by Teri Wilson
She inhaled a ragged breath.
He appeared to study her for a long moment, his jaw growing more firmly clenched the longer he looked at her. “To be clear, I wasn’t attempting to buy your affection. I was trying to have a conversation with Alegra without the threat of imprisonment looming over my head. I didn’t think it was out of line to compensate her for acting as a go-between. Believe me, I plan on making her earn her keep. More importantly, just what makes you think I don’t understand what it feels like to be with a person who mistakes money for affection?”
Mistakes money for affection. She hadn’t thought about it quite that way before, but the phrase was perfect.
And intriguing. What did Leo Mezzanotte know about such things?
Quite a bit, apparently. “You’re not the only one with an ex, Juliet.”
His fiancée. Of course. “My mistake.”
“You and I have more in common than you might imagine.” His blue gaze bored into her.
She didn’t want to ask. She really didn’t. If she did, he would just get the wrong idea. If she did, he’d think that it mattered to her that he’d been so recently engaged. He’d think she was jealous. And she wasn’t.
Except that the tiniest part of her sort of was.
“Tell me,” she said, unable to resist the idea of knowing the story behind the wedding that wasn’t.
“Tell you what, exactly?” His eyes narrowed.
“About your engagement.”
He glanced at the ground and then back up to meet her gaze. “There’s nothing to tell. I was engaged. I realized I was about to make an enormous mistake, so I ended it.”
“Why would it have been a mistake?” And why, oh, why, did she care so much about his romantic past?
“I didn’t love her.”
Harsh. “Then why did you ask her to marry you?”
“I didn’t. She asked me. I should have said no, but I didn’t. I got caught up in the idea of what we could build together. A business, not a life. I may have ended things late, but at least I ended them.” He crossed his arms. “Is your curiosity satisfied now?”
Juliet swallowed. “I suppose so.”
“Good.” He nodded, and something in his eyes softened.
He’d been honest with her about his engagement. Painfully so. Juliet wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but not that.
It was too much. She closed her eyes for the briefest of moments so she could strengthen her resolve. But instead she saw Leo returning her mask and pretending not to know her at the Mezzanotte Ball, saw him carrying Cocoa inside the animal hospital, saw him kissing her hand as he told her good-night. In that moment, she saw everything but his last name.
Don’t be stupid.
She opened her eyes. “Look, Leo. I don’t know what you want, but...”
“All I want is to take you on an actual date. Wouldn’t you agree that it’s about time?” He walked toward the Nuovo balloon that loomed above them and rested his hand on the edge of its wicker basket. “It’s not a marriage proposal. It’s a date. I’m not any more interested in marriage than you are.”
Juliet managed to tear her gaze away from him long enough to give the balloon operator a weak smile and take a peek inside the gondola. She’d never been this close to a hot air balloon before. The basket was roomier than she’d imagined. It had a nice cushioned bench along one side, and in the center sat a sleek silver ice bucket filled with ice, two red plastic cups and a familiar-looking cobalt-blue bottle that could only be Nuovo Napa Cuvee X. Her favorite.
A hot air balloon and sparkling wine in plastic cups? As dates went, it sounded awfully cozy. But surely he didn’t think she was going to get into that thing with him. “A date? Now? In the middle of the balloon festival?”
“No time like the present.” He reached out to cradle her face in his hand, his thumb grazing her cheek, then the underside of her bottom lip.
Somewhere deep inside, she trembled. A tremble almost painful in its intensity.
Violent ends, she reminded herself. He’d just won the Best of Balloon Fest trophy. Not twenty minutes ago, she’d seen him shaking hands with George. If she climbed inside that balloon, something awful would probably happen. She’d fall overboard.
Or just fall...for Leo, which would be far worse than hurling toward earth from high among the clouds.
“I...” Can’t. Won’t.
Leo offered her his hand. “Let’s do this, Juliet. A real date. I promise I won’t bite.” He paused, his gaze roaming from her face to her neck to her shoulder. His lips curved into a devilish smile. “Unless you ask me to.”
She bit her lip—hard—to prevent a yes from flying out.
“Juliet, is that you?”
Leo’s eyes widened at the sound of someone else calling her name, and every one of the impressive muscles in his body appeared to tense. He glanced over her shoulder and back at her. “Ah, do we have a problem?”
“Juliet?”
There it was again.
Juliet couldn’t move. Couldn’t turn around. Couldn’t seem to breathe.
She was suddenly hyperaware of every sight, every sound, every sensation around her—the dim glow of fireflies spinning graceful pirouettes over the grapevines, a baby crying far off in the distance, the whoosh of the propane-fueled burners of the hot air balloons as they lifted off the ground, the look of real alarm on Leo’s face. But she couldn’t seem to make herself react to any of it. She wasn’t sure she’d ever had a classic deer-in-the-headlights moment before, but she was undoubtedly having one now.
“Juliet, do we have a problem here?” Leo whispered again. Then he rested a hand on her shoulder.
The weight and warmth of his touch stirred her back to life.
“We most definitely have a problem. A big one.” She heard the hysteria in her own voice, and her panic ratcheted up a notch. “My mother is here.”
10
Fight or flight?
It was the timeless struggle—the instinct that separated zebras from lions, antelope from tigers, field mice from hawks.
And Juliet from her mother.
Juliet didn’t turn around, nor did she wait to see if her mother had actually seen her. She acted without thinking, planting her hands on the edge of the balloon’s wicker basket and vaulting up and over.
She landed inside the gondola in a graceless heap, her head making contact with the ice bucket.
Ouch.
“Are you hurt?” With his feet still planted on solid ground, Leo frowned down at her over the edge of the basket.
“I’m fine.” Her pride had taken a serious hit, but she supposed that went without saying. God, this was humiliating. She was hiding from her mother like a five-year-old.
She should stand up. What was there to be afraid of? Hadn’t she decided she was going to run her own life from now on? Make her own decisions?
And that had been going so incredibly well so far, hadn’t it?
Things could be worse. You could be engaged to marry George.
The hot air balloon operator cleared his throat, dragging Juliet back to the degrading present. She didn’t even want to contemplate what he must be thinking.
The corners of Leo’s mouth crept upward. If he laughed, she might lose it. “I would have been more than happy to give you a hand, you know. You didn’t have to throw yourself into the basket.”
She sat up, straightening her clothes and hair. She might be cowering at the bottom of a hot air balloon gondola, but she could at least look presentable. “Are you getting in here with me or not?”
“I wouldn’t dream of missing our first date.” He leaped over the side of the basket with the grace and ease of an Olympic hurdler. Naturally.
“For the record, this isn’t a date.” He could
call it whatever he wanted, but to Juliet it was more of a desperate escape plan.
“Keep telling yourself that, babe.” He winked at her, leaned against the side of the gondola and crossed his feet at the ankles. Having him loom over her like that did nothing to lessen her humiliation.
“Is she still out there?” Juliet asked.
Leo took a glance around and shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never met your mother. Should I be on the lookout for horns and a forked tail?”
He wasn’t that far off the mark. “You’d probably know her if you saw her. She’d be the one coming after you, hell-bent on tearing you limb from limb. She knows exactly who you are, and if she just saw us together, the result would not be pretty.”
Leo eyed the padded bench but crouched down on the bottom of the gondola to sit beside her instead. The sweetness of the gesture wasn’t lost on her. “How bad can she be?”
Bad enough to expect her only daughter to marry someone she didn’t love. “Alegra is terrified of her, if that tells you anything.”
Leo’s brow furrowed. “The same Alegra who tried to get me incarcerated and accused me of trying to murder your dog?”
She nodded.
“I suppose that does put things in perspective.” He grimaced. “My uncle Joe has a pretty nasty streak himself. But you know what?”
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t want to talk about either of our families. Not now. Not here. Date or no date, this balloon is a feud-free zone. Agreed?” He arched an eyebrow and waited for her to respond.
It sounded nice.
It also sounded like a pipe dream. But she could use an hour or two without thinking about the feud. It seemed as though lately she’d thought of little else.
She glanced over at Leo. Why did she get the feeling that there was more between them than there should have been? More than just physical attraction, as if that wouldn’t have been forbidden enough.
Feud-free zone. The words dangled meaningfully between them, and Juliet realized she’d held her breath without intending to. It seemed Leo had, too.
She took a slow, measured inhale. “Agreed.”
“All right, then.” He smiled at her, not his usual mischievous grin, but a genuine smile. Then he gave the balloon operator a thumbs-up. Presumably the signal for takeoff.
The gondola shifted a bit as the ground crew untethered the balloon. Then the burner released a blast of hot air, ruffling Juliet’s hair and warming her cheeks. She closed her eyes and lifted her face toward the heat, letting it wash over her. The chill that had settled in her bones sometime around dawn slowly lifted.
The burner grew quiet, and she opened her eyes.
Leo was watching her intently, with a look on his face that she couldn’t quite read. “Shall we stand up now and enjoy the view?”
“Sure.” She nodded.
Leo rose to his feet, offered her his hand for support and pulled her up off the floor of the basket.
What was she doing here with her hand in Leo Mezzanotte’s, floating above Napa Valley as if she didn’t have a care in the world? Today had been an unmitigated disaster.
As a single episode, it would have been bad enough. But this was only the beginning. Next weekend was the Napa Valley Chocolate Fair, an event that Arabella Chocolate Boutique had dominated for the past decade. Juliet’s entry had taken the top prize year after year.
Somehow she doubted things would be so easy this time. And the one man who could steal the prize out from under her was standing right beside her. She tore her gaze from him and focused instead on the view. The lush green landscape of the Nuovo Winery spread below them in perfect, symmetrical rows of grapevines and pristine white tents. From above, the tents all looked alike. If Juliet hadn’t known exactly where the Arabella and Mezzanotte booths were situated, she wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart.
“It’s peaceful up here, isn’t it?” Leo handed her one of the red plastic cups, filled nearly to the brim with the Nuovo Cuvée.
“Yes. Very.” Despite the gentle silence of the blue sky, and the way the balloon drifted so slowly among the clouds that she felt as though they weren’t moving at all, but rather suspended in time and place, Juliet felt anything but serene.
On the contrary, she was worried. Worried to the brink of panic.
She took a taste, thinking about how different this was from the last time she’d sipped champagne. The limousine...George...it all seemed so far away now. And so vastly different from the current circumstances. How was it that someone she’d dated for so long hadn’t really known her at all, and Leo, of all people, seemed to have a sense of exactly who she was? Maybe there was something else between them besides a special brand of heated chemistry. Maybe there was more.
Stop it.
How many other men were there in the world? Millions. Any one of them would be a better choice.
“Juliet,” he whispered against her hair as he wrapped his arms around her from behind and planted his hands on the edge of the wicker basket, effectively locking her in place. “Do you have any idea how difficult it was not to march over to your booth this morning and kiss you senseless?”
She kept her gaze fixed on the horizon and did her best to ignore the way those words, and his nearness, sent an illicit tingle coursing through her. “I don’t kiss on the first nondate.”
Thank God for the presence of the balloon operator. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have a chance of sticking to such a policy. Given past history and all.
A soft laugh escaped him. “Very well, then. No kissing. Although I could accuse you of sending mixed messages, considering the way you’re dressed.”
She glanced down at the sweater and jeans she’d tossed on after leaving the animal hospital. The sweater was cashmere and the jeans were her favorite pair, perfectly worn and soft. But nothing about either article of clothing screamed kiss me. “What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?”
“Absolutely nothing.” He dipped his head and let his lips barely graze the sensitive skin of her neck.
She held her breath and willed herself not to react.
“It’s just that every time I’ve seen you, you’ve been wearing the Mezzanotte color,” he murmured. “It’s beginning to bring out a rather predatory feeling in me.”
“The Mezzanotte color?” She laughed. “You’re a family, not a sports team. What in the world are you talking about?”
He ran his fingertips up and down her arm. “Surely an Italian girl like you knows what Mezzanotte means.”
She had to think about it for a second. All her life, the name had been synonymous with the very worst sort of evil. She’d never actually thought about the literal translation.
Mezzanotte.
Midnight.
Visions of a moonlit vineyard danced in Juliet’s head. She squeezed her eyes shut. “It means midnight, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” He ran a fingertip up and down the deep blue cashmere of her sleeve.
Midnight-blue. It had always been her favorite color. Her subconscious clearly had a twisted sense of humor. “I suppose I’ll have to rethink my wardrobe.”
“Don’t stop wearing it on my account. It suits you.” He gathered a pinch of cashmere in his fingers.
Juliet swallowed. “It does?”
“Very much,” he all but growled.
The balloon operator cleared his throat. Thank goodness. Juliet had forgotten he was even there. She’d forgotten pretty much everything except Leo.
And how very much she needed his lips on hers.
Except that wasn’t what she needed at all, was it? Wanted, perhaps, but definitely not needed.
What she really needed was to get her head out of the clouds. It was one thing to feel a physical connection to Leo. After what had transpired in
the vineyard...and beyond...she couldn’t exactly deny that there was something between them. Heat. Passion. Desire. But it was another thing entirely to entertain the notion that she might be developing real feelings for him.
Nothing so drastic as love. Obviously. Not even close. But definitely a feeling that went beyond mere tolerance, which in itself would have been scandalous with regard to a Mezzanotte. Ever since she’d watched him carry Cocoa into the vet clinic like some kind of animal-loving superhero, she couldn’t deny that there was an inkling of something more than heat simmering beneath the surface.
She shook her head. It was impossible. Downright unthinkable.
Then why was she thinking about it?
She swallowed a gulp of champagne and took in the panoramic view of the valley’s rolling green hills, the rich, clay-colored earth and the soft light of the rising sun, bathing the grand estates of the vineyards below in a warm, dreamy glow. Around them, other brightly colored balloons drifted on the wind, as graceful and weightless as feathers. It was breathtaking. All of it. The view, the champagne.
The company.
How exactly was she supposed to get her head out of the clouds when she could practically reach out and touch them?
Think about something else. Anything else.
She took another swig and blurted the least romantic thing that popped into her head. “George.”
Leo’s arms stiffened around her. “No. I’m Leo. Leo Mezzanotte. Surely you haven’t forgotten. We just had an entire conversation about my last name.”
“I know perfectly well who you are.” As if she could forget that particular detail.
She spun around to face him. Maybe if she turned her back on the romantic view, she could get through the remainder of the balloon ride without growing weak in the knees.
Then again, maybe not. Leo’s eyes flashed and grew darker, dangerous, until they were a fitting shade of midnight-blue. The mention of George had clearly stirred something proprietary in him, just as it had at the Mezzanotte Ball.
