“Stop it,” Gina hissed at Josh

“Stop what?” Josh asked, putting on an expression that was pure fake.

“There are no cameras here the way there were on the show. You don’t have to pretend.” Thank goodness the aspirin was kicking in. The throbbing in her head had subsided to a dull ache.

“Pretend? Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“And what am I pretending?” His eyes took on a devilish gleam as he treated himself to a long, languorous lick of ice cream. A runnel of it dripped down his wrist and Gina imagined licking it off. She made herself look away.

“That you—that you…” Words failed her. She averted her eyes, no longer angry. She was exhausted, though. Anger could do that to a person.

“That I’m fascinated by you,” he said simply….

Dear Reader,

Most of us, at one time or another, have been dumped by a guy we cared about. Me, too. It wasn’t in front of millions of people, as happened to Gina Angelini, the heroine of this book. But it still hurt.

Oh, you say. I remember what that’s like. It was awful.

I know, my friend. I know.

So there I was, after my own personal experience, watching one of those television reality shows where a handsome bachelor chooses one out of many fabulous women to continue a relationship. The choice was down to two. One was in love with him; the other didn’t seem to be. But guess who he chose? Not the one who loved him.

Afterward I felt so sorry for the one whose heart was broken, because I knew exactly how she felt. I started thinking, what if? What if this guy lives to regret his choice?

Thus the idea for Heard It Through the Grapevine was conceived. I wanted that girl to get the guy eventually, so that’s what happens to Gina. She goes home, gets on with her life and then…the man who dumped her turns up and wants to make amends.

In fiction we can right past wrongs. We can make things turn out happily ever after. That’s not always true of real life, but guess what? It happens sometimes.

You know the guy who broke up with me? I eventually married him. Yes, really. And when I watched the TV show that gave me the idea for this book, he was right there beside me. He said, “You could write a book about this.”

And I did.

With love and best wishes,

Pamela Browning

Heard it Through the Grapevine

Pamela Browning

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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For Alix, the never-to-be-forgotten frog princess, with wishes for her present and future happiness; and for Bethany, with thanks for her technical advice.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Unlike her heroine in Heard It Through the Grapevine, Pamela Browning has never been on a reality-TV show, but she once was a contestant on Jeopardy!

She divides her time between homes in Florida and the North Carolina mountains, but enjoys visiting her relatives in California’s Napa Valley once or twice a year.

Pam invites you to visit her Web site at www.pamelabrowning.com.

Books by Pamela Browning

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

854—BABY CHRISTMAS

874—COWBOY WITH A SECRET

907—PREGNANT AND INCOGNITO

922—RANCHER’S DOUBLE DILEMMA

982—COWBOY ENCHANTMENT

994—BABY ENCHANTMENT

1039—HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter One

The last tourist bus had lumbered out of the Good Thymes parking lot, and Gina Angelini narrowed her eyes at the broad-shouldered guy lurking behind the display of dried sunflowers. At first she thought that maybe he’d missed the bus, but a glance out the window revealed a snazzy BMW parked under the olive tree. It shouldn’t be there. That morning she had posted a neatly lettered sign on the front door notifying customers that her herb shop was closing early today.

“Ah-choo!”

The man’s sneeze startled her so that she almost dropped the tray of dried rosemary that she was removing from the sales floor. “Bless you,” she said distractedly before carefully setting the tray down beside the cash register.

“Thank you,” said her last customer. He emerged slowly from behind the sunflowers and favored her with a brilliant smile. Gina felt her jaw drop, and she grasped the edge of the counter for support. She knew this man. She knew him only too well. But what was he doing in Good Thymes? And two years after he’d dumped her?

“Get out,” she said as soon as she regained her voice. Unfortunately, this wasn’t before she registered that broad chest, those wide shoulders, the blue eyes that sparkled in pleasure as he gave her a quick and appreciative once-over.

He cocked a skeptical eyebrow and stuck his hands deep in his pockets as he leaned against a table holding vases of lavender. “So, Gina, I guess you still love me,” he said.

She charged toward him past the goldenseal, the chamomile, the valerian. A pot of chives sat close at hand, and she could have thrown it at him. Instead she showed remarkable restraint, considering that he’d humiliated her in front of millions of people on national TV.

“Wrong,” she said. “It’s not the first misjudgment you’ve made, either.”

“I had my reasons for choosing Tahoma,” he said. “Maybe you’d like to hear them.” It didn’t help that he looked as if he’d stepped right out of Gentleman’s Quarterly. The blazer was Armani, Gina was sure, and his Italian leather loafers were polished to a high gloss.

She turned her back on him with all the determination she could muster, considering that she didn’t trust him not to pounce. There was a certain tigerish quality contained in Joshua Corbett’s well-groomed, well-mannered personage, which was probably why he’d been chosen to be Mr. Moneybags on the reality-TV show. That’s where Gina had met him, thanks to her overzealous cousin Rocco, who had submitted her name to a contestant search unbeknownst to her.

“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say,” she said, stalking back to the cash register and taking refuge behind the counter. She’d never thought she’d set eyes on him again, and though she never let him know it, she was seriously rattled, so much so that she was trembling.

“Maybe you should,” he said mildly. “It might be a good idea to have this conversation outside, if you don’t mind.” He sneezed again.

“I don’t love you, I don’t like you, and what are you doing here in the Napa Valley, anyway?” It seemed like a logical question, since he used to live in Boston.

“I happened to be in the neighborhood and came to see if you’re married and have a couple of kids,” he said, moving closer and hitching himself onto a stool nearby.

“She isn’t married, and that’s why she doesn’t have children,” said a little voice from beneath the counter. A curly red head popped up. The moppet to whom it belonged stared at him curiously for a moment before breaking into a wide gap-toothed grin.

Gina wondered if it was too late to clap a hand over her niece’s mouth. Probably it was, and anyhow, she’d done her own share of talking.

“Who are you?” Josh asked.

“Mia Suzanne Sorise. My favorite color is purple, I love lasagna, and I live next door. Who are you?” she asked, abandoning the hidey hole under the counter where she had staked out the cat’s old bed as a good place to read the latest Harry Potter book.

“I’m Josh Corbett,” he said, smiling as Gina rolled her eyes in disbelief. She’d watched as he’d charmed twenty contestants vying for his affection on Mr. Moneybags, and now he was charming her own nine-year-old niece.

Mia’s eyes grew even rounder. “Ooh, you’re the guy who dumped my aunt Gina,” she said.

“I wish you wouldn’t put it that way,” Josh said, a pained expression flitting across his features.

Mia leaned her elbows on the counter and studied Josh. “Why didn’t you pick her?” she asked. “My aunt Gina is really a very nice person.”

“No argument there,” Josh said with a faint smile.

“Ha!” Gina replied, reflecting that it was sometimes possible to be too nice. She pretended to stack papers and clip them together. She needed something to do if Josh insisted on eyeing her in that coolly appraising way of his. She wished she’d run a comb through her hair after picking up Mia from soccer practice. She wished she had worn something other than her old peasant blouse and a skirt that fell short of her knees.

Josh had the good grace to look uncomfortable. “Actually, there was a lot more to the situation than that.”

“And less. Mia, you’d better finish that chapter you’re reading. We need to go soon,” Gina said. She sounded more confident than she felt.

“I already read it. I’m playing ticktacktoe now, but it’s not much fun to play against yourself.”

“I’m a great ticktacktoe player,” Josh said.

“Good! You can play with me.” Mia laboriously spread a grubby piece of notebook paper on the counter and handed Josh a pencil.

“How about a chance to explain,” Josh asked Gina.

“When you play, do you like Xs or Os?” Mia asked.

“Xs will be fine,” he said, but he was watching Gina expectantly. “Well?”

Despite the impending game, Gina decided against her better judgment to continue the conversation. “How about telling me why you were so insistent on showing me the heather back at Dunsmoor Castle? How about explaining what that—that procedure behind the pantry door meant?” She slapped the papers into a drawer beneath the cash register and slammed it, summoning up her recollection of the heather, which had been rippling gently in the breeze, and of Josh’s eyes, which had been blue and sincere. They were still blue; it was his sincerity that was in doubt here.

“The heather was a planned date. The producers of the show set it up. I had a great time, though, didn’t you? And the procedure behind the pantry door—it was a way to proceed, if you know what I mean.” He nonchalantly entered an X in one of the ticktacktoe squares.

The procedure had been a kiss; only, Gina didn’t want to say it in front of her niece, who could be counted upon to ask too many questions. In fact, on that night before his final choice of the twenty contestants, Josh had sought her, Gina, out and kissed her so tenderly and then so thoroughly that she’d known for sure that she would be the winner the next day. Wrong-o. He’d chosen the other semifinalist, a schemer named Tahoma. Gina found no consolation in the fact that according to one poll, seventy-eight percent of the viewing audience believed that Mr. Moneybags had made the wrong choice.

“The procedure was something you threw in to confuse people, including me,” Gina said.

“Not exactly,” Josh said seriously. “The only person I confused was myself. If you’d let me—”

“I’m not letting you do anything,” Gina said pointedly.

“I won! I won!” Mia crowed. She grinned up at Josh. “Hey, you know what? I really like you.”

“In that case, isn’t there a consolation prize? Like dinner with your aunt?”

“No,” said Mia. “But you could come to crush if you like.”

“Crush?”

“You know, it’s what we do after harvest. There’s this really funny I Love Lucy show where Lucy and Ethel are in a big barrel stomping on grapes. It’s like that.”

Gina glanced at Josh to see how he was taking this.

“That’s one of my favorite I Love Lucy episodes, but I thought they had machinery for squeezing the juice out of the grapes these days,” he said to Mia.

“The stomping is just matrimonial,” Mia replied.

Gina hastened to correct her. “Ceremonial, Mia. Wrong word.”

“Ceremonial, then. Ooh, that’s a good one to tell Frankie.” Mia prided herself in collecting words to impress her eleven-year-old cousin. “Anyway, at our family’s winery we have a grape-stomping contest. They don’t use any of the stomped juice to make wine, though, because we stomp barefoot and that wouldn’t be sanitary. They have crushers to get the juice out of the grapes for the wine that we make, and after that there’s a whole lot of things they do to the grapes to make them into wine. My dad’s the winemaker, so that’s how I know all this. It’s cool. Would you like to come to crush with us?” She gazed disingenuously up at Josh.

“I—” Josh began, but Gina had heard enough.

“He would not like,” she said pointedly. “He has other things to do, I’m sure.” To Josh, she added, “Did Tahoma come with you?”

“Tahoma?” he replied, wrinkling his forehead. “Why would she?”

“I thought you were in love with her. Why else would you toss me aside like yesterday’s old salami?” Gina walked to the far end of the counter.

“Maybe because I really cared about you,” Josh said with a determined air.

Gina indulged in a ladylike snort. “How could I not have known? Who would have thought?”

“Listen, Gina, I’d like a chance to talk it over.”

Gina treated this statement with the stony silence it deserved.

Josh turned to Mia. “Crush sounds like so much fun that I’d like to go.”

“Oh, it is.” Mia’s eyes sparkled up at him. She ducked under the counter and bobbed back up with the Harry Potter book, careful to mark her place with the ticktacktoe paper. “You can explain everything to Aunt Gina when we’re at crush. You can’t miss it. It’s bad luck if someone doesn’t go.”

Gina set her straight. “That only applies to family members, Mia. It doesn’t apply to people you’ve invited for no reason at all.”

“But, Aunt Gina, I invited Josh because he likes I Love Lucy,” Mia said, frowning. “My mom says that we can invite anyone to crush. She says it’s hospital.”

“I think you mean hospitable, Mia. It means making people welcome. And we don’t have to show that kind of courtesy to Mr. Corbett.”

“But, Gina, we’re old friends,” said Josh. “Doesn’t that count for something?” He beamed the full wattage of his smile on Gina, who immediately steeled herself against his charm.

“We were friends,” Gina corrected him. Turning her back on Josh, she said, “Mia, I have to run upstairs and get my jacket.” The October day was cool, and the night might become chilly.

“Please hurry,” Mia said. “We don’t want to be late.”

With one last scalding look over her shoulder at Josh, Gina ran up the stairs of the rustic stone cottage that served as both shop and living quarters. When she returned, Mia was pulling on her own sweater, a cable knit in bright purple.

“Now we can leave,” Gina said.

“When you have a customer?” Josh asked plaintively.

“That’s not what I would call you.” For emphasis, she went to the door and flipped the Open sign so that it read Closed.

“I was going to buy—” he cast his gaze around wildly “—some sachets for my landlady.”

“At this moment, nothing in here is for sale. We officially closed at noon. Are you ready to go, Mia?”

“Yes, and I can’t wait to get there. Josh, you can ride in the front seat with Aunt Gina. We have to pick up Frankie ’cause his dad’s helping to cook the barbecue.”

“Oh, I forgot about Frankie,” Gina said. Frankie was at his accordion lesson about a half mile away. She had no idea what to do about Josh short of a knock-down, drag-out argument, which didn’t seem fair to Mia.

Shooting a go-eat-roadkill look in Josh’s direction, Gina grabbed her keys and ushered Mia out of the shop in front of her, with Josh following along behind. She had probably no more than a minute to think of some tactic that would send Josh on his way. So far, nothing had occurred to her. Nothing legal, anyway. Murder was not an option, and neither was assault. She could only hope that he would take the hint and back off.

Her red-and-white 1966 Ford Galaxie convertible was parked with its top down in its customary spot under the olive tree, and Mia climbed into the back seat.

“We could ride in my car,” Josh said.

“There is no ‘we’ as far as you’re concerned,” Gina retorted. She started the car.

“I invited Josh,” Mia piped in her clarion voice. “It would be rude to tell him he can’t go.”

Mia was into defining the differences between rude and polite these days, mostly because her parents emphasized good manners at their house. Gina, knowing this, wavered under the power of Mia’s righteous and expectant gaze.

“I invited him,” Mia repeated. Her voice was beginning to take on the aggrieved tone that preceded a bunch of difficult questions.

Gina exhaled and rolled her eyes. “Get in,” she said to Josh, who beamed.

He opened the door and slid in beside her with the air of someone who expected to be included all along. “Nice car,” he said.

She edged a glance toward the BMW parked near the door of the shop. “So is yours,” she pointed out as she backed out and turned.

“It’s rented,” he said. “I flew in a couple of days ago and had to have wheels.”

So he’d been here for a while and was only now getting around to saying hello? She could have taken offense at the delay if she cared anything about him. Which she most emphatically did not.

“Aunt Gina loves this car,” Mia said, squeezing her head through the gap between the front seats and sending a whiff of Juicy Fruit their way. She chomped on the gum enthusiastically.

“Mia, dear, would you mind leaning back?” Gina said, trying not to sound as annoyed with her niece as she felt.

“It is a fine car,” Josh said, taking in the restored upholstery, the gleaming knobs on the radio.

“My father bought it used when I was a kid,” she said. She didn’t add that she’d fallen in love with the Galaxie’s style and elegance from the first moment that her father wheeled it into their driveway. “He always meant to restore it and give it to me, and after he died, I discovered that he’d put money aside for years for the restoration. My cousin Rocco volunteered to do the work.” For a moment she had forgotten that she was talking to the man who’d broken her heart two years ago, and she fell silent as she headed down the bumpy road toward Vineyard Oaks, the winery that the Angelini family had owned ever since her grandfather, Gino, his brother and two sisters had bought it shortly after arriving in the United States sixty-seven years ago.

The vineyard, planted with merlot, sangiovese, petite syrah and zinfandel vines now stripped of their grapes, stretched out toward the distant mountain ranges on either side of the fertile valley. After a few minutes, Gina pulled the car over in front of a small house set back from the road, where Leo Buscani, retired Vineyard Oaks winemaker now accordion teacher, lived. A boy of eleven emerged, lugging an accordion case.

Mia bounced up and down. “That’s Frankie. He’s okay most of the time—for a boy, I mean. Get in back with me, Frankie. I’m being hos-spit-able.”

Frankie balked. “You’re going to spit on me?” he asked skeptically.

Mia dissolved into giggles. “That’s my new word. It means making someone welcome.”

Frankie chucked his accordion case in the back seat and climbed in after it. He was a captivating, curly-haired boy whose dark eyes snapped with merriment.

“Aunt Gina, Mr. Buscani says I’m the best student he’s ever had,” Frankie announced. “He wants me to join his accordion band.”

Everyone in the family was pleased that Frankie, who possessed an aptitude for getting into trouble, had taken so well to the accordion. Gina glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him. “That’s wonderful,” she said.

“Do you think Pop will let me?”

“Oh, Rocco will probably go for it.” Rocco and his son were closer than most, possibly because Frankie’s mother had died when he was only six.

When Frankie and Mia settled into a spirited discussion about whether or not she should give him her last stick of gum, which Frankie argued was only hospitable, Josh turned to Gina. “You’re more beautiful than ever,” he said in a low tone.

The compliment discombobulated her more than she liked to let on. “Yeah, right,” she said.

“I mean it, Gina.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why shouldn’t I? It’s true.”

Thanks to her Norwegian mother, Gina had grown up blond in a family of dark-haired, olive-skinned Italian-Americans, convinced that her light coloring wasn’t attractive. She’d longed to resemble the rest of the family for most of her life, but the only features she seemed to owe to the Italian side of her family were dark eyes and tawny skin. These days, she could finally accept that men found her beautiful, but she wasn’t in the mood to hear compliments from Joshua Corbett.

She kept her eyes focused forward. “You act as if nothing happened between us.”

Josh slid a cagey look in her direction. “More should happen, don’t you agree?”

She shook her head in disbelief. “Not if I can help it.”

“Would it change things if I told you that I wasn’t smart in the way I handled the Mr. Moneybags choice? That I realize it now? That I want to make amends?”

Gina bit back an exasperated retort. “Didn’t it work out with Tahoma?”

Josh kept his eyes focused on the road ahead. “The woman happened to be living with a boyfriend she never mentioned. After she walked away with the million dollars, I never heard from her again.”

“Bummer,” Gina said, trying unsuccessfully to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. She’d never liked Tahoma much, though she’d been cordial to her for the sake of the show. The woman had pranced around the chilly Scottish castle where the show was filmed thrusting her silicone-enhanced chest in front of the ever-present video cameras while stuffed into dresses the size of cocktail napkins. It was a wonder she hadn’t caught pneumonia.

“You live and you learn,” Josh said philosophically.

“Did it ever occur to you that I might be angry about losing the million dollars I would have won if you’d chosen me?” Of course it hadn’t; he was independently wealthy. The show’s publicity had touted him as being the scion of a prominent Boston family. Gina seemed to recall pictures of a huge mansion and a family of bluebloods with ties to the Mayflower.

He appeared disconcerted. “If you’ll recall, no one told me that the woman I chose would win that much money. I thought—”

“They told the contestants right at the start. You mean you didn’t figure it out?” He had a Yale education, for Pete’s sake.

“The million dollars for the winner was a total surprise to me. The first I knew about it was when the butler marched into the room carrying a check on a silver platter and handed it to Tahoma. If I’d caught onto that little secret, I’d have realized early in the game I couldn’t trust anything the contestants told me.”

“Did you trust what I told you?”

He took his time answering, and when he did it was with an air of thoughtfulness. “Whenever the conversation touched on the Napa Valley and your family, your eyes shone. You didn’t promote yourself like some of the other contestants. You seemed sincere in everything you said. Of course I trusted you.”

She was touched that he’d recognized her sincerity; it was how she had determined to play the Mr. Moneybags game in the beginning, and she’d stuck to that decision even when it might not have been in her best interest. And she couldn’t believe he recalled how longingly she’d spoken of home, family and her good fortune at having been born and reared in Rio Robles, California, population eight thousand, many of them Angelinis.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. She’d trusted him, too, but she never would again. Why would she? He’d broken her heart.

“You brought the whole thing up,” he reminded her in a mild tone. As she turned down the long driveway that led between the two rows of ancient oaks giving the Angelini winery its name, he changed the subject. It was just as well; she’d wallowed in her own disillusionment and pain for a long time before she’d managed to climb her way out of the miserable funk brought about by Josh’s rejection.

“Is that the winery up there?”

They were crossing a narrow stone bridge and had begun the climb up the slope that led through several acres of vineyards. At the top of the hill was a large timber-and-stone barn housing the winery office, the tasting room and wine vats. From this angle, the doors to the wine cave in the hillside beyond were barely visible.

“Yes, this is Vineyard Oaks,” she said, schooling her voice to sound dispassionate, trying not to think about how a million dollars would come in handy now that her family was looking for financing so they could buy the equipment they needed to keep the winery competitive. Of course, she’d wanted to use part of the prize money to fund the proposed new teen center, too, but that was another story and one that Joshua Corbett probably had no interest in hearing. Her failure to win that money had contributed more than a little to the anguish of the months immediately following her appearance on the show.

A low stone wall separated the parking area from the expanse of grass where tables were set up. As they got out of the car, Gina smelled the thick, sweet-sour aroma of harvested grapes, a familiar fragrance that would sweep over this valley until crush was over. She remembered that scent from her childhood when her parents would bring her to the annual celebration after the harvest and she and her cousins would run in and out of the wine cave, sit down to enormous meals prepared by the aunts and listen spellbound to tales of the old country told by her grandfather and great-uncles. She hadn’t known it then as she knew it now: her family was her strength. They made it possible to bear whatever obstacles life threw in her path.

A group of whooping youngsters ran up to greet them. They grew suddenly silent and wide-eyed at the sight of Josh.

“You’re the guy from the TV show, right?” asked Emma, the daughter of Gina’s cousin Jennifer.

“Sure am,” Josh said easily.

“Why didn’t you marry Aunt Gina?” piped a voice that Gina identified as Alexander, her cousin Donna’s son.

“Alexander!” Gina said.

“I want to know,” the boy said stubbornly.

“Did it occur to you that I might not have wanted him?” Gina said lightly, ruffling Alexander’s hair with one hand and squeezing Emma’s shoulder as they began to walk toward the tables.

“He is rather handsome,” said Mia’s sister, Stacey, after unabashedly staring at his profile.

“Thank you,” Josh told her gravely. “For sticking up for me.”

Gina’s cousin Rocco, his beefy face flushed from the heat of the barbecue fire, detached himself from a group of men—all uncles, nephews or cousins.

“Hey, Gina. How about introducing me?” He was studying Josh, taking in the highly polished leather shoes and the blazer, now casually slung over one shoulder. Rocco stopped in his tracks. “No, wait a minute. You’re the Mr. Moneybags guy, right?”

Josh extended his hand. “Otherwise known as Josh Corbett,” he said.

Rocco’s expression didn’t change, but Gina knew what he was thinking. Got to protect my little cousin from this guy who did her wrong. Got to vet him out. Got to let him know he can’t treat her the way he did before. She suppressed a laugh at the almost imperceptible but defensive change in Rocco’s body posture and the cool handshake he offered Josh. Rocco had always been her protector; she couldn’t expect him to abandon her now. The Angelini men looked after their women. Never mind that Gina had outgrown her need for their services by the time she was ten and had learned a couple of handy karate chops. And Rocco, like everyone else, had never realized how miserable she’d been after Josh Corbett’s rejection.

Rocco raised inquiring brows at Gina, who nodded to let him know that it was all right to admit Josh into the family circle. At least for today, while she tried to come to terms with his reappearance in her life.

At her signal, Rocco’s demeanor changed immediately. “Welcome, Josh. Come over and meet the guys. We’ve got a game of bocce going.”

“Bocce?”

“Yeah, we put in regulation courts last year. What’s the matter, haven’t you played before?”

Josh, for the first time all day, appeared discomfited. “No, I can’t say that I have.”

“We’ll take care of that.” Rocco threw a casual arm across Josh’s shoulders and led him to the bocce court, where a group of Gina’s male relatives were watching his approach. Her cousin Paul shoved an elbow into his brother’s ribs, and Gina almost laughed out loud. After a couple of games with those guys, Josh would be running for the hills. They were experts.

Josh aimed a pleading glance over his shoulder at Gina and mouthed “Help!” but all she did was smile and wave as if they had the most friendly relationship in the world. At the same time, she felt grim satisfaction in the thought that Rocco and company would probably accomplish what she hadn’t been able to do today—get rid of Josh Corbett for good.

Chapter Two

Rocco was a stocky man, the beginning of a paunch swelling beneath his T-shirt. His quick introductions made Josh’s head spin: Gathered around the bocce court was a Tom, a Tim and at least two guys named Tony, all even bigger than Rocco. They eyed him with what seemed like suspicion as he removed his blazer, assessing his muscles. Rocco showed him where to hang his coat over a low-hanging branch and proceeded to explain bocce.

“My grandfather and uncles brought the game over from Italy with them, and we grew up with it,” Rocco told him.

Josh opened his mouth to say that he’d never seen a bocce ball, nor had he ever observed any games, but Rocco didn’t give him a chance to speak. The game, Rocco said, was played on a long sand court that appeared to be about ten feet wide by sixty feet long. The brightly colored bocce balls seemed slightly larger than those in the old croquet set that Josh had shared with his sister at their summer house in Maine, but no mallets were involved, so Josh assumed that bocce balls were thrown or tossed.

“Now, Josh,” Rocco told him. “You don’t have to be Italian to learn this game. Right, Collin?”

The other man, standing with a bunch of mostly male onlookers, just grinned. This, Josh decided, was not encouraging.

“Collin married into the family, but that doesn’t make him any less an Angelini,” Rocco confided. “Even though his last name is Beauchamp.”

“Of the Virginia Beauchamps,” Collin said. “Spelled the French way, pronounced Beecham.”

Josh had known some Beauchamps at his posh northeastern prep school, but mentioning that exclusive institution didn’t seem like a good idea, considering the good-natured guffaws that greeted Collin’s statement.

“The game can be played indoors or outdoors, and there can be two to four players on a team. Four balls are assigned to each team. You’ll play on my team,” Rocco said.

Tim and Tom were also on Rocco’s team. The other team consisted of the two men named Tony, someone called Angelo and an older white-haired guy named Fredo, who was treated deferentially by everyone involved.

“First, the pallino,” Fredo said, holding up a ball that was smaller than the others. There was a coin toss, and Fredo’s team won the right to throw the pallino. Fredo rolled it onto the court, where it inched to a stop a little more than halfway to the end. At that point, Josh craned his head to search for Gina and discovered that she was surrounded by a bevy of women close to her age, all of them talking and laughing. Gina was holding a baby, patting it on the back and crooning to it, and paying no attention to what was going on over here.

While Josh was looking elsewhere, Fredo rolled one of his team’s balls, to the accompaniment of shouts of encouragement from his own team and groans from Josh’s team when the second ball rolled close to the pallino.

“Kiss it, kiss it!” cried one of the Tonys, which Josh figured meant that he wanted the two balls to touch. He shot another surreptitious glance toward Gina, remembering with a pang of regret the sweet softness of her lips. He must have been crazy to turn his back on her in Scotland.

“All right,” Rocco said, interrupting his reverie by slapping a ball in Josh’s hand. “Now you.”

Josh, whose mind for the past few moments had been engaged in wistful remembrances of a heather-strewn moor, stared at him blankly.

“Go ahead. We have to bowl until one of our balls is closer to the pallino than the ball that Fredo rolled.”

Josh hefted the ball in his hand and summoned enough bravado to convince himself that this game was a piece of cake. Unfortunately, he slipped as he rolled the ball, and it landed about as far away from the others as it could without jumping the sides of the court.

“You’ll do better next time,” Rocco said before rolling another ball, which edged somewhat closer to the pallino than Josh’s.

Rocco’s team bowled until all balls had been thrown, but not without a lot of good-natured jesting. After that, it was Fredo’s turn again.

“When both sides have bowled all their balls, the side with the ball closest to the pallino gets a point. A point is also awarded for any other ball from that side that is closer to the pallino than any ball rolled by the opponents. Thus, only one team can score in a frame, and that side can get up to four points. The first team to score sixteen points wins,” Rocco told him.

Josh didn’t need long to figure out that bocce was a game of strategy. The pallino could be moved by a shot, so a player often scored by knocking the pallino closer to balls previously rolled by his team. On the other hand, a player whose team already had balls in scoring position sometimes chose to place a ball in front of the pallino to keep it from being moved.

Whenever it was Josh’s turn, he managed to goof up. If he tried to land his ball close to the pallino, it inevitably pushed the pallino the wrong way. If he wanted to keep it from hitting the pallino, it always did. He found that he couldn’t estimate how much a ball would roll from where he stood to throw it, and he tended to throw short. If he didn’t throw short, he overcorrected.

Rocco, on the other hand, was a virtuoso. “Bocce is as simple or complicated as you want to make it,” he told Josh, and then he’d proceed to blow everyone away with a cunning move.

When the game was finally over, Josh realized that he was the one who had virtually lost for Rocco’s team. Even though the others tried to gloss over his many errors, he felt bad about letting the team down.

“Don’t worry, we’re playing two out of three to win,” Rocco said by way of reassurance, which was not at all reassuring to Josh. He looked around, wishing an excuse to bail out would come to mind. But Gina had disappeared, and Mia was hanging over a bench, waiting to cheer him on.

Well, maybe this time he’d give Mia something to cheer about. He forced a halfhearted grin and girded himself for the second game.

Unfortunately, he didn’t play any better in the second game than he had in the first. The only good thing was that now he knew the rules. The third game was a disaster, though his teammates were generous in not blaming their loss on him. Still, by the time everyone dispersed, Josh felt extremely apologetic, not to mention dejected for letting the team down.

“That’s okay,” Rocco told him. “A lot of guys wouldn’t have even tried to play.”

Josh resisted the temptation to invite Rocco and company to play lacrosse. Or hockey. Or water polo, in which he excelled.

Mia jumped down from the bench and ran over. “Don’t worry, Josh,” Mia consoled him. “You’ll get better at bocce.”

“I’m not so sure,” he said, wiping the perspiration from his face with a handkerchief. He was still bummed out from his disappointing performance. He kept scanning the crowd for Gina, but he didn’t see her near the barbecue, the big doors that led to the wine cave or near the group of women she’d been standing with before.

Fredo stumped over, his white hair an aureole standing out around his head. “Come along, my boy,” he said to Josh. “I’ll show you where to clean up.” Josh followed him on a circuitous route along a well-worn grass path past the barbecue, the picnic tables and three or four kids playing with skateboards in front of the winery office.

“You know,” Fredo said as they washed up in the men’s room inside the small tasting facility, which held a bar and a few tiny tables, “it’s not the game that’s important, Joshua. It is the family, and that we play together as well as work together.”

Josh splashed water on his face. “That’s, um, good,” he said. He was surprised that Fredo was treating him as an equal, considering how everyone else deferred to him.

“My father, the first Gino Angelini, always held family to be more important than anything. This is the philosophy that we have let govern our family winery since we started it.”

“When we were in Scotland, Gina talked about her family a lot,” Josh told him. “The other women playing the game never mentioned their parents, brothers, sisters.” He hadn’t, either.

“Yes, that’s our Gina. She is named after my father and her father, too. Gino Junior was my elder brother. He died when Gina was twenty-two.” Fredo dried his hands on a paper towel and then handed one to Josh before clapping him on the shoulder. “Come, Josh. We must join the others. It is almost time for the stomping of the grapes.”

As they were making their way past the winery office, Fredo was distracted by questions from some of the children playing nearby, and Josh stepped to one side to wait for him. After a few moments, someone walked up behind him and gently put a hand on his arm. “Josh Corbett? I’m Maren, Gina’s mother.”

When he turned and looked into Maren’s face, he saw Gina’s delicate features, the same straight nose and high cheekbones. But where Gina’s eyes were dark, almost black, Maren’s were sapphire-blue, and her skin was ivory, not golden like Gina’s.

“I’m happy to meet you,” Josh said.

“And I’m glad to meet you,” Maren said, studying his face for a long moment.

“Aunt Maren, they’re pouring the grapes in the barrels,” Frankie announced as he bounded past.

“Is this the first time you’ve been to a crush?” Maren asked.

“Yes,” Josh said, scanning the group for Gina but trying not to be obvious about it. He spotted her setting food out on one of the tables, her breasts shifting gently against the gathered fabric of her blouse as she leaned over. She looked serenely at home in these surroundings, not at odds and edgy as she had in Scotland. Suddenly, she glanced his way and their eyes locked, stilling her laughter. A breeze stirred the leaves overhead, sending a romantic ripple of sunlight across Gina’s lovely face. In that moment his reason for wanting to come to the Napa Valley became perfectly clear: this trip, he admitted to himself for the first time, had little to do with writing an article about the Napa Valley and less to do with Starling Industries’ search for a winery; it had everything to do with Gina.

“Come, we should go watch the grape-stomping,” Maren said, appropriating his arm and leading him away. Reluctantly, he followed.

On a platform on the far side of the barn, men were dumping grapes into a row of twelve oaken half barrels. Fredo broke away from the children and mounted the stairs, first saying a few words to the group about being glad that everyone could be at crush, and then joining Josh and Maren as an accordion band began to play boisterous music. Josh noticed Frankie standing on the sidelines, tapping his foot in time to the beat and looking for all the world as though he wished he were playing with them.

Josh’s attention was distracted when he saw Gina walking toward him, her long hair swinging around her shoulders. “Hello, Uncle Fredo,” she said.

Fredo gave Gina an affectionate hug, his weathered face crinkling into a smile. “Not only do we Angelinis know how to grow grapes, Josh, we also understand how to grow beautiful young women, each as individual as a vintage of wine.”

“Uncle Fredo,” Gina protested with a light laugh, but whatever she might have said was cut off when Mia ran up, dragging Frankie along behind her.

“They’re going to start the contest! Whose team are you on, Aunt Gina?” Mia tugged excitedly at her arm.

“I—”

“Hey,” said Fredo expansively. “Why don’t you show Josh the ropes, Gina? Be a team?”

“But—”

“Oh, I think that’s a good idea,” Frankie said seriously. “You have very big feet, Josh. That’s important because the team that squashes the most juice out of the grapes in two minutes wins.”

“Frankie!” Gina protested. “Talking about the size of someone’s feet isn’t good manners.”

“That’s okay,” Josh said quickly because of the way Frankie’s face fell as a result of this rebuke. “I know my feet are big.”

“This grape-stomping is a tiring thing,” Mia grumbled. “You have to stomp and stomp and stomp.”

“It’s time for me to be out of here,” Maren declared with a half laugh. “I have to help in the kitchen.” She hurried off toward the entrance to the wine cave, where people were bringing out food.

Gina was trying to melt into the crowd, but some of her family members pushed her forward. “Go ahead, Gina. Go on,” they said.

Rocco dragged Josh along with him to the platform. “You can’t fully experience crush unless you stomp the grapes,” Rocco insisted, and next thing Josh knew, he was rolling up his pantlegs and his shoes were being collected by one of the Tonys, to put in a secure place where they would not be spattered with grape juice.

“I didn’t ask for this,” Gina said helplessly as they faced each other in one of the grape-filled barrels, which was barely large enough for two people to stand in. “I tried to get out of it.” She was so close that he could smell the heady fragrance of her cologne over the scent of the grapes.

“I’m glad you weren’t successful,” he murmured so that no one else could hear, and she glared at him.

“Okay, wait for the sound of the bell, and then you have two minutes to demonstrate your stomping skills,” instructed the person in charge, who Josh recalled was Gina’s brother-in-law and Mia’s father, Nick. “The idea is to crush as much juice from the grapes as you can. When I ring the bell at the close of your round, we measure the juice. The team that provides the most juice wins.”

“Wins what?” Josh asked Gina in a low tone.

“A bottle of wine, what else?” she said. She had hitched her short skirt even higher so that an expanse of creamy thigh showed.

“I’d like something more than that,” Josh muttered, and Gina’s eyebrows flew sky high.

Nick, who did not hear Josh’s remark, cleared his throat. “All right, contestants. On your mark, get set, go!”

The accordions struck up a frenzied melody. Gina said through gritted teeth, “Okay, Corbett. Move.” She’d done this before; he hadn’t. But he did his best, hating the way the grapes felt as they oozed up between his toes but liking the way Gina couldn’t avoid touching him as they jumped and squished and stomped and in general threw all decorum to the wind. Mia was right; this wasn’t easy. He grew tired long before the bell rang to signal the contest’s close, and when it did, he tried a sagging maneuver in Gina’s direction in the hope of bodily contact, but she was already stepping over the side of the barrel.

A hurried consultation ensued while the grape juice from each of the twelve barrels was measured, and then Nick declared, “The winners—Rocco and Jaimie!” Jaimie, who wore a silver tongue stud and had been pointed out earlier by Rocco as one of his cousins, accepted the bottle of wine and acknowledged the applause of her relatives with an exaggerated bow.

“You came in second,” Nick said to Josh as Frankie ran up and slapped him an exuberant high-five. “Where’s Gina?”

Josh gestured toward the crowd. “She’s wandered off, I guess,” he said.

“You did okay for your first time,” Nick said. “Here are a couple of T-shirts. See that Gina gets hers, will you?”

As a new group of contestants climbed into the barrels, Josh looked down at his feet. They were purple. So were all the other previous contestants’, but they didn’t seem to care, so why should he? He scrambled down from the platform and took off in pursuit of Gina, whose ash-blond hair was highly visible near the food-laden tables. He caught up with her as she was piling barbecued ribs onto a plate.

“Here,” she said, unceremoniously shoving the plate in his direction.

“Nick said to give you this,” he said, handing her the T-shirt.

She afforded him a grudging smile as she tossed it over her arm. “Thanks, Josh. Second place isn’t bad, you know, for your first grape-stomping experience.” Her gesture encompassed the abundance of dishes on the tabletop. “Please help yourself to the food. There’s Aunt Dede’s special penne-and-artichoke salad. She’s a caterer here in the valley and my mother works for her. Also, Claire—she’s Uncle Fredo’s daughter—made her prize carrot cake, and you might want to try that.”

Josh set the plate of ribs aside momentarily so that he could roll his pantlegs down. Gina caught sight of the purple stains on the fabric.

“Uh-oh,” she said with a grimace. “I’m sorry about your pants.”

“Don’t be. It’s nothing a good dry cleaner can’t fix.” He picked up the plate and helped himself to Aunt Dede’s salad.

“Try the bruschetta,” Gina said as they moved past the layered salad, the marinated mushrooms, the artichoke pie.

“Hey, Gina, did you make your special mussels-and-tomato fettucine?” Rocco called from a table at the outskirts of the group.

“Not this time. Too busy,” she called back.

“Aw, that’s too bad. I’ll let you sit with us, but only if you promise to invite me over for it soon.”

Gina glanced up at Josh. “Do you mind hanging out with Rocco? Or have you had enough?”

Which was how Josh found himself part of another amiable family group. He met Gina’s vivacious cousin Bobbi, who said she’d served in the Peace Corps, and her husband, Stan, who owned a chain of fresh markets. He met Albert Aurelio, a salt-of-the-earth type who had married into the Angelini family and was now chief financial officer at Vineyard Oaks. When Josh’s plate was empty, he returned to the buffet table for more food and found Maren putting out bread and rolls that she’d baked herself, and later he listened with rapt attention as Gina’s cousin Carla, who was unmarried, talked animatedly about her career in public relations with the local winegrowers’ association.

“Are you the one who made the carrot cake?” he asked her. “It’s the best I’ve ever tasted.”

“No, that was Claire. She’s over there—the tall one with the long earrings. Don’t worry,” Carla said with a laugh. “No one could get all the Angelinis straight right away. A lot of people have the same name—for instance, Big Tony and Little Tony.”

“I met them playing bocce,” Josh said, digging into the artichoke pie.

“They’re not to be confused with Anthony Ceravolo, Rocco’s dad, who married Aunt Gianna and is sometimes called Tony. And of course Aunt Gianna is not to be confused with my cousin Gina, who brought you here, and neither of them should be mistaken for Jennifer Saltieri Thompson, who for some unimaginable reason is sometimes referred to as Jeni, with a long e. Oh, and Marcy, who is Little Tony’s wife, is expecting a baby girl in a few months, and she and Little Tony say that they intend to name their new daughter, guess what? Toni.

“Of course,” she went on, “we have a Timmy and a Jimmy who are brothers. And Jaimie, naturally, doesn’t like to be mixed up with Jimmy. There’s Sophia, the grandmother of Sophie, and a Ronnie and a Donny, and Victorine, Vicki and Victor.”

“Don’t forget Fredo and Fred, Emma and Emily, Suzanne and Susan, and Mia, whose middle name is Suzanne,” chimed in an older woman, who introduced herself as Audra.

“Maren and Maureen,” contributed Carla. “Margo, Marco and Mark.”

“Thank goodness for Teresa and Angelo Bono. They named their kids Zizi and Dodie. They’ll never get mixed up with anyone else.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” said Gina. “Zizi and Dodie are only nicknames.”

Audra frowned. “What are their real names?”

“No one remembers, thank goodness,” Carla said with a laugh.

Josh grinned, and all in all, by the time dinner was over, he thought he had never met more interesting people gathered in one place in his entire life.

Night fell, and the party, with a final tired wheeze of accordions, was declared to be over by Fredo. Barbara, Nick’s wife and Gina’s sister, came over to their table and presented Josh with a Super Stomper Certificate in honor of his stomping grapes and attending his first crush. People lingered, gathering up their children, their strollers, diaper bags and wraps as they bade one another fond goodbyes. And before her parents came to carry her home to bed, Mia curled up on Josh’s lap and almost fell asleep.

“I have to leave,” Gina said to Rocco after the Sorises had departed. “I’ll need to be up early to work in the herb garden in the morning.” Others were wending their way through the big oaks to their cars, and the cleanup detail was stashing containers of food in a van marked Dede’s Catering Service.

“I should help fold the chairs,” Josh said, but when he offered, Rocco told him that it wasn’t necessary.

“We’ve got things under control, don’t we, Frankie?”

“Sure, Pop,” Frankie said with a jaunty grin. “Hey, Josh, how did you like crush?”

Amazingly, he didn’t even have to think twice; Josh immediately gave it two thumbs-up, much to Frankie’s delight.

“Now, Josh,” Rocco said in parting. “You get any extra time, drop by the house. I’ve got a bocce court in my backyard, and I’ll give you some pointers.”

As painful as the bocce experience had been, Josh thought he never wanted to see another bocce ball or court as long as he lived. But he did want to see Rocco again, so he managed a halfhearted grin. “Will do,” he said before hurrying after Gina, who was halfway to the parking lot by this time.

ONCE THEY WERE AWAY FROM everyone else, Gina was self-conscious around Josh, though she certainly felt more favorably disposed toward him since he’d made such an effort to fit in. She hadn’t expected Rocco to take to him so well, nor had she counted on her mother’s trying to make him feel welcome.

Josh didn’t say much as they put up the Galaxie’s convertible top and got in the car. He tossed his shoes in the back seat; the night had never grown as cool as expected and he was still in his bare feet. As they headed down the long Vineyard Oaks driveway toward the road, moonlight dappled the car’s long hood with shadows and cast a silvery glow ahead. Gina sneaked a glance at his aristocratic profile and suppressed a grin when she saw that he was smiling. She wasn’t quite sure why she was glad that he’d enjoyed himself tonight; whatever vengeful feelings she’d nurtured since the Mr. Moneybags show seemed to have been crushed out of her as completely as the juice from the grapes.

“Your niece is a charmer,” Josh said, apropos of nothing.

“Which one? Stacey or Mia?”

“Mia. I didn’t get too well acquainted with Stacey.”

Gina smiled. “They’re both my sister Barbara’s kids. Stacey recently became a teenager, and she likes to congregate with her cousins at family events. Mia is my godchild as well as my niece. She’s great.”

“Agreed. And Rocco is a character.”

“As well as the worst practical joker in all creation.”

“He’s the one who sent your application in for the Mr. Moneybags show, right?”

Gina nodded and braked for a curve in the road, then accelerated. “That was only one of the pranks he’s played on me. It almost rivals the occasion when he got a realistic audiotape of a train wreck and called my aunt Linda from the station at about the time that the wine train with all its sight-seers was due to arrive. He told Aunt Linda where he was, then played the tape into the phone, and she started yelling for my uncle Tony to come because she was convinced the train had jumped its track and run over Rocco in the phone booth. She was glad to hear his voice reassuring her that he was unharmed.”

“Doesn’t anyone ever get suspicious that he’s playing jokes?” Josh asked between chuckles.

“No, since Rocco’s so unfailingly clever about it. None of us will ever forget the time he borrowed the spare key to Aunt Audra and Uncle Charles’s house and took about five of our male cousins over there. When Aunt Audra and Uncle Charles came home that night, they heard what sounded like a bunch of guys laughing and showering in their tiny bathroom. They didn’t know whether to call the police or what, but they finally recognized some of the voices and started pounding on the bathroom door. They discovered that Rocco and the guys had turned on the shower but were sitting around the bathroom fully clothed, making an unholy racket so that my aunt and uncle would think some strangers had broken in and were partying in their shower. And then there was the time—”

Josh was still smiling. “Okay, okay, I get the picture. It’s all pretty funny, by the way.”

“Not if you’re the butt of it,” Gina said emphatically.

By the time she reached the highway, Josh’s laughter had abated and he appeared pensive. They were passing the water tower at the edge of the town limits before he spoke.

“You’re lucky,” he said into the silence. “To have such a large family to care about you.”

That he would feel this way surprised her, and she certainly wouldn’t have expected him to mention it. “I know,” she said. She tried to recall what she knew about Josh’s family from the résumé that had been handed out to all contestants on the show. A mother who listed “philanthropist” as her occupation; a father who was a director of a couple of big corporations. One younger brother and a sister whose ages she couldn’t recall.

He shifted in his seat, leaning slightly toward her so that his face was more clearly lit in the light from the instrument panel. He looked somber. “My family is great, don’t get me wrong, but we’re so spread out that we seldom see one another. My father travels a lot, and my mother spends most of her time raising money for charity. My brother Jason’s business keeps him in New York. And then there’s my sister, Valerie, who married a banker from Brazil. They live in Rio de Janeiro.”

“I wouldn’t like living so far away from everyone who is important to me,” she said, trying to imagine such a thing. Not being able to drop by her mother’s apartment after Maren tried a new cake recipe, then the two of them sitting and gabbing with her sister, Barbara, while Mia and Stacey dashed in and out of the house? Not to run unexpectedly into Rocco at the market and laugh together at Frankie’s latest escapade while they waited their turns at the deli counter? Life anywhere else but Rio Robles would be flat and dull, Gina was sure of it.

Josh sighed and faced forward again. “I was afraid I’d be treated like an outsider today, but everyone was so friendly,” he said.

“Oh, that’s because Rocco took you under his wing. He may be the family clown, but we all respect his judgment.”

“If I’m in with Rocco, I’m in with the rest of the family? Including you?”

She ignored the hopeful note in his voice. “Not necessarily.”

“Oh. That’s too bad.”

Was he being sarcastic? She slid a stealthy look at him out of the corners of her eyes. His expression was neutral and revealed what might be a bit of regret. Okay, so it hadn’t been sarcasm. But what was it?

“Anyway, thanks for sharing your family with me,” Josh said.

The sincerity of his tone left Gina unable to think of any response other than “You’re welcome.”

“Besides,” Josh said wryly as he peered down at his feet. “I now have feet that would be the envy of Mia. Purple toes.” He tendered Gina the famously lovable Mr. Moneybags grin.

She slowed the car as they approached the pillars marking the entrance to the parking area in front of Good Thymes. The unique stone cottage nestled in a hollow in the land and was shaded by a variety of trees. Flowers spilled out of window boxes, and more flowers bordered the path leading to the red-painted and arched front door.

Gina drew the Galaxie slowly to a stop beside Josh’s car and, without looking at him, slid out of her seat. “Come on, you can wash your feet off at the garden spigot,” she said.

Josh stepped out of the car and followed her along the flagstone path bordering the cottage, looking around with interest. The stones were cool and damp beneath his bare feet, and the plants in the garden rustled in the light breeze. On the other side of the fence, they could hear the low hiss of drip irrigation in the adjoining vineyard.

“You live back here?” He gazed up at the mellow gray stone, its hard edges softened by the moonlight.

She’d bought the shop using her booty of fifty thousand dollars, the consolation prize from the TV show, as a down payment. “One of the main attractions of this building was that I could reside on the premises,” she said, gesturing toward the windows above. “My quarters are big enough, and comfortable, as well.”

As she spoke, a furry shape crashed through the underbrush and hurtled toward them. Josh yelled, but Gina staggered backward under a sudden weight. “Don’t holler so loud,” she said as she righted herself. “You’ll scare Timothy.”

Josh stared at the squirming ball of fur in her arms. A contented rumble emanated from it. A purr? If so, it was the loudest purr he’d ever heard, and it came from the biggest cat he’d ever seen in his life.

A few moments passed before he recovered. “That’s a cat?”

“This is my best buddy. He’s a Maine Coon cat with an attitude.” Timothy’s head appeared, and great unblinking yellow eyes focused on Josh with interest.

“I’ll say he has an attitude,” Josh said as he recovered his composure. He sneezed.

“Allergic?” Gina asked sweetly.

“Yes. Maybe I should leave.”

“I was going to let you wash your feet. Or are you becoming fond of purple?”

“I’d appreciate some running water. Will Timothy mind if I pet him?”

“No. He’s harmless.”

Josh tentatively reached out a hand and stroked Timothy’s head. The cat closed his eyes and purred even louder.

“He likes you.”

“Yeah. I wish you did.”

“I do, sort of. You were a good sport tonight, Josh.”

“How many points does that win me?”

She couldn’t help laughing. “Enough.” She turned away. “The spigot’s right over here,” she said, leading the way. “I’ll get a bar of soap from the potting shed.”

Josh dropped his shoes and blazer on a nearby bench and turned on the water. Gina set Timothy down on the back porch steps and picked her way carefully through the shadows to the shed, where she gathered up the bar of soap, a washcloth and a soft old towel.

Josh stood almost ankle deep in a puddle when she returned. She handed him the soap and washcloth and went to observe from the porch so her shoes wouldn’t get wet in the runoff.

“That should do it,” Josh said as he dried his feet. Crickets chirped in the garden, filling her ears with sound to block out what she was thinking. She recalled a night in the garden in Scotland two years ago when she and Josh had been enjoying an arranged date. She had climbed up on a crumbling moss-covered bench so she could see over the wall separating the castle from the moor, and Josh had smiled up at her in exactly the same way he was doing now. Then he had taken her hand and helped her down from the bench while she worried about whether he would try to kiss her.

“What should I do with the towel?” he asked, breaking the bubble of her memories.

Silently, she held out her hand, and he put the towel in it. Timothy meowed, impatient because she hadn’t fed him before she’d left earlier.

“Gina, how about going out for a drink or something?” Josh had moved closer and was lounging against the wall with his own brand of careless grace.

Her heart did a flip-flop at the eagerness of his tone, and she willed it to start beating normally. She had no business letting Joshua Corbett think that their romance could heat up again.

“Sorry, I have to get up early in the morning,” she said curtly, though the words had a hard time moving past her suddenly dry throat.

Josh straightened, a hint of impatience in his stance. “Gina,” he began, but she interrupted.

“I really have to go in now,” she said on a slightly frantic note. She was beginning to feel light-headed, and she’d hardly drunk any wine at all.

Before she knew it he had cupped a hand around her nape and was pulling her head down toward him. She seemed to have forgotten how to breathe; all the air seemed to have left her lungs. She closed her eyes and an unbidden picture sprang up from somewhere deep inside—two bodies, theirs, tangled amid bedclothes, and his hand sliding slowly up from her waist to cup her breast and bring it to his mouth. The fantasy expanded until she could imagine his warm skin pressed against hers, and the arch of her back as—

She made herself open her eyes. She shouldn’t be thinking of Josh that way. As she knew only too well, moonlight and a romantic setting did not a relationship make. She had found that out all too painfully once before.

She took a deliberate step backward, inadvertently treading on Timothy’s tail. The cat yowled and leaped into space, and Gina nearly lost her balance.

Josh grabbed her before she went flying off the porch, and she clutched at him in order to stabilize herself. His muscles were strong beneath the sleeve of his shirt, the fabric soft and expensive. The sight of the monogram on the pocket reminded her that he was Joshua James Corbett III, Mr. Moneybags. And she was the same person she had always been, Gina Angelini of Rio Robles, California, which was hardly in his league. She’d known it from the beginning, and he’d more than likely known it, too, since he’d chosen Tahoma and not her.

Flustered, she pulled away. The mood was broken, but at least he had the good grace to look sheepish. “Sorry,” he said.

Gina made an effort to pull herself together. To cover her confusion, she peered into the shadows, looking for Timothy. He was sulking, no doubt, but he’d get over it when he heard the electric can opener. That sound always made him come running.

She had barely regained her composure, when Josh spoke. “Thanks for the evening, Gina,” he said, unexpectedly formal and overly polite.

“You’re welcome,” she said, equally as formal and polite. He raised his hand in a farewell salute as she opened the door and backed inside. Timothy poked his head out of his favorite refuge, the catnip patch, and meowed plaintively.

“Come in, Timothy. I won’t step on you this time.” The cat, eyeing her distrustfully, jumped onto the top step and followed her up the stairs to her apartment.

Through the kitchen window, Gina kept an eye on the back of Josh’s shirt as he disappeared around the corner of the cottage. She was in trouble, big trouble. And clearly, she’d be in over her head if she couldn’t say no to Josh Corbett and mean it.

Chapter Three

Josh drove away in his rented BMW, still smarting from Gina’s rejection. In the rearview mirror, he saw a light flick on upstairs in the cottage. He slowed the car and leaned his head out the window to glance back. Gina’s shapely silhouette was framed in the square of light, showing off her considerable attributes.

Which happened to include what might be the most voluptuous breasts he’d ever seen; not that he’d actually seen them, but give him time. And that long elegant neck of hers, and that thick mane of naturally ash-blond hair, which set off to perfection her tawny complexion and dark, dark eyes. As Gina moved from one side of the room to the other, Josh accelerated quickly so he wouldn’t be witness to whatever she did next. He might have the hots for her, but a Peeping Tom he was not.

Business. I’m here on business, he reminded himself. At the moment, however, pleasure seemed a whole lot more important.

When he reached the large two-story house near the river where he’d rented an apartment yesterday, Mrs. Upthegrove, his landlady, was walking her beagle, Sadie, along the path leading to the back of the house. The landlady was as spare and tall as Sadie was short and fat, which disproved the idea that dog owners tended to resemble their dogs.

“Hello, Josh,” she said pleasantly, tossing long salt-and-pepper bangs back from her face. “How’s your room? You’ve got a hundred and something TV channels in there because of my new satellite dish.”

Josh hadn’t turned on the TV since he’d arrived, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her. “Everything’s great,” he said. His apartment had been carved from the bottom floor of the house and consisted of the former library, an enormous bathroom and a bedroom that had once been a large pantry.

“Did you find Gina at her shop, like I said?”

“Yes,” he said, figuring that he might as well stop to scratch an adoring Sadie behind her floppy ears.

“Gina’s in a position to help you learn more about the wine country for the article you’re writing.”

He’d said that an article was in the works, which was true. But that wasn’t the only reason he was visiting the Napa Valley. He was prepared to remain mum on that topic, however, so as not to blow his cover.

“Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.”

“Oh, no problem. Let me know if I can do anything else to help.”

He turned to walk away, but Mrs. Upthegrove, who had urged him to call her Judy Rae yesterday when he’d written her a check for a month’s rent, followed along.

“Was it wonderful for you and Gina to get reacquainted after two years?” the landlady asked with great interest. “Was she happy to see you?”

“It was great,” Josh replied, though he wasn’t sure this was true for Gina. He’d skip answering the second question, since the moment she’d recognized him Gina had ordered him out of her shop.

“Good,” said his landlady with great satisfaction. “I always thought you chose the wrong woman. That Tahoma was bad news.”

He couldn’t have agreed more, but he had his key at the ready to unlock the door and didn’t want to prolong the conversation any longer than necessary. “Good night, Mrs. Upthegrove,” he said firmly.

“Judy Rae,” she reminded him, so he repeated it after her and closed the door before she could say anything more.

His apartment was configured so that he entered it through the bedroom, which was small, but the double bed was comfortable and the window faced the meandering Napa River. The living room, or the former library, was sumptuously paneled in mellow old oak, and three walls of shelves housed books. At one end was a small rudimentary kitchen, and beside it the entrance to the bathroom, which had a tub with claw feet and a floor made of shiny dark green marble.

This apartment, like the smaller one next door, was tastefully furnished with cast-off furniture from the rest of the house, which Judy Rae had confided was too expensive to maintain without tenants to help with the bills. Some of the pieces, like the bed, were antiques. Others were new, such as the gaily patterned rug covering the tile floor.

Josh peeled off his clothes, lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling in the dim light from the lamp across the room. For a moment, he wished he were home in Boston. Yet if he were miraculously able to transport himself to his own comfortable town house on Beacon Hill, he wouldn’t be plotting how to wangle more time with Gina Angelini, as he was now.

Gina. Her very name made him feel all warm inside. Gina Angelini, Gina the angel, Gina the beautiful. Why had he ever turned her away?

Because, in his judgment at the time, she was too natural and unspoiled, too gentle and sweet, to be subjected to the media attention sure to follow his choice. Throughout the filming of the show, Gina had sent signals that she was uncomfortable with celebrity; she had been noticeably homesick when she first arrived in Scotland. Still, he’d felt an affinity toward her immediately, from the moment their eyes met.

There’d been an indefinable spark. An undercurrent of excitement that made their every encounter sizzle. He’d often wanted to spirit her away from the artificial atmosphere of the show, but he’d had obligations. He had a contract with the producers that prohibited him from deviating from a certain script. And in the end, he couldn’t imagine anyone as honest and upfront as Gina appearing with him on Good Morning, America or Oprah to bill and coo on cue for the cameras. So he’d chosen that hussy Tahoma. But he had regrets. Boy, did he ever.

He fell into a fitful sleep, crazy dreams cartwheeling through his mind so that he woke often. Each time he tried to go back to sleep, there was Gina, her unforgettable face lulling him back to dreamland. Gina smiling, Gina frowning, Gina and that come-hither bat of her eyelashes that he suspected was entirely unwitting.

Finally, when the bedside clock read six o’clock, Josh gave up on sleeping. He swung his feet out of bed and padded across the floor to the bathroom, where he shaved in record time. He had business in the Napa Valley that required his attention, but how could he concentrate on it if all he thought about was Gina, Gina, Gina?

AS SOON AS HE FINISHED getting dressed, Josh drove over to Good Thymes, less than a mile away, and parked his car in the same spot as yesterday. He couldn’t help glancing automatically at the upstairs window where he had seen Gina’s lush silhouette last night. The windows were open now, the curtains looped back, and there was no sign of her. In the lemony first light of day, the cottage seemed like an illustration from a fairy tale, with its weathered green shutters and faded red front door. He half expected Cinderella or Snow White to appear and beckon him inside.

Only it was Gina who appeared on the doorstep, carrying a basket over one arm and looking amazed to see him. He didn’t know why. Had she thought he’d give up so easily?

Taking advantage of her speechlessness, he walked over and gestured at the basket. “Going to Grandmother’s house, Little Red Riding Hood?”

“No, but if I’m Little Red Riding Hood, what does that make you? The wolf?” She walked down the steps and alongside the flagstone path leading through the rose arbor to the garden.

He was right behind her. “Yes,” he said. “The better to harass you, my dear.”

“I don’t deserve it,” she said loftily. “You might as well annoy someone else.” She unhooked the gate latch.

“I tried annoying someone. She had a boyfriend already.”

“You mean Tahoma? Smart girl.”

Josh didn’t like the way this conversation was going, but he followed along doggedly even though she let the arbor gate swing back to punch him in the stomach.

“Oof,” he said, and she grinned back at him as she made her way past the dew-drenched plants to the back of the garden.

“Next time don’t walk so close behind me,” she said.

“I’m keeping a decent distance between us,” he told her as she bent down among the rosemary bushes.

“Your idea of decent and mine could be quite different,” she said. In the misty morning light, she seemed ethereal and more beautiful than he’d ever seen her. There was also more than a hint of determination in the cant of her jaw, and a mote of resolution in her eyes.

He decided to tackle the problem head-on. “What is your main objection to me?” he asked mildly.

She tilted her head to one side, which only increased her desirability. She was wearing a loose chambray smock over her jeans, and it was unbuttoned low enough to show a hint of cleavage. He swallowed, realizing that she wore no bra. The thought of her breasts swinging unfettered beneath the light fabric made concentrating on her answer to his question hard.

“Number one should be obvious,” she said, tossing a sprig of rosemary into her basket. “You dumped me in front of millions of people.”

“I thought I expl—”

“Number two, there’s no future in it. We’re from different worlds, you and me. I’m from a simple farming family. You live in Boston and went to prep school. You graduated from an Ivy League college, while I only managed one year at UC-Sacramento before I had to drop out and work at the winery. Number three…” She stopped talking and regarded him coolly. “I’m still trying to think of reason number three,” she said lamely.

“Does there have to be a future in every relationship?” he asked heatedly. “Isn’t it enough to renew old acquaintance and see what develops?”

“Maybe for you,” Gina said, half rising and settling herself down in a new place.

“As for your simple farming family, between bocce games I met your cousin Greg who has a Ph.D. in chemistry and teaches at a private college in San Francisco. There was nothing simple about Greg.”

“It’s true, Gregory is very intelligent.” Unperturbed, she tossed several more sprigs into the basket.

Josh continued. “Your cousin Carla seems to have a brilliant grasp of how to build a public relations career. When I was on my return trip to the buffet table, your mother treated me to a fascinating discourse on baking bread and rolls for your aunt Dede’s catering service. Don’t run down your family, Gina. I told you I think they’re wonderful.”

“Yes, you did, and yes, they are.”

It annoyed him that she wouldn’t give him something to refute, anything that would help him prove the point that she ought to stop pushing him away.

“We could at least go out to dinner.”

She nailed him with an unfathomable look. “Last night all you wanted was drinks. Now it’s dinner. I haven’t even given you an inch, and you’re already trying to take a mile.”

“Come on, Gina, I hardly know anyone in town. Be a good sport and keep me company for a couple of hours.”

“You’re tearing at my heartstrings.” His wheedling seemed to have made no difference at all, and here he was slugging away, trying his hardest.

He forced an expression of optimism. “Good. Does that mean you’ll go?”

She leaned back, shaded her eyes against the rising sun with her hand and squinted up at him. “Tell you what, Josh. You go back to Boston and I’ll let you know if I change my mind. In other words, don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

He let out a long low whistle of appreciation. “You’re one tough cookie, Gina Angelini.” He couldn’t help grinning down at her.

For a moment, he thought she might be wavering, but no. She did grin back at him, though, and there was a flicker of something—communion? camaraderie?—behind her eyes.

“And you’re one persistent fellow,” she said, almost without missing a beat.

Whatever else he had in mind to say was lost in the shuffle when two pint-size whirlwinds burst through the gate.

“Gina, Gina! Guess what!” Frankie was first, with Mia hot on his heels. Both of them carried backpacks.

“Frankie’s dog is gonna have puppies! And Mom said we could have one!”

Gina rose gracefully and smiled at Mia, whose excitement at this good news was written all over her face. “That’s wonderful,” she said warmly.

Mia noticed Josh for the first time. “It’s gonna be a girl and I’m gonna dress it up in doll clothes,” she declared.

Frankie grimaced. “Fat chance. You do that and I’m taking the puppy back.”

“We always used to dress our dog, Charlie, in doll clothes, and he liked it,” Mia said.

“No way,” Frankie said. He turned to Josh. “Say, Josh, would you like a puppy? Last time Beauty had puppies there were seven.”

“No, Frankie. Thank you, but I don’t have enough room in my apartment in Boston for a dog.”

Frankie gave Josh a look of incredulity. “You don’t? That’s awful. You’d better move right away.”

Josh laughed, liking the look of Gina as she smoothed Mia’s unruly hair and adjusted Frankie’s collar. He’d never thought of Gina as maternal, yet he could imagine how she’d be someday with her own children, by turns solicitous and gently admonitory. They’d be cute kids, too, if they inherited her piquant features.

Gina smiled indulgently at both children. “You’d better get out to the road. It’s almost time for the school bus.”

“’Bye, Aunt Gina. See you later. ‘Bye, Josh.”

“Let me know if you want a puppy,” Frankie said before he raced after Mia.

“Mia said she lives next door, but I didn’t realize that Frankie and Rocco lived so close,” Josh said into the silence they left behind.

“They’re right down the road. One of the reasons I bought this place was that my sister and Rocco were nearby.” She knelt and began to pluck weeds from the soil, turning her back toward him.

Josh sat down on a low stone bench nearby. “You mean the cottage wasn’t always in the family?”

Gina took note of his occupation of the bench, seemed about to say something, then perhaps thought better of it. She shook her head. “This was a country store that was put out of business by the convenience stores that started springing up around here a few years back. The owner moved away and I bought it for my herb business a year and a half ago. I was lucky that I could live above the shop. I hated to move out of Mother’s house, but she was ready to scale down to an apartment by then, she said. She’s getting along fine, and so am I.”

“Most of the people I know could hardly wait to move out of their parents’ homes,” he observed carefully. Gina was how old now—twenty-nine? No, thirty-one. That was a long time to live at home.

She must have noticed his perplexity because she appeared to feel the need for explanation. “Mother needed me after my father died,” she said quietly. “They were inseparable, and his final illness exhausted her. Barb had already married, and it was up to me to take care of our mother. She’d always been a stay-at-home mom and was faced with getting a job, which I thought would be a difficult adjustment. Fortunately, she’s launched a new career with Aunt Dede’s catering service and loves it.”

Josh would bet that Maren Angelini was every bit as independent as her daughter. “I like your mother,” he said.

“Most people do.” Gina stood up. He did, too, following her as she headed back toward the cottage. She stopped at the back door to wipe the mud off her feet. “Now,” she said with the utmost patience, “I’d better go in and get ready for the rest of my workday.”

“What time does the store open?”

“Nine o’clock.”

“I’ll be back to buy something.”

“Josh, stop it. You’re a pest. Go. Now.” She wasn’t as put out with him as she sounded, if he judged her correctly. Her mouth quirked up at the corners, and she couldn’t hide the warm amused light in her eyes.

“Okay, okay, I’m out of here. But remember, Gina, the Big Bad Wolf only pretended to leave. Once he was out of sight, he circled around the woods until he could surprise Little Red at another juncture in the road.”

He thought she might burst into laughter at that, but she only lifted her eyebrows. “Well, Josh, you’ve described your MO very well so far. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when you show up at Grandmother’s house wearing her nightcap and sleeping in her bed.”

She’d given him an opening and he delighted in using it. “It’s not your grandmother’s bed I want to sleep in. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”

Again he thought she might laugh. But she only said, “Ooh, Grandma, what big teeth you have.” Then she tripped on into the house and shut the door in his face.

Josh laughed to himself and went off to find a place where he could buy a decent cup of coffee. Then he’d make a few phone calls. If all went well he might be able to arrive back here by ten o’clock or so.

He wasn’t about to give up on Gina so easily.

JOSH DIDN’T WASTE TIME on any of the trendy tourist hangouts around town. He discovered a real old-fashioned diner called Mom’s on the outskirts of Rio Robles, its squatty silver shape boldly contrasting with the hazy mountain peaks in the distance. After quickly sizing up the vehicles in the parking lot, he decided that the large number of pickups boded well for finding a lot of grape growers inside. He’d dressed in jeans and a plain gray sweatshirt so he’d fit in with the locals, and when he sauntered in, hardly a head turned in his direction.

The tantalizing odor of bacon and fried onions assailed his nostrils. The regulars spared glances in his direction before returning to their conversations or newspapers. “Coffee, please,” he said to the guy behind the counter as he hoisted himself up on a red-vinyl-and-chrome stool. The guy stood almost seven feet tall and had to stoop to walk into the low-ceilinged area where the coffee was made, and when he returned with Josh’s cup, Josh saw that the name written on his uniform was Mom.

“Hey, Mom, I’ll have another one of those doughnuts,” called a man sitting at the end of the counter. Mom reached into a covered container, withdrew a powdered doughnut and tossed it under his arm to its intended recipient. Whereupon everyone chuckled, including Josh.

“Good old Mom, he keeps it lively in here,” said the man next to him. He set a folded copy of The Juice: A Journal for Growers down beside Josh and took a long pull from his cup.

“That’s his real name?”

“Yeah, ’fraid so. It’s Momford or Mumford or some unfortunate name like that. I can sympathize, since my parents named me Maurice. I go by Mike.”

Josh extended his hand. “Josh Corbett,” he said.

“Oh, you’re that Mr. Moneybags guy who came all the way from Boston to get reacquainted with Gina.”

Josh was slightly taken aback at the familiarity. “Not exactly. I have business here, and it made sense to look her up.”

“I heard that some of the Angelinis were surprised when you showed up at their crush last night.” Mike eyed him curiously.

“How do you know?”

“That’s the scuttlebutt.”

“There’s gossip already? I only arrived two days ago.”

“I see Devon Vost every morning when I drop my daughter off at day care. She’s Gina’s cousin.”

Josh vaguely remembered Devon, a cheerful young woman with a kind face whom he’d met at crush. He wondered why she would be telling this Mike person what the Angelinis thought about his showing up.

Mike answered his unasked question. “You see, Devon is married to my sister’s brother-in-law. Practically everyone you’ll meet around here is related to the Angelinis in some way.”

Josh sipped his coffee; it was good. He thought about asking Mom for a doughnut but discarded the idea, amusing though it was to watch one flying through the air.

“They seemed friendly,” he said to Mike. “The Angelinis, I mean.”

“There are no nicer people in the world. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of them, though. About Gina—everyone thinks she’s pretty special, and folks in Rio Robles didn’t like it that she wasn’t picked to win the million dollars.”

“I gathered that,” Josh said on a note of regret.

Mike eyed Josh speculatively. “You’re not figuring to make a play for her, are you?”

Josh didn’t want to tip his cards to someone he’d just met. “You never know,” he said.

“You do that and you hurt Gina again, the Angelinis won’t let you get away with it.”

Great. A threat. That was all he needed.

“What kind of business did you say you have here?” asked Mike.

He hadn’t. “I’m writing an article about the valley.”

“For some big newspaper or something?”

“No, it’s for a company newsletter. The company has an interest in winemaking.” A recent interest, and the article would appear in the newsletter after the beverage conglomerate in which his family had a controlling interest bought out a winery or two in the valley. This was all hush-hush so far, and it was going to stay that way, at least as long as Josh had anything to say about it.

“You might like to read The Juice,” Mike said, pushing it toward Josh. “Being that you write for a newsletter and all.”

Josh accepted the folded paper and stood up. “I’d better be going. Thanks for the paper and the warning,” he said as he tossed a bill on the counter.

“Sure. Nice meeting you. I’m here every morning about this time, and I hope we’ll run into each other again.”

When Josh left, Mike was asking Mom for a doughnut. This time Mom ran with it to the kitchen, feinted and tossed it overhand.

“Best play I’ve seen since the last Super Bowl,” hollered one of the customers.

“One of their scouts tried to recruit me last week,” Mom said.

This provoked a round of good-natured jeers. But Josh didn’t stick around to hear any more. He had business here, all right. He was going to put his phone calls on the back burner and try to talk Gina into having lunch with him. He’d struck out with his invitations to drinks and dinner, but lunch? It was a nonthreatening suggestion, time limited and requiring no special dress.

He was willing to bet that Gina would say yes when he asked her. She’d had that glint in her eye that was the giveaway of an interested female, and come to think of it, he seldom met any other kind.

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