Love in the Vineyard (The Tavonesi Series Book 7) (19 page)

“For us,” he said as he reached to take it from her.

It took some deft maneuvering, but she was careful not to let his fingers brush hers. She had a plan and had no intention of taking any detours. Yet she knew it would be impossible to touch him and stay on the road she’d mapped out.

“You find the place okay?”

She nodded.

He laughed. “Obviously you did. What kind of a host am I? Come in out of the evening chill. Let’s open this. I’ve been wanting to taste Dario’s new rosé. They’re trending now, but he garnered a ninety-four.”

Natasha had no idea what he was talking about. She’d been lucky that Mary had the bottle stashed away—an unclaimed raffle prize, she’d said. What would she ever have done without Mary?

If not for Mary, she wouldn’t have met a man who cracked her heart and tumbled her reality.

But it wasn’t Mary’s fault that Natasha had fallen for Adrian. And it wasn’t Mary’s fault that once she’d realized who he was and the impossibility of a future with him, she hadn’t been able to put the man out of her mind. Or out of her dreams. God, she couldn’t,
wouldn’t
think about those dreams. Not now. She needed to focus.

Adrian brushed his hand along her shoulder as she entered the house. Natasha’s senses went to high alert. She swore she could feel every cell in her body screaming for more.

“I’m a bit behind schedule,” Adrian said as they entered the kitchen. “My sister—Amber—always leaves things to the very last minute and I promised I’d drive her to the helipad.”

Helipad
. It didn’t take a moat or a wall or an army of censuring patriarchs to remind Natasha why she had to end things with Adrian. His words and what they conveyed did that just fine.

“What does Amber do?” she stammered out in an attempt to make conversation that would distract her from the unwanted desire rising in her belly.

“Do?” The pop of the cork punctuated his puzzled expression.

Natasha felt the flush steal up her neck. Maybe Italian heiresses didn’t
do
anything.

He handed her a glass of the rose-colored liquid.

“This has a perfect hue.” He turned his glass and looked through it toward the light. “A light blush but not too far to the red side.” He motioned toward her with his glass. “
Salute
.”

The ringing sound as the crystal touched was like a bell sounding in a prizefighter’s ring. She had stepped under the ropes and she needed to deal.

“Amber is a campaigner. She travels the world and tries to see that precious medicinal plants don’t go extinct. She calls herself an herbalist, but I think of her as a warrior.” He sipped his wine and then stared into the glass.

“Dario uses neutral French oak barrels, he doesn’t just bleed the vats.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “Do you like it?”

“Yes.” She was still learning the lingo of the winemaking industry. Bleeding the vats sounded like a horrible practice.

“I’ll chill it. If I don’t burn our pasta sauce, it will be a perfect accompaniment to our meal.”

Natasha wasn’t sure she was going to make it through an entire meal. She took a gulp of her wine, sat down on a stool near the counter and cleared her throat.

“I need to talk to you.” The firm and resolved tone she’d gone for had come out more like a plea.

“Then it’s my very lucky night.”

“No. I mean yes, I need to talk with you.”

He came around the edge of the counter.

“Is something wrong?”

“Everything’s wrong.”

He took a step closer, and she held out her hand in a stopping gesture.

“No, don’t. I can’t think when you’re close to me.”

“Then that makes two of us.” He pulled out the other stool and sat, bringing him closer to her eye level.

“Tell me what’s troubling you. And if it’s Inspire you’re concerned about, I already know.”

“It’s not that, it’s everything. It’s—” His words sank in. “You
knew
?”

“My sister Coco told me yesterday. But she swore me to secrecy. She’s on the board at Inspire. Maybe you knew that?”

Natasha shook her head. And the speech she’d been so confident in being able to give scrambled under the intensity of his gaze.

“Adrian, you’ve been nothing but kind. But our lives, they don’t match up. The fact that Tyler and I landed in a homeless shelter should be evidence enough. Although we are moving out this weekend. Into a place of our own,” she added, wishing her tone didn’t sound so defensive. But she was feeling defensive, there was no denying it. “We’re getting out thanks to you and Casa del Sole. Thanks to my job.”

He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture she’d come to love. His biceps bulged under the sleeve of his T-shirt. No, she shouldn’t be thinking about his body at a time like this. She snapped her gaze to his. And wished she hadn’t. The muscles around his eyes tightened with his frown.

“Natasha, there’s no rhyme or reason why someone is born here or there, why one person is born with privilege and another isn’t. But I’ve learned that no matter what life may have dished out, if we meet challenges without letting them dim our dreams, then there’ll be a better outcome.”

She wouldn’t let his seductive words feed oxygen to the stubborn embers of hope that she was fighting to keep safely under control.

“You don’t understand.”

“Then make me.”

Was it challenge she heard in his voice? Maybe if he understood, it would make what she was about to do easier. Maybe he’d help. She closed her eyes for the briefest of seconds and hauled in a breath.

“I’m afraid of my past,” she said, exhaling and looking into his eyes.
That
was a mistake. She looked away, her eyes seeing but not focusing on the massive stoves against the wall facing her. “I’m afraid that no matter how well I pull things together, it will always follow me, drag at my world, like a big black bag tailing me that I can never escape. I know it’s maybe crazy, but I keep thinking that if I can cordon it off and send the worst of my memories to a nice private asylum-like island in my imagination—an island with a very, very high fence—that I someday won’t feel so bothered, so trapped. That I can start fresh. Like I’d hoped to do with you. Until I found out who you are. What you are.”

“I don’t believe the past determines the future. If I believed that, then I’d have no hope, not for my life or what’s possible for creating a better world. I think our dreams determine the future far more than the past ever can if we only let them.”

She could feel his eyes on her, like a beacon. She drew her eyes back to his. “I wish I could believe that.”

But it was a dream that had inspired her foolish bet. Following a dream had upended her world in a flash. Tears welled, and she couldn’t fight them back. They’d been threatening for weeks and now rolled out of her eyes and onto her white cotton shirt. Horrified, she rubbed at her face with the back of her palm.

Adrian slid his stool closer and handed her a linen handkerchief. The darned handkerchief was just one more symbol of the gulf between them and made her cry harder. Her sobs had her gasping for air. He tugged her into his arms, and her cheek pressed against the hard planes of his chest. Held, circled by his arms, she allowed all the tears she’d dammed up for so many years to flood out. Tears for the innocent girl she’d had to leave behind when her mother died. Tears for all the abuse she’d suffered at the hands of greedy, self-serving foster parents. And tears for all the things she wished she could provide for Tyler but hadn’t yet found a way to afford. She even let loose tears for her deep regret at not being able to reciprocate the kindness and generosity of the people who had been helpful to her while she’d had to focus so hard on survival and safety. But the most painful tears that escaped were for the future that would never be, a future with a man she’d finally found to love.

He rocked her, murmuring against the top of her head. And until her sobs subsided, he never let go.

A smoke alarm wailed, high-pitched and screaming.

Adrian didn’t move. But Natasha pressed away from him.

“There’s smoke,” she said, wiping her eyes with the monogrammed linen cloth. “
Smoke
,” she repeated.

He slid off the stool and crossed to the stove, yanked a pan from the burner and dumped it in the sink. The alarm screamed its ongoing message above their heads.

“At least I know it works,” he said as he waved a towel at the device. The alarm went silent, and he turned to her. “I seem to have a bad habit of making you uncomfortable.”

She sniffled. “It’s not you. It’s me.”

“Well, right now, it’s us. And
we
are going to have to pull something out of my freezer if we want any supper tonight.” He tossed off the denim apron and threw open the door to his freezer. “I could use some suggestions.”

Her legs were rubbery under her as she stepped over to the freezer. He seemed to know that she didn’t want to—
couldn’t
—talk any more about her feelings right then. About her outburst. The unspoken understanding between them scared her almost as much as the emotions that had escaped her guard. The feelings they’d shared with each other were spinning the bridge she’d feared. And damned if she hadn’t been right—she might have kept a lid on her desires for many years, but she’d never been faced with a man like him before. Worse, being in his kitchen, doing tasks that any couple might do, had her seeing him in a new light, seeing the man behind the mask that the world thrust on him as a result of his birth. Wasn’t that the same thing she wanted for herself? To be seen for who she was, who she’d fought to become rather than for the aspects of her life she’d fought to overcome and leave behind?

He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close to his side.

Her heart did a double thump, and not even the chilled air escaping the freezer cooled the want firing in her.

“Anything appeal?”

The labels weren’t written in English.

“I don’t read Italian,” she said, glad that she didn’t have to admit she couldn’t read English very well either.

“Our former nanny, now housekeeper down at the Casa, is sure that I’ll starve on my own.” He tilted his head down to hers. “Don’t tell her about this fiasco or she’ll be sure it’s true.”

Natasha laughed.

He rummaged through the freezer shelf. “There’s a lasagna, an eggplant Parmesan, and four containers of something Leonora makes especially for me and calls health rice.” He touched his head to hers and quirked a smile. “It sounds better in Italian and is more delicious than it sounds.”

Crying had made her ravenous. She’d missed lunch, and Cara’s snack of lemonade and cookies had burned up in the fury of her tears. But now, with Adrian next to her, a different sort of hunger ached, and its lancing, impossible-to-ignore message had her losing interest in food. “Let’s try the rice,” she said, knowing that no meal would satisfy the silent wish rising in her and twining with the desire shuddering in her belly.

He released her and she let out the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Her heart skittered with longing, with a yearning that refused to be tamped down as she watched him microwave the containers and then scoop the rice and vegetables onto plates.

At his suggestion they skipped the dining room and took their plates into his living room. Sitting at his formal table and trying to make small talk through a meal would’ve been the worst sort of torture. Maybe he’d felt it too. She almost wanted to ask him.

They settled onto the couch in front of the wall of glass, looking out over the valley. He seemed to sense that she didn’t want to talk about what had made her bawl in his arms. Thank God for favors. Or sisters. Or for whatever made him sensitive to her distress. She’d said less than she’d planned to about what she wanted to tell him and way more than she’d planned about what she didn’t. And through it all she’d never been more aware of wanting him.

She’d better eat, give her speech and scram.

But then he cast a smile that reached into her soul. Whispers rose and her lips trembled as she smiled back.
Taste, feel. Even if it can’t last.
She fought back the powerful messages threatening to dissolve her willpower, threatening to brush aside her fear of consequences and erode her good sense.

Chapter Fourteen

NATASHA’S GENTLE SMILE AS SHE SAT cross-legged on the floor of his living room nearly undid Adrian. Her skin glowed, almost translucent in the evening light pouring through the wall of windows. Her beauty stunned him. But more amazing was the hungry eagerness, the pull toward joy he felt whenever he was with her. And she was the stimulus that sent the top spinning in directions he’d never explored. In the moments when her gaze was unguarded, he felt invited into a realm he hadn’t known he yearned to enter. She set off anticipation for something he hadn’t even been aware of wanting. He’d never before been cut loose from his bearings, so unbalanced and then forced into uncharted territory. There was no way that he was going to let the circumstances of his birth get in the way of exploring the feelings he had for her. His circumstances already caused him grief and disquiet—he wasn’t about to let them dictate his relationship with Natasha.

Still, the little he’d heard of her life fueled the anger that burned in him whenever he thought about injustice, about the capriciousness of life and fortune.

He knew he couldn’t just spread money around, although sometimes it could help, but he didn’t have enough to make a difference to the big picture. What he could do was provide opportunities. “Don’t give people fish,” his grandmother had told him. “Teach people to fish. And then teach them to take care of the river while they’re at it.” His nana would have known what to do to help Natasha. She might even have known the secret to unlocking her skittish heart.

Maybe Natasha had never had the opportunity to pursue a dream, a passion. Hell, until he’d let the work at the Casa get under his skin, neither had he. In a flash of insight, he saw a path forward. One that might even make it possible to scale the inner walls Natasha kept strong and fortified, walls that he knew she’d once needed, maybe still did. And it could be a path that might allow him to be with her on the other side of those walls.