Emily: Sex and Sensibility (6 page)

He already knew that she was unsophisticated. Her accent told him that she was a girl from somewhere in the South, probably a small town where life moved at a slower pace. He figured she was in her twenties. It was easy to imagine her finishing high school, trying to find work as a pianist—a piano player, he thought, smiling—and, after coming up empty, taking a job in an insurance office or maybe at a small retail shop for a couple of years while she saved up enough money to come north to the Big Apple.

She would know nothing of the life he led. She’d be as uncomfortable as the proverbial fish out of water.

Last night had been a page torn out of time.

Besides, suppose he did send her flowers. Or asked her to dinner. Once she realized who he was, what he was, a man building an empire, no matter how unsophisticated she was, that would change things. Like the easy way she’d dealt with him. Of course it would.

Plus, what would they talk about? Not that his conversations with the women he dated were ever deep and meaningful. Hell, he wasn’t looking for deep and meaningful, only that the women who passed through his life fit into it.

Seamlessly.

But he’d bet anything in the world that his rain-soaked tigress would fit into his arms.

Into his bed.

Emily, her skin silken and hot under the stroke of his hands, her mouth sweet and parted to the thrust of his tongue, her body arching against his, her cries of need and desire rising into the silence of the night…

His elbow jerked.

Half the stack of messages tumbled to the floor.

Marco muttered a curse, retrieved them, dumped them on his desk and shot to his feet.

The window wall behind him offered a breathtaking view of the city. He swung toward it, flattened his hands against the cool glass and took long, deep breaths until his mind emptied of everything.

He’d been working too hard lately. He always worked hard but the past few months had been rough. He’d had acquisitions to deal with, the expansion of MS Enterprises into Brazil, endless projects that all required constant attention.

This was the result.

Foolish thoughts. Pointless imaginings. He was, and always had been, a logical man. He didn’t waste time daydreaming. He had built his empire on logic. On clear, cool thought.

Perhaps he needed a break.

“Mr. Santini?”

The Paris trip. Then a few days off. He’d fly down to La Tortuga
,
the island he’d recently bought in the Caribbean. Hadn’t he promised himself he’d find time to do that? There was a house there, adequate to stay in until he planned the one that would replace it. Maybe he could begin doing that while he was there.

“Mr. Santini. Sir.”

The sun, the sea, the isolation of the white sand beaches and lushly wild interior were the reasons he’d bought the island. Surely, a couple of days in that kind of privacy would restore his equilibrium—

“Mr. Santini. I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but a problem’s developed.”

Marco frowned and turned to the door. His people knew better than to walk in without knocking. If an efficient PA were at the desk she’d have—

Joe Stein, the head of the design team that had handled the Twenty-two Pascal project, stood in the doorway. Joe had been busy all week with final preparation for the building’s grand opening on Wednesday.

Normally, he had a ready smile and bright pink cheeks.

This morning, his face was pale. In fact, he looked as if he were going to be sick.

Marco felt a knot forming in the pit of his belly.

“What problem?”

“You, uh, you remember the plans for the atrium at the Pascal building?”

Marco’s frown deepened. Did he remember them? The atrium was the focal point of the restoration. His company had taken what was basically a useless empty space and turned it into a glass box, open to the sun, protected from rain and snow by a sliding glass roof.

“
Si
,” he said carefully. “I remember it quite well.”

“Yes. Well—well, we’ve run into some difficulties with it.”

“Dammit, man, don’t pussyfoot. What difficulties?”

“The orchids. For the display.”

The orchids. White orchids. Ten thousand branching stems of them.

The knot in Marco’s gut tightened. “What about them?”

“We’re—we’re not getting them.”

“What do you mean, we’re not getting them? I authorized the order months ago. “

“Yes, sir. But—but…”

Stein launched into an explanation that started with a series of tornadoes destroying dozens of greenhouses and ended with a freak hailstorm trapping a huge cargo plane on a runway.

Midway through, Marco held up his hand.

“Get to the point,” he snapped. “How many orchids are we getting?”

“None.”

Marco could feel his mouth drop open. “None?”

“That’s right. None.”

“Let me be sure I understand this. Today is Monday. The official opening of Twenty-two Pascal is two days away. The mayor will be there. So will NBC, ABC, FOX and CBS. Vanity Fair
is sending a photographer.”

“Yes, sir. I know. But—”

“But,” Marco said in a low voice that drained the final bit of color from Stein’s face, “all anyone will see is an eighteen-foot-square glass room filled with rows of glass risers topped by white ceramic vases filled with… nothing.

Stein’s Adam’s apple made a noticeable up-and-down track above his dark blue tie.

“I could probably find other flowers.”

“But not orchids.”

“No. White flowers.”

“What kind of white flowers?”

Stein’s Adam’s apple moved again.

“Well, if I ordered from several dealers, I could mix them. You know. Roses. Tulips. Carnations. Carnations are easy to come by.”

“You’ll be suggesting daisies next,” Marco said coldly, rubbing the nape of his neck as he paced the length of his office. “Dammit,” he said, swinging toward the hapless designer, “the whole idea was to provide drama. Visual and aesthetic impact. Elegance.”

Stein nodded. “I know.”

“There must be some other way to do it.”

“How about—how about installing a pond? Maybe a waterfall. Some fish…”

Marco’s glower silenced him.

“Birds,” Stein said after a couple of seconds. “White bamboo cages full of—what are those big white birds? Cockatoos.”

“This is a building, not a zoo! Come up with another idea. What about something you’ve done before in—where was it you worked? Chicago?”

“Yes. Chicago.” Stein’s face lit. “I did a terrific display in a big department store.”

“What was it?”

“Well, it was seasonal. It was, uh, it was Christmas.”

“This is September,” Marco said coldly.

“Halloween is coming. Thanksgiving—”

“Pumpkins and turkeys? Get hold of yourself, man! This is not a shopping mall: it is a historic building saved from being razed. I told you what I wanted almost six months ago: a construct that would push back the noise and smells of the streets. Offer tranquility in the midst of a city. An urban oasis.”

“I understood the concept, sir. It was why I suggested the orchids. I’d created something similar in the foyer of a concert hall in Chicago. The papers dubbed it an urban island.”

“What was it?”

“Well, it wouldn’t apply here. I’m not even suggesting that it would—”

“What was it?” Marco said sharply.

“I used candles. All sizes, all shapes—all of them electric,” he added quickly, when Marco raised his eyebrows. “There was no danger of fire. And in the center, a Steinway grand.”

“A what?”

“A piano. One of those big things you see at concerts. The pianist wore a tux. The real deal, you know, a black tux, the coat with that funny-looking split tail—”

“A white grand piano,” Marco said slowly.

“No, sir. It was black—”

“A white piano. The white vases on the glass risers, the vases filled with tall glass candles and alternating with tall white—”

“Lilies,” Stein said excitedly. “White candles. White lilies. White piano. A guy in a white tuxedo.”

“A woman,” Marco said, “in a white evening gown.”

Stein nodded his head furiously. “Yes, sir! That would work. We already have the vases. I can get the candles, no sweat. And flowers—we won’t need anywhere near as many since we’re also using candles. As for the piano—no problem, I’m certain.”

“In which case, all we lack is the piano player.”

“They call them pianists, sir.”

“They call them piano players,” Marco said, fighting back the little rush of anticipatory excitement that went through him.

******

Stein left to deal with the piano, the flowers and the candles.

“I’ll handle the rest,” Marco told him.

“The rest,” of course, was Emily.

He’d come away last night without her phone number, even without her last name but then, he’d never anticipated seeing her again. Getting in touch with her now was only logical. Nothing about it was personal. He needed a piano player. She needed a job. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t really bought into her breezy
Oh, my agent will find me something else.
If it were that easy, she wouldn’t have been working in the kind of dive she’d described.

This was business, plain and simple.

He considered going to see her but decided against it. Too personal. A would-be employer would not turn up at a would-be employee’s door. Not that he would actually be her employer. This was a temporary job…

“Hell,” he muttered, and reached for the phone.

His attorney listened, asked for Emily’s address, said he knew just who to contact and would get back to him with the information within the hour.

“Unless you want a full background check.”

“I want an address and a phone number,” Marco said brusquely. “Nothing more.”

Twenty minutes later, he had her last name—Madison—her cell number and her landline number

All he had to do now was contact her.

Why was he hesitating? What he was about to do was logical. Eminently logical.

Nothing about this was personal.

She needed a job. He needed a piano player. It was a win-win situation, a problem solved for him, a problem solved for her. It might even be more than that for her. This was only a one-day event but it would provide her with excellent media coverage.

That kind of exposure was surely good for an entertainer. Not that he’d gotten the impression she saw herself as an entertainer. He hadn’t even gotten the sense that she saw piano as a career. It hadn’t been in anything she’d said but in her attitude. Maybe she was still looking for a career.

Whatever. That didn’t matter.

Her future was not his concern. Solving Wednesday’s problem was.

Still, calling Emily himself struck him as almost as unwise as going to see her.

Marco frowned.

Normally, he’d have told his PA to handle things, but…

But he did have an HR manager.

He dialed her extension, quickly explained that there’d been a change of plans for the Wednesday opening of Twenty-two Pascal.

“Of what, sir?”

Hell, he was an idiot! What would Human Resources know about it?

Marco filled her in on the situation and on how the company was dealing with it.

“Well,” the head of HR said cautiously, “that’s great news—but what does it have to do with Human Resources?”

Marco cleared his throat.

“Obviously, we need someone to play the piano.”

“Ah. Well, sir, unfortunately, I’m afraid I wouldn’t know how to go about locating a pianist—”

“A piano player,” Marco said, “and I already know of someone. I’ll give you her name and number. Call her, explain that we have a one-day job for her and ask her to come in this morning.”

“You want me to call this person, sir?”

“Of course,” Marco said briskly. “We will be employing her, will we not?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“All hiring at MS Enterprises is done through your office, Mrs. Barnett.”

“I really don’t know what to ask her, Mr. Santini. I mean, what should I look for in her résumé?”

“Never mind a résumé,” Marco said briskly. “Just call her, tell her what we want and have her come in to sign the necessary documents.”

“And if she asks how we know about her, sir?”

Marco put his hand to his forehead. It was an excellent question.

“Never mind.”

“But you said—”

“I’ll handle this myself.”

Was he insane? He was making more of this than necessary. Emily played piano. She needed work. He had a piano. Well, a building his company had restored had a piano or it would have a piano and
Dio,
all he had to do was phone her and tell her he was offering her a job. Easy, especially since he wouldn’t even be in town on Wednesday.

He’d be in Paris.

Marco took a deep breath. Picked up the phone. And stared at it.

His mouth was dry.

This was ridiculous! He was behaving like a teenage kid calling a girl for a date. Not that he’d ever been a teenage kid calling a girl for a date. He’d discovered sex at seventeen with the mistress of the rich American who’d hired him to clear out the tangle of trees and shrubs behind the house the man had put up on the cliffs outside Catania.

She’d kept him happy that entire summer, and by the end of it he’d saved enough money to emigrate to the States where he’d worked his ass off doing what he still thought of as donkey labor. Anywhere he could find it.

The girls, long-legged American beauties, had found him.

He punched in the cell number the attorney had given him. It rang and rang and then a robotic voice announced that the number was no longer working.

OK.

Maybe that was a sign…

Except that she had a regular phone as well as the mobile and he had that number, too.

Quickly, he punched in the numbers for the landline. The phone rang five times. Then another electronic voice announced that there was no one there to take the call.

At the sound of the tone, please leave a message.

Marco cleared his throat. “Emily. This is Marco Santini. Do you remember me?”

He winced. Of course she would remember him. Not even twelve hours had gone by since they’d met. Since he’d kissed her like a man who’d lost control of his sanity.