The Villa

by Nora Roberts

  Great legs, Ty noted absently.

  She was looking as sleek and polished as ever, like something lifted off a movie screen and dropped down in three dimensions. She appeared to be fascinated by whatever Don was saying to her, and kept those big, dark chocolate eyes of hers on his face. But Ty watched as she discreetly slipped Sally hors d'oeuvres. The move was too slick and calculated for her to have had her full attention on the conversation.

  "Here. The stuffed olives are excellent." Pilar stepped up beside him with a small plate.

  "Thanks." Tyler shifted. Of all the Giambellis, Tyler was most comfortable with Pilar. She never expected him to make endless, empty conversation just for the sake of hearing her own voice. "Any idea when we're going to get this business rolling?"

  "When Mama's ready, and not before. My sources tell me lunch is set for fourteen, but I can't pin down who we're waiting for. Whoever it is, and whatever this is about, Eli seems content. That's a good sign."

  He started to grunt, remembered his manners. "Let's hope so."

  "We haven't seen you around here in weeks—been busy," she said even as he uttered the words, then she laughed. "Naturally. What are you up to, other than business?"

  "What else is there?"

  With a shake of her head, she pressed the olives on him again. "You're more like my mother than any of us. Weren't you seeing someone last summer? A pretty blonde? Pat, Patty?"

  "Patsy. Not really seeing. Just sort of…" He made a vague gesture. "You know."

  "Honey, you need to get out more. And not just for… you know."

  It was such a mother thing to say, he had to smile. "I could say the same about you."

  "Oh, I'm just an old stick-in-the-mud."

  "Best-looking stick in the room," he countered and made her laugh again.

  "You always were sweet when you put your mind to it." And the comment, even from a man she considered a kind of surrogate son, boosted the spirits that seemed to flag all too easily these days.

  "Mama, you're hoarding the olives." Sophia dashed up, plucked one off the plate. Beside her lovely, composed mother, she was a fireball, crackling with electricity. The kind that was always giving you hot, unexpected jolts if you got too close.

  Or so it always seemed to Ty.

  For that single reason, he'd always tried to keep a safe and comfortable distance.

  "Quick, talk to me. Were you just going to leave me trapped with Don the Dull forever?" Sophia muttered.

  "Poor Sophie. Well, think of it this way. It's probably the first time in weeks he's been able to say five words at the same time without Gina interrupting him."

  "Believe me, he made up for it." She rolled her dark, exotic eyes. "So, Ty, how are you?"

  "Fine."

  "Hard at work for MacMillan?"

  "Sure."

  "Know any words with more than one syllable?"

  "Some. Thought you were in New York."

  "Was," she said, mimicking his tone as her lips twitched. "Now I'm here." She glanced over her shoulder as her two young cousins began to shriek and sob. "Mama, if I was ever that obnoxious, how did you stop yourself from drowning me in the fountain?"

  "You weren't obnoxious, sweetie. Demanding, arrogant, temperamental, but never obnoxious. Excuse me." She handed the plate to Sophia and went to do what she'd always done best. Make peace.

  "I suppose I should have done that," Sophia said with a sigh as she watched her mother scoop up the miserable young girl. "But I've never seen a pair of kids less appealing in my life."

  "Comes from being spoiled and neglected."

  "At the same time?" She considered, studied Don ignoring his screaming son, and Gina making foolish cooing noises to him. "Good call," she decided. Then because they weren't her problem—thank Jesus—she turned her attention back to Tyler.

  He was such a… man, she decided. He looked like something carved out of the Vacas that guarded the valley.

  And he was certainly more pleasant to contemplate than the four-year-old temper tantrum behind her.

  Now if she could just pry a reasonable conversation out of him, she could be nicely occupied until lunch was served.

  "Any clues about the theme of our little gathering today?" Sophia asked

  "No."

  "Would you tell me if you knew?"

  He shrugged a shoulder and watched Pilar murmur to little Tereza as she carried her to the side window. She looked natural, he thought. Madonnalike, he supposed was the suitable word. And because of it, the irritable, angry child took on an attractive, appealing look.

  "Why do you suppose people have kids when they're not going to pay any real attention to them?"

  Sophia started to speak, then broke off as her father and Rene walked into the room. "That's a good question," she murmured and, taking the glass from his hand, finished off his wine. "Damn good question."

  At the window, Pilar tensed, and all the simple pleasure she'd gotten from distracting the unhappy little girl drained away.

  She felt instantly frumpy, unattractive, old, fat, sour. Here was the man who had discarded her. And here was the latest in the long line of replacements. Younger, lovelier, smarter, sexier.

  But because she knew her mother would not, Pilar set the child on the floor and walked over to greet them. Her smile was warm and easy and graced a face much more compelling than she thought. Her simple slacks and sweater were more elegant, more feminine than Rene's slick power suit.

  And her manner carried an innate class that held more true sparkle than diamonds.

  "Tony, how good you could make it. Hello, Rene."

  "Pilar." Rene smiled slowly and trailed a hand down Tony's arm. The diamond on her finger caught the light.

  She waited a beat, to be certain Pilar saw it, registered the meaning. "You look… rested."

  "Thank you." The backs of her knees dissolved. She could feel the support going out from under her as completely as if Rene had rammed the toe of her hot red pump into them. "Please, come in, sit. What can I get you to drink?"

  "Don't fuss, Pilar." Tony waved her off, even as he leaned down to give her an absent peck on the cheek. "We'll just go say hello to Tereza."

  "Go to your mom," Ty said under his breath.

  "What?"

  "Go, make an excuse and get your mom out of here."

  She saw it then, the diamond glint on Rene's finger, the blank shock in her mother's eyes. She shoved the plate at Ty and strode across the room. "Mama, can you help me with something for a minute?"

  "Yes… just let me…"

  "It'll only take a second," Sophia continued, quickly pulling Pilar from the room. She just kept moving until they were well down the hall and into the two-level library. There, she pulled the pocket doors closed behind her, leaned back against them.

  "Mama. I'm so sorry."

  "Oh." Trying to laugh, Pilar ran an unsteady hand over her face. "So much for thinking I pulled that off."

  "You did beautifully." Sophia hurried over as Pilar lowered to the arm of a chair. "But I know that face." She cupped her mother's in her hands. "Apparently so does Tyler. The ring's ostentatious and obvious, just like she is."

  "Oh, baby." Her laugh was strained, but she tried. "It's stunning, gorgeous—just like she is. It's all right." But already she was turning the gold band she continued to wear round and round her finger. "Really, it's all right"

  "The hell it is. I hate her. I hate both of them, and I'm going back in there and telling them right now."

  "You're not." Pilar got up, gripped Sophia's arms. Did the pain she could see in her daughter's eyes show as clearly in her own? And was that her fault? Had this endless limbo she'd lived in dragged her daughter into the void? "It solves nothing, changes nothing. There's no point in hate, Sophie. It'll only damage you."

  No, Sophia thought. No. It could forge you.

  "Be angry!" she demanded. "Be furious and bitter and crazed." Be anything, she thought. Anything but hurt and defeated. I can't bear it.
>
  "You do it, baby." She ran her hands soothingly up and down Sophia's arms. "So much better than I could."

  "To walk in here this way. To just walk in and shove it in our faces. He had no right to do that to you, Mama, or to me."

  "He has a right to do what he wants. But it was poorly done." Excuses, she admitted. She'd spent nearly thirty years making excuses for Anthony Avano. A hard habit to break.

  "Don't let it hurt you. He's still your father. Whatever happens, he always will be."

  "He was never a father to me."

  Pilar paled. "Oh, Sophia."

  "No. No." Furious with herself, Sophia held up a hand. "I am obnoxious. This isn't about me, but I just can't help making it about me. It's not even about him," she said, winding down. "He's oblivious. But she's not. She knew what she was doing. How she wanted to do it. And I hate her coming into our home and lording that over you—no, damn it, over us. All of us."

  "You're ignoring one factor, baby. Rene may love him."

  "Oh, please."

  "So cynical. I loved him, why shouldn't she?"

  Sophia whirled away. She wanted to kick something, to break something. And to take the jagged shards of it and swipe them over Rene's perfect California face. "She loves his money, his position and his goddamn expense account."

  "Probably. But he's the kind of man who makes women love him—effortlessly."

  Sophia caught the wistfulness in her mother's voice. She'd never loved a man, but she recognized the sound of a woman who had. Who did. And that, the hopelessness of that, emptied her of temper. "You haven't stopped loving him."

  "If I haven't, I'd better. Promise me one thing? Don't cause a scene."

  "I hate to give up the satisfaction, but I suppose chilly disinterest will have more impact. One way or the other, I want to knock that smug look off her face."

  She walked back, kissed both her mother's cheeks, then hugged her. Here she could, and did, love without shadows and smudges. "Will you be all right, Mama?"

  "Yes. My life doesn't change, does it?" Oh, and the thought of that was damning. "Nothing really changes. Let's go back."

  "I'll tell you what we're going to do," Sophia began when they were in the hall again. "I'm going to juggle my schedule and clear a couple of days. Then you and I are going to the spa. We're going to sink up to our necks in mud, have facials, get our bodies scrubbed, rubbed and polished. We'll spend wads of money on overpriced beauty products we'll never use and lounge around in bathrobes all day."

  The door of the powder room opened as they walked by, and a middle-aged brunette stepped out. "Now that sounds wonderfully appealing. When do we leave?"

  "Helen." Pilar pressed a hand to her heart even as she leaned in to kiss her friend's cheek. "You scared the life out of me."

  "Sorry. Had to make a dash for the john." She tugged at the skirt of her stone-gray suit over hips she was constantly trying to whittle, to make certain it was back in place. "All that coffee I drank on the way up. Sophia, aren't you gorgeous? So…" She shifted her briefcase, squared her shoulders. "The usual suspects in the parlor?"

  "More or less. I didn't realize she meant you when Mama said the lawyers would be coming." And, Sophia thought, if her grandmother had called in Judge Helen Moore, it meant serious business.

  "Because Pilar didn't know, either, nor did I until a few days ago. Your grandmother insisted I handle this business personally." Helen's shrewd gray eyes shifted toward the parlor.

  She'd been involved, one way or another, with the Giambellis and their business for nearly forty years. They never failed to fascinate her. "She keeping all of you in the dark?"

  "Apparently," Pilar murmured. "Helen, she's all right, isn't she? I took this latest business about changing her will and so on as part of this phase she's been in this past year, since Signore Baptista died."

  "As far as I know, healthwise, La Signora is as hale as ever." Helen adjusted her black-rimmed glasses, gave her oldest friend a bolstering smile. "As her attorney, I can't tell you any more about her motivations, Pilar. Even if I completely understood them. It's her show. Why don't we see if she's ready for the curtain?"

  Chapter Three

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  La Signora never rushed her cue. She had planned the menu personally, wanting to set the tone for the lavish, and the casual. The wines served were from the California vineyards, both Giambelli and MacMillan. That, too, was meticulously planned.

  She would not discuss business at the meal. Nor would she, much to Gina's annoyance, allow three ill-mannered children at the table.

  They had been sent to the nursery with a maid who would be given a bonus, and Tereza's considerable respect if she lasted an hour with them.

  When she deigned to speak to Rene, it was with chilly formality. Because of it, she felt a grudging admiration for the woman's spine. There had been others, many others, who had withered visibly under that frost.

  Along with family, and Helen, whom she considered one of her own, she had invited her most trusted wine-maker and his wife. Paulo Borelli had been with Giambelli, California for thirty-eight years. Despite his age, he was still called Paulie. His wife, Consuelo, was a plump, cheerful woman with a big laugh who had once been a kitchen maid at the villa.

  The final addition was Margaret Bowers, the head of sales for MacMillan. She was a divorced woman of thirty-six who was currently being bored senseless by Gina's chatter and wishing desperately for a cigarette.

  Tyler caught her eye and gave her a sympathetic smile.

  Margaret sometimes wished desperately for him, too.

  When the food was cleared and the port passed, Tereza sat back.

  "Castello di Giambelli celebrates its centennial in one year," she began. Immediately conversation stopped. "Villa Giambelli has been making wine in the Napa Valley for sixty-four years. MacMillan has been doing so for ninety-two. That is two hundred and fifty-six years combined."

  She scanned the table. "Five generations have been vintners and wine merchants."

  "Six, Zia Tereza." Gina fluttered. "My children give you six."

  "From what I've seen your children are more likely to be serial killers than vintners. Please, don't interrupt."

  She lifted her port, nosing the wine, sipping slowly. "In those five generations we have earned a reputation, on two continents, for producing wine of quality. The name Giambelli is wine. We have established traditions and have blended them with new ways, new technology, without sacrificing that name or what it means. We will never sacrifice it. Twenty years ago, we established a partnership of sorts with another fine vintner. MacMillan of Napa Valley has run side by side with Giambelli, California. The partnership has aged well. It's time for it to be decanted."

  She felt rather than saw Tyler tense. She gave him high marks for holding his tongue, and met his eyes now. "Changes are necessary, and for the good of both. The next hundred years begin today. Donato."

  He snapped to attention. "Si, yes," he corrected, remembering she preferred English at her California table. "Yes, Aunt Tereza."

  "Giambelli, Italy and California have been ran exclusive of each other. Separate. This will no longer be the case. You will report to the chief operating officer of the newly formed Giambelli-MacMillan company, which will have bases in both California and Venice."

  "What does this mean? What does this mean?" Gina exploded in Italian, shoving awkwardly from the table. "Donato is in charge. He is next in line. He carries the name. He is your heir."

  "My heir is who I say is my heir."

  "We give you children." Gina slapped a hand on her belly, then waved an arm in disgust at the table. "Three children, and more will come. No one gives the family children but me and Donato. Who