuzz, canceled her appointments and jumped on a plane to San Francisco in time to make this party.
There was only one problem with the whole scenario. Katya didn’t know Alex’s relationship to Gabe. Didn’t know he had a strict no-working-with-family policy he’d never bent from, no matter how much she’d tried to convince him to give her De Campo’s business. Didn’t know she and Gabe were like oil and water. Always. When Gabe said white, she said black. It was just the way it was.
Which had no bearing on the here and now, she told herself, tucking a wayward strand of her long, dark hair back into her chignon, squaring her shoulders and starting for the winding staircase that led down to the mezzanine. Her combative relationship with Gabe was inconsequential when a two-million-dollar contract was on the line. When her future was on the line.
She curved her hand around the mahogany banister and took a deep, steadying breath. Her steps down the staircase were slow and deliberate, designed not to attract attention. Gabe was in the middle of the crowd, speaking to the head of the local farm workers union, his attention immersed in his subject as it always was—that single-minded focus his trademark. But as she continued her descent, that familiar awareness flickered across the air between them, charged, electric. Gabe’s head came up. His gaze froze as it rested on her. His eyes widened.
As if he was surprised to see her.
Oh, Lord. Katya had told him she’d hired her. Hadn’t she?
She started to get the awful feeling that no, somehow her old colleague had not passed along that crucial piece of information as she descended the second flight of stairs, her heart thumping in tandem with each step. Gabe’s thick, dark brow arched high, his gaze not leaving her face. Surprise. Definitely surprise.
This was so, so not good.
Or maybe, she countered desperately, as he broke off his conversation and strode over to stand at the base of the stairs, it was actually a very good thing. Having the element of surprise over control freak Gabe could work in her favor. Allow her to slide in some sound reasoning before he brought the gavel down.
Her knees, as she descended the last flight and took him in, felt a little too weak for a woman facing a man who was essentially family. Which might have been due to the superbly tailored suit that fit Gabe’s tall, muscular body like a glove. Or his black-as-night hair worn overly long with perfectly cut sideburns.
Some women pointed out the sexy indentation in the middle of his chin as outrageously hot. She preferred the drown-yourself-in-them forest-green eyes. His formidable self-control she was fairly certain would come crumbling down for the right woman...
She pulled in a breath as she negotiated the last step and stopped in front of him. Utterly to die for. Utterly off-limits. Get a hold of yourself, Lex.
His mouth curved. “Alexandra.”
The rich, velvety texture of his voice stormed her senses, sending goose bumps to every inch of her skin. His use of her full name was formal, his gaze as it rested on her face probing. “I had no idea you were on the West Coast.”
Dammit, Katya. He really had no idea. She swallowed past the sudden dryness in her throat and tipped her head back to look up at him. “Your internal radar didn’t signal I was close?”
His mouth quirked. “Something must have been scrambling the signal.”
She braced herself against the smoky, earthy scent of him as he bent to brush his lips across each of her cheeks, but his husky “ciao” decimated her composure.
“What are you doing here?” he murmured, drawing back, his gaze lingering on her face. “I can’t imagine anything less your style than an industry party like this.”
Hell. She lifted her chin. “You haven’t spoken to Katya yet today, have you?”
“Katya Jones?”
“Yes, she was going to call you. She—I—” Alex planted her gaze on his and held on. “She hired me, Gabe. To do the events.”
His eyes widened, then darkened. “That isn’t possible. I approve those decisions.”
“I’m afraid it is,” she said calmly. “Have you checked your messages? She must have left you one.”
He scraped his hair out of his face with a tanned, elegant-fingered hand and scowled. “I haven’t had two seconds to think today, let alone check email.”
And there you had it. She plastered a breezy, confident smile on her face. “You have coast-to-coast launches in three and a half weeks, Gabe. Katya knows I’m the only one who can pull them off at this point, so she called me in to help.” She waved a hand at him. “I’m here to save you.”
“Save me?” His frown deepened. “You know I have a firm policy against working with family.”
“I don’t think you have a choice.”
He screwed up his aristocratic, beautiful face and sliced a hand through the air. “I need a drink.”
Excellent idea. So did she.
“So, I can have a theme to you in forty-eight hours,” she said brightly, trailing along behind him to the bar. “I looked at the ideas the other agency put together for you and I agree, they’re crap. I’ve got some much better ones.”
“Alex,” he growled, slapping his palm on the bar, “you are not doing these launch events.”
She slid onto a stool, her chin tilted at a mutinous angle. “Katya hired me. I’m brilliant at my job. You know I am.”
“That is irrelevant.” He barked a request for drinks at the bartender, then sat down beside her. “I know you’re the best, Alex. I would have hired you already if you weren’t family. But you are, and it’s not happening.”
Desperation surged through her. She rested her elbows on the bar, locked her gaze on his and went for the jugular. “You backed the wrong horse, Gabe. You chose the wrong agency and now you’re in too deep. Executing two massive back-to-back launch events in Napa and New York with this little prep time is an almost suicidal assignment. There are only two PR people besides myself in this country who are even capable of pulling it off. One,” she emphasized, “is presently sailing up the Nile with his wife. I know because I just got a postcard from him. The second is in Houston doing an event with five extra staff she just hired to make it happen. You will not,” she pronounced, “be getting any personal service there.”
He slid a glass of wine across the bar to her, his broad shoulders rising in a dismissive shrug. “We’ll figure it out. I’m not breaking my rule.”
Fire singed her veins. There were a few things Alex was sure of in life. One was the fact that no one was better at their job than she was. Hands down. He needed her. “Do you want your launches to fail?” she demanded. “You’ve spent eight years, eight years getting De Campo to this point in Napa, Gabe. Eight years gaining the respect you deserve for your Californian vintages. You have one chance to make a first impression with this wine. I can make sure it’s the launch of the year.”
He set his glass down and cursed under his breath. Alex stared at him. She had never, ever heard Gabe say that word.
“Let me help you,” she murmured, reaching out and laying her hand on his forearm. “I can do this.”
A current of electricity zigzagged its way from her palm to her stomach. She pulled her hand away and tucked it under her thigh. It was always this way between them, a gigantic pulse-fluttering awareness of each other that defied reason.
“You didn’t think it was a really bad idea jumping on a plane before you had any idea if I was going to take you on?” Gabe muttered with a dark stare that was equal parts frustration and something else entirely.
“Katya hired me. As in gave me the job, Gabe.”
“I can unhire you.”
“You wouldn’t.”
He shrugged. “You know it’s a bad idea.”
“It’s fine.” She sank her teeth into her bottom lip. “I’ll stay out of your way. I’ll be so invisible you won’t even know I’m there.”
“That,” he murmured, wry humor flashing in his eyes, “is a physical impossibility for you. You’re like a fire-engine-red poppy in a sea of Tuscan green.”
“Gabe—”
He held up a hand, his gaze flicking over her shoulder. “I need to talk to a couple of people, then I have a ton of work to do at home. Sit here, wait for me and I’ll drive you back to your hotel. We can talk on the way.”
She wanted to retort she wasn’t a dog, that she didn’t take orders, but this was the part where she needed to prove he could work with her.
“Fine,” she murmured sweetly. “Here I sit, waiting for you...”
He narrowed his gaze on her face, looked as if he was about to say something, then shook his head and stood. “Ten minutes.”
She watched his tall, imposing figure cut through the crowd. Holy hell, Katya. Really?
The chicly dressed West Coast crowd buzzed around her, drawn to the shining mahogany centerpiece of a bar like moths to a flame. She settled back on the stool, enjoying the relaxed, chilled-out vibe that was so far from the New York scene she was used to, it was like night and day. Sipped her wine and wondered how to approach this Gabe she wasn’t familiar with. He rarely got into a mood, he was iron man, the man most likely to walk through a burning building unscathed, his Armani suit intact. Yet tonight he was antagonized, edgy. Harder to predict.
The only thing to do was stick to the end goal, she told herself. Get the job. She hadn’t spent the last eight years slugging it out in a big, prestigious Manhattan PR firm to go back to working fourteen-hour days on brands that bored her to tears. Functioning like a corporate robot to pad someone else’s bottom line. Anderson Communications was hers. Her ticket to complete financial independence and security. She was not going to fail.
For her, freedom was everything. Misplaced testosterone had no part in it when her future was on the line.
She ran her gaze over the crowded bar with a restless energy that contrasted with the easy vibe. Continued cataloging the attributes of her target audience. A fortysomething salt-and-pepper male on the other side of the bar caught her eye.
It couldn’t be.
It was.
The one man she’d truly hoped never to see again.
Her heart stopped in her chest. Tall, lean and sophisticated in a dark gray designer suit, chatting to a quirkily beautiful blonde, he looked exactly the same. Except, now he had the gray where before he hadn’t and there were visible lines around his eyes when he smiled. That smile he knew dropped a woman at fifty paces.
It had her.
She whipped around on the stool, but not before he saw her. The shock on his face rocketed through her, made her dizzy, disoriented. She got unsteadily to her feet and walked blindly through the crowd, destination undetermined, anywhere that was far, far away from him. The faces around her blurred into a haze of polite laughter and bright lights. Of course Jordan would be here tonight. He was the CEO of the biggest spirits company in the U.S. Everyone who was anyone in the wine industry was here....
Why hadn’t she anticipated it?
A hand came down on her shoulder.
“Alex.”
She spun around, her heart jump-starting and racing a mile a minute. Jordan Lane. Her former client. The man she’d made the biggest mistake of her life with.
The man she’d loved and hated in equal measure.
“Jordan.” She forced the words past her constricted throat. “What a surprise.”
His gaze narrowed on her face as if to say he knew she’d seen him, but he played the game, capturing her hand in a deliberate gesture and brushing his lips across her knuckles. “You look beautiful. Age agrees with you.”
Meaning she’d been twenty-two when she’d met him and far too unsophisticated to ever have been able to handle a man like him. Heat roared inside of her, dark and all consuming. She pulled her hand back and pressed the trembling appendage to her side. He had used her inexperience to play her like a bow, to mold her into what he’d desired.
The charm was still there, but the predatory instinct in those startling blue eyes was clearly visible to her now. How had she not seen it before?
“How about,” she suggested icily, “we pretend I took that as a compliment and you go back to your flirtation? At least she doesn’t look half your age.”
His eyes darkened to the wintry color of the Hudson River on a stormy day. “How about we have a drink and talk about it?”
“No. Thank. You.” She turned her back on him.
“It’s about work.”
She spun around. “I wouldn’t work for you if you were the last client on this planet.”
“It takes two to tango, Alex.”
“Funny,” she bit out, “I didn’t even know I was dancing.”
His mouth tightened. “I need branding work done. I know your work and I trust you.”
Trust. Her stomach lurched. The very thing he’d taken away from her when she’d had so little to start with. She clenched her hands into fists and drew herself up to her full height, her gaze clashing with his wintry silver one. “You lied to me and dishonored your wife, Jordan. You almost destroyed my career. Don’t talk to me about trust.”
“Let me make it up to you.” He thrust his hands in his pockets and shifted his weight onto both feet. “I heard you lost Generes. Let me give you some work.”
She lifted her chin. “Go to hell.”
Head held high, she pushed through the crowd, anger stinging her eyes, stinging every part of her. How dare he so cavalierly dismiss what he’d done? How dare he think she’d even want to talk to him, let alone work for him? She was almost to the front doors when a hand grasped her arm. Sure it was him again, she swung around, intent on giving him a piece of her mind, but it was Gabe standing in front of her.
“Everything all right?”
She nodded. “I just need some fresh air.”
“You know Jordan Lane?”
Damn. He had seen them. She struggled to wipe the emotion from her face, to wipe away any evidence she had ever known the man who had almost destroyed her. “Yes—” she nodded “—he was a client at my old agency.”
A frown creased his brow. “He was coming on to you?”
“No.” She raked a hand through her hair and looked away from that penetrating green gaze. “He was offering me a job.”
“He’s not the kind of guy you want to work for, Alex.”
She set her chin at a belligerent angle. “Then give me the job and I won’t have to.”
He was silent for a moment. If there was one person she couldn’t read in this world, it was Gabe. He guarded his feelings with a security worthy of Alcatraz. “I’m ready to go,” he said finally, pulling the sweater out of her arms and holding it out for her. “You look exhausted. Let’s go.”
She slipped her arms into the sleeves, letting him wrap it around her. His deliciously male scent enveloped her, sending her senses into overdrive. And not the kind of overdrive that had anything to do with business.
The valet brought Gabe’s car around. He held the door open for her and she slipped into the luxurious interior of the silver-blue Porsche and sighed. So much better to be out of that crowd.
On the way to her hotel, Gabe wanted to know how his nephew, Marco, Lilly and Riccardo’s rambunctious two-year-old, was doing. She gave him an update, smiling when he asked her what he should buy him for his birthday present, because Gabe inevitably bought Marco totally inappropriate toys. No one saw fit to correct him because, really, how could you tell a proud uncle that a two-year-old, however clever Marco undoubtedly was, was not capable of building a suspension bridge by himself?
They hadn’t even begun discussing the events when Gabe parked outside her boutique Union Square hotel, cut the engine on the powerful beast of a car and looked at her. “Talk over a drink?”
She nodded, even though every bone in her body told her it was a bad idea. She wasn’t sure if it was seeing Jordan tonight that made her nervous about having a man in her hotel room or if it was just that it was Gabe, but her cozy little suite suddenly seemed far too small as they entered it and he shrugged out of his jacket and loosened his tie. Steady on, she told herself, turning some lights on as he folded himself into the sofa in the little sitting room. It’s just a drink.
He looked tired, she noticed, the lines at the sides of his mouth more pronounced than usual, the hand he used to rub his eyes shifting back to cradle his neck. The stress was getting to him.
She walked over to the bar. “Scotch?”
“Soda and lime if you have it. I have to drive back to the vineyard tonight.”
“Aren’t you swamped back in New York?” he asked as she handed him his drink and perched on the sofa beside him. “How can you possibly take on a job like this?”
“Some things have moved around in my calendar.” Moved permanently, as in out of her calendar, but he didn’t need to know that.
He sat back and took a sip of his drink. “Us working together is a bad idea, Alex.”
“These are extraordinary circumstances.”
“We will kill each other.”
“No,” she countered, “we will learn to work together. I haven’t even tried to be nice to you.”
His smile flashed white against his olive skin. “That thought terrifies me.”
She gave him an earnest look. “I’m the only person who can do this, Gabe.”
He set his drink down and pushed a distracted hand through his hair. “If I gave you the business, and I’m not insinuating anything here, would you do the work yourself or will it be a case of bait and switch with the juniors doing everything?”
“I’ve never done a bait and switch in my life,” she said matter-of-factly. “If you hire me, you get me.”
Oh. That didn’t sound right. She hadn’t meant get her. But he knew what she meant, right?
He shot her a sideways look. “What is wrong with you? Sit down properly, for Cristo’s sake. You’re completely on edge.”
She pushed herself deeper into the sofa. She was on edge, dammit. It was stupidly hard to concentrate with Gabe plastered across the sofa of her hotel room looking hellishly hot in a shirt and tie that would have been ordinary on any other man but made him look like stud of the century.
“Alex?”
“Sorry?” She lifted her gaze to his face.
He sighed. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “It’s been a long day.”
He pursed his lips. Took a sip of his drink. “Convince me I should let you do this.”
She got up, found her briefcase and pulled out a file. “Here are five case studies of events I’ve pulled off in this amount of time,” she said, handing it to him. “I can make this the most spectacular debut for your wine. I promise you that.”
He flipped through the folder. “This is impressive.”
“So make the call.”
He put the folder down on the coffee table and sat back. The movement drew her attention to his superb, muscular thighs. They were so good they were impossible not to ogle.
“Even if I did agree you are the right choice,” he said evenly, “we still need to discuss our other problema.”
“What other problem?”
“That problem.”
She frowned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He lifted a brow. “Tell me that was not a distinctly lustful look.”
“That was not lustful. That was—”
“Alex.” He angled his body toward her and captured her gaze. “You’ve been jumpy since the minute we walked into this hotel room and we both know why. You keep wondering what it would have been like to have that kiss in Lilly and Riccardo’s garden and so do I.”
Ahh. The almost kiss. The thing she couldn’t get out of her head no matter how hard she tried. She’d been slightly tipsy, standing on a stool unstringing lanterns from a tree after all the guests had left her sister’s welcome-to-summer party, when Gabe had come looking for her. She’d been caught so off guard by his sudden presence she’d nearly fallen off the stool. He’d caught her and swung her to the ground, but kept his arms around her waist. The knowledge that he had been about to kiss her had made her grab her slingbacks and run.
She scowled at him. “I’m working on about four hours’ sleep, that’s why I’m jumpy. Maybe you should just say yes to the contract so I can get some rest and—” She stared at him as he moved closer. “What are you doing?”
He lifted his hand and splayed his fingers across her jaw. “Figuring out how bad this particular problema is before I make up my mind.”
“There is no problem,” she croaked. “And if we’re going to be working together, I—”
“I haven’t said yes yet,” he cut in, his gaze purposeful. “Right now we have no working relationship whatsoever.”
They did have heat. They definitely had heat. She swallowed hard as it washed over her and made her pulse dance. “If I make this really bad you’ll say yes?”
His gaze darkened. “It isn’t going to be bad.”
No, she acknowledged, heart pounding, it wasn’t. Slicking her tongue across dry lips, she told herself she just needed to stay in control. Prove to him this attraction between them was wholly avoidable. But when he shifted his thumb to the seam of her lips in the most erotic opening to a kiss she’d ever experienced, she caved like a ton of bricks.
Her first taste of Gabriele De Campo lived up to every fantasy she’d ever had. Hot, smooth and utterly in control, his mouth slanted unhurriedly over hers, exploring every dip and curve with a leisurely enjoyment that made her want to curl her fingers into his shirt and beg. She resisted with the small amount of willpower she still possessed, but it was like being dangled over a ledge a hundred feet above the ground and told to hang on when you knew you were eventually going to fall.
She’d known he’d be good. Just not this good.
For a minute, for just one glorious minute, the temptation was too great and she let her mind go blank. And let herself savor what she’d been craving for a very long time.
He sensed her softening. Slid his hand to the back of her head and took her mouth in a drugging, never-ending kiss that upped the hotness quotient by ten. Off balance, she had to dig her fingers into his shirt and hang on.
“Lex,” he murmured, sliding his tongue along the seam of her lips. “Give me more.”
She was going to stop this in about five seconds. She was. He demanded entry again and she gave it to him. The feel of his tongue sliding sensuously against hers made her insides coil tight. This was more than a kiss, it was a full-out assault on her common sense.
And it was working.
She yanked herself out of his arms, her chest moving rapidly in and out. Her five seconds were definitely up. Way past up.
“That was not fair.”
“You need to admit you have a problem to solve it,” he murmured dryly. “Now we know.”
“We also know we can control it,” she pointed out. “Look it’s done. Presto,” she said, waving her hand at him. “Never to be had again. Curiosity’s over.”
He picked up the file and got to his feet. “Be at my office at ten tomorrow.”
She stared at him incredulously. “You’re leaving me hanging?”
He waved the file at her. “I need to read this.”
“That kiss was nothing, Gabe.”
“I’d like to see what something is.”
She watched as he straightened his shirt. Mortification sank into her bones. Why the hell had she allowed that to happen? She was supposed to be convincing him of her professionalism, not her skills in the necking department.
She followed him to the door. “You won’t regret it if you give me this job, Gabe.”
He gave her a long look. “Che resta da vedere.”
She scrunched her face up. “What does that mean?”
“That remains to be seen.”
He left. She picked up her shoe and threw it at the door. His soft laughter came from the other side. “Use the deadbolt, Alex.”
Despite her bone-deep fatigue, it took a hot shower and an hour of fretting to get herself anywhere near sleep. Gabe had been playing her and playing her well. Establishing a reason not to give her the business. She’d just been too busy being a spineless fool who couldn’t resist his Italian charm to see it.
After all these years of walking away, it had taken jet lag to do her in.
She whacked her head against the pillow and closed her eyes. If she got another chance, if he gave her the job tomorrow, she wasn’t making the same mistake twice.
