Her footsteps took her closer and her smile died. The grass was littered with things, but not dolls and bears and tiny plates. Instead, it looked like torn cushions, ripped curtains, and smashed perfume bottles. Her throat closing down, she ran closer and saw that the entrance doors hung open and shards of glass littered the porch beneath the broken front windows.
She froze. Though she didn’t see or hear any movement from the cottage, latent fear held her by the throat. Panic fluttered in her belly and her mind silently screamed, Liam!
His name snapped her free of the paralysis. She was on her own, she told herself, forcing her feet forward. She knew better than to depend upon him.
One step, two. Then a voice shouted her name. She spun around, her shoulders sagging. He’s here. He’s come.
Liam’s gaze was on the cottage as he ran up. “Jesus. What happened here?” An absent hand slid over her hair to cup her cheek.
“I don’t know,” she choked out. It took everything she had not to step into his body and hang on. “I just got here myself.”
His eyes flicked to her as his jaw hardened. “You were heading inside.”
“I had to see—”
“I’ll see.” He shoved his phone in her hand. “Call the police.”
Her heart tried lurching after him as he headed up the walkway and into the house. Despite a couple of deep breaths, her fingers fumbled on the keypad of his phone. He was on the porch again before the dispatcher picked up. “Tell them there’s no hurry,” he said. “No one’s here—just the damage.”
Her knees crumpled. She sank onto the grass. Liam rushed back to her and took over the emergency call. Standing beside her, he pressed the side of her head against his thigh. She leaned on him, allowing herself these few moments to absorb his strength.
She was back on her feet by the time an Edenville patrol car drove up. It was still too early for her sisters or any of the other winery staff to be out and about.
“Call the farmhouse,” Liam urged. “Get everybody over here.”
She shook her head. “Not yet. I have to clean it up first.”
“Jules, you can’t go in.” He sounded impatient. “The PD is sending a team to take photos and fingerprints.”
She didn’t want anyone cataloging the havoc. It would only seem more real then. “How could that possibly help? It’s a public venue. A zillion people have been in and out of there since last summer.”
“And another zillion before that,” Liam acknowledged on a sigh. “Even the cop told me he brought his wife here when they first started dating.”
“Just like everybody else in Edenville.” The location had held a cult status for area lovers since before her own birth. It seemed as if you couldn’t call yourself a couple unless you’d necked at least once in the Tanti Baci cottage. “Stupid legend,” she grumbled.
“I have a few fond memories myself.”
She refused to look at him. Looking at him would make her remember her own memories—stolen kisses, kisses given freely, more intimate lovemaking that she’d demanded from him but that he’d not allowed until they were married . . . and then again yesterday, in those long hours in his big bed.
“I have to ask, Jules . . .”
“It was great, okay? It was great when we were teenagers and it was great last night.” She glared at him. “Does that satisfy you, Mr. Ego? Can we drop the subject now?”
He went still. Then he lifted a hand to draw his palm along his whiskered cheek, creating a sandpapery noise that sounded loud in the quiet morning.
Her skin prickled in response, everywhere that he’d left a burn: on the lower curve of her breast, the tender skin covering her pelvic bone, the soft flesh between her thighs. She refused to look away in shame, though. When she thought about it, she was damn glad the day and night before had been so wild. She could hope that the wild had been burned out of her as well as the bonds between her and Liam.
That wildness had led her to rash decisions and deep regrets ten years before.
He was still looking on her with that annoying, bemused expression. Her skin prickled again. “Fine. The earth moved. Several times. Happy now?”
“I was going to ask you why the security alarms didn’t go off.”
“Oh.” And all she’d talked about was how she’d gone off. “Well.”
He cocked an eyebrow.
This was almost more difficult to confess. “I cancelled the contract two months ago. We couldn’t afford it. I’ve been relying on the window stickers and those little staked signs they gave us when we signed up to act as a deterrent.”
He gaped at her. “For God’s sake.” He then snapped out, “What the hell were you thinking?”
“Didn’t you hear me? We couldn’t afford it.” More embarrassed heat crawled up her neck. “I’ve been doing my very best, but we still struggle with cash-flow issues.”
He took a jerky turn on the path in front of the cottage. She stared, because he didn’t do jerky very often. “Are you . . . uh . . . okay?”
“No, I’m not okay,” he said, halting in front of her. “Why didn’t you come to me? Or Jack or Penn?”
“I ran it by Seth—”
“I’m going to kill my brother.”
“He didn’t exactly recommend it, either,” she confessed.
“Giuliana . . .” He pinched the bridge of his nose, then spoke again, quieter now. “I would have floated you the money. Not to mention your brothers-in-law. Penn and Jack would come to the rescue, you know that.”
She was coming to the rescue. Her plan was just a short time away from fruition. “My sisters and I agreed that we would handle this on our own—it’s our place, our problem to solve.”
He studied her face, then sighed. “You are one stubborn woman.”
His recognition of that loosened some of the knots in her belly. “So you’ll stand clear while I go into the cottage and—”
“If you dare, I’ll tie your hands behind your back and haul you home.”
Outraged, she flushed. “You wouldn’t—”
“Oh, I will. I want to.” A smile twitched the corners of his mouth. “As a matter of fact, if memory serves me, I have.”
Heat flooded her skin. He was trying to distract her, unnerve her, infuriate her. And it was working, because she remembered another dark night, a wrought-iron bed, scarves . . .
Exasperated by how easily he could turn her mood, she spun away from him. This connection was supposed to be gone! The tension, the awareness, finally in ashes after all they’d done the day and night before. But he had only to simply mention . . . She pressed her palm to her head as if that could force everything they’d once been to each other back into the farthest reaches of her mind.
His hands closed over her shoulders. “Jules . . .” He started up a tender massage. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about this mess.”
She didn’t know if he meant the cottage, their stale marriage, or the way she worried they might have complicated all their problems by having sex again. “I just want to clean it up before Allie and Stevie get a glimpse—”
“No.” His hands continued their gentle kneading.
She blinked the sting of tears away. “They were married there, Liam.”
He pulled her back against him and crossed his arms around her waist to hold her close. His head tucked so his scratchy cheek was aligned with hers. “I know, sweetheart.” He rocked her gently. “I know.”
Her nerves steadied. “How did you come to be here, anyway?”
“I woke up. You weren’t in bed. I missed you.”
After one night in ten years. Tears stung again and she closed her eyes. Then she walked out of his arms. To prove she was strong, she turned to face him. “Sorry to have troubled you.”
His eyes narrowed and he cocked his head. “It’s going to be okay, Jules.”
“Sure.”
“Your sisters, you, you’ll all survive this just fine.”
“Of course.”
; “Tanti Baci will go on, too.”
See, this is why reestablishing distance between them was imperative. He made her want to agree with him. She wanted to say that yes, they would all survive just fine. That the winery would last forever. But no one knew better than she that it wasn’t going to happen.
Since returning to civilian life, Kohl didn’t always understand what motivated his own actions and reactions. He’d find himself enraged, arms corded, fists clenched, and not quite know what exactly had set him off. Like last night, he could lose chunks of time that he could never account for. He was growing accustomed to bewildering himself.
So he didn’t think too hard about why, upon learning about what happened at the wedding cottage, that he’d rushed to find Grace at the vineyard that morning. By the time he tracked her to the tasting room, he was breathing hard and his hangover headache was throbbing at the base of his skull in time with his speeding pulse. In the doorway, he stood for a moment, silently taking her in.
She appeared harried as well, sweeping the floor of the tasting room with the kind of vigor usually reserved for scouring a sticky pot. Her pretty hair was caught in a lopsided ponytail that bobbed with every one of her overenergetic arm movements.
He pointed to the Tanti Baci logo painted onto the wooden surface. It was coated with polyurethane, fortunately. “I don’t think you’ll get that up.”
Letting out a shriek, she jumped, and the broom flew from her hand, its wooden handle crashing against the floor with a loud clack. Those summer eyes of hers went round. “You scared me,” she said, pressing her hand to her chest. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Lots of surprises around here this morning.”
She bent for the broom and he noticed the way her jeans clung to her butt. He remembered her shaking that cute little booty when she’d been rapping along with Sir Mix-a-Lot. Rubbing the back of his neck, he wondered if he could blame his behavior on the song. Maybe it had been some sort of incantation. A spell that caused him to want to seek her out. He suspected she had special powers, didn’t he?
She glanced at him through those reddish gold lashes as she straightened. “What’s going on out there?”
“Fingerprints have been collected and photographs taken. All that’s left is the cleanup.”
“Maybe I should . . . ?”
He could tell she didn’t want to and he didn’t blame her. The damage to the pretty place had bothered him, too. “It’s not as bad as you might imagine. A few lamps and windows bashed and the curtains and couch cushions will need to be replaced or repaired. Giuliana’s already making calls. The display case that held some of Anne and Alonzo’s things was broken, but the stuff is all there—including Anne’s diary.”
“That’s good.” She was back to sweeping again.
“I only wish I’d heard when it was happening.” So far no one had asked him what he’d been doing that he’d missed the sounds of destruction from the vineyard manager’s bungalow. Prevailing wisdom supposed it must have happened before midnight, when the two couples who were residing in the farmhouse were out to dinner and a movie. Likely they assumed Kohl had been out, too—which he had, in a sense. He’d broken his own rule about drinking alone and spent a lost evening with his friend, José Cuervo.
He thought he could quit the boozing, and he thought he would, from time to time, but the appropriate incentive had been lacking. Sometimes avoiding the present was just too tempting. One drink became four became six became . . .
A big ol’ chunk of blown time.
He shook his head. “I missed the whole damn thing.”
“I’m glad.” Grace propped the broom in a corner and then took up a cloth to dust the shelves of stemware. “You could have been hurt.”
“Me? I made it through a war. And if you hadn’t noticed, I’m kind of a big guy.”
Her hand stilled. “I noticed.”
Okay, there she went again. Two words from her soft pink mouth and he was on his way closer to her, like a fish with a damn hook in its cheek. But smelling her on this summer morning suddenly seemed imperative, too, for whatever crazy reason.
Peaches. Today she smelled like peaches. Fruity, fresh, and cinnamon dusted. Her flesh would taste like that, he thought, a sexual fizz charging through his bloodstream. He could imagine peeling away those clothes, slow, just as he removed a peach’s fuzzy skin, before he took a big, juicy bite. His mouth watered, and below the waist, his penis started thinking about its own appetite.
“My ex is a big man, too.”
Her ex. Kohl moved back. Talk about a buzz kill. The woman had a big, violent ex-husband, which made her the exact wrong candidate to satisfy Kohl’s cravings. Worse, he would likely scare the hell out of her if she thought he was even thinking of her in those terms. Sure they’d kissed that one time, but he’d been careful it didn’t happen again.
He’d rescued her dog. He’d tended to her injuries when she was seven years old. Likely she considered him as some kind of vet-cum-EMT. Or a big safe teddy bear. Not a man.
Didn’t that just piss him off? “What the hell were you thinking to hitch yourself to a loser like that?”
Immediately, he regretted the question. He leapt toward her and grabbed her free hand. “Grace. I’m sorry, I—”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“I do. I’m a beast—”
“That’s why I brought Daniel up. I can recognize one of those beasts now, Kohl, and you’re not close to that category.”
Right, he thought, looking down at his feet. He was the pet and people rescuer, to her mind. Warm and fuzzy like a stuffed toy, he supposed. Remember? Not a man.
“I married him to get away from my father, of course. And because he was the only person who ever told me I was pretty.”
Kohl’s head jerked up. “What? The only . . .”
A clear wash of pink overlaid the cinnamon snowflakes on her cheeks. “The kids at school always teased me. One person said that people with red hair smell funny.”
They smelled good. Kohl took in another breath of her peachy scent and squeezed her hand. Oh. His gaze jumped from her face to their fingers. They were still holding hands.
Another woman with her background probably would have run screaming if a rough guy like Kohl had his hold on her. But she trusted him, and that . . . that felt good. Even as his blood started zinging around his body again, Kohl tried looking cuddly instead of bulky and brutish.
Grace’s brows drew together, her expression slightly alarmed. “Do you feel okay?”
The alarm registered. Clearly cuddly wasn’t working for shit. He dropped her hand and moved a decent distance away. “I should leave you alone.” Why wouldn’t this sink into his brain?
She made a little movement of her shoulder. One of those “I don’t care” gestures that meant she really did care. He sighed. “Are you afraid to be alone? I’m sure the vandal is long gone now, but if you need me to hang around . . . ?”
Her smile had a little sad in it. “You’re a very nice man, Kohl.”
Uh! Enough of that! He found himself beside her again. This time he grasped her shoulders and spun her to face him fully. “I’m not some freakin’ saint, Grace. As a matter of fact, I—”
Brain cells sizzled then smoked as he looked into her beautiful eyes. There was something in them, something he couldn’t quite decipher but that destroyed his ability to tell her just exactly how demonic he’d become. Demon enough to want to have sex with a woman who had very strong reasons to be suspicious of men.
“You’re so lovely,” he heard himself say instead. His hand reached for her cockeyed ponytail and he pulled the elastic band confining it free, so that her rose gold hair fell around her shoulders. He took it in his hands, letting the silky locks slide through his fingers. They caught on his calluses and he worked them gently free. “So damn lovely.”
That clear, watercolor pink washed over her face again. “I wish you wouldn’t have said that—though I suppose it
seems as if I was asking for it.”
He frowned. “Huh?”
Her blush brightened. “Just because I told you I didn’t get a lot of compliments growing up, I wasn’t fishing for fake ones, okay?”
His smoking brain was still struggling to catch up. “Huh?”
“Fake compliments . . . you know. As in, not true.”
She thought he was bullshitting her, Kohl realized. He blinked, trying to imagine a world where anyone would imagine him capable of that kind of pretense. For God’s sake, it was his personal brand of hot-headed honesty that had gotten him into barroom brawls with bad men and kicked out of the beds of good women.
Grasping her by the shoulders, he shook her a little. “I’m truthful to a fault, my friend.”
She made a little face. “As if we were friends, either.”
Well, hell, what could he say to that? He didn’t want to be her friend any more than he wanted to be her teddy bear. So he avoided that subject altogether. “Let’s get this looks thing settled, all right? I don’t know what people saw when you were a kid—I know I went through a phase when my neck was longer than my legs and my Adam’s apple seemed to be the size of a soccer ball—but now . . . now you’re just what I said. Lovely.”
“Kohl . . .” Again with that little face.
Frustrated, he looked around. “Here,” he said, spotting a small display of coasters. There were cork ones in the shape of grape leaves, square ones that depicted labels from local wineries, and round ones that were, in essence, silver-framed mirrors. With one in hand, he spun Grace around so her back was to his front. Then he held it so her reflection filled the glass.
“Here’s what I see.” He slid his hand through her “red” hair again. “A color like gold and rubies melted together.”
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