by Teri Wilson
She couldn’t take it anymore. She just couldn’t. How could they fail to see how absurd they were acting? They were an ocean away from Napa Valley, generations apart from whatever strife had started this whole mess, and they still couldn’t be in the same room without trying to tear each other apart limb from limb. Centuries of monks were probably rolling in their graves right now over the ridiculous behavior on display at their former place of worship.
“Everyone, would you just please stop?” she screamed, her voice echoing off the stuccoed walls.
A momentary hush fell over the crowd. Juliet found the sudden silence almost as jarring as all the yelling. She blinked, looked around and noticed that the judges, the other competitors and the rest of the spectators were beating a hasty path out of the kitchen, toward the garden and the gentle shade of the umbrella pines.
She couldn’t help but envy them.
“Juliet, really. There’s no need to raise your voice,” her mother said, somehow maintaining a straight face.
Could she genuinely not see the irony of that statement?
“Mrs. Arabella.” The deadly warning tone in Leo’s voice made Juliet want to grab him and kiss him on the lips right there in front of everyone.
But as tempting as that might be, she wanted her family to listen to her for once. Isn’t that what this trip to Rome was all about? Finally standing up for herself and what she wanted?
“Leo, I can handle this,” she said.
He nodded, but the angry knot in his jaw was working overtime.
“Leo just won the Roma Festa del Cioccolato, everyone. I think the decent thing to do would be to congratulate him.” She crossed her arms and aimed a glare at each of her family members, one by one.
She started with her mother, who just sighed and dropped her gaze to the floor. Her father glanced nervously back and forth between the two of them but remained mum. Nico rolled his eyes so hard that Juliet was surprised they didn’t fall right out of his head.
But finally, when her eyes met Alegra’s, something wholly unexpected and wonderful happened.
“Congratulations, Sparkle.” Her cousin’s voice was flat, but she winked at Leo. And the beginnings of what looked like a smile hovered on her lips.
Two words. Two simple words, spoken with nary a drop of emotion. And still, it was the most polite thing an Arabella had said to a Mezzanotte in over fifty years. With the exception of Leo and Juliet, of course.
Leo smiled. “Thank you, Alegra. But the victory isn’t mine to claim, no matter what the judges said. It belongs to Juliet.”
“Leo.” Joe Mezzanotte’s voice shook. That tiny hint of vulnerability made him seem less like an ogre to Juliet and more like a lonely old man. “Don’t do what I think you’re about to do.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Joe. I know this means the store will close, but I can’t keep this money. It belongs to Juliet. She told me what to put in the truffles. I couldn’t even taste them. I’m allergic to chocolate.”
Like a well-rehearsed chorus, everyone gasped in unison. Juliet’s mother crossed herself, as though her ears had just been assaulted by unfathomable evil.
“Allergic to chocolate? Nonsense.” Joe Mezzanotte’s face was whiter than Juliet’s grandmother’s white chocolate frosting.
“It’s not nonsense, Uncle Joe. It’s true. And it’s why this belongs to Juliet.” Leo handed her an envelope. Not just any envelope, but the one the judge had handed him when he’d been declared the winner of the contest.
Inside that envelope was a check in the amount of twenty thousand dollars.
Juliet stared at it, unable to make a move to accept it.
“Leo, don’t be stupid,” Gina Mezzanotte said. “What are we supposed to do without the chocolate shop?”
Leo ignored her. “Take it, Juliet. It’s yours.”
“Not mine.” She shook her head. “Ours. And I’m only taking it under one condition.”
“A condition? He’s handing you twenty thousand dollars on a silver platter, and you want to add a condition?” Leo’s uncle shook his head in wonder.
“He’s right, Juliet. Just take the check,” her mother said.
Then her mother’s gaze met Joe Mezzanotte’s, and they both froze in place. The fact that they’d agreed on something seemed to have the effect of rendering them both motionless. Everyone exchanged shocked glances. Even Juliet fully expected the earth to fall right off its axis.
“A condition?” The corner of Leo’s mouth quirked upward. “Might this condition have something to do with the question I proposed earlier?”
Juliet inhaled a deep breath. Could she do this? Accept Leo’s proposal right here in front of everyone?
Of course she could. They were all going to have to grow accustomed to the idea eventually. They may as well start now.
She looked into his eyes, remembering the promises they’d made to one another on the balcony.
Mine.
Yours.
Promises they’d made not only with words, but with their bodies and souls. Promises they’d exchanged under the glow of a full moon and a star-swept Roman sky.
Was their fate written in those stars? Was fate even real?
She had no idea. She just knew that, against all odds, she and Leo had found one another. He’d been a world away—right across the street—but somehow she’d ended up in his arms.
She nodded and slipped her fingers through his. “It has everything to do with your question.”
He lifted her hand to his lips for a kiss. “I take it your answer is yes?”
“Oh, no, I think I’m going to be sick,” Gina Mezzanotte muttered under her breath.
“Shhh.” Alegra cut her off at once. “Pipe down, would you? Can’t you see that this is a special moment?”
Gina and Alegra looked at each other, and Juliet was struck with the peculiar sensation that it was like watching two mirror images see one another for the very first time.
“Juliet, in case you’ve forgotten the question...” Leo dropped to one knee. And right there, on a Roman tile floor that had been trod upon for centuries, in front of every member of their respective warring families, he asked Juliet to be his wife. “Will you marry me?”
She pulled him back to his feet. “Yes. I will.”
He drew her toward him, and in the shelter of his arms, she couldn’t even hear the protests she was sure were being uttered from anyone and everyone. But when he released her, nothing but stunned silence reached her ears.
“Well.” For the first time in Juliet’s twenty-eight years, her mother was at a loss for words. “Well,” she repeated, her forehead furrowing in the way she’d always warned Juliet would cause premature wrinkles.
“Congratulations, Juliet. Sparkle.” Alegra gave Leo a slap on the back.
“Now that we’re going to be related, do you suppose we could rethink the nickname?” he said.
Alegra’s expression was one of faux horror. “Sparkle? Absolutely not. I mean, let’s not go crazy. It’s one thing to completely upend generations’ worth of family history, but it’s another thing entirely to abandon a nickname. I can only take so much change at one time.”
She winked at him. “Baby steps, Sparkle, baby steps.”
Epilogue
Three months later
Juliet held the ladder still as Leo climbed to the top and hung the newly painted sign on the outside of the chocolate boutique. The grand reopening of the store was scheduled for the next morning. Everything was ready. Juliet had made countless truffles, specialty filled bonbons and chocolate-dipped fruits of every variety, even her nemesis—chocolate strawberries. Juliet’s mother had handled the decorating, tackling every decision from what color paint to use on the walls to the thread count of the window dressings, with her trademark i
ntensity.
Gina and Alegra had become close friends, to the surprise of everyone, save Juliet. She could see the similarities in their personalities right from the start, but it had taken an epic battle of wills at a bridal salon for the two of them to realize they were on the same side. It was a miracle how two sworn enemies could bond over their mutual hatred for one ugly bridesmaid dress.
Juliet would go to her grave defending that dress, not that she would have ever actually made either of them wear it. They didn’t need to know that she’d purposely chosen the only bridesmaid dress hideous enough to make them finally join forces. As far as family secrets went, it was harmless. Now Gina and Alegra would be jointly in charge of the day-to-day financial operations of the chocolate shop. Either one of them was intimidating enough to keep everyone in line, even Uncle Joe, but together they were sure to run a tight ship.
Joining the two businesses had been a delicate process, one that Juliet and Leo hadn’t even attempted until after the wedding. They’d married almost as soon as they’d returned from Rome, on a moonlit night at the same vineyard where they’d first met. Under a starry sky, with their families, the grapevines, the sunflowers, and even Cocoa and Sugar as witnesses, they’d pledged their love to one another. And in the time it took to slip rings on one another’s fingers, a feud that felt as if it had gone on longer than time finally came to an end. The conclusion was as gentle as a whisper, as delicate as the rose petals the wedding guests had tossed at Juliet and Leo when they departed for their Tuscan honeymoon.
“How does it look?” Leo asked, straightening the sign on its white metal hooks.
She grinned up at him. “Why don’t you come down and see for yourself?”
“Okay.” He climbed down, until he was beside Juliet on the ground with his arm wrapped around her shoulders.
Together they looked up at the quaint sign with its swirling white letters. A breeze blew in from the bay, grape-scented and gusty, rattling the sign on its hinges and bringing goose bumps to Juliet’s skin. She knew it was silly, but she had the feeling it was more than just a simple breeze. She burrowed into her husband’s side and couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps the whispers of the wind were actually voices from the past. Voices murmuring their long-awaited approval.
“We didn’t have to do this, you know.” Leo pulled her closer and pressed a gentle kiss to her hair. “I would have been fine leaving it as Arabella Chocolate Boutique. The store could have kept your family name, and the commercial end could have remained Mezzanotte Chocolates. We didn’t have to do it this way.”
“Yes.” Juliet nodded. “Yes, I believe we did.”
The wind swirled one last time, kicking up leaves and tiny white flowers from the surrounding olive trees. They danced around Juliet and Leo’s feet, as if the two of them were at the center of the storm. The center of everything.
Above their heads, the new sign swayed but remained firmly fixed in place, its letters gleaming in the Napa Valley sunshine.
Welcome to Bellanotte Chocolates.
* * * * *
Acknowledgments
With special thanks to Elizabeth Winick Rubinstein, Rachel Burkot, Susan Swinwood and all the wonderful people at Harlequin HQN. It takes a village to birth a book, and I’ve been blessed with the best village I could possibly hope for.
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ISBN-13: 9781460330135
UNMASKING JULIET
Copyright © 2014 by Teri Wilson
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