“The French,” she murmured, trying to work up some righteous anger at him again. “Always with the French.”
He smiled a little. “How?” he insisted.
“I only know for how long,” she said. Now unprotected and defenseless, the small organ in her chest was starting to thrum with a rhythm she’d never known before.
Jack’s shoulders relaxed. There was another little smile. “God, I hope that means for the rest of our lives.”
She hesitated. Not so brave, now, was she? Jack had been right about that. But after a deep breath, the words came as naturally as easing her foot into a seamless glass slipper - or winding up for the perfect pitch. “It means I’m in love with you, Jack.”
He was silent a moment. His “You don’t know how happy I am to hear that,” came out cool and calm. Then her sentimental, emotional prince - oh, she had his number now - yanked her into his embrace. She thought she felt dampness as he pressed his face against her hair.
Her poor little heart hiccupped, but then kept right on beating. Maybe it knew what it was doing.
He pushed her away to look into her face. “You believe I love you?”
And she had to smile. “Believe?” She drew his mouth to hers for a long kiss, then held him away again. “You realize you’re asking that of the woman who’s clung all her life to her faith in family legends, loving ghosts, and lost treasure, don’t you?”
He claimed the next soul-deep kiss, then lifted his head again. “I want it all,” he said, his voice fierce. “We’ll make wine at our two-acre vineyard, we’ll make babies that will carry on the tradition, we’ll make a lifetime of happiness together.”
“You royal types, always expecting to command things,” she teased.
“Bien sûr,” he said, all aristocratic Ardenian prince.
So she jumped him like the tomboy she was, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. He laughed and spun in a circle, hitching her closer against him. “I have such a surprise for you.”
She cocked her head. “What surprise?”
He grinned. “I found your treasure.”
“There’s your arrogance again,” she said, shaking her head even as she rolled her hips suggestively. “My ‘treasure’?”
“No.” He laughed again. “Really.”
She speared her fingers in his hair and brought his lips close again. “Tell me later. Right now I’ve got better ideas for what to do with your mouth.”
*****
“Come on,” Jack said softly. His wife was beautiful tonight, as beautiful as when he’d married her a month before. Their wedding had taken place at seven P.M. in the Tanti Baci cottage filled with family and friends. The room had been nearly pitch-dark, lit only by a smoldering fire as he waited for his bride to join him. Then he’d seen a candle’s flame
Her bouquet was a single white taper surrounded by ivory roses. It had illuminated her slender figure in a long, white velvet gown that left her neck and shoulders bare. His heart had expanded, taking his breath, and tears had stung his eyes as she’d moved closer - so fittingly bringing to him a light to alleviate the darkness.
Her love had banished all his personal shadows. Stevie lit up his soul.
They’d honeymooned in Tahiti, sleeping - or not - in a private cabana built over the water. Now he’d made them a bed on the floor in the wedding cottage’s bridal boudoir, but she was hesitating to join him on the pad of quilts and blankets. Candlelight flickered against the walls. “Come on,” he coaxed again. “You know you want to.”
“No,” Stevie protested, even as she sank down beside him and took the glass of sparkling wine he handed her. “It’s only a fantasy.”
“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give it a try.” He kissed the side of her neck, then moved the vase of white roses he’d brought with him farther from the pillows. He’d bought her a dozen every day since she’d agreed to marry him. Practical Stevie kept complaining of the expense, but he knew her secret longing … and now she knew his.
Maybe it was the emotional Ardenian in him … or perhaps the simple Georgia farmer. Either way, he was eager to plant his seed in this lovely woman and make new life. When he’d mentioned it on their wedding day - which he’d managed to make happen a short six days after Roxy’s nuptials, while his parents were still in the States - his bride had melted.
Oh, she was so, so soft on the inside. When they’d unlocked the strongbox he’d found in the fireplace, she’d watched with shining eyes, although the “treasure” had turned out to be nothing more than an old diary. Anne’s diary.
“Maybe there’s a clue inside,” Giuliana had said, her voice wistful.
And his tough girl had handed the leather-bound book to her older sister. “You find out for us,” she’d said. Then she’d whispered to Jack, “Maybe she’ll find a clue about what to do with Liam and Kohl.”
He’d laughed then, swamped by love for her. He was still happily drowning in it.
“Please, Stevie,” he said now, kissing her again. “Let me make love to you.”
She shivered. “Well…”
He tipped up her face to gaze into her eyes, no longer afraid for her to see the emotion in his. “I promise it will be fun.”
“Always the fun with you,” she scolded, then sighed. “But you can’t tell anyone, Jack. Not ever.”
“It will be our secret, mon ange,” he said, smiling. “Our sweet little secret that we conceived our child under Anne and Alonzo’s approving gazes.”
She glanced around. “That’s what makes it feel weird, Jack. I mean, what if the ghosts are really here?”
“They’ll close their eyes during the good parts,” he whispered. “Come on, Stephania, let’s make a baby.”
Her hesitation lasted only another second. Then she pushed him down to the blankets and came over him. “Say it in French, Jack,” she demanded. “You know I can’t resist that.”
“Let me show you in French,” he murmured against her mouth. You know I can’t resist you.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
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Thank you to my (blushing) reader in France, Emmanuelle, who contributed Jack’s French phrases, including the cuss words (hence the blushing). Any mistakes are my own!
As mentioned in the first book in the Three Kisses trilogy, Crush on You, there are restrictions to the kinds of events that may be hosted at wineries in the Napa Valley due to its designation as an agricultural preserve. Over the years, the rules have been challenged and then revised. For my fictional purposes the romantic “I-dos” go forward at beautiful Tanti Baci.
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Teaser Chapter
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Keep reading for a preview of the next book in the
Three Kisses trilogy from Christie Ridgway
Drunk on Love
Giuliana Baci shivered in the June night air even though flames were crackling and roaring just fifty feet away. She clutched the old leather-bound diary to her chest and stared at the spectacle across the street, trying to take it in. A muscle car passed, possibly attracted by the strobing emergency lights, because it slowed to a lookie-loo pace. It veered toward the opposite curb, and she could see the driver’s neck crane, his eyes obviously not on the parked obstacle just ahead. “Watch out,” she warned, stepping forward.
But it was too late. Two and a half tons of heavy metal had already taken out a headlight and crumpled the hood of a small, innocent sedan. Giuliana’s sedan.
Somehow she wasn’t surprised to see the over-cylindered other vehi
cle lurch into reverse, then race away from her latest personal disaster.
The screech of tires against pavement was swallowed by the sound of the fire burning up the rest of her belongings in the now-engulfed four-unit apartment building where she’d been living.
“To hell with threes,” she said, her voice as defeated as her mood. Her legs folded and she sank to the curb, the cement cold through her thin robe. One set of bare toes crossed over the other. “If you ask me, bad luck comes in batches.”
“I’m sorry,” the young woman beside her replied. She was perched on the same old-fashioned suitcase she’d lugged into Giuliana’s small apartment when she’d offered the woman temporary lodging not long ago. “I’m so very sorry.”
“That should be my line,” Giuliana answered, though it looked as if Grace had at least saved her possessions. She’d been living out of that very suitcase and sleeping on the - now likely incinerated - living room couch.
“You’ll get through this,” Grace said, her freckled face earnest beneath her rumpled strawberry blonde hair. “No doubt about it.”
Those should have been her lines, too, Giuliana thought. For the last year she’d been repeating them often enough - ever since her father’s death and the Baci sisters’ takeover of the family’s failing one-hundred-year-old winery.
Only a month to go, she consoled herself now. And then -
Another car sped onto the scene. Giuliana’s nerves went on instant alert, standing on end as she jumped to her feet, still clutching the old diary. Liam Bennett exited the Mercedes even as it rocked to a halt.
Despite her quaking belly, her jellied knees went rock solid. The girl still has some fight in her, she thought, relieved. Now don’t let him guess there are any chinks in your foundation.
Then he was in front of her, the flickering fire and the flashing emergency lights casting reds and yellows over his lean face. Her stomach cramped again, and it was as if the heat of the flames set a torch to her skin. What is wrong with me? she wondered for the millionth time. On a daily basis, people encountered their childhood sweet-hearts and didn’t suffer such an intense physical reaction. But although she’d hidden herself away for a decade, she’d returned only to discover she was still not immune to him.
“What are you doing here?” she croaked out. It sounded more froggy than unfriendly.
Damn it.
He cocked an eyebrow. “This is Edenville.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Small town of six thousand nosy souls in the northern end of the Napa Valley. Word of what happened had likely run faster through the gossip grapevine than the fire through the clothes in her closet. The mental image made her shiver.
Liam saw it, and he reached for her.
No! every instinct inside her shouted. She swayed back and he froze. Then he stripped off the sports jacket he wore and dropped it over her shoulders, careful that his hands didn’t touch her body.
She wanted to grasp the lapels and hug it against her. She didn’t. She didn’t thank him, either.
The wind shifted, sending smoke across their faces, and she blinked against the sting in her eyes. But it was Liam’s scent that was in her nose, spicy, male, and she had to tighten her grip on the diary to remind herself to stay steady.
Strong.
When all she wanted was to collapse against him and bury her face at his throat.
“Jules,” he said. For a second she thought she heard an ache in his voice that mirrored the one in her chest, but that couldn’t be true. Liam’s expression appeared as unreadable as it always did.
Only emphasizing the fact that she had to stand on her own two feet. She’d proven she could, all that long time ago, and she wouldn’t stumble now. People depended upon her, not the other way around, and she was afraid of how she might ultimately be hurt if she forgot that.
Clearing her throat, Giuliana waved away another waft of smoke. “Look, thanks for checking on us. But we’ll be fine.”
“Us?” he echoed, looking around, and then his gaze found Grace, who offered him a tentative smile.
Giuliana moved closer to her. “You remember Grace Mackey - I mean Grace Hatch. I hired her to pour in the Tanti Baci tasting room two weeks ago.”
“Hatch … ?”
“Yes,” Giuliana confirmed. “The dowser.” Old Peter Hatch had owned some rocky acreage in the backcountry and eked out a living divining for water and doing handyman chores. Known as a mean drunk and an even meaner dad, those who knew shy and quiet Grace had actually been happy for her when she’d dropped out of high school to marry a boy just home from the Army in the next county. Except he’d been cut from the same cloth as her father, and when Grace had shown up at the winery with final divorce papers and a black eye, what could Giuliana do?
“She’s been staying with me for a while,” Giuliana explained to Liam.
He glanced over his shoulder at the apartment building that appeared soon to be ashes. “Then you’ll both need somewhere to stay. You’ll come to my place -”
“No.” She shook her head. “Of course not. We’re headed for the farmhouse. I’ve already left a message for Stevie.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. He wore a cotton polo shirt tucked into dark jeans. His shoulders had been broad and strong as a teenager, his hips lean, his butt nearly nonexistent. As a man, he’d filled out everywhere in all the best ways. Not that she hadn’t tried not to notice.
“That should be fun for you,” he said. “Moving in with two sets of honeymooners.”
Oh, why bother disguising her grimace? Her youngest sister, Allie, had married Liam’s half brother, Penn Bennett, nearly a year before. Though they spent some of their time in Southern California, when they were in Edenville they took over the first floor of the small farmhouse the Baci girls had grown up in. The second story was the domain of her other sister, Stevie, who was camping there with her husband of five months, Jack Parini, while they were remodeling the winery on their two-acre vineyard into a home.
She sighed. “It’ll be just like old times.”
“Except for the addition of your ardent brothers-in-law. Good luck trying to ignore all the squeals and heavy breathing.”
“Surely it won’t -”
“They’re horndogs, Jules.”
Well, duh. It didn’t take more than five seconds in a room with her sisters and the men they’d married to realize their relationships were passionate. “I’m sure Allie and Stevie will keep the lid on when guests are around.”
“Yeah. You Baci girls are always so good at keeping things on simmer.”
The way he said it set her blood on boil. She moved up, toe-to-toe with him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He looked down his aristocratic nose at her, all golden boy to barefoot peasant girl. The story of their lives. “We could finish this thing, Giuliana. One damn way or another if you’d just give over. Move in, and we could -”
“We couldn’t! We won’t!” Giving over was exactly what she couldn’t do. Rehashing their past had no place in her future.
“Fine. Your choice.” His face was composed, his voice steady. “But then it’ll bubble and spit and make us both miserable for the next ten years.”
“No! No it won’t.” She had a plan, already set in motion, that would bring it, everything for all of them, finally to an end. No more emotional distress, no more poignant pulls from the past.
He quirked that brow again. “How so?”
His calm made her want to murder him. While her heart pounded and her mouth went dry when she shared even the largest space with him, he appeared as unmoved as ice forgotten in a freezer. He might talk about being miserable, but he didn’t fathom a damn thing about that emotion or any other.
“Jules?”
His doubting tone had her inches closer and on tiptoe. “Because -” she started. Then she halted, her brain clicking in before her temper got the better of her-hey, she’d matured, too. Telling too soon could ruin everything she’d planned. “Just bec
ause,” she said, falling back to her heels.
He didn’t twitch a muscle, but she could sense his inner mental eye roll.
The temperature of her blood spiked again. “Don’t give me that look.”
His gaze narrowed. “I’ll tell you what I want to give you -” He broke off as a taxi pulled in beside his vehicle. “Oh, hell.”
She ignored Liam’s disgust as she turned to the figure exiting the cab. At the sight of Kohl Friday’s dark hair and rock-solid form, she let her spine sag. The
Tanti Baci vineyard manager didn’t hesitate to move in and bolster her with an arm around her shoulders. “Okay?”
“Okay.” She leaned against him, his presence diminishing a little of the threat she felt in Liam’s company. He smelled of cinnamon gum and tequila - which explained why he hadn’t driven himself. “Phone lines been working overtime?” she asked.
“I’m here to give you a lift,” he said. Then he half turned, his gaze finding the young woman still seated on her suitcase. “Grace.”
Her eyes were wide and focused on Kohl’s face. Giuliana saw her gulp. “Hi,” she said, her voice nearly a whisper.
Kohl turned back quickly, as if aware he was spooking her. “Ready, ladies?”
Giuliana slid a look in Liam’s direction. He’d moved away a few paces to lean against the side of his car, arms and ankles crossed. His expression proclaimed he was bored by the proceedings.
“Ready,” she replied, tacking on a smile for her second rescuer. Then she walked away from the first one with perfect composure - just as Liam, her very first lover, had walked away from her a decade before.
******
Giuliana peeked through the holes in the afghan she’d thrown over her head last night as she’d tried getting comfortable on the love seat in her office. Sleep had apparently arrived at some point, since early morning sunshine was now in the room, along with something that was rummaging around in the large storage closet located across the tattered Oriental carpet. Drawing the blanket below her chin, she blinked against the light.
“Has the European grapevine moth moved onto paper goods now?” she called out.
A petite brunette peered around the door. “Oh, sorry.” Alessandra Baci Bennett, Giuliana’s little sister, formerly known as the “Nun of Napa,” stepped from the closet, her pretty face contrite. “You’re awake?”
Then He Kissed Me Page 27