The guy was ice-cold in his analysis of Eli’s past, Eli’s family, Eli’s prospects.
And he was right. Eli might as well marry this Chloë Robinson. With his parents as an example, he knew he had as good a chance for happiness here as anyone who wed. “No. I don’t want to love. But I don’t intend to have a broken marriage, either.”
“Then make sure she has no reason to stray. She’s only a woman, Eli Di Luca, and you’re a smart man. Treat her like one of your wines, and your marriage will be solid.”
Good advice from a man who had been married so many times.
“All right. It’s a deal. Have your lawyer contact my lawyer. I assume you know who that is?” Since he knew everything else, Eli meant.
“The contracts are already in his office.”
“You bastard.” Conte had never had any doubt he would accept.
“He’ll look them over today. You can sign them tomorrow.” Conte’s businesslike tone changed. “Enjoy your family celebration. They are one of the reasons you won the chance to marry my daughter, Eli Di Luca. Your family . . . they are good people.”
“Yes.” Eli glanced up at the window again.
Nonna stood watching him, wearing a worried expression.
He pantomimed exasperation and sent her a reassuring smile. “My family and I will do everything to make your daughter one of us.”
“Chloë,” Conte said. “Her name is Chloë.”
“I know.”
“Say it.”
Conte was right. This resistance to using her name, as if that would make her real . . . it was stupid. “Chloë. We’ll make Chloë part of our family.”
“Thank you, Eli Di Luca. You’re a man of honor, and I am glad to give my daughter into your keeping.”
Eli shut his phone and stood for a moment breathing. Just breathing.
Good. That was done. Now all he had to do was court the girl.
Not a problem. He knew how to make a woman happy, and this woman was young, easily dazzled, without subtlety. He would turn her head with his attentions.
How very simple this courtship would be.
Picking up the case of champagne, he went around the house again and in the back door. He was pretty proud of how natural he looked and sounded as he stacked the champagne in the refrigerator and said, “Our Italian ancestors—the male ones, anyway—would be horrified at how pussy-whipped we are.”
Noah slid the chicken breasts into the now-hot oven. Turning back to face the kitchen, he said, “Pussy-whipped? You want to talk pussy-whipped? Rafe’s trying to convince Brooke they shouldn’t drive back to Reno and get a divorce.”
“That’s truer than you know.” Clearly Rafe was torn between amusement and terror. “Every once in a while I look at her and she has that I’m-bolting-now expression. Scares me to death.”
“I always thought if you two got together, it would be because she hog-tied you.” Eli could hardly contain his amusement.
“No such luck. She doesn’t trust me yet. There’s too much water under the bridge or over the dam or wherever the hell the water goes.” Stepping back from the casserole, Rafe examined it. “Does that look right to you?”
“It’ll be great,” Noah said.
Rafe opened the second oven and thrust the pan inside, then turned back to his brothers. “Listen—you guys are no spring chickens. You need to get married before you’re too old to get it up.”
Noah laughed.
Eli did not.
Both brothers looked at him in concern.
“I was kidding,” Rafe said, “but if you’re really having trouble getting it up, there are pills that help. Not that I would personally know . . .”
“Eli is the oldest,” Noah said. “Once a guy passes thirty, they say the angle of the dangle points toward the toes. Not that I would personally know . . .”
Eli and Rafe smacked the back of their kid brother’s head, one after the other.
Noah just laughed. He was twenty-eight.
Eli said, “I’ll marry someday”—possibly sooner than you think—“but I swear it won’t be because I stepped in a big gooshy pile of love.”
“You make it sound like a cow patty.” Rafe leaned against the counter, picked up his wine, and sipped with a smile.
“Call it like you see it.” Eli found himself repeating Conte’s mantra. “A man who loves a woman is weak.”
“Then why get married at all?” Noah picked up the tongs, leaned into his oven, and turned the chicken tenders.
“Family. Children.” Eli was preparing them, trying to ease their shock at the upcoming events. “I can marry and keep a wife happy. She doesn’t need to know—”
“—that you’re dead inside?” Noah didn’t know the truth, not the whole truth, but he was right.
Still, Eli had his reasons. “Have you looked at our father? And our mothers? And the relentless drama and the anguish and screaming and the blood? Dead inside beats the constant, clawing need for overwhelming passion and excitement. Give me a quiet life with a good, obedient woman and I’ll be happy.”
“Obedient?” Noah snorted. “Where will you get this chick? Tell me you’re not going to mail-order a bride from Russia.”
With Chloë in mind, Eli said, “No. I think an Italian girl would be good, though.”
Rafe turned his glass around and around in his hand. “You’ve got a point about the quiet life, and keeping an upper hand and all that, but it’s too late for me. I’ve been bribing and cajoling Brooke every step of the way. You got anything you want to tell us, Eli?”
“Yeah.” Eli hoisted the case with the rest of the red wine. “I need to take this into the dining room.”
“Set the table while you’re in there!” Noah called.
Eli accepted the task. It kept him out of Rafe’s way until something came along to distract him. Because Rafe was watching Eli as if he heard more than Eli was saying. That was the trouble with having a brother who was in security. He paid attention.
Eli didn’t mind setting the table. It wasn’t as if this were the first time. One of his earliest memories was of proudly helping Nonna polish the heavy silver the first Di Luca bride had brought as part of her dowry. Together he and Nonna had spread a red linen Christmas tablecloth over the battered walnut surface. She displayed the fragile white glass plates behind glass doors, and every Christmas she used them, one at each place, telling him how his great-great-grandmother Adele had collected them during the Depression from soap boxes.
His little mind hadn’t understood that at all, but it didn’t matter, because at Christmas the whole family was together, Nonno and Nonna, his great-aunts and uncles and cousins, and his daddy and mommy were not fighting, and all was right with his world.
In that memory, he must have been three, because after that . . . after that, his mother was in prison and he had a baby brother and a new stepmother, and his father still paid no attention to Eli. Gavino paid attention to his family only when it somehow profited him.
Now Eli opened the drawers in the cabinets that stretched the length of one wall, the cabinets that had been hand-built in the forties by his great-grandfather, and found the blue linen tablecloth with its border of yellow and red morning glories. On his last trip to Italy, he’d picked it out for Nonna, knowing she’d love the colors and treasure the gift because it came from him.
Nonna had that way about her, appreciating every little thing anybody did for her. That was why the house overflowed with everything from a priceless watercolor painted by the once-starving artist Nonna had befriended, to a pile of shiny rocks given to her by her eager grandsons.
Yet one thing was missing: a priceless old bottle of wine, and more than anyone in the family, Eli wanted that bottle. It was not only his heritage; that wine held the taste of the past and held the secrets of their future . . . or perhaps the contents were vinegar.
But if Eli held that bottle, Tamosso Conte would hold no power over him.
Eli rubbed his forehead
with both hands.
Foolish thoughts. The bottle had disappeared. It wasn’t his to start with. He needed more than it would bring at auction.
And the mess he was in . . . it was all his. All his.
Chapter 4
“What’s the matter, dear?” Nonna stood in the doorway, Olivia at her elbow, the other women behind them.
The game of Australian football was over, and they were staring—at him.
Desperation aided glib answers. “I was trying to decide which plates to use, Great-grandmother Adele’s American Sweetheart or the ones from Target.”
Clearly scandalized, Nonna said, “The good plates, of course. We’re celebrating Rafe and Brooke’s marriage!”
“But we have to hand-wash them.” His question had been a ploy to distract her, but his despair was real. Hand-washing those plates took hours.
“I’ll do it, Eli,” Nonna said reprovingly.
“No, you won’t, Nonna.” Brooke shot Eli an angry glance. “You can’t get your cast wet. We’ll do it.”
“You’ve been on your feet for too many hours.” Francesca tucked her hand into Nonna’s arm.
“I couldn’t sit down. The game was too exciting!” Nonna’s eyes sparkled as she remembered.
“I couldn’t either, and I’m pooped.” Kathy pushed her walker up the hallway toward the kitchen. “Come and sit down with me.”
Great. Now Eli felt like a heel for inadvertently suggesting his grandmother should wash dishes.
Brooke came in and pushed on his shoulder. “A man’s place is in the kitchen. Let the girls set the table.”
Bao joined her.
Eli lingered, but Brooke knew her way around Nonna’s house—she’d been visiting since junior high—and Bao had been with Nonna as her bodyguard from the first week after the attack. These two moved efficiently to set each place with the perfection Nonna demanded.
So Eli collected Nonna’s cut-crystal champagne flutes and headed into the kitchen.
Francesca was quizzically looking in the oven at the eggplant Parmesan casserole.
Kathy was painfully lowering herself into a chair.
Nonna still stood, almost bouncing on her toes. Company always energized her. “Eli! What kind of champagne did you bring?”
“Just for you, some Frank Family rouge.” Nonna loved her pink champagne.
“You’re a good grandson.” She put out her arm and hugged him. “Thank God I’m off the pain pills.”
“We’ll make sure you don’t drink too much.” Eli laughed at her moue. Nonna knew her wines, but she was a taster—she sipped, nothing more, taking pleasure in the flavors, not the intoxication that followed.
She started to pull the vegetables out of the refrigerator for the salad. Rafe gently bumped her out of the way and took over.
Olivia assembled the vinegar and olive oil for the dressing.
Rafe took the loaf of whole-wheat sourdough, sliced it in half, drizzled it with olive oil, and mashed roasted garlic on top.
Noah started a huge pot of water boiling for the pasta.
“What am I supposed to do?” Nonna asked. “I feel like an old lady standing here while everyone else works.”
“You’ve done for us our whole lives,” Rafe said.
“Let us do for you now.”
“You know us, Nonna,” Noah said. “As soon as that cast is off, we’ll be over here cajoling you to bake us your special chocolate-chip cookies.”
Everyone paused for a moment of reverent silence. Bao walked in. “She makes good chocolate-chip cookies?”
Brooke followed on her heels. “The best chocolate-chip cookies in the world.”
Eli and Noah nodded in unison.
Rafe extended his arm to his new wife and hugged her. “When they’re warm from the oven . . .” he said.
Nonna beamed at them. “All right. You’ve buttered me up. I’ll sit down and let you wait on me.”
“But now we all want cookies,” Kathy said wryly.
“And I cannot have them.” Francesca slid her palms down her slim waist. “I have an audition coming up.”
“You look beautiful, Mom, just like always.” Rafe smiled at her.
She smiled back.
Their rocky relationship seemed to have smoothed out, at least for the moment.
Eli popped the cork on the first bottle of champagne, poured the flutes full, and tapped on the crystal with a spoon. “Who wants a glass of the bubbly instead?”
The champagne toasts lasted only until the food was on the table; then the Di Lucas got down to the serious business of pouring good red wine with their meal. Bao and Olivia sat with the family, were a part of the family, as was anyone who ever dined at Nonna’s. Rafe and Brooke held hands under the table. Noah teased them about sitting in a gooshy pile of love.
When the main course was over, and Brooke carried out the cheese and fruit plate Kathy had assembled at her shop, and the boisterous laughter had been replaced by quiet conversation, Eli took the plunge. “I’m going to have a visitor staying with me.”
Silence fell, a silence so profound and astonished he knew his chances of passing this off as a casual announcement were doomed.
“Who is your guest?” Nonna asked politely.
“A young writer who’s made quite a splash with her first book—”
“So it’s a girl?” Brooke asked.
“Yes, I met her father at the winemakers’ dinner, and he asked—”
“Is she pretty?” Francesca asked.
“Her picture is very nice, and she wants privacy to—”
“So you haven’t met her yet?” Kathy asked.
The women were interrogating him.
His brothers were letting them.
But Rafe and Noah looked as interested as the others.
Even Olivia, for all her silence, appeared fascinated. Cornered by a pack of curious relatives, Eli said, “I haven’t met her, but what’s the big deal? I can have a visitor if I want.”
“You can.” Rafe placed an array of cheese and fruit on Brooke’s plate. “You just never do.”
“You built that new, big house on the hill with four bedrooms, a pool table, and a huge living room. Who have you ever had stay with you? Who?” Noah asked.
Eli was sorry his brothers had joined the conversation. “Someone could stay with me if they wanted.”
“Most people wait for an invitation.” Rafe slid a grape into Brooke’s mouth and smiled.
She blushed.
Wow. Sexual games, right here at the table. Eli wanted to give them a hard time.
But Noah wasn’t finished rattling Eli’s cage. “You won’t even pave the first half mile of driveway. It’s a washboard. I won’t drive my car up there; I’d tear the mufflers off!”
“I suppose we could all casually drop by some night and announce we’re having a party.” Kathy sounded thoughtful.
“I’d pay to see his face if we did.” Noah grinned at her.
She grinned back.
“Quiet,” Nonna ordered, then turned back to Eli. “What’s her name?”
“Chloë Robinson.”
“We read her!” Bao looked between Nonna and Olivia. “What was that book called?”
“We listened to the audiobook while Nonna was doing rehab,” Olivia said.
“Die Trying. It was a good mystery. It distracted me from the pain,” Nonna said.
“It kept me awake afterward, scared to death.” Olivia turned to Eli. “Have you read her book?”
“Not yet, but it’s a bestseller, so I’m sure it’s—”
“You should read it before you meet her.” Bao sounded bossy and authoritative, a woman who took command as needed.
He had no intention of reading Die Trying or whatever it was called. Bad enough he had to marry the girl, much less torture himself reading some female idea of scary suspense.
“Is she going to stay in the house with you?” Nonna asked.
“No. I’m putting her in the guest cotta
ge.” Eli hoped that would silence most of the curiosity.
After all, he wasn’t giving up his privacy for a woman. Or her muse.
Not yet.
“As soon as you can, bring her to dinner,” Nonna ordered. “I would love to meet my new favorite author.”
Chapter 5
Chloë Robinson looked around at the quiet two-lane road that ran through a remote part of Bella Valley.
She looked at her bug-splattered blue Ford Focus.
She looked at the right front tire, so flat it was resting on the rim.
Damned tire.
Damned deadline.
Lately she blamed everything on her deadline, on being late with her book, on having second-book syndrome. She wouldn’t have driven over the nail if she weren’t distracted by her plot, by being halfway through a book that seemed slow and clunky, weighed down with too many expectations. Her first book had been written so easily, had been so much fun, and only when it hit the bestseller lists had Chloë realized that if she wanted a career writing books, she’d have to do it again. And again.
Yep. This was definitely the fault of her deadline.
And Eli Di Luca. It was his fault, too.
She sighed.
It was also her own fault. What kind of fool was she to stand in front of her father and proclaim that all she needed to finish this book was a quiet place to write?
She dragged her suitcases out of her trunk, stacked them beside the road, and found the spare, the jack, the tire iron.
Saying she needed a quiet place to write was just an excuse, and a stupid one, too. She didn’t expect him to take her seriously.
But like a pudgy Italian whirlwind, he had come back with the invitation from Eli Di Luca to stay in a guest cottage on his California estate and finish her book.
Papa said Di Luca was a fan.
Papa obviously thought his daughter was a gullible idiot.
She dug the spare out of the trunk and rolled it over onto the dusty shoulder of the road.
One quick trip to the Internet showed her what she already knew—Eli Di Luca was a successful, handsome Italian, exactly the kind of guy her father had been flinging at her.