Can't Hurry Love (6 page)

The whole tribe of them ambushed Giuliana in Allie’s office at the winery early the next morning. She hadn’t been hiding out, exactly, though her youngest sister usually didn’t make it into the office before noon on Fridays. The real reason she’d changed locations was because she was so sick of working and sleeping in the fourteen by fourteen space that had her own nameplate on the desk. To be honest, though, she probably would have slipped away in avoidance of the confrontation if they hadn’t caught her unawares.

Sometime around eight A.M., she’d dozed off on the stack of bills she’d brought in to peruse.

When Allie, Penn, Stevie, Jack, and Liam popped open the door, she popped up, embarrassingly aware that she’d been drooling on the envelope from the gas and electric company. Her sisters were gazing on her with consternation. Both brothers-in-law stared at the focal piece of furniture in the small room, wearing odd, bemused expressions.

She glanced between them as she straightened the Tanti Baci logo T-shirt she was wearing. “Uh, Penn? Jack?”

The second man shook himself, then shot his wife a quick, hungry look. His hand stroked a path down her bare arm. “Every time I come in here . . .” He shook his head again. “God, I love that desk.”

Penn snorted with laughter, and Allie thwacked him on the arm. “Stop,” the youngest Baci said, though there was a gleam in her eye, too. “You guys are terrible.”

Her husband curled an arm around her neck and yanked her close enough to whisper in her ear. Allie went red in the face and gave him another halfhearted thwack. “Terrible,” she muttered again.

Giuliana couldn’t help but meet Liam’s gaze. From his place behind the newlyweds, he pretended to hurl in the nearby wastebasket. It was so unlike the stiff, almost stuffy man he’d seemed to be the last year that he startled a laugh out of her.

The couples turned around with suspicion, but Liam was straight and straight-faced again. Giuliana laughed a second time.

At the sound, Allie spun back. “I’m glad someone’s in a good mood. We were left a little flat-footed yesterday, Jules.”

Her humor evaporated. After the big reveal at the winery’s booth, she’d refused to stick around for all the inevitable questions. Running hadn’t solved anything, apparently—because when her glance found Liam’s now, he shook his head. Clearly he’d avoided explaining, too.

Stevie laid out the facts. “The entry in the ledger that’s just turned up indicates you and Liam married in Reno, Nevada, ten years ago last month.”

“And we didn’t even throw you an anniversary party,” Allie added. Her voice held a slight edge. “The traditional gift is tin.”

Sighing, Giuliana figured there was no way out of this now. “Look . . .” Then she stopped, deciding to strip it down to the most basic of truths.

“Eighteen,” she said, touching her chest. “Stupid.” Not just because of the secret wedding, but because they’d recorded it upon downing a purloined bottle of
blanc de blancs
post-ceremony. Then she pointed toward Liam. “Twenty. Not any smarter.”

His usual deadpan expression didn’t commit his opinion of her reasoning.

Allie couldn’t leave it at that, though. “You tied the knot in spring, hied off to Tuscany in the summer, and by fall broke up—but then never bothered with the legal side of things?”

“You make it sound so . . . slapdash.” She tried making light, though in her mind those months were the anchor she’d dragged behind her for the last decade.

“You don’t do slapdash, Jules,” Allie insisted. “Never in your life have you been reckless.”

Probably not. In general, both she and Liam had been the responsible older siblings—whether dictated by nature or nurture, she didn’t know. Maybe that had been the dangerous attraction of their youthful passion—the exciting lure of the imprudent.

Stevie took up the assessment of her character. “Yet to let it go all this long! Sure, you have a nasty temper and can hold a grudge longer than a vampire’s lifetime, but . . . but . . .”

“Gee, thanks,” Giuliana said, her voice dry. “Tell me what you really think.”

Stevie took her up on the offer. “Well, I—”

“Could perhaps leave off the recriminations,” Liam put in.

All at once, her sisters subsided. Giuliana thought she should be grateful for his intervention, but that nasty temper of hers kindled at the realization that no one was castigating
him
. “Just to be clear,” she said. “I didn’t force Liam to the altar.
He
asked
me
.”

The assembled company swung to face the head of the Bennett family. Instead of hauling his ass over the coals, however, after one glance at his forbidding expression, they turned back to Giuliana.

“What are we going to do about it?” Allie asked.

The same thing she’d been planning to tackle at the end of the month. After years of them both letting the situation remain unresolved, she’d promised Liam at the restaurant that she’d finally deal with the issue of their youthful marriage in four-weeks’ time. But now . . . She sighed. Now it couldn’t wait even that long. And because her reasoning for putting it off in the first place wasn’t something she actually understood herself, she just cut to the chase. “We’ll immediately do what it takes to get a div—”

“Don’t say divorce!” Allie’s eyes rounded. “There can’t be a divorce. At least not now. Not yet.”

“Why?” Then Giuliana groaned as understanding dawned. “You told the papers, didn’t you? You made calls . . . claims . . .” That ridiculous legend.

Her younger sister grimaced, guilt flashing over her face. “Well . . .”

Penn raised his eyebrows at his wife. “That’s why you contacted the
Wedding Fever
people.”

Jack was the only one who appeared perplexed as Giuliana groaned again. Stevie had to fill him in. “Popular TV show . . . remember I told you how they filmed Penn and Allie’s ceremony last year?”

“They saved our bacon then,” Allie said, sounding defensive. “They might just do it again.”

Bacon with a side of rotten eggs, Giuliana thought, when all was said and done. She sighed. “Allie—”

“They loved the idea of the Vow-Over Weekend,” her little sister said quickly. “C’mon, Jules. Don’t we owe it to Papa to try our very hardest?”

To save the winery, she meant. They’d made that promise at his bedside and she’d honestly tried. Still . . . Yet looking into her sister’s big brown eyes, it was impossible to refuse her. She sighed again, and clearly capitulation was written all over her face because Allie clapped her hands together.

Stevie, much more practical, cast a glance at Liam. “We’ve still got problems.”

Allie shook her head, causing her waving hair to float around her shoulders. “Not when the Three Mouseketeers are on the job.”

Giuliana almost smiled. When they were little girls, they’d put their Disney ears on their heads and tie their mother’s aprons around their necks by the strings. Then they’d galloped around the house and through the vines, fighting imaginary enemies. Always standing with each other.

She could lose that. But not yet. Not quite yet. Her shoulders straightened. “What’s worrying you, Steve?”

“You can’t go on living here.”

That wasn’t good. But Honeymoon Central wasn’t an option. And though she could go through the motions of searching for another apartment, it would waste time. Instead of saying that, she lifted the stack of bills and let them fall onto the desk. “At the moment, I’d rather save the money than pay for another place.”

“You’ll start walking crooked if you spend any more nights on your love seat,” Penn pointed out.

Allie chimed in. “And you don’t look so pretty with creases on your face after you fall asleep on top of the paperwork.”

To seek out embarrassing wrinkles, Giuliana’s hand went on a reconnaissance mission. “Where? Here?”

“You’re fine,” Liam said. “Beautiful.”

Her hand dropped. She looked everywhere but at him as the word rolled over her heating skin. “Uh, okay.”

“Good,” Stevie said. “That was easy.”

Giuliana’s gaze flew to her middle sister’s. “Not okay, I’ll sleep somewhere else, but okay . . . okay . . .”

“Okay, Liam thinks you’re beautiful,” Stevie said, in a no-nonsense voice. “All the better for our purposes.”

“I think she’s beautiful, too,” Jack put in, grinning at her. “Always have.”

“Scary, but beautiful,” Penn agreed.

She narrowed her eyes at her brothers-in-law. “Cut it out. You do that to embarrass me. Keep it up and you’ll be the ones frustrated when I move into the farmhouse and insist we girls have sleepovers each and every night.”

They didn’t even appear worried, which should have worried
her
. Jack’s grin widened. “I’m not concerned about the sleeping arrangements,
ma petite soeur
.”

“There’s plenty of room at my house,” Liam said.

No! After the fire, he’d made the offer.
Move in. We could finish this thing, Giuliana.
But if they were in such close proximity, who knew what she might risk?

Her palms were starting to sweat at the idea, though she tried keeping her expression serene and her voice out of the shrill range. “I couldn’t intrude on you and Seth.”

“My brother’s in Monterey. Big work project, so he’s staying there the next few weeks.”

“Anyway, you have to intrude on Liam,” Stevie said. “That’s the whole point. We discussed it on the way over.”

Allie was nodding. Penn and Jack wore faint smiles, indicating their approval.

“Please, you guys,” Giuliana said. She loved them all, and might only have the chance to show it for a few more weeks, but this was too much!

“I told them you’d chicken out,” Liam put in. His voice was cool, his manner unattached, as always.

Suddenly she wanted to slap that nonexpression expression off his face with the flat of her hand. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Clearly, if we’re going to postpone proceedings in order to keep the no-divorce legend going, we can’t be estranged.”

Panic clutched at her stomach. “We’ve been estranged! All this last year when we were both in Edenville and for nine years before that.”

“But that can’t be anymore. Surely you see that.” He spoke to her as if she was a two-year-old.

“Surely you see that I can’t just move in and . . . and . . .”

“Live with me? Be my wife?”

“I’m not going to be your wife!”

Liam crossed his arms over his chest. “Giuliana, you
are
my wife.”

“The kind that will kill you while you lie in bed.” She could see it now. “You heard them. They say that I have a nasty temper and hold a grudge for eternity. And you know me. Think! I might even do it without realizing it. I’ll just rise up in the middle of the night and . . . and smother you with my pillow.”

They were all staring at her as if she’d gone mad. So? The idea of being that close to Liam again
made
her mad.

Allie stepped forward. “Giuliana.” Her voice was kind. “Nobody said you had to actually
sleep
with Liam.”

Mortification rushed over her. “I knew that,” she mumbled.

“For the good of the winery,” Stevie reminded her, “all you need to do is live under the same roof. Fake conjugal bliss for a few weeks.”

As if it would be that easy. Good God. She’d started the day hoping to avoid her family and the fact that she was married, but now they weren’t going to let her avoid her husband, either. She slumped in her seat.

Penn had this happy face that under normal circumstances Giuliana found charming. These weren’t normal circumstances. “What do they call it?” He snapped his fingers. “I know, a marriage of convenience.”

Giuliana slid lower in her chair. She didn’t dare meet Liam’s eyes, though she couldn’t avoid his voice.

“Convenient,” he said, and if she didn’t know better she’d think he was laughing at her. “I like the sound of that.”

6

Kohl dominated one corner of the bar at his favorite nothing-fancy watering hole on the outskirts of Edenville’s small downtown. There were more than a few upscale tasting rooms and classy cocktail lounges attached to ritzy restaurants nearby, but the winegrowing business employed plenty of real workingmen and workingwomen who couldn’t afford the cost of pricey liquor—even the fermented grape juice they worked their asses off to produce.

Ironic, that.

The world was just full of irony, he thought, his hand tightening on his shot glass. He tossed the contents back, and the tequila burned his throat as it went down.

A body slipped onto one of the empty stools on either side of him—the other patrons were smart enough to give him a wide berth. “Whatcha doing?” a familiar, female voice said.

He let his empty glass clack against the bar before drawing a second, full one closer. “Getting drunk. Avoiding company.”

On his right, one of his sisters, the unsinkable Mari, didn’t seem put off by his brusque tone. “You should have stayed home then.”

Yeah. But he had this rule about drinking alone. He didn’t do it, not since his last blackout. The way he figured it, a witness or two might curb his most destructive tendencies. Though tonight . . .

“I suppose you heard,” Mari said.

About Jules and Liam. Still not looking at her, he grunted. “It makes me want to kill somebody.”

A little gasp had him twitching. It wasn’t Mari’s gasp. His head whipped to the side and he saw Grace Hatch standing at his sister’s elbow. “What the hell are you doing here?” he barked out.

Her big blue eyes rounded. Mari answered instead. “Friday night? Two girls out on the town? We’re looking for a good time, Kohl.”

He turned his stare on Mari. “And you’re looking here? This place is too rough for the little rabbit,” he said, indicating the other woman with his chin.

“That’s why I’m leaving her with you,” Mari said. “I just ran into Pat Rowan and he wants to take me to dinner.”

Before he could tell his sneaky sister he wasn’t the least interested in babysitting, she was off in a flurry of long corkscrew curls and Grace was taking her place. A faint scent of vanilla reminded him of her cinnamon freckles and her wholesome, boy-howdy features.

It only underscored how he was in no frame of mind to deal with a fresh-faced little girl. “You call a taxi, I’ll pay to have it take you home.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her fingers lace on the bar top, the little rabbit as teacher’s pet. “No, thank you,” she said, her voice prim.

The bartender placed a glass of white wine on the napkin he set in front of her. With a swipe of his hand, he removed Kohl’s empty shot glass and replaced it with a fresh tequila. Good man.

“Excuse me,” Grace said. Though her voice was almost timid, it halted the guy on the other side of the bar. “We’d like to order some food.”

Kohl stared at her.
We?
“I’m not hungry.”

She acted as if she didn’t hear him. “Potato skins, I think,” she said. “And nachos and . . . some buffalo wings.”

“Who the hell is going to eat all that?” he asked as the bartender hurried off.

Her big blues found his face. “You don’t like buffalo wings? I could change the order to calamari . . .” She half rose.

“No.” He put his hand on her shoulder, then jerked away as something hot sprinted up his arm and toward his chest. “I’m allergic to calamari,” he mumbled.

She settled back on her stool. “Is that right? I get a weird rash from contact with the skin of mangoes—though I can eat the fruit.”

“It’s the urushiol in the skin—the same oil that causes people to react to poison oak and poison ivy. They’re all part of the sumac family.”

“Really?” She sipped from her wine. “Do mangoes do that to you, too?”

“No. I just learned all I could about poison oak after it gave me six weeks of hell in sixth grade.”

Sympathy crossed her features. “On your face?”

“I wish.” He snorted. “On my balls, and the surrounding environs.”

A pink flush camouflaged all the pretty freckles. “Oh.”

“Camping weekend in the mountains. The only thing worse than eating food from foil packets is eating food from foil packets someplace without an outhouse and where you have to use leaves as toilet paper.”

She looked at her wine instead of at him. “I would have thought that Boy Scouts 101 covers dangerous plants.”

“Kohlrabi Friday was no Boy Scout. My folks didn’t have the money for scouting—and were suspicious of . . . what I’d guess you’d call institutionalized joining.” They’d been really freaked when he’d enlisted—though youthful rebellion hadn’t surprised two hippies who’d met at Woodstock.

“I always wanted to be a Brownie,” Grace admitted. “All those pretty colored badges. A group to belong to.”

The little confession dug a hole in his belly that he found himself filling once the food arrived between them. They were silent for a few minutes as they shared the appetizers. On Grace’s other side, a woman he’d once had a good time with pawed through her purse. She was laughing too loud as she dumped out the contents and Kohl realized that her blouse was fastened with so few buttons that her big breasts were nearly exposed to the nipple line.

“Where the hell’s my cell phone?” she asked her companion, another bosomy female. She looked fairly familiar, too. “Have you seen it?” As she shook her purse, a snake of foil-wrapped condoms fell atop the tissues, lipsticks, and breath mints.

An uncomfortable burn climbed Kohl’s neck as he noticed Grace’s big eyes were taking in the sight. He ignored the urge to blindfold her with his palms and tried redirecting her attention with a question. “Uh, um, do you have any hobbies?” Shit, he sucked at small talk.

Grace put one of her small hands on his forearm. “Excuse me just a moment.” Then she turned back to the bawdy woman on her right. “Your desk. Could you have left it on your desk at work? Beside your keyboard.”

The woman blinked. Clearly she was thinking back. “Why . . . why I . . . I think I did!” She stared at Grace from under sticky black lashes. “How did you know?”

The little rabbit shrugged. “Just a good guess.” Then she picked up another potato skin and smiled at Kohl. “Hobbies, you were saying?”

“Yeah.” He glanced over her head to the neighboring lady—Dawn, he remembered was her name. She was still gazing on his companion in bemusement.

“Do you, uh, sew? Cook? Grow vegetables?” he asked Grace.

“Well, I’ve done all of those, but I think those fall more under activity than amusement.” She smiled self-consciously and he found himself hypnotized by the puffy pinkness of her mouth. “I’ve always wanted to sing, though.”

Dawn leaned over her shoulder. “Then you have to sign up tonight! For karaoke. As a matter of fact, you can have my spot—I’m going second. As a thank-you for nudging my memory.”

Kohl almost groaned. That’s how deep his bad mood was—he’d been so immersed in it he’d forgotten to avoid this particular joint on this particular night. Fridays and Tuesdays were karaoke. He looked behind him, and sure enough, in the far corner of the tiny dance floor, a guy was setting up the equipment, which included a squat portable stage.

Grace glanced at Dawn, shaking her head even though her eyes lit up. “Oh. Oh, I couldn’t take your spot. Thank you so much for the offer, though.”

Another groan welled up inside him. He hated karaoke, but with Grace wearing that expression—like a girl offered a turn as queen of the Brownies, which included a handful of merit badges—he couldn’t very well run them both out of here before the music started. He edged her wineglass toward her hand.

“Take the offer, honey.”

Her head whipped toward him. Pink cheeks, those blue eyes startled. He remembered her memory of him calling her “honey” when she was a little girl. Were casual endearments so few and far between for her? Another hole dug itself in his belly. He glanced at the waiting shot of tequila but ignored it in favor of shoveling another potato skin into his mouth.

“Do you think I should really try it?” she whispered.

No. “Yes.” Already the first singer of the night was approaching the stage. “You’d better get on over there. I think you have to look through the songbook and choose your piece.”

At that, she appeared more abandoned than the damn mangy dog of hers that he’d stolen away. With a sigh, he slid off his stool. “Come on,” he said, holding out his hand for hers.

She stared at his open palm. Then, like the rabbit was expecting a trap, she slowly, slowly, extended her own hand. Before it even touched down, he grasped her securely.

Her fingers quivered.

Something deep inside him did, too.

Clenching his teeth, he ignored all that and led her toward the karaoke area. The songs listing was in a fat binder set atop an elbow-high bar table. She turned the stained pages gingerly, as if touching them more fully might commit her fully as well.

But Kohl found himself determined to have her go through with it. How much pleasure had she had in her life? While the Friday household couldn’t afford luxuries, and living down the name Kohlrabi with sisters dubbed Marigold and Zinnia had held its own challenges, there’d been more love than lumps.

The striking fists had been his own.

Truth to tell, now that he thought of what she’d endured at the hands of her father and former husband, he felt a little ashamed of his careless brawling habits.

“Pick a song,” he urged.

She bit her lip. “What if I’m terrible?”

He fully expected it. Ninety-nine point nine percent of people he’d ever heard grab the mike and belt one out
were
terrible, except they didn’t know it. It was why he avoided this particular night at this particular joint.

“Just have fun.” And he’d force himself to applaud, though he suspected that she’d set the dogs in town wailing when she chose one of those songs that all the girls did, like Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” or Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” or anything by Kelly Clarkson.
That
would send the cats screeching, too.

“I don’t know . . .” She was gnawing on her pouty pink bottom lip.

He couldn’t watch. The first singer was starting his turn. Kohl winced as he launched into something by the Boss. When it came to guys, it was always the Boss. Grace was still dithering over the list. “Just close your eyes and point to one,” he suggested to her.

Hell, he thought she just might have followed his advice. But his mind wasn’t working too well because she shuffled to the side, relinquishing the song book to another patron, and now was clutching his forearm to bring him with her. She was hanging on to him like a starfish glued to a rock.

He was just that hard with her hand on him.

The wannabe Boss wound down. There was clapping. Grace’s hand tightened on him so that he was forced to pry her fingers loose. “Your turn,” he said against her ear.

When she turned those big, nervous blue eyes on him, he was sunk. “Good luck,” he said, and kissed that perfect, plump mouth.

He might have still been kissing it if the master of ceremonies hadn’t shoved the microphone between them. Grace’s fingers curled around it, and, face dazed, she climbed onto the platform.

Kohl’s heart was pounding. He figured it would go with what his head was going to be feeling any second. Cindi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” he bet. Look attentive and encouraging anyway, he reminded himself.

Then the music started and there was pounding, yes. From the beat. The rap beat.

Grace was singing “Baby Got Back.” No, she was rapping. That Sir Mix-a-Lot song. Good God. And her own “back” was shaking, her booty going from side to side, keeping up with the beat. For the first time he realized she was wearing a pair of tight jeans.

The little rabbit had a cute, heart-shaped ass.

And she was getting into the song, in just the right kind of way, stumbling a little sometimes as the words rolled by on the screen, but obviously having fun. So everyone else did, too. Her joy moved through the crowd until the people in the audience were wiggling their hips or nodding their heads, their gazes glued to Grace Hatch, scruffy little nobody from the ’hood.

The crowd cheered when it was over.

She fist-pumped the air, relinquished the mike, then leapt off the stage, grinning like a seven-year-old. “Well?”

Well . . . He just laughed. “Grace . . .” Shaking his head, he laughed again.

Her grin didn’t die. “I’ve never seen you do that,” she said. “I’ve never heard you laugh.”

So he did it again. For her. All the while realizing that though he’d been tasked with taking care of her, it hadn’t gone that way at all. Shy Grace Hatch had fed him. She’d made him talk. She’d made him laugh. She’d pulled him out of his sour mood.

The only hangover he suspected he’d have tomorrow was the memory of that startling, might-be-addictive kiss.