A few more jabs, and Noah escorted DuPey to the back door to make sure it was properly closed.
With a great deal more intensity and less cordiality, Rafe turned once more to Penelope. “What are you doing in town?”
“Come on.” Brooke pulled on his arm. “I’ll fill you in while I show you what Penelope and I decided to do upstairs.”
He hesitated, clearly wanting to argue with his wife… and not wanting to argue with his wife.
Brooke patted his shoulder and murmured softly, and, with a final hard glance at Penelope, he let Brooke lead him up the stairs—leaving Penelope alone to face Noah.
Chapter 13
Facing Noah might be no big deal—was no big deal—but until Penelope made a final decision about this job, she had no business sticking around here. She could go back to the motel and… well, read a book or something. She had no responsibilities.…
But leaving felt awkward and childish and as if she were running away, and she couldn’t bear for Noah to think she couldn’t face him. So she stayed, alone in the tall entry, listening to the echo of the footsteps on the floors above and hoping to hell that Joseph Bianchin turned out to be worth all this trouble.
When she heard the back door open and close, an unexpected chill ran up her spine. Noah and Rafe and Brooke kept weapons at the ready. Brooke used words like trouble and murder. The way they acted made Penelope wonder all of a sudden who had come in.
Then Noah came around the corner and walked toward her through the afternoon’s downward-slanting light, and a different sort of chill ran up her spine. Because, oh, God, he was handsome.
She assured herself that there wasn’t a woman in the world who could remain unmoved by the sight of him. He had the kind of beauty that came from centuries of wealthy Italian families breeding their sons and daughters for the choicest lands and sums of money. His arms were too long, his hands too big, his shoulders impressively broad, his hips dangerously narrow. But it was the way he stepped that made her gaze cling to him; his strides were long and smooth, centered on his being. He moved like a dark-browed pirate king in command of his ship, his crew, the very elements that raged around him.
“Rafe and Brooke bought this place, and Rafe wanted me to see the house.” He was close.
She was skittish. “I know. Brooke thinks a lot of your opinion. We were discussing whether this is a bearing wall.” Penelope walked into the parlor and rested her hand on the peeling plaster.
“It is,” he said with assurance.
“You didn’t even look or tap or… whatever.”
“In older homes, assume every wall is a bearing wall. When you go in for the permit, it’s easier.” His peculiar green eyes observed his world with good-humored interest—and Bella Terra was his world in every way.
Yet she remembered the way his eyes changed to the angry gray of a stormy sea… or the rich gold of a great passion.
“I’ve learned a fair amount about remodeling. I’m the manager of Bella Terra resort, you know, a job I got by shrewdly being born into the Di Luca family.” He smiled at her, inviting her to smile back.
She did not. Instead she stared like a rodent enthralled by a snake.
He continued. “The resort has grown since it was built in the thirties, and I’ve had to deal with every electrical upgrade and plumbing disaster.”
Charming. My God, he was as charming as ever.
“The resort keeps me busy most of the time, and by most of the time I mean I’m on call twenty-four hours a day. So when I vacation, I leave town, ski, or go to Hawaii for the Iron Man competition or hike.… Last summer I went to Nepal and tackled a couple of pretty impressive peaks. Nonna said that was stupid.” He chuckled. “But it’s one more item off my bucket list.”
“I’ll have to agree with your grandmother.”
“I’ve done it now. I can go to my grave knowing I’ve conquered K2.”
He could have died. Plenty of people had fallen to their deaths on that mountain, their bodies never recovered. And Penelope shouldn’t care, but she did. Too much death…
She folded her hands at her waist and, to hide her expression, looked down at them. “I would say it’s more important to go to your grave later than earlier. But… that’s just me.”
“How’s your mother?” he asked. “Is she visiting Bella Terra with you?” He must have seen something in the way she stood, or heard something in her voice… or maybe he had simply moved on to another topic of conversation.
“No.” Penelope gained control, looked up at him. “I lost her a few months ago.”
She had caught him by surprise. “L-lost? She died? Your mother? But she seemed so vibrant!”
“Yes. Always.” Until the very end.
“What happened?” He added hastily, “If it’s not too painful.”
“I came to Bella Terra the summer after my freshman year in college.”
He nodded. “To serve an internship for the interior designer who was updating the resort.”
“The summer before my freshman year, Mama discovered a lump in her breast. But we had a lot to do to get me ready to go to college. Plus she was working for Mrs. Walters.”
“Your mother was her… nurse?”
“Nurse/companion, I guess. We lived with her, you know, and Mama was at her beck and call.” Penelope looked down again, remembering how her shoplifting in L.A. had precipitated the move to Portland, how she had been flung into an all-girls Catholic school with no more chances to screw up… and how she had realized she could never stand to disappoint her mother like that again.
The two of them were on their own.
“Mrs. Walters did a lot for us—I would never have been able to afford Cincinnati if it hadn’t been for her. But she was always demanding. Cincinnati was a long way away, so Mama didn’t say anything about the lump to me or Mrs. Walters. She didn’t do anything about the lump.” Penelope put her back against the wall, slid down, and sat on the floor, arms on her knees, eyes staring straight ahead. “Once she got me settled and returned to Portland, she had it checked out. They removed it. It was malignant. She underwent chemotherapy, and by the time I came home for Christmas, she was… She looked thin, but her hair was growing back in, and when I asked her, she didn’t tell me she’d had breast cancer. She said she was fine.” If only Penelope had questioned her further. If only she’d been less selfish and more concerned for her mother. If only…
If only.
Noah joined her on the floor, staring straight ahead, not looking at her… but listening. He might be her enemy, but he knew her and he knew her mother, and he remembered.… “It’s not your fault,” he said. “If your mother had told me lies, I would have never questioned her. She was a force of nature.”
“And I was selfish, happy to be home, to see my friends. Mrs. Walters might have told me if I’d asked, but I didn’t. I didn’t think to ask why or how my mother managed to pull enough strings to get me that internship in Bella Terra that summer, or why she was willing to leave Mrs. Walters and come here to live with me.”
“She was afraid she was going to die, and she wanted to give you a good start in life and spend as much time with you as possible.”
Not quite. But close enough. “That’s right. At the end of the summer, we left here. I finished college. I went to work. I got married. I lost my husband.” She dropped her gaze. She’d said enough. “When Mama came to help me get through it, this time I knew there was something wrong. They’d told her the cancer was gone. Actually, it had metastasized to her lungs. I quit my job. I sold our house. I went to Portland to take care of her.” Penelope recited the story steadily, but an unexpected wave of emotion caught her by the throat.
“How long ago?” Noah asked.
Had Mama died, he meant. “Five months.”
“What about her family in L.A.? Have you seen them?”
“I let them know when she died. Her mother is dead. Her father never forgave her for getting knocked up. Then he never forgave
her for moving out of L.A.”
“But you said he washed his hands of you.”
“After I got arrested, he wanted Mama to put me in a correctional facility. Said it would teach me a lesson. She said no and we moved. He blames me. Which is true. So he told me I shouldn’t expect anything from him. As far as he was concerned, I was no grandchild of his.” Not that Penelope expected anything different, but what a bitter conversation that had been!
Now Noah turned to her. “You’re alone in the world.”
“Mrs. Walters is still alive. She is very old, ninety-seven and feeble. When Mama got really sick, Mrs. Walters finally had to concede defeat and go into an assisted-living facility. She hates it, of course, and she’s starting to fail, and she told me… well. She told me stuff. Stuff that might be true, but her mind is wandering.” And for all that Penelope had not loved the old tyrant, she found that to be another almost unbearable loss. “She thinks I’m my mother.”
“Oh, Penelope. You’ve had such a tough time.” Before she realized what Noah intended and could move to take countermeasures, he grasped her hand again, holding it in both of his, warming her cold fingers between his palms.
She cleared her throat. “The last couple of years have been a challenge. But things are on the upswing.” She was so uncomfortable. Uncertain and uncomfortable and… Why was he doing this? Why was he being nice? The last time she’d seen Noah, he certainly hadn’t been nice. He had taken her youthful, fragile heart and crushed it with all the focused cruelty of a man who’d had his pleasure and wanted to move on.
She had loved him.
He hadn’t loved her.
She had thought he wanted to marry her.
He had dumped her in the cruelest way possible.
It had taken years for her to recover confidence in her own judgment, years to grow an ego large enough to believe a man could truly love her. It had taken Keith, kind and gentle, before she’d been willing to wade into the marital waters.
So what was Noah up to? Did he think she was just going to forget what a jackass he was?
If she was mature, she would.
She was never going to be that mature.
She pulled her hand away and scrambled to her feet. “No, really. I’m fine. Living the usual boring life. I don’t carry a knife. Or a gun. Or any weapon at all. So tell me, Noah—what’s going on here in Bella Terra?”
Chapter 14
Noah hesitated, apparently wanting to extend the moment of connection between them.
But Penelope pointedly rejected him, rising, turning, and walking away from the shadows of the parlor and into the foyer, where the westering sun splashed light across the walls.
Noah followed. “It’s a long story.” He glanced at the ceiling as if weighing the chances that Rafe and Brooke would return, then gestured Penelope toward the entry and the stairway. “Have a seat. I’ll try to make it brief. Over eighty years ago—”
She laughed as she seated herself on the hard step. “It really is a long story.”
“I wouldn’t kid you.” But he wasn’t amused. He watched her closely as he said, “Less than three months ago, Nonna was attacked in her home.”
Penelope’s amusement died an abrupt death. “Is she okay?”
“She walked in on a robbery in progress. He hit her with a tire iron, broke her arm, and knocked her out.” Noah paced in front of her, the diffused light from the high windows in the entry brushing his dark hair and broad shoulders with a loving hand. “She had a concussion and was in the hospital for more than a week. We sent her home with a bodyguard and a nurse to ensure her safety and health.”
Penelope’s dismay subsided, and her anger rose. “Did you catch the mugger?”
“Eventually we did, but it turned out he was the harbinger of something much larger. It goes back to an old family feud. Over eighty years ago—”
She didn’t laugh this time, but intently leaned forward.
“—my grandfather Anthony Di Luca was born, and on the same day across the valley, the Bianchin family also had a son.”
She knew who. “Joseph.”
“Yes!” He looked startled. Stared questioningly at her.
“I’m in town because I’ve got business with him.”
“Design business?” He shot the question at her. “But he’s not here.”
“I know that.”
“Is he coming back soon?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
“I hope not. He’s the one who initiated the attack on Nonna.”
Noah’s sharp tone, the harsh words, made her lean back away from him. “What? Why? How do you know that?”
“Over eighty years ago,” he began again, “there was a man, unmarried and with no family, named Massimo Bruno. He lived in Bella Valley and he made fine wines. World-class wines.”
“I’m listening.” Although she wished Noah would get to the point.
“On the occasion of a son’s birth, he would give a bottle of wine to the family, to be opened at the child’s twenty-first birthday. It was tradition, but this was Prohibition, and that year the revenuers found Massimo’s wine cellar. They broke all the casks and spilled the wine into the street. The gutters ran red, and Massimo managed to save enough wine for one bottle only. One bottle. Two sons. Two rival families.”
“Uh-oh.” She was starting to comprehend.
“Massimo gave the bottle of wine to the child who had been born first, my grandfather, Anthony Di Luca. To Joseph and the Bianchins, he gave an antique silver rattle.” Noah looked down, heavy lidded with satisfaction. “As it should have been.”
She wouldn’t dream of disagreeing. “Yes, of course.”
“The Bianchins swore vengeance.” Noah managed to convey cruelty in the wave of a hand. “For twenty-one years, they brooded on the perceived wrong—we Italians know how to wait, letting the anger fester year by year.”
Penelope’s heart clutched in anticipation and anguish.
Had she imagined that she knew this man?
She did not. Her heritage was Mexican: Mayan, Spanish, and French, and in those American and European heritages she shared the same heated Mediterranean blood as the Di Lucas. But she knew without a doubt that her grandfather’s petty grudges were nothing like this.
“On my grandfather’s twenty-first birthday, which was also his wedding day, Joseph led the Bianchin family on the attack. They came with guns and knives. They destroyed the gifts, the food, the wine—and they shot my grandfather.” The grim lines around Noah’s mobile mouth deepened. “He almost died.”
No. No. It wasn’t true. But she didn’t say a word. She didn’t want Noah to realize how much this meant to her… or why.
“Unfortunately for them, they attacked too soon. Massimo’s wine had not been opened. The bottle was still hidden. My grandfather survived, but he never forgave them—”
Please tell me this is not true. Not true. Because if it is…
“As long as Nonno lived, he would bring out that bottle of wine and show it off to his friends and his family… and put it away again. Because he knew that, across town, Joseph Bianchin would hear about it. He knew Joseph was stewing in his own bile, envying that bottle, coveting it.”
When Penelope came to Bella Terra to meet with Joseph Bianchin, she had never anticipated anything like this. How could she? To sit here and watch Noah gesture animatedly, to watch his face change from that of an amiable, civilized man into that of a brutal barbarian moved to violence by old vendettas… it was a revelation that both frightened and fascinated her. “Then what happened?”
“About a dozen years ago, my grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He slid slowly into dementia and died.” Noah stopped for a moment, his head bowed. Taking a breath, he finally continued. “When Nonna went looking for the bottle of wine—it was gone.”
“Gone?” She straightened up. “Gone where?”
“Wouldn’t we like to know?” Noah flashed a smile. “Nonno hid it, and hid it w
ell. We’ve looked and looked, but it’s gone. And yet the trouble remains.”
Chapter 15
“Your grandfather could have put that bottle of wine anywhere,” Penelope whispered.
“No.” Noah shook his head with assurance. “The hiding places are limited. It’s wine. Wine has to be properly cared for or it disintegrates, and a bottle of that age… Well, there’s a chance—a good chance—that no matter how well tended it was, the wine has soured. But the bottle was precious to Nonno, his heritage, the reason he was wounded and almost killed. He would have put it somewhere it would be preserved. He would have put it somewhere dark and cool.”
She had to object. “But he had Alzheimer’s. Maybe—”
“For Nonno, the proper care of wine wasn’t a function of his mind. It was like his hair color or the sound of his voice. The proper care of wine was bred into him by a thousand generations of Di Lucas, and he would never have abused that bottle.”
She didn’t know whether she believed Noah or not, but it didn’t matter. He believed it. His family believed it. But she saw a flaw in the logic. “So the person who broke into your grandmother’s house was someone hired by Joseph Bianchin to grab the bottle of wine?”
“That’s right.”
“You know this for a fact?”
“I do.”
“How?” She leaned forward, making her point. “Because frankly, if Joseph Bianchin had wanted that bottle of wine so badly he’s willing to resort to violence, he should have come for it sooner.”
Noah nodded at her. “Exactly our thoughts. But we knew it was Joseph who started the trouble, because we found the Internet ad looking for someone to do the job.”
“He put up an ad for criminals to beat up an elderly lady and put his name on it?” She made her disbelief plain in her voice.
“No, he put up an Internet ad saying someone would pay to recover a precious possession, and the sly old bastard covered his tracks very well. He’s smart enough to make sure nothing he does is prosecutable.” Noah’s face grew cold again. “But while Nonna was in the hospital, he visited her. He threatened her.”
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