A Little Holiday Temptation Page 2

  His cognac-colored eyes held an amused expression when he answered her question, his tone seductive, “About twice a day, maybe four times a day on weekends.”

  Ana fanned her face. She’d flushed upon hearing him admit that. So, she wasn’t the only one who had sex on the brain. “I’ve thought of it just as often,” she admitted.

  “But I’d never actually do it,” said Erik, his expression turning serious. He sighed and sat up straighter on the barstool. Looking deep into her eyes, he said, “Ana, being friends with benefits means that you will somehow be able to detach yourself from your feelings while you’re making love. I could never do that with you. When we make love it’s going to be seriously emotional. I’m not going to hold anything back. Everything I’ve wanted to express to you in a physical way over the last two years will be in every touch. So, if you want me, you’ll have to take all of me, not just a part of me.”

  Ana was trying to calm her racing heart. The man was hot as hell. What would happen if she just let go and told him, “yes, let’s go back to your place right now? It’s time.” Actually it was way past time to do something about the sexual tension building between them.

  She was glad when the hostess approached and said their table was ready. Erik handed the bartender a tip and with it, the woman’s card. “Would you mind disposing of that for me?”

  He then escorted Ana to their table and helped her into her chair.

  “Your waiter will be with you shortly,” said the hostess, and left.

  “You were saying?” Erik said, looking at Ana expectantly.

  “You’re right,” Ana said a bit breathlessly. “We’re well past the friends-with-benefits stage. I couldn’t make love to you, and then return to being just friends the next day. I’m not made that way.”

  Erik grasped her hand. “I have to say I’m a little surprised by the suggestion. What brought this on?”

  Suddenly Ana knew exactly why she hadn’t given in to Erik until now. It wasn’t just that she was afraid of messing up a good thing. The epiphany was a relief to her. But it also made her a little sad. Looking him straight in the eyes, Ana said, her voice awe filled, “I kept putting you off because…I didn’t feel worthy of you.”

  “How could you have felt that way?” Erik asked. Surprise was evident in his tone.

  Ana cut him off with, “I know it never crossed your mind. But listen, please. I grew up in a family of overachievers. My mother was a world-renowned singer. My father has run the family business for decades with great success, and my sister is following in his footsteps. Do I need to mention how beloved my brother, the maestro, is?” She paused to breathe. “Growing up, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I loved to draw but in a country like Italy where so many of the great artists were born I felt more than a little intimidated. I hid my work for years, not wanting anyone to see what I’d created. Then, when I was a teenager and I just kept growing, five-ten at fifteen, someone told me I should be a model and I thought to myself, ‘That’s something I could be good at,’ and to my utter surprise I was signed to an agency right away. But I never felt as if it were an accomplishment. After all, beauty is something you inherit from your parents. It’s not something you earn.”

  “I think a lot of people who work hard on their physical appearance would disagree with you,” Erik pointed out.

  “Yes, of course I have to eat right and exercise, but this face was a gift from God,” Ana countered.

  “Are you feeling guilty again because your image is used to make women feel insecure?” he asked softly. “So insecure that they’ll buy the products your face helps to sell in order to aim for an impossibly high standard of beauty?”

  “No, it isn’t, Dr. Freud. It’s about leaving behind something lasting when I’m dead,” Ana insisted, smiling at his instant psychoanalysis. Although, she did, like several other models she knew, feel guilty about propagating an image of perfection that was, frankly, a lie. She had been honest in several interviews about the hours spent being made-up and then, if the subsequent photographs weren’t up to par, being airbrushed to make them perfect.

  “You’re a man of substance, a man whose life means much more than the pursuit of self-gratification. To me, what you do is inspiring, saving peoples’ jobs, keeping families together. Being a model doesn’t compare to that.”

  “You have helped raise millions of dollars for New York City’s homeless,” Erik reminded her.

  “Yes, as a result of modeling I’ve been able to help others. That’s a plus. In my opinion, the only true benefit. It’s not enough, though. You need a woman who is equal to you in every way.”

  Erik laughed softly. “You’re already my equal in every way.”

  Ana took a sip of her wine and swallowed. “There’s always room for improvement.”

  Erik raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “You do realize that this is your personal little quirk, and I wholeheartedly disagree with your assessment?”

  “If that’s business talk for you think I’m a little nuts to think this way, then, yeah, I do,” Ana said, smiling.

  Their waiter approached at that instance, and they ordered dinner. After the waiter left them alone, Ana changed the subject with, “So, are we going running in the park tomorrow morning?” They had a standing date on Saturday mornings to run in Central Park if both of them were in the city.

  “No, I’m sorry, but tomorrow I’ll be driving to Bridgeport for the weekend.” Erik sighed. Some of the people he’d had to negotiate with over the years had made some strange stipulations before signing on the dotted line. However Leo Barone’s invitation to spend the weekend with his family took the prize. Barone owned a shoe factory that Whitaker Enterprises was in the process of purchasing. Barone stated that he wanted to meet the head of Whitaker Enterprises in a social setting before signing over his company, and the people who worked for him, to him. The biggest hitch in the negotiations had been Barone’s concern for his employees once he was no longer their boss.

  According to Barone, lawyers were fine for ironing out the legalities. However nothing compared to spending time with a person to get a real feel for what kind of man he was. Erik relayed all of this to Ana after which she responded with a smile, “Do you think he’d mind another guest for the weekend?”

  “Of course not,” said Erik, smiling as if that was his plan all along. “I told him I would try to convince my lady friend to accompany me.”

  “Is that what I am—your lady friend?” Ana asked, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

  “You’re a lady and you’re my friend,” Erik replied, playing along.

  “Could you drop the ‘friend’ part and refer to me as your lady from now on?” she asked, eyes sparkling with humor.

  “As far as I’m concerned you’ve been my lady for quite some time now,” Erik told her, looking into her eyes with sensual intensity. “I was just waiting for you to come to that conclusion.”

  “Then remember this date,” Ana told him, “because the wait is over.”

  With that, she leaned in and kissed him. Because of where they were Ana held back, even though it took some strength to do so. Erik’s mouth was one of the things she liked best about him. His lips were beautifully formed, and when he smiled, showing those even white teeth, she got all jittery inside. Each time she gave him a peck on the cheek she always entertained the notion of kissing him full on the lips. It had never happened before. Erik respected her wishes to keep things platonic. He’d not even “accidentally” missed her cheek, grazing her mouth—not once.

  She glanced at his mouth now and made a vow: this night will not end until I get my fill of those lips!

  Chapter 2

  “Let me drive!” Ana exclaimed, running her hand along the driver’s side of Erik’s sleek, black Corvette the next morning. Erik couldn’t hold back a
laugh her face was so animated with pure delight.

  She looked fresh and stylish in jeans, a cotton shirt open at the neck, a thick brown jacket to guard against the cold and brown suede boots. Her thick hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Erik also wore jeans, but had paired them with athletic shoes, an MIT T-shirt, and his favorite black leather jacket.

  “I’ve barely had her out on the road myself since I bought her,” he said, chuckling and holding the car keys high above his head out of her reach. Ana pressed her chest to his as she stretched on tiptoe, trying her best to snatch the keys from his grasp.

  “Come on, I’ll be good, I promise. No more than, five, ten miles over the speed limit.”

  “This is not Europe, and we don’t have an autobahn,” Erik reminded her as he handed over the keys. She had him at a disadvantage. Her close proximity—her breasts against his chest, the subtle erotic, utterly feminine scent she exuded—were causing an all too familiar physical reaction in him. Better to relent and let her drive.

  Ana clutched the keys in her hand and let out a whoop. “You choose the music, and let’s roll!”

  Erik got in and buckled up. He watched as Ana slid into the driver’s side, automatically adjusted the seat to her proportions, then fastened her seat belt.

  She turned and smiled at him as she turned the key in the ignition. He could have sworn she got pleasure from the purring of the engine. He’d never known a woman who loved to drive as much as she did. He had to admit, she was a good driver. Yes, there was that one time when they got pulled over for speeding, but even the officer stated that she hadn’t been driving recklessly, just over the speed limit. He had let her off with a warning.

  Ana consulted the GPS and pulled into the early-morning Manhattan traffic. “Tell me more about the Barones.”

  Erik was riffling through the CDs. He selected a Howlin’ Wolf album and put it in the CD player. “Well, the business was started by Leo’s grandfather, Alphonse, in the early 1900s. He and his wife, Lucia, were from Salerno, Italy. Leo’s father, Leo, Senior, took over in the sixties and left the business to Leo when he died in the eighties.”

  “Doesn’t Leo have any children to leave the business to?” asked Ana. It made no sense to her that Leo would sell the family business, even if he were having financial troubles, when the tradition in the Barone family was for the children to inherit the business. The Corellis’ clothing-manufacturing business was also an inherited family business.

  “They had a son, but the boy was killed in a diving accident when he was nineteen.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Ana sympathetically.

  “They still have a daughter. She’s sixteen now.”

  “What a blessing. She doesn’t show any interest in the business?”

  “From what I’m told, she’s more into soccer. Her team was the state champs last year.”

  “You seem to know a lot about them.”

  “I make it my business to know whom I’m dealing with,” Erik said matter-of-factly. “Besides, Leo likes to talk about his family.”

  “What about his wife?”

  “He met her in Rome when he visited the old country for the first time, is how he put it. It was love at first sight. He learned Italian in order to communicate with her.”

  “You mean he’s Italian and didn’t speak Italian?”

  “Italian was the language his grandfather spoke, and he never quite mastered. But when he met Teresa she refused to speak English so he had to learn it.”

  “Smart woman,” said Ana laughing softly.

  “Yes, he later found out she could speak English all along.”

  “Very smart woman,” she added as she nodded her head to the beat of the music. “Who is that?”

  “Howlin’ Wolf,” Erik told her. “He was known for classic Chicago blues. Like Muddy Waters.”

  He knew Ana was slowly working her way through American blues singers. She loved the gutbucket blues the best, the rough-and-ready singers who got under your skin with the emotion in their voices.

  “He’s got a gritty, sexy tone to his voice,” she said. “I could listen to him all night.”

  Erik grinned, “Are you blushing?”

  “No,” she denied, eyes on the road. “Tell me more about him.”

  “He was a big guy,” Erik said, “six-six and almost three hundred pounds.”

  “He sounds big,” Ana said.

  “He and Muddy Waters were rivals. I don’t know why, exactly, but they reportedly didn’t like each other much.”

  “Probably a professional rivalry,” Ana suggested. “They competed for jobs, maybe record deals, maybe even women.”

  “They probably didn’t have to compete for women. Women love musicians. There were undoubtedly enough to go around.”

  “Who knows, maybe they were in love with the same woman,” Ana countered. “Men have feuded over women since the beginning of time. Remember Helen of Troy?”

  Erik laughed. “The blues is usually about a broken romance,” he said. “You could be right.”

  They talked about the blues and listened to it the entire trip. It was nearly noon when Ana turned onto the long driveway that led to the Barone house, a three-story Tudor-style mansion on the outskirts of Bridgeport. There were three other late-model cars parked on the circular drive.

  Ana parked the Corvette and turned off the engine. Shy by nature, she was always a little apprehensive about meeting new people. “Here we are,” she said to Erik hesitantly.

  Before they could get out of the car, the Barones, looking relaxed in their casual weekend clothes and warm jackets, came out of the house, welcoming smiles on their faces.

  “Oh my God, it is Ana Corelli!” Julianna Barone cried, sprinting to the driver’s side and pulling open the door. “When Daddy said Mr. Whitaker was bringing his lady friend, Ana Corelli, I thought to myself, ‘Not the Ana Corelli!’ But it is you!”

  Ana got out and was immediately enveloped in Julianna’s arms. Ana hugged her back. Then they peered into each other’s faces. “It’s good to meet you…” Ana began.

  “Julianna. I’m sorry. Where’re my manners?” Juliana said.

  “I was wondering that myself,” said Teresa Barone. She was in her early fifties, five-six and curvy with tanned skin. Her dark brown hair was cut short and framed her lovely face nicely.

  “This is my mom, Teresa,” said Julianna.

  “Welcome to our home,” said Teresa in Italian, having noticed Ana’s accent. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ana.”

  Ana smiled, loving the way the language tripped off the other woman’s tongue. It had been a while since anyone other than her family had spoken in Italian to her. She answered in Italian and soon the two of them were speaking rapidly in the language. Teresa took her by the arm and led her inside with Leo, Erik and Julianna following.

  “Forgive her,” said Leo to Erik, commenting on the fact that his wife had totally ignored him in favor of Ana. “It isn’t often she meets someone who speaks her native tongue as fluently as she does. It goes to her head. How was your trip?”

  Erik told him they’d had a pleasant drive. He looked around him, at the beautiful house and acres of greenery. “Is that a stable?” he asked about the outlying building east of the house.

  “It is,” Leo told him. He shaded his eyes with a hand as he looked across the field at the well-kept stables. “In good weather, Teresa and I ride every day. We’re trying to interest Julianna.”

  “But I’m scared of horses,” Julianna finished for her father. She smiled up at Erik. She was taller than her mother, but had the same chestnut hair. However hers was long and fell nearly to her waist in waves. Her complexion was also somewhere between her mother’s dark skin and her father’s fairer skin. She and her father were nearly the same height at around fiv
e-nine.

  She and Leo stood aside as Erik retrieved his and Ana’s luggage from the car’s trunk.

  “Yes, well, I’ve never gotten used to them myself,” Erik told her. “My father raises horses. These days he calls himself a gentleman farmer, and horses are one of his obsessions.”

  “Finally,” Julianna said, “someone else who doesn’t think horses are the noble beasts my parents think they are. Those things are big! They’ve got hard hooves and they bite!”

  “They don’t bite,” Leo said, chuckling. “Well, I’ve never been bitten by one, anyway.”

  “You’ve been lucky,” his daughter said.

  Leo suggested they put the luggage in the foyer closet until after lunch.

  By the time they got into the kitchen where Teresa had led Ana, the two women were already putting lunch on the table while chattering away.

  Teresa looked up at her husband when they came into the room. “Ana tells me that her mother is Natalie Davis-Corelli. Do you remember we saw her onstage in Rome over twenty-five years ago?”

  “I do,” said Leo. He regarded Ana with an amazed look on his face. “I didn’t care much for opera at that time. It was your mother who changed that for me. I’d never heard a voice so pure, so clear, or so emotional. Is she still singing?”

  “She performs on special occasions,” Ana told him, “but mostly she teaches voice lessons.”

  After years of singing, she gets a lot of joy out of helping other singers reach their full potential.

  Leo, Erik and Julianna sat on stools around the granite-topped island in the middle of the large stylish kitchen while Teresa and Ana put the dishes Teresa had prepared earlier in the center of the island. The smells to Ana were reminiscent of home.

  “You come from a family of musicians,” Leo said to Ana. He smiled at his wife. “Being married to an opera expert, I’ve picked up a little knowledge over the years.” He returned his attention to Ana. “If your mother is Natalie Davis-Corelli that means your grandmother was Renata Corelli.”