Can't Hurry Love (5 page)

They’d signed up to intern at a vineyard from June until September and had left two days after she graduated from high school. Flying in a seat beside her, he’d thought it was the happiest he’d been in his life. Finally away from the tension in his house and finally free to be with the girl he loved—they’d kept the knowledge that she was his partner in the Italian adventure as much a secret from his parents as their two-year relationship.

There had been so many secrets that summer.

On the flight overseas, she’d slept with her head on his shoulder. He’d pressed his mouth to her shining hair and committed himself to a lifetime of keeping her safe and happy. He’d succeeded for a few weeks. The air-conditioned restaurant wasn’t the shaded streets of the tiny town where they’d lived, but he could feel the rough cobblestones under his feet anyway. He remembered a particular day, turning a corner only to spy Giuliana walking in his direction. She’d spotted him too and approached him on a run, flinging herself against his chest in loving abandon. Her body warm, her smile brilliant.
Liam!

“Liam!”

He blinked, coming back to the present. The woman he remembered was a tabletop away. And scowling. There were shadows under her deep brown eyes, not brightness in their depths.

“You didn’t hear me,” she said.

“No.” But he had. Ten years before he’d heard every word, felt every break in her voice like a lash to his skin, and every sob like a punch to his gut. Yet guilt and remorse and self-disgust had clogged his throat and iced his heart so that he couldn’t respond in the way she’d needed.

“I asked you to take me home.”

He blinked again, now fully back to the present. “We’ve already ordered food,” he said. “For God’s sake, Jules, you fainted in the tasting room. Scared the hell out of everybody.”

Her sisters. Her brothers-in-law. Him. As she’d slumped, he’d caught her in his arms, only to discover how very fragile she was, no bigger than a bird much too young to leave the nest. It had stabbed at him. “You’ve lost weight—”

“I want to go home.”

He glared at her. “And apparently you’ve lost your mind, too. It was either a doctor or food and I’m holding you to your promise to eat a full meal.”

“I’ll get something back at Tanti Baci,” she said, waving a slender hand. “I don’t have the time for this.”

“I should have known you’d break this vow, too.”

Her mouth snapped shut and the look she shot him was black. Bitter. But he ignored it. After a year with Giuliana back in Edenville but without a resolution to their situation, he was prepared to play hardball. That’s what this interlude was really about. His Plan B after the friendship fail. Yeah, he wanted to feed her, but he was also planning on using this time to get her agreement that they go forward, immediately, with what needed to be done.

Dropping her gaze, she fiddled with her utensils, lining them up like good soldiers. “I want to see Stevie,” she finally said, her voice a little hoarse. “I don’t even remember what I said. I want her to know how happy I am for her and Jack.”

The blade that had been stuck in his belly twisted. “Once you stopped seeing stars, you expressed yourself just fine.”

Liam had been the one without the right words, as usual. His friend and father-to-be, Jack, who could be surprisingly emotional at times, hadn’t been content with a congratulatory handshake. He’d yanked Liam into a Super Bowl–win of a man-hug, thumping him on the back. Stevie’s embrace had been the one to slay him, though. She’d bussed him on the cheek, coming close enough for him to imagine he could see the swell of new life beneath her navel.

So many memories.

So many secrets.

“Giuliana . . .” He’d survived her once before, but he’d been younger then. “Listen to me. We’ve got to—”

“It’s just like old times!” a new voice commented.

Swallowing his groan, Liam glanced up. Charles Conrad was beaming down on them, his brush cut just turning silver. Beside him was his wiry wife—her tan testament to her passion for golf. They’d lived in Edenville since Charles had been one of the first to sell his Silicon Valley software firm and retire to the Napa Valley, about two decades before. The couple had been part of his parents’ wider social set.

Politeness necessitated he stand to greet the older pair. He shook hands with Charles and brushed his lips against Mary’s cheek. Though the town was a mere six thousand, he thought he might need to introduce Jules anyway. “Do you two know Giuliana—”

“Of course.” Charles patted the young woman’s shoulder. “Why, we’ve been watching over the Baci girls for years.”

Giuliana gave a good-natured grimace. “We’ve discovered that to be a civic hobby of sorts. Of course, when Allie lost Tommy . . .”

“Tragic,” Mary agreed, “but it was
you
who first caught our eye, Giuliana.”

“Me?”

“And you,” the older woman answered, nodding at Liam. “The whole town held their breath as the two of you fell in love.”

His gaze jumped to Giuliana’s. A blush was creeping up her cheeks. He felt a little hot himself. “Kid stuff.”

“But here you are all over again,” Charles pointed out.

“Business stuff,” Giuliana said.

“If you say so.” Mary sighed, then leaned in. “But I just want it known that we did our part to keep your big romance under wraps all those years ago. Everybody did, you know.”

Shit. He’d thought it was because they’d been discreet. But teenagers . . . discreet?

“Well, uh, thank you,” Giuliana said. “But my father wasn’t so strict—”

“Not your father. What a pleasant fellow he was.”

Oh,
shit.
Liam saw where this was going. “Pleasant, yes. And it’s been pleasant seeing you again.” He shuffled his feet, hoping it would get the older couple moving along.

No such luck.

“Of course, it was because of Liam’s mother and father that we all kept it undercover,” Charles said, shaking his head. “They . . .” He let the sentence trail off, as if suddenly realizing just where this was going himself. His laugh was too hearty. “I think Mary and I had a little too much wine with lunch.”

“Go ahead,” Giuliana urged, her face now at full flush. “What about Liam’s mother and father?”

Charles turned to Liam, in clear appeal. Oh, hell. He steeled himself to answer her, knowing it would erode any goodwill she felt toward him and make her that much more uncooperative. But otherwise he left Charles in the hot seat. “My parents wouldn’t have approved,” Liam admitted.

The woman he’d loved stared at him for a long moment. “Oh, I get it,” she finally said. “They expected someone better for you.”

The food arrived and Charles and Mary departed before he could respond to the charge. As Liam dropped back into his seat, he felt his face settle into the cool mask that camouflaged the roiling of his inner emotions. Jules had to know he’d never thought the same as his parents . . . didn’t she?

Her expression was as stoic as his, however, and gave nothing away. His hand tightened on his fork as he watched her move her ravioli around her plate without taking a bite. Damn it! It always went wrong between them, ever since he’d returned to California two weeks early, leaving Giuliana in Tuscany alone. Their transatlantic phone calls had been both frustrating and heart wrenching. After a ten-year hiatus, they’d come together again, but their exchange of verbal slaps and charged silences proved to be no kind of real communication now, either.

Hell, yes, it was as much his fault as hers, but he couldn’t work a conciliatory syllable up his tight throat. He watched her play some more with her food, his irritation growing.

“To hell with it,” he said, and reached across to spear one of the pillow-shaped pastas, then put it to her lips. “Take a bite. You need to fucking eat.”

Her mouth set for a stubborn moment, then her gaze lifted to his and she pulled the piece into her mouth.
Satisfied?
her glare said.

“No,” he answered, watching her chew. She was tying him in knots and there was only one way out. “We have to take care of it, Jules.” Poking his fork into another ravioli, he presented that to her as well, slightly mollified when she allowed him to feed her again. “It’s got to end, sweetheart.”

The endearment stilled them both. “No,” she said. To the lover’s term? To his ultimatum?

“Jules—”

“Four weeks. In four weeks I’ll have the time to do what’s necessary.”

Four more
days
and he’d be a basket case! He couldn’t see how another month would change one damn thing and he worried that in four weeks she’d be asking for another four and then another four and pretty soon he’d be begging his brothers to put him out of his misery. Under the current circumstances, Edenville was just not big enough for him and Giuliana both.

He quaffed a gulp from his glass of wine, taking it down like medicine.

“I can get to it after the end of the month. It’s just paperwork,” Giuliana said, finally attacking the ravioli on her own. “No big deal. Not like real unfinished business.”

Did she want to make him furious? He was trying to save his sanity here, but now she was throwing
paperwork
in his face. Pushing his own untouched meal aside, he caught her gaze with his. Her eyes widened. Her fork clattered to her plate.

Maybe she guessed his intention, because he saw her start to scoot away just as he caught one of her hands in his. Just as he trapped one of her bare legs between his denim-covered calves. The shudder that ran through her body matched the bolt of fire that sprinted through his. Touching her only made him want to touch more. Having just this much of her against him had every impulse clamoring to have him under her, over him, every and any way he could.

“See?” he said, his voice hard. “This isn’t paperwork. And it’s
real unfinished business
.” His pride wouldn’t let her deny or reject what they’d once been to each other or pretend that the physical attraction had dissipated in the years they’d been apart.

He rasped a thumb across the back of her knuckles and watched her breath hitch. His own lungs burned, but both made him damn happy. Mutual was always better than singular. “Admit there’s still something.” God knew why, but it was paramount.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “Not now, please. Because—”

A shadow fell over their table. Liam ignored the intrusion. Neighbors, waiter, it didn’t matter. He didn’t want any interruption when he felt this close to finally reaching Giuliana.

“Hello, ma’am,” a man’s voice said.

Liam’s head jerked toward it. A stranger stood beside their table, big, with military bearing, and military-short hair. He glanced at Giuliana. She seemed equally unfamiliar with the other man. Yet she smiled—a winemaker’s instinct for hospitality.

Something icy spider-walked up Liam’s spine. “What do you want?” he asked, aware he sounded hostile, because Giuliana’s fingers tightened on his hand.

“To see her,” the stranger said, his gaze resting on Liam’s . . . Liam’s . . .

Shit. He found himself on his feet. “We’re not looking for company.” The frozen-footed spider was dancing tarantellas down his back.

The man shoved his hand toward Giuliana. Before Liam could intervene, her winemaker manners kicked in again and a half smile tilted her lips as her palm slid against the other man’s.

That was it. Everything clarified for Liam in that moment when the spiders were dancing, Giuliana appeared so vulnerable, and the imprint of her skin against his was still a brand on his flesh. For a man who was so much about common sense, practicality, and rationality, he tossed all that away as he looked upon his first love, her hand touching another man’s.

This wasn’t the petty, juvenile jealousy that he’d felt toward Kohl. God, that was puerile compared to this.

This was a new kind of understanding. And even as he realized it, Liam leapt forward to grasp the man’s shoulder and break Giuliana free of his hold.

The stranger didn’t seem to notice. “I’m Grace’s husband.”

Giuliana’s brows pinched. “Grace—”

“I just wanted us to meet. For now.”

“I don’t think so,” Liam said, all his instincts definite about that.

The stranger’s gaze shifted to him. And then, like a snake, he slithered free of Liam’s grasp and was gone.

“That was weird,” Giuliana said.

He couldn’t speak, as every thought in his head realigned or receded for the new plan taking shape. In a deliberate set of movements, he returned to his chair across from Giuliana.

Her gaze flicked to his, flicked away. “Okay. Where were we?”

He’d been completely wrong altogether. Since she’d returned to Edenville, he’d been all about getting her back out of his life. What an idiot.

“So in four weeks . . .” Giuliana started.

She was serious. She believed she could make this all go away when she wanted it to—a month from now.

He almost laughed. Waiting until some specious four-weeks’ promise came to pass was no longer acceptable—not when she could heat his blood with just a flick of her eyelashes and make him burn with just a brush of her fingertips. If he was going to get back to his normal, civilized self, their “situation” must be ended quickly—and his new strategy was designed for just that. It was clear, now.

He was going to force her hand.

5

On Thursdays, regional wineries, restaurants, farms, and other businesses set up booths in and around Edenville’s town square. Tourists were a dependable staple in the summer, but Edenvillians were on hand, too, eager to see and be seen as well as sample wares, buy fresh produce, and catch up on the local gossip.

The weekly Market Day event morphed into Market Night as the afternoon’s heat waned. Giuliana relieved the last of the interns in the Tanti Baci booth at five P.M. Her sisters were already on hand. When word had leaked a year ago about their winery’s financial difficulties, the sisters had made it a point to spend time pouring the tastes of chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon themselves. “We need to project to the public financial stability and family unity,” Allie always said.

At least they had the second going for them, Giuliana thought, as she wrapped an apron around her middle that matched the ones her sisters wore. For now, anyway. At month’s end . . . she wasn’t sure.

There was a lull in the booth’s visitors, a brief respite, because if past experience held true, there’d be a rush around five thirty that wouldn’t let up until full dark. She took a moment to breathe a lungful of fresh oxygen, a pleasure after being stuck in her office all day—and all night. During the hours between ten P.M. and six A.M. she was still trying to sleep on her lumpy and getting-shorter-by-the-day love seat.

She sucked in a second long breath. The temperature was in the pleasant seventies, but there was a second element to the wine country air that even her tired eyes could appreciate. Beneath the canopy of the spreading oaks and towering date palms that shaded the town square, the daylight had a golden quality. She swore she could taste it on her tongue, an almost buttery flavor that could be found in a glass of chardonnay.

Better get your fill of it now,
she told herself.

Allie nudged her with an elbow. “Did somebody flush your goldfish?”

“What?” She made a face. “You know I don’t have one.”

“Well something’s making you sad.”

Giuliana had to smile at her little sister. The youngest Baci’s irrepressible spirit made you forget sometimes she had alert eyes, too. “Just thinking that nothing lasts forever, does it? Not even . . . summer.”

Stevie sauntered forward. “I thought maybe your mind was on a man.”

“Kohl? He’s back at the—”

“Not Kohl.” Stevie rolled her eyes. “I never believed that could really work. I’m talking about Liam.”

“Good God.” Giuliana turned to the stack of glassware on the counter and picked one up by the stem to polish the bowl with a towel. “Has marriage riddled your brain with holes like Swiss cheese?”

“No. Though they say that forgetfulness is a symptom of pregnancy.”

Pregnancy. Giuliana ignored a little twinge. “That’s what’s wrong with you then. You’ve forgotten how Liam and I don’t get along.”

“Nope. I’m remembering something,” Stevie said, her expression smug.

Giuliana sighed. “Yeah? What’s that?”

“How many people have stopped by the booth this afternoon asking about the intimate lunch they heard you and he had yesterday afternoon.”

“There was no intimacy about it!” Except she could feel herself flushing as she remembered the stroke of his thumb across the top of her hand, the delicious squeeze of his legs around her naked calf. “It was two people eating lunch.”

He’d fed her from his own fork. There
had
been an intimacy to that. She should have slapped his hand away or excused herself for the ladies’ room or . . . But her strength had been sapped by his nearness. Her will had been mesmerized by his familiar blue eyes. Fine lines fanned from their corners now, reminding her they were no longer those impetuous kids. She wasn’t an eighteen-year-old under the influence of hormones and passion; he’d matured, too, though she sensed those unreachable places that had so frustrated her then were even darker and more hidden now.

Stevie shrugged. “The way I heard it—from Eileen Brown, Scott McDougall, and Ed and Jed from the hardware store—is that you two looked like a romance rekindled.”

“Oh, please.” She returned her attention to the wineglasses. “I didn’t see any of those people during lunch. They’re all just repeating rumors.”

“Natch,” Allie said, bending to pick up a cardboard carton. “But they really started flying once Liam didn’t refute them.”

“
What?
” Her enjoyment of the summer afternoon was flying, too. Flying away.

Her youngest sister pulled open the flaps of the box and stood on tiptoe to peer inside. “Yep. He was standing right there and didn’t say a word. If you ask me, he looked more than a little . . .” Her voice trailed off as she frowned and stuck her hand inside the box.

“Looked a little what?” Giuliana stomped closer as her sister didn’t answer. “A little what?”

Allie was still frowning.

“What have you got there?” Giuliana asked, distracted for the moment.

“I brought a few of the wedding wine ledgers to display,” she said. “I thought I grabbed four, but there’s five in the box. Oh, well, all the better to flog the legend.”

Those damn ledgers. That damn fable. “Allie . . . I thought we talked about this.”

Her sister didn’t even try to look guilty as she pulled a leather-bound volume from the box. “I’m a PR girl. It’s in my blood, okay?”

Giuliana watched as Allie drew out the books one by one. They were identical and legal-sized. As she knew, inside were ivory-colored lined pages that listed the bride and groom’s names, the location, and the date of their wedding. They’d bought them from the same source for the last fifty years and there were always a few on hand in case the latest one was filled . . . or lost.

Some sixth sense drew her attention from her sister and toward the crowded square. In the near distance she glimpsed a tall man, the lowering sun glinting off his dark gold hair. Her heart hiccupped, and she swore at the stupid thing as her skin seemed to tighten on her bones. He’d been right about one thing: there was still that attraction between them.

But not a romance! Why hadn’t he denied it? Surely he knew that his silence would only swell the fruit on the Edenville gossip vines, like the summer sunshine worked on the grapes in the local vineyards.

“What was his look?” she demanded from her little sister.

Her brows drawn together, Allie was turning the pages of one of the ledgers. “Huh?”

“You said he looked almost . . .” When her sister didn’t answer, she snapped her fingers to get her attention. “Looked almost . . . ?”

“Smug,” Stevie supplied.

Smug! Smugness only made it worse! Her gaze shot toward where she’d last seen the cool, arrogant,
smug
man who should be assuring the world she was the last woman he’d fix his interest upon. He was closer now, leaning against a lamppost and looking unforgivably handsome in a white polo and a beat-up pair of khakis. His bare feet were stuffed in battered, navy blue leather loafers.

Golden boy.

My parents wouldn’t have approved.

Of course, it was no big shock that the Bennetts had considered her some number of notches below them on the social scale—it had been one of the trigger points of the Bennett-Baci feud for a hundred years, but it had stung to hear him say it aloud. To wonder if he’d considered her beneath him as well and that’s why everything had ended so poorly.

Too bad, she thought, anger shooting up her spine. If that was his opinion, then he shouldn’t be sauntering about town,
smug
, giving everyone in Edenville the impression that they had something going on again. She leapt over the counter, hearing wineglasses rattle in her wake.

Ignoring the sound, she stalked toward her prey.

He saw her, straightening from his elegant slouch. An expression flickered across his face, come and gone so fast that he was back to being maddeningly unreadable in one heartbeat. Except there was no mistaking the way he started toward her.

“You’re ruining my June,” she told him, when she was close enough. It was an important month. Maybe the most important month ever.

“How’s that?”

She glanced around, hoping she wasn’t doing just what she wanted to yell at him about—giving grist for the gossip mill. But the five-thirty crowd had arrived and the place was teeming with people who didn’t seem to be paying the pair by the Tanti Baci booth any mind. In the distance, she could hear the faint sounds of classic rock. The chamber of commerce had hired a deejay to play on the far corner of the square.

She stepped closer so she didn’t have to shout over the new sound. “The town is buzzing.”

Cocking his head, he drew nearer. He leaned close to her. “What’s that?”

“Town. Buzzing.”

He shrugged without backing away. “It’s always buzzing. You’ve just forgotten after ten years away.”

His body was close enough that she could smell him. It used to be one of those nose-tickling boy-soaps that had seemed as foreign to her—with sisters only—as jockstraps. Now, as she’d been noticing for months, he smelled like sliced limes and laundered cotton. Common scents that on him seemed as sophisticated and pricey as the black luxury sedan he drove.

“I was happy in Southern California,” she heard herself declare. “It wasn’t ten years of misery. I dated.”

His jaw tightened. “I dated, too. I had fun times.”

Why did the idea of it make her eyes prick? “Good.”

“It
is
good. We grew up, Jules. As adult as we thought we were then, we were really just kids. We weren’t ready—”

“I was ready!” she said fiercely, her eyes stinging again.

He cupped her cheek with one of his large palms. She held still, determined not to lean into the touch. “All right,” he said, ducking his head so his breath brushed her ear. “All right.”

It wasn’t all right. Not when the goose bumps were cascading down her neck and gathering around her nipples, so they tightened into their own hard points. She remembered the heat of his chest against them, the wet suction of his mouth covering them, the way his long fingers had plucked her there.

Do you like that?

How about like this?

What if I do that
and
this?

Two crazy, hormonal kids. The rich boy, confident in his place in the world. The passionate Italian girl, whose inhibitions fled the instant he unfastened the first button. Had her wild responses turned him off?

“I was so easy for you,” she muttered.

He laughed, the sound low. “Nothing about you has ever been easy for me, Giuliana.”

His thumb stroked her cheek and her body thrummed. Suddenly, she was aware that they were standing toe-to-toe, nose-to-nose, forehead-to-forehead. Yeah, just how to squelch those rumors. Frowning, she took a big step back, in the direction of the tasting booth.

Liam instantly took up the distance. She shook her head, retreated again. He followed.

“Stop,” she said, as her back encountered the corner edge of the winery’s booth. She was aware that Stevie and Allie were nearby, as well as a knot of people chatting and waiting to be served, but she didn’t look at them. Her focus was trained on Liam.

His glance shifted right and again, for just a brief second, his expression shifted, too.

Curious, her gaze cut that same way. Hell. Allie’s display had garnered attention, just as her sister had planned. People were poring over the wedding wine ledgers. She supposed it was mostly innocuous, but still . . .

“Jules.” Liam caught her attention again. “I won’t stop. Because this hasn’t.” He gestured between them, as if they could both see that invisible pull of wicked attraction that had years ago brought teenage Giuliana into his arms and into his bed.

Her temper flared. She wanted to stomp her foot, but she wasn’t sixteen anymore. Or untouched by hard, harsh, heartbreak. “You have to,” she said, her voice fierce again, though low enough for only Liam to hear. “You can’t let people believe there’s even a remote chance we’ll get together again.”

“Oh. My. God.” A voice pierced the surrounding babble. Stevie, talking in tomboy tones. “Oh. My. God. Jules and Liam.”

Giuliana’s head whipped toward her sister, who was staring down at the page of one of the wedding wine ledgers. Any last enjoyment she might find in the day vanished. Aghast, she felt the chardonnay-gold air around her turn to molasses. It slowed time, movement, comprehension.

But soon enough, she understood.

Liam didn’t try to dodge her accusing stare. The rat! He’d returned the missing book. “People don’t need to believe we’ll get together again . . .” he said.

Stevie, the brash Baci sister, spoke out in her loud voice. “Liam and Jules . . . they married!” There was a pause. “And are still married?”

Giuliana’s husband’s lips turned up in a wry smile. “. . . when now they’ll know we never really broke up.”