Can't Hurry Love

by Christie Ridgway

  . . . Especially emotions that Giuliana Baci wouldn’t welcome ever again. Outsized emotions that he should have outgrown long ago.

  “Jules . . .” But whatever he was going to say next—his mouth was operating separate from his head so he had no idea—was interrupted by her youngest sister.

  “What do you guys think?” she asked. With the shovel, she held back the rosebush to reveal a metal plaque embedded in the two-foot-high stone foundation of the cottage. Embossed in bronze was the year the building was constructed and Anne and Alonzo’s names. “We’re considering transplanting the roses to expose the cornerstone. I can see people gathering around for photos, can’t you?”

  Expose. Yesterday morning she’d said she was going to expose the Tanti Baci wedding records—once she located the missing book. He stepped closer to Giuliana, close enough to smell the fresh scent of her shampoo. As he watched, a flush crept up her neck and turned her cheeks pink. She slid him a glance from her dark eyes.

  “Jules,” he murmured. “I checked. It’s safe. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Her tongue slid along her bottom lip. He felt his own skin go hot and his muscles tense. Her mouth had taken him to paradise—and torn a hole in his soul. These last months, with her back in Edenville, just looking at it had tortured him.

  He swallowed his groan and breathed in, searching for a little inner peace. “Jules,” he said again, and was pleased at how sensible he sounded. “We have to face facts, though. We can’t go on like this indefinitely.”

  She hesitated, her palms rubbing against her denim-covered thighs. “Four weeks,” she finally whispered, her gaze averted from his. “It’s all going to be over in four weeks.”

  “How—” But he broke off when Kohl Friday appeared and grasped Giuliana’s elbow. Liam stared at the man’s hand on the woman who cringed from his own touch. Then he glared at Kohl. “Where did you come from?”

  The ex-soldier and current vineyard manager was as solid as the tanks he’d driven in the Iraq War. And about as verbal. “From the vines,” he said, then he directed his attention to the woman between them. “Have a few minutes, honey?”

  Honey. It took every ounce of restraint Liam could dredge up to keep himself from tearing into the other man. He’d known Kohl all his life and his reputation as a barroom brawler was legendary, but the battle between them had been stewing for months and he suspected that Kohl was anticipating it as greedily as Liam. Which was exactly why he wasn’t going to satisfy the other man today. There was more than one way to fight.

  He looked at Giuliana, then slid his eyes to Kohl’s hand, still on her skin. Clearly noticing his regard, she flushed again and sidled away from the other man. As Kohl’s arm dropped, Liam made sure no triumph showed on his face.

  Her pretty mouth turned down in a frown. “I—” she started, then her cell phone trilled.

  As she dug it from her pocket, Liam wanted to smack the heel of his hand against his forehead. Jesus! Why hadn’t he done that this morning? He could have just called her with his reassurance. But instead, like some besotted kid, he’d made an excuse to visit.

  Stepping away, he took a few more deep breaths and focused on the vineyard acres in the distance. He felt the view of the lush lines relax him. Structured order was how he liked his inner life composed as well. Organized, harmonious, stable. All those years ago with Giuliana he’d been driven by high emotion, and it was an experience he didn’t relish replaying. It was much better to hold back, to command the world around him instead of letting the world command him.

  It wasn’t just his own past that informed that preference. Being ruled by his appetites was what had caused the heart ailment that had killed his father—and caused Calvin Bennett to so deeply damage his family. Liam was determined not to make similar mistakes—which meant putting a cap on the craziness that Giuliana could stir up in him.

  “Jules?” Allie’s voice was sharp. “Jules, what’s wrong?”

  Liam spun. Giuliana was staring down at her phone, the sunlight setting off sparks in her brunette hair. Her head lifted, and there was a puzzled expression on her face. “Nothing’s wrong,” she said. “It’s just weird. That was the police.”

  The uneasiness that had been plaguing him for two nights and a day started tap-dancing up and down Liam’s spine with icy feet. He was beside her in the next instant. “Police?”

  Her eyes turned up to his and his chest tightened. All his hard-won control unraveled with just that look. Though she couldn’t know it, and he hoped like hell he wasn’t showing it, calm felt far beyond him now.

  “They think the fire at my apartment might be arson.”

  Sitting at one of the tables in the winery’s picnic area, Giuliana checked her watch, watching the hands creep closer to that critical hour. Then she looked up again, absorbing the fact that the seats beneath the dozen umbrellas were nearly full with visitors enjoying the seventy-five-degree sunshine. Her gaze moved beyond the happy people to the land surrounding them, the vines appearing robust and the winery buildings freshly painted. Even the gravel in the nearby parking lot had been recently raked.

  I’m doing my best, Papa, she thought. On his deathbed, he’d made the three sisters promise to try to bring Tanti Baci back on its feet. I think I’m making the best decision for us all.

  She spun on her bench to tuck her knees beneath the table as Allie and Stevie threaded through the other picnickers, their hands full of sandwiches, sodas, and fruit from the deli case inside the tasting room in the wine caves. “I don’t have a lot of time,” she said as they arranged the goods between them and took their own seats on the bench across the table from her.

  When they didn’t acknowledge her warning, she squelched a little blip of panic but didn’t dare check her watch again. “And remember, you guys have that appointment in town with the caterer for the Vow-Over Weekend.”

  Stevie unwrapped a huge sandwich, hesitated, then reached for an oversized chocolate cookie. She took a huge bite. “That still leaves us time enough for you to tell me about the arson thing. I missed the excitement this morning.”

  “If you weren’t such a slowpoke,” Allie said, frowning, “you would have been there. You used to be an early bird and these days we need dynamite to get you out of bed.”

  Stevie finished off the cookie. “I wasn’t feeling so great this morning.”

  “Well, you must feel fine now,” Giuliana replied. “Dessert first?”

  Stevie shrugged. “Sweets for the sweet.”

  Allie groaned. “I don’t think it’s right that you’re tall and you get to eat more than I do. I’d like to see you get fat. It’s only fair.”

  With her turkey and avocado sandwich halfway to her mouth, Stevie hesitated as if about to say something. Then she shrugged again and bit into the stack of bread and meat.

  Giuliana plucked a cherry from their cardboard container and wiggled it by the stem. Her appetite had fled the morning before.

  “Well?” Stevie prompted. “What did the cops say?”

  “They want me to go down to the station for an interview. I had to explain I was car-less at the moment, thanks to another one of their open cases—the hit-and-run that took out my vehicle.”

  “We can drive you,” Allie offered. “Drop you off on our way to the caterers, pick you up afterward.”

  “No! No.” She cleared her throat. “I have a, um, a . . .” Don’t say meeting, she reminded herself. That would make it too easy for her sisters to ask what kind and with whom. “I think they’re sending someone over to question me.”

  “So what’s the motive?” Stevie asked. “For the arson, I mean. Bad blood between drug dealers? A cover-up for a robbery? I know, the corrupt landlord wants to cash in on the insurance money.”

  “You’ve been watching too many crime shows on TV,” Giuliana said, shaking her head.

  “I don’t know how she could be,” Allie put in. “You wouldn’t believe how early she goes to sleep and how much trouble
she still has getting up in the morning.”

  Alarm goosed Giuliana and she leaned forward to inspect her sister more closely. Her skin was clear, her eyes alert, her mood apparently untroubled. Still . . . “Are you sure you’re okay? You could have mono or something.”

  “Yeah,” Allie agreed. “Remember? When we were in high school they called it the ‘kissing disease’ and from the way you and Jack carry on—”

  “I do not have mono.” Stevie made a face. “And as for a kissing disease, Al, I saw that hickey you have on your—”

  The youngest sister threw a balled paper napkin, silencing the middle one. They both started laughing. “Okay, okay,” Allie said. “I guess all the Baci girls have been infected with a kissing affliction.”

  “All?” a new voice inquired. Liam Bennett slipped onto the bench on Giuliana’s side of the table. He stole one of the cherries she had been playing with and popped it into his mouth. “Does that include Big Girl?”

  If she could breathe, she would have moved to another table. If her mouth wasn’t so dry, at the very least she would have objected to being referred to as “Big Girl.” It only served to emphasize their past history—that went back to forever. She’d been no more than seven when another of the valley kids, too little to say their long Italian names, had dubbed the Baci sisters by their relative size. When she’d topped out at all of five-foot-three, Liam still liked to tease her with the nickname.

  Come over here, Big Girl, I have a surprise for you, a teenaged Liam would say. And cupped in the hands behind his back would be a flower, or her favorite flavor of ice cream cone, or a black and yellow butterfly. Those little gestures had just as firmly trapped her heart.

  But that grinning teenager of the past looked nothing like the self-assured, über-confident male beside her now. Even in Tuscany, at twenty, there’d been shadows inside him she couldn’t pierce.

  Now, she watched his long fingers steal toward her pile of cherries again. “What have you been up to, Stevie?” he asked.

  “I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of Jules’s mystery.”

  The jerk of his hand scattered the red fruit. “What?” He cast Giuliana a quick glance. “What, uh, mystery?”

  She cleared her throat. “She means about the arson. Her latest theory is that the building’s owner torched the place for the insurance money.”

  “Ah.” Liam appeared to relax. “However, given that Giuliana’s landlords are Ed and Jed, I doubt it.”

  She stared at him. The elderly twins owned and ran the old-fashioned hardware store in town, but it surprised her that Liam knew they also held the deed to the property where she’d—formerly—lived. As if he sensed her regard, he turned his head. Their eyes met.

  She avoided that as often as she could—their eyes meeting. But it was too late to look off now, with her heart already halfway to her throat, leaving her insides jittering. Her breath was stuck in her lungs and it was as if he’d stripped her of clothes while he was fully dressed. The surface of her skin prickled and she felt her pulse thrum in panic. Don’t look at me, she was ready to beg. Please, don’t look at me.

  “Oooh,” Stevie’s voice sounded in soft wonder. “Check it out, Allie.”

  The connection between her and Liam snapped. She sucked in a needed breath and turned her head to see what had caught her sisters’ attention. They were both half turned on their bench, in the process of engaging with the group on the table behind them. Giuliana already had a polite half smile tugging up the corners of her mouth. She wasn’t the PR type like her sister Allie, but winery owners learned early to be good with the public.

  The object of their attention right now was a tiny infant, wrapped in tiny infant-wear and cocooned in the arms of a woman whose fond face screamed mother.

  Allie glanced back at Giuliana. “Look how sweet, Jules.”

  She nodded. “Sweet.” Then she glanced at her watch. “Allie—”

  But her sister had already turned back to the child, going through the obligatory sheaf of questions. Name. Age. Place of birth.

  “For God’s sake, we can’t ask that much when we’re interviewing someone for a job,” Giuliana muttered as Stevie started carrying on in a similar fashion. She took another urgent glance at her watch. “Allie, look, I’ve got to go.”

  Her sister sighed, her attention still focused on the bundle. “Us, too.” She didn’t move.

  Giuliana felt more anxious by the second. She was expecting the people she was meeting with at any moment, and with the picnic area adjacent to the parking lot, there was too much chance of an untimely encounter.

  She rose to her feet. “You guys can’t be late,” she said, raising her voice to hurry her sisters along. “We all should be going.”

  They continued to ignore her. Giuliana glanced around, trying to think. Her gaze lit on Liam, who was studying her in a way that made her pulse jolt again. She closed her eyes a moment, peeked at her watch again, and then made a quick decision. Desperate times, and all that.

  Raising her eyebrows at him, she extended her hands in his direction. Then she put her right fist on her left palm and brought them toward herself. American Sign Language. They’d played around with it years ago. Will you help me?

  Liam immediately rose to his feet. “Steve? Allie? Hey, can I get your guys’ help before you head out?”

  Where it was easy to ignore a sister, apparently it wasn’t so easy to disregard Liam’s polite but authoritative tone. Almost immediately her sisters were on their feet and following the oldest Bennett brother in the direction of the wedding cottage.

  That left her with the lunch leftovers.

  As well as the short-lived relief that she was going to make her meeting undetected.

  Short-lived, because of the memory of the little hand gesture Liam had given her in return, behind the backs of her sisters as he ushered them away. His left palm outstretched in her direction. The index finger of his right moving as if he was flicking a coin on his hand toward himself. It was a “pay” gesture.

  What he meant was clear: You owe me.

  3

  The next morning, Liam found Giuliana in the vineyard. When she spotted him strolling toward her, she ducked her head and hurried forward, as if trying to catch up with a small group of visitors being led about by an intern. “Don’t run on my account,” he called out.

  As he expected, she responded to the challenge by letting the guests go ahead and swinging around to face him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that was you.”

  He resisted snorting. “It’s me.”

  She wore a skimpy T-shirt and a knee-length cotton skirt that left bare the rest of her tan legs. A pair of dime-store rubber thongs were on her feet. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Four visits in four days, Mr. Bennett? That may be a record.”

  In their teenhood, he’d found reasons to see her four times before noon. Those days were over now, though, and she was right about the record. The fact was, for the last year that she’d been back in Edenville, he’d worked very hard at avoiding her as often as possible.

  But that hadn’t done a thing to ease the tension between them. They couldn’t even speak without snapping at each other. Today, he hoped that by taking a different tack—by actually talking and engaging in some civil discourse—they could start to forge a new kind of relationship. Some casual visits, some casual conversation, and maybe they could become friends. Then finally they might address their underlying issues without stirring up animosity—or feelings even more dangerous.

  So he worked on his most pleasant expression and glanced around, taking in the healthy look of the Tanti Baci vines. Two weeks before, as in his own vineyards, the buds had flowered and formed clusters that looked like small green beads. Though laborers might do some shoot, leaf, or crop thinning as the season wore on, at this time of year Mother Nature did most of the work.

  What started out as hard and acidic softened and sweetened under the summer sunshine.

  He hop
ed to do the same with Giuliana’s attitude toward him. “Good fruit set this year,” he ventured.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw her shoulders relax a little. Score.

  She reached out to trace the edge of a cabernet sauvignon leaf, her fingertip following the defined lobes. Gold beads in a delicate bracelet she wore around her wrist glinted in the sunlight. “We’re optimistic,” she said.

  He nodded, then made a gesture, indicating the spring green brightness surrounding them and tried keeping the conversation going. “You must have missed this over the years.”

  “I was in the wine business.”

  In Southern California. Working for a wine distributor. After that summer in Tuscany, she’d not matriculated at nearby UC Davis as she’d planned, but instead ended up at a college in the central part of the state. “No offense, but what you were doing in LA compared to winemaking here in the valley is the difference between selling ice cream bars and milking dairy cows.”

  Her laugh was a tad dry. “Okay, I won’t take offense. But not everyone wants to get their hands dirty.”

  “You loved getting your hands dirty.”

  Her shrug frustrated him. “You mix me up with Stevie. She was the tomboy.”

  “I could never mix you up with anyone.” He leaned down to scoop up a fistful of powdery red dirt, then held his palm under her nose. “Come on, admit this is in your blood.”

  Shaking her head, she turned away. “I was gone for a decade, Liam. I lived without all this just fine.”

  He allowed the dirt to sift through his fingers as he looked out over the vineyard and tried imagining it—a world lacking the summer’s eager anticipation, the mad frenzy of sweat and toil during harvest, the dormancy of the vines after the first frost that was followed by bud break in early spring. It was the ruler of life in the valley—both in the sense that grape growing was king and that it was the measure of their days in the beautiful wine country.