JAMES (7 Brides for 7 Brothers Book 6)

  It was a memo.

  To: James Brannigan

  From: William Hayward

  Subj: Sale of Villa Pietro to Whitehouse Status Report

  She literally reeled at the words. He was selling the winery. Her gaze shifted to the date—five days ago.

  Every single minute he’d been here, he’d had this plan.

  Every minute of the last twelve hours. They’d made love, talked, laughed, had dinner brought up and ate it in robes on the balcony after the rain ended, made love again, slept, cuddled, whispered, and she’d been ready to let him inside her again.

  And all along he was planning to sell.

  She stared at the words and tried to breathe, but couldn’t.

  Chapter Sixteen

  James stood on the balcony where hours before he’d lost himself with the sweetest, brightest, most delightful lover he’d ever known.

  He glanced over his shoulder into the suite as Luke droned on about the film he was making about climbing El Capitan, which was near the resort that had been his legacy.

  While Luke talked, James replayed earlier snippets of the conversation. How much of that had she heard? Enough. Anyway, there was no hiding it from her now. He had to tell her, as soon as he got these drunken clowns off the phone.

  “So I’m not completely housebroken,” Luke said on a laugh. “’Cause I have a feeling you think Knox and I are totally whipped by these women we love.”

  Did he think that? “If whipped sounds content and stable,” he said. “Because you both seem to be.”

  “Dude, you have no idea.” Knox grabbed the phone again, his eyes bright from the Bushmills. Or love. Who could tell the difference? Both had made him loopy. “Erin changed me. And Luke says the same thing about Lizzie. Don’t you see?”

  He peered out to the predawn darkness of the Mediterranean. “See what?” he asked, too tired and anxious to get back to Kyra to have a philosophical discussion with his whiskey-soaked brothers.

  “It was Dad’s doing,” Luke said. “I mean, in my case, it was conscious. He knew Lizzie was at the resort.”

  “So he set you up by leaving the place to you?” James asked.

  “Yeah, but it’s more than that,” Luke said. “Being here helped me get to know a part of the old man that I honestly never appreciated before. He loved his family.”

  La famiglia è tutto. James choked. “Yeah, I knew that.”

  “It was different for you,” Knox added. “You remember him before Mom died. We don’t. I was a little kid, and the only dad I knew was the one who was basically ashamed of me because I didn’t take life seriously enough.”

  James nodded, settling on the chaise and holding the phone so he could really see his brothers while they talked. Telling Kyra the truth was important, but this was, too. His brothers deserved his attention, whether they were drunk or sober.

  “It made me mad,” Knox said. “And resentful. But then I found out that he had my back all along. And knowing Erin—who I’d have never met if Dad hadn’t left me that motorcycle—really helped me see him differently. And, by extension, myself.”

  James took a deep, slow breath, and Luke laughed. “I think our big brother just rolled his eyes.”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said. “It’s early, this is deep, but I…”

  “Don’t really want to think about it,” Luke supplied.

  “But I have to.” James ran his free hand through his hair. “I’m also grappling with why the hell I have this winery. Dad could have sold it and made just as much money. It wasn’t difficult to get an offer, but now…”

  “He sent you there for a reason,” Knox said.

  James looked over his shoulder into the living room, catching a glimpse of movement. It was Kyra, fully dressed and putting her shoes on near the door. Oh shit.

  “I gotta go,” he said quickly, standing up.

  “James, listen to me,” Luke pleaded. “Don’t miss the big picture. Don’t miss what’s really important. Don’t miss Dad’s last lesson.”

  Screw lessons. She was leaving. “Okay, got it. I have to go. She’s…” She was digging her keys out of her bag. He threw open the French door.

  “She?” Both brothers repeated the word, loudly and with much amusement and emphasis, making Kyra whip around from the door to the suite.

  “Holy shit, bro,” Knox said on a laugh. “You, too?”

  “No,” James insisted. “It’s just…nothing.”

  As soon as he said it, he saw the flash of hurt in her eyes. Son of a bitch! “I have to go. Thanks for the drunk-dial.” Without waiting for their good-byes, he thumbed the phone and threw it on the living room sofa, walking toward her.

  “Are you leaving?”

  “You’re planning to sell the winery.” She threw the statement down like a gauntlet, with nothing but challenge in her gaze. No, there was something more than a challenge there. Pain. Shadows of deep, soul-slicing pain.

  “Damn it, I knew you’d misconstrue what you heard them say—”

  “Misconstrue?” She paled. “And now you’re going to lie to me.”

  “I’m not…” He exhaled, a long slow sigh of resignation. Yeah, damn it. He was lying to her. “I was going to sell it.” Which made him scum in her eyes. In anyone’s eyes. “But I changed my mind,” he added quickly.

  “Really? When?” she fired back. “Because the memo about the status on the sale to Whitehouse Wineries would say differently.”

  Shit. He tried for the offense. “You looked through my stuff?”

  “The stuff that was on the desk in the room where I just trusted you completely for twelve solid hours?”

  The offense failed.

  He took a few steps closer, his penetrating gaze searching her face, looking for the sunshine he’d come to adore but seeing only ice in her eyes. “I didn’t want to hurt you or make you mad or any of those things.”

  “Too late.” She crossed her arms protectively. “I’m all of those things.”

  “Kyra.” He reached for her hand, but she snapped away before he could touch her. “Yes, I came here with that intention, but after yesterday…”

  “Sex changed your mind?” She snorted. “Great. The ‘get cozy’ plan really worked. The family will be so proud.”

  Her sarcasm sliced him. She was never bitter, never dark, but he’d made her that way. “Not sex. What Anamaria told me. And then at the tree. Everything. I realized it was the wrong thing to do.”

  “No, James. Not telling me was the wrong thing to do.”

  No kidding. “I was just talking to my brothers about it—”

  “I thought you were talking to them about nothing.” She threw the word at him. “Like how to make the most amount of money on the sale of a little winery that means nothing to you but everything to me? Or was it how the woman you spent the night with is, what was the word, nothing? Oh, yeah. Nothing. Just a little lemondrop of nothing.”

  She turned and snagged her purse from the table, and he was next to her in a second.

  “Stop it!” He got a hold of her shoulders before she could get away. “If you’d heard the whole conversation, you’d know my brothers are on your side.”

  “We have sides now? Who knew? Oh, you did. You just forgot to mention it to me.” Her eyes shuttered closed as she tried to wrest from his grasp, but he held tight.

  “Listen to me. Of course I intended to sell it originally, that’s what I do—”

  She got free and glared at him. “Do you know how many times I heard my mother justify her wretched job with those words? And this isn’t just any company you’re heartlessly dismantling. This is my family now.”

  “I’m not heartlessly dismantling anything, Kyra.”

  “No, but Whitehouse Wineries will.”

  He couldn’t even argue with that. “Kyra, before I did anything at all, I wanted to know if I could figure out what my dad had in mind. Because Luke and Knox and even Gabe seem to think I’m supposed to…” He fisted his hands. “I’m
supposed to…”

  “To what?”

  Good God, could he even say it? He stared into her eyes, took a breath, and jumped. “Change.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I don’t want to hide the truth from you any longer. I did plan to sell the winery. I did. But I can change that decision, and I will.”

  She looked at him for a long time, her expression confused and broken and nothing like the satisfied, loving woman he’d fallen asleep with.

  He’d wrecked this.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said simply. “I need to talk to the family. My family. Because that’s what those people are, James. They are the family I never had, and I can assure you, I will pick them over anyone in the world, including you.”

  She stepped back and turned to the door, her bag on her shoulder, her keys in her hand.

  “Kyra.” He heard the crack in his voice but didn’t care. “Please don’t leave.”

  “I have to,” she said. “Good-bye.”

  Without waiting for a response, she slipped out the door, proving once again that women leave.

  And that wasn’t what he wanted. Not this time. Not this woman.

  * * *

  “I know what he’s going to do.”

  Every eye around the kitchen table turned to Kyra as she stood in the doorway of the kitchen. The response was fast, furious, and, oh God, loud.

  “Where you been?”

  “All night, Cara?”

  “We almost send the polizia after you.”

  “You call this cozy?”

  Kyra held up her hand for mercy. “I haven’t had coffee yet. And I need it, fam. I need it.” But she loved them for wondering and worrying more about her than the future of the winery. That would change soon enough.

  The questions stopped while she took her seat at the table and accepted a steaming cup from Anamaria, avoiding direct eye contact with the old woman’s judgmental gaze.

  Instead, Kyra stared at the table and took a long drink. Then another.

  “Why you no talk?” Anamaria demanded.

  “Because none of you are going to be happy with what I have to say,” she whispered, finally looking up, but just seeing a sea of faces that she thought of as family. None of them looked remotely like her, that was for sure, but all of them mattered. So, so much.

  Her gaze shifted to Lorenzo and Elena, who sat side by side, holding hands, staring at her, fear mixed with worry and no small amount of fury, all directed at her. Because they loved her.

  Next to them, Enzo and Filippa each held the hand of one of their sons, who were unnaturally quiet, as if even little Nico and Gianni knew something was about to rock their perfect little worlds.

  Across the table, Antonio held a biscuit poised in midair, unable to bite as he waited, and Sofia rubbed her enormous belly. Would their baby girl not get to grow up in this happy, solid home?

  “Tell us, Kyra,” Bruno demanded, his voice as dark as his eyes on her. “Tell us what you learned from all this time with Signor Brannigan.”

  One more sip of coffee. One more look around the table. One more moment of utopia in Italy before it all falls apart.

  “He’s selling to Whitehouse Wineries,” she said softly, although she might as well have thrown a bomb on the table and let it explode. Questions, exclamations, and demands followed, along with so many gesturing hands that she could have sworn she felt a breeze.

  Lorenzo won the battle of the wills, silencing them all when he slammed the table and shouted a few choice Italian curses. Every mouth stopped moving, and the only sound was the clicking of alabaster beads as Anamaria slid her rosary out of her pocket.

  “Are you certain?” Elena asked Kyra.

  Was she? To be fair, James said he wouldn’t sell. But why hadn’t he told her he had an offer in the first place? So he could sleep with her? The thought stabbed. “Not certain, but the offer is on the table, and he is talking to them.” That much she was certain of.

  “Then you must get it off the table!” Anamaria said. “Get more cozy!”

  She managed a smile. “Nonna, I got about as cozy as I can get. If he changes his mind, it won’t be my doing. I’m…” She closed her eyes briefly. “Too emotionally invested.”

  Most of them looked like they didn’t understand the term, and she was too drained to try to explain. Anyway, she’d been gone overnight. They knew where she’d been and no doubt knew exactly what she’d been doing.

  Bruno stood suddenly, his mouth turned down. “I need to leave,” he announced in Italian.

  Kyra sighed and looked up at him, searching his face. Bruno was like a brother to her—and that’s all he’d ever been. They both knew it, and they both preferred it that way. Didn’t they? Something was making him frown and drag his hands through his hair.

  “Where are you going?” Lorenzo demanded.

  “Wine shipment goes out later this week. Did you forget?” Bruno asked. “Antonio needs to get in the cellar, and you need to supervise the help, and I’m going to meet with the truckers who are in Naples now waiting for me. I don’t want them to hear this from someone who knows this…this Whitehouse.”

  He’d spoken quickly, and in Italian, but Kyra got it all. Bruno, for all his immaturity, bravado, and carousing, was wise enough to know they couldn’t let this news bring the business of the winery to a halt.

  But no one else moved, all of them looking at Lorenzo, waiting for his order.

  He whispered something under his breath and turned to his wife. “Do you have all of the papers ready?”

  She nodded. “Enzo and I finished them early this morning. We can give them to him now.”

  Lorenzo turned to Antonio. “You are ready for this shipment?”

  He lifted a broad shoulder as if to ask how his father could question that.

  Finally, Lorenzo looked at his mother. “Have you said every prayer?”

  She lifted the rosary. “I called up to Giorgio last night,” she said. “He say what he always say. La famiglia è tutto.”

  Of course. The family is everything.

  At Anamaria’s words, they all nodded solemnly, the abrupt explosion of emotion soothed already.

  “Tutto,” Lorenzo said softly. Then he looked at Kyra, uncharacteristically silent for a moment. “We will survive,” he said. “We will be strong and do what is required and continue to make the best wine in the region, the country, even the world.”

  “But…” Kyra shook her head, not following. “If this big corporate winery comes in and replaces all of you, then what?”

  Lorenzo crossed his arms, smug and arrogant and certain. “We will still be famiglia. We will find work, a winery, food, and shelter. We will survive as one,” he said, his tone indicating his disappointment, or even frustration, that she didn’t understand that.

  She didn’t. “How?” she asked.

  “As a family,” he said, speaking the word slowly in English, as if she was the one who didn’t understand the language. Well, she didn’t understand this attitude, that was for sure. Didn’t they realize how tenuous this situation was?

  Bruno put his cup on the counter and pointed to his father. “Sì, sì. I go now.”

  Antonio pushed up. “I will be in the cellars.”

  Elena grabbed some papers. “We’ll finish this work,” she said, nudging Enzo to join her in the office.

  “Nico, Gianni.” Filippa pulled back their bench. “Venite, venite. It is time for school,” she said. “English today. I teach you.” She smiled at Kyra. “Because you teach me.”

  Suddenly, the table was empty as the family moved off to their respective jobs in the winery and places in life. The blow had been dealt, and they would endure it and move on.

  They would. As a family. The one she didn’t actually belong to.

  Alone at the table, Kyra looked down at her coffee as the sounds of Sebastianis hustling around faded. She wasn’t part of this famiglia, just like thos
e painful summers when she went to her father’s home in Georgia and sat at their table as an outsider.

  She wanted to belong, but wanting didn’t make it so.

  Here, she was an outsider, a guest, an employee. She didn’t know how the Sebastianis would survive, but they would. And she would simply…move on.

  “Cara.”

  Kyra startled at the pressure of Anamaria’s hand on her shoulder. She looked up and realized her eyes were filled with tears that the old woman had to see.

  “I’m not part of this family,” Kyra whispered.

  “You are…in some way.”

  Well, that wasn’t very encouraging. Not the full-on Italian love and hug and reassurance she needed from her very own handpicked nonna.

  “But you need your own family,” Anamaria added.

  Kyra blinked, making a tear fall, but she didn’t care. The truth of that hurt so much she could hardly breathe. “I don’t have one.”

  Anamaria tilted her head, looking at Kyra with a hint of a smile curling her full lips. “Then make one.”

  Yeah, just like that. Thanks, Nonna. But Kyra didn’t do bitter, the way James didn’t do fun, so she just smiled and nodded. “Good plan,” she murmured. “I’ll get right on that.”

  “You start last night.”

  She stared at Anamaria, not entirely sure she understood. “I didn’t…I mean…I didn’t…”

  “But you did.” Anamaria grinned at her. “And he reached your heart. I see it in your eyes.”

  “What you see is a lack of sleep. And he’s not exactly Mr. Loyal and Trustworthy.”

  Silent, Anamaria turned and walked toward the sink, slipping her rosary back into her pocket and humming.

  Humming? Did she not really comprehend what was about to happen around here? But in a matter of seconds, Anamaria was chopping garlic. Everyone else was gone, busy, and doing their work for the family.

  But not her family, because she didn’t have one.

  Chapter Seventeen

  James flipped another page of documents, fingering a tiny note that William Hayward had attached when he’d had the paperwork couriered across the ocean. A Post-it Note, pale blue, the same color as Kyra’s eyes.