Dangerous...

“What can I do for you, Luca?” she asked, as if she hadn’t spent the past month avoiding him.

But he knew she had been avoiding him. Not because she was grieving, although he knew she was. He saw it in the faint circles under her eyes. In the extra paleness of her skin.

But because he had left her without explanation seven years ago.

“There are some legal matters you need to attend to immediately unless you want everything to come crashing down around your ears.”

She raised a black brow. “I’m sure Vito can help you with whatever you need.”

Lucas shook his head. “No. Only the person in charge can see to these matters.”

She held his gaze for a long moment, as if trying to read beyond his actions. He wondered when she’d become so guarded. No, he didn’t have to wonder. He knew. And he knew he’d played a role in one of her first understandings that life wasn’t all sunshine and daisies and good intentions. Oh, she’d certainly been aware of danger—after all, she’d been born and raised under the Trainello roof. But he’d been among the first to wrong her.

And now she’d been wronged again.

“I’m in charge only until my brother Lorenzo can take over.” She finally broke their gaze and walked toward her father’s old desk. He caught the way she ran her fingertips across the top before sitting down in the chair and looking at him again. He took the seat opposite her.

“I understand he’s doing better,” Lucas said, even though he knew that that wasn’t the case at all. Her older brother was little more than a functioning vegetable by choice.

Still, Gia nodded, giving away nothing with her expression as she folded her hands on top of the desk. “What do you need, Luca? I don’t have much time.”

He opened his briefcase and took out a series of documents. “These are the Trainello estate papers. I assume that you’d like to be named power of attorney. You know, until Lorenzo can take over.”

She nodded.

“Well, you have to do that legally. There have already been several claims made against the estate having to deal with outstanding debt and the like that you’ll have to see to. And, of course, there’s probate that you’ll have to go through.”

He put the papers in front of her.

“Can’t someone else do all this?” she asked.

“Yes,” Lucas said. “Me. But you’d have to sign that power over to me.”

Finally, a show of emotion via a spark in her dark eyes. “I’m not signing any power over to anyone.”

Lucas sat back, mildly amused. “That’s what I thought you’d say. Which means you need to sign where I’ve indicated. You won’t have to do much. I’ll take care of overseeing what needs to be done…with your supervision, of course.”

She finally appeared to give the papers in front of her the attention they deserved.

Lucas fought the urge to tug at his collar. In all his imaginings, he would never have thought that being in Gia’s company again after so long would bring back a few memories of his own. Or inspire in him a desire to relive a great many of them.

Despite what his actions might have left her to believe, she’d touched a place inside him no one else had been able to reach. And even now that spot ached in a way he was helpless to stop.

At least not in her presence.

He cleared his throat and started to get up. “Why don’t I just leave the documents with you and come back for them.”

She blinked at him, apparently surprised by his abrupt change in behavior. Hadn’t he been the one to insist on the meeting? Why, then, was he in a hurry to get out of there?

She sighed. “Fine.”

She put the papers aside and then rose to lead him to the door.

Lucas followed. “How about dinner?”

She looked at him so quickly a strand of her shiny, long black hair stuck to her red lips. “What?”

“Dinnertime,” Lucas explained, watching as she put the strand back into place.

One simple move. One tiny blip in time. One undeniable distraction that switched his mind from the matter at hand to the woman who was close enough to touch.

He breathed in the smell of her perfume. A subtle mixture of lemon and vanilla. It was all he could do not to lean in closer so he might get a better sense of how the scent mingled with her own personal aroma.

He quietly cleared his throat, but the act did little to return his voice to normal. “Why don’t I come back around dinnertime. Surely you take time out to eat, don’t you? I can collect the papers then and talk to you about other matters at hand.”

Gia apparently caught on to his attentive state and his preoccupation with the pulse at the base of her neck where he imagined she’d applied her perfume this morning. She swallowed thickly even as her pupils grew large.

Lucas was powerless to stop his mouth from moving toward where hers loomed temptingly within reach.

“Miss Gia?” one of the Trainello goons that had been hiding in the shadows emerged, wearing an earpiece he was apparently listening to. “Your next appointment has arrived.”

The connection snapped.

Lucas squared his shoulders and Gia took a physical step away.

“Very good, Tony,” she said, louder than necessary. “Um, escort Mr. Tamburo into the library until I call for him.”

She turned back toward Lucas, looking mystified by him, bewildered by her own emotions.

And—he hoped—perhaps on a level she was loath to admit, still anticipating his kiss.

“How’s six o’clock?” he asked.

She looked toward where Tony had been a moment before and then back at him. He fully expected her to refuse the dinner meeting.

Instead, she met his gaze head-on and said, “Make it seven.”

Lucas watched her make her way back down the hall, appearing more self-conscious of her movements than she had been before.

Then he turned, opening the front door at the same time as Vincenzo Tamburo, the head of the Peluso crime family, climbed the last step, two of his henchman in tow.

Whatever lingering emotions might have remained after nearly kissing Gia vanished instantly, yanking him soundly back to the reality of the here and now.

Lucas gave the other man a nod and the mafia don nodded back.

Christ.

Vincenzo Tamburo headed the second most powerful crime family in the city and was not a man to be taken lightly even when he was smiling, as he was doing now. He was ruthless and deadly, known to go to any and all lengths to keep his power intact. It was said that last year he’d had his own son-in-law whacked, the man’s body found at a Queens dump site, while his severed head had never been recovered. It was rumored that Tamburo had it preserved in a jar in his safe to remind himself that he could trust no one.

The son-in-law’s crime? Taking some initiative in his new role in the family and making his father-in-law a fortune from a Brinks-truck robbery that Tamburo hadn’t authorized.

Lucas stared at the older man’s wide back. Jesus, he hoped Gia knew what in the hell she was getting herself into.

And he hoped that when all was said and done, he would be able to protect her from the worst of it.

3

AN HOUR LATER, Gia stood at the French doors of her father’s office, trying to soothe her nerves by rubbing her hands up and down her bare arms. It wasn’t that her meeting with Tamburo hadn’t gone as expected. It had. What she hadn’t anticipated was that the overbearing man would shake her to the core with his leering stares and arctic smiles.

She’d suspected that her familiar connection to her father’s old “friends” would change somewhat for the duration she sat at the helm. After all, she’d known these men all her life and they had been like uncles to her, providing her with lavish birthday gifts, big bear hugs and enthusiastic cheek pinches. They were probably as surprised as she was by her new title, however temporary. At worst, she’d allowed that perhaps they’d try to treat her like that child they’d watched grow up.

She’d never expected Uncle Vincenzo to look at her as if he’d prefer to see her hanging from a meat hook.

The question was, could Vincenzo Tamburo have given the order to pull the trigger of the gun that took her father’s life?

“Romulus! Stop!”

Gia blinked the backyard into focus. Or, more precisely, she watched as a hundred pounds of lean, mean Bucciuriscu canine lumbered onto the patio outside the doors she stood in front of, covered in soapsuds.

“Come back here right now, you,” a guy that was more gangly teen than man demanded as he followed the stubborn dog.

Romulus’s red tongue rolled out of his mouth in a doggie grin as he considered his pursuer and then proceeded to shake off the suds, covering the teen and the doors, causing even Gia to take a step back.

“Oh, Romulus, you no good hound,” the kid said in exasperation. “If you were my dog, I’d be having you for supper.”

Gia smiled for what felt like the first time in months. Romulus was one of two of her father’s purebreds, the other, Remus, of course, after the infamous mythological Roman twins.

She watched as Romulus planted himself, making it impossible for the kid to budge him from the patio.

Gia opened the soap-speckled doors. The kid looked up at her, having to shield his eyes from the sun. “Oh, God. I’m sorry, Miss Gia. I didn’t see you there.” He grimaced. “You didn’t hear what I said, did you?”

“What’s your name?”

“Fusco, ma’am. Frankie Fusco.”

“Please, just call me Gia.”

She bent over and stroked the snout of the hulking guard dog.

“Yes, Miss Gia.” Frankie tugged on a handful of fur at the back of Romulus’s neck and nearly lost his fingers to the dog in the process.

“No, he won’t do anything for you that way,” she said. “Buccuriscus are highly aggressive dogs. You have to show them who’s boss.” She whistled for Romulus’s attention and then snapped her fingers, pointing to her side. “Here, Romy.”

The dog instantly obeyed, coming to stand next to her.

“Sit.”

He sat.

She patted the back of his wet head. “Where are you washing him?”

“Out by the garage, Miss Gia.”

That meant that Frankie had chased the dog a good ways around the grounds. Not surprising.

“Just Gia,” she said again.

“I couldn’t call you by your first name, Miss Gia. It wouldn’t be showing you the proper respect.”

Respect definitely had its drawbacks.

“You try commanding him,” she suggested.

Frankie followed her lead.

Romulus barked once at him and stayed put.

And then he stood again and shook himself out, spraying Gia with whatever suds and water remained on his thick fur.

She and Frankie looked at each other and laughed.

“Come on,” Gia said. “Now that I’m dressed for the job, I might as well help you out.”

“Oh, no, Miss Gia.” Frankie looked stricken. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“Are you disobeying an order, Fusco?”

“Me? Oh, no. No, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Come on, then.”

Gia ordered Romy to heel at her side and she and Frankie walked the span of lawn behind the house toward the garage.

“How long you been working here?” Gia asked.

“Two months tomorrow, Miss Gia.”

“And your duties?”

He reached down to pat Romy, who growled at him threateningly. He snatched his hand back. “Well, washing the dogs. Running errands for the guys. Stuff like that.”

“Do you like it?”

“Like it? I love it. I’ve been trying to work for the family for years.”

Gia smiled at his exaggeration. He couldn’t be more than a day over eighteen.

“I was bussing tables at the Guarinos’ and running numbers when I met your father, God rest his soul.” He looked awkward about mentioning her dad. “My condolences, Miss Gia.”

“Thank you.”

“Anyway, I met your father and he brought me out here to see to some things. I stay in the stables with the other guys.”

Gia looked toward the converted stables in question that were barely visible through a thatch of trees and flowering bushes, and then turned back toward Frankie. She could see why her father had been taken with the teen. He didn’t appear to have an insincere bone in him. His obvious youth aside—she’d met more eighteen-year- olds who looked forty than she could count over the past month—he was open and enthusiastic and apparently relished his connection to the family.

Of course, she’d seen much of the same misplaced interest growing up. Especially from the kids who came up in the area of Brooklyn that the Venuto family had controlled since Prohibition. Where teens in other neighborhoods might join gangs, in the Venuto neighborhood, the family was the gang. And, it seemed, every kid wanted to be a member.

They rounded the corner of the garage to find one of Vito’s goons standing in shirtsleeves in the summer heat, his shoulder holster and firearm clearly visible. Romulus’s brother, Remus, sat quietly waiting his turn for a bath.

“Romy, sit,” Gia ordered.

The dog whined at her and then did as she asked.

“Thanks, Miss Gia,” Frankie said, appearing not to know what to do. He held out his hand to shake hers, and then stared at where it was covered in suds and drew it quickly back. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

“No bother,” Gia said, looking around. She’d have to ask Vito to have his men cover their weapons.

Just as she thought his name, she spotted Vito at the edge of the part of the driveway leading to the garage, speaking to a man she didn’t recognize. Of course, she had yet to name all of the personnel around the sprawling estate, but she was pretty sure she hadn’t seen this guy before.

She watched as the two men shook hands, and then the dark stranger rounded the front of a BMW sedan and climbed inside. Moments later, he disappeared down the long driveway toward the road.

Frankie looked as if he had things well in hand, so she began making her way back toward the office’s back entrance.

She turned slightly. “Frankie?”

He immediately snapped to attention, the soapy sponge he held covering his face in suds. He wiped them away with the back of his hand.

“How would you like a promotion to personal assistant?”

LUCAS LET HIMSELF into the small studio apartment he’d rented in Queens, careful to avoid being seen. Of course, that he’d left his car on Queens Boulevard, changed into a tracksuit, Mets cap and athletic shoes in a subway bathroom, and then caught the next train to the apartment had helped in his subterfuge.

He threw the five different locks on the door and flicked on the one light in the cramped space. There was only a sofa bed, a desk and a small kitchen and bathroom. The walls bore peeling wallpaper that revealed a different pattern wallpaper underneath. The floorboards beneath his shoes were scratched and gouged, multiple coats of paint having come up over the years.

He tossed his keys onto the desk and shrugged out of the track jacket, removing the palm-size tapes he’d put in the pockets and staring at them. They represented more than thirty hours of conversations he’d had over the past week. One with Gia, herself.

Sitting down in an old wooden chair, he considered the tapes, dumping the ones that held conversations with Vito and other family members into one shoe box, the last tape that included today’s conversation with Gia into another.

Like clockwork, the cell phone that he left in the apartment rang.

He picked up on the second ring.

“What have you got?” his FBI handler asked.

“Not much. Things have been quiet.”

Silence. Then, “How are you going in your effort to get closer to Gia Trainello?”

Lucas rubbed his forehead. His handler even asking the question made him feel like dirt.

Yes, the bureau knew the rumors that Gia had taken over in her brother’s stead. And he’d been ordered to get closer to her. His handler didn’t know his past with the onetime mafia princess. And if he had any say in it, he wouldn’t, either. What had happened between him and Gia seven years ago was between them. Period. It didn’t enter into his current job assignment. Which, simply, was to bring down the Venuto crime family, and possibly any other families he could along with them.

Still, he said, “I’ve established contact in order to discuss estate papers.”

“And?”

“And that’s it.”

Lucas leaned back in the chair, causing it to creak, a part of him daring his handler to press him for more information.

Damn it. He should have asked to be reassigned the moment Giovanni and Mario Trainello were hit. Forget the years’ worth of tapes and wiretaps and his hands-on investigation into the crime organization.

But he hadn’t asked. Because every time he’d thought about doing so, he remembered Angelo. Recalled his younger brother’s pale face against the satin that lined his casket. And that alone was enough to remind him that what he was doing now was the culmination of seven years of hard work. Any day now, he would have the revenge he’d craved for the better half of his adult life.

He would see to it that the family responsible for his brother’s death paid the ultimate price for its crimes.

Gia…

A small voice whispered her name in the back of his mind.

Of course, he’d try to protect Gia any way he could. He was determined to keep her out of it, both because of their past together…and because she didn’t deserve to be hurt by him again.

But if push came to shove…

Well, he’d have to wait until it came to that.

4

LATER THAT EVENING, a while after Luca had gone following dinner, Gia bent over the additional papers he had left with her, trying to concentrate on the words instead of trying to interpret the meaning of his actions.

It had been so long ago that she’d been in love with him. But not so long that she couldn’t remember what it was like to look at him and feel something larger than herself expand within her. Experience a desire that made her feel like she might combust if she couldn’t kiss his mouth, feel the cool texture of his hair under her fingertips.

Luca represented a time in her life when all was good. When family was family and when one look into his eyes had been enough to make her smile for a week.

But that time was long past. No matter how much a part of her wanted to believe differently.

And if she needed any reminder of that fact, all she had to think about was what happened after he’d left. What she had gone through alone that had left a jagged scar across her soul that could never be forgotten.

She unfolded her legs from under her on the overstuffed couch in the library and walked to the French doors, staring out into the deep summer night. A shadow moved and she started, still not used to having armed men around in order to protect her. She hadn’t needed them in seven years.

She needed them now.

But rather than their presence making her feel safe, she felt as if she was imprisoned. The reminder that danger lurked everywhere unnerving.

What did Luca want? Oh, she’d known the instant he’d come back to New York a year ago and rejoined the family as one of the lead attorneys. It had been all her father had talked about at the time. Luca had been his golden boy years earlier, second only after Lorenzo, rating a spot even before headstrong Mario. Luca was a man who instilled trust in others and was more than capable of seeing any assignment through to the end.

The description had been her father’s. She hadn’t asked what he’d meant by “any assignment.” She hadn’t wanted to know.

What she did want to know was what Luca had done while he was gone.

And why he’d left the city after his younger brother had been killed during a random mugging.

Was it the tragedy of losing his brother? Was that why he’d left?

But his parents had remained in Brooklyn. Gia had even visited them. Once.

She’d never gone back again.

After everything that had happened since, every ounce of common sense told her that she shouldn’t care why Luca had left, what he had done while he was gone, and why he was back now.

But, God help her, she did care.

She absently rubbed her arm. While it was still August hot outside, the air-conditioned temperature inside was kept low. Just as her father had liked it. And she hadn’t had the heart yet to change even the thermostat.

The trivial detail brought a memory flooding back as if it could have happened yesterday instead of nearly twenty years ago.

It had been a cold, rainy March day. Most of the mourners had left the grave and her grandmother was in the waiting limousine with her brothers. She and her father were all who remained.

Holding her father’s hand, the new patent- leather shoes her grandmother had bought her sinking into the mud, Gia had watched as the shiny mahogany casket had been lowered into the ground. The top had been covered with yellow roses, her mother’s favorite. Gia had felt numbed by her emotions and the weather.

“She looks lonely,” she’d said.

Her father had blinked then, as if he’d been in a trance, and looked down at her, his hand squeezing hers. “She’s with family now.” He looked up at the rain-soaked skies. “In heaven.”

“But we’re family.”

Her father had stood for a long moment, staring down at her. Then he’d crouched so that they were close to eye level. “Yes, piccina, we are family. But the family in heaven needed your mommy more than we did.”

Gia had spotted the pain on his face even as he said the words and had wondered if he was comforting her or himself.

“I miss her.”

Gia wasn’t sure if it was the rain trailing down his handsome face or tears as he enveloped her in a hug, holding her tight, holding her close. “I do, too, sweetheart. I do, too.”

They stayed like that for a long moment.

And then Vito had cleared his throat from somewhere behind them, and an umbrella appeared above their heads, casting a gloomier shadow over them.

Her father had looked at his close friend, then back at Gia. “You have family, Giovanna. Lots of family. And you’ll always have them. Remember that. You’ll always have them.”

Gia had tried to find comfort in his words, but she’d only been seven and hadn’t really understood what he’d meant in light of losing the closest member of her family. Now she saw what he meant. Now, so many years later, the family had welcomed her back with open arms when she’d decided to return to the fold. Each and every one of them working in unison to help find the person behind her father’s death.

Luca included.

She rubbed her arm again, the memory of him sitting across the informal kitchen counter from her a short time earlier replacing the image of her father’s rain-stained face.

“Why are you so surprised I came back?” he’d asked her over a simple pasta dinner she’d prepared herself with the help of a jar of homemade pesto sauce the housekeeper/cook had stored in the refrigerator.

Gia had pretended she might not answer the question, even though she’d known she would. “You didn’t seem to want anything to do with the family when you left. It just seemed odd that you would come back.”

She’d seen something in his blue eyes then. Something that signaled that the still waters of his appearance ran deep within him.

She remembered the many family nicknames for him. The most popular being Pretty Boy Paretti because he had the blond-haired, blue- eyed good looks of the northern Italians rather than the dark intensity of the Sicilians.

It had been those same good looks that made her easy prey when he’d spent a lot of time around the house doing odd jobs for her father while he attended college and then law school. She’d fallen for him, hard.

And the same, she’d thought, had applied to him.

And then his brother was killed and the man she’d fallen in love with had become cold and distant. And then he’d disappeared altogether.