Revenge at Bella Terra

  When he told them about the loss of the cash and the staggering debts he owed, they would give him a bad time. They might even be pissed. But they were his brothers. They wouldn’t judge him harshly. Together they’d get an equity loan on the resort. Probably Noah and Rafe would liquidate some of their personal holdings. Financial juggling like that would take some time, but he would make this work without Conte’s proposed marriage of convenience.

  He didn’t even have to wonder why he’d had such a change of heart.

  He could see the reasons right here in this old-fashioned bedroom.

  Chloë was smart and funny. She made him feel warm, admired, part of a family, at home. Together with his grandmother, she alleviated the loneliness that had plagued him his whole life.

  And who knew? If Chloë continued living in his cottage, and they saw each other occasionally, maybe . . .

  His phone rang. Pulling it from his pocket, he saw the number—and frowned.

  His accountant.

  His new accountant, Val Mowbray, the one who hadn’t given him one good piece of news since she’d taken over the mess left by Eli’s treacherous buddy Owen Slovak.

  “Let me get this,” he said to Nonna and Chloë, and headed out onto the front porch as fast as he could go. “What is it?” he asked Val.

  He didn’t actually ask. He snapped.

  Val didn’t snap back, but as always, she was brisk and efficient. “I just got a certified notice from the IRS. At noon on Monday, unless paid in full, they’re putting a lien on the winery.”

  “What?” Eli leaped down the steps and walked into the yard, trying to put more distance between this news and the two women in the bedroom . . . as if that would shelter them from the truth. “How? Why? You said—”

  “I know what I said. It’s the IRS. There are protocols. They’re skipping steps. I’ve never seen them move so quickly. I mean . . . they’re part of the government!”

  Eli’s outrage heated to two thousand degrees. “Can’t you do anything?”

  “I called. I talked. And talked. And talked. I’ve been talking for seven hours, on and off.”

  “Why off?”

  “Because they kept disconnecting me.” Eli could almost see Val putting air quotes around “disconnecting.” “I got nowhere. I couldn’t figure it out, because I’ve never seen anything like this drive to seize your lands. Finally I called my friend in the Washington office and asked him to check into it.”

  Eli thought he already knew, but he said harshly, “Tell me.”

  “He wouldn’t exactly tell me what was going on—couldn’t because he didn’t exactly know, I think—but I gather someone with contacts in high places is putting pressure on them to take the land ASAP.”

  Familiar rage engulfed Eli. “Joseph Bianchin.”

  “I don’t know.” Val sounded as frustrated as he felt. “I’ve never actually seen the IRS bend to outside pressure. If it’s him, he must have some nasty goods on someone with power.”

  “That sounds exactly right.” Noah should have killed the old bastard instead of running him out of town.

  As he always did, Eli pushed his fury down, hid it away, gained control. “Is there nothing we can do?”

  “Hand them a check before Monday.”

  “Five days. And part of that a weekend.” No time to tell his brothers. No time to marshal their financial forces. “All right. I’ll take care of it.”

  “What are you going to do?” Val asked.

  The screen door slammed.

  Chloë—beautiful, smiling, euphoric—came out the door and clattered down the stairs.

  Eli watched her, the pit of his belly cold as ice. “I’m going to get the money to pay them off.”

  Chapter 21

  Chloë bubbled over with enthusiasm. “I had such a good time today. Thank you for taking me to meet your grandmother!”

  Eli nodded and drove.

  “She’s amazing. You must be awfully proud of her.”

  “I am.”

  “What a story she told—about Massimo and your grandfather’s bottle of wine and Joseph Bianchin. . . . He sounds like a nasty old villain. Someone should tell him it’s not politically correct to tie virgins to the railroad tracks. I mean, does he have a mustache that he curls?” She grinned spitefully.

  “No.”

  “I suppose that would be too good to be true. But someone needs to take him down.”

  “Agreed.”

  “We can do it. All we have to do is find that bottle of wine. I’ll bet those diamonds are in there. It certainly sounds like he believes it, too, or he wouldn’t have hired someone to attack your grandmother. Don’t you think so?”

  “I said so, didn’t I?”

  She froze. He’d snapped at her.

  Not that that was so different; he’d been pretty much an ass the first time she’d met him. But after the last couple of days, she wasn’t expecting it. She’d grown used to being herself, saying what she thought without fearing his mockery or his scorn. And after their time in Nonna’s cellar, his impatience felt like sandpaper on her skin. “Are you okay?” She tried to remember when he’d grown quiet. “Was the phone call bad news?”

  She thought for a moment that he was going to ignore her, pretend she hadn’t spoken. Then in a milder tone, he said, “Just accounting stuff. Math always puts me in a vile mood.”

  She relaxed a little. “I know what you mean. The first year after I published my book, I had to pay self-employment taxes. Holy smokes. I’m still in shock.”

  “Beats being without a job.” He was still terse, but his irritation seemed to have eased.

  He was good-looking, charming when he wished to be, so obviously he could have had his choice of roommates. But he lived alone as a matter of choice. So here was a man who cherished his solitude.

  So did she, and sometimes silence healed life’s little wounds.

  She had been chattering a lot, and probably loudly, with excitement.

  “I know. I have friends who have been out of college a year who still live with their parents and work at TechLand. I mean, I love both my parents, but I don’t want to live with either one of them.” As they turned off the highway, she glanced out the window and resolved to give him his moment of quiet.

  But Eli really seemed to have recovered. “I’ve met your father,” he said. “Interesting guy. You don’t look like him at all.”

  “I know. But we did the DNA. I’m all his.” She was still being cautious.

  “I never doubted that. And I’m glad you don’t look like him.” Eli shot a warm, smiling glance at her. “What’s your mother like?”

  “Really smart. Really smart. She’s always right, even when she’s not.”

  He laughed briefly, as if Chloë had caught him by surprise.

  “She’s sharp-tongued,” Chloë continued. “She doesn’t suffer fools lightly. I assure you, the worst thing I could do while growing up was to deliberately play dumb. With just a few words, she’d rip the skin off my hide.”

  “Was she a good mother?”

  “Really good. She taught me a lot—not to put up with bullies, to read contracts before I signed them, to think things through.” Chloë meant to be brief. But he was listening so well, as if he were really interested. “She taught me other stuff, too, stuff she didn’t mean to teach me.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Some things she does I don’t like, and I don’t want to do them. I’m not always going to be suspicious and look for the hidden motives in anything and everything. Sure, it saves her from making a fool of herself, but it also makes her suspicious of anything and everything.” Chloë turned back to him, wanting him to really hear her. “I don’t want to live like that.”

  “She’s not trusting.”

  “She would say she’s being wise.”

  “She thinks you’re too trusting?”

  “Yes, but I think that’s better than being too cynical.” He hesitated. “Yes.”

&nb
sp; In the normal run of conversation, Chloë would now ask him about his mother. That was the polite thing to do—talk a little, ask a lot.

  But as they bounced up his gravel driveway, Eli changed again, looked like he had the first time she’d met him, stony faced and angry, and he appeared to be watching for something.

  The way he glanced from side to side made her start glancing around, too.

  “What are you looking for?” she finally asked.

  “Nothing.” A pause. “Someone’s been up here.”

  He made it sound sinister. “UPS? I ordered a jeweler’s loupe.”

  “No, I know what their tire tracks look like.”

  He knew what their tire tracks looked like? He watched for stuff like that? Why?

  She wanted to ask, but he was concentrating, driving as if he expected to have to turn around quickly and get out of here. As if he scented danger on the air . . .

  The hair stood up on the back of her neck.

  They got closer to the house, reached the asphalt part of the drive. The ride smoothed out. Still he was watching. He pulled up in front of her cottage, stopped the car, and said, “Wait here.”

  He walked slowly to her cottage, glancing at the ground, then all around, then at the ground again.

  The sun beat down on the truck. It was too hot in here, too dry and still. And the way he was acting . . .

  Her breath grew short. She tried to see what he was seeing. But the stretch of lawn around his house was green and lush. His house stood like the prow of a ship, surveying the valley. Her cottage looked small and cozy. . . .

  What did he see? What did he suspect?

  He looked at the steps as he climbed onto her porch. He checked the cottage’s security pad, then opened the door and walked in. He was gone long enough to raise her anxiety level to red.

  Finally, he stepped out on the porch and gestured her in.

  She flung herself out of the truck. As soon as she got close, she asked, “What? What is it?” But she asked quietly, somehow afraid that some evil, invisible entity would hear her.

  His voice was quiet, too, pitched to a level below his usual rumble. “They’re gone now, left the property, but someone’s been inside the cottage.”

  Dread grabbed her by the throat and squeezed. “The diamond! Is it gone?”

  His mouth was a straight, tight line. “Not at all. We were very wise. We hid it in plain sight, and whoever was in there discounted its importance.”

  She nodded, relieved and yet . . . How did he know this stuff? How did he know how to look at the ground and tell someone had been there? When had he learned that rare kind of skill, that caution, and so much about human nature?

  Like ominous clouds, his dark secrets loomed on the horizon again. “We need to call the cops,” she said.

  “And tell them what? Someone sneaked in without tripping the alarm and didn’t steal anything? You met DuPey. I went to high school with him. But he bungled the investigation of Nonna’s attacker, and if it hadn’t been for Rafe and Brooke, I don’t know what would have happened. Plus we have Finnegan Balfour.”

  Chloë remembered the big-eyed, smiling boy from Kansas. “He’s a nice guy,” she offered.

  “But not the sharpest crayon in the box.” Eli grimaced. “Wyatt Vincent might be able to figure something out, but I’d hate to tell a guy like that, who worked for the FBI and is a consultant to police forces across the country, that I knew someone broke in because of the way the leaves are bent on the grass.”

  “Yes. True. I get it. But . . . we can’t not tell the police.”

  “We will. Let’s get some evidence first. My brother Rafe owns a security firm. He can set up an array of cameras, connect them to my Wi-Fi network, and if the guy comes back—and I imagine he will—we’ll know who it is.”

  “What do we do in the meantime? I’m not staying here.”

  He held the door open, inviting her in. “Gather up whatever you need to work and move into my place.”

  She looked up the ridge and across the wide swath of lawn to his house. “That’s not going to be safe.”

  “I have better security.” As if embarrassed, he said, “I never thought anybody would break in here when the obviously much more expensive house was right there.”

  He made sense.

  Gesturing toward the lawn and walk, he said, “The tracks go here, not there. You’re the one they fear. You’re the one who can figure out where the diamonds are.”

  “Me? Don’t be ridiculous. Why would anyone think that I—” She stopped. They, whoever they were, thought she could solve the mystery because she was a mystery writer. Her own small fame had revealed her.

  “Did you have your notebook with you at Nonna’s?” he asked.

  “No. It’s here.” She dived toward her desk, suddenly frantic to see that it really was here.

  It was, red and ragged, spirals twisted out of shape, open to the spot with her notes taken at the water tower and afterward. In large sprawling letters at the bottom, she’d written, DIAMOND!!!!, in all caps. And in small caps, PINK and VALUABLE.

  She put her hands to her forehead. “If anyone was in doubt about what we were doing, they’re not now.”

  He joined her and looked down at the notebook. “Would you know if someone looked at this?”

  She tried frantically to remember whether the notebook had been open or closed. “I left it open.”

  “To this page?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The only person who could have slipped through the alarm on this cottage was a professional. How would you have known your belongings weren’t safe here? God!” He paced away from her. “I am sorry. This is my fault.”

  She hurried after him. “No, it’s not! In the right hands, any security system can be cracked. I know this stuff.” She tried to smile. “I’m a mystery writer.”

  “My house should be secure.” He went to the closet, pulled out her suitcase of death, opened it on the bed. “Don’t worry. I know you need privacy, but you can work in my office.” He opened her drawers, pulled out her underwear, threw it in the case. “I’ll be working, too, mostly in the vineyard and at the winery. I won’t bother you, I promise, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving you alone unless I know you’re safe.”

  “Okay.” She wasn’t going to argue with that. When she thought of someone in her cottage, looking at her things, reading her notes, handling her books . . . it made her stomach hurt.

  More important, she would feel safe in Eli’s house, under Eli’s protection.

  She never doubted that Eli was one of those guys who guarded what was his.

  His house was his, and in some indefinable way she had begun to believe . . . that she was his, too.

  Going to the bed, she pushed him aside and started packing her books.

  Chapter 22

  Chloë climbed to the main level of Eli’s house, put her bags down, and looked around.

  The tall, massive great room consisted of the living room and the kitchen, a vast space looking east through a wall of windows across the valley. The decorative touches were spare; the furniture was sparse: an extralong tan recliner, a wide, comfortable-looking couch upholstered in sage, a coffee table created from a single polished slab of wood cut from the length of a glorious old tree, two swooping copper arc lamps, and a modern area rug that covered the swept granite floor. One huge golden painting of a long stairway leading up to a hidden garden hung over the fireplace. The kitchen sported all stainless-steel appliances, a basalt countertop bare of canisters, knives, or utensils, a backsplash of gleaming green glass tiles, and handcrafted wood cabinets stained a deep cherry.

  It was perfect. Understated. Very Eli.

  She should be comfortable here, yet somewhere, someone was watching them. Watching her.

  Why?

  Eli came puffing up the stairs, carrying the Suitcase of Death with its load of heavy books. He set it down and leaned against the wall, holding his chest and gas
ping as if he were having a heart attack.

  She ignored his dramatics. “I’ve been thinking—do you suppose my father has offered me up to someone besides you?”

  “What?”

  “Someone came here looking for something. They broke into the cottage and didn’t take anything, and the diamond was sitting right there. Do you suppose it’s some Mafia-type jerk my father came up with for me to marry?”

  Eli made a show of wiping the nonexistent sweat off his forehead. “It’s possible. But you thought I was the designated jerk, didn’t you?”

  At this point, she wouldn’t have thought anything could make her laugh. But this did. “If it’s you, you’re taking your own sweet time about it. Most of the guys figure a meal, a couple hours of romancing, a quick horizontal tango, and it’s off to the church.”

  He actually looked offended. “Maybe I’m smarter than they are.”

  “Maybe so,” she said soothingly. “For sure you’re a better kisser.”

  “I think I’ve been insulted.”

  She chortled. “No, I didn’t mean it like that.” She chewed on her theory some more. “I have to admit, Papa’s previously never come up with anyone dangerous. It could have just been a run-of-the-mill break-in.”

  She had talked herself into feeling better until he said, “Run-of-the-mill burglars do not make sure everything looks the same as when he broke in. We know someone murdered Massimo. Someone attacked my grandmother. And the diamonds are still missing. Money moves people to violence. Stay with me so I can keep you safe.” He looked bleakly serious and as if he wanted an answer.

  “Yes. I will.”

  “Thank you.” He had gotten his way, and now he gestured around at the great room. “What do you think?”

  “If it had been me, I would have found some framed mirrors, and added some art prints, and maybe some glass art . . . but that would have been gilding the lily.” She walked to the windows. “Because your designer was right. The focus is here.”

  “My designer was an idiot. I’m the one who put the brakes on the froufrou.”

  That was so Eli that she laughed again. “You’re a lucky man to have a heritage that included these lands and this view.”