Authors: Barbara Wallace
“I can’t believe this is how people used to make wine,” she said to him over the noise. “They must have had incredibly muscular thighs.”
“Not really.” Nico had leaned in to speak. His breath floated over her collarbone leaving goose bumps. “Italian winemakers have used presses to crush grapes since the middle ages. This is just for the tourists.”
“You mean there is no Old World tradition?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I’m up to my ankles in pulverized grapes because of a gimmick? You—”
He laughed and she gave his shoulder a shove, only to have her feet slide out from beneath her.
“Careful!” Nico scooped her up into his arms just as she was about to fall bottom first into the mashed fruit. “We wouldn’t want you to be trampled,” he said, smiling down at her.
No danger of that now. With her arms wrapped around his neck, and his arms holding her tight, Louisa had never felt safer. “I’m not worried,” she said. “You’d rescue me.”
His smile faded. “Always.”
Louisa’s breath caught at the seriousness in his voice. Just as it had at the royal wedding, the world receded, leaving only the two of them and the sound of their breathing. Nico’s eyes grew heavy lidded, his attention focused on Louisa’s mouth. Slowly she ran a tongue over her lower lip, an action for which she was rewarded with the tightening of his hand on her waist. “Louisa...” His voice was rough and raw.
He wanted her. But he was holding back to let her make the first move. That she held the power was all Louisa needed to reach a decision.
She pulled his head down to meet hers...
Dear Lord, how on earth could she have gone so long without kissing him? Nico might have given her the power to decide, but once their mouths joined, he took control, kissing her so deeply Louisa couldn’t tell where she ended and he began. She didn’t care. She was too swept away by the moment.
It was the cheer rising from the crowd that finally broke the moment. “I think the crowd approves,” Nico said, rubbing his nose against hers.
Heat rushed to Louisa’s cheeks. Let the crowd cheer, she decided. She held his gaze and wondered if her eyes looked as blown and glazed over as his.
“Why don’t we go someplace more private?” he said. Without giving her a chance to answer, he carried her out of the barrel and through the crowd.
* * *
Nico pressed a kiss to the head resting on his shoulder. Louisa and he were in his garden, ensconced on a lounger beneath the pergola. Insects could be heard buzzing in the foliage above, their soft droning working with the wine to make him comfortable and drowsy. An interesting sensation, since only an hour before he’d been consumed with lust. Once alone, the urgency had receded. The best wines were made with patience. So it was with lovemaking, as well. They had all night. Why rush when you could draw out the pleasure?
Besides, strange as it seemed, being close to Louisa like this was pleasure itself.
“What was she like?”
Her question came out of nowhere. “Who?” he asked, fingers playing with the tendrils of her hair.
“Your fiancée.”
“Floriana? Why do you ask? Are you jealous?” That she might be gave him a jolt of satisfaction.
“I’m curious. What made her so perfect?”
He thought back. “I told you, she liked the same things I liked, she had the same sense of humor. Plus we wanted the same things out of life.”
“Which were?”
“To create wine and live a life free of drama.”
“I take it you never threw a reporter off her balcony.”
“She didn’t own a balcony,”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do.” Floriana would never need to take refuge in his winery to avoid scandal. Rational to a fault, she would never have fallen for a man like Steven in the first place. On the other hand, she also never ignited a fire in the pit of his stomach the way Louisa did. Standing in those grapes, with that silly floral crown falling about her ears and her clothes wrinkled and damp from the heat, Louisa had been the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen.
“She sounds like someone Steven would have liked. Whenever I found an interest Steven didn’t like, he would find a way to suck the fun out of it.”
“I don’t understand.” The American colloquialism threw him, although he could wager a guess.
“Well...” She shifted so she could prop herself up on one elbow. “He would either get condescending and make me feel like it was silly, or he’d suggest it wasn’t the kind of thing ‘Mrs. Steven Clark’ should be doing.”
The man was a bully. Nico was glad they’d put him in prison. Her ex deserved to be locked up in a cell as lonely and sad as he’d made his wife.
“He didn’t deserve you. You know that.”
“When we met, I thought I didn’t deserve him.”
A most foolish notion. If anything Steven Clark must have known from the start that he’d discovered a treasure and that was why he’d insisted on wrapping her up so tightly.
“What’s sad is how I was so impressed by something that wasn’t real. I mean, all his power and breeding. Turned out he wasn’t any better than me.”
“You were the better one,” Nico said. “To begin with, you weren’t a thief.”
Louisa smiled. “Thanks, but I meant background-wise. He was just some guy from the Midwest. His fancy family history was as phony as his investment scheme. When I contacted the feds, the whole house of cards came tumbling down. The only truly real thing that survived was the palazzo.” She nestled back against the curve of his neck, her hand coming up to play with the edge of his shirt collar.
“Thank God, I never told him about the place or it would be gone, too.”
Prison was too good for him. “The bastard is lucky he wasn’t the one on your balcony,” he muttered.
“Might have been interesting if he was. I think I’d have liked to see you throw him over.”
“Satisfying, too,” Nico said. Propping himself on an elbow, he smiled down at her face. “What is it about you that incites me to violence?”
“I don’t know.”
Neither did he, and he’d been looking for the answer for the past few weeks. All he knew was that the idea of Louisa hurting made him see red. He wanted to punish Steven and the others for making her life so hard.
Come to think of it, Louisa made him feel a lot of strong emotions. He didn’t just want to kiss her, he wanted to kiss her senseless. And he didn’t want to enjoy her company, he wanted to spend every moment he could spare with her.
Where on earth did these feelings come from? He’d never behaved this way around Floriana. Or anyone else for that matter.
Could it be that this—Louisa—was what he’d been missing all these years?
He turned on his side until they lay face-to-face. All it took was one look into her blue eyes and his pulse started racing again. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“You don’t have to thank me for anything.”
“But I do. Did you know,” she asked as he freed a stray petal from her hair, “that this past week was the first time in years that I’ve felt like I truly belonged.”
“I’m not surprised. Monte Calanetti loves you.”
“No, Monte Calanetti loves you. I’m just lucky to have won approval from its favorite son.”
“Oh, you have more than my approval,
bella mia
.” She’d awakened a part of him he didn’t think existed and now it belonged to her forever.
Suddenly, his desire couldn’t wait any longer. Slanting his mouth across hers, he drank in her sweet taste. This—this—was perfection, he realized. All these years he believed his soul was incomplete, it had merely been in hibernation, waiting for his blonde American to move in next door.
“Louisa, Louisa, Louisa,” he chanted, his lips raining kisses down her throat. “I’ve waited for so long.”
He paused when he reached the lace neckline blocking the rest of her skin from exploration. The top button strained to be released. All it would take was a flick of his fingers.
His hand hovered. The memory of her pushing him away at the royal wedding forced him to slow down. “Are you sure?”
Looking up, he saw eyes more black than blue, the pupils wide with desire. Out of the corner of his own eye, he saw a shaky hand reaching toward her blouse. She smiled, and a moment later, the button was undone.
It was all the answer Nico needed and he crushed his mouth to hers. Later, as his fingers made short work of the remaining buttons and as Louisa breathed his name, he wondered if maybe it wasn’t only Monte Calanetti that was in love...
* * *
“You are a lying lie-face. I hope you know that.”
What the heck? Louisa blinked at the nightstand clock and decided it was far too early to decipher what Dani meant.
“I just want you to know that I forgive you,” her friend continued.
“Forgive me for what?” She brushed the hair from her eyes.
“For telling me nothing was going on between you and Nico, of course. You’re not going to keep insisting the two of you are only friends after what we saw yesterday.”
Louisa smiled, thinking about what Dani and the others hadn’t seen. “No.”
“Good. Because unless you let all your friends literally sweep you off your feet, no one would believe you,” Dani told her. “By the way, Rafe and I completely understand why the two of you wanted to keep things private for a while. Especially given the circumstances.”
“Thank you.” No sense explaining how she and Nico weren’t together until yesterday. Like Dani said, after the way she’d kissed him in the plaza, no one would believe her anyway.
Nico had swept her off her feet, hadn’t he?
In more ways than one.
Her stomach dropped a little at that.
He’s not Steven. This was a different kind of affair.
“Louisa, are you there?”
She yawned and pushed herself to a sitting position. “I’m here,” she said, pulling the sheet up.
“Good. I was afraid Nico might be distracting you.”
“Nico isn’t here. He went to see how the harvest was going.”
I’ll wake you when I get back
, he’d whispered upon kissing her cheek. So much for that fantasy. Maybe she could pretend to be asleep. “Is there a reason you’re calling this early,” she asked, “or did you just want to call me a liar?”
“I have your sandals. You left them in the plaza, in case you were looking for them.” Oh, right. Now that she thought about it, Louisa didn’t remember Nico getting his shoes either. Definitely wouldn’t be able to sell the idea of friends.
“Thank you,” she replied, sheepishly.
“Also now that the festival is over, Rafe wants our economic development committee to start meeting in earnest. Can you ask Nico if he’s available next Tuesday morning, since you’ll probably see him before any of the rest of us will?”
Wow, the little blonde was really enjoying this wasn’t she? Louisa shook her head, despite Dani’s not being able to see her. “I’ll try to track him down.”
As if on cue, no sooner did she speak than the bedroom door opened and Nico strolled in wearing a shirt that should have been tossed several washes ago as it was at least a size too small. The fabric clung to his biceps and flat stomach.
When he saw her sitting up, he gave an exaggerated pout. “Dani,” she mouthed. Her breath was too short to talk anyway. That shirt left nothing to the imagination, especially to a woman who knew exactly what lay beneath the cotton.
She watched him putter around the bedroom only half listening while Dani talked on about the meeting. Finally, guessing that a pause meant the conversation had ended, Louisa told Dani she had to go.
“What did Dani want?” Nico asked, when she tossed the phone aside.
“To give me grief for not telling her about our affair.”
“But we weren’t having an affair until...”
“I know,” she replied. “And you didn’t think people believed the tabloids.”
“People will definitely believe them now,” he commented. Hard to call them liars, that was for sure. “Does it bother you?”
He looked so serious, standing there smoothing the wrinkled duvet. “Don’t have much of a choice now, do I?” she replied. “I mean, the time to object would have been before I kissed you, and if I recall...”
She rolled onto her stomach, and hugged his pillow beneath her, grinning to herself at how the movement left her shoulders and back exposed. “As I recall, I wasn’t doing all that much objecting at the time.”
“That is true. I did not hear an objection,” he replied. To her surprise, however, his smile didn’t last. “I hope I don’t hear one today.”
An odd question considering she lay naked in his bed. “What could I possibly object to? That yesterday wasn’t perfect enough?”
“This.”
* * *
Louisa sat up as Nico pulled a rolled-up newspaper from the back of his waistband. The pages had been folded to a gossip column. Near the bottom of the page, she saw a brief mention of her holding court at the harvest festival with her latest millionaire boyfriend. Two lines. No more. Her fifteen minutes of notoriety was fading. A weight lifted from her shoulders.
“Looks like I’ve been replaced by bigger news.” Finally. Heaven help the poor person who took her place, whether they deserved the attention or not.
“So you don’t mind the mention?” Nico asked.
Honestly? She’d rather they not mention her at all, but given how bad things had been? “Two lines on page thirteen I can handle.”
At last, a true smile broke across Nico’s face. “Good. I’m glad. I was concerned...”
“About what? That I would freak out?”
“You did before.” He pressed a knee to the edge of the bed, and leaning close, cradled her face in his palm. “I never want anything to hurt you that badly again.”
“
Never
is a very big promise,” she told him.
“Not where you’re concerned. If I have to buy up every newspaper in Italy to keep the paparazzi from hounding you, I will.”
A shiver ran down Louisa’s spine. He’s just trying to make you feel safe and special. Even so, when he said things like that she couldn’t help thinking of Steven.
“No need to do anything so drastic. I’ll settle for your arms around me.”
“Ask and you shall receive,
bella mia
.” A twinkle appeared in his eye. “Is a hug all you need?”