by Teri Wilson
George’s gaze softened. He reached for her hand, pressed the tiny velvet box in her palm and wrapped her fingers closed around it. “Think about it. We’ll be happy together. I promise we will.”
Impossible. Not after this.
How could she be happy living side by side with a man who’d chosen her as though she were a Royal Gourmet acquisition? Worse, she didn’t love him. And now she didn’t see how she ever could.
The intercom crackled overhead, breaking the tense silence in the car, which, despite its stretch proportions, had begun to feel far too small.
“Sir, we’ve arrived,” the driver announced.
“Thank you.” George buttoned his tuxedo jacket and checked the time on his wristwatch.
His ring was still clutched in Juliet’s fist, but when he looked up she felt as though she were invisible.
Had it always been this way? Had she really wasted the better part of a year wishing the two of them could have something that so obviously wasn’t there?
She’d never felt so foolish in her life. Even the time she’d mixed up the sugar with the salt in her first batch of chocolate kiss cookies as a teenager paled in comparison.
She gazed wistfully out the window of the limousine. The Manocchio Winery stretched out before her in endless rows of green tangled vines and rich, red earth. A border of tall sunflowers surrounded the vineyard, the wide faces of the blooms lifted toward the sky. At the forefront of it all stood a grand house, with a gabled roof that gave it a certain Old-World charm. Its creamy white exterior glowed almost amber in the light of the setting sun. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought the limo had carried her all the way to a Tuscan hillside.
At the entrance, a handful of people milled about—women in elegant ball gowns, dashing men in perfectly cut tuxedos. The guests looked especially stylish and otherworldly in their Venetian masks.
Beautiful, she mused.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. A group of thugs who looked like extras from an episode of The Sopranos?
A plague on the house of Mezzanotte!
Plague or not, she couldn’t wait to walk into that party. She’d rather be anywhere right now, doing anything, talking to anyone other than George. Even someone named Mezzanotte.
* * *
Leo Mezzanotte had been back in the United States for less than two hours following a twelve-year absence and had a case of jet lag the likes of which he’d never experienced. Even his dog, Sugar, was feeling the aftereffects of the long international flight. Her little white body was strewn across his lap in a lifeless heap.
Leo envied her unconscious state with every fiber of his being. His throat felt as though he’d just swallowed a mouthful of sand, and he had a killer headache. What he needed most was a long hot shower and a bed. Instead, he was dressed in a tuxedo, with a silver Lone Ranger-style mask strapped to his face.
Now that he thought about it, perhaps the mask had something to do with the pounding in his head. He peeled it off and tossed it on the tiny café table next to his glass of wine, an action that earned a disapproving glare from the man seated across from him. Sugar, on the other hand, didn’t so much as flinch.
“What are you doing? We’re at a masquerade ball.” Leo’s elderly uncle Joe pushed the mask back toward Leo with a shove of his shaky index finger. “Hence, the masks.”
“The guests have barely begun to arrive. I’ll put it back on before I get to the ballroom.” God, the ballroom. There would be music. Dancing. People.
Was it too late to find someone he could pay to wear his mask and take his place? Just for the next few hours, while he took a nap?
Uncle Joe frowned. “Don’t forget. This party is a tradition.”
So much for cloning himself. Leo knew better than to mess with tradition. Uncle Joe was Italian through and through, as old school as they came. Tradition and family were everything. Leo already had a few ideas for shaking things up with regard to the family business, starting with the chocolate shop itself. Things he knew that might be met with resistance if Uncle Joe’s reaction to his mention of mendiants was any indication.
“Mendiants? Why the hell would an Italian want to make something French?”
Leo would have to pick and choose his battles.
He’d wear the damned mask. He’d shake a few hands and schmooze with Uncle Joe’s friends. But he wasn’t about to give in on the mendiants. Or the chocolate hazelnut macarons. He hadn’t spent three years at Le Cordon Bleu and another five as an apprentice at La Maison du Chocolat to come back to California and dip cherries in melted chocolate all day. Or worse, sit in an office overseeing the mass production of candy bars.
“This night is most important. Everyone who’s anyone in the Napa food scene will be here. And I want them all to meet you, so they’ll know the torch has been passed. You’re the future of Mezzanotte Chocolates.” Uncle Joe flicked an imaginary speck of lint off the knee of his tuxedo trousers.
Leo stared at his wine and wished it would somehow transform into a vodka martini. Or maybe just plain vodka. He reached for his glass of Cabernet and took a generous sip. It was excellent. Full-bodied. Fruity. He may have left his soul in Paris, but he was still enough of a Californian to know that French wines had nothing on Napa’s finest. Of course, the first-rate Cab was a total waste at the moment. He could be drinking gasoline for all he cared.
You’re the future of Mezzanotte Chocolates.
There was a time when those words would have meant the world to Leo. That time had passed.
“It’s a shame your father didn’t live long enough to see this moment. He would have been so proud.” Uncle Joe smiled.
“Let’s try and avoid the topic of my father, shall we?” Leo took another gulp of wine and rested his hand on the gentle rise and fall of Sugar’s back.
“You’re going to be working in the kitchen where he worked for over fifty years. You can’t avoid his memory forever, now that you’ve finally come home.”
Home.
Leo didn’t feel as though he’d come home. He’d felt more at home in Paris. Specifically, in the modest, unfinished brick building in the third arrondissement where he’d planned to open his own chocolaterie.
He wouldn’t be here, on the verge of a coma, if he’d just sucked it up and gone through with the wedding. Rose had been ready and willing to pledge him her heart along with her supersize bank account. He would have had more than enough cash to open his own shop. In Paris.
But in the end, he just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take advantage of a woman like that. He’d been known to bed a woman without being in love, but he drew the line at marrying one. Call him sentimental.
He’d sat Rose down after the invitations had been mailed out and told her she deserved better. Once he’d admitted he wasn’t in love with her, and never had been, she agreed. She’d been the one to propose, and he never should have let things get so out of hand.
So this is what he got for having a sentimental streak? A future of moving about in his father’s shadow?
He had no right to be dissatisfied with the turn of events. The worsening of Uncle Joe’s arthritis was rather fortuitous. He needed help with Mezzanotte Chocolates, and Leo needed a soft place to land. It wasn’t Paris, but it was home. More importantly, it was honest.
And honesty was key. He’d watched his father lie to his mother his entire childhood.
No, I didn’t bet on the game.
I don’t know where the money went. Honest.
In a way, marrying for money was its own form of gambling. And Leo couldn’t bring himself to repeat the past.
“The Arabellas will be seething with jealousy when they hear about you.” Uncle Joe’s lip curled in a triumphant sneer. He’d always had a certain flair for the dramatic.
Leo lifte
d a brow. “The Arabellas?”
“You know the Arabellas. Our archenemies, those evil swine.” There was that dramatic flair again.
“The name rings a bell.” Leo hadn’t heard the name Arabella in years. Not since he’d left for Europe at eighteen.
When he was a kid, he’d actually thought it was a curse word since it was usually uttered with revulsion. He could remember his parents talking—usually in raised voices—about their rivals, another Italian family-owned chocolate enterprise. He knew there was no love lost there. He’d just never known why. And he hadn’t realized the rivalry was still in full force.
“It should sound familiar. And it should stoke the fires of hatred deep in your gut every time you hear it.” Uncle Joe pounded his fist on the desk. The empty wineglass jumped a few inches.
“Consider my fires stoked,” Leo said dryly.
“This is no laughing matter, Leo. As a member of this family, you are required to despise the Arabellas to the same extent as the rest of us. The Arabellas are traitors of the very worst sort.”
“How so?”
“There was once a time when my mother, God rest her soul, was friends with an Arabella. The very best of friends. Way back before Mezzanotte Chocolates could be found in grocery stores, they owned the shop together.”
“Our chocolate shop?” This was news. The competing shops were now right across the street from one another, but Leo had never known they were once the same store.
“You could say that. It stood where our store stands today, but at the time it was known as Bellanotte Chocolates.”
Bellanotte. Beautiful night. It had a nice ring to it. “What happened?”
“That Arabella woman was a selfish snake. That’s what happened.” Uncle Joe wrinkled his nose.
“A selfish snake? In what way, exactly?”
“The shop was doing well. Very well. Like any smart businessperson, your grandmother saw an opportunity to expand it. She had visions of seeing Bellanotte Chocolates on grocery store shelves, right alongside names like Hershey and Mars.”
Leo could take a wild guess who had ended up winning that argument. “That’s where our chocolates are today, so I’m assuming Grandma got her way.”
“You might say that. She grew weary of trying to convince that Arabella snake to see reason, so she went ahead and made a deal with an industrialist who could really put the chocolates on the map. Then she handed over the Bellanotte recipe.”
“Without her partner’s consent?” Hell, it was like a bad soap opera.
“She was doing them both a favor. As a Mezzanotte, you should know that. Really, Leo. Why must you vex me so?”
Sugar opened one eye and growled.
Leo gave her a scratch behind the ears, and she fell back into a dead sleep. “Whether it was in the best interest of the business or not, they were partners. Surely you could see how that might cause some hard feelings.”
“Hard feelings?” Uncle Joe released a loud snort. “Your grandmother would have made that woman a millionaire. But before they saw a dime Sofia Arabella packed up her candy molds and opened up shop right across the street. Less than twenty feet away! The nerve. Then she proceeded to tell everyone in Napa what a sellout your grandmother was. She even claimed to put some weird voodoo hex on our entire family. It became a full-scale chocolate war.” Uncle Joe’s voice trailed off, and his expression grew pensive.
So, that was the big mystery. Five minutes with Uncle Joe, and Leo knew more about his own family than his father had ever bothered to share with him. But that was nothing new. He could count on one hand the number of civil conversations they’d had before hd left the country. And after he’d moved to Europe there’d been no more conversations.
Until the night he called to tell Leo that his mother had died. Lymphoma. He’d never even known she was sick. Thanks, Dad.
Try as he might, Leo still couldn’t drum up an ounce of hatred for the Arabellas. He actually couldn’t care less about them. “Chocolate war? Really? Don’t you think it’s time for someone to fall on a caramel grenade and let bygones be bygones? All of this happened years ago.”
“I could say the same about your feelings for your father,” Uncle Joe said softly.
Leo cleared his throat. “Point taken.”
He hadn’t given a thought to forgiving his father. The man was dead and buried, as were Leo’s feelings. So long as he was far away, he could forget about everything to do with home. Family. Mezzanotte Chocolates. Being surrounded by all of that now was one of the more unpleasant aspects of being back.
His uncle stood and attached a Phantom-of-the-Opera style mask to his face. “Enough talking. We’re late. Let’s head to the ballroom. You’ve got a great number of people to meet.”
For someone who’d done his best to convince his nephew that he was on his last legs, Uncle Joe was remarkably strong-willed.
“In a minute. I need to clear my head. It was a long flight. Do you mind?” What time was it in Paris? Four in the morning.
“I suppose not. But don’t keep everyone waiting. You’re a big star. The toast of the town.” Uncle Joe lingered at the foot of the stairs, his mouth turned down in a frown. His hand rose to the front of his tuxedo shirt, and he pulled at his collar. “I’m getting indigestion. It must be all this talk of those filthy swine, the Arabellas.”
Then he spit on the tile floor of the terrace, as if the very name Arabella was so utterly revolting he couldn’t bear the taste of the word in his mouth.
Alone at last, Leo dropped his weary head in his hands. Sugar craned her tiny neck and swiped the side of his face with her tongue. Her fluff ball of a tail beat against his thigh.
He was home, all right.
Home, sweet home.
3
At the first brush of the mysterious woman’s lips on his, Leo was fully aware he should stop her. He really should. She was clearly acting on impulse. And even though she was a most effective seductress—more so than she realized, he suspected—he had the distinct impression this wasn’t the sort of behavior she often engaged in.
Maybe that’s why he found it so damned hot that he lost control of his senses. Still, somewhere in the periphery of his consciousness, he knew he should just gently unclench her hands from around his tie and remove his lips from hers.
That’s what a gentleman would do.
But being passionately kissed by a beautiful masked woman in the golden light of a harvest moon had a way of making him forget he was a gentleman. He’d forgotten pretty much everything altogether, including his headache.
Jet lag...what jet lag?
She tasted exactly as a barefoot goddess standing in the middle of a vineyard should—warm, sweet, like a sun-kissed cluster of merlot grapes. A predatory thrill surged through him, the likes of which he’d never experienced. Not with Rose. Not with anyone.
He was in the middle of what was probably the sexiest experience of his life, and he didn’t even know her name. He couldn’t see much more than a hint of her face. Her mask glittered in the moonlight and left everything to his imagination, save for a pair of jade-green eyes and her full-lipped, most kissable mouth.
He groaned into that mouth. He couldn’t help himself. She responded with a helpless whimper that just about drove him to his knees. His tie slipped through her fingertips as her hands found his back, sliding over his muscles in a path of brazen exploration. His own hands fisted in the wispy netting of her dress and pulled her closer until she was crushed fully against his chest.
God help him, he was on the verge of unzipping her fluffy ballerina gown right there among the canopies of grapevines. What was wrong with him? It wasn’t like him to abandon every last shred of restraint. Although he should have known he was in trouble when he first spotted her standing there.
She’d pain
ted such a pretty picture among the grapes, with her strapless midnight-blue gown exposing a perfect pair of feminine shoulders, waves of dark hair tumbling down her moonlit back. Her mask was decorated with an abundance of dazzling crystals that formed dramatic cat eyes. He wasn’t sure if he was looking at an actual woman or a vision—a lifelong fantasy that until that moment he hadn’t even known he had. He’d taken one look at her and wanted to sink his teeth into her creamy white shoulder. The image had flashed through his mind, as vivid as a fiery Tuscan sunset. Strange. He wasn’t ordinarily the shoulder-biting type. Or the biting type at all.
Maybe the near-death experience of his bachelorhood had done something to him. Something potent. Something primal. Or maybe it was just her.
He’d wandered back out on the patio in search of a moment of peace before he had to drag himself to the ballroom and let his uncle parade him around like the prodigal son. Instead of clarity, he’d found a woman. It had been those bare feet that did him in. Barefoot. In a ball gown. In the dirt. The contrast had been so striking, he’d done a double take. And when he did, something about the sight of her pink-polished toes spoke of a heartbreaking vulnerability that reached straight to his core.
With his mouth still on hers, he tangled his fingers in her hair until he found the smooth satin bow that held her mask in place. He nibbled the corner of her lips and gave the end of the ribbon a gentle tug.
She stiffened in his arms.
He dipped his head and whispered against the slender column of her neck, “I want to see your face.”
His lips found the curve right above her collarbone, and she melted into him once more.
“Please,” he murmured, sounding far more desperate than he cared to.
She lifted her chin and fixed her gaze with his. Green eyes framed with lush black lashes peeked out at him from behind her bejeweled mask. Ever so slightly, she nodded.
Leo cradled her face in his hands, slipped his thumbs beneath the ribbons on either side of the mask and lifted it free. His breath caught in his throat as he waited for the first glimpse of her face. She bowed her head as he untangled the ribbons from her hair, and when she looked up his heart stopped.
