by Marina Adair
“What can I get you? The regular?” the bartender asked.
Every Thursday night for the past eight years, ever since the youngest DeLuca brother, Trey, became of legal age to partake in public, Marc and his brothers had met at the locals-only bar, the Spigot. After a couple rounds of pool and a couple more rounds of beer, they would come up with a couple really satisfying ideas on how to catch and castrate their sister Abby’s SOB of a husband.
Six years ago Richard, who suffered from wandering-dick-and-sticky-fingers syndrome, got caught having an affair. Shortly after, he disappeared—taking with him twelve million dollars and their sister’s heart. The four brothers had sworn to get both back.
Tonight was a Wednesday, though, and Marc hadn’t come to shoot a game, the shit, or otherwise. He’d come to unwind—alone. He’d managed to avoid a meeting with his brothers, claiming that the first shipment of wine for the Showdown was expected to arrive, which it had. It had also taken three extra guys and an afternoon of paperwork to get the cases settled properly in the wine cellar.
Okay, so maybe the paperwork took a little longer because he still couldn’t get his mind off what Lexi had said yesterday. More specifically, what Lexi hadn’t said. She’d stood there silent while he justified how he’d chosen to live the past ten years—to her!
The more he thought about it, the more irritated he got.
So he’d grabbed his keys, locked up the office, and found himself standing at her back door, ready to explain just how much he’d changed. And apologize for his parting remark.
Then he realized that he didn’t do explanations—or apologies. They were too close to the truth, which made things too serious—another thing he didn’t do. He also reminded himself that this was Lexi, the woman who’d been married to his best friend. The same best friend who had not only helped Marc get through the single most painful experience of his life, but had stood by his side as Marc spun himself out of control. Jeff had never judged Marc for his reckless behavior after his parents’ deaths, like his brothers had. Never told him to grow the fuck up and get serious about his future. No, Jeff had understood that Marc needed to lose control before he could find it again, needed to deal with the pain of losing his parents in his own way.
So instead of knocking he kept walking, straight through town, straight through the bar, and straight through his second drink.
He’d barely started on his third when two familiar and, by the looks of them, pissed-off Italians flanked him on either side. Not bothering to hide all their big-brother bullshit, Gabriel and Nathaniel, the oldest of the DeLuca boys, elbowed and pressed in on him as they took their seats at the bar.
“You want to tell me what the hell you were thinking?” Gabe said in greeting.
Since Marc wasn’t sure exactly what he was being accused of, though he was pretty sure he was guilty on several counts, he remained silent. When he picked up his beer, purposefully tuning out his brothers and tuning in to the ball game playing on the plasma screen behind the bar, Nate slid the day’s issue of the St. Helena Sentinel in front of him.
Marc looked down at the headline advertising the St. Helena Summer Wine Showdown and felt himself relax. They weren’t here about Lexi or Natasha or the fact that two contenders had almost pulled out of the Showdown because his “qualified” assistant had forgotten to send them the proper paperwork.
“You’d better start explaining, and fast, since I’m about two seconds from kicking your ass, stealing your beer, and moving the Showdown to the family winery.”
“I heard that the second trimester’s rough,” Marc said, biting back a grin and sliding his beer toward his oldest brother. “I didn’t know all the nagging and hormonal crap was contagious, though.”
Gabe shot him a look that was intended to intimidate him into compliance, but all it accomplished was making Marc laugh. Even after their parents died and Gabe stepped up to run the family winery and raise his younger siblings, he’d always managed to keep his easygoing attitude—that was, until his new wife announced that they were expecting. Regan, outside of a few bizarre cravings, had had an easy pregnancy so far. Gabe, on the other hand, was a complete mess.
“Regan’s not nagging,” Gabe defended.
“Says the man who has a flat of Rocky Road ice cream stashed in his truck,” Nate said, waving the bartender over.
“Which is melting.” Gabe looked down longingly at the beer before slowly sliding it back toward Marc with a mumbled curse.
Marc took one look at the constipated expression on Gabe’s face, noticed the three gray hairs that had sprouted overnight, and slid the beer back. “You go ahead. You need it more than I do.”
Gabe held out a weary hand, waving off the beer. “Can’t” was all he said.
“Since Regan was totally alone through her first pregnancy with Holly, Gabe said he wanted to be a part of every step of this one.” Nate managed to hide his smirk but not the tone in his voice that said dumb-ass. “If Regan is awake, so is Gabe. If she wants ice cream, it’s what’s for dinner.”
“If she can’t drink alcohol, neither can he?” Marc added, seeing where this was going. Dumb-ass didn’t even begin to describe what Gabe was if he willingly agreed to that setup.
Gabe rested his elbows on the table and dropped his face into his hands. “I haven’t slept in three weeks, my pants are tight, and I swear, if I have to eat one more pickled-beet salad, I think I’m going to puke.”
But he’d man up and do it. Gabe had already proven that he would do anything if it meant making Regan happy.
“So can you explain to me what kind of idiot agreed to this so I can go home, snuggle with my wife, and eat a bowl of Rocky Road while watching another Nicholas Sparks movie?”
“There he goes, being all hormonal,” Marc joked.
“You think he’s bad, wait until Frankie gets a hold of this. She’s going to castrate you. Slowly,” Nate said.
Marc picked up the paper and studied it, at a total loss for why his two brothers were looking at him like he was in deep shit. Sure, he’d approved the article, even had Regan look it over to make sure it would pop. Nothing.
Gabe opened the paper and once again rested his head in his hands. “Fourth column, down at the bottom. Third name under the Tasting Tribunal.”
Marc scanned the article, found the list of judges for the blind wine tasting, and drew a blank. “Simon Baudouin, so what?”
“So what?” Gabe snapped, looking up and pinning Marc with a glare. “You want to tell me how the hell that happened?”
Marc couldn’t understand what had his brothers so pissed. A hundred years ago the DeLuca and Baudouin families held the first annual St. Helena Summer Wine Showdown in the dining room of the Napa Grand as a way to settle a friendly dispute over whose wine was superior. Over the years the tasting grew to include the entire valley, and it eventually became a platform for winemakers and enthusiasts from around the globe to compete and show off their new wines. It was also where his grandparents met and fell in love, and even where his parents had their wedding.
And had the Napa Grand not closed its doors twenty years ago, this year would have marked the hotel’s centennial year of hosting the event as well as his parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary. Which was why Marc had agreed that, even though his hotel wasn’t quite ready for an event of this caliber, the Showdown needed to be brought home—back to the Napa Grand. It had long outgrown the opera house two towns over in old town Napa, where it had been held the past twenty years.
“There’s always been one DeLuca and one Baudouin on the tribunal,” Marc defended. “It’s written in the bylaws. So if Frankie’s bitching because they only get one spot, tell her to suck it up.”
“Frankie doesn’t bitch.” An extremely loud and extremely ticked-off voice echoed throughout the bar. “Frankie delivers a donkey kick to the nuts.”
All three brothers turned toward the entrance, took one look, and instinctively dropped their hands to cover their goo
ds because there—dressed in a shirt that read Bite Me, shredded jeans, and a pair of steel-toed boots—stood Francesca Baudouin.
“Ah shit,” Nate whispered.
Frankie was tall, curvy, supposedly tattooed, and hot in that I-can-maim-you-with-my-bare-hands kind of way. She was also considered one of the most promising up-and-coming vintners in the valley, which ticked Nate to high hell—and she was the granddaughter of Charles Baudouin, placing her on the wrong side of the sixty-year-old Baudouin-DeLuca feud.
“Is this another one of your stupid jokes, Nathaniel?” Frankie demanded when she’d made her way across the bar and right into Nate’s face.
No one knew what Nate had done to get on Frankie’s shit list, but whatever it was had landed him permanently at the top. Not a good list to be on, since Frankie was a master grudge holder—and dartboard champion.
“Why are you looking at me? I make wine. He’s the one planning the Showdown,” Nate said, pointing to Marc and selling him out. So much for brotherly support.
“Yeah, well, if your goal was to humiliate me, the DeLucas get a gold star.” She held up a copy of the newspaper as proof. “Do you know how hard I’ve worked to be taken seriously in this industry?” That she’d had to work twice as hard to gain any respect from her family went unsaid.
“No one’s questioning your qualifications, Francesca.” Nate’s expression was soft, but his body was ready to respond should Frankie start donkey kicking. “We were as shocked as you were when we saw the article.”
“How can you be shocked? You were the ones who ran the list, which pretty much says that a dog is more qualified to represent my family than I am.”
“A dog?” Marc gasped.
“Simon is old man Charles’s bulldog,” Gabe supplied, picking up Marc’s beer. The foam hadn’t even touched his lips when he stopped and with a mumbled curse slammed the glass back down.
“This is going to make the Summer Wine Showdown look like some kind of redneck moonshine crawl.”
“You really didn’t know?” Frankie asked, her eyes narrowed in disbelief.
Marc put his hands up in surrender. “I followed the bylaws to the letter. Five people sit on the Tasting Tribunal: the mayor, the wine commissioner, a celebrity judge, and one member from each founding family. We chose Nate. Your grandfather chose Simon.”
Which made no sense at all. Sure, a lifetime ago Charles Baudouin and Geno DeLuca had been the best of friends; they had also fallen in love with the same woman. And Charles had chosen Geno’s wedding day to publicly express his undying love for Marc’s grandmother, ChiChi. The ceremony continued, a lifelong friendship ended, and the feud between the DeLucas and the Baudouins began.
Although the dog would complicate things for Marc and his family, it would also hurt the town’s reputation. And Charles Baudouin might despise the DeLucas, but he loved St. Helena.
“My grandpa did this?” Frankie held the paper limp in her hand, and had she been any other woman, Marc would have sworn she was about to cry.
“Looks like it.” Marc shoved back in his chair. “I worked my ass off to get the town behind hosting this event at my hotel. Not to mention I have so much money tied up in this thing if it goes under, I go with it.”
“Christ, Marc, you said you had this under control,” Gabe said, going all brother-knows-best.
“It is under control,” Marc defended.
“You have a fucking dog for a judge.”
“I’ll check the bylaws tonight. See if there is a clause that states the representative has to be human.”
“You should have done that before you announced to everyone that you were going to host the Showdown.” Gabe shook his head. “This is why I told you to wait a few years, to make sure your foundation was laid so you could handle it.”
“The town council approached me about hosting the event, remember? And this,” Marc said, pointing to the headline announcing the Showdown, “will shave five years off my ten-year plan. I knew the short timeline was going to be a challenge, but I would have been an idiot to turn them down. They wanted it brought back to the Napa Grand for the centennial, and it’s a chance to really show what the hotel can do.”
“You’re willing to bet everything you’ve built because you want to challenge yourself? And you choose the most high-profile event you can find to do it?” Gabe shook his head.
“A lot of people are counting on this fund-raiser,” Nate said in his most inoffensive tone, which Marc took immediate offense to. The only thing missing in this touching moment of brotherly bonding was the youngest DeLuca. Thankfully for Marc, Trey was in Madrid, selling a hotel chain on DeLuca Wines as their house specialty of choice.
“We are talking hundreds of thousands of dollars that this town needs,” Gabe said, as though Marc didn’t already know. The Summer Wine Showdown was elaborate, exclusive, and at a thousand dollars a plate, the dinner and wine tasting raised close to a million dollars every year for the local hospital and schools. Which made it a high-visibility event, and if it went bad, it would go bad under the watchful eyes of every media outlet in the food, wine, and travel industries.
“Did you even think about how this will affect the family if it goes south? Ryo Wines is one of the main sponsors, and the last thing Abby needs right now is her company connected to another disaster.”
Marc wanted to laugh at his brother’s family-first speech. Hell, just last Christmas Gabe had given the family an ultimatum: either welcome Regan and her daughter, Holly, into the family or he’d walk. A hard thing to ask since Abby’s husband, Richard, who had been carrying on an affair with Regan for over a year, was Holly’s biological father. Regan hadn’t known that Richard was married, but the affair had shattered Abby’s world regardless. Now that Regan was officially a sister-in-law and expecting the first DeLuca great-grandbaby, Marc was surprised that Abby hadn’t relocated to one of their Santa Barbara properties.
Not wanting to argue in front of half the town, especially on a topic as delicate as Regan and Abby, Marc picked up his beer and took a drawn-out pull, making sure that Gabe saw every last drop disappear. Then he licked his lips and considered ordering another one just to mess with his brother.
“I want to see this work,” Gabe finally said. “For everybody.”
“I can do this.” Marc had to do this. It was the only way to prove to his family, and himself, that walking away from his role in DeLuca Wines was a smart move. That he wasn’t that same impulsive screwup he’d been after his parents died. That he’d grown into the kind of man his father would have been proud of.
“I don’t doubt that you will. I’m just afraid that one day you’re going to play it too fast and too risky and end up blowing something important.” Gabe shook his head, then changed his tone—trying for light. “At least tell me you found a caterer.”
“Handled,” Marc lied.
Gabe took one last look at Marc’s beer. “Hopefully better than you handled announcing a dog as a fucking judge.”
CHAPTER 4
Saturday morning, with her eyes barely open, two trays full of pastries in her hands, and a light dusting of flour in nearly every crevice, Lexi pushed through the back door of the bakery. She made her way to her car and managed to locate her keys and pop the trunk, only to realize that there was no way all of the pastries were going to fit.
The grannies were already at the Book Walk. Her best friend, Abby, wasn’t answering her phone. And Lexi still had two dozen trays left in the kitchen.
She checked her watch and wondered what the time limit was before Nora Kincaid, who had been adamant about timeliness, was justified to act on her promise to publicly pop Lexi’s cream puffs. Not long, she imagined, since the event started in ten minutes.
Maybe if she dropped the backseat down she could make it in two trips.
Lexi set the trays on the roof and crawled into the car. Unlatching the seat locks, she pulled. And pulled. With a frown, and a whole lot of stomping, she went around to the trun
k, leaned in, and started pushing.
“Well, look who it is, Wingman. Our friendly neighborhood backside.”
Lexi looked over her shoulder, surprised to see Marc, his brown eyes twinkling with amusement as he leaned out the widow of his pickup and watched her struggle. She was less surprised, however, at the annoying fluttering that started low in her belly just because she looked at him. Irritated, but not surprised. The man was sexy as sin, and he knew it.
He wore his dimpled grin and enough stubble to show that he hadn’t bothered to shave that morning. Which shouldn’t have bothered Lexi. But it did. And that made her nervous.
“Go away,” she mumbled, focusing on the back seats again. Because divorcées who couldn’t make it work with the sure thing had no business getting bothered by the hometown playboy.
“Heard you might need a hand,” he said. “Actually, heard you might need a truck to lug all of the pastries.”
“You heard?” She didn’t turn around.
“Yup, ChiChi called an hour ago saying you’d need a ride. Pricilla about ten minutes after that.”
Which meant their grandmas were trying to set her up on yet another date she hadn’t agreed to. With Marc.
“I’ve got it handled,” she lied. “You can go.”
“Nah, we’ll wait. It’s not every day that a guy gets a morning flash of red lace before he’s even had his coffee. Huh, Wingman?”
Wingman panted loudly from the passenger seat.
With a squeak Lexi jerked up, smacking her head on the top of the trunk, her hands smoothing down the back of her dress. She reached the hem and stopped, pinning him with a glare. “I’m not wearing red today.”
“No?” He rested his forearm on the windowsill and shrugged matter-of-factly. “Well, a man can dream.”
“Does this whole ‘let me guess the color of your panties and then you’ll be charmed into taking a ride with me’ shtick really work?”
He paused for a second, as though surprised that it hadn’t. Then the dimples were back. “I can see you’re still a crabby morning person, which is why I brought coffee.” He held up two cups, and she nearly drooled at the scents of hazelnut and vanilla wafting out of his car window. She’d already had a cup, when she’d first gotten up and started baking. That had been five hours ago.
