Secrets Of Bella Terra (12 page)

The brothers each filled the glass of their favorite, sipped and smiled, and shared a rare moment of accord.

“Good thing we have you, Eli, to make the family fortune.” Rafe grinned at his brother, and was surprised when Eli didn’t grin back.

Uh-oh.
Had there been a bad harvest? Was that why Eli looked as if he had indigestion?

“What wines have you got coming up?” Rafe asked.

“I’ve got a pinot noir that’s going to do great things, and I’ve put together another wine from those old vines on the hill behind Nonna’s house.” Eli smiled faintly. “That could turn out to be interesting.”

“What kind of grapes are they?” Rafe asked.

“Red.”

Rafe rolled his fingers, urging Eli to explain.

“I don’t know. We’ve always flung some into the mix when we create our table wine, but it occurred to me that the grapes could stand on their own.” Eli shrugged. “I could be wrong.”

“But you’re not,” Rafe said.

“But I could be.”

“But you’re not,” Noah said.

Tom returned and leaned across the bar. “Fan approaching from behind.”

Eyes shining with anticipation, an older woman waited for Rafe to turn around. “Young man, I have to tell you how much my family and I loved that dragon movie you did when you were a little boy. I showed it to my grandchildren when they were little.”

“Thank you, ma’am. It’s good to be remembered so many years later,” Rafe said.

“Won’t you ever do another movie?” she asked. “A sequel? All your fans would come to see it!”

“I would, but the dragon has retired from show business,” Rafe said solemnly.

As she was supposed to, she laughed. “You scamp! I’ll tell you what—I don’t want your signature. I want a hug and a kiss!”

“I always like to smooch a pretty lady. It’s one of the perks of the job.” Leaning down, Rafe embraced her and kissed her cheek, then watched her walk away.

He turned back to his brothers.

“You scamp!” they said in unison.

“Shut. Up.” Rafe wanted to kill them both.

Tom ominously cleared his throat. “That did it. Every female in here and the gay guys in the corner are getting ready to rush the bar. You might want to evacuate before you’re kissing every tourist who ever dreamed of owning a dragon.”

As the brothers scrambled to leave, Noah told Tom, “Pour the wines for the wedding party in the corner, Rafe’s treat. If you need us, we’re going to the Beaver Inn for pizza and beer.”

“The Beaver Inn, huh?” Tom watched them walk out the door and shook his head. “Those boys are looking for trouble tonight.”

B
rooke juggled a bouquet and a vegetable plate, tapped on her mother’s door, then opened it and called, “Mom! You home?”

Kathy Petersson stuck her head around the corner. “I’m back here getting ready. It’s bunco night!”

“I remember.” Brooke walked through the living room to the kitchen. “When’s everybody getting here?”

“At eight. Sylvia will be late, of course, so we’ll snack a little and gossip a little, and when she shows up, we’ll start.”

“And play until, ooh, ten thirty?”

“Don’t make fun of us, young lady. I’m sure we’ll be here until eleven, and all of us yawning tomorrow.”

Her mother’s house was a cozy 1950s bungalow set on a narrow lot with an alley in the back, a white picket fence all around—and a handicapped ramp beside the front steps. “Zachary sent you a bouquet for the dining table,” Brooke said. “The cook at the resort put together an appetizer for you. I had a heck of a time convincing him you didn’t need any cheese or chocolate.”

Kathy laughed. “Is he crazy? He buys the cheese for the restaurant from me.”

“He thinks veggies are second-class citizens.” Brooke slid everything onto the counter, and turned to hug her mother.

Neither of them let the metal bars of Kathy’s walker get in the way.

Kathy Petersson had once been as tall as Brooke, with a swift step and a strong grip. She had given orders to her soldiers in a tone that cracked the whip, and if they didn’t respond quickly enough, she pounced and they learned to pay attention.

She still applied her makeup and tended her sweep of dark hair with the care of a model. But time and rheumatoid arthritis had shrunk her frame and robbed her of the ability to dance or fight; the disease had twisted her bones until she moved at a painful snail’s pace. Last year’s hip replacement had eased her misery, but slowed her further, and now on bunco night, when Brooke could make it, she helped her arrange the food and set up the card tables.

“I didn’t think you’d be here, honey,” Kathy said. “I thought you’d be at the hospital with Mrs. Di Luca.”

“I got relieved of most of my duties.” Brooke got the dice and notepads out of the drawer. “Rafe arranged for a bodyguard-slash-nurse to stay with Sarah and take care of her. I’m to visit, but the responsibility is off my shoulders.”

“That’s good.”

If Brooke hadn’t been listening, she wouldn’t have heard that off note in her mother’s voice. But she was, and she did, and she knew what was coming.

Kathy continued. “I know you’re fond of Sarah—I am, too—but I thought you were overdoing it.”

“I guess.”

Long pause. “So Rafe is back in town.”

“This afternoon.”

“It took him long enough to get here. Where was he?”

“I don’t know, Mom, but I imagine he was in, as you have so aptly put it, one of the shitholes of the world.”

“So he’s still touring the shitholes, hm?”

“I don’t know that, either. He doesn’t check in with me.”

“No, thank God. That’s over.” Another pause, more significant this time. “You won’t have to see him much while he’s here, will you?”

Now this conversation was going to get tricky. “I’m working with him to find Sarah’s attacker.”

Kathy turned on Brooke with fire in her eyes. “Why?”

Brooke put the lacy paper napkins on the table and fanned them out. “Because he thinks the attacker is probably someone in town, maybe at the resort, and I know everybody.”

“Let him work with Brian DuPey!”

“He doesn’t think the sheriff is good for much more than traffic tickets.”

“I don’t care. Rafe shouldn’t be hanging around with you.”

“Mom, I’ve heard you say it a hundred times. You don’t think Brian DuPey is good for much more than traffic tickets. And you ought to know. You used to be in charge of all kinds of stuff in the Air Force, stuff you won’t even tell me about.” Facing her mother, she said, “To quote you, ‘Don’t piss on my shoes and tell me it’s raining.’ In this case, DuPey isn’t good enough; we both know it, and I don’t want some guy running around town bashing helpless women with a tire iron.”

“Especially when you’re related to a helpless woman.” Kathy didn’t get bitter about her condition very often, but this was one of those times. “Sometimes I wish we’d never come to this town.”

“I used to wish that, too.”

“I never understood why you were so unhappy when we moved here.”

Of course she didn’t. Kathy had been a military officer in charge of a whole gob of people doing secret government stuff. For a woman to thrive in the service, she had to let her grasp of the subtleties of human emotion slip away. So when she said she didn’t understand, she meant it. “Mom, when we moved here, you didn’t tell me what was going on. If I’d known about the arthritis, that you needed a dry climate and a big medical center close by, I might not have been so bewildered.”

“I didn’t want you to worry that I wouldn’t be able to take care of you.”

“I can truthfully say it’s never crossed my mind that you would be anything but a success.” Even now, bent and crumpled, Kathy Petersson carried in herself a valiant spirit, and her cheese shop was the model of how to find a niche that needed filling. Brooke continued. “I wasn’t worried about starving. I was worried about being unlovable.”

“But why?”

“Daddy didn’t love me. Or at least he didn’t love me enough not to take another wife.”

“Your daddy doesn’t love anybody but himself. But I’m not sorry I married him. If I hadn’t, I would never have had you, and you have always been the light of my life.” Kathy brushed a hand across her eyes. “That’s why I hate to see Rafe Di Luca in your life again. He’s the worst thing that ever happened to you.”

“Oh, no. He wasn’t. Sometimes I think he was the best thing.” Brooke went to the closet in the second bedroom, her old room, brought out two of the card tables, and put them up in the living room.

Kathy followed. “Rafe broke up your engagement to that nice man!”

“What nice man? Dylan? Mom, I broke off that engagement.” Brooke moved the recliner back against the wall to make room for the last table. “Rafe didn’t make me. He cleared my mind.”

“By screwing you out of it!”

When Brooke was a teenager, she’d wished Kathy’s speaking weren’t quite so blunt and to the point. But she was over that now—most of the time. “No. By making me realize I couldn’t spend my life with a man as good and kind and completely, horribly boring as Dylan Roper.”

“It’s better than being married to a . . . womanizing adventure addict.”

“I was never married to Rafe, and while I admit he seems to thrive on adventure, he isn’t a womanizer.”

Kathy scoffed. “How do you know?”

“You always said you could tell when Dad was having an affair.”

“I don’t know if that was really true,” Kathy said reflectively, “since he was having an affair all the time.”

“You can say a lot of things about Rafe, about what he did wrong and how that ended our relationship. But I wasn’t exactly the figurehead of maturity myself.” Remembering, Brooke chuckled. “Actually, considering we were in high school the first time, I suppose we could both get a pass on the maturity thing.”

“And the second time?”

“I knew exactly what I was doing, and why, and what was going to happen afterward. So back off, Mom.” Brooke had never been so forthright with her mother before. “When Rafe’s with me, he’s with me. He can’t stay, that’s all. He’s not Dad, and I’m not you. You know that. You even like him.”

“When he’s not messing with you.” Kathy leaned away as Brooke marched to the coat closet and dug out the folding chairs.

“He doesn’t mess with me. I’m an intelligent woman. When I’m with him, I’m perfectly aware what I’m doing isn’t smart.” Brooke put out the chairs, and she smirked. “But it is fun.”

“How can you joke about this?” Kathy asked quietly. “After the last time?”

Brooke’s smile faded. “He needed me, Mom.”

“And you went running to him.”

It was true. “The first time, I needed him. The second time, he needed me. If all of our relationships are based on need, then here, now—nothing will happen because neither one of us needs the other.”

As if Brooke’s words pained her, Kathy put her hand to her heart. “Honey, I don’t want you to get hurt, and he always seems to do just that.”

“I won’t let him hurt me.” Brooke was desperately earnest.

“You say that, and yet you won’t even date seriously.”

This was new territory. Brooke hadn’t realized Kathy knew or cared about her social life. “I haven’t found anybody.”

“You work at a resort! Men come through there every day. Politicians. Rock stars. Movie stars. Wine barons. Millionaires. Billionaires. You even said you have a con man who vacations at Bella Terra. Gagnon, I believe you said his name was.” Obviously, Kathy had given this some thought.

“You want me to date a con man?”

“He sounds charming.”

Brooke recalled Gagnon’s dark hair, tanned skin, his towering height . . . the slash of scar across his cheek, the way he smiled as if he knew all too well what she wore under her clothes . . . “He’s French. Of course he’s charming.” She also remembered the bodyguards never left his side and the unrelenting watchfulness in his dark eyes. “He’s dangerous, too.”

“You’re too sedentary. A little danger would do you good.”

Brooke couldn’t decide whether she should be amused or appalled. “Mother, how desperate are you to get rid of me?”

“It simply seems as if you should give at least one of those men a whirl.”

“They’re not bicycles!”

“Rafe Di Luca has been back less than twenty-four hours and he’s already mesmerized you.”

“No, he hasn’t,” Brooke answered a little too quickly.

“Has he kissed you?”

“You mean like . . . today?”

Kathy saw right through that evasion. “Oh, Brooke. Not again.”

“It was just a kiss.” . . . His lips smoothing hers. His body pressing her onto the sun-warmed front steps until Brooke felt each tread against her spine, until the smell of the old boards and old paint had been a newfound pleasure . . .

“Find a man,” Kathy said. “Settle down. Have some kids.”

Now, that was insulting. “I am not having kids to distract me from Rafe.”

Kathy narrowed her eyes at Brooke. “I’m going to pray the next time you have sex, the condom breaks.”

“Vibrators don’t wear condoms, Mom.” Brooke thought that would put an end to the conversation.

Instead, Kathy said, “Don’t I know it.”

It took Brooke a second before she caught on. Then she groaned, “Oh, Mom. Gross me out.”

Kathy laughed.

“Ew. I’m scarred for life.” She heard women’s voices on the walk, and saw her chance to escape. “Everything’s set up.” She kissed her mother on the cheek. “I’m going out the back. I’m going home. I’m going to take a bath—alone—and read a book—alone—and I’m going to pretend I never heard you say that.”

Kathy caught a strand of Brooke’s hair. “When you get out of the bath, why don’t you get online and book your next trip? Go someplace civilized. Someplace romantic.”

“Someplace Rafe would never go?”

“Exactly.” Kathy’s expression reflected her satisfaction. “Go to France or Spain or Italy. Or Scandinavia! You’ve never been to Scandinavia.”

“That would be different.” Brooke warmed to the idea.

“Yes! Find someplace you like. Get a job in a hotel there. Don’t come back.”

“Mom!” Brooke couldn’t believe she was talking that way.

“I’ll get along without you, and so will the Di Lucas. It’s time you went out into the world and lived your own life.” The bell rang. Kathy went to the door and looked back at her daughter. “Go on. Get going.”