her shoulders she sipped again and sat down. “I hear you’re seeing the French actress.”
“As always, your hearing’s excellent.”
As if it interested her, Gina studied the hue of the liqueur in her glass. “She is, of course, beautiful.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t think she’ll give me grandchildren.”
Carlo laughed and sat beside her. “You have six grandchildren and another coming, Mama. Don’t be greedy.”
“But none from my son. My only son,” she reminded him with a tap of her finger on his shoulder. “Still, I haven’t given you up yet.”
“Perhaps if I could find a woman like you.”
She shot him back arrogant look for arrogant look. “Impossible, caro.”
His feeling exactly, Carlo thought as he guided her into talk about his four sisters and their families. When he looked at this sleek, lovely woman, it was difficult to think of her as the mother who’d raised him, almost single-handedly. She’d worked, and though she’d been known to storm and rage, she’d never complained. Her clothes had been carefully mended, her floors meticulously scrubbed while his father had spent endless months at sea.
When he concentrated, and he rarely did, Carlo could recall an impression of a dark, wiry man with a black mustache and an easy grin. The impression didn’t bring on resentment or even regret. His father had been a seaman before his parents had married, and a seaman he’d remained. Carlo’s belief in meeting your destiny was unwavering. But while his feelings for his father were ambivalent, his feelings for his mother were set and strong.
She’d supported each of her children’s ambitions, and when Carlo had earned a scholarship to the Sorbonne in Paris and the opportunity to pursue his interest in haute cuisine, she’d let him go. Ultimately, she’d supplemented the meager income he could earn between studies with part of the insurance money she’d received when her husband had been lost in the sea he’d loved.
Six years before, Carlo had been able to pay her back in his own way. The dress shop he’d bought for her birthday had been a lifelong dream for both of them. For him, it was a way of seeing his mother happy at last. For Gina it was a way to begin again.
He’d grown up in a big, boisterous, emotional family. It gave him pleasure to look back and remember. A man who grows up in a family of women learns to understand them, appreciate them, admire them. Carlo knew about women’s dreams, their vanities, their insecurities. He never took a lover he didn’t have affection for as well as desire. If there was only desire, he knew there’d be no friendship at the end, only resentment. Even now, the comfortable affair he was having with the French actress was ending. She’d be starting a film in a few weeks, and he’d be going on tour in America. That, Carlo thought with some regret, would be that.
“Carlo, you go to America soon?”
“Hmm. Yes.” He wondered if she’d read his mind, knowing women were capable of doing so. “Two weeks.”
“You’ll do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
“Then notice for me what the professional American woman is wearing. I’m thinking of adding some things to the shop. The Americans are so clever and practical.”
“Not too practical, I hope.” He swirled his drink. “My publicist is a Ms. Trent.” Tipping back his glass, he accepted the heat and the punch. “I’ll promise you to study every aspect of her wardrobe.”
She gave his quick grin a steady look. “You’re so good to me, Carlo.”
“But of course, Mama. Now I’m going to feed you like a queen.”
Carlo had no idea what Juliet Trent looked like, but put himself in the hands of fate. What he did know, from the letters he’d received from her, was that Juliet Trent was the type of American his mother had described. Practical and clever. Excellent qualities in a publicist.
Physically was another matter. But again, as his mother had said, Carlo could always find beauty in a woman. Perhaps he did prefer, in his personal life, a woman with a lovely shell, but he knew how to dig beneath to find inner beauty. It was something that made life interesting as well as aesthetically pleasing.
Still, as he stepped off the plane into the terminal in L.A., he had his hand on the elbow of a stunning redhead.
Juliet did know what he looked like, and she first saw him, shoulder to shoulder with a luxuriously built woman in pencil-thin heels. Though he carried a bulky leather case in one hand, and a flight bag over his shoulder, he escorted the redhead through the gate as though they were walking into a ballroom. Or a bedroom.
Juliet took a quick assessment of the well-tailored slacks, the unstructured jacket and open-collared shirt. The well-heeled traveler. There was a chunk of gold and diamond on his finger that should’ve looked ostentatious and vulgar. Somehow it looked as casual and breezy as the rest of him. She felt formal and sticky.
She’d been in L.A. since the evening before, giving herself time to see personally to all the tiny details. Carlo Franconi would have nothing to do but be charming, answer questions and sign his cookbook.
As she watched him kiss the redhead’s knuckles, Juliet thought he’d be signing plenty of them. After all, didn’t women do the majority of cookbook buying? Carefully smoothing away a sarcastic smirk, Juliet rose. The redhead was sending one last wistful look over her shoulder as she walked away.
“Mr. Franconi?”
Carlo turned away from the woman who’d proven to be a pleasant traveling companion on the long flight from New York. His first look at Juliet brought a quick flutter of interest and a subtle tug of desire he often felt with a woman. It was a tug he could either control or let loose, as was appropriate. This time, he savored it.
She didn’t have merely a lovely face, but an interesting one. Her skin was very pale, which should have made her seem fragile, but the wide, strong cheekbones undid the air of fragility and gave her face an intriguing diamond shape. Her eyes were large, heavily lashed and artfully accented with a smoky shadow that only made the cool green shade of the irises seem cooler. Her mouth was only lightly touched with a peach-colored gloss. It had a full, eye-drawing shape that needed no artifice. He gathered she was wise enough to know it.
Her hair was caught somewhere between brown and blond so that its shade was soft, natural and subtle. She wore it long enough in the back to be pinned up in a chignon when she wished, and short enough on the top and sides so that she could style it from fussy to practical as the occasion, and her whim, demanded. At the moment, it was loose and casual, but not windblown. She’d stopped in the ladies’ room for a quick check just after the incoming flight had been announced.
“I’m Juliet Trent,” she told him when she felt he’d stared long enough. “Welcome to California.” As he took the hand she offered, she realized she should’ve expected him to kiss it rather than shake. Still, she stiffened, hardly more than an instant, but she saw by the lift of brow, he’d felt it.
“A beautiful woman makes a man welcome anywhere.”
His voice was incredible—the cream that rose to the top and then flowed over something
