Laying a Foundation: Bonus volume: Includes series prequel, The Groundbreaking (The Love Under Construction Series) (24 page)

“Hi! You’re early!” Nikki opened the door and peeked through just enough that Tony could see half of her face.

“Yeah. Guess I was excited to see you.” He waited. “Are you going to ask me in?”

Nikki’s face turned bright pink. “Oh my god, of course, but I’m not ready. So, close your eyes?” He grinned, then squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m going to take your hand and lead you to the sofa. Don’t open them until I say you can.” She took his hand and led him inside, backed him up to the sofa, and sat him down. He heard her footsteps cross the room, and then she told him, “Okay, you can open them. I’ll finish up in here.”

Tony looked around. The living room wasn’t large, but it wasn’t tiny either. Everything was very neat, tidy, and organized. It was decorated very simply, and it wasn’t extremely girly-looking. Some of the toss pillows were floral, but quite tastefully so. On the table were the roses he’d sent her.

Over on the mantel were a half dozen photos of people, so he got up to look at them. A smiling family gazed back at him; a woman, man, and two younger people. Next to it were two pictures in matching frames; each was a photo of one of the younger people in the first photo with a person of the opposite gender with them. On the other side of the mantel was a photo of the man and woman from the first photo, just the two of them. The woman looked familiar, but he couldn’t figure out where he’d seen her. “Hey, who’s this woman in these photos?” he called out. “You don’t have a sister, do you?”

“No,” he heard her reply, then there was a long pause before she replied, “that’s me.”

Tony looked again. The woman looked a little younger than Nikki, but was a good hundred pounds heavier. “You’re kidding, right?” he called back. “That’s you?”

“That was me,” she called back. “That’s not me anymore.”

“Well, no shit.” Tony heard a sound behind him and turned. “Oh. My. God,” he murmured. His mouth fell open in shock.

Nikki stood in the open doorway in her gauzy turquoise sundress. The straps of her purple bra showed under the sundress straps, and both showed through the open knit of the cap-sleeved shrug she was wearing over the dress. She had on matching bejeweled flip-flops and a gold ankle bracelet, and plenty of sparkly jewelry. Her hair was pulled back in a half-tail with a turquoise, blue, and purple scarf tied around it. “Do I look okay?” she asked.

Tony chuckled and shook his head. “You have no idea, do you?” he asked her.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“You look spectacular. Really, really hot.” Tony looked her up and down. “I wish you had some idea what kind of effect you have on me.”

Nikki blushed. She wondered if he’d done the same thing last night, alone in his bed, that she’d done in hers. She’d like to think he had. As if to answer her unspoken question, he offered, “Do you have any clue what kind of shape I was in last night after you left?”

“No,” she lied. “What do you mean?”

“Let’s just say it was a good thing all of the kids went home.” He looked down at the floor and blushed, then looked back up at her under his brows. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah, let me say goodbye to Bill and Hillary.”

“Can I meet them? Will they eat me?” he asked mockingly.

“Oh, yeah, they’ll eat you! Come in here.” She motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen, where the two small dogs jumped at his legs as she fussed at them to stop. Tony just dropped to one knee and scratched ears and chins.

After she’d petted them goodbye and closed the gate to the kitchen area, she and Tony made their way out the front door. Before they could get through the doorway, Tony caught her around the waist, twirled her around to face him, and planted a small, soft kiss on her lips, then buried his face in her hair. “You can’t know how much I’ve been looking forward to this.”

“I doubt you’ve looked forward to it as much as I have,” she whispered in his ear.

He squeezed her to him and leaned back, his gold-flecked eyes locking with her turquoise-blue ones. “If this day goes as well as I think it will, we’re going to have a lot to talk about on the way home.” He let her go and swept his arm toward the car. “After you, baby.”

“Do you really like dogs?” she asked as she buckled in.

“Oh, yeah, I love them.” He looked both ways before pulling out onto the street in the non-existent Sunday afternoon traffic.

“But you don’t have one?”

“Nope. I’d love to have one. But I work so much that it wouldn’t be fair to a dog. Plus I always had my hands so full taking care of, well, everything, by myself that I couldn’t handle a dog too. Maybe someday I’ll have somebody in my life to help me so I can have a dog. Or maybe,” he said, reaching over to take the hand she held in her lap but not looking at her, “she’ll already have dogs and I can love and enjoy them.”

“Even if they’re weird, yippy little dogs?”

Tony laughed. “Hey, even weird, yippy little dogs need love!”

“By the way, whose car is this?” Nikki ran her hands across the leather seat of the gold Mercedes sedan. It was easily the most luxurious car she’d ever ridden in, and so quiet too.

“Mine.”

“This? Where’s the Camaro?” Nikki loved the sports car. It was beautiful, fast, and very, very sexy.

“At home in the garage,” he told her as he pulled onto the interstate.

She wasn’t sure what answer she’d expected, but that wasn’t it. “So exactly how many cars do you have?” she asked without looking at him.

“Let’s see . . . this one, the Camaro, the work truck, my personal truck, which is a Dodge Ram, a Yukon Denali, and a BMW convertible. Oh, yeah, and a Harley.” Tony rattled them off as though it were the most natural thing in the world to have an entire car lot of vehicles.

“Oh. And what about a plane and a helicopter? And the yacht?” she asked, trying to be funny.

“No helicopter or yacht. But I do have a plane,” he replied matter-of-factly. “Well, the company has one. It’s at our hangar.”

Nikki didn’t know exactly what to say to that. How do you ask someone why they need six cars and an airplane? And besides, why was it her business? He clearly enjoyed what he was working so hard for. She decided she’d asked all the questions she needed to ask for the time being, so she took a deep breath, sat back in the glove-soft leather, and relaxed. She had a feeling it was going to be a fabulous day.

They hadn’t gone very far before Tony signaled and pulled onto an exit ramp. Nikki started to ask where they were going, and then she remembered: The magazine article said Tony’s family home was in Shelbyville, and that was the exit they were taking. Was he taking her to his other house?

Within a few minutes they were driving through the middle of Shelbyville. It was small but quaint, with a sparsely-populated main street like so many small towns in the state. Tony kept driving east until they were on the other side of town. There were plenty of fairly average houses, nothing spectacular, but the countryside was gorgeous.

“So you grew up here?” Nikki asked.

“More or less. I think I told you, when I got to high school age, my parents sent me to Italy. I came back here summers until I graduated high school, then I went to UK to engineering school. But I came here almost every weekend during college. I was seeing Dottie. Her piece-of-shit family is here too. So being here seemed like the thing to do.” Tony didn’t look at her while he was talking. She wasn’t sure if that was because he was watching the road, or if he really didn’t want to talk about those years. “Now, with the business to run, I don’t spend as much time here as I’d like. I like the outdoors, the farm, the land, all of that. But it’s easier for me to live in Louisville. And I raised the kids there for that reason too.” He turned onto a smaller road, barely big enough for meeting cars to pass.

“Is this where you’re planning to retire?” Nikki gazed out the window at the neat white fences along both sides of the road.

Tony’s voice sarcasm when he said, “Retire? What’s that? I doubt I’ll retire until I’m so old that I won’t be able to drive all the way out here! Even my weekends are usually pretty jammed up.”

Nikki turned to look at him and asked him outright, “So you’re sure you’d have time for a relationship?”

Her question caught him by surprise – very direct, but he respected that. He thought for a minute before answering. “I think the right woman could persuade me to spend time with her.”

“That’s good to know.” She was blunt and there wasn’t even the hint of a smile. “Because I’d hate to think I’m wasting my time on somebody who wouldn’t have time for me. I’m not very demanding and I enjoy my ‘me’ time, but I miss having somebody to talk to, eat with, that kind of thing.”

This time when Tony smiled at her, it was a sad smile. “I’d make time for the right person.” He hesitated for a second, then added, “Actually, I scrapped some plans this weekend to come here.”

“To come here?” she quizzed. “Or to come here with me?”

“Both. But mostly the latter.” He smiled without looking at her; she was tricky, this one. She was just so damned straightforward. He’d have to stay on his toes with her, but he liked a challenge, and it looked like she might offer a lively one.

Nikki looked out the window so he couldn’t see her face and broke into a wide grin. He’d had plans, but he’d cancelled them to spend time with her. That was sounding promising.

After they’d gone a couple of miles, a modern ranch-style home appeared on the left a small distance ahead of them, but instead of facing the road, the house sat perpendicular to it. “What a lovely place!” Nikki chirped, noting the carefully manicured lawn and small fish pond out front.

“Looks like Helene is home.” Tony pointed at a small gray car in the driveway.

“Helene?” Nikki asked, puzzled.

“Yeah, my housekeeper.” He honked the horn twice as he got nearer but, to Nikki’s surprise, he kept driving. “That’s her house.”

“That’s your housekeeper’s house?” She’d assumed it was his.

“Yeah. Mine is over the hill.” They passed the housekeeper’s house and started up a long, gradual incline. Nikki looked behind them and saw a middle-aged woman waving at them from the back deck of the house.

“What’s the name of this road?” Nikki asked as they continued the gradual climb.

“Oh, this isn’t a road.” Tony sighed. “This is my driveway.”

The Mercedes crested the hill and started down the other side, and Nikki had to stifle a gasp. Ahead of them lay an enormous two-story house. Her brain couldn’t quite grasp its immensity; it made the McMansions she was accustomed to seeing look like tract houses. The entire façade was stone, wood, and glass. On the first level, an imposing mahogany front door with leaded beveled crystal sidelights was framed by the columns supporting the second level balcony, which had huge windows looking out over it. Several gargantuan oaks graced the lawn and threw shade onto the house, and a tire swing hung from a branch on the largest tree. Jutting out and back at an angle on either side of the house were two-story wings. The left wing appeared to have windows from the living area; the right one, a five-car garage. To the left and a good quarter-mile behind the house was a large stable, designed to mimic the exterior of the house, and a half-dozen horses grazed on the lush grass in the sunshine beating down on the pastureland around the scene. It was almost too perfect, like an advertisement from a travel magazine.

“Sweet mother of god,” Nikki whispered under her breath.

“Like it? My humble abode,” Tony announced, pulling up in front to park. “Come on in.”

She opened the car door but, before she could get out, Tony was there, holding it for her. He closed it behind her and marched up the steps, her hand in his. She noted he didn’t take out a key; the door was unlocked and he simply opened it for her and held it until she was inside.

What the outside didn’t do to intimidate her, the interior managed. It was beautiful, crystal entry chandelier and all. Her voice broke as she asked, “How many bedrooms?”

“Eight. Not counting the one for the housekeeper. I can use it as guest housing now that Helene has her own house. So I guess nine.” Tony walked into the kitchen with Nikki following. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked, opening the refrigerator.