The Sicilian's Bride (7 page)

“Good,” she said. The names were a blur. “Who are they?”

“Old-timers. Men who know their way around the Azienda. They’ll be up there tomorrow morning at eight.”

“Fine.” She breathed a sigh of relief. She might pull this off after all. “How much do they get paid?”

“That depends on their job. Some operate the crushing machine, some the fermenter. They’re good men, but you have to be there to supervise them, otherwise they’ll take advantage of you.”

Isabel blinked rapidly. More men who wanted to take advantage of her? What had she gotten herself into? All she could see was fifty-dollar bottles of Amarado on the shelves without any clear idea of how they got there. She had to keep up a brave front.

“But where…how…?”

“The machinery is in the barn. As far as I know, it still works, but just barely.”

“I didn’t see any barn.”

“You weren’t looking. It’s there behind the grove of trees behind the house.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” she said.

“The men expect to be paid in cash. I’ve written down the hourly rate for each man. Do you have a bank account?”

She shook her head. He must think she wasn’t equipped to run a vineyard. Or to make wine. Or to change a tire. But she could learn. And she would.

“You’ll want to open an account right away so you can write checks for your utilities. When you get them installed.”

“Of course.”

There was a soft knock on the door. Now what?

This time it was the maid with her dinner. She came in and set up the plates on the table. For some reason it appeared to be a dinner for two. Had the personnel seen Dario go up to her room and figured they would be expecting an intimate meal for two? Or had he told them he was staying for dinner? Dinner with the one woman he most wanted to get rid of? The woman he’d already had breakfast and lunch with? Hardly.

“Are you staying for dinner?” she asked.

“It looks that way,” he said.

No “thank you.” No polite refusal. Did he want to stay? Probably not. Then why do it? He must have his reasons. Did she want him to? Definitely not.

Whatever the reason, the maid seemed to know what she was doing, serving veal Madeira in a white-wine-and-mushroom sauce over creamy polenta from a silver chafing dish, along with sautéed fresh spinach. She poured two glasses from a bottle of Pinot Grigio and quietly left the room with a shy smile.

The whole scenario was surreal in the extreme. Was this really Isabel Morrison having dinner in nothing but a robe with the richest and best-looking man in all of Sicily? The same man she’d had lunch and breakfast with? If he shared her sense of the absurd, he didn’t let it show. For all she knew, he dined with half-clad women in their hotel rooms every other night. The best she could do was to pretend to be at least that sophisticated herself.

She couldn’t possibly change into her clothes at this point, but she did retreat to the bathroom to take the towel off her head, and run a comb through her tangled hair.

Dario looked up when she came back with her hair in a damp cloud of dark-red curls. He swirled some wine around in his glass to keep from staring at her bare legs and the way
her robe gaped in front giving him a tantalizing glimpse of one pale breast.

Maybe he shouldn’t have barged in this way and invited himself for dinner. It was only now he realized how bizarre the situation was. It had been a long time since he’d eaten dinner with a woman in her hotel room. The first time ever with a redheaded American woman in a robe in her hotel room. And he hadn’t planned on her being a distraction, but she was.

The situation had its advantages over the expensive restaurants where he usually dined and where he might have taken her if he’d wanted to have dinner with her. No one but the night clerk knew he was here in her room. Also, he had to admit that any gown she might have worn for dinner would not be as sexy as this robe which covered most of her body, but left him free to imagine what was underneath it.

“I have to say they serve a decent wine,” Dario said, tearing his gaze away from her for a moment. He really hadn’t meant to stay for dinner. He’d only meant to hand over her camera case, thank her for helping his grandmother and tell her he’d hired some workers. But seeing her with the towel over her head looking like what he imagined a concubine in a harem would look like, had set his senses reeling.

Maybe it was the seductive smell of the soap that clung to her skin that had such a strange effect on him, or maybe he was losing his mind. He told himself to go, to get out of here before he did something stupid, but the voice in his head wasn’t very loud or insistent. So then he told himself to shut up and relax.

No getting around it; Isabel looked very different from the enemy he knew she was. Instead she looked soft and warm and very feminine. The kind of woman you wanted to wrap your arms around and get into that queen-sized bed with. The kind of woman whose skin looked so soft and inviting you wanted
to taste and touch it. If she wasn’t who she was, and if he was someone else, he might be tempted. In fact, he
was
tempted.

How could this red-haired woman who knew nothing about winemaking, wearing only a bathrobe, be a threat to him or his family? She couldn’t possibly be. She was as good as on her way home. He felt the guard he kept up around his heart and soul start slipping away. And why not? How threatening an adversary could she be? None at all.

So he stayed for dinner. And allowed himself to look at her between bites of the food, which looked delicious and probably was, but he didn’t seem to be able to appreciate it the way he might have if she’d been a plain fifty-year-old spinster, which is what he’d hoped for when he’d heard about her inheritance.

It was late. He was hungry. The veal was tender and the sauce appeared to be exceptional. At the family home the talk would be all about the harvest which could be repetitive after a while. Truthfully, he hadn’t seen much of his family in a long time. For one thing, his sisters always had some unmarried woman friend they wanted him to meet. He’d explained over and over why he wasn’t interested, but they kept trying. Then he disagreed with them about the same issues, which they rehashed over and over. They just couldn’t understand why his working so hard now was his way of making up for his past mistakes, so he gave up trying to explain and just tried to keep to himself. Having someone new in town, even someone he didn’t want there but who needed his help, was like an unexpected shot in the arm.

Here was a woman who knew virtually nothing about wine, his family or their problems. He felt as though he’d been dropped down into a little part of America. He felt stimulated and refreshed and challenged for the first time in months. What had happened? Was it just her?

He saw no harm in having dinner with her. All he had to do was play along with her plans for a few days, a week or two at most. He’d even help her pick her grapes and make her wine. When she realized how hard it was and that it wasn’t going to work, she wouldn’t blame him, she couldn’t. She’d just accept the fact she wasn’t cut out to be a vintner, sell him the property and go home where she belonged. No hard feelings.

“I’m not sure how this happened,” she said, indicating the food on the plates at the table.

“Did you order dinner in your room?”

“Yes, but just for me. I had no idea…”

He shrugged. “I stopped at the desk and asked for your room, maybe they thought…”

“I see,” she said. But she looked confused. Maybe she thought he’d told them to make it dinner for two. If he’d known her skin was glowing, her toenails were painted pink and she was fresh from her bath and smelling like a fragrant essence of sweet-smelling herbs, he might have. What was the harm in dining with an attractive woman once in a while? No strings. No obligations. No anxious sisters asking him for a report:
Did he like Signorina X? Did he want to see her again? And if not, why not?
This was just dinner. A business dinner actually. It didn’t happen that often. Not to him. Not anymore. Not since Magdalena.

“The food here is quite good,” he said. As if that was a good enough excuse for him to stay. “Why would you want to move to the Azienda? No hot baths, no bathrobes. No sauces.” He allowed himself still another frank yet leisurely look at the shapely body across the table from him.

“I told you—it’s my home and I intend to live there. I didn’t come here to stay in a hotel, however comfortable it is.”

“Your home isn’t quite set up for cooking either.” That was the understatement of the year.

She looked around. “I’ll miss the comforts here, but I don’t need them. I want to live like the natives do. I believe there’s a fire pit outside near my pond. I’ll have picnics and cook over an open fire.”

“Speaking of the natives, my grandmother is very grateful to you. She told me that you chased her peaches down the street for her. She didn’t get a chance to thank you properly so she wants you to come to dinner at the house tomorrow night.”

“Does she know who I am?”

“I told her.” He paused. “You said you wanted to meet the neighbors. Here’s your chance. Are you coming or not?”

“Well, I…yes, sure. Please thank her for me.”

She poured more wine into her glass and then his. All of a sudden she’d become the hostess. Just as she had earlier today at the Azienda. He could have sworn a few minutes ago she’d wanted nothing more than to get rid of him. She probably still did, but now she was being polite.

“You said there was a long story behind your losing the Azienda,” she asked. “What is it?”

I
SABEL
knew he probably wouldn’t answer her question no matter how many glasses of wine he drank. After a lifetime in Sicily he was probably able to drink wine all night and still keep a cool head. But she thought it was worth a try. Something must have happened. Something important enough that he didn’t want to talk about it.

He probably thought it was none of her business. Maybe he was right. On the other hand, since she was going to live there on the property, with him as her neighbor, she wanted to know. He lifted his glass and considered the wine as a connoisseur would do. Or was he considering spilling the whole story? She held her breath. She waited. He still said nothing.

Finally he drained his glass and set it on the table. “It’s not a very interesting story. But since you asked, here it is. Two years ago, I was engaged to a woman. It was, how do you say? A whirlwind time. We traveled from one end of the island to the other. Magdalena was Miss Sicily and she had appearances to make. Festivals to attend. We were wined and dined everywhere, Magdalena was treated like royalty, which she enjoyed and the truth of the matter is I forgot about work. Forgot about making wine. Forgot about checking the vines and following the weather forecast. Which meant I neglected the vineyards
just when they needed my help most—during a drought and an infestation of fungus which attacked the plants.”

He stopped suddenly. “I’m talking too much. Making excuses for myself. Trying to explain when there is no explanation and no excuse. The rest of the family were working round the clock trying to save the harvest, but I was gone enjoying myself. I let myself be distracted just when I shouldn’t have. The result was a near disaster. A blight. The workers hadn’t been paid. We had to raise money and quickly. We sold the Azienda to your uncle. All I can say is I regret the whole affair. I regret everything about it. And I assure you it won’t happen again.” He said the words with so much finality, she had no doubt he meant them.

He stood abruptly and looked down at her. “There you have it. I’ve talked too much and I hope I haven’t bored you. Now I must go. It’s late and you have a big day ahead of you.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” she said, while a million questions came to mind. What did he mean
it won’t happen again?
Was he referring to the sale of the land or to getting engaged? What happened to the beauty queen Magdalena? Where was she now? Who broke it off and why?

She stifled the urge to ask these questions. He’d already said more than he’d intended. Instead she said, “It’s the first day of my new life as a winemaker. And, by the way, if you ever want to swim in my pond, feel free. Because there are no water snakes in Sicily.”

“Is that right?” he asked. A flash of something that might have been recognition of her knowledge of flora and fauna flickered in his eyes.

She stood and reached into the pocket of her robe for the book she’d been reading and opened it and read, “‘Sicily’s only poisonous snake, the viper, can be found in the forests and flatland in the south of the island.’ As far as I know this is not the south of the island and the viper can’t swim.”

“I never said I was a herpetologist. I’m a vintner. I was trying to warn you about possible poisonous reptiles. For your own good,” he said.

For her own good! She doubted that very much. She brushed past him and held the door open.

“Good luck,” he said. Then he stood in the doorway, one arm braced against the door frame. He looked at her with a gleam in his eye as though he was about to say or do something, so she waited. And waited. The tension rose. Her cheeks were burning. The temperature in the room must have gone up ten degrees. His gaze held hers and she couldn’t look away. All the breath had left her lungs. She couldn’t stand there much longer. She had the strangest feeling he was going to do something rash like kiss her. But that was ridiculous. He didn’t even like her. Finally after an eternity he seemed to switch gears, change his mind and the gleam in his eye disappeared.

“Thanks for dinner,” he said briskly. Then he was gone.

Isabel closed the door and staggered backward. What was wrong with him? What was wrong with her, imagining him kissing her? Maybe it was a Sicilian custom, after dinner you kissed the hostess. Or at least thought about it. It would have meant nothing if he had kissed her. But he hadn’t. She was not disappointed. She was relieved.

The next day she needed all the luck she could get and she didn’t get much. First she went to the bank, but it wasn’t open yet, so she proceeded straight to the Azienda. There, the foreman, whom Dario had assured her was the best in the business, was emerging from the wine cellar, and she suspected that he might have been sampling her vintage collection. At least he was cheerful which was more than she could say for the crew who all looked so glum she thought they must have just lost their best friend.

If only she could talk to them, but whenever she practiced her Italian on them, they just looked at her with a blank expression on their faces. Even without a common language she understood that the old trailer they found in the barn had a flat tire and without it they had no way of loading the grapes as they picked them.

The men handed her the tire and it was obvious they expected her to fix it. Or have it fixed. Fortunately she’d paid attention when Dario changed her tire, knowing he wouldn’t always be around, and knowing she was too proud to impose on him again. She located an old spare tire in the barn then took the tools from the trunk of the car and after enlisting one of the workers to help her hold the tire in place, she actually replaced the old tire.

She might have imagined it, but she thought the workers looked impressed. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that she’d done it herself. She needed supplies in town so she got in her car and headed down the hill, a feeling of pride swelling inside her.

But that feeling didn’t last. One backward glance told her the men were glad for the lack of work. They were standing in her driveway, some leaning against trees, others lying on the ground as if they’d already had a hard day. They wouldn’t mind if she never came back as long as they got paid at the end of the day, which would be difficult without a trip to the bank.

She remembered what Dario had said about keeping an eye on them or they’d take advantage of her, but what could she do? She was only one person, one person who had way too much to do and no real knowledge of how to do it.

In the small gas station she asked the owner for a tank of propane and a container of diesel oil. She was pacing up and down in front of the station as she waited when Dario drove by in his convertible. He pulled over and took off his sunglasses.

“Everything going well?” he asked. He must be working, but he looked as though for him it was just another day in paradise, and he didn’t have a care in the world. Maybe some day she’d have the same calm, cool attitude, the same confidence, but right now she was frazzled, worried and nervous. And seeing him like this, all she could think about was his almost kissing her last night, even though he hadn’t, and she knew it would have meant nothing if he had.

“Fine,” she said briskly. Never show anxiety. Always project confidence. Never trust or rely on anyone but yourself. Lessons she’d learned early on. “Except for a few glitches.”

“Glitches?”

“Problems.” Sometimes she forgot he didn’t know every American slang word. “Like the trailer had a flat tire.”

“And…?”

“I found another and I changed it myself.”

She bit back a little smile at the way his eyebrows shot up in surprise. He hadn’t thought she could do it.

“I watched you, remember?” she reminded him.

“Good for you. You’re a fast learner.”

She blinked. Was that another compliment?

“The men all show up?” he asked.

“Yes, but they have nothing to do while I’m here doing errands.”

“Nothing? What about picking the grapes and putting them into baskets?”

She gritted her teeth together. Why didn’t she think of that? Because she didn’t know there were baskets. She’d changed a tire, but there was more to be done. Much, much more.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “That’s what they’re doing.” She didn’t think they were doing anything, but she didn’t want to tell Dario that. Didn’t want him to think she had a problem in the world that she couldn’t solve. Didn’t want him to think
she couldn’t manage her hired help by herself. Or at least command respect.

“I’ll stop by and see what’s happening,” he said.

“You don’t need to go up there. I have everything under control.” She didn’t want him acting as if he had the right to take over her job. It was her place and if she needed help, she’d rather get it from someone else. Someone neutral who didn’t have something to gain when she failed.

“I’m going to the bank, then I’ll head back up the mountain,” she added.

“You haven’t done that yet?”

What did he think she was, a robot?

“I did go, but they weren’t open yet.”

He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe how stupid she was not to know the banking hours of a small-town bank in a strange country. She’d like to see him in America, challenged by the language, hiring a crew, moving into a house that needed repairs and starting a new business. That would be a very satisfying scenario—to watch him struggle with something…anything. Just a dent in his self-assurance—which bordered on arrogance—would improve her disposition. Just to know she wasn’t the only one who made mistakes.

“While you’re in town, you might want to negotiate with the company to turn the power back on, if you want electricity, that is. If you do, you’ll need to run a wire from the nearest line. And pick up a tank of propane so you can use your stove.”

“I’m just waiting for it now.”

If he wanted to overwhelm and confuse her and make her think she couldn’t handle it, he was not going to succeed. Because she could and she would. The main thing was to let him know she was on top of everything.

“I don’t need electricity just yet. I’ll get some candles and I’m sure I’ll be fine without lights for a while,” she said loftily.

“And will you be fine without running water? You’ll need diesel oil for the engine that pumps water to the tank from the well.”

“Of course I know about diesel oil,” she said, waving a hand at the pump. “I’m getting some here.”

She had planned to skip the problem of running water because she’d buy a case of mineral water, but if he found out it would shout “spoiled American heiress” to him. She did want to live off the land if possible. “And I know I’ll need electricity eventually.”

“Only if you’re really planning on living there.”

“Oh, I am.”

Some day she’d have everything under control just as he did. She’d have water and power and a roof without a hole in it. She’d be making prize-winning wine. She’d have friends and neighbors over to wonderful dinners cooked on her propane-fired stove. She’d invite local people who actually liked her and didn’t resent her presence. And she’d smile at people instead of glaring at them, and she would refrain from telling them what to do. In other words she’d be the opposite of Dario Montessori.

He looked at her as if he knew what she was thinking, as if he knew she was dreaming a dream that would never come true. As if he knew she was going to fail and he’d be there to pick up the pieces. She tried to come up with a matching self-satisfied look, but she didn’t have it in her. Not now.

The mechanic came out with her gasoline and propane and when she turned around Dario was gone. Then she headed to the bank. No problem there. They were open and glad to receive her money and open an account. It was a different story at the power company which was located above the bank in a small dusty office. There they didn’t speak English and quoted what seemed an enormous amount of money.
Maybe they didn’t understand. All she wanted was a new connection or the old one repaired. They brought out several file folders with her uncle’s name on them and had a long discussion in Italian.

Then they shook their heads. Maybe they’d come through. Or maybe she’d have to come back again. In the meantime she’d use bottled water and candles and propane. Her ancestors didn’t have electricity and they survived. Of course, she wanted to do more than survive. She wanted to make a fine dessert wine and become part of this community. She wanted to be independent but not lonely. Would all these wishes come true? Or were they just impossible dreams?

When she got back to the Azienda, the workers were strolling leisurely up and down the rows of vines picking grapes and tossing them into baskets. That much they’d done on their own. But if they had to work this slowly it would take weeks to get her grapes picked. She consulted her dictionary and tried out a few commands, indicating that she needed them to work faster and harder.

When she lifted the heavy cylinder of propane out of the trunk of her car, suddenly one of the workmen appeared. They might not respect her, they might not understand her every word, but in Sicily chivalry was not dead yet. She pointed to the house, and he carried the tank to the kitchen where he left it next to the stove, which still tilted to one side. She motioned to the worker to lift up one corner of the cast-iron stove and she stuffed a piece of wood under the leg. It was now level and he left.

Now what? She studied a diagram on the side of the tank. Then she carefully attached the hose from the back of the stove to the cylinder. A picture of a valve with arrows showed her how to turn it on—and presto. She held the sparker to jets and they sent out blue flames. She jumped back from the stove, just in case.

It was magic. She had gas. She stood staring at the gas jets, smiling to herself as if she’d performed a miracle. She had. She could cook now. She could do anything.

She turned off the gas and went back outside, where she grabbed a basket and a knife and started picking along with the workers, hoping to set an example of speed. She set an example all right. She cut her finger and had to open one of her precious bottles of water to wash the cut. At noon the men all stopped working and pulled out huge hunks of bread, wedges of cheese, bottles of wine and slices of meat. They sat under a tall oak tree and spread out their food as if they were picnickers having a day in the country. Isabel hadn’t thought to pack a lunch or buy any food. She had a working stove but no food to cook on it.