by Grace Conley
“Your trailer – err, tiny house, is fine,” Charles told Luke. “I walked out to it earlier, looks like no damage.”
“I think we’ll stay out there tonight, so we don’t inconvenience you and Chi Chi.”
“I’ll make sure Chi Chi understands,” said Charles with a wink. “Have fun figuring out who gets which sleeping loft.”
Chapter Six
“Thank you for saving my Presley,” trilled Chi Chi, who kept refilling his plate.
Luke wasn’t the son of the finally-promoted Dean of the Napa Valley Culinary Academy for nothing. He knew women wielded food as a weapon. Especially one like Chi Chi Ryo DeLuca Baudouin, who was the woman cheerily responsible for the sixty-year DeLuca/Baudouin feud.
Helen of Troy had nothing on Chi Chi Ryo.
Luke found himself plied with a gourmet Italian meal prepared in the fireplace of Charles and Chi Chi’s over the top outdoor kitchen at the rear of the family villa, overlooking the lush green vineyard on either side, and an intricate garden sweeping back at the center. He knew that Charles had spent countless hours and money investing in that garden in the last decade, and it became clear that it was because he finally got his chance to marry the Chair Emeritus of St. Helena’s Garden Club.
He sat soldier-straight under the tight scrutiny of two senior citizens. One of whom should have been on his side, in his opinion, given that person was also a red-blooded Baudouin male.
Luke could feel the wheels in Chi Chi’s mind turning.
But the odd thing that fascinated him was Presley’s easy relationship with Chi Chi, known as one of the grand dames of St. Helena.
Under Chi Chi’s expert direction, Presley built a fire in the outdoor fireplace using corn cobs and grape vines.
“You’ll see, my darling, we’ll have the sweetness from it in the flavor of the seafood, a special treat which will play well with the Ryo champagne.” She waved her cane at Presley, but in such a cute way. Luke never got the feeling that with Presley, Chi Chi would brandish it, unlike what he’d heard about the DeLuca brothers who grew up with her as their Nonna.
Together, Chi Chi and Presley grilled a lobster that one of the neighbors had dropped off for Charles from Picker’s Produce, Meats, and More. Biff and Marilee Craver, owners of Picker’s, apparently had extensive damage to their cooling system for the meat and seafood area, so they were handing out food out to all comers.
Luke was on his third portion of lobster and asparagus wrapped with pancetta and drizzled with some type of citrusy essence to it, when he noticed that Presley was downing glasses of champagne and not eating much.
He tipped his vintage champagne coupe back, figuring he might catch up to her, and nearly threw up in his cup when Chi Chi finally tasked him.
“Since you and your father do specialty carpentry, you’ll both come and help us at Coupe, won’t you, dear?” Chi Chi said sweetly.
Cleopatra also had nothing on Chi Chi.
“Yes, ma’am, I’d be happy to,” he said, sitting his champagne glass down and putting his hands in his lap.
Making like she was adjusting her napkin in her lap, Presley reached over and brushed a hand over his, just lightly enough that his skin zinged and his body went all-systems-go on alert.
“Wonderful,” Chi Chi said agreeably. “Tanner Construction is excellent – he is my granddaughter Abby’s husband - but they will have their work cut out for them with the retrofit and all of the emergency work that I’m sure will become necessary around town. Such horrible timing, but St. Helena will rebuild. And in between your busy shooting schedule for television, I believe it would be meaningful for you to work on something at home. Because our home is where the heart is, is it not?”
“It certainly is,” replied Luke.
Luke shifted in his seat and stared wild-eyed at Presley, who downed another glass and started chowing down on the generous piece of tiramisu that Chi Chi put out.
His was markedly smaller, but Luke dug in anyway.
“We’re lucky in life today,” Charles said, taking Chi Chi’s hand, “having survived another earthquake – after having found one another at this age.”
“You and I are lucky every single day we’re alive,” she added, smiling fondly at her dapper silver-haired husband. “I think that’s the thing to remember. It’s never too late.”
***
“We’ll wait up with the fire,” Luke offered as Chi Chi and Charles headed off to bed.
“Thank you, Luke,” said Charles, steering a tired Chi Chi inside. “With the whole region already strapped by the earthquake, we can’t afford wind to pick up an ember and start a vineyard fire.” Charles and Luke gave each other a knowing nod, quietly acknowledging the vineyard fire that had impacted the Baudouin estate a few years ago.
When the older couple had gone, Luke turned to Presley and wrapped a dark green cashmere throw around her that Chi Chi had set out earlier, noticing how it set off her creamy skin and penny-burnished hair in the firelight.
As they settled in, he snuck an arm around her.
“That’s a high school move,” she teased.
Luke grinned at her, and poured another glass of champagne. He got startled when she curled into him, learning her head against his shoulder, but tried not to let on.
They sat that way, looking into the dimming embers and listening the to night sounds. A lone bird called, and another called out in response.
“It’s so quiet out here,” she murmured. “I can’t imagine you growing up here.”
Luke laughed softly, “yeah, if you’re saying I’m generally too big and loud to match up well…you should see my older cousins. They’re bigger and louder. And we were all raised here, every last one of us.”
“I don’t believe you,” she slurred a little, sipping her champagne.
“When did you turn into such a lightweight?” Luke teased a little, stretching to top off her glass and emptying the bottle. He pulled over the last bottle that Chi Chi and Charles left them, popping it.
He wondered what they were up to, then let it go. He shrugged and placed it on the small table next to them, ready to pour.
“Don’t want to let that go to waste now,” Presley said, unsettling him as she ran the edge of the cup against the curve of her lips.
“I always took you for more of a shooters and keg stand kind of girl.” He resettled the blanket around them and scooped up his glass, adding more to it. He brushed a hand down her arm lightly, letting her know he was teasing, and was pleased when she smiled and gave a little shiver. Pleased even more when she leaned further into him.
“We lost her just when we found out about her,” Presley murmured, going on a tangent he wasn’t ready for. “And I was afraid I’d lose you, too.”
“Now, woman, that makes no sense,” Luke cupped her cheek with his hand and turned her face to his, gently, but with enough strength that she was moving.
“It does, too.”
“You keep talking about this curse, which you did not mention one single time in the year we were together.”
“I never thought that I’d get to keep you, so I never mentioned it.”
“So, let me get this straight – you went into a relationship with me, assuming we’d never stay together. And then we did stay together, or were working toward that, and you got pregnant, and you ran. Because of some curse.”
“Yes.”
He let out a low whistle. “You are so full of it.”
“Trask women are unlucky in love,” she insisted. “We’re cursed, my Grammy Ginny always said so. This goes back five generations.”
“So, you’re doomed.”
“No, the men we love are doomed.” She gazed into his eyes, searching.
“So you decided to un-love me. Like un-friending someone on Facebook. Because you were saving my life.”
“Yes.”
Luke chose that moment to kiss her, hard. If he was going to be doomed anyway, then he would take every opportunity to tell F
ate exactly what he thought of her. By living, and loving, as much as he could.
Presley dropped her empty wineglass. But instead of it crashing to the floor and sharding in a thousand pieces, Luke caught it expertly with one hand.
He looked at her as he set the glass down with emphasis. “Well, I’m lucky, the Baudouins are lucky, and the only way you’re going to change my luck to bad is if you walk out of my life again.”
“Didn’t exactly walk last time. More like ran.” She was drunk.
“More like ran,” he agreed. His mouth brushed the edge of her ear as he murmured, “well, I call foul. Because I am not a Trask man. And I am damned lucky. I went through multiple tours of duty, in multiple war zones, and I came home, mostly in one piece. And, Presley? I am here calling bullshit. Bull hockey frickin’ shit. Because I have great luck, and the best piece of luck that ever happened to me was when I walked into that yoga class you were teaching, and there you were.”
She grabbed his face with both hands, cradling his cheeks, and looked at him with such intensity, rubbed her thumbs down his five-o’clock shadow.
He let the champagne-fueled girl run off at the mouth.
“Look, you! Let’s get something straight. You’re the lucky one, and I’m not. And the proof is in the pudding, or the tiramisu, or whatever that ambrosia was that Chi Chi made us for dessert. And I do not want to be responsible for changing your luck. I just want you to be happy, more than anything!”
He registered that she was mad, and touching him, moving from stroking his cheeks to running them down his shoulders.
Luke rested his palms lightly on her waist. He was close enough that he could kiss her again, but unlike the him of a year ago, he waited, let the moment play out.
Long enough for her to get that he was taking her seriously.
“We have something, Pres. You know it, and I know it. And I know you feel it, from the way you’re looking at me and touching me.”
She pressed her hands to his shoulder like she was comforting a small child, then shrugged as if in finality, and dropped them.
“You can’t do that, Presley.” Luke cupped her hands in his bigger ones, and placed them firmly back on his shoulders. He brushed the top of her head with his lips.
“I’m so tired,” she said, pushing unsteadily to her feet. “All I want you to do is go have a good life. And I’m so sorry the baby died. And I’m glad for you for your show and mad as hell at you for hugging that girl in the bar.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The girl. There was a girl. She had an animal carrier. And she looks a lot like me, just with brown hair.”
He thought about the timeline of his last week in Oceanside. They’d lost the baby, then two day’s later he got the job offer of a lifetime, and he and his dad had to be ready to move fast to work with the producers. He was all over the place, busy, which he’d regret later because he didn’t realize there were warning signs going on with her.
Luke frowned. His cousin Jonah and his wife, Shay, stopped briefly to meet up with him on their drive down to San Diego for one of her friend’s swanky wedding at the Hotel del Coronado.
“Did she have a crazy slogan t-shirt with dogs on it, that said OCD: Obsessive Canine Disorder?” asked Luke. “Because that’s my Cousin Shay. I’m amazed you haven’t seen her around town. She would have been the girl, you know, wearing a giant ring and dragging my even more giant cousin down the street on her arm.”
“I didn’t notice another guy, I only saw this hot girl hugging you. And for not knowing her since I live here – I kind of, well I hide from your family. I mean, I know they live here, and I know Charles because he’s married to Chi Chi. But I haven’t gone overly out of my way to go introduce myself to people named Baudouin,” she huffed.
“Presley, you are one piece of work.” He rubbed his temples.
“Did you not read my letter?” she said, near tears.
“You! Your letter! I waltzed into the apartment, ready to introduce you to my Dad, and there was this letter. The most absurd, cryptic, shortest breakup letter I’ve ever hear of. And I’ve heard of some crazy ones, I had pals who got broken up with by text message overseas. What is that, ‘I’m sorry that I need to leave – I won’t curse you’ crap?”
“It’s true.”
“It’s chickenshit, is what it is, Presley, and it hurt like hell.”
“The best thing I could do was let you go. I wasn’t good for you.”
His gut churned. She really believed this stuff.
“You were good for me,” he said quietly. “And I was good for you. We just needed to give it a chance past losing - what it was we lost together.”
“Since we lost her, I thought it was starting. The women in my family really are cursed. I thought I’d lose you in a much worse way, so I let you go.”
“Well, you should have had the decency to tell me. Screw this ‘fly, be free’ stuff.” The night air was cooling off the land, and Luke found he was unable to cool off how he felt. Confusion ripped through his body, leaving him gasping.
“What does it really matter now?” Luke looked from the stars down into Presley’s dark eyes, from one fathomless distance to another. He’d struggled all year with the guilt. He knew he should have stopped and taken care of what was most important to him, to find her and set things right. That wasn’t a weekend task, that was a go-right-now-and-get-the-girl-of-your-dreams.
He’d caved, from the pressure of the TV network to get filming started to his father’s pressure that the right girl would never run from a Baudouin.
Chi Chi Ryo ran from a Baudouin once, he thought dully. And that took, oh, only sixty years to work itself out and for old Charles to get his girl.
He looked at Presley, tipsy and beautiful and ladylike and sad as hell. He figured it was more of her karma shit that she’d gotten a job working for Chi Chi.
“The fire’s out,” he said, gently getting up and offering her a hand. Surprisingly, she took it.
“Come and see one of these tiny houses close up. They’re actually really cool.”
“I like the name you came up with for your show and the charity – A Home on the Range,” she offered. “It sounds very patriotic, and then you help build these clever little houses and it helps the vets get homeownership, but also a sense of space. Of freedom.”
His lips quirked up into a smile. “I’m trying to help them get to peace.”
Presley rambled on about a couple of the different episodes, and he realized with a start that she’d seen all of them. He was impressed with her analysis of what worked and didn’t for each of the vets, which customizations worked and what she thought would work better. He made note to propose a follow-up episode for the beginning of the next season, where they revisited a few of the new homeowners and made some more improvements.
It made him inexplicably happy that she got it, that she understood and liked his work. Because his work meant the world to him, to help his fellow brothers. Almost as much as he realized that she could mean, though he wasn’t yet ready to say anything about that.
“Come on,” he pulled her gently toward him so they each looped an arm around each other’s waists, an old familiar gesture. Luke threw the blanket from the outdoor sofa around both of their shoulders for warmth as they walked out to the end of the vineyard where the tiny house was parked.
He echoed a thought Charles put in his head earlier. “I’ll let you pick which loft is yours.”
Chapter Seven
Presley woke up in the middle of the night discombobulated and out of sorts. Her head was fuzzy and her mouth dry, and she registered that she’d drunk way too much champagne after the strangest day in a year.
She realized that she’d experienced two earthquakes – a real one and a figurative one. Aside from wondering if she’d still have the new job at Coupe if the old historic Goodwin Building got yellow-tagged for demo, she was still having aftershocks as a result of the figurative quake.
Luke. Her Luke – though she knew she couldn’t rightly call him that anymore.
But damn it. Her Luke. Busting into a quake-damaged building to rescue her. The wild ride to Baudouin Vineyards, helping Charles and Chi Chi, and then having an amazing and confusing family dinner with them.
Confusing, mostly because of Luke.
At first she thought the sound was a crying animal, some poor thing injured in the quake.
Then her mind flashed back to two years ago, when she first met Luke in a whirlwind romance when she was teaching the yoga class in Oceanside that veterans kept getting referred to.
Those dreams, those horrible nightmares he had sometimes.
“Presley, sweetheart,” she heard him call her name in a keening, plaintive wail. Then a strange quiet, as his body shuddered and froze up, muscles seizing in the moonlight. He clutched the bedcovers in a giant hug, then shoved them away. The nature of the dream was clearly changing. When he started breathing again, it was labored, loud, like he’d run with the bulls in Pamplona, running for his life, running to avoid being gored.
“NO! No, no, no, NO!” he shouted, thrashing the blankets.
Presley rolled over in her loft bed, saw him thrash the quilt off.
Her breath caught as she saw his naked chest sleek in the moonlight.
Her heart caught as he cried out in pain with another panicked roar, like a lion who’d just been shot by a poacher.
“Luke,” she rasp-whispered. “Luke!”
Luke was wrapped up in his nightmare, sound asleep.
Presley had a damning realization. This was the first time she’d felt at home in the last year.
All the time she’d spent trying to leave, trying to build a new home, and getting it all wrong. Home wasn’t a place.
Home was him, this poor amazing man thrashing and crying out in the night. And she’d been stupid enough to believe in her dumb family curse, that somehow she’d save him if she left.
