Revenge at Bella Terra (8 page)

Chloë
looked like hell. She wore some kind of green plaid flannel pants with an elastic waist and a green top. Her fluff-ball hair drooped. She was pale as death, and she glared through bloodshot eyes.
“What?”

He didn’t know where to start. “Is the maid from the resort not coming up to clean?”

“Once a week. She was here”—Chloë ruffled her hair—“yesterday, I think.”

He looked around.
The poor maid.
“Why are the blinds closed?”

“The view’s too good. It distracts me.” Again that snappish, impatient tone.

“How’s the book going?” It seemed like a pertinent question.

Until she burst out, “Fine! Just fine! Writing a book is easy, isn’t it? All you have to do is put your fingers on the keys and type out your dreams. Anybody can do it. Right?”

“I couldn’t.”

She flung out an arm like he’d just made an obvious point. “
Thank
you!”

Things were not going well, he surmised.

“Did my mother call you?” Chloë asked suspiciously.

“No.” Possibly Chloë’s intensity, her angst, her anguish provided an opportunity he could manipulate to his advantage. With a persuasive ability he hadn’t known he possessed, he said, “You need a break. Why don’t you come with me and I’ll buy you some lunch?”

“I have to work. I’m late on my deadline.” She sounded petty and disagreeable.

He was not, he realized, going to take no for an answer. “Lunch. Then I’ll show you around Bella Valley.”

“I don’t want to be shown around Bella Valley.” And cranky. She sounded cranky.

“A lot of Italian, Chinese, and Mexican immigrants settled here, mingled with the Americans, native and otherwise.”

“Shut the door when you go.” She started back toward the desk and her open computer.

He continued. “The early days were rife with carnage, murders.”

She paused, her hand on the back of the chair.

“
Unsolved
murders. When Prohibition took effect, the violence escalated. The economy collapsed two years later. Life was desperate. The cops were called revenuers. Half of them were corrupt.” Walking to the French doors, he flung them wide. Light poured into the room. A draft between the open front door and the deck sucked away the smoke. “The revenuers destroyed the breweries, the liquor distilleries. The river ran red with wine.”

She stared at him with an arrested expression.

He was starting to enjoy enticing her with brutality and death. “Men who had been perfectly respectable vintners were suddenly criminals. They went to prison. Their families were fatherless.”

Slowly she said, “I thought all the crime during Prohibition was in New York and Chicago. Back east.”

“Think again. According to federal law, during Prohibition every family could make two hundred gallons of their own ‘nonintoxicating juice’ for personal use. Who do you think raised the grapes? We did. The Italians in California.”

“Whoa.”

“We had our moonshine, too, mostly brandy, but . . . Come with me. Bring your notebook. I’ll show you the water tower I recently acquired.”

“A water tower?” She edged closer. “Why should I care about a water tower?”

“I bought that water tower because it’s sitting in the middle of a vineyard planted with Alicante Bouschet grapes, grapes that were planted in the early nineteen twenties.” Clearly she didn’t understand, so he continued. “When Prohibition went into effect, the wine producers in this valley—people who had been very successful—became nothing more than grape growers. But the kind of delicate wine grapes grown in Bella Valley couldn’t make the train journey east, where the Italian families were waiting to manufacture their own . . . nonintoxicating juices. So the wine producers ripped out the delicate grapes and replaced them with grapes like the Alicante Bouschet varietal because they were hearty and could be shipped back east without spoiling.”

“I still don’t understand why I should care about your water tower.”

“The older vines produce mature grapes. I wanted to try my hand at producing Alicante Bouschet, so when this vineyard came up for sale, I bought it. It’s passed through a lot of hands in the last ninety years, so I checked to see who had owned the vineyard and planted the grapes in the early twenties. I laughed when I discovered a man named Massimo Bruno had owned that vineyard.”

She looked him up and down. “
You
laughed?”

“You don’t have to sound incredulous. I laugh . . . when something is funny.”

“Of course,” she said politely. “I didn’t mean to imply you were humorless.”

She made him sound as if he
were
humorless. That wasn’t true. There just wasn’t much that was funny in this world.

“Who’s Massimo Bruno?” Chloë shuffled through the piles on her desk until she found a ragged spiral notebook and a pen.

Nothing funny in this world except perhaps the thought of him romancing a pretty girl by tantalizing her with murderous mysteries. God forbid his brothers ever found out. “Massimo Bruno produced the most famous, most expensive wines ever produced in California. They were known for their subtlety, their smoky undertones, their ability to age well . . . and it didn’t hurt that in 1930, Massimo disappeared without a trace. Because wines are like diamonds—if they have a dramatic history, they’re priceless.”

Chloë cradled the notebook in her arm and started scribbling. “He disappeared? Where? Why?”

“He vanished before my grandmother was born, but Nonna says her mother didn’t trust Massimo, said he was a thug.”

Her eyes narrowed. He could almost see her mind racing.

Good. He had her hanging on his every word. “I decided to take down the old brick water tower before it fell down. I ordered my men to remove it brick by brick—”

“Why brick by brick?”

“I resell them. Old bricks bring a premium on the market.”

“You don’t miss a trick.”

“I like to think of it as recycling.”

For the first time today, she grinned and relaxed. “Nice spin.”

“You should hear me give my ‘Italian men make better lovers’ speech. It’s a guaranteed seller.”

She chuckled, then saw him watching her—she was lovely, even in plaid flannel, even when she looked tired—and stopped.

He held her gaze.

Color climbed in her face. She looked down at her notebook.

At last, she had noticed him not as a landlord, not as her father’s friend, not as a nuisance suitor, but as a man.

Good. Because he had definitely noticed her not as a wife to be acquired for her dowry, but as a woman he’d like to find naked in his bed on warm, dark night. Apparently he had a thing for green plaid flannel.

As if nothing had happened, he said, “My men started at the roof of the water tower to remove the brick veneer. While they were still within three feet of the top, part of the wall collapsed. They expected to see a water tank. Instead they saw the
lid
of a water tank, and on top of that, a couple of copper barrels and the glint of metal pipes. They backed off and called me. Because inside the water tower, there’s a still.”

“What?” Chloë stepped closer, eyes shining, irresistibly drawn by the story. “
What?
There was a still in the water tower? A still, like where they distill wine into brandy?”

“It’s 1930 and it’s Prohibition. Revenuers are using their axes on every barrel of liquor and wine they find. Can you think of a better place to hide it?”

“That’s brilliant!” She ran to her desk and stuffed her computer case with the spiral notebook, five different-colored pens, and her MacBook Air. “You’ll take me there?”

“After lunch.”

“Okay, I’m ready.”

He fought a smile. “I don’t know a lot about fashion, but aren’t those your pajamas?”

Looking down at herself, she said, “Shit!” grabbed an outfit from the closet, and ran into the bathroom.

When he heard the shower running, he went out on the deck and waited—and made his plans.

Chapter 10

C
hloë came out of the bathroom dressed in what she considered appropriate field gear: faded jeans and a pink button-up shirt over a black, short-sleeved tee. Sitting down in the chair, she laced on a pair of low-rise hiking boots—they were new; she hoped she wasn’t screwing up taking a chance on them—then checked her computer case again.

“You might add a hat,” Eli advised from the door that led onto the deck. “You don’t have much hair left, and what you have doesn’t cover your lily-white neck.”

The short hair/lily-white comment was clearly not a compliment, but she didn’t care. After two interminable weeks of working and getting nowhere, she was going out into the world. The fresh air blowing through the cottage already seemed to be dispersing the cobwebs, and the sight of Eli Di Luca’s dark silhouette against the light was oddly menacing. Or critical. Or something. All she knew was that her heart beat faster knowing he stood there.

Funny, considering that when she’d gotten here and gone to work on the book, she’d easily dismissed him from her mind.

“Ready?” He locked the French doors, then came to her and took her computer case. “We’ll eat at the resort; then we’ll drive out to the water tower.”

“I can carry that,” she offered, and halfheartedly tugged at the strap. She was from Texas; she knew how to let a man perform the little courtesies between a man and a woman. But somehow, that kind of relationship between the two of them made her uncomfortable, as if it moved them to a level of intimacy. Which was stupid when she considered the fact that he was lifting less than ten pounds.

“Humor me. My old-fashioned grandmother taught me my manners.” He walked away from her. “Do you know how to set the alarm?” When she nodded, he walked out the door and down the steps.

When she joined him in the driveway, he said, “We’ll need to take the truck. Your little car won’t make it.”

“Okay.”

He looked surprised. Probably it wasn’t politically correct for a guy to assume he had to drive, and California was all about being politically correct. But she didn’t equate her femininity with a steering wheel.

His forest green extended-cab F-250 pickup had big, serviceable wheels and tires and a jacked suspension that lifted it so far off the ground she would need help to get in.

“
Nice
truck.”

He raised his eyebrows at her.

“I’m from Texas,” she said. “We know our trucks.”

“I should have known.” He gave her a hand up into the cab. When she was settled, he handed her the computer case, walked around, and climbed into the driver’s seat.

The dashboard was dusty and he had a few paper coffee cups rolling around on the floorboard, but she supposed, after the condition of the cottage, she was in no position to criticize.

The winding road to Bella Terra involved a couple of switchbacks as they descended the ridge, then smoothed out as it joined the highway.

Eli’s driving wasn’t flashy, wasn’t too slow. He drove skillfully; she didn’t notice the curves. But that didn’t surprise her; Eli seemed to be one of those men who occurred too seldom in life: a man capable of doing whatever he did with a deceptive ease.

Chloë rolled down the window, let the breeze blast tease her face, and watched the vineyards and wineries and fruit stands go by. They slid from one enclave of Bella Valley to another, the olive and oak trees casting dappled shade onto the two-lane road. The vines stretched in endless rows. Peach trees shed their blossoms as California’s early spring scattered them across the landscape. Here and there a farmhouse or a barn stood on a small plot of grass, and wineries of various grandeurs beckoned invitingly. The air smelled new, as if the vines and trees and the earth itself breathed out the coming summer.

There was isolation here, and wilderness beckoning just over the hill, yet farmers worked the vineyards, and tourists drove the roads. Maybe in the summer Bella Valley would be hot and crowded, but right now, it was perfect, and it fit Eli Di Luca.

He belonged here.

She liked that she didn’t feel as if she needed to entertain him. In fact, she thought she annoyed him so much he’d much prefer if she didn’t talk. Of course, that brought up the question—why had he asked her out?

Probably her father had called and demanded an accounting.

Yes, that had to be it.

Although . . . Eli looked better than the first time she had seen him—he was clean and in jeans, a blue denim shirt, and work boots; he certainly hadn’t gone out of his way to impress her.

Maybe he wasn’t here at her father’s behest.

Plus, she still suffered from that gut feeling he didn’t like her, as if he’d been angry at her before he’d even set eyes on her.

Some guys were like that, she supposed . . . although usually not with her. Men tended to like her.

So. Nothing personal in this excursion. It was business, and that knowledge helped her forget that uncomfortable moment when he’d looked in her eyes and she’d suddenly remembered she was in her pj’s, her bra hanging from a chair, and he smelled like warm spice and cool citrus, and tall guys with long legs and broad shoulders made her weak at the knees—among other places.

He slowed down to twenty-five as they entered the outskirts of town.

On her first spin through on her way to Eli’s home, Chloë had noted that the town of Bella Terra was marvelously quaint, a place founded in the nineteenth century and relatively undiscovered until the 1980s, when the California wine industry was well on its way to its current prominence. Main Street was actually the main drag, where elaborate Victorian mansions that advertised themselves as bed-and-breakfasts sat arm in arm with ultramodern condos made up of tin roofs and jarring angles. The grocery stores and strip malls were located on the outskirts, but those outskirts weren’t too far from the central town square. Posh art galleries, chic clothing stores, and wine-tasting rooms circled the park, and shoppers and tourists strolled and shopped and mingled with the locals.