You two will make beautiful babies together.
He wanted to flinch at the memory of those words.
Who the hell did Tamosso Conte think he was?
Eli answered his own question.
Conte thought—no, knew—he was the man who held all the trumps. But Nonna knew so many people, both here in Bella Valley and back in Italy. Perhaps Eli could shuffle the cards in his favor.
“Have you ever heard of an Italian gentleman named Tamosso Conte?” he asked.
Nonna’s brow knitted. “I don’t think so. Why?”
“I met him at the auction.”
“I know him!” Francesca Pastore was fifty years old, a movie star, the most beautiful woman in Italy, a land renowned for its beautiful women—and she was Rafe’s mother. “He is from Milan, a leather merchant, a self-made man, very rich, very powerful.” She smiled. “Very charming.”
Eli couldn’t believe she was so indulgent to the man he found so direct and despicable. “He’s short.”
Francesca ran an amused gaze up and down Eli’s six-foot-four-inch frame. “Is that how you think women measure charm, Eli Di Luca? If so, you are in for a sad surprise.”
“Lately I’ve had all the sad surprises I can stand,” Eli said. An understatement.
“Tamossa has been married, what? Five times, I think. He loves women. That’s part of his magic.” Francesca ran her hand through her long auburn hair. “You should try showing your love for the women, Eli. Nothing interests a female as much as a man who finds her fascinating.”
He gave Francesca a lazy smile, bending all his charisma on her. “For a man like me, to be surrounded by women is a pleasure none other can surpass.”
“Very good,” Francesca purred, and fluttered her lashes.
Brooke applauded. “Wow. Impressive, Eli. I’ve always said you Di Luca men have raised the art of flirtation to new heights.” She was pretty, smart, and talented, the head concierge of his family’s Bella Terra resort (although in her determination to get away from Rafe, she had resigned . . . That hadn’t worked out as she had planned). Because Brooke was also the first bride for one of the three Di Luca brothers . . . although if Tamosso Conte had his way, not the last.
Still smiling, giving not a hint of his inner turmoil, Eli asked, “This Tamosso Conte—have you ever met his daughter?”
“His daughter?” Francesca lifted her perfectly arched brows. “He has been married many times, but he has no children.”
Eli knew she was wrong. He’d seen the photo Tamosso had proffered.
The girl—she didn’t look old enough to be called a woman—sat at a cluttered desk smiling at the camera. Her blond hair was twisted on top of her head, held up with a sharpened pencil, and careless wisps fell artlessly around her cheeks. She cradled her chin in her fist—a very determined chin, by the look of it—and peered right at the camera through big brown eyes. She was, as pictured, very pretty.
And all Eli had been able to think was . . . Photo-shop.
Because her father had sagging jowls and a droopy nose, and he wasn’t just short—he sported a workingman’s build, with a barrel chest, broad shoulders, and a rotund gut. With genetics like that, the girl was doomed.
Eli supposed he shouldn’t be so shallow . . . and maybe when he met her, no matter what she looked like, he’d like her.
Maybe when he married her, he’d worship her.
Maybe when pigs could fly, all the chicken would taste like bacon.
“You okay, honey?” Nonna asked. “You look a little ill.”
She saw too much, so he moved the wine box in his arms as if he were growing tired of the weight, and looked around. “Where’s Rafe? Where’s the bridegroom?”
“He’s in the kitchen.” Brooke smirked at him. “Cooking.”
Eli smirked back at her. “Training him right, hm?”
“He complained about the shouting, said that our voices were so high we gave him a headache, but I said if he thought that was going to get him out of sex tonight, he—”
Eli’s sweet little eighty-year-old grandmother, the one who never swore, shouted, “Shit! Did you see that?” She pointed toward the screen.
The women started shouting again.
Eli backed out of the room and headed down the hall for the kitchen. He passed the dining room, passed the one bathroom in the house—when the extended Di Luca family got together, that made for some desperate moments of pounding and pleading—and went into the brightly lit and recently renovated kitchen.
Rafe was layering slices of eggplant with pasta, cheese, and Nonna’s marinara sauce.
Noah was putting chicken fillets on a cooling rack, and that was placed on a cookie sheet that would catch any loose breading, and spraying them with cooking oil.
Both of his brothers had their sleeves rolled up and kitchen towels tucked into their belts. Both wore frowns of concentration.
“Does anyone besides me see the irony of having the women in the living room watching sports while the men cook dinner?” Eli put the case down on the counter and pulled out the first three bottles of wine.
“Shut up and put on your apron.” Noah was the youngest of Gavino’s sons, handsome, charming, and urbane, the manager of the Bella Terra resort and, to all appearances, the most well-adjusted. That was possibly the truth . . . although it didn’t say much.
Eli walked over to him and peered over his shoulder. “What are you doing, man?”
“Rafe is making eggplant Parmesan casserole and I’m making chicken Parmesan.”
“That’s not how you make chicken Parmesan,” Eli said. “And—eggplant Parmesan casserole? What’s wrong with this picture?”
His two brothers turned on him. In unison, they asked, “Do you want to fry the chicken and the eggplant?”
There was only one right answer. “No.”
“Then pour for us and get to work.” Rafe was a military hero who now owned his own security firm. He gave orders well.
Briefly Eli toyed with the idea of taking wine to the ladies first, but decided he wasn’t that much of a gentleman. So he uncorked three different Di Luca varietals, chosen to please each brother’s palate, and while he did Noah said, “I don’t mind cooking, and besides, I couldn’t sit in there and listen to Nonna talk about some guy’s tushie anymore.”
Eli nodded. He could understand that. He poured the wine, put the glasses at his brothers’ elbows, and said, “I’ve got to get the champagne. For, you know, the wedding toast.” He bumped his shoulder against Rafe’s.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Rafe stopped layering the casserole and turned. They bumped chests and hugged; then he did the same with Noah.
Eli supposed they should be civilized and have a wine toast, but they were guys, and somehow the body slam expressed their glee so much better.
After years of never making it work, Rafe and Brooke had finally tied the knot in a runaway marriage to Reno.
Nonna and Kathy wanted a real ceremony in a church, but all Eli could think was—thank God Rafe and Brooke hadn’t waited. Thank God they had snatched at happiness while they could. There had been too much pain in the Di Luca brothers’ lives; it was good to, at last, see one of them find happiness.
Thanks to Tamosso Conte, Eli had a chance for happiness, too, as good a chance as any person who ever tied the knot.
If that was cynical, so be it. He had planned to say “I do” someday.
He had simply never planned to walk down the aisle for money.
“I am proposing a marriage of convenience. Yes. A marriage between two people based on property values arranged between the prospective groom and the bride’s father with an eye to a successful union that provides for the bearing and raising of offspring.”
“You want me to marry your daughter?”
“I’ve researched you, Eli Di Luca, and you are Italian, from a good family, a responsible winemaker. You trusted a friend. Your accountant stole your money and fled to South America. Now you’re desperate to
save your winery. So if you can convince my daughter to wed you, we have a deal. I’ll pay your debts. You give me grandchildren.”
“Grandchildren? With a woman I’ve never met? I don’t even know her name.”
“Chloë Robinson. My daughter’s name is Chloë Robinson.”
Now Eli had a decision to make, and he had to make it . . . soon.
Chapter 2
Noah finished spraying the chicken and opened the oven. He waved his hand inside. “Damn it! I forgot to turn it on.”
His brothers chortled.
“Like you guys could do any better.” Noah shut the oven and flipped the temp to four hundred.
“I turned mine on.” Rafe indicated Nonna’s much-loved second oven.
“If God had meant me to cook he wouldn’t have made me the manager of a resort with a five-star restaurant,” Noah snapped.
“That’s not helping you now.” Eli headed back down the hall to the front door, and as he passed the front room, the women were groaning—apparently a football player had bruised his tushie.
Kathy was offering to rub it for him.
He shook his head, walked out onto the wide, white-painted front porch, and stopped to take in the view.
Nonna’s house sat on the crest of a hillside, and dated from the late nineteenth century, when Ippolito Di Luca arrived in central California, bought land all around long, narrow Bella Valley, and planted his first acres with the grapes he had brought from the old country. Nonna said Ippolito, a legendary vintner, had nursed his cuttings through the sea voyage from Italy, and within ten years his winemaking talents allowed him to buy this piece of ground. Here he had built this stylish farmhouse with tall ceilings, narrow windows, and ornate trim. Here he had brought his bride. Here they had started the Di Luca dynasty.
Of course, she had brought land and vineyards as her dowry.
So really, this marriage of convenience Eli was contemplating was nothing new. It was practically a family tradition.
Except, of course, the first Di Luca bride knew all the facts. Stories about Allegra Di Luca said that she took pride in providing her share of the income, that she ran the home and the farm while Ippolito created his wines. Would Chloë Robinson be that kind of help to Eli?
Who the hell knew?
“Grandchildren? What if I don’t like her?”
“How could you not like her? She’s American, like you. She’s pretty. She’s young. Twenty-three.”
“For God’s sake, man, I’m thirty-four. Too old for her.”
“She needs a mature man, one to make her decisions for her.”
“Your American daughter is going to let someone make her decisions for her? What does she say about this marriage of convenience?”
“Nothing. She knows nothing. And I would take it badly if you told her.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“She’s stubborn. She rejects every husband I offer her, so you’ll have to be crafty. It won’t be easy. She’s smart, like me, and she has become . . . suspicious.”
“Imagine that.”
“She graduated in the top of her class at Rice University in Houston. She wrote a book. Only twenty-one years old when her first book was published, only twenty-two when it was optioned for a movie.”
“How are her teeth?”
“Good. Strong, white. Also, she’s a virgin.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. She’s twenty-three and . . . Wait. How would you know?”
“I had her investigated, of course.”
For the first time, Eli had felt sympathy for the poor kid. Her traditional Italian father was brokering a deal to marry her off. He didn’t get the joke when Eli asked about her teeth as if she were a horse he was considering for purchase. And Tamosso had investigated her love life.
“A powerful man like you, you want a wife unsullied by another man’s touch.”
Not really. What Eli wanted was to pick his own wife, make sure she was calm, quiet, attractive, desired the same things he did, was willing to support him in his endeavors. . . .
He’d said all that once to Nonna. She’d suggested he buy a yellow Lab.
Women. They stuck together.
But he wanted a helpmate; he sure as hell didn’t need a young prima donna with a career that took her into the limelight.
If only he were willing to ask his family for help.
But when he had taken control of Di Luca Wines, he had sworn he would create a place for himself in this world, in Bella Valley. He had vowed he would elevate the family fortunes—and to his great pride, he had been doing just that.
He had no modesty about his gift for creating wines that sang on the tongue. The gift was God-given, but he had gone to school, worked hard, learned how to cultivate his senses and when to trust his instincts. He was good at what he did. He won awards. His wines always rated at the top of the lists. He was everything Nonna (and Tamosso Conte) believed—one of the world’s finest vintners.
Until his accountant, his friend Owen Slovak, had fled to South America, leaving Eli to discover that the bank account was clean and the taxes were in arrears. If Eli didn’t lay hands on a small fortune soon, the IRS was going to foreclose on the winery.
What a fool he had been to trust anyone outside of his family. To trust anyone at all . . .
So why not ask his family for help? They would give it willingly and without mockery.
But he couldn’t stand to look in their faces and know he had failed them.
He could not bear to know he had broken his own vow.
Eli gazed at the silver ribbon of the Bella River that wound through the verdant bottomlands, at the plum orchards where falling blossoms swirled like pink snow on the wind, at the grapevines that dug their roots into the tough, shallow soil that rimmed the basin.
From here, he could make out the resort that had carried the family through Prohibition and the Depression and lifted them on a tidal wave of prosperity from the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The main building was nestled among luxuriant landscaping and the vineyards that he tended so carefully. The town surrounded it, taking sustenance from the tourists and their dollars. North and south, east and west, the long valley was embraced by richly wooded mountains.
His brothers thought Eli loved nothing and no one, but that wasn’t true. Here was the place his heart called home.
He descended the steep steps to the drive and to his truck, a powerful extended-cab F-250 with a Power Stroke diesel engine, a six-speed manual transmission, and massive tires with tread that chewed up the ground.
He drove it, so Noah said, like an old lady.
Nonna objected, saying she was an old lady and she drove her ’67 Mustang convertible faster than Eli drove his F-250.
Eli didn’t care what they said. He knew what he had under the hood, and he knew he could go anywhere in his truck. If he had to, he could climb a sequoia.
As he pulled the case of champagne out of the backseat, he saw Bao watching him from the window, saw Nonna and Brooke join her and wave enthusiastically. He showed them a bottle and smiled when they stood at attention.
Yes, everyone was ready to celebrate.
This would be a great day . . . if only he weren’t keeping things from his family. If he knew which move to make.
The phone rang in his pocket.
He put the case back in the truck, checked the phone number, and winced.
It was Conte.
Eli’s moment of decision had arrived.
Chapter 3
“I want an answer.” Conte’s Italian accent sounded heavier, more Godfather-esque, on the phone.
The answer was yes, of course. Yes. Eli agreed to Conte’s deal. He had only to say it. Say it!
But Conte had lost his patience. “I had not thought you would be so obstinate about what is really a simple plan. Perhaps I have picked the wrong man. I have an alternative choice, of course. I’ll make him an offer.”
“Wait! No, I . . . want to
be sure of the terms.” Eli drew a breath. “You said we would sign a contract and the terms would be clear. I’m to court your daughter, marry her, and you will pay my debt.”
“That’s right.”
“All of my debt.”
“The tax bills the accountant did not pay, the penalties, and the interest, and the United States government will no longer be threatening to foreclose on your winery. Plus I’ll pay whatever bills your accountant left unpaid when he fled to South America. I’ll put you back on your feet, Eli Di Luca, although I will ask that you not trust anyone so blindly ever again. Not even for my grandchildren would I bail you out again.”
“I can promise I’ll never put that much trust in anyone ever again. Despite evidence to the contrary, I’m not the trusting sort.” Eli remembered the photo of Chloë, then recalled Conte’s heavy features. She was an author, ambitious, flighty, probably nuts. She’d have a muse . . . hopefully the muse didn’t want to sleep in the bed between them.
He smiled acidly at his own joke.
Yes, he was receiving the money, but he was binding himself to a woman of unknown character. He was shelling out, too. “When the debt is paid, I’ll once more be in complete control of Di Luca Wines.”
“I don’t want your winery.” Conte seemed to mean it.
Nevertheless, Eli would examine every word of the contract. “How do I convince your daughter that she loves me?”
“I don’t care. You’re a handsome young man. I suggest you feign love for her.”
“You don’t care if I actually love her?” Not that he would, but Conte seemed to dote on her.
“A man who loves a woman is weak.” Conte’s voice was sharply bitter. “Besides, do you want to love? I would have thought not—after all, your parents were grand lovers, and look what happened when your mother discovered your father was having an affair.”