Heard It Through the Grapevine

by Pamela Browning

  Josh realized that he was standing beside a wicker basket piled high with lavender sachets. In addition to buying some for his landlady, he supposed he could send packets to his mother and sister. Their scent made his nose itch, though. Lavender always did.

  Gina rang up the ladies’ order, which took a while because they’d bought a number of items. When she had finished, she turned to Josh. “You’ll help Miss Tess and Miss Dora carry these things out to their car, won’t you, Josh?”

  He stacked the lavender sachets on the counter beside the cash register. “I’d be glad to,” he said easily, scooping up their bag.

  Neither one of the ladies moved particularly fast, so he was treated to a long and drawn-out account of Felix’s last hairball episode, whereupon the two of them became involved in an argument about the best remedies for feline hair-balls. By the time he had installed the women in their elderly compact sedan, Josh was eager to get back inside. Then the sedan backed up, heading straight for him. He jumped out of the way barely before being hit.

  Miss Tess leaned out the window. “Young man, you look a lot like that Mr. Moneybags fellow. Are you?”

  Josh nodded. “Yes, I am.”

  “You listen to me, sir. Our Gina is a nice girl. Don’t you dare hurt her again!”

  “I—” Josh began. He didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence, since Miss Dora, who was driving, scratched off and left him standing in a cloud of dust.

  Did everyone in town dislike him for what he had done to Gina on the show? Didn’t they understand it was all a bit of make-believe, conjured up by a couple of producers who were interested in the show’s entertainment value and not much else? They hadn’t expected him to fall in love with the woman he chose. The most they had hinted should happen was that he and Tahoma might want to keep in touch and give themselves a chance for real romance to develop. He wished there were some way he could let everyone know that he realized he’d chosen the wrong woman. What was he supposed to do—emblazon a sign across his forehead? He pondered the wording of such a sign. I Should Have Picked Gina. No, that made her sound like a bunch of grapes. I Was Stupid. Now, that was more like it. It seemed to fit in with the locals’ opinions of him.

  Josh walked slowly back into the cottage. Gina was arranging fresh flowers in a vase on one of the front window-sills, and he marched up to her.

  “Gina, tell me one thing. Do you hate me for the way the show turned out?”

  She was so startled that she dropped a handful of cut ferns, which scattered around her feet. Josh bent to help her pick them up.

  “Well,” Josh demanded, “do you?”

  At that moment several other customers came in, and Gina, after one last annoyed glance in his direction, went to see to their needs.

  She hadn’t answered. So perhaps she did hate him. If so, was any of this pursuing doing any good? Was she so totally dead set against renewing their friendship that all his efforts were a waste of time? Would it help if he told her how much he’d matured since the Mr. Moneybags experience, now that he’d reflected on what had happened? If he mentioned that, ultimately, choosing the wrong woman had made him a wiser, better man?

  He hoped that the customers wouldn’t linger over their choices, but two of them seemed inclined to study every bin and the card next to it in order to learn more about treating various symptoms with herbs, and another, who was apparently a friend of Gina’s, embarked on a long explanation of a complicated family situation that required patient listening on Gina’s part.

  As if that weren’t enough, Josh stood too near some dried goldenrod, began to sneeze and couldn’t stop. He fled outside and sat down on a garden bench beneath an oak tree while he waited for the customers to leave.

  The trouble was, they stayed longer than Josh expected, and fast on their heels came three more carloads of people. He peered in the window and saw Gina talking animatedly with one group while the others browsed, and she soon had a line at the cash register.

  As soon as everyone left, Josh ambled back inside. Gina, who wore a pencil behind one ear and was adding up receipts, glanced up with a smile of greeting as he entered. It quickly faded when she saw him.

  “I thought you’d gone,” she said pointedly.

  “I was only biding my time. Could you ring up those sachets for me, please?”

  “Glad to,” she said through tight lips.

  “About lunch, Gina.”

  She tucked his lavender and his cash register receipt into a bag and handed it to him.

  “What about it?”

  “Let’s run downtown and grab a sandwich.”

  She let out a long sigh. “I can’t leave. My relief salesperson won’t be in today, so I’m going to make do with peanut butter and crackers.”

  Disappointment washed over him. “Who’s your relief?” The thought occurred to him that he could find whoever it was and beg him or her to show up.

  “My sister fills in for me when I need a break. She lives so close that it usually works out well. Today she’s at the winery, cleaning up after last night’s party. Oh, hello, Shelley. How are things at the Bootery?”

  Josh grew glum as he listened to the two women talking about Shelley’s business, a shoe store downtown, and soon more customers arrived, some on a tour bus on a day trip to the valley from San Francisco, which was only an hour and a half’s drive away. Getting time alone with Gina was almost impossible.

  When twelve o’clock came and went, he decided that he might as well leave, but not for good. He’d be back soon, this time with food.

  GINA BREATHED AN AUDIBLE sigh of relief as she saw Josh’s car exit the parking lot. She and Shelley had business to discuss: the bachelor auction, which was Gina’s latest project. Gina had shepherded the auction project through the city council’s permit process, had assembled a crackerjack committee and was going to emcee the event. The project would benefit the teen center that was so important to Gina and her family as well as the entire community.

  “I’ll see you at the next committee meeting,” Shelley said after they’d hammered out several decisions concerning the wine to be served, decorations for the stage and recruiting an auctioneer. As soon as Shelley left, Gina recalled that she had promised to phone the other committee members to let them know the time and place of the next meeting. Since this was a lull, she might as well do it now.

  She was flipping through the pages of her address book when the door opened and Josh walked in. He carried a paper bag and looked cheerier than he had a right to be.

  “Before you tell me to get out, you’d better hear what I have to say,” he announced before setting the bag down on the counter in front of her. From it wafted a tantalizing scent of meatballs and marinara sauce, and she recognized it right away as one of Mom’s famous sandwiches. Belatedly, she recalled that she’d never eaten lunch.

  “You have to eat something,” he said.

  She stared at him, taking in his determined stance, his sinfully blue eyes and the earnestness that shone from within. What was it about this man that she found so arresting? So fascinating? So all-fired absorbing?

  “I suppose you propose to eat what’s in that bag,” she managed to say, even as her mouth was watering at the thought of sinking her teeth into one of Mom’s savory concoctions.

  “That’s why I brought it,” Josh said. He leaned forward on the counter, resting his hands on it and invading her personal space. “What do you say?”

  She studied him for a moment, assessing his immovability and his perseverance.

  “I think,” she said slowly, “that once we eat these sandwiches, they will practically ensure that we won’t want to get this close to each other or anyone else until the garlic wears off. Although,” she continued distractedly, “we could nibble parsley. It cleanses the breath.” She slid down from the stool and went to a cabinet, where she located a stack of paper napkins.

  “That’s not all I could nibble,” Josh said under his breath, and she almost didn’t hea
r him. She decided to let his comment pass, however, considering the uselessness of objecting. Besides, she was hungry.

  “We can eat on the bench outside,” she told him. “That way I’ll see customers slowing on the road before they get here and be back inside by the time they pull into a parking space.”

  “Must you always be so practical?” Josh said, but there was a note of triumph in his tone.

  “Yes, that’s the way I am.” She sat on one end of the bench and plunked the napkins in the middle. Josh was forced to occupy the other end, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  “Tell me, Gina. Haven’t you ever done anything that you had an urge to do, just for the fun of it?” His mood had changed, and she wasn’t sure if this was good or bad.

  “I was a contestant on Mr. Moneybags. That was totally impractical.” She unwrapped her sandwich and appreciatively inhaled its aroma.

  “I thought you told me you didn’t send in your application yourself, that Rocco did it for you.”

  “He never expected that I’d actually be chosen to compete.” She bit into the sandwich, which tasted like pure heaven. She was hungrier than she’d admitted.

  “Have you ever done something really risqué? Like taking off your clothes and dancing naked in the moonlight? Like getting a tattoo on a part of your body that isn’t usually visible?”

  She paused in mid-bite, afraid that she’d choke with indignation if she tried to swallow. “If I had, I wouldn’t tell you,” she said finally when she could speak.

  “Who would you tell?”

  “No one.”

  He looked as if he were digesting this, then dispensed with his jocular mood. “What I really want to know, Gina, is if you hate me.”

  “No.”

  “Or if you’re seeing someone, or if you’re engaged.”

  She set the sandwich down very carefully and gazed out across the neighboring vineyard. “No on both counts,” she said. That she was still unattached was a sore point with her family. Nice Italian girls were supposed to be married before they were thirty—or at least, that was the way it was in her family.

  Josh’s jubilation was evident in his quick smile. “That’s good,” he said, and for a moment she suspected that he might try to give her a greasy high-five. She quickly picked up her sandwich again.

  “I figured there might be some reason that you don’t want to hang out with me,” he explained. “Those were the only things I could think of.”

  “Surely those weren’t the only things,” she said.

  “They were, too.”

  Her first impression of Josh on the night all the contestants had met him was that he was conceited, though charming and handsome. “What is it with men?” she asked. “They tend to think that women should be falling all over them.”

  “Some women do.”

  “Not me,” Gina said. Rocco sometimes reminded her that this was why she was still unmarried. She usually ignored his jibes, but the words stung more than she cared to admit.

  “Why don’t you try it? Starting, like, right now.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  “Could we make that was? As in, I was impossible? I’ve changed, Gina, since we first met.”

  She edged a look in his direction. “What do you mean?” Then, unsure about the conflicted expression flitting across his features, she added quickly, “I don’t want to hear anything about you and Tahoma, okay?”

  “I wasn’t going to talk about her.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll be the first to admit that I could have used a come-uppance back there at Dunsmoor Castle. Somebody should have told me off, should have informed me that I was too in love with myself to love anyone else.”

  “Is that true?” She stared at him openmouthed, then rapidly clamped her mouth shut, considering that she was eating.

  “That’s why I goofed up. I’ve learned my lesson, believe me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Rejection hurts. I realize that now.”

  “Mmm,” Gina said, bewildered at this unexpected revelation. The silence thickened between them, which was fine with her. They’d be better off to get lunch over with so she could go back to work.

  “So, anyway,” he said, “I wanted you to know that.”

  Gina narrowed her eyes, trying to read his expression. He met her gaze unwaveringly, and she decided that he was serious.

  “I don’t understand why you’re telling me this now, Josh.”

  “Because I’ve thought about you a lot. Because you haven’t let me talk to you in any serious way since I’ve been here.”

  “I didn’t think you could be serious.”

  “Obviously. Now that you know, maybe we could spend some quality time together.”

  “Isn’t that what we’re doing?” she said. “Doesn’t this count?”

  “Any chance you get to push me away seems to be important to you, so I figure you’ll do it again soon. Which only enhances your attraction, by the way.”

  She didn’t know how much more of this conversation she could take. It was time to lighten things up. “Do you mean that if I wasn’t pushing you away, you’d lose interest?”

  He laughed, a welcome sound. “I doubt it, Gina Angelini. I find you to be a most fascinating human being.”

  “Why?” She couldn’t help asking.

  He had finished with his sandwich, and he was folding the wrapper into a neat rectangle. “You’re fascinating because you’re kind to children and cats. Because I know what you’re thinking, at least some of the time. Because you’re beautiful and unaware of it. And, oh—because you’re sexy as hell, and you do know that, don’t you?” His eyes twinkled with amusement at her discomfiture.

  “I don’t know any such thing,” she said faintly, unable to look away from his perfectly arched brows, the dimple that appeared fleetingly when he smiled, the groove in his upper lip.

  “I think you do,” he said softly, and then, before she could move away, his hand whipped out to capture her chin. His lips brushed hers in a swift kiss.

  She jumped up immediately. “That—that will be quite enough,” she said primly, walking over and depositing her sandwich wrapper in the nearby trash can.

  “Not for me,” Josh said, barely suppressed laughter in his voice. A TV fan mag had once described him as “a chunk of hunk, yet a picture of boyish vulnerability.” Gina, however, was the one who was feeling vulnerable at this moment.

  Leaving Josh sitting right where he was, Gina rushed inside and grabbed a sprig of parsley to cure her of garlic breath before her customers arrived. There wasn’t anything she could take, however, to cure her attraction to Josh.

  Chapter Five

  Josh congratulated himself on a job well done. He’d moved in on Gina so quickly that she hadn’t had a chance to run away. And now that they’d kissed, the barriers between them would begin to fall one by one.

  He drove back to his apartment, noting when he arrived that Judy Rae’s car wasn’t in the garage. Good, he thought. I’ll have peace and quiet while I make my phone calls.

  A quick perusal of The Juice revealed a couple of possibilities. A winery in Sonoma County had fired its winemaker, indicating, perhaps, troubled management. And why would there be a problem with management? Probably because the winery wasn’t making money.

  Josh called his father first, but his dad’s assistant told him that Mr. Corbett was in a meeting, and would Josh like to leave a message? Josh declined, glad that he wouldn’t have to talk to Ethan today. His father would want to know if he’d made progress, and he would have to tell him no. He’d had other things on his mind.

  Then he called the CEO of Starling Industries, Walter Emsing.

  Walter took his call right away, and as always, he sounded hearty and gregarious.

  “Josh! About time I heard from you! Any prospects out there in God’s country?”

  “So far, only God knows,” Josh said wryly. “It’s going to take me a while, Walter.
I told you that.”

  “I know, I know. At Starling, we’re eager to move, so keep me posted. A small to mid-size company would be best, as we’ve discussed, and we’ve sold that winery in Australia. Not enough profit, and not enough reason to keep it, considering the risks. We want to hang on to the top management, though, so we can install them in whatever established winery you recommend.”

  The plan, most of it, was familiar to Josh. “I’m working on it, Walter. I’ll check in again when I have news to report.” Before he hung up, he gave Walter his number at Mrs. Upthegrove’s.

  When it was time for dinner, Josh headed for Mom’s. It seemed like a good place to pick up news he could use.

  He spotted Rocco sitting in a booth as soon as he walked in.

  “Hey, Josh! Come sit with us,” Rocco said, waving him over.

  “Hi, Josh,” said Frankie as Josh slid into the booth with them.

  Josh rumpled Frankie’s hair, and Frankie grinned.

  “Dad, can I go play video games in the back room?”

  “Sure, son. Hurry back when Edna brings our food.” He forked over a fistful of change.

  Edna slapped a menu in front of him, and Josh ordered the blue-plate special, which today was meat loaf.

  “Are you finding everything you need here in Rio Robles?” Rocco asked.

  “I sure am. Everyone is really friendly,” Josh replied, taking in the way Rocco was dressed—coveralls over a T-shirt.

  Rocco must have seen him looking. “I came straight from my job at my auto repair shop. I didn’t feel like cooking today, so I brought Frankie here for dinner. We eat out two or three times a week. This single-father business is no bed of roses, that’s for sure.”

  “I believe that,” Josh said.

  “Yeah, well, my wife, Cissy, died five years ago. I never thought I’d be able to manage bringing up a kid on my own. Yet here I am.” Rocco laughed and shrugged.

  “I’m sorry about your wife. Frankie’s a great kid.”

  “Isn’t he? I wish I had six more like him. I worry about him growing up an only child. I had a brother and a sister.” Rocco took a long drink of water. “I think about marrying again, but after what happened to Cissy, I—well, I don’t know if that’s what I want.” For a moment he seemed lost in memories.