by Teri Wilson
“Whatever for?” Leo crossed his arms.
He wasn’t going to Rome. Boarding an international flight was the last thing he wanted to do. He’d had a grand total of one headache-free day since he’d climbed off the plane from Paris, and that day had been just yesterday. He hadn’t even been able to enjoy it since he’d been grappling with how to handle his new reality.
Uncle Joe straightened his tie. The man was seventy years old, and he still wore a suit and tie to work every day. In a chocolate shop. “For the contest, of course. Why else?”
Why else indeed? The whole world revolved around chocolate.
Not anymore. “We need to have a talk.”
“Yes, we certainly do. When were you going to tell me that you were sleeping with Juliet Arabella?” Leo’s uncle slammed his fist down on the countertop. The chocolate straws next to the register jumped in their tall glass apothecary jar.
“Don’t start in on that, Uncle Joe. There are more important things we need to discuss right now.”
“What could possibly be more important? George Alcott has rescinded his offer of representation. No Royal Gourmet contract. No chocolat chaud. No French Laundry. All because out of all the women in the United States of America, you had to choose her.”
“Forget about Royal Gourmet and George Alcott III. That man is an idiot.” Leo could have told him that there would have been no contract regardless. But why stir that particular pot now? They had enough to sort out. “What makes you think I’m going to Rome for the Roma Festa del Cioccolato? I lost the other day. Remember?”
“A technicality.” Uncle Joe shrugged, and his gaze dropped to the countertop.
“No. Not a technicality. I lost. Juliet won. Fair and square.” It would have been nice to have won. He’d probably never compete again. Not now that he couldn’t even eat his own recipes. And forget ever participating in another taste-test challenge.
But he hadn’t won. Juliet had. No amount of pouting on Uncle Joe’s part would change that.
Although Uncle Joe didn’t exactly look like he was pouting. “You’re in. Like I said, a technicality.”
“What did you do?” Leo lowered himself onto one of the barstools across the counter from his uncle. He had a feeling he’d be better off sitting down for this conversation.
“I made a few calls. It didn’t take long to convince the organizers that in the case of a tie in a qualifying event, both finalists should be eligible to compete in Rome. They were more than agreeable.”
A few calls. Uncle Joe and that damned phone of his.
Leo lifted a brow. “Were they now?”
“Yes. Think about it from their point of view. They said if you and Juliet both made the trip to Rome, they could play up the rematch between the two of you. It could draw even more attention to the competition.” Uncle Joe rolled his eyes. “Of course, that will never happen, but I didn’t tell them that. I’m not about to shoot myself in the foot like that.”
Something about this whole thing just wasn’t right. “And why are you so sure it would never happen?”
Uncle Joe waved a dismissive hand. “Juliet Arabella isn’t about to go to Rome. She could have already competed there five times over. She’s going to stay right here and slave away under her mother’s watchful eye like she always does.”
Leo’s hands balled into fists. “Uncle Joe...”
“Before you get all up in arms about it, think for a minute. Have you heard a word from her since you nearly died the other day?” Uncle Joe looked at him expectantly.
He hadn’t heard from her. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. A lot had happened over the course of the weekend.
“I’d hardly say that I nearly died.”
There was a grain of truth to it, though.
“You were unconscious on the floor. You’d think that the woman you’re sleeping with would want to know if you’d lived or died. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Well, if that’s all...” Leo rolled his eyes. He was sure there was no end to what his uncle wanted to say. “Can we not talk about Juliet? Please. Let’s stick with the matter at hand. Why do you want me to go Rome so badly?”
“For the money, of course.”
It was the last thing Leo had expected his uncle to say. “You mean the twenty-thousand-dollar prize money? The odds of winning aren’t great. And it would cost an arm and a leg for airfare and accommodations. It would be a gamble.”
Something in Uncle Joe’s eyes flashed. “Any reason you’re using that particular word?”
“No, I...” Leo paused. He remembered how tense Uncle Joe had been in the days leading up to the chocolate festival. All the phone calls. All the agitation. And he was suddenly hit with a sickening memory. His mother crying. His father begging for forgiveness. I’m sorry. I’ll never play cards again. He searched his uncle’s gaze and saw hints of that same look of regret he’d seen so often in his father’s eyes growing up. History was repeating itself. “Uncle Joe, did you gamble on the results of the chocolate fair yesterday?”
The lines in his uncle’s face seemed to deepen. “Don’t sound so self-righteous. It was a small bet, and you were sure to win. I was simply showing faith in my nephew.”
Turn it around on someone else. Classic gambling addict behavior. Only his uncle wasn’t a gambling addict. At least not to Leo’s knowledge. “How small, exactly?”
Uncle Joe grew very quiet, and Leo realized that not only did they have a problem, but they had a big one. Really big.
He shook his head. “First, Dad, and now, you.”
“This has nothing to do with your father,” Uncle Joe said.
Was he actually delusional enough to believe that nonsense? “Our family has a problem, Uncle Joe. Face it.”
Our family has a problem.
Our family.
No. Leo shook his head. No, it couldn’t be.
He didn’t want to believe it, but it was the only explanation. Clearly the family problem went much farther back than he realized.
He closed his eyes, and Elenore Arabella’s faded pencil marks in her journal danced in his memory.
Donnatella has been so quiet of late...she thinks we should sell our recipes to a candy bar company. Thinking of giving away everything we’ve worked so hard for hurts my heart.
His grandmother hadn’t been herself. She’d been quiet. Withdrawn. Desperate.
And then she’d betrayed her best friend.
For money.
Leo ground his teeth together and leveled his gaze at his uncle. “This is what’s behind the feud, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Leo. I made a few bets. Bets I should have won. The feud has been going on for years.”
Leo pounded his fist on the counter. “I’m talking about our family history. You...Dad...who else? Was it my grandmother or my grandfather? I know it was one of them. Tell me.”
Uncle Joe grew pensive and stared at Leo’s fist for several long seconds before answering. “I’m not saying he had a problem, but your grandfather was known to make a bet or two in his day.”
Leo let the news sink in while he blew out a strained breath. So this was it. The real reason behind the Arabella-Mezzanotte strife. “A bet large enough to put Bellanotte Chocolates in danger?”
“Maybe.” Uncle Joe finally looked up. “But your grandmother still did that Arabella woman a favor. Mass producing those chocolates put them on the map.”
Leo dropped his head in his hands, scrubbed them across his face. Uncle Joe could spin it however he wanted, but the fact was that the Mezzanotte gambling problem was at the root of the bad blood between his family and Juliet’s.
And he’d thought he could come back home and pretend nothing that had happened in his childhood actually mattered.
�
�Leo, we need to talk about the matter at hand. Not things that happened fifty years ago,” his uncle said quietly.
Leo supposed he was right. There would be time to deal with the feud situation. Later. Assuming the Mezzanottes still had a store to compete with the Arabellas. “This isn’t the first time, is it? This is why you called me here from Paris. So I could help you get out of debt.”
A tiny nod of Uncle Joe’s head was his only admission. Somehow the smallness of the gesture only underscored its magnitude.
Leo could have sworn he felt the scratch of a rope slip round his ankle and the weight of the anchor that was family responsibility dragging him off his bar stool.
It had been a long time since he’d worn that particular accessory. It didn’t fit now any better than it had when he’d been eighteen. Or when he’d been a kid and his dad had made him promise to keep his secrets. “How bad is it? Just give me the bottom line.”
Uncle Joe cleared his throat and took his time answering. The urge to wring his neck intensified with each passing second. “We’re in danger of losing the shop. The proceeds from the candy bar side have been slipping for the past few years, and I’ve incurred other...expenses.”
Expenses. As in gambling debts, no doubt.
“I took out a second mortgage,” he continued. “There’s a balloon note on the store due next month.”
“Next month.” Marvelous. “What exactly were you planning on doing if the Rome festival wouldn’t let me compete?”
“Leo, don’t be upset. Please. I had things perfectly under control. Of course I thought you’d win the chocolate fair. And we had the contract with Royal Gourmet all negotiated....”
The contract that George Alcott had ripped up and thrown in Leo’s face.
“Do not try to turn this back on me,” he said through gritted teeth.
He was tempted to walk out the door and never look back. He hadn’t made this mess. Why should he be the one to clean it up? Just because his last name was Mezzanotte didn’t mean he had to be the one to save the family business.
He could go home, grab Sugar and get on a plane back to Paris. And...
Then what?
La Maison du Chocolat would probably jump at the chance to rehire him now that he was allergic to chocolate, wouldn’t they?
He was stuck. As much he wanted to resent it, this store, this business was all he had. At least for now.
He muttered a heartfelt expletive.
“So you’ll go to Rome, then?” At least his uncle had the decency to ask this time.
Now that the secret was out, Leo’s days of ignoring his uncle’s attempts at ordering him around were over. “Yes, I’ll go. On one condition.”
“What condition might that be?” Uncle Joe pulled at his shirt collar. His tie went slightly askew.
It was funny how that one small detail could make him look older somehow. Vulnerable, which was a word Leo had never before associated with his uncle.
“If I win, the store is one hundred percent mine. Mine and mine alone. Got it?” If he was going to be the one to save it, then he’d be the one to make sure it stayed that way. Safe.
Of course, there was no guarantee he’d actually win. Especially now.
“All right.” His uncle, in no position to argue, simply nodded.
“And this is the final contest. No more.” He didn’t need this kind of stress. For all practical purposes, he’d be competing with one arm tied behind his back.
Uncle Joe frowned.
“I mean it. No more. No more competing for me. No more gambling for you. If we get this straightened out, and you mess up again and the candy bar business goes down the drain, so be it. Is that understood?”
Another reluctant nod. “Any particular reason?”
“I’ve never been a fan of the mass production side of things. You know that.” Leo had no interest in off-the-shelf chocolate. If that side of everything caved in, he could live with it.
He wondered if his willingness to sacrifice that part of the business had anything to do with the fact that it had been the root of the whole Mezzanotte-Arabella feud. Then he decided that maybe it wasn’t best to examine his motivation right now. Rome...his chocolate allergy...Uncle Joe...
He felt as if he was juggling fire. And that was without even adding his feelings for Juliet Arabella into the mix. Feelings that he was in no way prepared to identify, yet were very much there.
Uncle Joe spoke up again. There was a tremor in his voice. Paired with the crooked tie, it gave Leo the sense that his uncle had aged ten years since he’d walked through the front door. “I meant the competing. Why no more contests? You’re great at it.”
Leo leveled his gaze at his uncle, fully intending to tell him the truth. He would worry. He would think the contest in Rome was hopeless. He would think Mezzanotte Chocolates would soon be a thing of the past.
He might be right.
Great at it.
I was great at it. Now? Who knows?
He swallowed. “I have my reasons.”
Then he slid off the bar stool and pushed through the double doors leading to the kitchen. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d spared his uncle the truth. God knows, the man deserved to worry.
But for the time being, Leo was worried enough for the both of them.
19
Juliet should have been delighted beyond reason. After only a handful of days of packing and frantic preparation for the Roma Festa del Cioccolato, she was in Rome.
Alone.
For the time being, at least. She’d been in the Eternal City for two days, most of which had been spent finalizing her plans for her entry in the contest’s artisan division. Her first stop upon arriving at Aeroporto Fiumicino had been the Altare della Patria—the building more commonly known as the Wedding Cake.
She’d had her taxi driver take her there even before going to her hotel. With the windows of the little white car rolled down, they’d driven through the outskirts of the city where old met new and clothes dried on outdoor laundry lines strung across tightly packed, semi-modern-looking apartment balconies. The closer the car had crawled to the historic heart of Rome, the narrower the streets became. Pavement gave way to cobblestone, and when they’d passed through the gates of the Aurelian Wall, they left all traces of the modern world behind.
Everywhere she looked, Juliet saw the past. The cab driver had pointed out Circus Maximus, the Pantheon and Palatine Hill. He’d told her that Cleopatra had once ridden an elephant down the winding road that bordered the Roman Forum. Then they’d zipped right past the Colosseum, which of course, needed no introduction.
It was all breathtaking, and Juliet couldn’t help feeling as if she’d stepped back in time. But remarkably, she also felt as if she belonged there. As if she’d been waiting her whole life to see these things, to breathe in the cool Mediterranean air and stand under the tall umbrella pine trees that resembled elegant parasols decorating the city sidewalks.
The car had carried her past churches, clay-colored buildings and piazza after piazza, until she’d spotted a glimpse of the purest white looming above the horizon.
She’d looked at so many pictures of the Altare della Patria in preparation for the trip that she’d recognized it at once. The Wedding Cake. But no photograph would have been preparation for the sight of the monument in its entirety as they cruised past the Piazza Venezia and curved around the busy circular intersection.
It was enormous, and its raised placement, carved into a portion of the Capitoline Hill, only made it look as though it loomed even larger.
“Here we are.” The cab driver had waved a hand. “The Wedding Cake, just as you asked. Although we Romans call it la macchina da scrivere.”
He’d made a pecking gesture with his fingers until Juliet had realized he meant
typewriter. She’d glanced back at the building. It had row upon row of wide stairs which she supposed could pass for typewriter keys. But she preferred the wedding cake nickname. It was far more romantic, for one thing. More importantly, it was the inspiration for her entry in the chocolate contest.
“You now sit in the very hub of Rome,” the driver had said in heavily accented English. “This is the center of everything.”
The center of everything.
Something about that phrase made her heart beat faster. And for some nonsensical reason, it also made her think of Leo.
She’d leaned toward the front seat and pressed three euro coins into the driver’s hand. “Can you wait here for just a minute while I take a closer look? Per favore?”
“Sì.” He’d nodded.
“Grazie.” She’d grabbed her sketch pad and camera from her carry-on and climbed out of the taxi.
She’d already sketched out a plan for her entry. In great detail. But a few last-minute additions couldn’t hurt. She wanted it to be accurate. As accurate as possible, anyway. There were limitations, of course, when working with food.
Basically, she planned on making the Wedding Cake into an actual, edible wedding cake. Over the course of her career, she’d made only a handful of wedding cakes. None of them had been nearly as decorative or made up of as many layers as the building standing before her. It was an ambitious plan. Overly ambitious, perhaps.
It was also perfect. Perfectly artistic. Perfectly impressive. And perfectly Roman. If she could somehow make it work, if she could make a cake that was recognizable as this famed Roman landmark and also tasted fantastic, she might actually pull off this whole Roma Festa del Cioccolato thing. She was here, after all. Not just to finally see Rome, but to compete. She may as well give it her all. If she did well, or possibly even placed on such a worldwide scale, it would be huge news back home in Napa. Those woeful strawberries and her close finish with Leo at the Napa Valley Chocolate Fair would be forgotten. Arabella Chocolate Boutique would once again reign supreme.
She’d finally made her way to her hotel that afternoon with a perfect picture of the Wedding Cake ingrained in her memory. The thing that had made the biggest impression on her hadn’t been the colossal size of it or the elegance of its graceful columns or its many carved sculptures, but the stark whiteness of it. Her research had told her it was crafted of white marble from Botticino in Northern Italy, but book knowledge hadn’t prepared her for the sight of a pure white spectacle sitting among the generally clay-colored backdrop of Rome. All the surrounding buildings were shades of muted brown, soft terra-cotta or creamy Tuscan beige. By contrast alone, the Wedding Cake was a standout.
