“You would do that for her?” Gina asked.
“I even tried to do just that, and she turned me down,” he said resolutely.
“Gabe.” She stood up. “If you’d offered the right thing to Liz, you wouldn’t be sitting here. Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“To find the seal to your fate.” She smiled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
LIZ HAD SPENT the day delivering her annual autumn gifts of homegrown Cinderella pumpkins, white pumpkins, butternut squash, acorn squash and Northern Spy apples to Sarah, Mrs. Beabots, Maddie, Isabelle, Olivia, Cate Sullivan and of course the Mattuchis. Liz had festooned the tasting room with raffia garlands, corn shocks and grape vines. She decorated the garlands with sunflowers she’d dried outdoors, hollowed-out gourds, clusters of mini Indian corn she’d bought in town and bright orange, gold, bronze and chocolate-brown ribbons. Liz’s autumn decorations were always an attraction for tourists, and every year, she had Chicago residents asking to buy her creations. Naturally, she sold them.
It had been nearly a month since Sam’s operation, and he’d been diligent about going for a walk every day. The first week he was home, he barely made it from the front porch to the tasting room, even with Liz’s help. Now he was talking about walking to the top of Matt’s hill to look out on Lake Michigan once again. Liz had put an end to that idea quickly.
“What if it’s too much, too soon? What if you wind up in the hospital again? You have to be sensible.”
“Sensible? I want to live, Lizzie. That’s what I discovered in the hospital.”
“I agree. And I am absolutely going to make that happen.”
“You call this living? You hanging on my every breath? Getting me my heart pillow every time I sneeze?”
“The doctors all said sneezing is dangerous. So is coughing. You have metal wires holding your sternum together. Don’t forget that.”
“Yes. And half the men my age have hip replacements. So don’t talk to me about foreign parts.”
Liz sighed and glanced out the tasting room window. It was a picture-perfect autumn day. Gold, yellow and purple chrysanthemums bloomed in giant mounds around the front porch and down the walk to the tasting room. They would last all the way till Christmas if the snow held off.
“Okay,” she said. “So you’re bored. It’s nearly Halloween and we haven’t gone for a ride to look at the decorations in town.”
“Or to Enzo’s for some baked ravioli and salad...”
“I can make ravioli,” she countered.
“Not as well as they can.” He looked down at the paper napkin on the table. “I bet Gina makes a good one,” he whispered. He must not have known Liz could hear him.
“Grandpa. You thinking about her?”
His head shot up and his eyes locked on hers. “No more than you’re thinking about Gabriel.”
She lifted her chin haughtily. “I told you. It didn’t work out.”
“Really?” Sam guffawed and then rose from his chair. “Lizzie. I had a heart attack, not a lobotomy. I’m going up to the house.”
Liz went to her office, shut the door and watched Sam from the window. His gait was quick and steady. He was healing rather well, she realized. Liz knew he’d asked Aurelio to go buy him a set of small barbells at the sporting goods store. He started last week with two pounds. But the minute the doctor told him he could lift ten pounds, Sam had pushed himself to lift those heavier weights. It was as if Sam couldn’t wait to be super fit again. Was he doing all this because of Gina? Liz wasn’t sure, but she had her suspicions.
Liz knew she was naturally paranoid, and that it was a terrible way to live, always lacking faith. She knew she was the way she was because she’d been traumatized by her parents’ deaths. And nearly losing Sam had thrown her completely off her axis yet again. She hadn’t known how to react. How to make decisions.
And she’d made a very bad one.
To make matters worse, she hadn’t the first idea how to rectify it. She couldn’t go to Gabe and say, “Oops, I messed up. I want you back.”
His first reaction would be, “Oh, yeah? For how long? A month? A day? Then what?”
Admittedly, Liz was scared to death of love.
Her fear had brought her to this empty, agonizing moment of clarity, when she finally understood that she’d been clinging to her father’s dream for so many years she hadn’t sorted out what she wanted from life.
For years, she’d believed her father’s desires were hers. She had turned him into an icon, a philosopher, rather than honoring him simply as a man and as her father. A father who had loved her and whom she had loved back.
Gabe had shown her that.
Gabe had made her see that her own life was waiting right in front of her.
But what had she done? She’d walked away. Gabe had begged her to tell him she loved him, but she’d been so stubborn, so arrogantly glued to her past, that she had pushed Gabe away.
Today, she’d walked through the yellowing grape vines and watched the golden leaves turning to autumn dust. Their energy would go back to the earth and be reborn in the spring.
But what about her?
She’d been singing to her vines for years. But she’d never had the beautiful opportunity to sing to her own child. She’d never once considered what it would be like to take the risk of giving her heart and dreams to someone other than her dead parents.
What a fool she’d been.
She should have known from that first dance with Gabe that for the rest of her life, no other arms were going to hold her as his had. And no one would understand her and all her flaws as well as he did. Till the end of her life, she wanted to spend every moment with Gabe.
Euphoria filled Liz’s heart and she felt like jumping into the air. Her life had just taken a new turn, and though it looked like an ordinary day to anyone else, it was monumental for her.
She ran her fingers through her hair. Think, Liz. You have to make this happen. You can do this. She spotted the new stack of personal stationery she’d just ordered for her holiday notes.
A letter! Not a text or a phone call or an email, but a good, old-fashioned letter. That’s what she should do. Write Gabe a personal note of apology and explanation.
Eerily, every word and emotion that had been bottled up in her heart flowed out of her so quickly, her pen flew across the paper. At times she cried and at others she laughed at the memories she and Gabe had already made. With each word, she felt hope bloom inside her. Suddenly, everything in her world felt right, joyful and...possible.
She would mail her letter today so Gabe would get it the very next day. She couldn’t wait. She folded the letter and put it in the envelope then tugged on the desk drawer where she kept her stamps.
The drawer was stuck. She yanked on it, but it only moved slightly. She yanked again, and this time she heard a scraping sound, as if something were caught in the back of the drawer.
“What in the world?” Liz tried to slip her hand inside, but the opening was too small. Using both hands, she pulled on the drawer again. It budged a little, but she heard a ripping sound.
Liz groaned and knelt on the floor in order to investigate the problem from underneath.
Caught between one of the wooden slats and the bottom of the drawer was a long legal envelope. Liz eased it out and got back up in her chair.
Out of the envelope, Liz pulled a cashier’s check made out to the Indian Lake County treasurer.
Her mouth fell open. Her heart pounded and her blood raced through her body. She jumped out of her chair. “It was here all along!” Liz danced around the office, and when she stopped spinning, her eyes fell back to her desk, to the snapshot of her father smiling up at her.
Chills covered her body, and in that split second, Liz believed her father had gu
ided her to the money.
With this check, she no longer needed money from the bank or from Gabe to shore up their finances and pay the taxes, and even Sam’s medical bills wouldn’t be such a burden. She didn’t need help from anyone. She had exactly what she needed.
“But what I want...” She looked down at the letter she’d written to Gabe. “What I really want...”
Smiling, she went to the desk drawer, opened it easily, took out a stamp and placed it on the envelope. “He’s all I really want, Dad.”
Just then, she heard a car pull up outside. Louisa was in the riddling room tending to her newly bottled chardonnays. Liz had been left alone to take care of the tourists, though there had been none this morning.
She heard a car door slam, then the crunch of shoes—boot heels?—on the gravel. She waited for the tasting room door to open. But it didn’t.
That’s odd.
She walked to the door and looked out into the parking lot, spotting a single car. A newly polished black Porsche.
Sucking in her breath, she stood stock-still. Her heart was banging so hard in her chest, she thought she was the one having the heart attack. “Gabe?”
No. It couldn’t be. He was here?
She dashed outside to see.
Gabe was walking toward the farmhouse, dressed in a pair of black slacks, a white shirt under a black cashmere V-neck sweater and black Italian loafers.
No question. The man knew how to dress.
And she loved it. Now that she knew Gabe and Gina better, there was no doubt that Gabe had learned his fashion sense from his mother. Odd as it seemed, it was yet another trait that endeared Gabe to her. He was just as close to the parent he loved dearly as she was to Sam.
She glanced at his hands and noticed he was carrying a bouquet of roses with aluminum foil wrapped around the stems.
Liz guessed he’d clipped them from Gina’s rose garden.
Her heart leaped in her chest. She closed the tasting room door behind her and headed quickly toward the farmhouse.
“Hi, Gabe,” she said nervously. She had a thousand things in her heart she wanted to tell him, but she didn’t know where or how to begin.
Oddly, he didn’t look back at her, but kept walking.
Anxiety whittled away at her confidence. She wasn’t sure of her next move. He must have driven all the way from the farm. He’d cleaned up his car and he’d brought flowers. What was he doing here? Her hopes lifted inside her. “Are those for me?”
He stopped dead in his tracks and Liz nearly collided with him. For a split second she thought she saw merriment in his Mediterranean-blue eyes. In a flash, it was gone, replaced with determination. “These? They’re for Sam.”
“Sam. Of course.” Liz felt as if her insides had turned to lead. It made sense. Gabe had saved Sam’s life. They would want to visit and talk. But still, she felt wonderful just being this close to Gabe. She wanted to take his hand and rush up to her father’s hill with him and tell him all about her revelations and the miraculous recovery of the cashier’s check. Most important of all, she wanted to tell him that she loved him. He had to know she loved him.
Gabe answered quickly. “My mother picked them.”
“Right,” Liz said glumly, lowering her eyes to the roses.
Gabe continued toward the house. He took the front steps two at a time and rapped on the screen door. “Sam, it’s me. Gabe.”
Maria appeared instantly, which surprised Liz, who had never seen the woman go to the door until the third or fourth knock.
Her suspicions were instantly aroused. Something was off.
“Welcome,” Maria said, untying her apron from around her waist.
Maria never took her apron off unless it was the end of her workday or a special visitor had arrived. Was Gabe a special visitor?
“These are for Sam.” Gabe handed her the flowers.
“I’ll put them in a vase with water,” Maria said.
“Excellent,” Gabe replied, stepping into the house.
“Barzonni? Is that you?” Sam shouted with all his old vigor.
“Thank you for seeing me, sir,” Gabe replied as he entered the living room. Sam shut off the television and caught Liz’s eye as she followed Gabe in.
“What’s going on?” Liz shot a skeptical look at her grandfather, who ignored it completely.
“As I was saying on the telephone, sir,” Gabe started.
Closing her eyes and shaking her head, Liz threw her hands in the air. “Wait a minute. You’ve been talking with my grandfather?”
“Yes, Liz. Besides requesting this visit, I wanted advice about something that only he could give me.”
“But why?”
Gabe clucked his tongue. “There’s that word again, Liz.”
Glaring at him, she clamped her hand on her hip. “I find it gets me answers, Gabriel Barzonni. Which brings me to another ‘why.’ Why are you here, Gabe? What do you want?” she probed.
“I want to hear what you want, Liz.”
She’d known since this morning, but now she was more certain than ever. All she had to do was tell him the truth.
Liz pulled the envelope out of the back pocket of her jeans and held it up. “I put it all in here. I want you, Gabe. I think I’ve been in love with you since our first dance. I want you to have your dreams, too. I’ve come to realize that by refusing to live my life, I was pushing everyone out of it. That’s not what my parents wanted for me. They wanted me to be happy. And I know I won’t be happy if I’m not with you.”
Gabe slipped his hands around Liz’s waist. “Do you really mean that, Liz?”
She nodded.
“Good, because I was running out of ways to win you over. I only had one trick left.”
Gabe’s eyes blazed such a deep blue, Liz felt as if she’d found everything in the universe in them.
For the first time in her life, Liz was not afraid. And she’d never felt so free. She let her heart fill to capacity. She had found a love she could believe in.
Her eyes met his on a magical, ethereal plane where only those who understood true intimacy were allowed to venture. Here, they gave their hearts unconditionally. Here, there were no scores to keep, no faults to find, no blame to cast. In life and death, love prevailed. It was this plane of existence that true lovers understood as no others did. It was not a concept, but an actual state of being.
“More tricks?”
“Uh, huh,” he answered, winking at Sam. Taking Liz’s hand, Gabe led her into the hallway for privacy.
“What are you doing?”
Gabe smiled mischievously. “Darling, will you marry me?” he breathed and pulled her close to his chest. “I promise to do everything I can to make you happy.”
“This is the only place I want to be,” she said earnestly, snuggling her face into the crook of his neck. And then she kissed him. Softly and with all the love in her heart.
She’d never experienced such happiness as she did now in Gabe’s arms. Reluctantly, she pulled away. “We have to tell Sam!”
She pulled on Gabe’s arm as they went around the corner to the living room. “Gabe just asked me to marry him, Grandpa. And I said yes.”
“It’s about time.” Sam grinned widely, looking at Liz’s left hand. “But did you forget something, Barzonni?”
Gabe blinked then he dropped to one knee. “I almost forgot,” he said, reaching into his pants pocket. “I got you something. I didn’t want to be like my brother Nate. Proposing to the love of his life without a ring.” He held up a square-cut amethyst surrounded by diamonds. “I wanted it to remind you of your most beloved grape. Always abundant. Always flowing with life.”
“Oh, Gabe,” she said, kneeling and placing her hands on both sides of his face. “Yes. Of course I’
ll marry you. The ring is beautiful!” Tears flowed from her eyes. “It’s perfect for us.”
“It was my mother’s. It’s her gift to us.”
Gabe put the ring on Liz’s left hand and when she looked at it, glittering bright with promise, she threw her arms around Gabe’s neck.
“I love you!”
“Liz.” He started to kiss her, but she had such a grip on his neck that he lost his balance and they toppled over onto the floor just as Maria came into the room with the vase of roses.
Horrified, Maria glared at Sam, who was laughing. “They look like they’re trying to crush the grapes!” she huffed.
Sam was laughing so hard he had to grab the heart-shaped pillow the nurses had given him to hold next to his chest when he sneezed, coughed or laughed too much. “I don’t think winemaking is on their minds right now.”
Gabe held Liz’s face in his hands, glanced at Sam and then back at Liz. “We could do that, you know. Merge our talents.”
“And we’ll live here at the vineyard?” Liz asked.
“Looks to me like there’s plenty of room upstairs.” He touched her nose. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Merging,” she said thoughtfully and snuggled closer to him. “It sounds wonderful.”
Gabe smiled up at Maria. “So, there you have it, Maria. We’ll all be making lots of Crenshaw wines.” Then he kissed Liz softly and smiled with that impish grin she adored. “Maybe we’ll make some other things, too.”
Gabe kissed her again, and though Liz felt dizzy, for the first time, he had not unbalanced her. She had found her bearings. She knew in her heart every year for them would be a fine one.
* * * * *
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A Fine Year for Love (Shores of Indian Lake) Page 23