Crush on You (5 page)

“Bullshit.”

Well, yeah, probably, but that’s not the way it played in the brochures in the tasting room and across the pixels that were the Tanti Baci website. “Apparently you don’t believe in happily ever after.”

“I’m pretty much a cynic, which comes with the territory of being the son dear-old-dad never acknowledged until he was dead and gone.”

She winced. “Your father—”

“Had an affair with a bar waitress, knocked her up, and then went back to his life here. Calvin Bennett could have left it at that, but he complicated things by coming clean in his will. So here I am, in part because Liam and Seth feel guilty and want to share their heritage.”

When the secrets of Cal Bennett’s past had surfaced after his death seven months ago, his widow Jeanette had immediately moved to her native upstate New York. Her sons, Liam and Seth, hadn’t had the luxury of ducking the scandal that burned up the phone lines in the valley. They’d stayed, continuing to run their family business and apparently reaching out a hand to their illegitimate brother. Cal had sired a daughter out of wedlock, too, but no one seemed to know where she was.

While the news had been difficult for Liam and Seth to swallow, Alessandra didn’t imagine it was easy for Penn to come into their lives and see the upbringing and life-style he’d missed out on. Her family had never had much besides the Tanti Baci land, but the Bennetts could boast of fat bank balances and other business interests besides wine. They were wealthy and their home and toys were testament to that.

Liam and Seth feel guilty
, Penn had said. And how exactly did
he
feel? Despite herself, she softened toward him, applauding his desire to forge a relationship with the more privileged sons. Without thinking, she reached out, though without quite touching him. “It was nice of you to come here . . .” she started.

“ ‘Nice’?” He barked out a laugh. “I came because it was convenient. I needed a break from L.A.” He stepped closer, until they were nearly chest-to-chest. She meant to move back again, even sucked in a breath in preparation, but then his scent refilled her lungs. Combining with the spring smells of fertile earth and budding vines, it made her head spin and that infection of lust-sickness caused her body to bloom and her blood to heat once more.

His voice lowered to a whisper and she could feel his hot breath against her cheek as his mouth neared hers. “But I’d have come sooner if I’d known the town included a sexy nun who needed me.”

She stood there, mesmerized by the heat radiating from his body, by the masculine form so close to hers. Both she and he were panting, she realized, and the harsh sounds made her aware of how very silent the vineyard had become. It was as if everything else in it was holding its breath in anticipation of what came next.

A kiss.

She’d never wanted a kiss so badly in her life. She needed . . .

Her mind snapped into focus. His last words replayed in her head.
I’d have come sooner if I’d known the town included a sexy nun who needed me.

She jerked away. “Need you! No way do I need you! I don’t need anything.” Particularly from a man who had the looks of a movie star and the machismo of a motorcycle hellion. “I’m going back to my house.”

She thought he might laugh at her vehemence, or at least make some final mocking remark, but instead he stared at her, his eyes unreadable. Then he sighed.

“Before you leave, you should see this.” He reached into his back pocket and withdrew a white sheet of paper. “I found it nailed to a wall in the back room.”

Alessandra snatched it from him, frowning. As she unfolded it, he trained the beam of his flashlight onto the page. Glancing down at the sheet, the first thing she noticed was that it was letterhead from Newton’s construction business. The second thing to strike her was that the nitwit couldn’t spell.

 

“Oh,
fudge
!” She really let the semicurse fly this time as comprehension dawned.

She’d been wrong. She needed something after all.

Worse, she needed some
one
.

Penn stared at his half brother Liam, sitting on the other end of the leather couch in the Bennett game room. He couldn’t believe that the same man who days ago had warned him off was now trying to hook him up—in a manner of speaking, anyway—with the nun.

Yeah, that one. Alessandra Baci, the Nun of Napa. Penn still didn’t know why the hell she was called that, and he’d decided to make it a point not to find out. Hadn’t he learned his lesson about getting over-involved with strangers?

So instead of responding to Liam’s request that Penn complete the work on the wedding cottage, he jabbed the buttons of the video game controller, focusing on the Halo 3 game projected on the big screen that took up nearly one wall. Obliterating one of the Brutes didn’t calm his uneasiness. “Should we be playing something more civilized, do you suppose?” he wondered, looking around him.

The Bennett game room featured a teak-and-felt billiards table and in the opposite corner marble chess pieces sat ready for action. From his place on the long leather sofa, he could see dominoes resting in an inlaid box, a cribbage board that might have belonged to George Washington, and a backgammon set worthy of a European prince.

Liam’s younger brother, Seth, spoke up from his sprawl in a nearby overstuffed chair. “You’re the one who wanted to battle the Covenant.”

Which was strange, because he was much too cynical to act on the belief that he could eradicate evil from the world. He glanced at the younger man—Penn was sandwiched in age between Liam and Seth—and once again was startled by the resemblance he saw to himself. For a kid who’d grown up sleeping on the sofa in an apartment living room, making himself a dinner of Cheerios every night while his mom, blue-collar Debbie Penn, worked the bar at Mr. G’s, it was going to take more time to adjust. It was still hard to believe that when he’d been keeping company with late-night TV and the neighbor’s cat, four hundred miles away these near doppelgangers had been living in a Tuscan-styled villa with a game room, eight-car garage, and enough bedrooms for a football team, including its cheerleaders. Living with their father, Calvin Bennett, who apparently strode around town unconcerned by the secrets he’d left behind. Secrets who had grown up fatherless.

And they called Penn a bastard.

He thought again of that skinny boy who’d been himself, the kid scared shitless by things that went bump in the night, the kid just as scared his mom wouldn’t earn enough tips to cover the next month’s rent. Maybe it wasn’t such a surprise that there came the day when he’d been suckered in by a sob story.

Never again, though. He’d wised up and remembered all the lessons he’d learned in his rocky childhood. Every pair of wide eyes wasn’t innocent. Not every trembling mouth told the truth.

Liam closed down the game, the screen going dark. “Look, about the cottage. I know you’re here to relax, but—”

“It’s not that,” Penn said. The truth was, he wasn’t used to hanging around watching other people go about their daily business. Seth worked as the Bennett corporate lawyer and suited up every morning for offices in Napa, so Penn was left to tag along with Liam as he walked the vineyards, talked on the phone, walked the vineyards some more, and talked some more on the phone. It wasn’t exactly stimulating.

“If you agree to finish up the work, you’ll be doing yourself a favor,” Seth put in. “We have a financial interest in Tanti Baci. If the place is kept afloat with this wedding thing, then we all benefit.”

So far Penn had avoided talking about the economic aspects of being Cal Bennett’s son, but he couldn’t help himself from probing a little now. “So the Tanti Baci winery’s not already nose-down?”

Liam shrugged. “Papa Baci drove the place into the iceberg some time back. Nobody noticed, because my—our—father embraced the ‘silent’ in ‘silent partner’ and let Mario have his way with it. Then Dad had his heart attack and Mario’s cancer showed up and combing the books was even further from anyone’s mind. By the time Mario confessed to his daughters on his deathbed, the water was rushing in the windows.”

See, here’s what Penn didn’t get. Liam was an eyes-wide-open kind of man. No nonsense, and sometimes Penn thought no sense of humor, as well. “So why aren’t you putting the place on the market ASAP? I know the Bennetts and the Bacis have a long history there, but you don’t strike me as the sentimental type, Liam.” He looked over at the younger man. “You either, Seth.”

The two brothers exchanged a glance. “Well, see . . .” Seth started, obviously lacking a good explanation. “Um . . . Alessandra . . .”

Penn groaned. Were his half brothers the suckers now? “If it’s a sound business decision, it’s a sound business decision. But if it’s men falling all over themselves because a pretty girl winks out a tear or two . . .”

“It’s not like that,” Seth protested. “Allie’s had a really rough time—”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Penn stifled the impulse to put his hands over his ears. Not that he thought he could be conned by a woman and her woeful tale of hard luck ever again. Still, losing the contents of a juicy bank account and various other items of value could make a man wary. Bitter, even.

“You don’t understand,” Liam said with a sigh. “I think I should tell you about Alessandra.”

“Don’t.” Suddenly, the woman in question was standing in the game room doorway. “Don’t,” she repeated. “I don’t want you telling him anything about me.”

Both Liam and Seth got to their feet, and to his own surprise, Penn found himself rising from the couch, too. Manners. Who knew he had them?

The corners of her mouth tweaked in a little smile of acknowledgment. “Sit down, sit down.” She moved to perch on the arm of Seth’s chair. “Charlene let me in,” she added, referring to the Bennett housekeeper. Then she addressed her next remark to Liam. “You told me to stop by at two—that you’d have spoken to him by then.”

Liam shifted on his cushion and glanced at Penn. “Yes, well . . .”

Alessandra turned her head to pin him with her big brown eyes. “I take it you’re not interested in Newton’s old job?”

“I—”

“Don’t bother apologizing. I supposed it was a long shot. No surprise that my little construction dilemma isn’t of interest to some big-shot TV star.”

He hadn’t planned on apologizing! And his refusal had nothing to do with him being “some big-shot TV star.” Good God. Folding his arms over his chest, he frowned at her, taking in the little dress she wore—a sleeveless shift that matched her lime-colored kitten heels. Her fingernails gleamed with a fresh, ladylike manicure, and she’d tamed her tumble of dark, wavy hair with a pink headband the exact shade of the lipstick on her I’m-not-that-innocent mouth. He wanted to—

No.
This was why he wouldn’t comply. In a wedding dress, in a sweatshirt, in something a second-grade school-teacher might wear, she had him thinking about sex acts. His blood was already taking the bullet train southward and he knew, just knew, that his reaction was something she practiced, counted upon, had used a dozen times with dozens of men. Only an expert at manipulation could snare Penn Bennett like this when he’d been so recently burned.

She clapped her pretty hands together and stood up again. Penn stared at her knees, just skimmed by the hemline of her dress, and realized that even they were turning him on. “See you later,” she told the men.

He and his half brothers were standing again. Seth cleared his throat. “What will you do now?”

“Something will turn up,” she said, her voice just the craftiest bit husky. And maybe Penn was wrong, but could that be yet another sheen of tears in her eyes? “I’m going to make some calls. Look around town.”

She’d already tried that, Liam had said so, which is why Penn had been approached as last resort. He knew any reputable business would already be booked at this time of year, leaving Alessandra’s only option that of picking up day laborers from the street corner. Yet if she managed to round up workers with the kinds of skills she needed, who would supervise them? He couldn’t imagine this spoiled, sexy little bundle with a splinter, let alone with wood stain under her nails and plaster dust in her hair.

And didn’t that just piss him off? She wanted what she wanted, but she planned on cajoling—or worse, crying—to achieve her ends. Certainly Alessandra Baci had never worked up a good sweat outside of the bedroom.

His gaze ran over her again, from her gleaming waves of hair to her delicate high heels. The tip of her nose was pink, he decided, definite proof of incipient tears.

What she needed, he thought, was to know what overtaxed muscles and an aching back felt like at the end of the day. That would really give her something to cry about. “I’ll do it,” he heard himself say.

“What?” She stared at him.