Unmasking Juliet (3 page)

She couldn’t think about that now. Things were already awkward enough. “George, I’m sorry.”

His expression remained unchanged. “Sorry? I don’t understand.”

“I can’t.”

“You can’t?” His brow furrowed as realization began to set in. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t marry you. I’m fond of you. You know that, but I don’t think this is the best idea for us.”

God, this was difficult. The look of bewilderment in his eyes was almost too much to bear. If he’d uttered a single word about love, her resistance might have faltered.

He hadn’t. There’d been Dom Pérignon. There’d been a diamond. But there’d been no mention of love.

“So your answer is no?”

She cleared her throat. “I’m afraid so.”

He snapped the jewelry box closed and leaned back in his seat. The confusion in his eyes had morphed into something darker, more dangerous. At last, an inkling of passion. The irony of the situation was hard to ignore. “Not the
best idea?
I’m afraid your mother doesn’t seem to agree.”

His words fell heavily between them.

The inside of the limo began to swirl around Juliet. “You discussed this with my mother? Why would you do that?”

She wasn’t some virgin ingenue to be sold off to the highest bidder. She was a grown woman, twenty-eight years old. Granted, her relationship with her parents might be a bit atypical due to the family business. Still, the idea of him asking her mother’s opinion on the matter rubbed her entirely the wrong way.

He shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I? Our marriage would affect your family’s business as well as mine. I talked about it with both your parents. They were in complete agreement, by the way.”

She imagined the three of them sitting around a conference table discussing her future.
Marriage? We concur. Children, negotiable. Love, optional.

Turning him down was becoming less and less difficult with each passing second. “That hardly seems appropriate. Shouldn’t something this personal be just between you and me?”

His laughter sounded condescending, and Juliet had the distinct feeling they were on the verge of their first argument. “That’s impossible. Our marriage is about more than the two of us.”

She wished he’d stop staying
our marriage.
There would be no marriage. The reasons why not were becoming even clearer.

George straightened his tie. “The foundation of our relationship is, and always has been...”

Love.

Juliet’s heart gave a little twinge. There was still a tiny part of her that wanted to believe he’d asked her to marry him because he was in love with her, and that someday she could love him, too.

“Business,” he finished, leaving no doubt in her mind exactly where she stood. “Imagine what joining Royal Gourmet with the Arabella Chocolate Boutique would accomplish. I urge you to reconsider.”

She shook her head. A single tear slipped down her cheek, leaving a hot trail of humiliation in its wake.

George’s gaze softened. He reached for her hand, pressed the tiny velvet box in her palm and wrapped her fingers closed around it. “Think about it. We’ll be happy together. I promise we will.”

Impossible.
Not after this.

How could she be happy living side by side with a man who’d chosen her as though she were a Royal Gourmet acquisition? Worse, she didn’t love him. And now she didn’t see how she ever could.

The intercom crackled overhead, breaking the tense silence in the car, which, despite its stretch proportions, had begun to feel far too small.

“Sir, we’ve arrived,” the driver announced.

“Thank you.” George buttoned his tuxedo jacket and checked the time on his wristwatch.

His ring was still clutched in Juliet’s fist, but when he looked up she felt as though she were invisible.

Had it always been this way? Had she really wasted the better part of a year wishing the two of them could have something that so obviously wasn’t there?

She’d never felt so foolish in her life. Even the time she’d mixed up the sugar with the salt in her first batch of chocolate kiss cookies as a teenager paled in comparison.

She gazed wistfully out the window of the limousine. The Manocchio Winery stretched out before her in endless rows of green tangled vines and rich, red earth. A border of tall sunflowers surrounded the vineyard, the wide faces of the blooms lifted toward the sky. At the forefront of it all stood a grand house, with a gabled roof that gave it a certain Old-World charm. Its creamy white exterior glowed almost amber in the light of the setting sun. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought the limo had carried her all the way to a Tuscan hillside.

At the entrance, a handful of people milled about—women in elegant ball gowns, dashing men in perfectly cut tuxedos. The guests looked especially stylish and otherworldly in their Venetian masks.

Beautiful,
she mused.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. A group of thugs who looked like extras from an episode of
The Sopranos?

A plague on the house of Mezzanotte!

Plague or not, she couldn’t wait to walk into that party. She’d rather be anywhere right now, doing anything, talking to anyone other than George. Even someone named Mezzanotte.

* * *

Leo Mezzanotte had been back in the United States for less than two hours following a twelve-year absence and had a case of jet lag the likes of which he’d never experienced. Even his dog, Sugar, was feeling the aftereffects of the long international flight. Her little white body was strewn across his lap in a lifeless heap.

Leo envied her unconscious state with every fiber of his being. His throat felt as though he’d just swallowed a mouthful of sand, and he had a killer headache. What he needed most was a long hot shower and a bed. Instead, he was dressed in a tuxedo, with a silver Lone Ranger-style mask strapped to his face.

Now that he thought about it, perhaps the mask had something to do with the pounding in his head. He peeled it off and tossed it on the tiny café table next to his glass of wine, an action that earned a disapproving glare from the man seated across from him. Sugar, on the other hand, didn’t so much as flinch.

“What are you doing? We’re at a masquerade ball.” Leo’s elderly uncle Joe pushed the mask back toward Leo with a shove of his shaky index finger. “Hence, the masks.”

“The guests have barely begun to arrive. I’ll put it back on before I get to the ballroom.” God, the ballroom. There would be music. Dancing. People.

Was it too late to find someone he could pay to wear his mask and take his place? Just for the next few hours, while he took a nap?

Uncle Joe frowned. “Don’t forget. This party is a tradition.”

So much for cloning himself. Leo knew better than to mess with tradition. Uncle Joe was Italian through and through, as old school as they came. Tradition and family were everything. Leo already had a few ideas for shaking things up with regard to the family business, starting with the chocolate shop itself. Things he knew that might be met with resistance if Uncle Joe’s reaction to his mention of
mendiants
was any indication.

“
Mendiants?
Why the hell would an Italian want to make something French?”

Leo would have to pick and choose his battles.

He’d wear the damned mask. He’d shake a few hands and schmooze with Uncle Joe’s friends. But he wasn’t about to give in on the
mendiants.
Or the chocolate hazelnut macarons. He hadn’t spent three years at Le Cordon Bleu and another five as an apprentice at La Maison du Chocolat to come back to California and dip cherries in melted chocolate all day. Or worse, sit in an office overseeing the mass production of candy bars.

“This night is most important. Everyone who’s anyone in the Napa food scene will be here. And I want them all to meet you, so they’ll know the torch has been passed. You’re the future of Mezzanotte Chocolates.” Uncle Joe flicked an imaginary speck of lint off the knee of his tuxedo trousers.

Leo stared at his wine and wished it would somehow transform into a vodka martini. Or maybe just plain vodka. He reached for his glass of Cabernet and took a generous sip. It was excellent. Full-bodied. Fruity. He may have left his soul in Paris, but he was still enough of a Californian to know that French wines had nothing on Napa’s finest. Of course, the first-rate Cab was a total waste at the moment. He could be drinking gasoline for all he cared.

You’re the future of Mezzanotte Chocolates.

There was a time when those words would have meant the world to Leo. That time had passed.

“It’s a shame your father didn’t live long enough to see this moment. He would have been so proud.” Uncle Joe smiled.

“Let’s try and avoid the topic of my father, shall we?” Leo took another gulp of wine and rested his hand on the gentle rise and fall of Sugar’s back.

“You’re going to be working in the kitchen where he worked for over fifty years. You can’t avoid his memory forever, now that you’ve finally come home.”

Home.

Leo didn’t feel as though he’d come home. He’d felt more at home in Paris. Specifically, in the modest, unfinished brick building in the third
arrondissement
where he’d planned to open his own
chocolaterie.

He wouldn’t be here, on the verge of a coma, if he’d just sucked it up and gone through with the wedding. Rose had been ready and willing to pledge him her heart along with her supersize bank account. He would have had more than enough cash to open his own shop. In Paris.

But in the end, he just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take advantage of a woman like that. He’d been known to bed a woman without being in love, but he drew the line at marrying one. Call him sentimental.

He’d sat Rose down after the invitations had been mailed out and told her she deserved better. Once he’d admitted he wasn’t in love with her, and never had been, she agreed. She’d been the one to propose, and he never should have let things get so out of hand.

So this is what he got for having a sentimental streak? A future of moving about in his father’s shadow?

He had no right to be dissatisfied with the turn of events. The worsening of Uncle Joe’s arthritis was rather fortuitous. He needed help with Mezzanotte Chocolates, and Leo needed a soft place to land. It wasn’t Paris, but it was home. More importantly, it was honest.

And honesty was key. He’d watched his father lie to his mother his entire childhood.

No, I didn’t bet on the game.

I don’t know where the money went. Honest.

In a way, marrying for money was its own form of gambling. And Leo couldn’t bring himself to repeat the past.

“The Arabellas will be seething with jealousy when they hear about you.” Uncle Joe’s lip curled in a triumphant sneer. He’d always had a certain flair for the dramatic.

Leo lifted a brow. “The Arabellas?”

“You know the Arabellas. Our archenemies, those evil swine.” There was that dramatic flair again.

“The name rings a bell.” Leo hadn’t heard the name Arabella in years. Not since he’d left for Europe at eighteen.

When he was a kid, he’d actually thought it was a curse word since it was usually uttered with revulsion. He could remember his parents talking—usually in raised voices—about their rivals, another Italian family-owned chocolate enterprise. He knew there was no love lost there. He’d just never known why. And he hadn’t realized the rivalry was still in full force.

“It should sound familiar. And it should stoke the fires of hatred deep in your gut every time you hear it.” Uncle Joe pounded his fist on the desk. The empty wineglass jumped a few inches.

“Consider my fires stoked,” Leo said dryly.

“This is no laughing matter, Leo. As a member of this family, you are required to despise the Arabellas to the same extent as the rest of us. The Arabellas are traitors of the very worst sort.”

“How so?”

“There was once a time when my mother, God rest her soul, was friends with an Arabella. The very best of friends. Way back before Mezzanotte Chocolates could be found in grocery stores, they owned the shop together.”

“Our chocolate shop?” This was news. The competing shops were now right across the street from one another, but Leo had never known they were once the same store.

“You could say that. It stood where our store stands today, but at the time it was known as Bellanotte Chocolates.”

Bellanotte.
Beautiful night.
It had a nice ring to it. “What happened?”

“That Arabella woman was a selfish snake. That’s what happened.” Uncle Joe wrinkled his nose.

“A selfish snake? In what way, exactly?”

“The shop was doing well. Very well. Like any smart businessperson, your grandmother saw an opportunity to expand it. She had visions of seeing Bellanotte Chocolates on grocery store shelves, right alongside names like Hershey and Mars.”

Leo could take a wild guess who had ended up winning that argument. “That’s where our chocolates are today, so I’m assuming Grandma got her way.”

“You might say that. She grew weary of trying to convince that Arabella snake to see reason, so she went ahead and made a deal with an industrialist who could really put the chocolates on the map. Then she handed over the Bellanotte recipe.”

“Without her partner’s consent?” Hell, it was like a bad soap opera.

“She was doing them both a favor. As a Mezzanotte, you should know that. Really, Leo. Why must you vex me so?”

Sugar opened one eye and growled.

Leo gave her a scratch behind the ears, and she fell back into a dead sleep. “Whether it was in the best interest of the business or not, they were partners. Surely you could see how that might cause some hard feelings.”

“Hard feelings?” Uncle Joe released a loud snort. “Your grandmother would have made that woman a millionaire. But before they saw a dime Sofia Arabella packed up her candy molds and opened up shop right across the street. Less than twenty feet away! The nerve. Then she proceeded to tell everyone in Napa what a sellout your grandmother was. She even claimed to put some weird voodoo hex on our entire family. It became a full-scale chocolate war.” Uncle Joe’s voice trailed off, and his expression grew pensive.