A Wedding on Ladybug Farm (13 page)

Bridget and Cici exchanged a look.  “Well, this is a change,” observed Bridget.  “It was your idea to have a formal wedding.  You wanted everything to be perfect, remember?”

Lindsay lifted on
e shoulder in a small shrug.  “It’s entirely possible,” she admitted, “that perfect is overrated.”  She looked at Bridget.  “How many miniature grapes do we have to make?”

“Six hundred thirty,” replied Bridget, and both Cici and Lindsay stifled a groan.

“You know,” said Cici, glancing at the empty chair next to Lindsay, “this is going to sound strange, and no offense to you guys—but I really miss Dominic when he’s not here.  He always has something interesting to say.”

“Well, I am offended,” objected Lindsay, though she did not look it.

“I know what she means,” Bridget insisted.  She stroked the sleeping kitten absently.  “It’s nice to have something to talk about besides weddings and menopause and sagging breasts.”

Lindsay raised her eyebrows high.  “I hardly ever talk about my sagging breasts.”

“Then you’re the only one,” said Cici. 

They rocked and sipped their wine while the shadows deepened along the porch.  “The days are getting shorter,” observed Cici.

Lindsay glanced at the chardonnay left in her glass.  “We should switch to merlot soon.”

“Chardonnay in the summer, merlot in the autumn, cabernet in the winter,” agreed Bridget.

The lights went out in the barn, and they all smiled, each to herself, as they watched Dominic cross the yard.  “Good evening, my ladies,” he said, mounting the steps.  He dropped a kiss on Lindsay’s head.  “The days are getting shorter.  Always bad news to a farmer.”

“We were just saying that,” Cici said.

“Although I’m not sure about the bad news part,” said Bridget.  “Even farmers need to rest some time.”

He smiled and picked up the bottle of wine.  “What are we drinking tonight?” He examined the label in the light from the open window, and poured himself a glass. “It will be merlot season soon.  Chardonnay in the summer, merlot in the autumn, cabernet in the winter.”

He lifted his glass to them, and took his chair. Another Ladybug Farm evening had begun

~*~

Chapter Five

Friends and Lovers

L
ori wanted to change for dinner, even though it meant having Kevin wait in the filthy lobby of her building.  She would have invited him up, but with two people in the room there wouldn’t have been room enough to change her mind, much less her clothes.  When she came down, he was brushing suspiciously at his own clothes and glaring at the desk clerk.  “Jesus, Lori, I think this place has fleas.”

“I think so too,” she agreed gamely.  “Funny though, I’ve never seen any dogs in here.”

He glanced around in undisguised distaste.  “This was the best you could do?  Don’t you have a credit card?”

“It’s my dad’s.  And if he starts seeing things like rent and groceries on it
, he’ll be over here in a heartbeat.”

Kevin noticed her dress, a cute little boat-striped jersey with a cut-out over the chest that hugged her figure like a glove, and the red patent shoes that set it off.  He lifted an eyebrow.  “Well, I’m glad to see poverty hasn’t affected your fashion sense.  What is that, Prada?”

She grinned and did a little twirl, copper curls bouncing in the dusty light.  “Now
this
is the kind of thing my dad expects to see on his credit card.  I didn’t want to disappoint him.” 

Kevin drew a breath for an exasperated reprimand, caught himself, and settled for, “You look nice.”

The smile she returned told him he’d made the right choice.  “Thanks.  And if it makes you feel any better, I got it in a consignment shop.  The shoes are new, though.”  She stretched out her foot to show him.

The desk clerk leaned forward to better appreciate the view, leering at her.  Kevin locked down his gaze and said something sharp in Italian.  The other man straightened up when Kevin put a protective hand on Lori’s back.  “Let’s get out of here before we catch a disease.”

“He’s a perv.  Just ignore him.”  Lori glanced up at Kevin, a corner of her lips turned up with a speculative smile.  “What did you say to him, anyway?

“I told him to keep his eyes to himself and his hands off my sister.”

“Oh yeah?  It sounded like you said something else.”

“How would you know?”

“It sounded like you said ‘lover.’  My lover.”

“That much Italian you know.  I should have figured.”

She laughed as they stepped out into the filtered golden sunlight of an early Italian evening.  The streets were not so crowded now, the pace was a little slower.  Voices called from open windows and laughter spilled out of open doors.  The air was scented with garlic and yeasty bread, overlying base notes of rich dark earth and damp stone and ripe, sun-baked fruit that was the very essence of the Italian hill country.  Kevin leaned back his head and took a deep breath.

“Well, I guess this is worth it, even if you have to live in a place like that,” he said.  “Just look at that sky. It’s like a Renaissance painting.  If I were you I wouldn’t want to leave either.”

Lori said, “Yeah, I felt like that when I first got here, too.  But after a while, it’s just a place.” She glanced at him suspiciously.  “What is this, some kind of reverse psychology? Aren’t you supposed to be talking me into going home?”

He laughed softly.  “Honey, I’m the last person in the world to be telling you what to do. I promised to look you up and deliver some presents, that’s all.  Maybe I’ll take a few selfies of us in front of some ruins and send them back to your mom, but then I’m done.”

Lori said expectantly, “Presents?”

“Your mom sent you some stuff.  Bath salts, I think.”

“Jasmine?” she said hopefully.

“I don’t know.  I didn’t open it.”

“Well, you ate my cookies.”

He said, “Don’t pout.”

“Did you bring them?”

“What?”

“My presents.”

“Do you mean now?  Tonight?”  He shook his head. “They’re back at the hotel.”

“Can we go get them?”

He gave her an incredulous look.  “No.  I’m hungry.  You really
are
a brat, aren’t you?”

She looked annoyed for a moment, and then she sighed.  “No,” she said, “just homesick.”

Kevin dropped a hand on her shoulder, giving it a brief, sympathetic squeeze.  And then, because she didn’t seem to mind, he left it there throughout the walk to dinner.

They were seated on a walled terrace next to yet another fountain, this one set into a hanging garden of riotous red and purple blooms.  A warm breeze tossed the candlelight around while the sky slowly faded into that gentle lavender color that seems to last all night in the hill country.  Lori grew animated as Kevin brought her up to date on the news from Ladybug Farm, and she asked a dozen questions in between enthusiastic bites of mushroom ravioli and stewed calamari, occasionally answering them herself and waving her wine glass for emphasis.  Had he tasted the first crush?  What did he think?  Of course it was young yet
, but had he noticed that whisper of elderberry in the top notes?  That was going to mature into a complex flavor layer that, when blended with the syrah they were growing now, would be worth putting up for an award, or at least that was what Dominic said.  And speaking of syrah, had they started harvesting yet?  Because the plan was to harvest at least half a ton this year from the old vines, which wasn’t a lot but it was enough to tell whether or not it was worth bottling on its own, or whether it would be better to wait until the new vines starting bearing next year.  And speaking of that, what did he think of the label?  Because a label could make or break a wine when they started distributing, especially if they expected to get into the better retailers.

By the time the main course was served
, she was educating him on the politics of the wine industry in the US—California, according to her, practically ran its own wine mafia—which was nothing compared to Italy or, even worse, France.  For his part, Kevin was pleasantly surprised by how much fun she could be when she talked about something other than herself, and by what an interesting young woman she had become.  He ordered another bottle of wine.  He sat back and sipped it while she finished a story.  He said, “You know, kiddo, I think you were wrong.”

“About what?”  She mopped up a bit of sauce with a crust of bread and popped it into her mouth.

“About not being good at anything.  Dominic said you were a hell of a winemaker.”

A slow delight spread over her face like a blush. “He said that?”

“He did. And he seemed really anxious for you to get home.”  He shrugged.  “Of course, I didn’t get a chance to spend a lot of time with him, but I couldn’t help noticing there doesn’t seem to be any real plan in place for sales.  You don’t have to major in business—which I believe you did—to know you can’t succeed in business without sales.”

She frowned a little and picked up her glass.  “Dominic has a sales plan.  It just can’t be a priority right now.  After all, he’s only one person.”

“He mentioned that.”

“Ha.”  She finished off her wine and set it down with a flourish.  “So I was right.  You were sent here on a secret mission to talk me into going home.”

“Nope.”  He refilled her glass.  “I don’t care what you do.  I was just pointing out that you’re not as dumb as you like to pretend, and I don’t feel sorry for you anymore.”

She glared at him. “I never asked you to feel sorry for me.”

“Good.  Because I don’t.”

They stared each other down for a long moment.  Lori was the first to blink.  She shrugged uncomfortably and took a sip of her wine.  “I’ll go home,” she said.  “Just as soon as I figure out what to tell everyone.”

“I take it the truth is not an option.”

She gave him a sour look.  “I meant something that doesn’t make me look like a total loser.”

“I see your problem.”  But he said it with the kind of smile that made her resist the urge to toss the contents of her glass at him.

The waiter came over to clear their plates and said something to Kevin, whose response in easy Italian seemed to please him. When he was gone, Lori said, “How did you learn to speak Italian, anyway?”

He looked at her for a moment as though he was debating whether to answer, and then he lifted his own glass. “I spent some time here right after I landed my first big client.  There was a girl, and I thought I had a lot to say to her.  But she didn’t speak English.”

Her eyes took on a teasing spark.  “And this was before or after the boss’s daughter?”

“After.”  He took a thoughtful sip of his wine.  “I think.”

“Well, that explains how you knew my dress was Prada.  Were you in love?”

He smiled and tilted his glass to her in a brief salute.  “Everyone falls in love in Italy.”

“What happened to her?”

“No clue.”

“You’re a pig.”

“Oh, I remember now.”  He pretended thoughtfulness.  “That’s what she said too, right before she broke up with me.”

Lori laughed, and he smiled back.  They drank more wine, and the silence between them rested easy.  She glanced down at her glass, and then at him, almost shyly.  “Can I tell you something?”

He inclined his head curiously.

“I used to have a giant crush on you,” she admitted.

“Oh yeah?” He looked mildly surprised, and hugely pleased.  “When?”

“I don’t know.  When I was a little kid.”  She gave a small awkward shrug. “I thought that whole Clark Kent thing you had going on was crazy sexy.”

He grinned and pushed at the bridge of his glasses.  “Is that right?”

“Clark Kent,” she told him sternly, “not Superman.  You
do
know the difference, don’t you?”

“Yep.”  He took off his glasses and began to polish them importantly.  “Spandex.”

That made her giggle, and her eyes danced in the candlelight.  He replaced his glasses and came around to her chair. “Hold that smile,” he said.  He took out his cell phone, bent low so that his head was close to hers, and stretched out his arm to snap a photo with the fountain in the background.  “There,” he said, typing out a message as he returned to his chair.  “‘Lori says hi.’”  He sent the photo to his mom.         

She took a sip of her wine and set down her glass, looking at him speculatively.  “So what’s the deal, Kevin?  I know you didn’t fly all the way over here just to take me to dinner.  Which was delicious
, by the way.  Thanks.”

He returned his phone to his pocket.  “I told Mom I was going to Rome for a job interview.  She figured since Tuscany was practically across the street, I should stop by.”

Another girl would have let that slide right by.  Lori caught it like a Venus fly trap.  “Did you?  Have a job interview, I mean.”

He picked up his wine glass, leaned back in his chair, and regarded her with absolutely no expression for a time.  Then he said, “No.”

Her brows quirked together curiously.  “Anyway, what happened to your job at the law firm?”

There was a moment of debate, but not too long.  For some reason, while lying to his mother had been difficult but not impossible, lying to Lori just seemed pointless.  He sipped his wine, watching her.  “I managed a couple of big trust funds for the firm,” he said.  “One of them, I happened to know, was plumped up mostly by money that was obtained in questionable ways
… mostly by taking little old ladies’ life savings and investing in bad bonds.  Not anything that was provable, you understand, but it irked me just the same, especially when one of the little old ladies in question came to me for help with an IRS problem.  She was about to lose everything—her house, her bakery business, her car, and even her future income—for a $75,000 debt.  She’d worked all her life, was barely getting by as it was, and wouldn’t you know she’d invested over a hundred grand with this dude and his bad bonds five years ago. If she hadn’t she would have been able to pay her tax bill before it got that high. Usually I can negotiate these things out, but she’d had some bad legal advice before she even got to me, piling up a ton of debt in attorney’s fees, and everything I tried fell through.  Finally it came down to the wire one Friday afternoon.  Her assets were frozen, my hands were tied, and she was going to jail unless she paid that bill in full by five o’clock.  So I transferred the funds from the other client’s trust fund account to pay the IRS.”

Lori’s eyes were big.  “God, Kevin.”

He toyed with the stem of his glass, his eyes falling briefly.  “It was stupid. I don’t know what got into me.” He frowned abruptly and said, “Actually I do.”

He looked at her.  “When I first got into law I was just like every other bright
-eyed kid, ready to go out and defend the downtrodden, fight for the right, all that crap.  What I found out is that practicing law is mostly about trying to figure out how to get around it, or to figure out how people who are rich enough to pay you can get away with breaking it.  And that most of the time what’s right and what’s legal don’t have a lot to do with each other.  It doesn’t take long for the lines to blur.  And it’s not just that, you know.”  The frown deepened.  “I think that after all those years, doing the
right
thing for a change, instead of the legal one, actually felt like vindication.  Like it was restoring the balance, somehow.”