Secrets of Bella Terra: A Scarlet Deception Novel

by Christina Dodd

  She put her purse over one arm, fished her grocery bags out of the passenger seat, and looked up the stairs at the wide, white-painted front porch. The treads were narrow and steep, not up to the current building codes, but when the house was built, there were no codes, only tough immigrants carving out places in the heat of California’s central valleys. This house, with its tall ceilings, narrow windows, ornate trim, and root cellar, had been the epitome of the stylish farmhouse.

  Now—Sarah climbed to the porch, dropped her purse and bags before the front door, and sank into the big rocking chair—she looked over the valley that stretched sinuously through the wooded foothills of central California. In the lush bottomlands, robust orchards nestled into the layers of thick soil brought down from the mountains. But up here, on the edges of the valley, jutting black stones, the bones of the earth, broke through and challenged the grapevines planted so precariously in the thin soil. Those tough vines grew the best grapes, and those grapes created the wine that in the early part of the twentieth century had made the Di Luca name famous.

  Then Prohibition arrived, with the revenuers who smashed their wine barrels and destroyed their chance at prosperity.

  As Sarah rocked, the floorboard moaned and complained as if it felt the ache in her back and the tremble in her legs.

  In 1921, in a desperate venture, the Di Lucas opened the Bella Terra resort, a place for the wealthy from San Francisco, Sacramento, and, in the thirties, from burgeoning Hollywood. There they rested, relaxed, and were pampered. Now the resort stretched like a jewel among the rows of grapes, the cornerstone of the Di Luca family’s wealth and influence.

  It made Sarah’s heart swell with pride to see how thoroughly the Di Luca family had sunk their roots into this valley, to know how the famous and affluent flocked to Bella Terra to vacation.

  At the same time, she missed the early days when the wine country was rural, quiet, homey.

  But that kind of nostalgia was another sign of old age, wasn’t it? Just like this weariness that plagued her after a mere trip to the grocery store.

  Trouble was, she couldn’t let the store deliver, and she couldn’t ask one of the kids who worked at the resort to meet her here and carry her groceries in. She’d done that once and her grandsons, all three of them, had found out within an hour and called to see if she was dying of some dreadful disease.

  She was dying, but from old age, and death would take its own sweet time. In fact, these days, eighty wasn’t so old.

  She groaned and stretched out her legs.

  Of course, it wasn’t so young, either.

  But she’d always been an active woman, and she was still in pretty good shape. If only . . . She glared at her shoes, ugly, sturdy things with all the proper supports. Some days, she was in the mood to put on heels and dance.

  The bunions had taken care of that.

  Still, there was no use complaining. There were people in worse shape, and if she slacked off on going to the grocery store and driving herself to church, her grandsons would soon have her wrapped so tight in protective gauze she’d be good for nothing. With renewed determination, she focused on putting the groceries away before the ice cream and frozen peas melted in the heat.

  Pushing herself out of her chair, she gathered her bags, opened the front door, and walked down the dim hall, past the parlor on the left and the bedroom on the right, past the bathroom and the second bedroom, and into the big, old-fashioned kitchen. The appliances were new, state-of-the-art, but when the boys had wanted to do a complete remodel, tear out the counters and the cabinets, change the flowered wallpaper, she’d said no. Because, of course, they would have wanted her to move to the resort to avoid the mess and fuss.

  She visited the resort occasionally: swam in the hotel pool, enjoyed the occasional massage at the spa, visited with the guests. But she knew that a woman of her age couldn’t move out of her house for a month without pining for the peace and quiet of her own company.

  The boys said she was isolated.

  She told them she was content.

  Dropping her purse and her bags on the table, she briefly noted the cellar door was open—odd, she didn’t remember leaving it ajar—and went to the sink. She adjusted the faucet to line up with the center of the sink—she must have been in a real hurry this morning; she usually left it in its proper position—then looked out the window at her yard.

  The boys were always fussing about something. They wanted to bring the driveway around to the back door so she didn’t have to tote her groceries so far, but to do that they’d have to pull out the live oak in the backyard.

  The wide, long-branched, evergreen oak had been planted in 1902 by the first Mrs. Di Luca the year she married Ippolito Di Luca and moved into the house as his bride.

  Like the house, like the valley, like Sarah herself, the tree had survived storms, fires, droughts, years of prosperity, and years of famine to grow old and strong. Its dappled shade had protected generations of Di Lucas as they played and worked. She wouldn’t have it removed. Not it, nor the rosebushes, now scraggly with age, sent from England in 1940 by young Joseph Di Luca . . . her husband’s cousin. He hadn’t survived that war. Old grief, but still grief. Oh, and not the amaryllis the boys grew in pots every Christmas and then had planted outside . . .

  A cool draft wafted across her cheek.

  Cold realization struck her.

  The cellar door was open.

  She turned to look. Yes, it was open, a dark, gaping mouth with a gullet that led to the windowless basement.

  Why was the cellar door open?

  She had not left it ajar. She knew she hadn’t. She’d raised one son and three active grandsons in this old house, and the entire time, that steep stairway and the cold concrete at the bottom had scared her half to death. One tumble and they would have cracked their little skulls. But she didn’t tell them that. They would have viewed it as a challenge. Instead she told the boys that she kept her wine down there and the bottles needed the dark and the cool temperature to age. They understood. If there was one thing the Di Luca family took seriously, it was wine.

  Her wine . . . bottles of wine . . .

  Her heart leaped.

  She hadn’t left the faucet catawampus, either. She remembered finishing the dishes, wiping the sink with a damp dish towel, and placing the faucet correctly.

  Her blood pressure peaked, a nasty feeling that made her light-headed. With her gaze fixed on that open door, she pushed herself away from the sink.

  Someone had been in her house. Might still be in her house.

  She looked around. Saw nothing else out of place. Saw no one.

  She needed to get out.

  Her purse and keys were on the table.

  Whoever it was, was gone. Surely they were gone.

  She walked briskly, quietly to the table and gathered her stuff.

  Amazing how the aches and tiredness vanished under the impetus to get out.

  She turned toward the back door, intent on removing herself from the scene. She opened her purse as she walked, fumbled for her cell phone. She glanced down long enough to locate it, heard the cellar door creak. She half turned to see the door swaying.

  A man ran toward her, a tire iron in his hand. He swung at her skull.

  She flung her arm up.

  The bar connected.

  Pain, bleak and bitter, exploded through her nerves.

  Ramming her from the side, he knocked her into the wall.

  Luckily, the plaster beneath the flower-patterned paper was old and it crumbled under the impact of her head. Luckily . . .

  Sarah woke with the sun shining in her face. For a moment, she couldn’t remember what had happened: why she was on the floor in the kitchen, why she could see through only one eye.

  Then she did remember.

  An intruder. Get out!

  She sat up. Her forearm flopped uselessly at her side. Agony struck her in waves. She wanted to vomit, but she didn’t dare. She was af
raid to move. She was afraid to stay. She listened to the house, to the familiar silence, and realized the hot breeze was blowing in her face. Little by little she turned her head to look.

  The back door was open.

  He was gone.

  Slowly, slowly, each inch a new torture, she withered back onto the floor, an old, hurt woman who didn’t want to face what would happen next.

  She lay there, eyes closed, fighting the nausea, grappling with the reality of her situation.

  If he was still hanging around, she was in trouble. But he could have finished her off while she was unconscious, so probably he’d hit her and left.

  She wondered if he had instructions to hurt her, as a warning, or if that had been panic on his part. She hoped it was panic; she hated to think of the state of a man’s soul when he willingly sabotaged and attacked an old woman.

  She hated even worse to think of the man who must have ordered the attack. But then, his soul had been damned years ago.

  No matter how much it hurt, she had to get up, get to the phone, call . . . Oh, God, her grandsons were going to have a fit when they heard what had happened.

  But she had no choice. There was blood on the floor and she was pretty sure she had a concussion, so gradually she opened her eyes—no, her eye—again.

  Huh. By some instinct, she’d managed to hang on to her cell phone. Good job, Sarah.

  Squinting at the numbers on the touch screen, she dialed 911 and talked to the dispatcher—a dispatcher who knew her, of course. Almost everybody in Bella Valley did. By the time the conversation was over, Sarah knew she didn’t have to worry about calling the boys. They’d find out through the grapevine. They’d be here in no time.

  Instead she went through the painstaking process of making a conference call to her sisters-in-law, one on Far Island and one on the Washington coast.

  She didn’t waste time with a greeting. She simply said what needed to be said. “It’s started again.”

  Chapter 2

  Tradition.

  Tradition had governed the Di Luca family for an eternity.

  Tradition had governed Bella Valley for one hundred and twenty years.

  Until Brooke Petersson moved to Bella Valley, she’d never seen that kind of tradition at work.

  Oh, she understood tradition. Until she was eleven, she was an Air Force brat, and if there was one thing the military did well, it was traditions. But family traditions . . . not so much.

  Her father, Captain Kenneth Petersson, was a fighter pilot, born in Minnesota, tall, tanned, blond, blue eyed, and broad shouldered, with a mother who made lutefisk and a father who ate it. Brooke had lived with her grandparents while her parents were both deployed to various hot spots in the world, and while she didn’t enjoy that—she was nine; she missed her daddy and mama—she discovered what it meant to be half Swedish. That gave her the sense of having roots, which, since the family moved about once a year, she really didn’t.

  But Brooke’s mother, Kathy, was from Oklahoma, straight black hair, striking blue eyes, curvaceous figure, with pale skin that burned unless she was wearing SPF 50. So the next year, when her mother was back from her assignment in the Middle East and the two of them were living on the base in San Antonio, Brooke made a friend who was red-haired and freckled, who sounded like Enya when she sang, and whose parents were from Ireland and spoke with a brogue. The Mc-Brians were Catholic, had six kids and another on the way, and were even poorer than most of the Air Force families. But Brooke ignored their lack of furniture and bare walls and focused on the family, so loud, so vital, so wrapped up in religion and their tales of the Old Country, so unlike her own with its comings and goings and long stretches of loneliness. . . .

  So the next time she visited her grandmother in Oklahoma, she asked in a hopeful voice if they were Irish. Her grandmother, a formidable woman who had raised three kids with no help from anybody, turned on Brooke, put her finger in her face, and said, “We’re not Irish, we’re not Mexican, we’re not French, we’re not any of those nationalities. We’re Americans, and don’t you ever forget it.”

  It wasn’t the answer Brooke was looking for, but she wasn’t dumb enough to complain. She shut her mouth and looked for something else to concentrate on—and found it in her parents’ bitter divorce.

  That broke every tradition and vow she’d ever imagined.

  That had broken her life and her heart.

  In Bella Valley, Brooke had quickly learned from the Di Lucas that their kind of family traditions were different. The Di Luca family was American, sure. Ippolito Di Luca had immigrated to California in the late nineteenth century, married an Italian girl whose father owned a swath of land and vineyards in Bella Valley, and every child born to the family since had been born in the United States and spoke English as their native tongue.

  But the Di Lucas had hung on to the essence of being Italian. They gestured when they talked. They drank wine. They corresponded with the family in the Old Country. They ate Italian. Northern Italian, to be specific. Not that the Di Lucas never got Chinese takeout or made a turkey for Thanksgiving, but every one of them knew their way around a pot of golden, slowly simmering polenta—and God forbid some well-intentioned fool should mention instant polenta. The Di Lucas flirted. . . . Brooke didn’t understand how flirting could be passed down as an Italian tradition, but it was. Every one of the Di Luca men and women used charm like a condiment, to bring flavor and pleasure to a relationship.

  The Di Luca traditions meant that when they liked someone, they adopted that person into their family. Brooke knew that firsthand; she had been a part of the family almost from her first day in Bella Valley, and no matter what happened in her life, she was still one of them, almost a daughter, completely a friend.

  The Di Luca traditions also meant that when someone got hurt, cards, flowers, and phone calls flooded in and the nearest and dearest gathered close.

  So when Rafe Di Luca strode through the door into Sarah’s hospital room, Brooke had been expecting him. Waiting for him . . .

  But neither knowledge nor foresight could ease the sweet, familiar shock of recognition. That long stride, that stern profile, that carved body displayed so pleasantly in blue denim and black leather . . .

  He nodded at his two brothers.

  At thirty-four, Eli was the oldest, the tallest, the least likely to shoot off his mouth and get in a fight—and the most likely to win if he did.

  At twenty-eight, Noah was three years younger than Rafe, with the Di Luca family head of curly black hair and a pair of green eyes that had turned many women’s heads.

  The resemblance between the brothers was strong, but Rafe was the son who looked most like his father— heart-stoppingly handsome—and acted least like him, for the dangers he faced every day were not the fevered imaginings of some scriptwriter, but real and terrifying.

  Brooke braced herself for the moment when his heated gaze touched her.

  He didn’t seem to notice her sitting in the corner. Didn’t even glance in her direction.

  Even so, the room grew smaller, the air warmer and more concentrated, Brooke’s heartbeat slower, stronger, each throb spreading heat and life and pleasure.

  So many years had passed since she’d seen him for the first time, on her beginning day of the new school, when he plucked her out of the crowd and summoned her with a jerk of his head, and she giggled like . . . like the prepubescent girl she had been and tagged after him like a love-starved puppy.

  Even so many years later, the memory made her wince.

  Today, all the Rafe Di Luca charm was bent on his grandmother.

  “Raffaello, I have been waiting for you.” A trembling smile broke across Sarah’s face, and she extended her good hand.

  Rafe stopped a few feet from the bed and assessed her—the broken arm, the battered face, the IV in her arm—and shook his head with mocking reproval. “Nonna, how many times have I told you not to get in bar fights?”

  For the first time
since she’d been attacked, Sarah chuckled. “I learned everything I know about getting in trouble from my grandsons.”

  He lowered the silver rail and leaned close, put his cheek against hers and closed his eyes. “You scared me half to death,” he murmured.

  Sentiment clogged Brooke’s throat.

  No matter what she thought of Rafe, she knew his adoration for his grandmother ran deep and true.

  As he straightened, he smiled at Sarah. “Now—tell me the truth. Why were you in a bar fight?”

  “You should see the other guy.” Sarah smiled back, but no eighty-year-old could have her head bandaged and a cast on her arm without some wear and tear, and the flush of happiness Rafe’s arrival brought quickly faded.

  Rafe saw it, of course. He saw everything. Cradling her hand, he turned to his brothers. “What do we know about the perp?”

  “Not a damned thing.” Noah bit off his words. “Nonna was unconscious probably a half hour, which gave him plenty of time to get away. We think she arrived right after he broke in—or rather, walked in, since she never locks her doors—”

  “Don’t need to,” she said.

  Like male versions of the Fates, the three brothers turned in unison and glared at her.

  “This proves you do, Nonna,” Rafe said.

  She snorted.

  Brooke hid a grin.

  To Noah, Rafe said, “Go on.”

  “We couldn’t see that the perp disturbed anything,” Noah said. “He hid in the cellar, then rushed out, attacked her, and ran away.”

  Rafe’s expression became cold interest. “So he was panicked . . . or he was sent there to attack her.”

  “Who’s going to attack an elderly woman?” Eli ran the winery. He called himself just a farmer. Yes, maybe. But he had also proved to have the Di Luca way with wines, creating reds that consistently ranked in the top ten percent of the reviews. Neither of the other two Di Luca brothers had the nose, the art, the sensibility, and in the circle of the larger Di Luca family, Eli was venerated.

  In this bleak hospital room, of course, he was merely one of the brothers.