Then He Kissed Me Read online

  “I think he’s with the princess,” Stevie said to her friend. When she’d told her clients they had to get moving or miss their tasting appointments, he’d climbed into the back with Emerson and his fiancée. “His name’s Jack.”

  Mari gasped. “Jack! Of course! ‘Jack’ is Prince Jacques Christian Wilhelm Parini. I read about him in one of those magazines at the hairdresser’s—you know, the pulpy ones with paparazzi pics of movie premieres and Euro trash boogeying down in flashy discotheques. He’s some kind of notorious playboy and the Princess Bride’s big brother.”

  That made sense. He struck Stevie as a royal pain in the ass because he was a royal pain in the ass. She loved being right.

  Though she should have made the Jacques-Jack connection on her own. Blame it on her ex-anxiety. She knew of the man, not from a magazine, but because he was college friends with the Bennett brothers, childhood neighbors and not-so-silent partners in the Tanti Baci winery. Liam and Seth, she recalled, knew Jack through the University of California Davis Viticulture and Enology program and had mentioned during one of their regular poker nights that their old buddy was coming for a visit.

  “It’s a small world of wines,” Stevie murmured.

  “Yeah, and—” Mari’s curls swung in an arc as her attention shifted to the side window. “Oops, gotta go. My peeps are coming out. Happy New Year!”

  She was gone in a blast of chilled air, leaving Stevie alone once again. Mari wasn’t soothing company, but she missed her anyway, because now there was nothing else to think about besides that little threat she’d been putting off contemplating.

  Your sister promised that it’s you who’ll handle each and every fine point of the upcoming Parini-Platt nuptials.

  Closing her eyes, she groaned. Had Giuliana really made that guarantee? Could she actually expect Stevie to honor it?

  The passenger door clicked open a second time. Stevie, eyes still shut, blessed her buddy and the distraction she’d prove to be. “Mari. Thank God, you’re back. I—”

  Her throat closed as heat prickles took another dash across her flesh and that weird hyperawareness she’d experienced at the resort tightened her belly. Opening her eyes, she saw a long male body fold onto the seat beside her. “Jack,” she said.

  He smiled at her, the wattage bright enough to bring up the temperature in the front seat. “You remember my name.”

  And his scent. It reached her again, subtle and smooth, a top-shelf cologne, one ounce likely costing more than her new boots—and probably her monthly rental check as well.

  “What are you doing here? You belong there,” she said, jerking her thumb toward the winery.

  “I belong wherever I want to belong,” he answered, smiling that easy smile he had as his body slid nearer to hers on the bench seat. “Just like I do whatever I want to do.”

  Stevie crowded close to the driver’s door. It didn’t stop his left thigh from grazing her right, his knee from bumping hers. One long finger reached out to adjust the heater that she’d left running.

  Forcing her gaze off his lean hand, she narrowed her eyes at him. “And what you want to do is … ?”

  Her suspicious tone didn’t appear to offend. He relaxed against the leather seat, sliding an arm across its back, obviously comfortable in his own privileged skin. His charming smile deepened. “Nothing for you to worry about. I only thought we might take these few minutes to get better acquainted, ma belle fille.”

  Not for a winter’s worth of bookings would she let him know that just for a second—a nanosecond—she found the soft foreign phrase as disarming as he most certainly intended. Even as her insides recovered from their quick melt, she made her expression blank and raised both brows in inquiry, all tomboy bumpkin.

  His smile was rueful, his shrug European. “What can I say? I know five languages and how to compliment a beautiful woman in each and every one.”

  Wide-eyed, she pretended to appear impressed. “Wow.” Then she dropped the innocent act. “I only know how to say screw you in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.”

  He blinked, then laughed.

  “Oh, and in English it’s fu—”

  Leaning forward, he clamped his palm over her mouth. At the contact, they both froze and the smile on his face died. Her lips tingled, her skin burned, and another shot of adrenaline punched into her bloodstream. Fight or flight.

  Uncertain which order to follow, her body twitched.

  His hand dropped.

  They stared at each other.

  Refine that New Year’s Resolution, Stevie thought, despising her breathlessness. Stay away from this man.

  She cleared her throat. “You should go back to Emerson and your sister.”

  Please go back to Emerson and your sister.

  His gaze didn’t move from her face. But he settled back in his seat and after a moment humor gleamed again in his eyes.

  “What are you laughing at now?” she demanded.

  He shrugged again. “Me, maybe.”

  Nothing felt the least bit funny to Stevie. She sent him another suspicious look, but his attention had shifted to a small item he was withdrawing from his jacket pocket.

  A crystal bud vase.

  A familiar crystal bud vase.

  “That belongs in the back of the limo,” she said, puzzled.

  He glanced up. “I thought so. I found it outside. It must have fallen from the car.”

  Frowning, Stevie accepted it from his outstretched hand, careful to avoid another touch. Then she held it toward him. “If you wouldn’t mind, you can return it to its place in the back.”

  His tall body didn’t budge. He regarded her with another of those faint, almost-mocking smiles. “I wasn’t kidding, you know.”

  “About what?”

  “Until the end of the month I’m going to be your new best friend—”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He shrugged and that shallow dimple flashed again. “All right. The fly in your champagne. The thorn on your rose.”

  Champagne and roses. He was just that kind of guy, she supposed, barely suppressing a snort.

  “Point is, I’m sticking close, mon ange.”

  Again with the French. Rolling her eyes, she ignored a second surge of traitorous warmth in her belly. “Why?”

  “Why?” His smile disappeared; his expression turned coldly serious. “To ensure, of course, that you don’t sabotage my sister’s wedding.”

  Then He Kissed Me

  2

  ************************************************************************************************

  At daybreak on January first, Stevie let herself into the house where she’d grown up on the grounds of the family winery. An ancient sweatshirt of Allie’s hung on the bentwood coat-rack by the front door and next to it dangled a ball cap with the Build Me Up! logo from Allie’s husband’s top-rated home renovation television show. The interior was silent and chilled. Only Allie and Penn lived there now - and part-time at that.

  Stevie winged a healing thought toward her younger sister, imagining her recuperating in the newlyweds’ house on the sand in Southern California. It was too early to check in on the patient just yet. As for her older sister - some vestige of holiday spirit had prevented Stevie from making a six A.M. call to Giuliana, presumably still snoozing in her bed at her rented condo. Jules was no early riser.

  And Stevie needed something besides coffee before she went toe-to-toe with the oldest Baci sibling about that “promise” she’d made to Emerson and the princess bride.

  It had been a tumultuous previous twelve months, Stevie acknowledged, as she wandered through the downstairs rooms. Their widowed father had died of cancer. The sisters had discovered the winery was in dire financial straits. And then Allie had fallen in love with Penn Bennett - illegitimate half sibling of the Bennett brothers the Bacis had grown up with - and married him last summer. Stopping before the overstuffed bookcase in the family room, Stevie ran a fingertip over her old
favorites.

  With all that upheaval, it was no wonder she needed grounding before facing the new year and this new dilemma regarding the upcoming wedding. Certain she’d find that stabilization here, she felt the tightness across her shoulders relax. Again her hand hovered over the books that had been the close companions of her childhood: an illustrated anthology of fairy tales, a compilation of Hans Christian Andersen’s stories, a now - ragtag collection of books about princesses and dragons and brave knights. How many times had she and her friends holed up in the ramshackle cottage on the winery grounds and lost themselves in romantic tales of the past?

  Closing her eyes, she picked a book at random, then tucked it under her arm and left the farmhouse to stroll in the direction of the one-hundred-year-old home of the original winery founders. Though Anne and Alonzo’s first residence had been renovated as the centerpiece of the winery weddings, to Stevie, nothing could change what it had always been for her.

  Part fort, part clubhouse, all comfort.

  Still, the gravel she scattered sounded eerily loud in the early morning. The narrow lane led not only to the cottage, but also to the wine caves and visitors’ parking lot. No one was about so early on the holiday and the heavy overcast darkened the green of the eastern hills. The surrounding acres of Baci land were covered in dormant vines. Devoid of any foliage, they stood side by side like spindly, twisted grave markers. Life wouldn’t show on them again until spring.

  She shivered, cold tracking down her spine as if warning of some dire danger ahead. “Stop being such a wuss,” she whispered aloud as Anne and Alonzo’s cottage came into view. Single-story, whitewashed adobe. A wide front porch and carved double doors. A stone chimney showed at the roofline, matching the massive river-rock fireplace in the main room that was said to have been built by Alonzo’s own hands. Inside, Stevie would find the steadiness she needed.

  Eager now, she hurried forward. With one knee-length, bright red rubber boot on the first shallow step, motion on the porch caught the corner of her eye. She started, dropping the book under her arm and jolting back. Her feet stumbled over themselves and she went down, landing on her ass.

  Gravel dug into her behind through her jeans. Surprise had stolen her breath,

  but air found its way back to her lungs as she watched a pair of expensive running shoes advance into her line of vision. Stevie silently cursed the man inside them, and then ignored his outstretched hand as she rose to her feet.

  With a glare at him, she brushed off her backside and yanked down the thick fisherman’s knit sweater she wore. “I ran the hurdles in high school track,” she said. “Played basketball. Was a linebacker on the powder puff football teamyou know, the one who sacks the quarterback? The only person who’s ever knocked me on my butt was Belinda ‘The Brute’ MacGraw.”

  “The Brute,” Jack Parini, Prince Jack Parini, murmured. “That’s kind of cruel.”

  Stevie narrowed her eyes. “She nicknamed herself.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “Guess they grow the girls tough around here.”

  “Absolutely.” And Stevie, despite that one hit of Belinda’s, was the toughest of the tough. Didn’t she have the masculine name, the business that was all about cars, the past history of lost ribbons and ripped party dresses? On occasion she might wobble on her feet, she’d admit to that, but even Emerson hadn’t managed to leave much more than a bruise.

  If that.

  So the prince wasn’t going to shake her up any further, either. “What are you doing here?” After his big warning about his sister’s wedding the night before, Emerson and Roxy had returned to the limo and he’d climbed into the back with them. At the next winery stop, Jack had gone off with another group and she’d been grateful.

  “I was out for a walk,” he said now, and then turned to glance over his shoulder. She noticed he looked as good in running pants and a long-sleeved microfiber shirt as he did in a tuxedo. “I’m staying with the Bennetts and there’s a path -”

  “I know, I know,” she said. Their winery property adjoined that of the Bacis. Years ago, Liam and Stevie’s sister Giuliana had worn a path between the two places that ran as deep as the wounds they’d left on each other’s hearts. “It’s early.”

  “I don’t sleep much.”

  She hadn’t last night, either. Her dreams had been an exhausting compilation of frustrating or frightening elements - twisting roads and steering that wouldn’t respond; an urgent appointment at an address she couldn’t recall; a beautiful man watching her trip down a flight of stairs, leaving a single shoe behind.

  Now she remembered who that beautiful man looked like. Bending over, she retrieved her fallen book and then dug her key ring from her jeans pocket. Brushing past Jack, she successfully mounted the steps. “Have a nice day.”

  Not taking the hint, he was at her shoulder as she unlocked the cottage’s front door. “What is this place?” he asked. “It looks like something from a fairy tale.”

  “It’s the venue for the winery weddings. My sister Allie’s trolling the Internet for a unicorn to graze in the front yard.” Stevie released a small sigh and turned to face him. “I suppose you’d like to see inside.”

  He stepped back, eyebrows high, palm rising to his heart. “What was that sound? Did you just drop the chip on your shoulder?”

  “Very funny.” Not at all, really. Because she wasn’t the kind who carried a chip around men. She was a guy’s girl - the kind who was offered the extra ticket to the 49ers game. The one forced to wince at the dirtiest of jokes because the assembled company forgot that she was female. The pal a man called on Sunday afternoon to help him flush a radiator. With men, she was at ease.

  Jack Parini threatened that. Around him, she felt too … female. Merely breathing in his body heat and the subtle scent of his masculine soap sent a flush rising up her neck and cheeks. She spun back, pushing open the door to hide her unfamiliar discomfiture.

  He followed her inside.

  Stepping farther from him, she went into tour guide mode. “A hundred years ago, Liam Bennett and Alonzo Baci were partners in a silver mine. When the ore played out, they invested in land … this land. Alonzo had learned about grapes and winemaking growing up in Italy, so they created the Tanti Baci winery.”

  “Meaning ‘many kisses,’” Jack translated.

  She shot him a look. “That’s right. You know all those languages.”

  His smile was unrepentant. She remembered Man claiming he had a playboy reputation, and with that beautiful face and devil-may-care smile she could well believe it. His gaze roamed around the room, a spacious area that had the massive fireplace on one wall but was otherwise filled with honey-colored craftsman-styled pews set on the gleaming hardwood floor. Seventy could sit comfortably here. A door led to a hail down which a groom’s waiting area and the luxurious bridal boudoir were located.

  “This house was … what?” he asked. “Liam and Alonzo’s bachelor pad?”

  “No. Alonzo built this for his bride, Anne. The San Francisco society beauty that both he and Liam courted.”

  “Alonzo won her then.”

  Stevie nodded. “And though the Bennetts and the Bacis have survived generations of intertwined business dealings since, there’s always been a feud at some level of simmer between those of us who live here and those in the big house over there.” She pointed in the direction of the Bennett property.

  “Hmm.” Jack strolled toward her. “Maybe that explains why you bristle around me. You’re a Baci, and since I’m temporarily living at Liam and Seth’s, I’m a stand-in Bennett. Maybe we’re this generation’s feud.”

  “I don’t bristle!” she said, but she did just that, backing up as he drew closer. “And Liam and my sister Jules have the feud thing sewn up.” Her butt hit the back of the last pew.

  “Ah.” Toe-to-toe with her, his hand reached out to play with the ends of her blunt-cut hair. “We aren’t enemies, then?”

  She tried swinging away from him, but his finge
rs tightened on the strands. They didn’t have nerves - else they’d cry when cut, right? - but she could swear the sensation of his touch was flowing to her scalp and from there cascading like a warm waterfall over her body.

  “We aren’t anything,” she choked out.

  “No?”

  “No. I’m no threat to your sister’s wedding. I’m not your enemy.” She sidestepped, her hair tugging free of his hold. “I don’t know you at all. We’re strangers.”

  “From the first moment you saw me, you’ve acted as if I rub your fur the wrong way.”

  He had that right. Around him, she felt twitchy and feline, half of her wanting to spit in his face with the other half wanting to draw her claws down his back his bare, muscular back.

  “Look, I’m not into politeness for the sake of being polite,” she said. It was one of the reasons why she hadn’t fit into Emerson’s world. “I call things like I see them.”

  Jack Parini was close again, his expression revealing only a mild combination of curiosity and amusement. “And, mon ange, how exactly do you see me?” he asked, a faint smile curving his mouth.

  She shook her head. “I can’t say. I told you, we’re strangers. For all I know you’re a thief, a murderer, a kidnap -”

  The last syllable dropped to her belly as his hands closed over her shoulders. He jerked her close, his gaze hot, his body hot, his hands hot on her through the wool of her sweater. Stevie’s pulse skittered. There it was again, that shocking and unprecedented physical response, like nothing she’d experienced before.

  Nonplussed, she stared up at him. Inky lashes surrounded his eyes that were a chilly gray instead of chocolate-dark like her own. The nostrils of his straight nose flared and his fingers flexed, holding her tighter.

  “W - what?” she asked.

  His eyes glittered like ice. “Or maybe I’m the kind of man who takes advantage of a woman alone.”