“That’s reassuring.” She meant it. She needed his experience to navigate this. She’d have to make sure to someday return the favor.
He removed his hand. “I thought it might be.”
Around them stage techs bustled, making adjustments to mikes and cameras. Flint and Gina both gave them last-minute tips, and then everyone backed away. Through it all, Holly wondered why Joseph didn’t want to spend the day with her. If it were the press, she could understand. She too, was reluctant to be interviewed all day long.
But it couldn’t be, because he said he knew how to handle them. It must be her. This was a new record for Holly. She’d never had a man detest her on sight before.
“Can I ask you something, Joseph?”
“Sure, and call me Joe.”
“Why don’t you want to spend the day with me?” she asked. She knew she shouldn’t voice the question, but couldn’t help herself.
Maybe she hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before. Maybe the closer you got to thirty the less control you had over your mouth. Maybe…maybe she just needed to feel as if she was sitting by a friend in the glare of the spotlight, instead of next to a man who didn’t want her near him.
“It isn’t anything personal.”
Let it go, Hol. Just smile at the camera, talk about cooking, collect your check and get out of here.
“It kind of sounded like it,” she said. What was her deal today? Definitely not enough sleep, she decided.
Joe shrugged. “You remind me of someone.”
Though he didn’t say it was a woman, she sensed it was. She knew men. Knew the way they thought and acted.
So she should have known better than to ask the question that was on the tip of her tongue. Her dad and brothers would never admit a woman had broken their hearts. “Did she break your heart?”
Joe stared at her in a way that made her feel like she had a spotlight shining on her.
“Sorry, that was way too personal,” Holly said quickly. But she knew by his reaction that she’d struck a chord, and she wanted to know more.
“Yes, it was.” The look he gave her made her squirm in her chair. Not in embarrassment, though. It was a male look that made her blood flow a little faster. This man had a presence of sophistication that made her feel like an inexperienced prep-chef in the kitchen of a world-renowned master.
She looked around but couldn’t stand the suspense. “Well, are you going to answer?”
He laughed and the sound surprised her. It was a warm sound from a very cold-looking man. A man she sensed didn’t find much humor in life.
“No.”
Fair enough, she thought. The stage director came over and gave them some directions, and when he left, Holly glanced over at Joe. He didn’t look nervous, but she was.
“Is it my hair?” she asked after a few minutes. Men had some strange illusions about redheads.
“Is what your hair?” he asked.
“The thing that reminds you of the other person.”
“Yes.”
“She’s not Orphan Annie, is she? Because I thought all the makeup I’m wearing covered my freckles.”
He didn’t smile but she sensed his amusement. “No.”
“No to freckles or to Annie?”
“Annie. I can still see your freckles.”
“I knew it. I’m covered with them.”
“Everywhere?” he asked in an intimate voice.
“Yes,” she said, meeting his clear brown eyes. There was something sensual in his gaze and she couldn’t look away.
Joe Barone was more than she’d expected him to be and that unnerved her. She felt safe flirting with him, for some reason. Well, safe wasn’t really how she felt, but it was fun. It was weird to realize she didn’t understand him—he didn’t fit with what she’d come to expect from men—and even stranger to realize that she wanted to.
Her freckles weren’t the only things about Holly Fitzgerald that lingered in his mind. Her sweet scent lingered on the air—something homey that reminded him of his mom’s kitchen at the holidays and something else more elusive. An aroma distinct to Holly and no other woman.
She’s in your life for a day, he told himself. He’d best ignore it.
But he couldn’t. His groin was tight and his blood ran heavy whenever he thought about those damn freckles on her creamy skin. He wanted to strip that professional-looking suit from her body and find each and every freckle. To caress it first with his fingers, then with his tongue.
Whoa, boy. Obviously it was past time to start dating again. But he’d never been into casual sex. Even before Mary, he’d slept with only 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