“I do.” And he liked that she appreciated what he had and was vocal about telling him.
She turned back to the vista. “How much of it is yours?”
“The view is all mine.”
She chuckled softly.
He might as well tell her. As a Di Luca bride, she had the right to know. “What with marriages and mergers, the Di Lucas own their share of the valley. Bella Terra resort is ours and sits on the street downtown, with seventy acres of grapes stretching behind it into the hills. The rest of the winery land is in parcels here and there, scattered across the landscape and up into the hills. Altogether I manage about four hundred twenty acres.”
She whistled softly. “Those are valuable holdings.” A lot of women had thought so. A lot of women had tried to convince him that marriage without a prenup would prove his love. A lot of women had miscalculated . . . for he hadn’t loved any of them.
Now Chloë’s voice changed, became speculative. “I’ll bet your ancestors did anything necessary to get this land and hold it.”
Startled at the direction of her thinking, he asked, “Why do you want to know?”
“I’m a writer. I like to know what people do, and why.”
He thought of all the years and all the threats to the Di Luca dominion, and thought, too, how close he teetered to losing everything his family had fought to possess. “You’re right. My ancestors did whatever it took to keep their land.”
“How about you? What would you do to keep your land?”
He stared at her profile. The breeze ruffled her sheared head and carried a hint of spicy, feminine scent to his nose. The sun kissed her pale complexion and made the rusty freckles that decorated her nose and cheeks glow. Her gaze was steady, her lips faintly smiling.
Did she know about the trouble he was in? The contract he’d signed? Was she acting on a suspicion, or was she clueless?
Regardless of what she knew or suspected, he saw no point in lying. Any one of his acquaintances would bust that story wide-open. “If there was a threat, I’d protect my family first, then my land, because . . . what’s mine is mine.”
“So it’s not about the money?”
“I don’t value the money for money’s sake, but for what it gives me.”
“What’s that?”
“Security.”
She waited as if expecting him to say more. She looked at him, saw he was through speaking, laughed, and nodded. “I’ve always thought that people who say money doesn’t buy happiness have never been without.”
He had, he thought, passed some kind of test.
She pushed the conversation back on track. “Is all your acreage planted in grapes?”
“We’ve got a few old orchards around Nonna’s house, but yes, four hundred and ten acres are vineyards, mostly red, mostly zinfandel and Sangiovese, with some other varieties mixed in. We even grow a few whites.” He knew pride rang in his voice.
“Are whites more difficult than reds?”
“I create unique wines. Whites are more difficult to make worthy of note.”
“I understand. But I like cabernet,” she said mildly.
“I do, too, but they grow better in the next valley over, so when I make cab, I buy those grapes.” She wasn’t looking at the view now; she was looking at him, eyes sharply attentive, and he realized he’d started telling her about his family, his lands, his expertise, trying to get her attention, strutting like a peacock.
It was all very well for him to tell himself he wasn’t interested in anything but her dowry.
Apparently his biological directive said otherwise. Perhaps Conte had seen something in him Eli had not recognized. Maybe like a grape Eli had reached the peak of maturity, and it was time for him to marry and reproduce.
What a mental image.
But whatever magic made him want to follow her around seeking the source of that warm, female scent . . . it seemed to have no effect on her. She wasn’t staring up at him adoringly. She had returned her gaze to the vista, her eyes narrowed on the horizon as if she were deep in thought.
Then, turning on her heel, she walked inside. “Thank you for allowing me to use your cottage. I’m sure I can finish my book here.” She laughed over her shoulder. “Or not. You should worry that I won’t finish so I can stay right here!”
She looked so pleased, so enthused, so pretty . . . and so oblivious about the ignominious contract that had led her here that Eli grunted in ill-tempered dismay. He followed her in, veered away, and headed toward the front door.
“Wait!” She ran after him, grabbed his arm, and yanked him to a halt.
He glared down at her.
She stared up at him. “Look. You don’t have to be so pissy.”
“Pissy?” Pissy? He was not pissy.
“It’s okay.” She patted his arm comfortingly. “I know what my father’s up to.”
Chapter 7
Eli considered Chloë. Considered what to say. His first thought—You know I’ve committed to a marriage of convenience with you?—was promptly rejected.
Don’t admit to anything!
“You know what your father’s up to?” he repeated warily.
“You don’t have to feel self-conscious. Papa wants me to get married. He makes no bones about it. So he parades young men in front of me like it was breeding day for his prize mare.” She grinned, but painfully, as if someone had given her a wedgie and she was trying to be a good sport about it.
She didn’t know about the contract. Eli relaxed.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’m not interested in you.”
He tensed. That was blunt. And surprisingly exasperating.
Chloë stood with her feet planted firmly on the hardwood floor, crossed her arms, and looked him right in the eyes. “I’ve got a job. I’ve got ambitions. I’ve got a deadline. I’ve got a mother who warned me about my father and his schemes before I even met him, and she’s been right about everything except . . . well, he’s cooler than she led me to believe.”
Apparently when Conte talked to Eli, he had left out a few pertinent details about his relationship with Chloë. “When did you meet your father?” Eli asked.
“Last year. No, the year before. My parents never married.”
Eli hadn’t thought to ask Conte why his daughter was an American. Now he discovered he was sharply curious. “Your father abandoned your mother?” Conte didn’t seem the type to dump his daughter, no matter what he thought of the mother.
“No! Not at all. My mother worked for my father. They had an affair. . . . Well, you’ve met him, right?”
“Yes, I’ve met him.” On one of the darkest days of his life.
“So you know he’s overbearing and pushy and an Italian mogul down to his bones. He believes he should always get his way, and my mother knew that was no way to raise a child. So when she discovered she was pregnant, she left without telling him.”
“Pardon me, but that seems . . .” He hesitated. Chloë seemed fond of her mother—and that woman was going to be his mother-in-law.
“Like a shabby way for her to treat him.” Chloë nodded. “Yes, she and I have had words about that.”
“She supported you well?”
“Very well. My mom is from Boston. Both her parents are alive. She had a degree when she worked for my father, returned to the States, got a position in the Italian department at the University of Texas in Austin, became a tenured professor. I was never without.”
“Except you didn’t have a father.”
“I didn’t feel the lack. Not at the time. But the things Papa said when he found out about me . . . He was so mad. And hurt, I think. But my mother still thinks she made the right decision, and knowing him as I now do, I have to at least partly agree.” The desk caught her eye. She wandered close and with one finger gently touched one of the rose petals scattered over the lace. “You know he’s got money?”
“I figured.” An understatement.
“Lots of money. H
e’s always at work, he’s got guards all over his estate, and if anyone knew I was his daughter, I’d be kidnapped and worse. But he’s been married so many times and had so many hugely public affairs, everyone assumed I was his girlfriend. We let them. It was easier. Safer.” As Eli eyed her, she said, “It’s not like I resemble him.”
“True.” Eli didn’t have a lot of good opinions about parents; his own had been such shits. But he knew most people had reasons, good ones, to love their parents, and he still really didn’t understand Chloë’s situation. “After all those years of silence, why did your mother suddenly tell you about your father?”
“I asked her.”
“Why didn’t you ask sooner? I mean, didn’t you have curiosity before you were—”
“Twenty-one. I did ask, but she always acted like”—Chloë thrust her hand through her hair, then looked at her palm as if the length surprised her—“like talking about him pained her. The first few times, I didn’t insist. Finally I did. I think she loved him, but didn’t trust him. That’s got to suck.”
“Yes.” He remembered his mother and the pain that had driven her from one despair to another.
Then he remembered what he intended for Chloë: a loveless marriage with no chance of reprieve.
But she would trust him, and never know he felt nothing for her. That was best for them both.
“These roses look fresh. Why do you think the petals fell off?” Picking up the lace shawl, she shook it over the black-and-gilt trash can.
As he watched incredulously, rose petals fluttered down, then disappeared from sight. He’d personally plucked those rose petals—and she’d dumped them?
She folded the shawl and put it on the shelf in the closet.
She didn’t like the lace shawl? He’d never met a woman who didn’t like lace.
Opening her duffel bag, she rummaged inside. “Anyway, that’s the story of my parents. I took a semester off, went to Italy, met Papa, finished my book while living on his estate, got published, graduated, and once that happened—boom! He decided I’d lived my life and needed to get married. He wants grandchildren.”
Eli knew that all too well. “Do you not like children?”
She turned, clutching a human skull. “Not the point, Eli Di Luca. The point is I’m twenty-three and have no desire to be married, much less married for a piece of my father’s fortune. And I realize this is an odd concept—but I’d like to fall in love.”
“Any candidates?” He hadn’t thought so, but just because her father offered her to him didn’t mean she was free.
“No.”
“And is that skull real?”
“Yes.” She lovingly placed it on the left-hand corner of the desk facing the chair.
There its empty eye sockets would stare at her and its eternal grin would give her cheer. Or something like that.
“No boyfriends?” he asked.
“I’ve had a few, of course. But now it’s complicated. You know what I mean.” She waved a hand toward the open French door. “You’ve got money. I’m sure women come after you with hot schemes for your fortune.”
“It’s happened,” he admitted. “But how can guys chase you for your father’s fortune if they don’t know Conte is your father?”
“You are such a chauvinist.” She stomped back to her bag, pulled out two bronze candleholders, and stomped back to the desk. “First—they chase me for my money. I did pretty well with the book, you know.”
He winced. “You’re right. I am a chauvinist, and I should know better. My grandmother would slap me upside the head for being so stupid as to assume you were courted only for your father’s fortune.”
“Thank you.” Chloë placed the candleholders on either side of the skull.
Each candleholder was ten inches tall, a squat dragon with its head back and its mouth open, ready to hold a taper.
He hadn’t thought to ask Conte whether his daughter was a witch. The matter had somehow slipped his mind.
“Are you going to hold a magic ceremony?” he asked politely.
“No, but I find when I write about murder, it’s good to have the props where I can see them.” She removed the crystal vase filled with roses to the bedside, and returned with two bloodred candles and her laptop. She arranged everything, stepped back, contemplated her modifications, and nodded approvingly. Turning back to him, she said, “What Papa does with the guys he sics on me is tell them I used to be his girlfriend, that he’s very fond of me and wants me to have a family, and he’s going to leave me one percent of his fortune.”
“Good God. One percent is . . .” Eli’s research had placed Conte’s fortune at anywhere between five billion and ten billion dollars.
“One percent is enough to send them racing to my side to pledge their devotion.” Chloë laughed, a light sprinkling of amusement. “I haven’t had the heart to tell Papa a good part of their interest is their belief that for one percent, I must be really great in bed.”
“You’re lucky you haven’t been kidnapped anyway.” A horrible thought.
She thought, and nodded. “I hadn’t considered that. But you’re right.”
“There’s electronic security here in the cottage.” He showed her the number pad by the door, gave her the code, showed her the emergency button by the bed. “When you’re inside, set the alarm.”
“I will.”
“Don’t forget.”
“I promise.” She laughed into his face. “I’m twenty-three, not twelve, and you’re fifty, not a hundred.”
“I’m thirty-four!” And he realized he’d been suckered.
“But you act so old,” she mocked.
He didn’t know what to say, how to respond. His brothers teased him, of course, but women . . . didn’t.
Sometimes they analyzed him.
According to one of his lovers, the woman with the psychology degree, he suffered from “communication problems,” “control issues,” and “a lack of emotional availability.” That was fine with him. Emotional unavailability saved him a lot of time and heartache.
But unless they were related to him, women from the age of ten to the age of a hundred reacted as if he were attractive and dangerous, as if he frightened and enthralled them. “You, um, think of me like your elderly uncle?”
“Nope. Not an uncle. Not one of my relations. But for sure someone’s great-grandfather!” Her brown eyes sparkled with amber lights.
Just as he thought. He was too old for her. “I’ve got to go back to work.”
“Me, too.” She sighed mightily, as if the prospect were hard and onerous.
“I thought you liked to write.”
“I do. Beats having a real job,” she said.
Was she joking? He thought she must be, because her sparkle faded and something that looked like misery turned her eyes a muddy brown.
Good. Life was serious. She needed to learn that. He touched his hat, then walked out the door.
As he strode down the hill, through the vineyard, and back to work on the broken water lines, he thought about her. About his future bride.
She had a temper.
She was too open, too willing to share personal information. She was frivolous. She laughed easily, teased by the slightest provocation.
She didn’t realize how swiftly life could become a desert of hopelessness where love was nothing but a memory and all your future stretched before you, barren and forlorn.
Not that he ever wanted her to know. He would protect her from that, at least.
Among the fresh new leaves on the vines, something caught his eye: a cluster of tiny round berries hanging low on the trellis. He stopped, knelt, cradled them tenderly in his cupped palm, this sign of good luck. He looked up toward the cottage.
Perhaps this meeting with Chloë had been fortuitous after all.
Chapter 8
Chloë flung herself backward on the bed, wrapped her arms over her face, and blocked out the world for a long, long minute.
But
she couldn’t block out the memory of Eli Di Luca’s horrified face, and his deep voice demanding, What did you do to your hair?
Let’s see. When she’d driven through L.A. and seen the billboard for the Alibi Spa, she walked into their trendy salon on a whim and told them she wanted something completely different. The hairdresser admired the length—past her shoulders—and the pale color, and suggested the streaks of pomegranate red.
But that wasn’t enough for her. When she demanded he cut it all off, he had stood like a deer in the headlights.
Guys, even gay guys, had such a thing about long hair. But she’d insisted, and he’d reluctantly used his razor until, for the first time in her life, she was sheared like a lamb—and glad of it.
Chloë was tired of caring for her hair. She was tired of being Chloë, who couldn’t get her second book done. She wanted to be the new Chloë, wild and free, someone who wasn’t afraid of anything, specifically not of the blank page.
What did you do to your hair?
She’d come out of the beauty shop feeling empowered.
Then she had second thoughts. Had her dash away from her problems and across the country led her to an impulsive, ill-thought-out act? Which was not necessarily a bad thing, just not . . . well considered.
Not that she didn’t like the haircut. She actually did. And she wasn’t sorry. The people in the salon said she looked like a pixie, and personally she thought all she needed was pointy ears and she could be one of the extras in Lord of the Rings.
So she’d been kind of wavering back and forth between terror that she’d made an impulsive, hideous mistake and pleasure that she’d been so bold and decisive . . . until Eli had seen her, looked horrified, and asked the fatal question.
He was good-looking, too, nothing like the college guys she’d known, but mature, serious, covered with mud and reeking of virility.
Not that she cared.
What did you do to your hair?
When Eli asked Chloë about her hair in that accusing tone, as if he had every right to question her . . . he was lucky she didn’t have an ax handy or he would have had to run for his life.