Luca loved the unapologetic spectacle of it—the high Italianate drama in every detail, from the epic sweep of the house itself to the grounds kept in a condition to rival the Boboli Gardens in Florence, delighting the tourists on their wine-tasting tours of Sonoma—despite himself.
Tonight was the annual Castelli Wine Winter Ball. This was the reason Luca had flown across the world, landing only a scant hour earlier, which he was sure Rafael would think was cutting it a bit close. He and Rafael needed to make it abundantly clear to all and sundry that nothing had changed since Gianni’s passing. That everything was business as usual at Castelli Wine.
And as with most things in life, the more elegant and relaxed and attractive the face of a thing, the more people were likely to believe it.
Kathryn, Luca thought grimly, certainly proved that rule. And so did he. He banked on it, in fact.
He checked his watch for the fifth time in as many seconds, unreasonably irritated that she hadn’t been waiting for him when he’d emerged from his bedroom suite, showered and dressed and as recovered from their flight as it was possible to be in such a short time. He could already hear the band in the great ballroom and the sound of very well-heeled enjoyment below, all clinking glasses and graceful laughter, wafting up into the far reaches of the family wing and down the long hall to this remote set of rooms set apart from the rest.
Luca glared at Kathryn’s door, as if that might make her appear.
And when it did—when it started to open as if he’d commanded it with that glare—he scowled even more.
Until she stepped out into the hall, and then, he was fairly certain, all the blood in his head sank with an audible thud to his sex.
“What—” and his voice was a strangled version of his own, even from the great distance that ringing in his ears made it sound “—the hell are you wearing?”
Kathryn eyed him with that cool expression of hers that he was beginning to think might be the death of him. It clawed at him. It made him want nothing more than to heat her up and see what lurked beneath it.
“I believe it’s called a dress,” she said crisply.
“No.”
She stood there a moment. Blinked. “No? Are you sure? The last time I checked a dictionary, the word was definitely dress. Or perhaps gown? A case could be made for each, though I think—”
“Be quiet.”
Her mouth snapped closed and she had no idea how lucky she was that he hadn’t silenced her in the way he’d much prefer. He could already taste her again, as if he had. Luca pushed off the wall opposite her door, unable to control himself. Unable to think.
A red haze of sheer lust kicked through him, making everything else dim.
Yes, Kathryn was wearing a dress. Barely. It was in an off-white shade that should have made her look like a ghost, with that English complexion of hers, but instead made her seem to glow. As if she’d been lit from within by a buttery shimmer. It had a delicate, high neckline and no sleeves, and an elegant sort of wide belt that wrapped around her waist before the full skirt cascaded all the way to the floor.
None of that was the problem. That could have been Grace Kelly, it was all so effortlessly tasteful and stylish.
It was the damned cutouts that made his entire body feel like a single, taut ache. Two huge wedges that edged in at sharp angles from the sides, cutting into the lower bodice of the dress and showing sheer acres of her bare skin in that sweet spot below her breasts and above her navel, then flaring out over the curves of her sides.
Luca wanted to taste her everywhere he saw skin. Right here. Right now.
He didn’t realize he’d said that out loud until her eyes went wide and turned that fascinating slate-green shade, and then it didn’t matter anyway, because he’d lost his mind—and worse, his control. He backed her into her own closed door, bracing himself over her with a hand on either side of her head.
“You can’t,” Kathryn said. Whispered, more like, her voice a rough little scrape that he could feel in the hardest part of him. “Luca. We can’t.”
Luca didn’t ask himself what he was doing. He didn’t care. That dress pooled around her, seductive and impossible, and he was lost in the elegant line of her neck and the hair she’d swept back into a complicated chignon at her nape.
“Did my father give you these diamonds?” he asked, trying to force this red-hazed lust out of him by any means possible. But it didn’t shift at all, not even when he lifted a finger to trace the sparkling stones she wore in both her ears. One, then the next.
All of this was wrong. That pounding ache in his sex. This impossible hunger that stormed through him, casting everything else aside—including his own good intentions. He knew it. He still couldn’t seem to care about that as he should. As he knew he would eventually.
“Answer me,” he urged her, his mouth much too close to the sweet temptation of that tender spot behind her ear, and he couldn’t identify that dark, driving thing that had control of him then. “What did you have to do to earn them, Kathryn?”
She jerked her head to the side, away from his fingers and the way they toyed with the delicate shell of her ear, but it was too late. He could see the way she shivered. He could see the pulse that fluttered madly in her neck. He could see the goose bumps that ran down her bare arms.
There was no ordering himself to pretend he hadn’t seen those things. Or that he didn’t know what they meant.
“You are meant to be here as my assistant, nothing more,” he reminded her, his voice a low throb in the otherwise quiet hallway. “This is not meant to be an opportunity for you to flaunt your wares and pick up new customers.”
“You’re disgusting.”
The icy condemnation in her voice poured over him, gas to a flame.
“That is an interesting choice of words,” Luca murmured, his lips the barest breath away from her warm neck, and she shuddered. “What is more disgusting, do you think—the fact that I do not want you parading around the château, contaminating my family home and my father’s memory? Or the fact you have no qualms about wearing a dress that makes every man in the vicinity think of nothing but you, naked?”
She turned her head to face him then, and her hands came up, shoving futilely at his chest. Luca didn’t budge, and he had the distinct pleasure—or was it pain, he couldn’t tell—of watching the color rise in her exquisite cheeks.
“Only you think that,” she snapped at him, mutiny and feminine awareness and something hotter by far in her furious gaze. “Because only you live your life with your head in the gutter. Everyone else will see a lovely dress by a well-known designer and nothing more.”
“They will see my father’s widow in white, with her naked body on display,” he corrected her. “They will see your complete disregard for propriety, to say nothing of the memory of your very dear friend.”
She laughed. It was a high, outraged sound.
“What should I have worn instead?” she demanded. “A black shroud? What would make you happy, Luca? A tent of shame?”
His hands shook and he flattened them against the wall, because he knew. He knew. If he touched her again, he wouldn’t stop. He didn’t care how much more he’d hate himself for it.
He wasn’t sure he’d even try to stop himself.
“You told me your laughable story,” he reminded her. “An unlikely friendship struck by chance in a far-off waiting room, between one of the wealthiest men in the world and you, our favorite saint.” He studied the way her lush mouth firmed at that, the way her eyes flashed and darkened. “I think I saw the syrupy cable-television