Just Like That

by Karin Kallmaker

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Synopsis

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  About the Author

  Bella Books

  Synopsis

  Syrah Ardani tried independence—but the call of the Napa Valley hills and rolling vineyards of her family’s winery have brought her home again. She is content with her ordered world until she learns that her father’s feckless management has put Ardani Vineyards into receivership.

  Corporate turnaround specialist Toni Blanchard’s arrival is preceded by tales of her slash-and-burn techniques. Determined to meet this soulless corporate raider head on, Syrah proudly prepares to do battle for her home and family business.

  Toni has reason to retreat from a high-pressure Manhattan lifestyle, not the least of which is a bitter break up. She’s been told that Syrah Ardani is attractive and single, but Toni never mixes business and pleasure.

  Creditors clamor for a quick sale and payment. The beautiful—and hostile—Syrah wants Toni off her land and out of her life.

  Their clashes smolder with distrust and resentment, but also threaten to light a completely different kind of fire. Most dangerous of all is the one thing Toni can’t control—the way her heart reacts when Syrah looks at her…just like that.

  Karin Kallmaker’s lesbian retelling of Pride and Prejudice pits first impressions against last chances in this lush wine country story.

  By the Author

  WRITING AS KARIN KALLMAKER:

  Just Like That

  Sugar

  One Degree of Separation

  Maybe Next Time

  Substitute for Love

  Frosting on the Cake

  Unforgettable

  Watermark

  Making Up for Lost Time

  Embrace in Motion

  Wild Things

  Painted Moon

  Car Pool

  Paperback Romance

  Touchwood

  In Every Port

  WRITING FOR BELLA AFTER DARK:

  All the Wrong Places

  Once Upon a Dyke: New Exploits of Fairy Tale Lesbians

  Bell, Book and Dyke: New Exploits of Magical Lesbians

  WRITING AS LAURA ADAMS:

  Christabel

  The Tunnel of Light Trilogy:

  Sleight of Hand

  Seeds of Fire

  Daughters of Pallas:

  Night Vision

  The Dawning

  Feel free to visit www.kallmaker.com

  Copyright © 2005 by Karin Kallmaker

  Bella Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 10543

  Tallahassee, FL 32302

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  First Bella Books Edition 2005

  Editor: Christi Cassidy

  Cover Designer: Sandy Knowles

  ISBN: 978-1-59493-025-6

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For Maria, and all the many friends I’ve been pleased to escort through our wine country—I couldn’t have done it without you.

  This novel is dedicated to the inspiration of Jane Austen, who breathed life into the modern romance novel.

  Seventeen is prime time

  Chapter 1

  “Everybody knows that a single woman with good money is in want of a wife.” Jane waded out of the pond and stood dripping on the old blanket they’d tossed over the soft, early spring grass.

  The outrageous statement succeeded in banishing Syrah’s drowsiness. “You? Wife material?”

  Jane shook water out of her hair. “I figure if a woman’s making steady green and she’s in her forties, never been engaged, maybe even still a virgin, then she needs a wife.”

  “You mean she needs you.” Syrah plucked a grape from the fist-sized cluster on the blanket next to her.

  “Same thing. Are those good?” Jane peered dubiously at the bright green fruit, then picked one for herself.

  Syrah bit the bottom from the grape she’d chosen and managed to keep a smile on her face. “I think so.”

  Ever trusting, Jane popped the grape into her mouth. Syrah allowed the laugh she’d been holding back to escape her lips, then clapped her hands to her throat, trying to soothe her own outraged glands.

  “You lying sack of potting soil—it’s sour!” Jane made a threatening gesture with her arm that Syrah laughingly avoided.

  “Yes, I know. And it’s good, don’t you think?”

  “You’re trying to poison me. Gods-on-the-vine, that’s painful.” Syrah passed over her water bottle to make amends for the lack of warning. “It’s too early for ripe. You of all people should know that. Take a little sip and then let it roll around in your mouth. Just think about it. That grape and thousands like it, this fall, next year, ten years from now, will taste like today, this sky, the breeze, those soft clouds, the hint of fog maybe tonight.” Tipping her head back, Syrah closed her eyes to the rolling vista of checkerboard greens as she savored the layers of flavors still assaulting her taste buds. “These grapes will be our memories in a bottle.”

  “Like a painting, but drinkable.” Jane passed back the water bottle, then shimmied into her boxers. “I’m afraid I’ve got more than wine on my mind.”

  Jane tended to put her clothes on before she was dry, and today was no exception. As she watched her friend try to wrangle her tank top down her still wet torso, Syrah had no trouble recalling a hundred similar afternoons. A swim in the pond, a bask in the sun, snacks purloined from Bennett’s kitchen—a beautiful May lunch hour was worthy of nothing less. Syrah arched her shoulders into the sun. A few minutes more and she’d get dressed, too. “Is there more than wine to life?”

  “Yes. A love life. A hot woman with a warm body and an inventive spirit. That’s what’s on my mind. I’m tired of being alone. I’m tired of being your date at the Spring Fling.”

  Syrah’s eyes flew open. “You mean you don’t want to go with me this year?”

  Jane flopped down on the blanket, her shirt stuck to her back. “Well, yeah, I do, now that you’re back for good. It sucked going alone. I hope you had fun in Europe, because I was bored out of my mind without you around.”

  “But enough to go thinking of yourself as somebody’s wife? What’s gotten
into you?”

  “The old Netherfield place finally sold, and I’ve heard rumors about the woman who bought it.”

  “Rumors fly fast around here.” A breeze tickled over her nearly dry breasts and Syrah rolled over to reach for her tank top. “She could be straight.”

  “No. Definitely a dyke. And femme, so, hey, I’m thinking she needs a wife like me. I’ve got all the qualifications. I can fix stuff, dance, like to talk and think sex is really fun. My only strike is the money thing.”

  “You’re an artist. You get to have no money. I’m not an artist and I’ve got no money either.”

  “You have a vineyard. A very large, old vineyard.”

  “Belongs to my father.”

  “And will be yours one day.”

  “A long way in the future, I hope.” Syrah couldn’t help the flicker of concern she felt thinking about her father. He wasn’t as physically vigorous as he had been before her sojourn in Europe. “Meanwhile, gas money can break the bank.”

  “Good paint costs more than gas.” Jane idly shooed away a buzzing bee.

  “Besides, you won’t be the only one checking out the new woman in town, you know. Move into this neighborhood and everybody thinks they automatically own you.” Syrah didn’t mean to sound bitter. She’d not been so popular when she’d left. But the four years in Europe had somehow reactivated her as dating material, and the fickleness irked her. She was the same woman now as she had been then.

  “It wasn’t that way in France?”

  “Not really.” Syrah yanked her tank top over her head and shoved her dark, not-quite-dry curls over her shoulder.

  “From your e-mails I gather that you had a line out your door.”

  “For fun, yeah. I don’t know what’s with California since I left. There is a positive mania to get married. I don’t just mean the piece of paper. I thought the drive to pair up was bad before I left. Hell, it was one of the reasons I left. I don’t need a wife and I don’t want to be anybody’s wife, either.”

  “And all those fun French girls didn’t want to settle down?”

  “They were fun and that was the whole point. But I’m home now.”

  Jane was quiet for a moment and Syrah appreciated the restraint. There was no point in rehashing the scorching European summer that had decimated last year’s wine harvest and left this year’s in doubt, or the undeniable reality that Ardani Vineyards needed another Ardani on the premises. Her father could still tell which hillside had birthed any given grape, but his energy for supervising crews and maintenance had definitely waned.

  She drew on her panties and shorts, squinting into the hot sun that danced along her skin. The pleasure in it was so sharp that for a moment she could not breathe. She had thought she’d love Europe, the independence especially. She certainly enjoyed herself, and enjoyed a small amount of respect from the vintners she worked for from season to season. But she had pined for the Napa Valley sun and the blazing blue sky. Since her return to the States in December she had waited through the long, wet winter for the glorious spring to arrive. No matter the reason she had come home, this was home. She wasn’t going anywhere else again.

  “I think,” Jane finally said, “that I am tired of pleasing myself.”

  Syrah glanced up in surprise. “But you’ve always prided yourself on pleasing the ladies.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” Jane stretched her long neck and closed her eyes. “So I have a good time one night with some lovely Chiquita up for the weekend from San Francisco. She goes home happy and I’ve certainly had a blast. Dinner and breakfast have been had and it makes me think about lunch.”

  “Lunch?” Syrah sat up to slip on her sandals, letting her hair hide her smile.

  “Don’t laugh.” Jane was frowning into the sun. “Maybe it’s hormones, maybe it’s that, like you, I’m finally looking back on thirty. But I don’t know. I feel like I want to make somebody’s entire day wonderful. Not just dinner, bed and breakfast. I want twenty-four-seven. To mean something to somebody all the time.”

  “Just because some woman has moved into the area doesn’t mean she’s your type. What if she’s got no brain? No style? What if she doesn’t get Jane the Artista?”

  “Some artist.” Jane shrugged and Syrah was surprised at the downward turn Jane’s mouth had taken.

  “An artist,” she repeated. “You create. You have flair and substance. French women would spread you on a cracker and gobble you up.”

  “I don’t want to be someone’s trophy. I want…oh, hell, I don’t know what I want. I know what I don’t want. I don’t want another summer of lunches by myself.”

  Syrah couldn’t think of a response that made sense of Jane’s abrupt abandonment of the very life she’d been striving to perfect since high school. What had happened to the cocky butch who had once declared, “Happiness is putting her to sleep so you can wake her up”?

  She found the keys to the truck in her pocket and gathered the grapes and bottled water. “It’s got to be nearly one.”

  Jane grunted and scrambled to her feet. “Drop me at the job site?”

  “Sure. Want to have a burger or something tonight?”

  “Okay.”

  Syrah nearly said that she’d gotten more enthusiasm from Hound the last time she’d said “burger” to him, but she resisted. She and Jane had been friends too long for a temporary fixation with romance to interfere. “I’ll pick you up after the tasting room closes. I’m pouring until six.”

  She coasted the truck down the incline from the pond, braking carefully to keep dust from billowing in their wake. Jane opened the gates as they made their way to the shady back road. The tires finally crossed onto packed dirt and she punched on the CD player as they increased speed to the public road that would get them to Jane’s current job site. With the windows rolled down and Stevie Nicks bawling a witchy song they might have still been in high school.

  The green-smudged hills and canopies of trees had not changed since then. Neat rows of vines lined both sides of the winding road. Rieslings in the sun, Syrahs in the lee of a curving hill, Pinots tucked into the shade—none of it had changed. The annual cycle of budbreak, leaves and harvest were only temporary. What was underneath—the vines—were as permanent in her mind as the soil itself.

  She watched Jane heft a roll of irrigation hose after greeting her boss, then tromp into the atrium of a new office building. Syrah didn’t care for the impersonal glass-and-mirrors architecture, but at least they were putting in a lot of greenery, keeping Jane employed for that much more of the spring. The job would end and her friend would haul out her paints and go back to her first love. That was what Jane had done for the baker’s dozen of summers since high school. She hadn’t changed, Syrah told herself. Not Jane. Not anything.

  “I’m back,” Syrah called out as she dropped her keys into the bowl next to the back door. Hound promptly greeted her with snuffles all around her knees, fanned her briefly with his tail, then he gracefully reclaimed his bed, curiosity assuaged.

  There was no human response, however, and a quick check of the tasting room confirmed that it was empty. She headed around to the patio overlooking the sunny hillside that curved down to the road. With a grin, she beheld her father in mid-snore. The glider had always been his favorite place for a quick doze.

  Setting the grapes down on the seat next to him, she tiptoed back to the tasting room to turn the door sign to Open. In a few weeks, early in June, they’d be open all day. A noon dip in the pond would be only a memory until September.

  She tidied the bar, frowned over the tasting listing—why were they still offering the best reserve? Its reputation was growing and she thought it was time to put it away. A bang from the kitchen announced Bennett’s arrival so she went in search of a snack. Sour grapes and a few crackers hadn’t dented her hunger.

  “You’ll never guess the news I heard.” Bennett set out a container of her homemade tapenade just as Syrah opened a box of sesame crackers. “N
ews that you should be overjoyed with, I might add.”

  Syrah dug up some of the chopped olives and sighed happily as she savored the delicious blend of garlic and pesto. “Netherfield has been bought.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Jane told me.”

  “Jane.” Bennett’s eyebrows joined into a single line. She slapped Syrah’s hand away from the tapenade. “Get a plate. Honestly, all the years I’ve tried to teach you some kind of manners. Jane doesn’t know anything about it. I’ve been asking around and the new owner is apparently some businesswoman with money—retiring in her forties, a lady of leisure. Get a napkin.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “She’s very pretty, everyone says, and agreeable and has already offered to host a Wine for March of Dimes get-together once the house is habitable again. There are already people there working on it.”

  “Jane should offer her services for landscape design. She’s good enough to do it on her own. It’s that artistic flair she has.”

  Bennett finished with the last of the groceries and rinsed her hands. Another thing that had not changed, Syrah mused. Bennett’s hands were as strong and gnarled as they had always been. Those hands had mesmerized Syrah as a girl, watching their hard strength turn out lighter-than-air pie crusts and biscuits. “You are the most eligible woman in the area and this very afternoon you need to go over to Netherfield and see about meeting the new owner.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Don’t you even want to know her name?” Bennett gave Syrah the look that suggested Syrah must be ill not to have demanded that piece of information at the outset.

  “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  Tomatoes squished between Bennett’s fingers, pulp and seeds falling into a bowl while the beautifully ripe flesh headed for the cookpot. “Perhaps I won’t, if you’re being snippy. You are very tiresome sometimes. All I want is to see you happy and settled.”