On the road, a car slowed and stopped.
She tensed, stood, tried to look tall and tough.
A guy, who did not look tall and tough, called, “Looks like you know what you’re doing!”
“I do.” She did. Because eight years ago, when she’d taken driver’s training, her instructor had made her change a tire. She hadn’t done it since. She didn’t know if she could loosen the lug nuts or get the jack to work right. But only a fool would ask a strange man for help....
Not that he was offering. “Do you need me to call someone for you?”
“No, I already called.” Her smile was more a baring of her teeth.
The garage had said they were busy and it would be two hours. The bastards.
She said, “I figured while I was waiting, I might as well give it a try.”
“Power on!” He rolled up his window and drove away.
“Yeah, thanks.” She read the directions in the trunk about how to assemble the jack, and did it . . . on the third try.
She wished she were back in Texas, where some man would stop, swagger over, and tell her to rest her pretty self while he changed her tire. She’d do it, too.
Okay. If she’d had this flat while driving through west Texas, home of tarantulas and dust storms, she would have waited a long time before she even saw a man. But other than Mr. Power On, it wasn’t as if they were coming out of the woodwork in California, either.
Men had their place in the world.
Taking out the garbage.
Opening jars.
Fixing flats.
The irony of having a flat tire here, within two miles of her goal, did not escape her.
What other reason—except being late on her deadline—could explain that kind of bad luck?
The deadline. Second-book syndrome.
And her father.
God help her. She loved him. She really did. He was a great guy. But her mother had warned her: When it came to women, he was a Neanderthal. He thought a woman should be married and producing children, particularly if that woman was his daughter and the children she would bear would be his grandchildren.
He was proud of her. He adored her. But they wanted different goals.
He wanted grandchildren to make up for all the years he’d missed of her life.
She intended to live the life she had worked so hard to make for herself. She did not want a husband he had bribed, begged, or blackmailed to marry her.
She read the directions about how to place the jack, read them three times, knelt in the gravel, and maneuvered it into place. Taking a breath, she started to raise the car.
The way things were going, she’d be lucky if the damned car didn’t slide on this gravel, fall off the damned jack, and crush her damned hands and at least one damned foot.
Hey! But at least if her fingers were broken, she wouldn’t have to finish the damned book!
That’s the way, Robinson. Look on the bright side.
When her father had given her a plane ticket from Austin to Santa Rosa, she debated telling him no, she wouldn’t go. But she had experience with his match-making schemes. He never gave up, and if she didn’t go to California, somehow Eli Di Luca would find his way to her.
Besides, right now, as Texas simmered under a blistering spring heat, California sounded pretty good. So she’d decided to go . . . but on her own terms.
She’d packed her car and started across country, determined to have an adventure. She’d driven across west Texas, the most godforsaken, desolate stretch of land in the world. She had traversed the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona, gawked at the magnificence of the Grand Canyon, driven through Los Angeles, where the freeway never ended, and onward to the coastline, where she had walked in the sand, played in the ocean, and locked her keys in the car.
That had been embarrassing.
After calling a locksmith and retrieving her keys, she’d stopped in Hollywood at a spa and, um, done something impulsive.
She touched her hair gingerly.
Very impulsive and possibly ill considered.
She’d driven into the Sierra Nevada mountains, through the mighty sequoias and into Yosemite National Park, where she had cried at the epic majesty of that glacial valley. She’d veered into the Central Valley, and found spots as hot and flat and bare as Texas. No tarantulas, though. No sagebrush, either. Just miles and miles of farmland as far as the eye could see. But when she drove into the wine country, the scenery changed. The valleys were narrow and long, the highway crowded. Grapes grew everywhere, beside the road, up on the hillsides. And every five hundred yards was another sign for another winery.
When her GPS instructed her to turn off and take the pass over the mountains and into Bella Valley . . . she’d almost died of terror.
She was from Texas, from the hill country. Not from the let’s-drive-on-a-narrow-winding-vertical-road-and-scare-the-pants-off-her country.
That road had scared the pants off her. Going up. Going down. And then . . . she’d come around a sharp corner and there it was, Bella Valley, spread before her like some flashback to early California, when people were scarce and the land drowsed under a loving sun. Wide oaks dotted the golden hills. Orchards and vineyards rode the rise and fall of every fold in the earth. In the distance a town, Bella Terra, nestled beside a silver river that wound in wide loops through the bottom-lands.
She didn’t care about Eli Di Luca, but right then and there, she fell in love with his home.
She had almost called her father to tell him. But there was no point in encouraging him any further.
Anyway, she didn’t dare call him right now. He had not been happy about his baby girl driving two thousand miles by herself. He had predicted dire happenings. Like this flat tire.
She stepped back and looked.
Okay. The tire was off the ground.
Should she have loosened the lug nuts first?
Crap. Yes. She should have.
She lowered the jack again, and when the weight of the car held the tire in place, she pulled the handle off the jack—good thing the instructions told her it acted as the tire iron, too—and wrestled with the lug nuts.
How was she supposed to loosen them when some guy with an air compressor had tightened them?
She bounced on the tire iron.
If her father knew about this flat tire, he’d call Eli Di Luca, who’d come to the rescue.
She wouldn’t mind if a Texan called her “little lady” and patronized her while he fixed her tire. Having one of Papa’s suitors rescue her would be seriously annoying.
No matter how much of a pain in the ass she found her father and his plans, she was still glad he was in her life. But between his machinations and her becoming a successful author, she had grown skittish about dating. She never knew whether the guy was going to talk about how he wanted to settle down and raise a large family or whether he was going to earnestly tell her he had a great plot for a book, and suggest she write it for him and they’d split the profits. And inform her that if they skipped the New York publishing house and published it themselves online, they’d make millions and billions of dollars and get to keep it all themselves.
In the end, she didn’t know which was worse: the guy who lunged at her with the intent of impregnating a rich man’s daughter, or the guy who bored her silly explaining every detail of his story.
Hm. Her father should look for a guy who had a plot idea and also wanted to marry money. She would go out with him; he’d talk about his book until she was in a coma; then he could have his way with her at his leisure.
She grinned and carefully stacked the lug nuts in a pile, then went to work with the jack again.
And no matter how much people who thought they could write when they had never tried annoyed her, she loved talking with other authors, published and unpublished, the ones who put their butts in their chairs day after day and wrote. If not for their knowledge and assistance, she would not have realized she was suffering fro
m the well-documented second-book syndrome. According to authors who wrote lots of books, there was only one cure—to finish the book and start another. And another.
So she would. Because she was tougher than she looked.
She had gotten the car off the ground again, hadn’t she?
She tugged the flat off, carried it to the trunk, put it in.
She put the spare on. Tightened the lug nuts. Lowered the jack.
She had changed the tire! She had changed the tire!
Lifting her arms over her head, she did the victory dance.
She was a goddess! A goddess!
. . . Of course, that was when a winery tour bus full of people drove past, staring as if she were crazed.
She lowered her arms.
Damned deadline.
Chapter 6
“Someone’s coming up your drive.” Royson Ryan straightened up and looked toward the dust cloud on top of the ridge.
“Son of a bitch.” Eli glanced at the horizon. “Now? I’m busy.”
Roy and Eli were at the bottom of Gunfighter Ridge, at the end of a row of grapevines, repairing the drip irrigation lines—except when the coyotes were thirsty. The creatures were smart; they chewed through the plastic, got their drink, and wandered off, leaving precious California water to gush through the break until the pressure dropped and Roy or Eli or one of the hands hurried to fix it.
“Maybe it’s that girl. The one you were waiting for.” Roy gloated.
Damn it. Roy hadn’t been at dinner with Eli’s family. He hadn’t had to be. Gossip slid through this valley on a greased track. The cashiers in Safeway knew Eli was expecting a girl who would stay with him. The Luna Grande cocktail waitresses knew he was putting fresh flowers in the cottage every day. Every time he saw them, his brothers gave him a ration of shit over the fact that she was supposed to be here two weeks ago and she hadn’t put in an appearance.
He was pissed because he didn’t want her there, and more pissed because he needed her to show up or the IRS would put a lien on his land.
He had spent his adult life making sure he was never forced to choose between the frying pan and the fire—and now here he was, trying to figure out the precise moment to jump.
No matter. He’d learned early not to let anyone see him in pain, not even someone he’d known as long as he’d known Royson. Wiping all expression from his face, he said, “I’ll go and chase whoever it is off my land,” and started up the hill.
Royson snickered.
Damn it. Eli would have fired him in a New York minute, except that Royson was the best foreman in any winery in the country, maybe in five countries, with a gut feeling at any given time about what the grapes needed, a sure instinct of where and what to plant, and an uncanny knowledge of what each season would bring.
So Eli would pretend he didn’t hear the snickering.
The climb to his house was steep, through rows of vines that zigzagged up the hill. The bud break had occurred early, in late February, and the leaves had unfurled to soak up the sun. At the same time they had the fresh, bright, spring green color of new growth. He saw no sign of grapes yet, but he knew they were waiting just out of sight, ready to sag below the leaves, small and green, tightly bunched. . . .
It was odd, but every year until he saw that first bunch of tiny grapes he didn’t truly believe the cycle had begun again. He needed to know that the earth, the sun, the wind, and the rain would collaborate again to create that most precious of miracles: a rich, heavy, fully ripened fruit.
He could take it, mash it, start the process that turned it from juice to wine, delicate or hearty, fruity or spicy, glorious in all its incarnations. He was a master at creating wines.
But only God could create the grape.
Every year, until Eli saw God’s hand at work, he lived on the edge of fear that this year it wouldn’t happen, and Eli would again be nothing, a pawn in the hands of fate.
The incline became abruptly steeper, and his house came into view, the house he had so carefully designed. His architect would dispute that, say he designed the sprawling, copper-colored adobe home. But Eli had known what he wanted: an Italian villa nestled into the hillside, cool and restful, on three levels, and with a view of the valley. The orange tile roof softly glowed, and the wide eaves protected the interior from the California sun. On the main level—the second story—the wide veranda ran the length of the house and overlooked the same valley as at Nonna’s, but from a different angle.
He had allowed an interior decorator to work closely with him to pick out the furniture, insisting on comfort first, with a lack of fuss and frills. He wanted his home to be welcoming, restful, and his.
As he crested the ridge, he saw the car, a blue Ford Focus, parked in front of the cottage. A blonde was lifting bags out of the trunk, but from a distance it didn’t look like Chloë Robinson. She was shorter than he thought she would be, maybe five-five. And thinner. Bony. “Geez, girl, eat a burger,” he muttered.
She had dust on her clothes.
Her complexion was pale, and as he neared, he saw she wore not a speck of makeup. Freckles dotted her nose. Her lips were lightly pink, as if she’d been biting them. And her hair—it was white-blond, straight and short, sticking up all around her head like a dandelion puff waving in the breeze. As she turned to face him, he saw that two pomegranate red strands sprang from her left temple and grew long enough to cup her cheek, and a sparkling blue stud was stuck through the upper part of her right ear.
Juvenile. So juvenile. Surely this wasn’t Chloë.
But the face was right: cheeks sweetly rounded, big brown eyes, and a warm smile. Her picture hadn’t lied. She was very attractive.
She was two weeks late with no explanation, her father was bribing him to marry her, and she looked younger than he’d expected, which made Eli feel like an even worse cad and bigger lecher.
And she was smiling? She had guts.
He stopped six feet away. Planted his feet. And demanded, “What happened to your hair?”
The smile disappeared. Temper flared in her eyes. “What happened to your face?”
She had the slightest traces of a slow Southern accent. She looked like the fragile type of woman who dissolved at a single cross word.
Apparently he’d read her wrong.
He rubbed his cheek. “My face? What’s wrong with it?”
Taking his arm, she pushed him over to her car and pointed at his reflection in the side-view mirror.
Okay. She had a point. He wore jeans and rubber boots caked with dirt; a denim shirt soaked in sweat, sunscreen, and grease; and his oldest hat. He had grease smeared up one side of his nose and over his forehead; the hair that had escaped from under his hat had been styled with thick, rich, black mud.
This was not the way he’d planned their meeting. He’d planned to dress nicely, comb his hair, and, most of all, bathe.
Damn the woman. They weren’t even married and already she was making him worry about the way he looked.
He turned to see her carrying two of her bags up onto the small stoop of the cottage. She inserted a key into the lock—he’d sent the key to her, along with a stern admonition that it was for the cottage door only and not to try the house—and opened the door. At her first glimpse inside, she gave an exclamation of surprise and pleasure . . . and he almost smiled.
He’d spared no expense in the cottage, using a studio floor plan from the Bella Terra resort. Because he wanted to live alone, but he wanted his guests to be comfortable. Not that he ever invited any guests, but he knew someday he would be called on to house the overflow from a family event . . . like his marriage to Chloë.
She disappeared inside.
He picked up her big suitcase.
He gasped.
The son of a bitch was heavy. Very heavy. The airlines would charge extra for this one. Good thing she drove. He lugged it up the steps onto the porch. He toed off his boots, then walked through the door and found Chloë looking aroun
d the generous, lush living space with a sitting area, a fireplace, and a queen-size bed.
He had had a desk brought in, French provincial in a high-gloss black finish with hand-painted gold accents on the edges of its top, apron, and drawers and down the gracefully curved legs. He’d draped one of Nonna’s antique lace shawls over the top and, in anticipation of Chloë’s arrival, he’d sprinkled the surface with fresh rose petals every damned day. Now he was glad, because with the antique mother-of-pearl lamp and the bouquet of pink roses in the Tiffany crystal vase, her work area looked romantic and writerly.
With awesome patience, he put the suitcase against the wall. “What’s in there?”
“Research books.” She examined the tiny kitchen, opened the fully stocked utility drawers, checked out the microwave, the oven, the refrigerator, the sink. “My mom and I call that the suitcase of death.”
“I survived.”
“You do look healthy enough.”
It didn’t sound like a compliment.
She headed into the warmly decorated bathroom complete with a shower, soaking tub, and heated towel bar, and came out nodding enthusiastically. “This is fabulous. It’s comfortable. It’s roomy. My God. This is better than I could have ever imagined. Thank you for allowing me to stay here. Thank you!” Walking to the French doors, she flung them open and stepped onto the deck.
He followed, wanting to see her see the view.
She paced toward the railing, grasped it with both hands, and leaned forward, sunshine on her face, lips softly open, eyes wide.
On this side of the cottage, the ground dropped away, lending the illusion that the deck hovered in midair. The panorama cut across Bella Valley rather than down its length, over the lazy loops of river that wound through orchards and vineyards. Here and there, a farmhouse dotted the landscape, but from this deck’s view, the town might not have existed. On the other side of the valley, the hills rose, terraced with vines, and behind them the mountains stood densely wooded, cool and shadowy.
“Amazing,” she whispered. She sniffed the air, turned to him, and grinned. “It’s so perfect it looks like a cheap painting. How you must love living up here!”