Scent of a Woman (10 page)

“Does it matter?” She entered the elevator while he held the button.

“Yes, it matters.” He followed her inside and pressed the button for the penthouse level. “Don’t you think I’d want to avoid doing business with someone lacking in ethics?”

“In that case, his name is Gunther Stahl and his family owns—”

“Panache Fragrances,” he finished for her, angry all over again for her sake. “They made a big splash two years ago with the hottest scent of the season. For a virtually unknown company, it was a major success story in the industry.”

She looked impressed.

“I see you know more about the perfume world than you let on.”

“I know the business.” He would have never set foot on the ship if he hadn’t been well versed in the financial statements and industry information. “It’s the art and science I don’t know much about.”

The elevator chimed for her deck and he followed her to her suite.

When she swiped her key card, he knew their time together was at an end. Still, he couldn’t help but stand on the threshold as she let herself in.

“So why didn’t you sue him?” He knew she hadn’t. He would have read about it in the industry overview Joe had provided him with before he left the States.

“As you have so eloquently pointed out, Adam, ours is a small business. Those who make trouble find themselves on the outside looking in, a risk we could not afford with Les Rêves. And perhaps my pride would not let me chase down that recipe legally. I told myself if I struck gold once, I could do it again with a new formula that would wipe his off the map.” Setting her purse down inside the suite, she faced him. “I will admit it was probably not a wise decision, but it was made in anger.”

Her beautiful features were set in determined lines and he regretted that their relationship had dredged up new professional obstacles for her.

“I’m sorry.” He skimmed the backs of his fingers along her cheek. “If there is anything I can do to take some of the heat off you this week, just let me know.”

She nodded, her eyelids closing for a moment before she backed up a step.

“Thank you. And I’m sorry, too, but I think the best thing for us to do at this point is to simply say goodbye.”

“W
HERE THE HELL
are you?” Giorgio Tzekas’s voice growled through the phone as Mike O’Connor made himself comfortable in a rented vacation villa just up the Italian coast from Civitavecchia that same morning.

Juggling his cell phone against his ear while he looked out at the beach, Mike spotted a woman closing up a boat rental shop. She was carefully lowering a wooden awning over the front window for the midday break.

“I’m in Rome visiting the Pope, didn’t you hear?” Mike was damn pleased with the cover that had bought him an extra night off the ship. Security wouldn’t be as tight tonight while
Alexandra’s Dream
was docked in Livorno.

“Yeah, I heard. Don’t you think your story is going to fall through the minute security checks out the people who failed to get on the ship last night? They’re looking for leads on stolen goods. Security has been questioning passengers who went into Rome all morning.” Giorgio sounded even more tense than usual.

Mike didn’t appreciate the third degree when he was the one taking the risks lately.

“I’m on the petitioner’s list of people who want to see the Pope.” He’d made sure he got on the list to cover his tracks, even though his chances of getting an audience with the Pope were nil. If push came to shove, he’d plead ignorance. Most American priests were far removed from the inner workings of Rome anyhow, so it wasn’t as if he would be an automatic suspect. “Besides, security isn’t going to be too worried about a priest.”

He fingered the small relic in a pocket of his jacket. Last night he’d secured it the old-fashioned way instead of bartering with the kinds of crooks who dealt in antiquities. It had saved him a lot of hassle and it had been a kick to return to his roots. He just hoped the boss didn’t find out about his methods.

The clay would not set off the metal detector when he passed through security. As long as no one decided to pat him down, he should succeed in bringing the item aboard. And if anyone found it, he would expound on his joy at being given a gift by the Holy See. It would work.

“Where are you really?” Giorgio pressed. “There is already a crowd of old ladies around the library looking for you. Ariana had to tell them you won’t have another lecture until tomorrow. That draws the wrong kind of attention.”

Mike was more concerned with the woman closing up the boat rental spot for the lunch hour, her figure lean and toned even though her dark hair was threaded with streaks of gray. There was something sexy about her out here alone in a quiet fishing village away from the crush of cruise tourists that frequented the bigger coastal cities.

This might be the perfect opportunity to make sure they both found some company.

“Then why don’t you help Ariana send the old bats on their way? God knows you’ve been drooling over that prissy librarian ever since the ship launched. Why don’t you buy her tickets to some classical concert or take her to an art museum while you case the place for me? Make a move on her already and stop taking out your lack of sex on me.” Impatient to get off the phone before the woman disappeared, Mike opened the door to his villa and headed across the beach with his cell phone in hand.

“Go to hell,” Giorgio snarled. “And keep Ariana Bennett out of your dirty-minded thoughts. She’s off limits to you.”

“Whatever.” Mike wondered how he could know ten times more about a woman he didn’t even like than the oblivious Giorgio. “I’m calling the boss tonight to say everything’s going according to plan. I suggest you make it a point to pass through security tonight around eight o’clock to ensure I get back on board with that…gift…we discussed.”

With a grunt, Giorgio finally disconnected the call, leaving Mike to celebrate his small theft with a hot-to-trot Sophia Loren look-alike. She raised her hand to wave and smile at him.

Too bad he realized just then that he was still wearing his collar.

Muttering an oath, he waved back at her and wondered how he could seduce a woman with his priestly cover in place. Definitely a challenge. But would the payoff be even more rewarding?

Years ago he’d worked as an actor. Maybe he’d go for a more brooding approach to see if she was the kind to offer a world-weary priest a once-in-a-lifetime night of forbidden passion to distract him from his heavy burdens. Oh, yeah, he liked the sound of that.

Stifling a smile, he nodded solemnly at her and started calculating how long it would take to get her back to his rented cottage for a few hours.

D
ANIELLE MADE HER WAY
to the library in search of something constructive to do before she lost her mind. After all that had shifted in her life in twenty-four hours, she was worried, anxious about her professional future—and very confused about her feelings for Adam. Feelings she could not afford to think about now. Feelings she had been denying when she told him they needed to stop seeing each other.

Her head pounded with the strain of thinking in circles as she bypassed the English tearoom and continued along deck six, needing to find a colleague, someone to discuss business with to help her forget she was hiding out from the phone and Marcel’s calls and his renewed threats to cut off her funding on the Nice store.

He couldn’t do that legally. But of course, they ran Les Rêves like a family business, not a faceless corporation, and she’d allowed him free reign with the finances. How could she fight him now? Should she threaten to take him to court? It had always seemed easier to simply work harder to develop the new business he continually pushed her to create.

And so what if that made her a coward? She could not afford to screw up this week any more than she had, and Marcel’s renewed frustrations with her—his anger about her public appearance with a well-known American competitor—would only put her off her game when she needed to be sharp.

Focused.

Jonathan Nordham had been in the Rose Petal that afternoon, but Danielle had not joined him because he seemed to be sharing a very intimate cup of tea with the harpist he’d been admiring a few days ago. Apparently, Danielle wasn’t the only one to find a shipboard romance, although she might be the only one foolish enough to throw away romance with both hands. Confused and frustrated, she stepped into the library to find the American librarian—Ariana—warding off flirtation from an officer leaning over her desk. Perhaps Danielle wasn’t alone in her decision to shun romance after all.

“Excuse me?” she interrupted them, sensing the librarian wouldn’t mind an ally.

“Yes.” Ariana stood immediately, straightening the items on her desk, which were already in perfect order. “How can I help you?”

“I’ll see you at dinner,” the officer said to Ariana, backing away with a wink.

Danielle realized by the stripes on his uniform that this was the same man Father Connelly had been walking with a few days ago. The first officer, she thought.

“I am looking for Father Connelly,” Danielle began, disappointed she didn’t see him in the room. “I had hoped he would share some of his expertise with me.”

She wanted to refine her ideas for packaging the Arabian Nights line before she went to Ahmed for their second round of discussions.

“He won’t be back on board until tonight,” Ariana explained, tucking aside a pair of headphones and a boxed CD set of Wagner’s
The Ring Cycle
into her desk. “Apparently he had some appointments with church leaders in Rome and will catch up with the ship just before we sail.”

“Is there something I can help you with?”

“Do you have some time?” Danielle appreciated the offer.

“Absolutely,” Ariana assured her. “What are you looking for?”

Danielle smiled inside, her heart warming with gratitude for the unexpected help and companionship when she needed it most. Ariana did not know it, but Danielle feared her heart would break if she allowed herself to think about all she’d walked away from when she said goodbye to Adam.

Focusing on her work now, she withdrew some rough sketches from her purse and began to explain the concept of her perfume line. Ariana nodded and proceeded to reel off a few different ideas based on Arabian myths and legends. Intrigued, Danielle took notes and set off for the communications center to do some research on the Internet.

As long as she concentrated on Les Rêves, she’d be fine. Maybe Adriana’s research tips would help her find that magical marketing scheme to captivate Ahmed and International Markets.

She’d work all night on her upcoming presentation. She need to flesh out ideas that she’d only sketched briefly the first time around. She would invest something more, something extra, some small facet of herself into this presentation to ensure she walked away with the account.

Quite simply, she would do whatever it took. Because there was no way a man—however unwittingly—would cost her another prime piece of business. Danielle might have been too trusting the first time around, but she had no excuses now.

Not even the unexpected tenderness she felt for Adam would sway her from her new course.

“Y
OU’VE NEVER SEEN
Livorno? Florence?” The old Englishman, Nordham, posed the question while he and Adam waited for their turn with the simulator on the ship’s high-tech practice green.

They stood watching the pair ahead of them compare their shots to the ideal golf swing. Adam had run into Nordham at a workshop on fragrance customization earlier in the day and appreciated the company, but he planned to avoid any mention of Danielle.

How could she have been so quick to cut and run because of a bogus newspaper photo that amounted to nothing in the larger scheme of things? Her brother had to be on the obsessive side to keep such close tabs on his thirty-four-year-old sister. Then again, Adam was an outsider in this industry. Maybe there was some sense to the brother’s worries if the fragrance world was as small and traditional as Danielle had suggested.

“No,” Adam answered finally while the pair ahead of them cleared the green. “I’ve never been to either.”

“You should go.” Nordham stepped up to take his swing next, not bothering to check the monitor. “Florence is Il Duomo. It’s
The Agony and the Ecstasy
. Home of Michelangelo. It’s…” He paused in lining up his shot to look at Adam. “It’s a rare and unique thing.”

The older man returned to his putt and sank the shot easily.

Adam couldn’t explain that Florence wouldn’t be the same without Danielle since he damn well refused to talk about her today, so he settled for a half truth.

“I might lay off the sightseeing for the rest of the cruise. Today is going to be about golf and billiards. Possibly some hoop if I can get a slot reserved on the basketball court.”

Nordham frowned while Adam took his place on the green.

“What?” Adam aligned his stance, wondering when he’d last taken an afternoon off to go eighteen holes. “What did I say?”

Nordham laughed. “You Americans. You always want to see how much you can fit in a day. Even your relaxation is scheduled. Yesterday I watched some American passengers disembarking and wondered how they manage to have any fun on their trips when they have an itinerary as long as their arms to follow. Perhaps Danielle can show you the city’s highlights?”

Adam tapped his ball too far to the left at the mention of her name.

Damn.

He leaned on his club like a walking stick, not caring what the video monitor had to say about his crappy shot. The sun beat down on them while Nordham looked at him expectantly. Knowingly.

“Are you not getting along?” Nordham prodded gently while he reached for the printout assessment of Adam’s technique. “I don’t wish to pry, but she is a lovely girl and you seemed to be enjoying each other’s company.”

“But she is here on business and so am I, so…” He shrugged, unwilling to discuss this in any more detail but not wishing to be rude. Nordham had introduced him to several key contacts during the cruise and seemed like a nice guy. “We agreed we needed to spend time focusing on work.”

“Yet you both looked very happy at the luncheon yesterday while you were focusing on each other. Life cannot be all work, my friend.” He twirled his golf club lightly between his fingers.

“But apparently she’s under a bit of pressure from her brother—” Adam stopped himself, not willing to betray any confidences. “If she needs to work, what choice do I have but to respect her decision?”

Adam didn’t understand the dynamic between Danielle and her brother or between Danielle and her colleagues, but he understood that she cared what they thought. She cared so much, in fact, she was willing to deny herself—and him—a chance to explore an attraction unlike anything he’d ever known.

Nordham tossed his golf ball up in the air and caught it a few times, the puckered white surface glinting in the hot sun as the golf pro returned from his lunch break, ready to go back to giving lessons to passengers.

Adam stepped off to one side of the open air deck as they left their clubs with an attendant.

“All I know is this,” Nordham offered, clapping Adam on the back. “Danielle is a woman full of life, like her mother. She will not thrive if she continues to allow her brother to dictate the way she does business. That is just my opinion, but as an old man I offer the wisdom of many years. You might encourage her to live through her dreams instead of her fears. Maybe then you’ll be rewarded by an engagement with a woman instead of the pool table.”

Nordham turned in his club at the desk and excused himself to join an elegant older woman dressed in a wide sun hat and long skirt. Adam wondered what Danielle would do if he protested being shut out of her life prematurely. Would he only make her more upset? Or maybe she just needed time to gain some perspective. Never one to back down from the chance to close a deal, Adam started calculating probabilities for the best places to run into her.

D
ANIELLE DIDN’T KNOW
how long she’d been working on sketches for the new perfume bottles. It had grown late, and she was still sitting on the ledge of the Jasmine Spa’s aromatic hot tub on the Helios deck. The working conditions weren’t exactly ideal since she’d opted to sit on the dark side of the huge sunken pool designed to look like a Roman bath. Mineral water bubbled around her tub, intensifying the scent of the jasmine petals sprinkled in the water. She’d taken this darker sanctuary for just that reason—the scent.