but Gabe, his chatty PA Danielle had told her, was contemporary both in his design taste and in the way he chose to make his wines in Napa, using a blend of new and old-world techniques.
She sat up straighter in the cream-colored leather chair, her senses switching to high alert. Gabe was dressed in another of those beautifully tailored suits, this time a charcoal-gray that made his green eyes pop, and it took her pulse from zero to fifty in a second flat.
His gaze slid over her. “Scusa. Traffic was murder.”
She bit her tongue. “No worries.”
“Buongiorno,” he murmured to Danielle, requesting an espresso and for her to move his next meeting, before waving Alex into his office, an equally large, open space that offered a superb view of the city.
She sat down in the chair he pointed to and took in the hard line of his jaw. “You’re not going to give me the job.”
He shut the door, walked around the desk and sat down opposite her. “I want to get a few things straight before I give you my answer.”
She felt the need for a preemptive strike. “If it’s about the kiss, I—”
“Are you even capable,” he asked harshly, stripping off his jacket, “of muzzling that mouth of yours while I lay this out?”
Whoa. Someone had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning... His face was all hard lines and tense mouth, his broad shoulders ramrod straight under the crisp light blue shirt. “Okay,” she agreed carefully, “I’m a mute until you tell me I can speak.”
His eyes flashed and she had the feeling he would have taken that comment elsewhere had he not been so focused on the subject at hand. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the desk. If that was supposed to intimidate her, it didn’t. “I will let you manage these events on four conditions.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to snap back that he needed her as much as she needed him, but she pressed her lips together and sat back in the chair.
“One,” he began, “I brief you today, you put an idea I like on my desk by Monday and you’re in.”
She nodded. She was nothing if not good under pressure.
“Two. If for any reason creative differences make it impossible for us to work together, I can fire you at any time.”
Hot anger singed her veins. “You are too much.”
He held up a hand, an icy, calm expression on his face. “You’re a mute, remember?”
She was going to be a killer in a second.
“Three,” he continued. “You have nothing to do with Jordan Lane. He is the competition and you will not do work for him. And four—” he trained his gaze on hers “—what happened last night doesn’t happen again.”
“You started it,” she burst out like a three-year-old.
“And now I’m ending it.” His lips tilted downward. “This is the most important launch of De Campo’s modern history, Alex. There is a ten-million-dollar ad campaign behind it. We don’t get to screw up.”
No kidding.
He pushed her portfolio across the desk. “I looked at this. You’re incredibly talented.”
She glowed at that. “Thank you.”
“I want you to work on the events. I know you’re right for this. Which means,” he added grimly, “we need to learn to work together. We need to put our personal differences aside. Put this inconvenient attraction we have for one other aside. And get this done.”
Inconvenient attraction? She supposed that’s what it was, but she didn’t like the distasteful way he said it. As if she were a bug running across the gleaming wooden floor he wanted to crush.
His gaze was on her, expectant. She lifted a brow. “Am I allowed to talk?” He nodded. “Sooo,” she began, “I’m all for that.” She had precisely one month’s office rent in reserve and she’d like to pad that, not kiss him again. “I also have no interest in working for Jordan Lane.”
“Bene.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, his dictatorial terms secured. “This is the way it’s going to work. You show me the theme—I approve. Then I see everything at every step in the process. Invitations, decor, suppliers.... Any major decision—I approve it.”
Alarm bells started to ring in her head. “Look, I know you had a bad experience with the last agency and the pressure is on, but that’s not how I work.”
“It is now.”
She reined in the urge to tell him he’d lost touch with reality. “We have three and a half weeks to pull these events together, Gabe. We’re going to have to move at lightning speed and even then, it’s going to be a minor miracle if we pull it off.”
His face was hard, implacable. “Tell me now if you can’t do it.”
“I can do it,” she barked, leaning forward and resting her palms on the desk. “But I think it’s nuts. You’re the vice president of De Campo Group. You have a wine to get out the door in a few weeks. You really want to be approving catering menus?”
“I’m creating a brand,” he returned harshly. “Everything depends on first impressions. So if I want to approve a catering menu, I will.”
“What about one of your marketing people back in New York? Surely they can work with me?”
“They’re not close enough to the ground.”
“Then get them here.”
His scowl grew. “This launch is mine, Alex. The culmination of years of blood, sweat and tears. I want to be intimately involved. You play by my rules or you don’t play at all.”
She pressed her lips together. “Do I need your approval to go to the bathroom, too?”
“Scusi?”
“Nothing.” She tapped her fingernails on the desk in a staccato rhythm. “Those poor buggers,” she muttered under her breath, feeling sorry for the last agency. But maybe it should be poor her. Because she was going to have to spend the next month of her life working for him.
“What did you say?”
She looked up at him, the tilt of her chin defiant. “I said, ‘poor buggers.’ As in I feel sorry for the old agency to have had to work with you. Are you sure they didn’t quit?”
His eyes glittered. “Are you sure you want to talk to your boss like that?”
“You’re not my boss yet.” She threw his words from last night back at him, wishing that didn’t put her head squarely back on that kiss. “I haven’t signed the contract yet. You realize I could walk out of this office right now and you’d be screwed, right?”
“But you aren’t going to do that.” He waved her portfolio at her. “I thought it was odd you weren’t booked solid,
