Crush on You (37 page)

They got married on Saturday. There were too many guests to sit inside the cottage, so they decided to say their vows outside it and set folding chairs on the lawn and the adjacent parking lot. Still, the event was standing room only. Penn, wearing linen slacks and a white Mexican wedding shirt, waited on Anne and Alonzo’s front porch with the minister. Red rose petals delineated the aisle.

The bride scattered them with her bare feet as she walked to her groom. Her off-the-shoulder, ankle-length white eyelet dress had been found at a boutique in town. Her hair hung loose down her back, a circlet of baby’s breath and red baby roses held it off her face.

As Alessandra approached the cottage, she glimpsed its interior. If Anne and Alonzo were there, she didn’t see them. But other ghosts hovered nearby, she just knew it. Her parents. Tommy. She smiled for them and was sure they knew she was happy.

At the base of the steps, she handed her bouquet of more roses to her sisters. The plan was that she would mount the stairs by herself, but then Penn was there, taking her by the hand so they could climb together.

He smiled at her. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he murmured.

“I used to hate how handsome and sexy you are.” She’d thought her desire for him meant he’d infected her with a sickness, when instead this man had healed her.

“Yeah?” His brows rose over his laughing eyes. “What about now?”

“Now I think you’ll show up marvelously well on TV.” After all that, the
Wedding Fever
people were filming the event. While Lana had disappeared from Edenville, Roger and the rest had stayed put for the weekend. A few bottles of their Tanti Baci cabernet had helped the producer get over the breakup. Still, Alessandra had protested using her marriage to Penn for anything but their personal happiness.

Her groom-to-be had insisted.

Though their honeymoon would be private, allowing them to be blissfully, passionately alone, he’d said he wanted their wedding to kick off Tanti Baci’s bid for success.

As together they approached the minister, he whispered again the words he’d used to convince her just two days before. “The famous Penn Bennett and Alessandra Baci, the Nun of Napa . . . face it, my love, that’s a hell of a good story.”

To learn more about the Napa Valley, I point you to two books by James Conaway,
Napa
and
The Far Side of Eden
. Another excellent choice is
A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma
by Alan Deutschman. If you’re in the mood for a movie, I think you’ll enjoy
Bottle Shock
, which provides incredible cinematography, a great sound track, and an understanding of how Napa Valley became a celebrated area for wine.

But Napa isn’t the only place where grapes are grown and fine wines are made. Many states have wine regions, and in California, you’ll find wineries from north to south. Vintners are a friendly group and you can learn a lot by taking vineyard tours and participating in fun (and often free!) tastings on location. Of course, you don’t have to go anywhere to enjoy an evening at home with a bottle of wine. Your local liquor store or gourmet grocer will have recommendations for every taste and price range.

And here’s what I say (well, so do a lot of others, too): throw out the “rules”! Don’t worry about whether or not it’s okay to drink a white wine with your steak dinner. It’s what
you
like and what tastes right to
you
. As to cost, we’ve participated in blind tastings and you’d be surprised how many times our group preferred the less expensive bottle over the pricier one. So . . . experiment and listen to recommendations, but ultimately follow your own palette.

Last, I want to acknowledge that due to Napa Valley’s designation as an agricultural preserve, there are restrictions to the kinds of events that wineries may host (including weddings). As of this writing, changes to those restrictions are under discussion. For the purposes of the Three Kisses trilogy, the romantic “I-dos” go forward at beautiful Tanti Baci.

Leaning against the driver’s door of a black stretch Cadillac, Stephania Baci crossed her arms over her pin-tucked white shirt and practiced pleading her case to a stern-faced judge wearing robes as dark as her own jacket and tailored trousers. “Put yourself in my shoes,” she murmured, glancing down at her stiletto-heeled half-boots, ego-boosters bought for just this occasion. “Who wouldn’t commit a crime when faced with chauffeuring an ex and his new fiancée on New Year’s Eve?”

Forty feet away, the double doors to the Valley Ridge Resort opened. Even as her heart took an elevator-plunge, she shot up straight from her slouch. It wouldn’t do for her posture to telegraph her low mood. The calm mask she’d donned tonight along with her limo driver’s uniform was supposed to camouflage messy emotions—and hopefully smother any stray compulsion to carry out a high crime or misdemeanor.

A lone figure swept onto the portico, his long black overcoat swirling around his calves as he moved into a shadowy corner. Though her nerves were still jitterbugging, this wasn’t the male half of the pair she was contracted to drive this evening. The tall man whose outline she could barely make out was wholly unfamiliar.

She ducked her head and studied him through the screen of her lashes, for some inexplicable reason intrigued. But the broad-shouldered silhouette didn’t surrender any secrets. When a breeze kicked up, the only new information she established was the length of his hair: Long enough to be ruffled.

Nothing to pique her interest. No excuse for her still-chattering pulse, unless it was that faint note of expensive cologne that reached her on the next gust of air.

Stevie and rich men didn’t mix with success.

The resort’s doors opened once more, pulling her attention away from the stranger. Again, it was not the couple she was anticipating that strolled onto the covered porch. As this pair came closer, Stevie responded with an automatic smile.

“Rex and Janice!” Contemporaries of her late father’s, she’d known the husband and wife all her life. “Happy New Year.”

Rex beamed. “Back at you, Stevie. I take it the boss has to work the New Year’s shift tonight?”

“Right.” She didn’t add that with the holidays nearly over and winter being the wine country’s off season, there was little work for herself or her part-time, as-needed-only employees of Napa Princess Limousine. The two would guess as much. Their town of Edenville, in northern Napa Valley, was populated by just over six thousand friendly—read: nosy—souls.

“I heard about your sister,” Janice said next, as if to prove Stevie’s last thought. “Allie broke her foot?”

“This morning. She had surgery this afternoon.” Stevie glanced over at the shadow in the corner, wondering if she imagined his attentiveness to their conversation. “Penn’s keeping her in Malibu for the next few weeks. She’ll be close to the surgeon and, unlike the Baci farmhouse at the winery, their beach place is a single story.”

Rex and Janice made sympathetic noises. “That means you and Giuliana will have to pick up the slack, I suppose. Besides her PR duties, doesn’t Allie handle all the details for the Tanti Baci weddings?”

“Mmm-hmm.” The comment barely registered as Stevie couldn’t shake the odd sense that Mystery Man continued to focus on them. The frowning glance she shot his phantomlike presence could neither confirm nor deny the feeling—yet it corroborated that odd awareness she had of him. She could swear she felt the intent of his return gaze, and the back of her neck prickled as a fight-or-flight spike of adrenaline kicked in.

The consequence of too much vampire fiction, she thought, suppressing the urge to cross herself as she waved Rex and Janice on their way. Not that she really believed in such dark creatures. No man could pierce one of Stevie Baci’s veins and suck her blood.

The doors to the resort opened again, and the two now walking through made that statement fact. It was Emerson Platt and the woman who wore his ring on her finger. Given how he’d broken off his two-year relationship with Stevie—the why and the words that he’d used to do so—she should have been mortally wounded. Instead, she was still breathing, wasn’t she? Her heart still beat.

She glanced toward the portico’s corner again. It was pumping weirdly hard, as a matter of fact.

“Stevie.” In a stylish tuxedo, the golden child of U.S. Senator Lois Platt moved down the portico steps, his fiancée’s hand clasped in his. “You’re already here.”

“Can’t keep the customer waiting,” she replied, switching her focus to a spot just left of Emerson’s elbow. As tempting as some misdeed tonight might be, she knew that maintaining an unruffled façade was in her own best interest.

Why give her ex the satisfaction of knowing he’d dented Stevie’s psyche and battered her self-esteem? To that end, she’d created a mental picture of the bride-to-be, complete with wart on her nose, receding chin, and sausagelike cankles. Just in case her image didn’t actually match the original, she’d decided against even passing her gaze over the other woman.

Spinning on her dominatrix boot heels, Stevie reached for the passenger door handle. It was cold under her fingers. Locked.

An anxious heat rose on her neck as she drew the remote from her pocket. “Just a moment,” she murmured, fumbling with the buttons.

Bleeps. Clicks. Double bleeps. The lock stayed stubbornly seated.

The burn on her face intensified. She felt eyes on her: Emerson’s, the warted bride’s, and especially those of Mystery Man, which only made her fingers more clumsy. “In a second,” she said, her voice tight, “I’ll have you out of the cold.”

She didn’t need to see Emerson to hear the tender concern that entered his voice. “It
is
really cold,” he said. “Roxanne, sweetheart, will you get too chilled on a winery crawl tonight?”

When he’d been with Stevie, icy temperatures would have had him exhorting her to man up and deal. But with Roxanne . . . what? Was he afraid his darling’s endearing wart would freeze and fall off?

Emerson’s shoes scraped on the pavement. “Did you say something, Stevie?”

Oh, God. Had she said that out loud? Her head swung around in order to deny the charge—and only at the last second did she remember her vow not to look upon the other woman. She turned away from the glimpse of silver-spangled skirt and breathed a sigh of relief as she heard the telltale snap of the limo’s locks releasing.

With a professional flourish, she opened the door, making a last-minute inspection of the interior. Low lights, miles of leather cushions, two miniature crystal bud vases holding tiny white roses, a bottle chilling in a bucket. Harry Connick, Jr., crooned through the speakers.

Emerson and Roxanne would have their romantic New Year’s Eve.

And Stevie, once seated behind the wheel with the privacy screen secure, would have her dignity intact and her cool façade unthreatened. After tonight, she’d make sure there was no reason that their path and hers ever crossed again.

“Go ahead,” she urged the couple with a gesture. “Please get in.”

A pair of glittery silver pumps paused beside her black boots. A light touch brushed the sleeve of her coat.

“I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced,” the other woman said.

Stevie stared at the diamond flashing on the slender hand touching her arm but didn’t look up as Emerson cleared his throat. “That’s right,” he said. “Stevie—Stephania Baci, this is . . . uh, Roxanne.”

“Princess Roxanne,” Stevie corrected. Princess Roxanne Karina Marie Parini of Ardenia, a constitutional monarchy that rubbed shoulders—geographically speaking—with its cousin in style and language, Luxembourg. Stevie’s ex hadn’t dropped her for some generic other woman, but instead for European royalty—of a microstate, yes, but European royalty all the same.

She’d
better
have a wart.

“Roxy,” the woman said now. “I’m half-American; I was mostly raised in America. Roxy is just fine.” That diamond-toting set of fingers touched Stevie’s sleeve again. “Especially as we’ll be working so closely together.”

Startled, Stevie forgot her promise and looked up into a pretty face surrounded by honey-gold hair. “Huh?”

“On the wedding.”

“Huh?” Stevie said again. “What . . . what are you talking about?”

“Giuliana called us this afternoon,” Emerson explained, in that hearty tone she remembered him using for breaking dates and conveying other bad news. “She wanted to be the first to tell us about Allie.”

“She had surgery,” Stevie said, still puzzled.

“Yes.” More Mr. Hearty. “And Jules assured us that our wedding at the Tanti Baci winery—your family winery—at the end of the month will not be affected.”