Can't Hurry Love

by Christie Ridgway

“I was ready!” she said fiercely, her eyes stinging again.

  He cupped her cheek with one of his large palms. She held still, determined not to lean into the touch. “All right,” he said, ducking his head so his breath brushed her ear. “All right.”

  It wasn’t all right. Not when the goose bumps were cascading down her neck and gathering around her nipples, so they tightened into their own hard points. She remembered the heat of his chest against them, the wet suction of his mouth covering them, the way his long fingers had plucked her there.

  Do you like that?

  How about like this?

  What if I do that and this?

  Two crazy, hormonal kids. The rich boy, confident in his place in the world. The passionate Italian girl, whose inhibitions fled the instant he unfastened the first button. Had her wild responses turned him off?

  “I was so easy for you,” she muttered.

  He laughed, the sound low. “Nothing about you has ever been easy for me, Giuliana.”

  His thumb stroked her cheek and her body thrummed. Suddenly, she was aware that they were standing toe-to-toe, nose-to-nose, forehead-to-forehead. Yeah, just how to squelch those rumors. Frowning, she took a big step back, in the direction of the tasting booth.

  Liam instantly took up the distance. She shook her head, retreated again. He followed.

  “Stop,” she said, as her back encountered the corner edge of the winery’s booth. She was aware that Stevie and Allie were nearby, as well as a knot of people chatting and waiting to be served, but she didn’t look at them. Her focus was trained on Liam.

  His glance shifted right and again, for just a brief second, his expression shifted, too.

  Curious, her gaze cut that same way. Hell. Allie’s display had garnered attention, just as her sister had planned. People were poring over the wedding wine ledgers. She supposed it was mostly innocuous, but still . . .

  “Jules.” Liam caught her attention again. “I won’t stop. Because this hasn’t.” He gestured between them, as if they could both see that invisible pull of wicked attraction that had years ago brought teenage Giuliana into his arms and into his bed.

  Her temper flared. She wanted to stomp her foot, but she wasn’t sixteen anymore. Or untouched by hard, harsh, heartbreak. “You have to,” she said, her voice fierce again, though low enough for only Liam to hear. “You can’t let people believe there’s even a remote chance we’ll get together again.”

  “Oh. My. God.” A voice pierced the surrounding babble. Stevie, talking in tomboy tones. “Oh. My. God. Jules and Liam.”

  Giuliana’s head whipped toward her sister, who was staring down at the page of one of the wedding wine ledgers. Any last enjoyment she might find in the day vanished. Aghast, she felt the chardonnay-gold air around her turn to molasses. It slowed time, movement, comprehension.

  But soon enough, she understood.

  Liam didn’t try to dodge her accusing stare. The rat! He’d returned the missing book. “People don’t need to believe we’ll get together again . . .” he said.

  Stevie, the brash Baci sister, spoke out in her loud voice. “Liam and Jules . . . they married!” There was a pause. “And are still married?”

  Giuliana’s husband’s lips turned up in a wry smile. “. . . when now they’ll know we never really broke up.”

  The whole tribe of them ambushed Giuliana in Allie’s office at the winery early the next morning. She hadn’t been hiding out, exactly, though her youngest sister usually didn’t make it into the office before noon on Fridays. The real reason she’d changed locations was because she was so sick of working and sleeping in the fourteen by fourteen space that had her own nameplate on the desk. To be honest, though, she probably would have slipped away in avoidance of the confrontation if they hadn’t caught her unawares.

  Sometime around eight A.M., she’d dozed off on the stack of bills she’d brought in to peruse.

  When Allie, Penn, Stevie, Jack, and Liam popped open the door, she popped up, embarrassingly aware that she’d been drooling on the envelope from the gas and electric company. Her sisters were gazing on her with consternation. Both brothers-in-law stared at the focal piece of furniture in the small room, wearing odd, bemused expressions.

  She glanced between them as she straightened the Tanti Baci logo T-shirt she was wearing. “Uh, Penn? Jack?”

  The second man shook himself, then shot his wife a quick, hungry look. His hand stroked a path down her bare arm. “Every time I come in here . . .” He shook his head again. “God, I love that desk.”

  Penn snorted with laughter, and Allie thwacked him on the arm. “Stop,” the youngest Baci said, though there was a gleam in her eye, too. “You guys are terrible.”

  Her husband curled an arm around her neck and yanked her close enough to whisper in her ear. Allie went red in the face and gave him another halfhearted thwack. “Terrible,” she muttered again.

  Giuliana couldn’t help but meet Liam’s gaze. From his place behind the newlyweds, he pretended to hurl in the nearby wastebasket. It was so unlike the stiff, almost stuffy man he’d seemed to be the last year that he startled a laugh out of her.

  The couples turned around with suspicion, but Liam was straight and straight-faced again. Giuliana laughed a second time.

  At the sound, Allie spun back. “I’m glad someone’s in a good mood. We were left a little flat-footed yesterday, Jules.”

  Her humor evaporated. After the big reveal at the winery’s booth, she’d refused to stick around for all the inevitable questions. Running hadn’t solved anything, apparently—because when her glance found Liam’s now, he shook his head. Clearly he’d avoided explaining, too.

  Stevie laid out the facts. “The entry in the ledger that’s just turned up indicates you and Liam married in Reno, Nevada, ten years ago last month.”

  “And we didn’t even throw you an anniversary party,” Allie added. Her voice held a slight edge. “The traditional gift is tin.”

  Sighing, Giuliana figured there was no way out of this now. “Look . . .” Then she stopped, deciding to strip it down to the most basic of truths.

  “Eighteen,” she said, touching her chest. “Stupid.” Not just because of the secret wedding, but because they’d recorded it upon downing a purloined bottle of blanc de blancs post-ceremony. Then she pointed toward Liam. “Twenty. Not any smarter.”

  His usual deadpan expression didn’t commit his opinion of her reasoning.

  Allie couldn’t leave it at that, though. “You tied the knot in spring, hied off to Tuscany in the summer, and by fall broke up—but then never bothered with the legal side of things?”

  “You make it sound so . . . slapdash.” She tried making light, though in her mind those months were the anchor she’d dragged behind her for the last decade.

  “You don’t do slapdash, Jules,” Allie insisted. “Never in your life have you been reckless.”

  Probably not. In general, both she and Liam had been the responsible older siblings—whether dictated by nature or nurture, she didn’t know. Maybe that had been the dangerous attraction of their youthful passion—the exciting lure of the imprudent.

  Stevie took up the assessment of her character. “Yet to let it go all this long! Sure, you have a nasty temper and can hold a grudge longer than a vampire’s lifetime, but . . . but . . .”

  “Gee, thanks,” Giuliana said, her voice dry. “Tell me what you really think.”

  Stevie took her up on the offer. “Well, I—”

  “Could perhaps leave off the recriminations,” Liam put in.

  All at once, her sisters subsided. Giuliana thought she should be grateful for his intervention, but that nasty temper of hers kindled at the realization that no one was castigating him. “Just to be clear,” she said. “I didn’t force Liam to the altar. He asked me.”

  The assembled company swung to face the head of the Bennett family. Instead of hauling his ass over the coals, however, after one glance at his forbidding expression, they t
urned back to Giuliana.

  “What are we going to do about it?” Allie asked.

  The same thing she’d been planning to tackle at the end of the month. After years of them both letting the situation remain unresolved, she’d promised Liam at the restaurant that she’d finally deal with the issue of their youthful marriage in four-weeks’ time. But now . . . She sighed. Now it couldn’t wait even that long. And because her reasoning for putting it off in the first place wasn’t something she actually understood herself, she just cut to the chase. “We’ll immediately do what it takes to get a div—”

  “Don’t say divorce!” Allie’s eyes rounded. “There can’t be a divorce. At least not now. Not yet.”

  “Why?” Then Giuliana groaned as understanding dawned. “You told the papers, didn’t you? You made calls . . . claims . . .” That ridiculous legend.

  Her younger sister grimaced, guilt flashing over her face. “Well . . .”

  Penn raised his eyebrows at his wife. “That’s why you contacted the Wedding Fever people.”

  Jack was the only one who appeared perplexed as Giuliana groaned again. Stevie had to fill him in. “Popular TV show . . . remember I told you how they filmed Penn and Allie’s ceremony last year?”

  “They saved our bacon then,” Allie said, sounding defensive. “They might just do it again.”

  Bacon with a side of rotten eggs, Giuliana thought, when all was said and done. She sighed. “Allie—”

  “They loved the idea of the Vow-Over Weekend,” her little sister said quickly. “C’mon, Jules. Don’t we owe it to Papa to try our very hardest?”

  To save the winery, she meant. They’d made that promise at his bedside and she’d honestly tried. Still . . . Yet looking into her sister’s big brown eyes, it was impossible to refuse her. She sighed again, and clearly capitulation was written all over her face because Allie clapped her hands together.

  Stevie, much more practical, cast a glance at Liam. “We’ve still got problems.”

  Allie shook her head, causing her waving hair to float around her shoulders. “Not when the Three Mouseketeers are on the job.”

  Giuliana almost smiled. When they were little girls, they’d put their Disney ears on their heads and tie their mother’s aprons around their necks by the strings. Then they’d galloped around the house and through the vines, fighting imaginary enemies. Always standing with each other.

  She could lose that. But not yet. Not quite yet. Her shoulders straightened. “What’s worrying you, Steve?”

  “You can’t go on living here.”

  That wasn’t good. But Honeymoon Central wasn’t an option. And though she could go through the motions of searching for another apartment, it would waste time. Instead of saying that, she lifted the stack of bills and let them fall onto the desk. “At the moment, I’d rather save the money than pay for another place.”

  “You’ll start walking crooked if you spend any more nights on your love seat,” Penn pointed out.

  Allie chimed in. “And you don’t look so pretty with creases on your face after you fall asleep on top of the paperwork.”

  To seek out embarrassing wrinkles, Giuliana’s hand went on a reconnaissance mission. “Where? Here?”

  “You’re fine,” Liam said. “Beautiful.”

  Her hand dropped. She looked everywhere but at him as the word rolled over her heating skin. “Uh, okay.”

  “Good,” Stevie said. “That was easy.”

  Giuliana’s gaze flew to her middle sister’s. “Not okay, I’ll sleep somewhere else, but okay . . . okay . . .”

  “Okay, Liam thinks you’re beautiful,” Stevie said, in a no-nonsense voice. “All the better for our purposes.”

  “I think she’s beautiful, too,” Jack put in, grinning at her. “Always have.”

  “Scary, but beautiful,” Penn agreed.

  She narrowed her eyes at her brothers-in-law. “Cut it out. You do that to embarrass me. Keep it up and you’ll be the ones frustrated when I move into the farmhouse and insist we girls have sleepovers each and every night.”

  They didn’t even appear worried, which should have worried her. Jack’s grin widened. “I’m not concerned about the sleeping arrangements, ma petite soeur.”

  “There’s plenty of room at my house,” Liam said.

  No! After the fire, he’d made the offer. Move in. We could finish this thing, Giuliana. But if they were in such close proximity, who knew what she might risk?

  Her palms were starting to sweat at the idea, though she tried keeping her expression serene and her voice out of the shrill range. “I couldn’t intrude on you and Seth.”

  “My brother’s in Monterey. Big work project, so he’s staying there the next few weeks.”

  “Anyway, you have to intrude on Liam,” Stevie said. “That’s the whole point. We discussed it on the way over.”

  Allie was nodding. Penn and Jack wore faint smiles, indicating their approval.

  “Please, you guys,” Giuliana said. She loved them all, and might only have the chance to show it for a few more weeks, but this was too much!

  “I told them you’d chicken out,” Liam put in. His voice was cool, his manner unattached, as always.

  Suddenly she wanted to slap that nonexpression expression off his face with the flat of her hand. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Clearly, if we’re going to postpone proceedings in order to keep the no-divorce legend going, we can’t be estranged.”

  Panic clutched at her stomach. “We’ve been estranged! All this last year when we were both in Edenville and for nine years before that.”

  “But that can’t be anymore. Surely you see that.” He spoke to her as if she was a two-year-old.

  “Surely you see that I can’t just move in and . . . and . . .”

  “Live with me? Be my wife?”

  “I’m not going to be your wife!”

  Liam crossed his arms over his chest. “Giuliana, you are my wife.”

  “The kind that will kill you while you lie in bed.” She could see it now. “You heard them. They say that I have a nasty temper and hold a grudge for eternity. And you know me. Think! I might even do it without realizing it. I’ll just rise up in the middle of the night and . . . and smother you with my pillow.”

  They were all staring at her as if she’d gone mad. So? The idea of being that close to Liam again made her mad.

  Allie stepped forward. “Giuliana.” Her voice was kind. “Nobody said you had to actually sleep with Liam.”

  Mortification rushed over her. “I knew that,” she mumbled.

  “For the good of the winery,” Stevie reminded her, “all you need to do is live under the same roof. Fake conjugal bliss for a few weeks.”

  As if it would be that easy. Good God. She’d started the day hoping to avoid her family and the fact that she was married, but now they weren’t going to let her avoid her husband, either. She slumped in her seat.

  Penn had this happy face that under normal circumstances Giuliana found charming. These weren’t normal circumstances. “What do they call it?” He snapped his fingers. “I know, a marriage of convenience.”

  Giuliana slid lower in her chair. She didn’t dare meet Liam’s eyes, though she couldn’t avoid his voice.

  “Convenient,” he said, and if she didn’t know better she’d think he was laughing at her. “I like the sound of that.”

  6

  Kohl dominated one corner of the bar at his favorite nothing-fancy watering hole on the outskirts of Edenville’s small downtown. There were more than a few upscale tasting rooms and classy cocktail lounges attached to ritzy restaurants nearby, but the winegrowing business employed plenty of real workingmen and workingwomen who couldn’t afford the cost of pricey liquor—even the fermented grape juice they worked their asses off to produce.

  Ironic, that.

  The world was just full of irony, he thought, his hand tightening on his shot glass. He tossed the contents back, and the tequila
burned his throat as it went down.

  A body slipped onto one of the empty stools on either side of him—the other patrons were smart enough to give him a wide berth. “Whatcha doing?” a familiar, female voice said.

  He let his empty glass clack against the bar before drawing a second, full one closer. “Getting drunk. Avoiding company.”

  On his right, one of his sisters, the unsinkable Mari, didn’t seem put off by his brusque tone. “You should have stayed home then.”

  Yeah. But he had this rule about drinking alone. He didn’t do it, not since his last blackout. The way he figured it, a witness or two might curb his most destructive tendencies. Though tonight . . .

  “I suppose you heard,” Mari said.

  About Jules and Liam. Still not looking at her, he grunted. “It makes me want to kill somebody.”

  A little gasp had him twitching. It wasn’t Mari’s gasp. His head whipped to the side and he saw Grace Hatch standing at his sister’s elbow. “What the hell are you doing here?” he barked out.

  Her big blue eyes rounded. Mari answered instead. “Friday night? Two girls out on the town? We’re looking for a good time, Kohl.”

  He turned his stare on Mari. “And you’re looking here? This place is too rough for the little rabbit,” he said, indicating the other woman with his chin.

  “That’s why I’m leaving her with you,” Mari said. “I just ran into Pat Rowan and he wants to take me to dinner.”

  Before he could tell his sneaky sister he wasn’t the least interested in babysitting, she was off in a flurry of long corkscrew curls and Grace was taking her place. A faint scent of vanilla reminded him of her cinnamon freckles and her wholesome, boy-howdy features.

  It only underscored how he was in no frame of mind to deal with a fresh-faced little girl. “You call a taxi, I’ll pay to have it take you home.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her fingers lace on the bar top, the little rabbit as teacher’s pet. “No, thank you,” she said, her voice prim.

  The bartender placed a glass of white wine on the napkin he set in front of her. With a swipe of his hand, he removed Kohl’s empty shot glass and replaced it with a fresh tequila. Good man.