Chasing Venus (53 page)

I’m trying to decide whether I, as an official personage in
this event, should take action to prevent Sally Anne’s wedding guests from
suffocating when the bride herself rears up from the Rolls.

“Stop the music!” she yowls.
 
“And stop the goddamn fog machine!”

Good!
—I
think.
 
Sally Anne’s taking
charge.
 
I’m surprised Frank isn’t.

I toss aside my bouquet and help Sally Anne eject herself
from the Rolls, no easy task given her heft, her bridal gown’s voluminous
sateen, and the fact that neither one of us can see more than two inches in
front of her face.

But lack of visibility doesn’t prevent Sally Anne from
stomping up the aisle once she’s cleared the vehicle.
 
“Where the hell is my wedding
consultant?” she hollers.
 
“And
what’s she using for brains?
 
We
could all choke to death in here!”

I watch Frank emerge from the fog, waving his arms in front
of him as if he’s cutting a swath through the stuff.
 
He tries to calm Sally Anne by taking
hold of her arms but she’ll have none of it.

“I was promised perfection and this sure as
shootin
’ isn’t it!”
 
Sally Anne pushes past Frank to go further up the aisle.
 
I’m right behind her.
 
I am her bridesmaid after all, and my
duty is to serve.

I would say that the main goal has been achieved.
 
Someone did turn off the fog machine and
the air is starting to clear.
 
I
can—sort of—see again.

Sally Anne is about to accost the reverend when she trips
over something on the carpet.
 
I
squint a few seconds and then realize that a man—in fact, the
best
man—is sprawled there, face
down.

“Just what I need!” Sally Anne yells down at him.
 
“What did you do last night, Danny, go
on a bender?”

“Sally Anne!”
 
I
grab her arm to pull her back.
 
“Maybe he fainted because he couldn’t breathe.”

I kneel down and gently roll Danny over.
 
It rapidly becomes clear that he may not
be breathing but it’s not because he fainted.
 
The bloodstain blooming on his chest is
my first clue that it wasn’t pink smoke that did in Danny Richter.

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MS AMERICA AND THE VILLAINY IN
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MS AMERICA AND THE VILLAINY IN
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Continue reading for
an excerpt from Diana’s novel
Too Close
to the Sun
, a selection of the Doubleday Book Club that Romance Reviews
Today called “an absolute must-buy for everyone.”

TOO CLOSE TO
THE SUN

“This is one of those
books that you don’t want to put down …” Romantic Times

A once-in-a-lifetime romance that blossoms beneath Napa
Valley’s sizzling sun …

Winemaker Gabby DeLuca is back from Italy, nursing a broken
heart and doing her best to create wonderful vintages she can be proud of. Then
hotshot financier Will Henley appears on the scene, prowling for an
acquisition. Will could be big trouble—for
Gabby’s
heart as well as her winery. Or his ingenious proposition might just prove to
be the best deal of both their lives.

REVIEWS:
“Wit, charm,
and undeniable chemistry drive the red-hot romance between Gabby and Will … Ms.
Dempsey delivers another compelling story which is sure to solidify her place
as one of today’s hottest authors!” Melissa Fowler, The Romance Readers
Connection

Chapter
1

Gabriella DeLuca stood alone at dawn among the grapevines.
To her east, beyond a stand of towering oak and eucalyptus, the sun poked above
Napa's Howell Mountains, struggling to banish the fog that on this June morning
hung heavy on the valley floor. Within hours the sun would win the battle, bathing
the earth in hot light and pushing the grapes, olives, and walnuts toward
harvest.

She stared at the small blaze she'd carefully set beside the
steepest hillside vineyard owned by her employer,
Suncrest
Vineyards. In one hand she clutched a photo, in the other a bouquet of
long-stemmed red roses Vittorio had given her, in another country, in another
life. The roses were dry now with age, and brittle to the touch. Without
allowing herself another thought—for already she had given this thought
enough—she tossed the desiccated blooms into the fire.

Whoosh!
The flames
shot high into the air as they greedily consumed their prize. Gabby watched the
last petals fall into ash.

"Vittorio
Mantucci
," she
whispered, "
arrivederci
…"
She closed her eyes, mentally saying good-bye to the only man she had ever
loved. Whom she'd also lost, unfortunately, meaning she had a grim record of
oh-for-one in the
amore
department.
But this morning—one year to the day after Vittorio had pulled the heart
out of her chest and stomped on it with his Gucci loafer—wasn't about
heartache or fury or regret. The last 364 had been about those. This morning
was about ending it, for now and forever.

Gabby lowered her gaze to the glossy five-by-seven
Kodachrome
in her left hand. It showed her and the former
love of her life in brilliant Chianti sunshine, grinning idiotically, him dark
and gorgeous, her blond and unbelievably happy, vineyards and olive trees and
promise all around them.

She remembered that day clearly. They had had a picnic. They
had sparred over the relative merits of Tuscany versus Lombardy, never agreeing
whether his family province won out over her ancestral home. They had made
hasty but wonderful love on a gingham blanket, then thrown on their clothes so
Vittorio could snap a photo, setting his self-timed camera on a tree stump
before scampering back toward her to get in place on time.

It took great force of will for Gabby to toss the photo on
the conflagration. But toss it she did—then she watched it disappear,
edges first, till finally Vittorio's face caved in on itself and melted away.
She stared at the space where it had been for some time, then threw in a whole
packet of photos. Those took longer to be annihilated but eventually they were.
That seemed to prove something.

"How's that for an Italian exorcism?" she
murmured, then had to laugh, choking on her tears, both regretting the past and
not regretting it, wondering if ever again she could think the name Vittorio
Mantucci
without a fresh gash in her heart.

So she'd traded Italy's wine country for California's.
Tuscany for Napa Valley. Not such a bad deal, really. It was home, she loved
it, her whole family was nearby. What did she have to complain about? And she'd
traded Vittorio for—who?
Someone
wonderful
, she told herself. Someone American like her, who she'd
understand through and through. Someone who'd stick by her even if everybody in
his family howled objections.

Or—and this poked a hole rather quickly in her
romantic bravado—maybe she'd traded Vittorio for nobody.

Oh, and don't forget. She hadn't traded Vittorio. He'd
traded
her
.

Gabby flopped down onto the vineyard dirt and eyed what
remained of her exorcism stash. All of it reminded her in one way or another of
her three years interning for the
Mantucci
family winery.
There was the one-pound box of fettuccine, Vittorio's most admired noodle, and
a box of wine. Yes, a box of wine, because Gabby knew there was no greater
insult to her former lover's memory than wine so cheap it was packaged like
fruit punch.

She was just feeding a fistful of fettuccine into the fire
when she heard a shocked male voice call out behind her.

"Gabby, what in God's name are you doing?"

It was Felix Rodriguez. He walked toward her, a heavyset
mustachioed man who'd been vineyard manager at
Suncrest
as long as her father had been winemaker, meaning ever since Gabby was five
years old. Like her, Felix wore jeans and work boots. Unlike her, he sported a
helmet similar to the kind coal miners wear, with a sort of flashlight mounted
on the forehead. Perfect for keeping one's hands free while traipsing around
vineyards. To put out rogue fires, for example.

"It's not in God's name, Felix," Gabby told him.
"It's in Vittorio
Mantucci's
."

Felix's eyes flew open at the accursed name, which all DeLucas,
and Felix by extension, were banned from uttering. Then he looked at her stash,
and his eyes widened further. "You're barbecuing spaghetti?"

"It's pasta, Felix, pasta. And I'm not barbecuing it.
I'm just burning it." She sighed. This was a hard ritual to explain.

No doubt Felix would lump in this lunacy with her other
inexplicable behavior. Like renting a house far up-valley and a difficult
half-mile drive up an unlit, unpaved road. It screamed isolation, and she knew
what everybody thought about that.
She
wants to be alone because of that Italian boy who broke her heart
. The
heads shook; the tongues clucked. Sometimes it seemed that the old families
like hers majored in grapes and minored in gossip.
She should have known he'd marry one of his own
.

She sort of had known, but had ignored it. And she rented
the house not only because nobody lived nearby but also because it allowed her
to live right next to vineyards. Which unlike Italian lovers had a certain
predictable, soothing rhythm to them.

Felix harrumphed. "You shouldn't have come in so early
today. You should be home sleeping so you're not tired for Mrs. Winsted's party
tonight."

"God, Felix, don't remind me." She tossed in the
rest of the fettuccine, box and all. "Why anyone would celebrate Max
Winsted coming back to Napa Valley is beyond me."

"She's his mother."

"All I can say is, Ava Winsted proves that a mother's
love is blind." It wasn't often that Mrs. W drove Gabby crazy, but she was
doing so now. Hand over
Suncrest
to that nincompoop
son of hers? "What is she thinking, Felix? He's going to kill this place.
He's going to come in here and run it in whatever asinine way he wants to and
he's going to kill it."

Felix wouldn't respond to that. He would keep his mouth shut
and his head down and not risk his job, which was probably what Gabby should
do, too.

She shook her head. That was the problem with working for a
family-owned winery. If the family ran out of sensible people to run the place,
the winery got screwed. And all the employees along with it.

"Maybe Max learned something in France," Felix
offered.

"All Max Winsted learned in France is how to say
'
Voulez-vous
coucher
avec
moi
ce
soir
?
' in three different
levels of politeness," she shot back. But Felix didn't seem to get the
reference.

Gabby poked a stick at her fire. It was all so frustrating.
And scary. She'd come back to California to pick up the threads of her life,
grow into the winemaker she knew she could be, maybe even recover enough to
love again. After losing Vittorio, all she wanted was the bulwark stability of
her family and of
Suncrest
, both steady, unchanging,
the Rocks of Gibraltar of her emotional landscape. The DeLucas were fine, thank
God, but the winery? With Max Winsted taking over, all bets were off.

She'd known him since she was five years old and he was a
newborn, and pretty much from the day he was out of diapers he was a jerk. He
got more smug and self-satisfied every year. And the biggest irony of all was
that even though he was born to
Suncrest
and the
employees only worked there, sometimes she wondered if he loved it as much as
they did.

He sure didn't act like it.

Gabby felt Felix's eyes on her, and she forced a smile.
"I'm sorry, Felix, I shouldn't be so negative." She knew she
shouldn't, since as assistant winemaker she was fairly high up the management
ranks and should be rallying the other employees around their new boss.
"It's just hard for me to imagine working for that . . . buffoon."

He stifled a smile, then his face turned somber. "I
know you love this place, Gabby."

She stared at him. "You do, too, Felix."

He sighed, his eyes skidding to the fire. "We all
do."

A wind came through, riffling the flames. Gabby shivered,
half wishing the sun would halt its rise, the day would never dawn, the
homecoming party would never happen. But she'd learned the hard way that
wishing didn't always make things so.

***

Will Henley Jr. was proud of himself. He'd positively
blasted through his morning ritual. Once the alarm at his San Francisco bedside
blared at the usual 4:30 AM, he did a killer half hour on the rowing
machine—a holdover from his years as stroke for Dartmouth's lightweight
crew—then noted the workout's intensity and duration on a chart. He
scarfed a few bowls of whole-grain cereal, showered, shaved, and selected a
pin-striped suit and lightly starched French-cuff dress shirt from his custom
collection. Then he sped his silver BMW Z8 the two fog-bound miles from his
Pacific Heights Victorian to his corner office in a refurbished redbrick
warehouse on the Embarcadero.