two other women and no one since her death five years ago. He’d completely shut off that part of his nature—until today when it roared back to life, demanding his attention.
The stage techs broke down the equipment, and the garden was slowly returning to its beauty. This place had long been one of Joe’s favorites. He’d found solace here more than once, but not today.
The July sun beat down on him, but that wasn’t the source of the heat running through his veins. No, a certain redhead was responsible. “No redheads” had been more of a safety precaution than a rule. Still, he knew better.
Why wasn’t his body getting the message?
Holly laughed at something his sister said, and his groin tingled to life. He needed to get away, but for once his pager was silent. Giving in to the pull he felt from her, he joined her and Gina at the coffee and pastry table.
“So, are you over your fit?” his sister asked.
Only family treated him as if he was a defanged tiger. Everyone else in his world trod lightly around him, treating him like a loose cannon. He wished he understood why because then maybe he could wield that cannon against his sister. “Gina, I’m trying to remember why I tolerate you.”
“Familial duty.” Gina smiled up at him.
“Right now I wouldn’t mind being disinherited.”
Gina laughed. “Joe, you know we’re Italian. There’s no escaping the family.”
He smiled at his sister. He knew she always had Baronessa’s success at heart and that she’d worked hard to prove herself to the family. “Sorry I tried to back out.”
“Hey, it’s okay. Flint’s ideas are always bigger than he makes them out to be.”
Gina left to join her husband, and an awkward silence fell between him and Holly. Joe wasn’t an open and gregarious man. Never really had been. But the past few years he’d fallen deeper and deeper into a silence he found comforting.
Holly lifted her hair off the back of her neck as the sun rose in the sky. She had to be hot in that suit she wore. A few tendrils of curling red hair clung to her nape. The skin there was covered with those freckles she seemed worried about. He took a sip from the Evian bottle in his hand to keep from leaning down and blowing on her overheated skin.
“So…” she said.
He raised one eyebrow at her. If she had an inkling of the direction his thoughts had been heading, he was in deep water.
“Are you ready to confess all?” she asked with a gamine grin.
“No. But I am curious about you.” Joe decided to go on the offensive and drive her back into hiding. He’d been called brooding more than once by the women he’d dated. Why was it so hard to keep Holly at arm’s length?
“I’m an open book,” she said.
Her blue eyes said otherwise. Interesting. He’d really like to delve beneath her depths and uncover her secrets. But he didn’t think he could do that and still keep her at arm’s length.
“Yes. I already know you’re a pastry chef,” he said.
She took a bottle of water from the refreshment table. “In fact, I was at work this morning before I came down here.”
“You must really love baking,” he said. Though his family had made its name in the gelato business, Joe had never taken to baking or cooking. He could heat frozen dinners and reheat the casseroles that his mom sometimes sent to her kids’ houses. But beyond that he wasn’t even interested in trying.
She put the water down and stepped closer to him. Again her scent assailed him. It was time to end this conversation and get on with the rest of the day’s activities. As soon as she answered, he’d say something vague and move away from her.
“I do. The kitchen is the only place where I’m totally in control. Totally alone. There’s a…peace to it.”
“Why aren’t you ever alone?” he asked.
“Family,” she said. That one word summed up the way he sometimes felt about his.
He patted her shoulder trying for a brotherly touch, but knew he failed. Her arm under his hand was soft and he couldn’t help sliding his hand down to her tiny wrist. She wore a charm bracelet there with a tiny gold rolling pin on it. “I know what you mean.”
Who had given her the bracelet? A lover? Jealousy took him by surprise and he ran his finger under the fine gold chain, resting his finger on her pulse. It threaded steadily.
“Joe?”
Ah, hell, he thought. He knew better. Why was he even looking at her this way? “Did a man give you this?”
“Yes,” she said huskily.
“A lover?”
Her pulse doubled. “No.”
Her pupils had dilated and he saw more than awareness in them. He saw the same hunger that was coursing through his veins. Her lips parted and the air around them seemed to stop moving.
He leaned forward. “Would anyone object if I kissed you?”
“Are you going to kiss me?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“There’s no man in my life,” she said. Holly watched him with feminine speculation in her eyes, and Joe knew he’d never be the same.
Two
Joe lifted her wrist slowly. Her heart beat so hard she thought it would jump out of her chest. Sensation trembled through her body, but she was helpless to stop it.
His breath brushed against her wrist, warming the gold chain her dad had given to her for her twenty-first birthday. Though Joe’s mouth didn’t touch her, she felt the humid warmth, and a sensual beating started deep in her center.
Holly’s experience with men outside her family had been limited. She’d worked during high school, which had left her little time to date. Then she’d skipped college and went instead to the Culinary Institute.
But that didn’t explain why she hadn’t dated in the past six months. The truth was, few guys wanted to wait for her to finish working two shifts at the bakery, and drive to her dad’s house to fix dinner for him and her brothers before getting to her place to get ready for a date. The men she had dated tended to be career-minded as she was, and ultimately more interested in their jobs than in her. None of them had had a tenth of the raw sexuality she sensed in Joe Barone.
His dark eyes blazed with a passion she’d read about but never experienced. His mouth on her inner wrist started a chain reaction that ended deep inside her. His hand on her arm forced her to remember she was more than a sister and chef.
Joe reminded her that she was a woman in every sense of the word. He called to her femininity and made her want to reach under the civilized facade and bring the elemental man to the surface. A man she sensed needed more than the solace he
