Crush on You (34 page)

The colors were pretty, the smell of the food divine, but her stomach still couldn’t handle a bite. So she toyed with her fork and watched him chew and swallow.

“Oh,” he groaned. “You should have said. You should have said this is really, really good.”

“Yeah?” She smiled at him.

He smiled back and his hand reached across the table so his forefinger could brush her cheek. “There it is. Your dimple’s been AWOL since I showed up.”

It dug again into her cheek and a flush of warmth rolled over her skin. “You compliment my cooking, you get my best smile. Of the three of us, I’m the only Baci sister who likes to spend time in the kitchen. Papa taught me that recipe himself.”

“Daddy’s girl, huh?”

“Oh, yeah.” She twirled her fork in the spaghetti. “My mom died when I was twelve, so I turned to my father. He took me into the kitchen and into the vines, anyplace where he could pass along his loves: for food, for the land, for the magical wine we produce.” Oh, God, was she laying it on too thick, what with her cooking abilities and then the pitch for the family business?

Glancing up, she noticed he was working his way through his plate. Soon he’d be finished and she’d
have
to get down to it.

Nerves had her babbling again. “Did I tell you what happened here during Prohibition?”

He shook his head.

“Well, of course it was illegal to make and sell alcohol, so my family planted and grew plums, pears, and apples amongst the vines. Still, some whispered that you could come to the back door of the winery and take home a jug or two.” This was part his history, too, though she didn’t think he considered himself a Napa Bennett . . . not yet.

“Was it true?”

She could see her father telling the story, his barrel chest, his expansive gesture, the twinkle in his eyes. “One year, federal agents raided the winery and dumped thousands of gallons of wine into the creek. It was a popular spot, the night the water ran red.”

“What? Did everyone come out with their ladles and soup pots?”

She shrugged. “That’s the first half of the story, that the red wine was dispatched into the creek. However, even then the Bacis were experimenting with a sparkling white, and it’s said that the daughter of the federal agent in charge of the raid was getting married in San Francisco the very next weekend. Rumor has it that the reception was a riproaring—and very bubbly—party.”

“Weddings even then,” Penn murmured.

“Even then.” She blotted her palms on her napkin again. “Did you know that my great-grandfather married a woman after only three arranged dates? She was the sister of one of the restaurateurs to whom he delivered Baci wine.”

“That doesn’t sound very romantic.”

“There’s all kinds of reasons for two people to get married.”

“Or not get married,” Penn added.

She cursed herself, because of course his mind would lead him to his mother and the philandering Calvin Bennett. “Yes, well . . . It’s really a very modern idea that people marry for love, you know. Dynastic reasons, reasons that involved land and power were much more common for most of history.”

“ ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ ”

She stared at him. “Did you just quote Austen?”

“In one of last season’s episodes, there was a fourteen-year-old in the family whose home we remodeled,” he said, shrugging. “Austen addict, that kid. The designer planned stenciling that line across the wall above her door, and then she sprained her ankle, so it was me up on that ladder.”

She continued staring at him, and in the center of her chest, the coal-lump that was her heart cracked, leaking something foreign and warm. He’d quoted Austen!

“Episode seven,” he said helpfully. “One of our most popular.”

She couldn’t look away from him. Blindly, she groped on the ground by her feet, finding the bottle of wine. “I . . . uh . . . I’ll have to look for it.” She managed to pull the 2006 Bella Amore
blanc de blancs
from its pouch and remove the cage over the cork, all while still keeping it out of sight. Then she was frozen again.

Penn noticed. He set down his fork. “Alessandra?”

“This is hard. Awkward.” She laughed but the sound held the sharp edge of her nerves. “Maybe even exciting.”

“Exciting?” He gave her a teasing smile. “Is this about some other little toy you picked up at a bachelorette party?”

“No!” Her face burned. “But that part . . . that part’s good, right? Between us, that part’s good.”

He stilled. “I’ll never forget holding you in my arms.”

“We can make more memories,” she offered, heat waving over her again. “I mean, it doesn’t have to end like this. It doesn’t have to end at all.”

Penn’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

With a breath, she lifted the wine bottle to the table. “This, this is the wedding wine,” she told him. She sneaked a glance back at the cottage. They still had privacy. The signal was when she let the cork fly. “We could serve it on Saturday.”

“Serve it where?”

Now or never. Sink or swim. Die or fly. “At our wedding.” She reached across the table to grab his hand. “What do you say, Penn? Will you marry me?”

The blank expression on his face rattled her. Had he lost his hearing? Had she not said it right? Was the sex not as good as she thought?

He continued staring at her, his hand frozen beneath hers.

“P-Penn?” She held her breath, willing him to agree. This was the only plan she’d come up with to save the winery. “Say yes.”

His hand withdrew from hers. He leaned back in his chair, his arms folding over his chest. The laugh he released was short and distinctly unamused. “What sort of joke is this?”

Nearby, tires ran over gravel and Penn whipped his head toward the sound, relieved to see a vehicle was leaving the winery, not arriving. The last thing he wanted was to have witnesses to this ridiculous conversation.

“Alessandra, who put you up to this gag?”

“I . . .” She glanced over her shoulder, suddenly looking as jumpy as he felt.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, half-rising.

“No, no!” Sounding alarmed, she gestured him back to his seat. “I just thought . . . We get along so well together.”

“Yeah,” he scoffed, starting to wonder if she’d been tasting wines all morning. “So well that we’ve had to keep our ‘relationship,’ such as it is, a secret.”

“That could change,” she said quickly.

He laughed again, then looked around him. “This
is
a joke. Liam and Seth don’t seem the types, particularly Liam, but are the Bennett brothers out to punk me?”

“
You’re
a Bennett brother.” She went all Vanna White on him and made a graceful gesture toward the rolling rows of vineyard surrounding them. “This is part of your legacy, too.”

The view distracted him for a moment. So different than L.A., with its golden beaches and rockier, taller mountains. There, the valleys were filled with houses and malls. And though it had rural spaces, too, where flowers and strawberries and peppers grew, they weren’t like these verdant acres. Maybe it was the way the vines stretched to embrace each other or perhaps it was the close boundaries of the mountains, but it all felt so personal here. Intimate. Where families committed to each other and to the land.

No wonder the bastard kid from a crappy apartment in downtown Burbank didn’t fit in.

“You like it,” Alessandra said. “You . . . you like me.”

His focus switched to the sexy little nun who was going to be so damn hard to forget. Yeah, he liked her. He liked how hard she worked to keep things going here at Tanti Baci. He liked her loyalty to her family and even, God help him, her devotion to Saint Tommy. A woman like that wouldn’t let you down.

But she couldn’t be
his
woman, because there was that aforementioned love of her life.

“So we could get married,” she said. Her hand ran up and down the neck of the wine bottle on the table between them. “It would be so easy.”

“Easy?” He shook his head, still not quite believing they were having this conversation. “You think marriage—I don’t care who the couple might be—is easy? I didn’t have a father, but even I know marriage can’t be called that.”

“Not the marriage,” she corrected. “The wedding. I’ve already done everything. We’re all set for Saturday. You invite your brothers, I’ll tell my sisters, we can both ask anyone else we want. The famous Penn Bennett and me, the Nun of Napa.”

He blinked. “I thought you didn’t think I was famous.”

Her thumb caressed the neck of the wine bottle. “I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” She leaned forward. “Look, just think of the
Wedding Fever
piece . . . think of the story Roger can tell with it when we’re the bride and groom.”

He stared at her. “You’re serious?” He’d really been thinking this was some sort of odd good-bye gag on her part, but there was an intensity to her expression that wasn’t the least bit funny. “Jesus. You’re serious.”

“Of course I’m serious.” A smile turned up that luscious doll mouth of hers. “Maybe we could go to a nearby B and B for our honeymoon—Roger might be interested in filming that, too.”

A honeymoon? His mind was reeling with all the implications of what she was saying, but that last word slowed his brain, nearly stopped it. Honeymoon. It spread out like a banquet in his head. White sheets, golden skin, the flavor of her juicy mouth and the juicier center he found between her legs. No more stifled sneezes for his Alessandra. He knew how to get her mindless with passion. He knew how to unleash the bad girl that shivered and cried and came in his arms.

Afterward, he’d slide down the sheets and soothe her aftershocks by sucking on her breasts, tender and soft, until her hands would cup his head against her and she’d whisper, “I love you, Penn Bennett. I love you.”

Then his brain started working again.

The fantasy shattered.

It was all clear to Penn now.

“This is part of a PR plan?” he asked, anger crawling up his back. “You think I’d get myself hitched as part of your plot to save the winery?”

She winced. “ ‘Plot’ sounds a bit harsh, don’t you think? As for hitched . . . really, Penn, did you see yourself as single for the rest of your life?”

Well, fuck yeah, he did. The woman he wanted was out of his reach. He didn’t think he’d find another, and frankly, falling in love had not much to recommend it.

Anger morphed to an ugly monkey, now digging into his shoulder. “Why did you think I’d go along with this?” he asked, his voice harsh. There was a ringing in his ears, claws digging into his flesh, shame burning outward from his chest, to leave a smoking hole over his heart. “What could possibly have convinced you that I’d agree to your plan?”

She swallowed. Her exotic eyes blinked, lashes falling up and down rapidly. “I . . .” She worried that wine bottle again, running her thumb to the cork and then back down again. “I . . .”

She’d heard him that night in her bed. He knew that now. They’d never mentioned it, and he’d hoped like hell she thought it was just one of those things that men said when they’d gotten their rocks off—and felt guilty for the thought, as a matter of fact. But now he didn’t feel guilty, he just felt pissed.

Humiliated, like when Lana had cleaned him out.

Enraged, like when he’d discovered that he and his mother had existed in near poverty for years when his father, Calvin Bennett, had been livin’ large four hundred miles away.

He shoved his hand through his hair. How had it come to this? There were women who’d come through his life. Dozens, right? Models, supermodels, actresses, designers, the barista at his local coffee shop. And he had to pull a dumbass move of falling in love with the one woman who represented the life he hadn’t lived and the love he’d never have.

“Why?” he demanded again. “I’m asking you why you thought I’d say yes?”

“Because . . .” Her thumb circled the cork of the wine bottle, a nervous gesture. “Because, uh . . . Because you’re nice.”

“
What
?”

His roar caused her thumb to twitch. The cork flew from the
blanc de blancs
, arcing into the overhanging branches of the oak.

Penn barely noticed. Nice? “
Nice
?” Though focused on her face, he was aware of people bursting out of the cottage. Camera people. Sound people. All gathering around them.

“Think about all the things you do, Penn,” Alessandra said, her expression earnest. “You go out of your way for people. Even Lana. I know she stole from you, that you feel humiliated that you didn’t read her right, and then she ripped you off . . .”