Free Loving Gigi by Ruth Cardello Page A

emotional basket case, but Gigi was unable to sleep. After a brief, fitful attempt at a nap, Gigi opened her eyes and said, “Kane?”
    Kane looked up from working on his laptop. “Yes?”
    “I can’t sit here and pretend I’m not going crazy on the inside, but I don’t want to talk about my family or the past.”
    Kane shut his computer and put it off to the side. “Okay. Have you ever been to the States before?” Before she had a chance to say anything, he said, “Besides Slater Island.”
    “No,” Gigi said slowly. Her father hadn’t taken her anywhere but she couldn’t say that nor did she want to think about it. “I haven’t had a reason to. I travel around Europe for my job. Mostly I get to dig through people’s dusty attics, but I love exploring new towns. How about you? Do you travel much?”
    “Like you, only for work.” Kane made a slightly dissatisfied face. “I took over my family’s company a couple years ago and it’s pretty much taken me over as well.”
    “What kind of business is it?”
    “It’s diversified developments. That’s a fancy way of saying we follow the money. Whether it needs to be torn down, built, maintained, or dug up we have the resources around the globe to make it happen. A lot of what we do is for governments, but I’ve been expanding into the private sector, and the opportunities are limitless there.”
    “Sounds exciting.”
    “It is. My father built the company and a strong reputation, so really all I had to do was not fuck it up. But I wanted to prove to him that I could do as well as he had, and that meant taking it to the next level.”
    Gigi loved the warmth in Kane’s eyes as he talked about his father. “You sound very close.”
    “We are,” Kane said simply. “I have a small family. Mostly just my parents and my sister, but not much happens to any of us that the others don’t instantly know about. That can be both a blessing and a curse. If I miss a family dinner there is hell to pay.”
    Gigi clasped her hands on her lap. “I can’t imagine that. My mother and I are more friends, I guess, than mother and daughter. We have our own lives. We check in with each other now and then, but it’s nothing like your family sounds.”
    Kane looked across at her intently. “My impression was she loves you very much.”
    Gigi nodded slowly. “I know she does. We’re just very different people.” Thinking about how often she’d tried and failed to connect with her mother threatened to make Gigi sad, and that wasn’t a layer of emotion she was looking to add to her already frayed nerves. “How did you break your nose?”
    Kane’s hand went to the bridge of his nose, and a large smile spread across his face. “I would like to say college football, but I accidentally dated a married woman once. I probably could have blocked the punch, but part of me felt I deserved it.”
    “How do you accidentally date a married woman?”
    Kane laughed. “Start with the underdeveloped frontal lobe of an adolescent boy, add alcohol, and a trip to Montana. I hired her for ski lessons, but I learned a lot more than that before her husband showed up.”
    “You were a teenager?”
    “Nineteen,” Kane said with an unabashed smile. “Old enough to appreciate the lessons, but too young to notice her ring.”
    “You’re right. You did deserve that punch.”
    He folded his arms across his chest and challenged, “Are you trying to tell me all of your choices have been good ones?”
    “No,” Gigi said with a chuckle and was surprised at how easily she and Kane had fallen into a comfortable conversation. “You’re right. We all make mistakes. Was that your worst?”
    “So far,” Kane said cryptically and excused himself, claiming he needed to make a few phone calls. When he returned they continued to talk, but their topics remained much less personal.
    When the pilot requested they prepare for landing, Gigi discovered she didn’t want her time with Kane to end. The