Crush on You

by Christie Ridgway

  There were no surprises in the rest of the photographs except that looking at them didn’t hurt. Alessandra had her own similar set that she’d been afraid to gaze upon since she was twenty years old. Her hands didn’t shake when she returned these to the box. Sliding off Tommy’s jacket didn’t feel like shedding her skin. She folded it back into its cardboard nest.

  “You missed this one,” Stevie said, handing her another photo.

  Alessandra found herself smiling. “Sadie Hawkins dance.” The girl in the photo had long dark hair in braids and had blacked out one of her teeth. Fake black freckles peppered her nose. The handsome blond boy wore a gingham kerchief that matched the girl’s short skirt. He sat on a straw bale and she sat on his lap.

  “Look how cute they look,” she said, holding the picture so Giuliana had a better view.

  “They look very happy.”

  Alessandra smiled down at them again, and it was only then that it really sank in. Though that was she and Tommy, it didn’t feel like herself at all. It was two young people, a girl and a boy, who had laughed and smiled and loved, once upon a time. The girl had lost that boy she’d loved, but that was in the past, too. With a final glance, she put the photo on top of the red jacket, like a memory held forever in the heart.

  Inspiration suddenly struck. “Wait, wait,” she said, and doffed the apron and colander, then raced upstairs to her bedroom. She was back in two minutes, carrying her white satin shoes, her tiara and veil, and the layers of white tulle that made up her wedding dress. They’d been in her closet for five years and it was time to put them away.

  It took nothing to tuck the shoes and tiara beside the letterman’s jacket. With the dress still over her arm, she folded the veil into a tiny package.

  “Are you sure about this?” Giuliana asked.

  She nodded. “Sure,” she said, even as her pulse started to pick up.

  Stevie found some tissue paper that she used to wrap the veil. It fit snugly into a corner.

  Then Alessandra held up the dress.

  Like that, pain hit, welling from the center of her breasts to fill her chest.

  Crying out, she bowed into it, fisting the fabric against her. “Oh, God.” Oh, God.

  “Allie? What is it?”

  She felt both Stevie’s and Giuliana’s hands on her, but their touch didn’t alleviate the bursting, breaking, radiating hurt from where the kernel of her heart resided. It was expanding in her chest, its hard shell cracking so it could swell to a size that multiplied the aching pain.

  Why? Her fingernails bit into her palms, even through the filmy fabric of the dress. Why now?

  “Allie? Is it Tommy? Are you crying for Tommy? He wouldn’t want this for you.”

  Shaking her head, Alessandra closed her eyes. There was a film playing in her head, and she couldn’t turn it off. It kept looping, around and around and around, bringing wave after wave of anguish to wrack her body.

  As it was resurrected, her renewed heart was breaking.

  And the catalyst for her heart’s regeneration and instantaneous fracture was the memory of her last time in this dress. Not that morning five-plus years ago when she’d learned of the death of her childhood sweetheart. But a month ago, when she went flying down the road to the cottage.

  She saw this all from above, too, like a movie, the rolling rows of green vines, the thick branches of the oaks, the gray gravel that led to the dilapidated cottage where Liam’s car was parked. A man was slouched against its side, his attention suddenly riveted by the woman running in his direction.

  She’d noticed him, too, in one corner of her mind. Maybe she’d recognized him as her chance—or her fall.

  They knew which one it was now.

  Her gaze centered again on that high school photo nestled on the scarlet jacket. That girl had loved a boy she’d lost. The pain had finally faded.

  But the woman, this woman who was Alessandra grown and who carried Alessandra’s now beating but broken heart loved a man she’d pushed away by insulting the very feelings that tore at her right now. That mistake would never fade. The memory of it would stay with her forever.

  Penn would have bailed if he hadn’t promised the kids. But he’d agreed a week ago to man the dunk booth yet again on Market Day. It just went to show what reward the Good Samaritans of the world reaped, because he was fully aware that the teenagers of the Edenville High service club who were sponsoring the fundraiser would remind him way too much of Saint Tommy and the Nun of Napa, the wine country’s very own Romeo and Juliet.

  Christ, it made him want to stick a knife in his gut. From now on, he reminded himself, no more Mr. Nice Guy.

  Reaching the end of Fir Street, he wondered if fate had sent him a reprieve. There was no tank/seat/target contraption in sight. “Hey,” he said to a passerby. “Isn’t the dunking booth usually here?”

  The man paused. “I saw it set up in the square. Do you know—”

  “Yeah, yeah. The town center.” He reversed direction, trying to cheer himself with the thought that once he got this last obligation out of the way, he could head back to L.A.

  L.A., where he’d be free of her dark-lashed eyes, her fall of coffee-colored hair, the lush curves and sweet scent of Alessandra Baci. His mood didn’t lift.

  Then he turned the next corner, and it sank lower. Damn. Hell. Fuck. He said every curse word he knew, then repeated them again, but the litany didn’t act like the spell he’d hoped and make the woman he didn’t want to love disappear. She was standing at the base of the booth, wearing that little turquoise dress she’d worn while proposing to him. The warm afternoon breeze pressed it close to her luscious body.

  From this moment on and for the rest of his days, he was going to be meaner than Scrooge. More flint-hearted than Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life. A Grinch the likes of which Dr. Seuss had never imagined. Penn’s good deeds had only led to great humiliation.

  She spied him across the square. Their gazes met and his heart jolted in his chest, like a boat trying to loosen from its mooring. Humiliation—ha! The anguish of that was nothing compared to this gut-churning certainty. This knowledge that he’d never see her again.

  He forced himself to walk in her direction. The square was crowded, forcing him to circumvent knots of people and step around strollers and kids on tiny bicycles that didn’t reach his knees. He caught a whiff of grilling meat and passed a panoply of local goods, but nothing kept him from approaching his final destination.

  Alessandra was short, he decided. Too short. After today, he was only going to date six-foot Playboy centerfolds.

  Who was he kidding? He never wanted to date again.

  When he was within hailing distance of her, she spun around and started clambering up the ladder to the seat suspended over the tank. Surprised, he halted in his tracks, wondering what the hell she was up to now.

  A premonition skittered along his spine, and he spun around, looking for a Wedding Fever cameraman or maybe Rocky Reed’s annoying mug, but if either was there, he was well-hidden by the growing crowd. And then it hit him . . . if there was another dunkee, he could go back to the Bennett house and dunk his troubles in a tank of beer instead.

  His arm was caught just as he was about to turn. Stevie Baci smiled at him. “You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

  “I’m not needed here,” he told her.

  “That shows what you know,” she muttered, towing him forward.

  “Hey—”

  “My little sister gets her chance,” she said fiercely. “She said she was willing to risk her own humiliation, and see if I don’t make that happen.”

  The Baci girls, as he well knew, could be scary. So he, Penn decided, could be stoic. When Stevie released him a few feet from the tank, he planted his feet and crossed his arms over his chest. He could make it through this.

  Instead of sitting on the seat, Alessandra stood on top of it in her little sandals. Her hemline fluttered just above her knees and Penn hoped like hell
the two teenage guys standing nearby weren’t looking up her skirt.

  Then he remembered he didn’t care about anything to do with her.

  “Hey, everybody!” She waved her arms to get the attention of the crowd. More people turned toward her, some with barbecue beef sandwiches in hand, others clutching bags of local produce. “I want to introduce you to someone.”

  Oh, crap. He stepped back, only to be rammed in the kidneys by Stevie on one side and Giuliana on the other. He winced. Glancing around, he noticed Liam and Seth were nearby, too, obviously operating on the side of those devilish Bacis. They were part of a larger crowd. Edenville had a population of about six thousand and it seemed as if nearly all of them were attending Market Day.

  Alessandra was gesturing again. “If you don’t know him already, this is Penn Bennett.”

  Some people clapped. A little kid said, “Who?” and one of the high school kids from the service club started flinging T-shirts from the show into the growing audience. Cheers rose up.

  Hell. But the showman had been beaten into him the last few years, so he found himself taking a step forward and raising a hand in acknowledgment. If he wasn’t done with Alessandra, he’d have gotten her back for this.

  She started talking again as the crowd quieted down. “He’s the best, nicest man I know.”

  All he could do was shake his head. Nice? She knew how he hated that.

  Her gaze touched his face. “I know you don’t like me to point that out. But, friend, you’re not as cynical or hard as you’d like to think. The band knows that, the Little League, the Kids’ Club, the Key Club. The fact is, Penn, you can’t run away from who you are—or what you’ve become. I know that now. And Edenville knows the good you’ve done here in the past month.”

  The high school kids applauded.

  “See?” she said. “They could tell you. But I’ll tell you more.”

  His feet shifted, but it was the Bennetts bracketing him this time. “Give her a chance,” Liam murmured.

  Seth nudged with his elbow. “Give yourself a chance, bro.”

  Alessandra swallowed. “You changed me, you presented possibilities I’d forgotten when you treated me like a woman.” She smiled a little. “To tell the truth, I didn’t want to be treated that way. That meant stepping out of my comfort zone, it meant feeling things I was afraid to experience.”

  Her gaze centered on his face and the honesty in it hit him like a wave. He stepped back. His brothers and her sisters were right there again, but he wasn’t thinking of leaving. Not quite yet.

  “Five years ago, I sort of . . . went to sleep, as Tommy’s girl. But you woke me up, Penn. And I’ve grown up.”

  His pulse was pounding in his ears. He’d seen her as that enchanted princess in the grapevines, hadn’t he? But he’d been wrong, too, underestimating what it would take to break that spell. What strength she had to find to get free.

  “Sally.” Alessandra’s gaze skipped to the side, and there was Mrs. Knowles, standing frozen by the booth selling fresh corn and strawberries. “We’ll never forget Tommy. None of us in Edenville. But I have to look toward the future now.”

  Stevie murmured in his ear. “For five years, she carried the town’s grief. You get that, right?”

  He got that. And it made his heart leak a little more pain, though he was glad if he helped her put down that heavy burden.

  Alessandra looked at him again. Her face was flushed and the breeze played with her hair and the hem of her dress. “I did you wrong,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I kept secret something that was worth sharing. But I kept secrets from myself, too.”

  Penn’s heart slammed against his breastbone. He couldn’t breathe.

  “Today, at Tanti Baci . . .” Her face went redder. “I hurt you by being dishonest with us both. I realize I set up that situation to give me an excuse not to say what I really wanted to say. Not to ask what I really wanted to ask . . .”

  Maybe he was dying, because air wasn’t making it to his lungs. But it wasn’t so damn terrible a way to go.

  “Penn Bennett . . .” She paused. “Would you, will you . . .”

  The brat certainly knew how to build the tension.

  Then her hopeful eyes smiled into his. “Build me up?” You’d think he’d hesitate. Wasn’t payback called for? But he wouldn’t chance it, not when he understood exactly what she was saying. And while he might be nice, he wasn’t stupid enough to postpone his own happiness.

  “Build you up?” he repeated loud and clear as he moved toward her through the crowd, his arms outstretched to pull her off that platform. “Just for the rest of my life.”

  “Wait.” Her grin blazed at him. “Wait. First you get to throw the balls.”

  Four were shoved into his hands.

  The Nun of Napa had that wicked glint in her eyes he found so irresistible. “Go ahead,” she offered. “Dunk me. Get your revenge for what happened at the winery today. I deserve it.”

  Witch. He eyed her pretty clothes and matching shoes and shook his head. “After all that public praise, you know I couldn’t possibly.” And she’d already settled that score between them by risking her own public humiliation. Walking forward again, he pitifully tossed three balls, missing each time.

  The fourth was snatched from his hands. “I’ll do it,” Stevie said. “I’m still mad that she cut the tails off every one of my My Little Ponies.”

  The ball hit the target, and with a shriek, Alessandra went down.

  Surely she could swim. But Penn couldn’t take the risk. In a blink, he ran up the ladder. He found her wrist, but she was an eel, he discovered.

  Instead of pulling her out, he found himself in.

  He didn’t fight it really, because that’s how he discovered this love thing was. You went in head first.

  They came up, arms around each other, to the noise of cheers and applause and woots and whistles. All that static faded away as he looked into those big browns of hers, now framed by spiky lashes. Everyone knows not to look in her eyes.

  But he wasn’t worried, because for the very first time he saw Alessandra’s heart in them.

  “I’m in love with you,” she said.

  Emotion strangled his voice. Until he found it again, he hoped his kiss said all he couldn’t.

  They got married on Saturday. There were too many guests to sit inside the cottage, so they decided to say their vows outside it and set folding chairs on the lawn and the adjacent parking lot. Still, the event was standing room only. Penn, wearing linen slacks and a white Mexican wedding shirt, waited on Anne and Alonzo’s front porch with the minister. Red rose petals delineated the aisle.

  The bride scattered them with her bare feet as she walked to her groom. Her off-the-shoulder, ankle-length white eyelet dress had been found at a boutique in town. Her hair hung loose down her back, a circlet of baby’s breath and red baby roses held it off her face.

  As Alessandra approached the cottage, she glimpsed its interior. If Anne and Alonzo were there, she didn’t see them. But other ghosts hovered nearby, she just knew it. Her parents. Tommy. She smiled for them and was sure they knew she was happy.

  At the base of the steps, she handed her bouquet of more roses to her sisters. The plan was that she would mount the stairs by herself, but then Penn was there, taking her by the hand so they could climb together.

  He smiled at her. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he murmured.

  “I used to hate how handsome and sexy you are.” She’d thought her desire for him meant he’d infected her with a sickness, when instead this man had healed her.

  “Yeah?” His brows rose over his laughing eyes. “What about now?”

  “Now I think you’ll show up marvelously well on TV.” After all that, the Wedding Fever people were filming the event. While Lana had disappeared from Edenville, Roger and the rest had stayed put for the weekend. A few bottles of their Tanti Baci cabernet had helped the producer get over the breakup. Still,
Alessandra had protested using her marriage to Penn for anything but their personal happiness.

  Her groom-to-be had insisted.

  Though their honeymoon would be private, allowing them to be blissfully, passionately alone, he’d said he wanted their wedding to kick off Tanti Baci’s bid for success.

  As together they approached the minister, he whispered again the words he’d used to convince her just two days before. “The famous Penn Bennett and Alessandra Baci, the Nun of Napa . . . face it, my love, that’s a hell of a good story.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  To learn more about the Napa Valley, I point you to two books by James Conaway, Napa and The Far Side of Eden. Another excellent choice is A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma by Alan Deutschman. If you’re in the mood for a movie, I think you’ll enjoy Bottle Shock, which provides incredible cinematography, a great sound track, and an understanding of how Napa Valley became a celebrated area for wine.

  But Napa isn’t the only place where grapes are grown and fine wines are made. Many states have wine regions, and in California, you’ll find wineries from north to south. Vintners are a friendly group and you can learn a lot by taking vineyard tours and participating in fun (and often free!) tastings on location. Of course, you don’t have to go anywhere to enjoy an evening at home with a bottle of wine. Your local liquor store or gourmet grocer will have recommendations for every taste and price range.

  And here’s what I say (well, so do a lot of others, too): throw out the “rules”! Don’t worry about whether or not it’s okay to drink a white wine with your steak dinner. It’s what you like and what tastes right to you. As to cost, we’ve participated in blind tastings and you’d be surprised how many times our group preferred the less expensive bottle over the pricier one. So . . . experiment and listen to recommendations, but ultimately follow your own palette.

  Last, I want to acknowledge that due to Napa Valley’s designation as an agricultural preserve, there are restrictions to the kinds of events that wineries may host (including weddings). As of this writing, changes to those restrictions are under discussion. For the purposes of the Three Kisses trilogy, the romantic “I-dos” go forward at beautiful Tanti Baci.