Can't Hurry Love (3 page)

Sitting at one of the tables in the winery’s picnic area, Giuliana checked her watch, watching the hands creep closer to that critical hour. Then she looked up again, absorbing the fact that the seats beneath the dozen umbrellas were nearly full with visitors enjoying the seventy-five-degree sunshine. Her gaze moved beyond the happy people to the land surrounding them, the vines appearing robust and the winery buildings freshly painted. Even the gravel in the nearby parking lot had been recently raked.

I’m doing my best, Papa,
she thought. On his deathbed, he’d made the three sisters promise to try to bring Tanti Baci back on its feet.
I think I’m making the best decision for us all.

She spun on her bench to tuck her knees beneath the table as Allie and Stevie threaded through the other picnickers, their hands full of sandwiches, sodas, and fruit from the deli case inside the tasting room in the wine caves. “I don’t have a lot of time,” she said as they arranged the goods between them and took their own seats on the bench across the table from her.

When they didn’t acknowledge her warning, she squelched a little blip of panic but didn’t dare check her watch again. “And remember, you guys have that appointment in town with the caterer for the Vow-Over Weekend.”

Stevie unwrapped a huge sandwich, hesitated, then reached for an oversized chocolate cookie. She took a huge bite. “That still leaves us time enough for you to tell me about the arson thing. I missed the excitement this morning.”

“If you weren’t such a slowpoke,” Allie said, frowning, “you would have been there. You used to be an early bird and these days we need dynamite to get you out of bed.”

Stevie finished off the cookie. “I wasn’t feeling so great this morning.”

“Well, you must feel fine now,” Giuliana replied. “Dessert first?”

Stevie shrugged. “Sweets for the sweet.”

Allie groaned. “I don’t think it’s right that you’re tall
and
you get to eat more than I do. I’d like to see you get fat. It’s only fair.”

With her turkey and avocado sandwich halfway to her mouth, Stevie hesitated as if about to say something. Then she shrugged again and bit into the stack of bread and meat.

Giuliana plucked a cherry from their cardboard container and wiggled it by the stem. Her appetite had fled the morning before.

“Well?” Stevie prompted. “What did the cops say?”

“They want me to go down to the station for an interview. I had to explain I was car-less at the moment, thanks to another one of their open cases—the hit-and-run that took out my vehicle.”

“We can drive you,” Allie offered. “Drop you off on our way to the caterers, pick you up afterward.”

“No! No.” She cleared her throat. “I have a, um, a . . .”
Don’t say meeting
, she reminded herself. That would make it too easy for her sisters to ask what kind and with whom. “I think they’re sending someone over to question me.”

“So what’s the motive?” Stevie asked. “For the arson, I mean. Bad blood between drug dealers? A cover-up for a robbery? I know, the corrupt landlord wants to cash in on the insurance money.”

“You’ve been watching too many crime shows on TV,” Giuliana said, shaking her head.

“I don’t know how she could be,” Allie put in. “You wouldn’t believe how early she goes to sleep and how much trouble she still has getting up in the morning.”

Alarm goosed Giuliana and she leaned forward to inspect her sister more closely. Her skin was clear, her eyes alert, her mood apparently untroubled. Still . . . “Are you sure you’re okay? You could have mono or something.”

“Yeah,” Allie agreed. “Remember? When we were in high school they called it the ‘kissing disease’ and from the way you and Jack carry on—”

“I do
not
have mono.” Stevie made a face. “And as for a kissing disease, Al, I saw that hickey you have on your—”

The youngest sister threw a balled paper napkin, silencing the middle one. They both started laughing. “Okay, okay,” Allie said. “I guess all the Baci girls have been infected with a kissing affliction.”

“All?” a new voice inquired. Liam Bennett slipped onto the bench on Giuliana’s side of the table. He stole one of the cherries she had been playing with and popped it into his mouth. “Does that include Big Girl?”

If she could breathe, she would have moved to another table. If her mouth wasn’t so dry, at the very least she would have objected to being referred to as “Big Girl.” It only served to emphasize their past history—that went back to forever. She’d been no more than seven when another of the valley kids, too little to say their long Italian names, had dubbed the Baci sisters by their relative size. When she’d topped out at all of five-foot-three, Liam still liked to tease her with the nickname.

Come over here, Big Girl, I have a surprise for you
, a teenaged Liam would say. And cupped in the hands behind his back would be a flower, or her favorite flavor of ice cream cone, or a black and yellow butterfly. Those little gestures had just as firmly trapped her heart.

But that grinning teenager of the past looked nothing like the self-assured, über-confident male beside her now. Even in Tuscany, at twenty, there’d been shadows inside him she couldn’t pierce.

Now, she watched his long fingers steal toward her pile of cherries again. “What have you been up to, Stevie?” he asked.

“I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of Jules’s mystery.”

The jerk of his hand scattered the red fruit. “
What?
” He cast Giuliana a quick glance. “What, uh, mystery?”

She cleared her throat. “She means about the arson. Her latest theory is that the building’s owner torched the place for the insurance money.”

“Ah.” Liam appeared to relax. “However, given that Giuliana’s landlords are Ed and Jed, I doubt it.”

She stared at him. The elderly twins owned and ran the old-fashioned hardware store in town, but it surprised her that Liam knew they also held the deed to the property where she’d—formerly—lived. As if he sensed her regard, he turned his head. Their eyes met.

She avoided that as often as she could—their eyes meeting. But it was too late to look off now, with her heart already halfway to her throat, leaving her insides jittering. Her breath was stuck in her lungs and it was as if he’d stripped her of clothes while he was fully dressed. The surface of her skin prickled and she felt her pulse thrum in panic.
Don’t look at me,
she was ready to beg.
Please, don’t look at me.

“Oooh,” Stevie’s voice sounded in soft wonder. “Check it out, Allie.”

The connection between her and Liam snapped. She sucked in a needed breath and turned her head to see what had caught her sisters’ attention. They were both half turned on their bench, in the process of engaging with the group on the table behind them. Giuliana already had a polite half smile tugging up the corners of her mouth. She wasn’t the PR type like her sister Allie, but winery owners learned early to be good with the public.

The object of their attention right now was a tiny infant, wrapped in tiny infant-wear and cocooned in the arms of a woman whose fond face screamed
mother
.

Allie glanced back at Giuliana. “Look how sweet, Jules.”

She nodded. “Sweet.” Then she glanced at her watch. “Allie—”

But her sister had already turned back to the child, going through the obligatory sheaf of questions. Name. Age. Place of birth.

“For God’s sake, we can’t ask that much when we’re interviewing someone for a job,” Giuliana muttered as Stevie started carrying on in a similar fashion. She took another urgent glance at her watch. “Allie, look, I’ve got to go.”

Her sister sighed, her attention still focused on the bundle. “Us, too.” She didn’t move.

Giuliana felt more anxious by the second. She was expecting the people she was meeting with at any moment, and with the picnic area adjacent to the parking lot, there was too much chance of an untimely encounter.

She rose to her feet. “You guys can’t be late,” she said, raising her voice to hurry her sisters along. “We all should be going.”

They continued to ignore her. Giuliana glanced around, trying to think. Her gaze lit on Liam, who was studying her in a way that made her pulse jolt again. She closed her eyes a moment, peeked at her watch again, and then made a quick decision. Desperate times, and all that.

Raising her eyebrows at him, she extended her hands in his direction. Then she put her right fist on her left palm and brought them toward herself. American Sign Language. They’d played around with it years ago.
Will you help me?

Liam immediately rose to his feet. “Steve? Allie? Hey, can I get your guys’ help before you head out?”

Where it was easy to ignore a sister, apparently it wasn’t so easy to disregard Liam’s polite but authoritative tone. Almost immediately her sisters were on their feet and following the oldest Bennett brother in the direction of the wedding cottage.

That left her with the lunch leftovers.

As well as the short-lived relief that she was going to make her meeting undetected.

Short-lived, because of the memory of the little hand gesture Liam had given her in return, behind the backs of her sisters as he ushered them away. His left palm outstretched in her direction. The index finger of his right moving as if he was flicking a coin on his hand toward himself. It was a “pay” gesture.

What he meant was clear:
You owe me.

3

The next morning, Liam found Giuliana in the vineyard. When she spotted him strolling toward her, she ducked her head and hurried forward, as if trying to catch up with a small group of visitors being led about by an intern. “Don’t run on my account,” he called out.

As he expected, she responded to the challenge by letting the guests go ahead and swinging around to face him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that was you.”

He resisted snorting. “It’s me.”

She wore a skimpy T-shirt and a knee-length cotton skirt that left bare the rest of her tan legs. A pair of dime-store rubber thongs were on her feet. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Four visits in four days, Mr. Bennett? That may be a record.”

In their teenhood, he’d found reasons to see her four times before noon. Those days were over now, though, and she was right about the record. The fact was, for the last year that she’d been back in Edenville, he’d worked very hard at avoiding her as often as possible.

But that hadn’t done a thing to ease the tension between them. They couldn’t even speak without snapping at each other. Today, he hoped that by taking a different tack—by actually talking and engaging in some civil discourse—they could start to forge a new kind of relationship. Some casual visits, some casual conversation, and maybe they could become friends. Then finally they might address their underlying issues without stirring up animosity—or feelings even more dangerous.

So he worked on his most pleasant expression and glanced around, taking in the healthy look of the Tanti Baci vines. Two weeks before, as in his own vineyards, the buds had flowered and formed clusters that looked like small green beads. Though laborers might do some shoot, leaf, or crop thinning as the season wore on, at this time of year Mother Nature did most of the work.

What started out as hard and acidic softened and sweetened under the summer sunshine.

He hoped to do the same with Giuliana’s attitude toward him. “Good fruit set this year,” he ventured.

From the corner of his eye, he saw her shoulders relax a little.
Score.

She reached out to trace the edge of a cabernet sauvignon leaf, her fingertip following the defined lobes. Gold beads in a delicate bracelet she wore around her wrist glinted in the sunlight. “We’re optimistic,” she said.

He nodded, then made a gesture, indicating the spring green brightness surrounding them and tried keeping the conversation going. “You must have missed this over the years.”

“I was in the wine business.”

In Southern California. Working for a wine distributor. After that summer in Tuscany, she’d not matriculated at nearby UC Davis as she’d planned, but instead ended up at a college in the central part of the state. “No offense, but what you were doing in LA compared to winemaking here in the valley is the difference between selling ice cream bars and milking dairy cows.”

Her laugh was a tad dry. “Okay, I won’t take offense. But not everyone wants to get their hands dirty.”

“You loved getting your hands dirty.”

Her shrug frustrated him. “You mix me up with Stevie. She was the tomboy.”

“I could never mix you up with anyone.” He leaned down to scoop up a fistful of powdery red dirt, then held his palm under her nose. “Come on, admit this is in your blood.”

Shaking her head, she turned away. “I was gone for a decade, Liam. I lived without all this just fine.”

He allowed the dirt to sift through his fingers as he looked out over the vineyard and tried imagining it—a world lacking the summer’s eager anticipation, the mad frenzy of sweat and toil during harvest, the dormancy of the vines after the first frost that was followed by bud break in early spring. It was the ruler of life in the valley—both in the sense that grape growing was king and that it was the measure of their days in the beautiful wine country.

And ten growing seasons had passed since he’d held Giuliana in his arms.

“Anyway,” she continued. “What do you have against the ice cream man? Dairy farmers love the guy.”

His head snapped toward her, all thoughts of being pleasant and friendly flying—just like that—from his mind. “Is that it? You found some slick ‘farmer’ who said he loved you and that kept you away from . . . from your family?”

She bristled. “I saw my family.”

Now he did snort. “At Disneyland. You didn’t come back to the real world to face your real problems.”

“I wasn’t aware of what was happening at Tanti Baci. You know that Papa kept the financial crisis from all of us until he knew he was dying.”

“I’m not talking about the problems at Tanti Baci.”

“Is this about you?” Her eyes narrowed. “Liam, if you’ve found someone—”

“Damn it!” That was the problem. He hadn’t found anyone—not in the way she meant.

She stiffened. “Don’t talk to me like that.”

“I’m not.” He closed his eyes instead of tearing out his hair like he wanted to. His voice lowered and he evened out his breathing. “I’m talking to myself like that. I didn’t come over here to have this kind of conversation.”

“What kind of conversation did you want?”

He inhaled another calming breath. “Cordial. Neighborly.”

“Really?” She blinked.

“Really. Perhaps we could even find some area of mutual interest.”

She looked suspicious. “What kind of mutual interest?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “But we have things in common. Winemaking. Our family connections. Two of the guys I hang out with the most are newly married. Your two sisters as well.”

“Do you have a mutual interest in wanting to smack them silly sometimes?”

His lips twitched. “What gets you the most? The smug smiles when they’re with their spouse or the unseemly haste to get back to him or her when they’re apart?”

“I’ve been half blinded by the rings my sisters are always flashing in my face.”

“My ego’s permanently bruised by how many baseball games Penn and Jack are just too ‘busy’ to attend with me.”

Giuliana was smiling at him now. A genuine smile. “Speaking of family . . . how’s your mom?”

He appreciated the interest, especially since Jeanette had never gone out of her way to be friendly with the Bacis. “Okay. Seth and I visited her in New York last Christmas. She has her bridge and tennis cronies and I think is happy to be far away from the crap that came down on her after dad died.”

“Calvin Bennett.” Giuliana shook her head. “He—”

“Was a black-hearted son of a bitch.”

She frowned. “I know he hurt your mother—”

“You don’t know the half of what he did.” Liam felt his fingers curl into fists and forced them to relax. “But let’s not ruin all our newfound geniality with talk of him. I saw your cousin Gil and his wife, Clare, in the deli.”

Giuliana rolled her eyes, but she was half smiling again. “Just more newlyweds flying high on cloud nine.” Then she hesitated and cocked her head. “Would you like to check out the chardonnay grapes? I wouldn’t mind your opinion.”

And that she didn’t mind his company for five more minutes was a positive step, he figured. As they walked, she glanced up at him through the veil of her lashes. “I think we were right about here that night we went treasure hunting with the metal detector. Remember, the one you borrowed from Ed and Jed?”

“I remember.”

“I was fifteen, and half convinced we’d find the legendary Bennett-Baci silver.”

“Not much hope of that.”

“I know it
now
, but then—”

“Not then, either.” He checked out the pure lines of her profile. “In the spirit of goodwill, I feel compelled to confess that the detector was broken that night. Ed and Jed had a replacement on order but were happy to let us play around with the defective one.”

Her feet halted. “What? Why did you want to do that? We spent hours out here, until it was way past dark!”

“Truth? I needed all the time I could get. I was working up my nerve to kiss you.”

Her jaw dropped.

“Alessandra was always tagging around after us, so I dreamed up the treasure-hunt idea, hoping she’d get tired of it sooner than later . . . which she did.”

Giuliana just stared at him. “You . . . you . . .”

“I apologize.”

Her face flushed. “For the deception? Or the kiss?”

“You remember it then.” They’d finally given up the hunt and were heading back to the farmhouse. Out by Anne and Alonzo’s cottage, they’d gotten into one of those adolescent horseplay matches—any excuse to touch—and he’d taken her down, frontier-wrestling style, onto the grass. Lying half across her, he’d brought his mouth to hers. “I won’t ever apologize for that.”

Her head ducked. “You’d kissed other girls before me.”

“I don’t remember them.” God’s truth.

“Oh, Liam.” She looked up, her smile wry. “Penn’s charm must be rubbing off on you.”

“Maybe.” He almost smiled back.
I should have done this before. I should have tried to be her friend.

A cloud of dust heralded the return of the vineyard tour group. He and Giuliana scooted close to the trellised vines to let the visitors pass. There were three middleaged couples, an elderly pair of women who carried walking sticks, and bringing up the rear was a family. The father had a small kid on his shoulders. The mother led a toddler by the hand who stumbled over Liam’s boots. Automatically he lifted the child to its feet, noticing the pronounced baby bump on the mom as he ushered the child into her arms.

His gaze followed them as they hurried to catch up with the rest of the tour. Then he felt Giuliana’s eyes on him. He turned to her.

“Nice,” she said. But the animation was gone from her face.

“Jules . . .”

“I don’t know how my mother did it. Three girls, one right after the other. Imagine how busy that woman will be when her new baby comes in—what? Two months or so?”

“I have no idea.”

Her nose wrinkled. “I don’t either, really.” Then she raised her brows. “Ready for the chardonnay, buddy?”

Buddy.
Jesus. Could he really make that work? “We should talk.”

“Sure. About grapes. About our mutually annoying friends and relatives. About friendship.”

“About before, Jules. About the future. Hell, about
now
. We have a problem.”

She was already shaking her head as she turned away. “I can’t. We’ll have to wait. Four weeks.”

He was responsible. A rational, logical person. And he’d already let too much time pass. “Giuliana,” he started. He’d been doing so well with this new neighborliness that he thought he had a hope to get through this as well. “Let’s be sensible. Grown-up.”

She whipped around. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not.” But frustration was bubbling again.

“Then just leave it alone. Leave
me
alone.”

He couldn’t. “I won’t.” He stepped toward her.

She scuttled back, then pivoted to walk past him. “See you later.”

He grabbed her arm to hold her still.

He hadn’t touched her in ten years.

They both froze. The sensation of her skin under his hand jolted through his system. It electrified his skin, turned his veins to paths of fire, melted his brain.

Intention tumbled one hundred eighty degrees. All his unsettling settled. He figured he was still as screwed as he’d been before touching her, but his mind was finally clear. The friend idea was fucked.

Before he could do anything about that certainty, she wrenched free. He let her go—for now. It was time to find a Plan B.

Giuliana squeezed out her sponge, ready to plunge her rubber-gloved arm back into the depths of the display refrigerator in the tasting room. The cold drinks she’d cleared from the racks were in an oversized cooler until she finished her cleaning.

With her free left hand, she lifted her coffee and took another sip. It burned upon landing in her stomach, a signal that she needed to take in some solid food as well, but nothing had appealed to her appetite in days.

“Are you okay?” Grace asked. The other woman was nearby, dusting the shelves that held glass decanters of local olive oil and fancy jars of special mustards.

“I’m fine! Fine.” She modulated her voice. “Why wouldn’t I be fine?”