Boys want soft, sweet girls.
Pushing the old memories out of her head, she refocused on the present. “But that’s beside the point. The real problem is, Allie, that our sister told Emerson and his fiancée that I would take over your wedding duties.”
There was a moment of silence on the line, then a quiet sigh. “Well, who else is there?”
Panic washed heat over Stevie’s skin. “Who else? Anyone else but me!”
Another sigh. “I feel terrible that I can’t do it, but the doctor says -”
“Not you,” she interrupted, feeling guilty. “And no need to apologize. But Jules could…” She let the words die away as she glanced over at her sister, with her ghastly complexion and exhausted eyes.
“She’s running the vineyard,” Allie reminded her. “All the administrative tasks, including inventory and supplies, overseeing payroll, keeping the wine club going. While you are -”
“Don’t say it,” Stevie said, guilty all over again. She wasn’t doing anything for the one-hundred-year-old Tanti Baci winery. Alessandra had been in charge of the PR end for years, and after their father died, Giuliana had returned from Southern California to take over his duties. While Stevie … In the past few months, Stevie had contributed exactly zero beyond pouring wine at the occasional tasting. The rest of the time she worked exclusively at her own business, Napa Princess Limousine
Which was in its fallow season.
“Don’t make me do it,” she whispered.
Allie’s voice filled with sympathy. “I know you don’t want to deal with Emerson.”
“It’s not him.”
“No? Then what? Who?”
Jack. His name popped into her head. He popped into her head, his handsome face, his elegant body, the way his touch made her toes curl in feminine surrender and her fingers into defensive fists. Mon anqe, he’d called her. My angel.
That devil.
That dangerous devil.
“Never mind,” she said, dropping her forehead to the heel of her hand. Stephania Baci liked nothing less than the smell of defeat, but right now it had the scent of fair trade coffee beans. Her voice sounded as miserable as she felt. “Don’t worry about anything. Just get well and -”
“I’ll take care of the wedding.”
Stevie lifted her head to look at the Corpse that Spoke, aka Giuliana. “What? Wait…” She took a minute to end the conversation with Allie, promising to call later, then studied her older sister from across the table, trying not to let her hopes rise too high. “What did you just say?”
Jules appeared marginally better. She patted Kohl’s hand as he tried to ply her with another piece of scone. “I’m fine,” she told him, then met Stevie’s gaze. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t see another way at the time.”
“There isn’t another way,” Kohl said, his voice firm. “You’ve got too much on your plate already, Jules.”
She ignored him. “I’ll juggle one or two things, and -”
“I’ll do those one or two things,” Stevie offered quickly. “I can take over the the…” Her mind went blank.
Kohl frowned. “You’ve never been involved in the winery business. You can’t take over your sister’s responsibilities.”
“Sure I can.” Though she couldn’t actually discuss her sister’s responsibilities with any specificity.
His eyebrows drew together. “Stevie -”
Jules put her hand on his arm to quiet him. “Shh. We’ll figure it out later.”
“Now. We’ll figure it out right this minute,” Stevie said. It would assuage her guilt if they nailed down the details immediately.
“All right,” Jules agreed. She leaned forward, both elbows on the table as Kohl kneaded her shoulders with one big hand. She let out a little moan. “Oh, that’s wonderful.”
“Wonderful” summed it up for Stevie as well. Once they hashed this through, she would call Emerson personally and inform him of the altered arrangement, ensuring the new year would begin just as she’d meant it to.
Free of men.
“What the hell are you doing, Friday?” a low voice demanded.
A low, male voice - and a definite bad omen. Without looking up, she groaned to herself. Why did Liam Bennett, long-time neighbor and Jules’s personal nemesis, have to show up now?
Stevie glanced over her shoulder, taking in the set of his jaw and the way he was focused on Kohl’s hand on her sister’s body.
“So you did get her drunk last night,” Liam accused the other man.
Kohl stiffened. “I -”
“It’s none of your damn business what Kohl and I did last night,” Jules said, a flush of pink on her cheeks chasing away the last of her pallor.
“I was talking to Friday and not to you,” he snapped, sparing her the briefest of blazing glances.
“You were talking about me,” she retorted, jumping to her feet. “And I won’t have it.”
Liam stared down his nose at her. “You’ve never been able to stop me. From anything.”
Jules’s face went redder, then the color leached away. She swayed.
Uh-oh, Stevie thought, half-rising.
But her sister’s spine steeled. “Including from becoming an icy-hearted robot.”
And with that, she stormed out of the café, Kohl following in her wake. Three seconds of silence passed, then, muttering an oath, Liam shoved his hands through his dark blond hair and exited himself, turning in the opposite direction of the vineyard manager and Stevie’s sister.
“Okay, then,” she murmured, dropping her head to her arms, mimicking Jules’s earlier sprawl. It seemed a fine way to sit when absorbing the depressing realization that the only thing she’d gotten out of the brief meeting was an abandoned latté and a bad feeling about a love triangle in the making.
*****
After her frustrating day, Stevie looked forward to the evening. It was her turn to host poker and darts night, and surely the event would put her in a better mood. A few hours of relaxation might even aid in figuring out her next step in untangling herself from the wedding business.
While the early arrivals congregated by the beverage tub stocked with ice and beers on the narrow sideboard in the duplex’s dining alcove, she set out the deli meats, breads, and chips. The first guy she’d ever punched - Ben Copeland, first grade, for trying to steal her bag of homemade snicker-doodles - was talking.
“So then the farmer’s daughter took the bull by the horns and -”
She grabbed a sourdough roll from the pile and threw it, bouncing it off Ben’s forehead.
“Hey!” He turned to her in surprise. “What’s gotten into you?”
“The joke?”
He continued staring at her, wearing a befuddled expression, looking just as he had when her fist had met his solar plexus that day by the swings.
She huffed. “I can see the punch line that’s coming, okay? It’s not appropriate for mixed company.” When his eyebrows rose in continued bewilderment, she huffed again. “Ben, I’m a girl.”
“Oooh.” The light dawned over his face. Then his gaze slid down her figure.
“Wow, I think you’re right.”
She promised herself she wasn’t blushing. Still, her face felt hot as she noticed the other guests - J.D. and Chuck - were now also staring. Maybe she shouldn’t have worn the new bad-girl boots. Or the thin, pale-pink wrap sweater that she’d been given by Allie and Penn that V’d so low in front. Or her favorite dark jeans, which were just a smidge tighter after all the holiday dinners, parties, and Christmas cookies.
“Double wow,” J.D. agreed, his focus on her cleavage. “You look, um, different.”
Chuck cleared his throat. “You clean up real good, Stevie. Why don’t you always dress like that?”
Face definitely burning now, she marched into the kitchen in order to get away from them and the knowledge that she usually wore her jeans with the ripped knees and a sweatshirt with bleach stains on poker and darts night. There, she leaned
against the countertop and massaged her temples. What had prompted her to change her uniform? With Emerson’s wedding in the offing, now was not the time to appear different in any way. It was important to assure everyone - including herself - that she was her usual, tough, tomboy self.
Instead of returning to the party, she exited the kitchen and rushed to her bedroom. Her favorite jeans were a little tight, too, but she did a few deep knee bends after yanking black sheepskin Uggs onto her feet. Though her lucky sweatshirt was in the laundry basket, she replaced the feminine sweater with a waffle-weave Henley as dark as her boots. It was securely buttoned to her throat.
That the guys didn’t notice the costume switch made her breathe easier. It put her in such a light mood that she slid a double batch of the pizza rolls that were Ben’s favorite into the oven. “I’m almost done here,” she yelled from the kitchen toward the dining table where they played cards. “Go ahead and deal ‘em up. I’ll be out in a second.”
J.D. stuck his head into the room. “Let’s wait for the Bennetts.”
Stevie froze, her hands stuck inside lobster-shaped oven mitts. “I thought they weren’t coming tonight. They … they have a house guest.”
Jack Parini. Why couldn’t she stop thinking about him? And why did the thought of him at the party make her regret changing from the pretty-in-pink sweater to the funereal black Henley?
“They’re coming.” At the sound of the doorbell, J.D. grinned at her. “Bet that’s them,” he said, disappearing from sight.
Stevie pressed the quilted lobsters belly-to-belly and breathed deeply as if in the yoga class her friend Man always encouraged her to attend. Don’t rush out there, she told herself. And don’t let Jack Parini see how he makes you anxious.
“Hey, Stevie,” a man said, stepping into the kitchen.
Shrieking in surprise, she jumped, pressing the orange mitts to her heart.
Seth Bennett, Liam’s younger brother, stopped short. “Geez, Steve. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She scowled at him. He was wearing his lucky poker duds, too, and his blond and blue-eyed good looks were enhanced by the pale blue polo that had “Boalt Law” embroidered on the chest. The salsa stain on the sleeve from the time J.D. dumped the bowl over his winning seven-high hand barely showed. Seth was the best bluffer of them all.
“Then why so jumpy?”
Her own poker face had definitely slipped. “I told you, I’m fine.” She turned away to pull the cookie sheets from the oven. “I just didn’t expect to see you, Liam, and Jack tonight, that’s all.”
“Jack didn’t come with us,” Seth said.
“Oh.” And at that her traitorous mind was on its own again, wondering just exactly who he was with tonight. Likely some other woman, one comfortable in pink sweaters and around men who called them mon ange with the all-smooth self-assurance of a … of a European prince.
She could still hear the words in his lowered voice, the phrase holding both a hint of humor and a larger dose of let’s-keep-this-light. Last night in the limo, he’d been serious about not taking anything seriously.
Yet that composure had fallen away in the cottage this morning. He’d jerked her up against him, his fingers tight on her shoulders, his hard belly pressed against hers, the tips of her breasts brushing his chest with each of her unsteady breaths.
Thinking about it now made her hot. Beset once more by that instantaneous, surprising, confusing desire. Instinct told her that to get back to normal she had to never touch, smell, or share space with Jack Parini ever again.
“… definitely not yourself,” Seth was saying.
“What?” She forced her focus on him, feeling annoyed. “I don’t know why you’d say that.”
He laughed. “There’s a reason you drop forty bucks every two weeks. You bluff for shit, Steve.”
Her frown deepened. “Sometimes I win.”
“Only because J.D. can never remember if a flush beats a straight or vice versa.” He leaned against the countertop and crossed his arms over his chest. “But the giveaway tonight was the fact that I just told you about the key and you didn’t blink.”
“What key?”
“See, you weren’t listening at all. I found an old key in a safe deposit box.
We’re still uncovering stuff since Dad’s death.“ He grimaced. ”Though this seems like something he’d forgotten about, not a secret he’d been keeping, like
He didn’t need to finish that sentence for her. Calvin Bennett had died of a sudden heart attack six months before her own father. After his death, the fact that he’d fathered two illegitimate children had come to light. A son, Penn, who had met and married Allie during his first visit to his half siblings. There was a daughter whose whereabouts remained unknown.
“It’s an old-looking skeleton key attached to a tag that reads ‘Baci.’ ” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Maybe it’s a key to the treasure.”
She stared at Seth, aware he was teasing but still jolted by the thought. “Why would your family have it after all this time?”
“Don’t know.” Seth shook his head. “Don’t really know what it opens.”
“Still…” Stevie swallowed, wondering if it could possibly be part of the Anne-Alonzo-Liam legend. All her life she’d been enthralled by the stories of the three, of the treasure and of the decision the society debutante had made to marry the scrappy immigrant instead of the well-connected rich guy. Smart girl. According to her father, the spirit of Anne and Alonzo’s great love affair survived beyond the grave.
“Seth … have you ever, even for a second, wondered if the legend of the treasure and the ghost story are true?”
He laughed. “If I didn’t think you’d take me down for it, I’d say you have the goofiest - and biggest - sentimental streak in Napa Valley.”
Embarrassed, she turned away to fuss with the pizza rolls. “Forget I said anything,” she muttered.
“I didn’t say I don’t believe in ghosts. I didn’t say there definitely isn’t a treasure.”
Stevie didn’t look up from the platter she was arranging. “So you believe the treasure’s real?”
“Real?” Seth asked. “Well, I don’t - Hey, Jack.”
Huh? Stevie thought. What did I don’t heyjack mean?
And then she knew exactly what it meant, because her skin prickled in that predators-in-the-proximity manner it did around only one person. One man.
Jack. On a deep breath, the faintest note of his expensive scent entered her lungs.
“Hey, back,” she heard him say to Seth. “What’s this about a treasure?”
Stevie stayed turned away. There was no need for her to look at Jack or to answer him. She shouldn’t do either if she wanted to appear normal. To be normal.
Damn it, she was normal, she thought, cursing her reluctance. Stevie Baci. Tough girl.
And then Seth stepped up to the plate, thank God. “We told you how the original owners of Tanti Baci, Alonzo and Liam, had a falling out over Anne. But there are those who say that argument was aggravated by some silver that went missing - the last load from their mine.”
“Yeah? Raw ore?” Jack asked.
“Or maybe it was crafted into some sterling pieces or perhaps a set of silver and gold diamond-encrusted jewelry. Take your pick.” Seth added, “In any case, even though it went missing, the rumors persisted. Every now and then we still catch people - kids usually - with shovels and flashlights digging holes around the property.”
“I’m not surprised,” Jack said. “Hidden treasure … hard to get more romantic than that.”
“Unless it’s ghosts,” Seth said. “Stevie’s the expert on that Baci legend.”
His death, she promised herself, would be as slow as the heat crawling up the back of her neck. “Shut up, Seth.” She used her most pleasant voice.
“Keep talking, Seth,” Jack countered.
“Not me,” the other man replied. “I want to live to taste my first beer of the evening. I’ll leave you
to persuade the lady.”
The rat left the kitchen.
His royal friend didn’t.
She sensed him drawing closer, but she kept arranging and rearranging the stupid pizza rolls on the platter as if it were a Rubik’s Cube. Then Jack touched the back of her arm.
Her hand jerked. Hors d’oeuvres scattered.
Holding the tongs like a weapon, she whirled to face him.
Wearing a rueful smile, he lifted his hands in surrender. “Honest, officer, I didn’t mean to startle you.” He wore that charming smile. It was the mon-ange.
Jack who stood before her now, the one who wasn’t serious about anything.
Still, it was a struggle to control her breathing, and her self-consciousness grew. While she had on her ratty poker duds, Jack Parini wore a slick pair of dressy jeans and a tissue - thin white shirt with buttoned pockets. He’d rolled up the sleeves to reveal hair-dusted forearms.
“My mind was elsewhere,” she lied, hoping it would cover her extreme reaction.
“On those ghosts perhaps?”
She was shaking her head before he’d finished. “Seth was just joking around.”
“About … ?”
Oh, what did it matter? “My dad told us a story when we were kids.” She sidestepped to put a little more distance between herself and the prince and refused to believe she was blushing again. “If you bring your true love to the cottage, the ghosts of Anne and Alonzo will appear.”
“Ah, damn.” Jack snapped his fingers. “There goes that dream.”
“What?”
“You. Me. We were there this morning, and unless you’re accustomed to seeing specters and so didn’t react, I’m guessing neither one of us had a sighting.” He shook his head as if in regret. “Meaning no true love.”
She rolled her eyes. “Like you were hoping.”
Bien sûr, mon anqe. I’m a man full of hope.
She wouldn’t let the French get to her. “Full of something anyway.”
He laughed, then stepped closer to run the back of one knuckle down her cheek. “You look overheated.”
“I had the oven on. Making stuff for poker and darts night.”
“Yeah.” He let his hand drop, then nodded toward the dining room. “Nice men out there.”
Then He Kissed Me Page 4