“These roses look fresh. Why do you think the petals fell off?” Picking up the lace shawl, she shook it over the black-and-gilt trash can.
As he watched incredulously, rose petals fluttered down, then disappeared from sight. He’d personally plucked those rose petals—and she’d dumped them?
She folded the shawl and put it on the shelf in the closet.
She didn’t like the lace shawl? He’d never met a woman who didn’t like lace.
Opening her duffel bag, she rummaged inside. “Anyway, that’s the story of my parents. I took a semester off, went to Italy, met Papa, finished my book while living on his estate, got published, graduated, and once that happened—boom! He decided I’d lived my life and needed to get married. He wants grandchildren.”
Eli knew that all too well. “Do you not like children?”
She turned, clutching a human skull. “Not the point, Eli Di Luca. The point is I’m twenty-three and have no desire to be married, much less married for a piece of my father’s fortune.
And
I realize this is an odd concept—but I’d like to fall in love.”
“Any candidates?” He hadn’t thought so, but just because her father offered her to him didn’t mean she was free.
“No.”
“And is that skull real?”
“Yes.” She lovingly placed it on the left-hand corner of the desk facing the chair.
There its empty eye sockets would stare at her and its eternal grin would give her cheer. Or something like that.
“No boyfriends?” he asked.
“I’ve had a few, of course. But now it’s complicated. You know what I mean.” She waved a hand toward the open French door. “You’ve got money. I’m sure women come after you with hot schemes for your fortune.”
“It’s happened,” he admitted. “But how can guys chase you for your father’s fortune if they don’t know Conte is your father?”
“You are
such
a chauvinist.” She stomped back to her bag, pulled out two bronze candleholders, and stomped back to the desk. “First—they chase me for
my
money. I did pretty well with the book, you know.”
He winced. “You’re right. I am a chauvinist, and I should know better. My grandmother would slap me upside the head for being so stupid as to assume you were courted only for your father’s fortune.”
“
Thank
you.” Chloë placed the candleholders on either side of the skull.
Each candleholder was ten inches tall, a squat dragon with its head back and its mouth open, ready to hold a taper.
He hadn’t thought to ask Conte whether his daughter was a witch. The matter had somehow slipped his mind.
“Are you going to hold a magic ceremony?” he asked politely.
“No, but I find when I write about murder, it’s good to have the props where I can see them.” She removed the crystal vase filled with roses to the bedside, and returned with two bloodred candles and her laptop. She arranged everything, stepped back, contemplated her modifications, and nodded approvingly. Turning back to him, she said, “What Papa does with the guys he sics on me is tell them I used to be his girlfriend, that he’s very fond of me and wants me to have a family, and he’s going to leave me one percent of his fortune.”
“Good God. One percent is . . .” Eli’s research had placed Conte’s fortune at anywhere between five billion and ten billion dollars.
“One percent is enough to send them racing to my side to pledge their devotion.” Chloë laughed, a light sprinkling of amusement. “I haven’t had the heart to tell Papa a good part of their interest is their belief that for one percent, I must be really great in bed.”
“You’re lucky you haven’t been kidnapped anyway.” A horrible thought.
She thought, and nodded. “I hadn’t considered that. But you’re right.”
“There’s electronic security here in the cottage.” He showed her the number pad by the door, gave her the code, showed her the emergency button by the bed. “When you’re inside, set the alarm.”
“I will.”
“Don’t forget.”
“I promise.” She laughed into his face. “I’m twenty-three, not twelve, and you’re fifty, not a hundred.”
“I’m thirty-four!” And he realized he’d been suckered.
“But you act so old,” she mocked.
He didn’t know what to say, how to respond. His brothers teased him, of course, but women . . . didn’t.
Sometimes they analyzed him.
According to one of his lovers, the woman with the psychology degree, he suffered from “communication problems,” “control issues,” and “a lack of emotional availability.” That was fine with him. Emotional unavailability saved him a lot of time and heartache.
But unless they were related to him, women from the age of ten to the age of a hundred reacted as if he were attractive and dangerous, as if he frightened and enthralled them. “You, um, think of me like your elderly uncle?”
“Nope. Not an uncle. Not one of my relations. But for sure someone’s great-grandfather!” Her brown eyes sparkled with amber lights.
Just as he thought. He
was
too old for her. “I’ve got to go back to work.”
“Me, too.” She sighed mightily, as if the prospect were hard and onerous.
“I thought you liked to write.”
“I do. Beats having a real job,” she said.
Was she joking? He thought she must be, because her sparkle faded and something that looked like misery turned her eyes a muddy brown.
Good. Life was serious. She needed to learn that. He touched his hat, then walked out the door.
As he strode down the hill, through the vineyard, and back to work on the broken water lines, he thought about her. About his future bride.
She had a temper.
She was too open, too willing to share personal information. She was frivolous. She laughed easily, teased by the slightest provocation.
She didn’t realize how swiftly life could become a desert of hopelessness where love was nothing but a memory and all your future stretched before you, barren and forlorn.
Not that he ever wanted her to know. He would protect her from that, at least.
Among the fresh new leaves on the vines, something caught his eye: a cluster of tiny round berries hanging low on the trellis. He stopped, knelt, cradled them tenderly in his cupped palm, this sign of good luck. He looked up toward the cottage.
Perhaps this meeting with Chloë had been fortuitous after all.
Chapter 8
C
hloë flung herself backward on the bed, wrapped her arms over her face, and blocked out the world for a long, long minute.
But she couldn’t block out the memory of Eli Di Luca’s horrified face, and his deep voice demanding,
What did you do to your hair?
Let’s see. When she’d driven through L.A. and seen the billboard for the Alibi Spa, she walked into their trendy salon on a whim and told them she wanted something completely different. The hairdresser admired the length—past her shoulders—and the pale color, and suggested the streaks of pomegranate red.
But that wasn’t enough for her. When she demanded he cut it all off, he had stood like a deer in the headlights.
Guys, even gay guys, had such a
thing
about long hair. But she’d insisted, and he’d reluctantly used his razor until, for the first time in her life, she was sheared like a lamb—and glad of it.
Chloë was tired of caring for her hair. She was tired of being Chloë, who couldn’t get her second book done. She wanted to be the new Chloë, wild and free, someone who wasn’t afraid of anything, specifically not of the blank page.
What did you do to your hair?
She’d come out of the beauty shop feeling empowered.
Then she had second thoughts. Had her dash away from her problems and across the country led her to an impulsive, ill-thought-out act? Which was not necessarily a bad thing, just not . . . well considered.
Not that she didn’t like the haircut. She actually did. And she wasn’t sorry. The people in the salon said she looked like a pixie, and personally she thought all she needed was pointy ears and she could be one of the extras in
Lord of the Rings.
So she’d been kind of wavering back and forth between terror that she’d made an impulsive, hideous mistake and pleasure that she’d been so bold and decisive . . . until Eli had seen her, looked horrified, and asked the fatal question.
He was good-looking, too, nothing like the college guys she’d known, but mature, serious, covered with mud and reeking of virility.
Not that she cared.
What did you do to your hair?
When Eli asked Chloë about her hair in that accusing tone, as if he had every right to question her . . . he was lucky she didn’t have an ax handy or he would have had to run for his life.
She crawled off the bed, grabbed her phone from the bedside table, and walked out onto the deck.
Good thing she and Eli had agreed they were incompatible.
He wouldn’t have to look at her.
She wouldn’t have to smell him.
The jerk.
She dialed her mother’s number.
Out here, the breeze puffed into her face and the view caught her by surprise again. She contemplated the valley, the winding river, and grass and trees and vineyards. It reminded her of her father’s estate in Italy . . . but not really. After the endless freeway that was southern California, this felt newer, fresher, more open, refreshingly rural yet not remote.
She could live here forever—although she was pretty sure Eli Di Luca would mightily object to her infinite occupation of his cottage.
The phone rang. Her mother picked up.
“Hi, Mom, I got here at last.”
She listened to her mother’s sigh of relief. “It’s a long drive, isn’t it, honey?”
“Whoo, boy.”
“Any problems?”
“Not till I got here and met Eli Di Luca. You were wrong about him.”
“He’s not your dad’s next candidate for your husband?” Her mother’s voice developed a lilt.
“I would say not. He’s good-looking—a prime marital candidate—but what a crank!” Although that was not strictly true. He was critical, a guy who thought he was superior because he had a penis and could pee at a picnic. For sure he didn’t approve of her. “I finally told him I knew that Papa was setting us up and that it was no big deal; Papa did it all the time and I’m not desperate. Then he seemed to loosen up a little.”
Lauren’s laugh warmed her. “I’ll bet that took him aback.”
“I think so. But he took me aback, too. After the way Papa described Eli Di Luca as this big, buff winemaker, I didn’t even think it was him for the first few minutes. He came out of the vineyard covered in mud. I didn’t expect that; I figured he was a hired hand or something. Do winemakers usually work in the grapes?”
“Dear, what I don’t know about winemaking could fill a large book. Now, wine
drinking
. . .”
Chloë chuckled.
Her mom continued. “How is this place? Is it comfortable? Can you work there?”
“It’s gorgeous, Mom, so much more than I expected. I’ll take a picture of the view and send it to you.”
“But can you work there?”
Chloë heard that note in Lauren’s voice, the one that said she was worried about her daughter.
Truth to tell, Chloë was worried herself.
But she put a reassuring note in her voice. “I can work here. I wish you could have been here to see Di Luca’s face when I put out my skull.”
“I can imagine. That thing gives me the creeps.”
“Him, too, I would guess. Best gift Papa ever gave me.”
Her mom got quiet. She usually did when Chloë talked too much about her father. Telling Chloë about him had been difficult for her, and she always acted oddly about him, not as if she hated him, exactly, but as if the memory of him hurt her.
For all Conte’s weird insistence that Chloë marry as soon as possible, she loved the old guy. How could she not? He was so thrilled at her mere existence. Who else would ever believe her to be a miracle of love?
“Mom, I need to unpack and go to work.” Briefly Chloë toyed with telling her about her hair, then decided against it.
It was
her
hair. She’d live through the good choices and the bad choices. She half smiled. In fact, with her writing schedule, no one would see her for so long. It would grow out before she saw sunshine again.
Chapter 9
E
li stood outside looking at the cottage.
Chloë had been in there for days. Weeks. He’d seen nothing of her except a light that burned far into the night. He’d heard nothing from her except once, when he sat on his own deck, he’d thought he heard a cry of rage and frustration.
Or maybe it was an injured vulture falling to its death over the vineyard.
Her father wanted to know how his courtship was going.
His grandmother was bugging him to bring her to dinner.
More to the point, he needed the money he’d get from marrying her.
Needs drove him. He responded to those needs.
When he married that young woman he would never cheat on her. Certainly she would never know he didn’t love her. She’d be happy. He’d make sure of it.
But if she never came out . . . he would have to go in.
Climbing the stairs to the porch, he knocked on the cottage door.
Immediately she flung it open.
The smell of a burned
something
gusted out the door.
“Is there a fire?” Alarmed, he pushed his way inside.
“I put frozen lasagna in the oven and forgot about it.” She sounded exasperated, as if that should be only too obvious.
He looked around.
The air was hazy with smoke. The blinds were shut. The only light came from the desk lamp.
The bed was unmade. She’d hung a bra on her chair. Books filled with paper sticky notes were piled beside the desk and open on top of the desk. One e-reader was flung on the sheets; another was propped against the desk lamp. The trash can overflowed. The place looked like hell.