Can't Hurry Love (7 page)

Kohl ushered Grace back to their stools at the bar. Dawn and her friend gushed over the performance and he bought the ladies a round of drinks. Nice ladies, he thought, ashamed again, but this time of his earlier censure. He realized he was smiling, wide enough to hurt cheek muscles that were unused to such an action. Damn, but he was still under the influence of a drug he didn’t recognize—almost a kind of . . . happiness.

Grace’s high spirits were contagious. The bartender was grinning, too. Who was Kohl to release the helium from their collective balloon?

“This may be the best night of my life!” she said.

Prepared to follow with some sort of agreeable remark, he was surprised when her delighted expression collapsed. Her hand squeezed his forearm again. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m so sorry.”

Sorry? Who died? His brows drew together.

“Liam and Giuliana.”

He tensed. “Do we have to go there?”

Her gaze met his, eyes serious. “You don’t really want to kill either one of them, do you?”

It shamed him, that she had to ask. “I was a soldier, true, but what I do now . . . I’m a farmer.”

She blinked.

“Babe, I’m the vineyard manager at Tanti Baci. I’m in charge of the vines, the grapes. It might as well be carrots or cauliflower. Anyone who says differently has bought into the mystique . . . and lost the best part of what we do. I’m in charge of a crop.” It was so simple—and he was a simple man. Dressing it up with artistic labels and deciding on price tags was someone else’s job. His was watching over the land and its product.

She still appeared worried. “Kohl . . .”

He surprised himself by how much he wanted to reassure her. “It means I grow things now . . . not damage them. And if there’s anyone I’m angry at, it’s me. Jules and Liam . . . they’ve had a thing for years. I should have seen it.”

Her boy-howdy face, her sweet freckles, her laser eyes presented such an arresting package that he found himself staring at her, his thoughts freezing on one truth.
I’ve scared her. She actually believes I might hurt Jules or Liam.

So much for hero worship.

He moved slowly so as not to frighten her. “I should take you home now.”

“Maybe so.”

He wouldn’t let her see the pain that caused, not when he didn’t understand it himself.

Before they could move away from their seats, the bartender placed a flute of sparkling wine in front of Grace. Only in the Napa Valley, he thought. There was a burger drive-thru in St. Helena that served nothing more sophisticated than burgers and onion rings but also offered dozens of different wines by the glass, half bottle, and bottle. Even the bubbly kind, like was in Grace’s glass. It shouldn’t surprise him that you could get something like that here, too.

But they hadn’t ordered it. “That’s not ours,” he said.

“It’s hers,” the barman answered, indicating Grace with a nod. “Compliments of the guy at the other end of the bar. He said he knows firsthand that baby’s got back.”

Cold steel replaced Kohl’s spine. Shit. His gaze cut right even as he leaned closer to Grace. She was staring in the same direction.

A guy was watching them from twenty feet away. Military cut. Muscles. “Who the hell is that?” Kohl could flatten him in twenty seconds. Kohl wanted to flatten him in ten.

“Daniel.” The syllables came out clipped, as if her tongue was dry. “My ex.”

Kohl was on his feet. He didn’t remember standing, but he was ready to attack. Only the trembling he felt in Grace’s body stopped him. He couldn’t leave her when she was shaking like an E-1 private facing his first firefight.

Then it was Daniel’s move. The SOB was sauntering down the line of the bar, ignoring the chattering around him. His gaze was focused on Grace.

If she was a leaf on a tree in the wind before, now there was a hurricane blowing through. Kohl held himself still, his hand on her shoulder, but trying to do nothing that would contribute to her anxiety. “He’ll have to go through me, honey,” he assured her. “You’re safe.”

Daniel wasn’t, as far as Kohl was concerned. Especially when the asshole stopped in front of his ex, an ugly smile on his face. “Hello. I didn’t know you could sing, sugar.”

Kohl ground his back teeth together. Sugar. No way could her ex appreciate how sweet Grace was. “You didn’t give her anything to sing about. Now move along.”

The other man’s drawl deepened. “I’m just giving the lady a compliment.”

It looked like a threat to Kohl, and it made him nuts. He dropped his hand from Grace’s shoulder. His fingers curled into fists. “Let’s take this outside.”

Grace sucked in air. It nearly halted him.

But the primal part of him was firing his blood. He stepped toward Daniel, leaving just inches between their beating hearts. “You’re going to leave her alone.”

Daniel didn’t flinch. “You’ve got it all wrong.” He looked around Kohl and gave Grace another of his chilling smiles. “See you, sugar.” Then he pursed his mouth in a kiss . . . and strode away.

Kohl was on his heels, but Grace caught his elbow. “No. Don’t.”

Nothing could stop him. He wrenched from her, familiar rage burning his skin. Again he felt like the Hulk, muscles going rocky, features turning to granite. He could be green for all he knew.

Then she recaptured his arm. He paused, glancing back. Her eyes were an impossible blue, brightened by a sheen of emotion. Shit.

“Stay with me,” she said. “Be with me.”

She shouldn’t ask it of him, damn it. Sure he’d claimed to be a farmer, and he was trying to be a good one, but that wasn’t the same as being a guardian—or a peacemaker. Still, he was stymied.

She’d fed him. Made him talk and laugh. Lifted him out of the mood that the news about Jules and Liam had left him in. And then plunged him into a thornier place.

“I’m no hero,” he muttered, sliding onto the stool beside hers. His hands ran through his hair as he took several deep breaths. He could manage containing himself . . . for now. “Don’t ever believe I’m any good.”

As the sun set, satisfaction, and an odd sense of relief, twined within Liam as he drove Giuliana toward his home. She was silent in the passenger seat of his Mercedes, and at her feet sat three grocery bags stamped with the Edenville Market logo, containing a few items of clothing and a smattering of toiletries. Her gaze was trained on the house they approached via the long drive delineated by three-foot-high walls built of locally quarried rock and mortar.

He looked at it through her eyes. It was a showplace to be sure, built by his grandfather and Tuscan-inspired. The Bennetts had always held a fascination for all things Italian, despite, or because of, the ongoing feud with the Bacis. His mother had never cared for it, though, and once his father died she’d wasted no time vacating to colder climes and happier memories in her native upstate New York.

Liam, on the other hand, couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. The estate property was nestled against a knoll covered with darkly green firs, the trees providing a contrast with the exterior stucco walls colored the shade of caramelized butter. Arched doorways on the second floor opened onto Juliet-styled balconies. A third-floor square-topped tower drew the eye up, then down to the front door that was a massive breadth of aged, distressed wood. Rather than pulling around to the garages located beyond the house, Liam parked the car in front of the shallow entrance steps.

The slowness with which Giuliana gathered her things made clear she was dawdling. He would have offered to bring in her “luggage,” but that would have pointed up how meager were her possessions. Tomorrow, he’d take her shopping, even if he had to kidnap her to make it happen.

He led the way to the porch. She’d been there before—though not often—as their courtship had been carried out beyond prying parental eyes. She hesitated as he pushed on the front door.

It hit him then. A memory of that weekend they’d slipped away to Reno. He’d booked a suite at a nice hotel, and with their marriage certificate in hand, they’d returned to Room 2292. He could see the number in his mind’s eye, and then the delight breaking over her face as he swung her up in his arms and carried her over the threshold.

It almost hurt to think of it. How young they’d been! How foolishly certain they could overcome each and every obstacle. It was why they’d entered their names in the wedding wine ledger upon their return to Edenville. Giuliana had written the words with a flourish that gave away their exuberant sense of optimism.

He wondered what it said about him that within hours of her recording the information that he’d removed the ledger and hidden it away. Postponing the inevitable explosion, he’d thought then. Now he supposed it bore witness to his innate pessimism. He hadn’t realized it yet, but his father had already done permanent damage to Liam’s belief in his ability to be a happy-ever-after husband.

Secrets and memories.

“Second thoughts?” Giuliana asked him now, one brow cocked.

“Not a chance.” He made to cup her elbow and usher her in, but she stepped away from his touch and into his house.

Again, that odd relief. It went through him like a sigh as he shut the door behind them.

The round foyer table held an antique ceramic footbath filled with flowers: Peruvian lilies, Queen Anne’s Lace, some other fat flower that he couldn’t name. The floral touch embarrassed him a little. “We have a housekeeper. She likes to make sure we don’t let the place degenerate into a clichéd bachelor pad.”

“I know Charlene,” she said, her voice cool. “She was a friend of my mother’s.”
You overprivileged snob,
her expression added.

“Oh? I dated her daughter last year.”
To hell with your assumptions,
he shot back.

A silence strung out between them. He finally reminded himself this was his own idea, and shook off his irritation. Hoping he appeared more composed than he felt, he lifted his hand. “There’s a guest room ready for you up the stairs.”

The second-floor gallery was suspended by columns and could be reached by a spiraling staircase on either end. He moved up the nearest set of steps, listening to the rattle of her grocery bags behind him. When he pushed open the bedroom door, this time he was glad to see more flowers in a vase on the dresser top. Charlene had remembered the mix of pink and purple dendrobium orchids that he’d requested.

Giuliana slowly crossed the room, wearing that short full skirt he’d seen before as well as a skimpy T-shirt that read “You Had Me at Merlot.” A wrought-iron, four-poster bed was on her right, a pale pink spread covering its wide surface. Four high windows let in the last of the afternoon light. But she moved with purpose toward the arrangement. She dropped the grocery bags at her feet and then reached out to stroke one curled petal with a fingertip.

“What are you doing, Liam?” Her gaze didn’t get anywhere near his.

His motivations were snarled, he had to admit. After the fire, he’d wanted her close, under his roof, compelled to know she had a chance to eat and sleep like a normal person. There’d also been the fear that without a close eye on her, she’d up and go again someday, leaving their situation forever unresolved.

And then there was the hellish, unrelenting attraction that unsettled him, unbalanced him,
obsessed
him, every time he saw her.

Every time he thought about her.

Part of his Plan B was the idea that in close proximity it might . . . go away.

Oh, who was he kidding? He’d wondered if they might do whatever it was necessary to burn the damn feeling out.

Hence the orchids. He had filled their honeymoon suite with them in Reno, telling her their pink to plum shades brought to mind the color of her soft mouth.

On a slow turn, she faced him and she saw right through him, he could tell. “You’re not playing fair, Liam.” Her voice caught, and she looked away. “I’m not a robot.”

No, that’s what she’d been calling him for months, when he would have given half his vineyards to turn android, instead of being tortured by the swing of her dark hair, the flash of her brown eyes, the tender wetness of her lush lips.

The plush area rug covering the slate floor absorbed the sound of his footsteps as he neared her. The fringe of her lashes hid her expression from him. He tucked his hand under her chin and lifted her face toward his.

“Really, Liam? Orchids?” She folded her arms over her chest, pretending his touch didn’t faze her.

But he could see her pulse raising as the blood beat against the tender skin of her neck. Hot emotion filled him as he stared into her big eyes. They were tilted at their outside corners, giving her face an unforgettable, exotic edge. He let his hand trail down her throat.

She swallowed against his palm. “I’m telling you,” she said, her voice trailing to a whisper. “This isn’t fair.”

And since he could only agree, he lowered his lips to kiss away the complaint.

7

Giuliana should duck his mouth. She knew that. But avoidance of Liam hadn’t helped her so far. As time slowed while his head drew closer, her heart pounded harder, trying to break out of her chest.

That’s what she wanted to do to him. Break the man. Find equal footing by shattering the maddening self-possession of the husband who was gazing down at her with those so-cool eyes.

But his kiss was hot. So hot.

At the first touch of his lips, her knees melted. She grabbed hold of the dresser top behind her to keep herself upright—and to keep herself from holding on to Liam. She’d never been any good at that.

Her stance pushed her breasts forward, but he kept a decent distance between their bodies.
Still so damn detached,
she thought, woozy with desire as his mouth brushed hers again.
Too light, too light, too light.
Swallowing back a moan, she dug her fingernails into the dresser’s sleek wood.

His tongue touched her bottom lip. Stupid tears burning her eyes, she submitted to the pressure, opening her mouth so he could slide inside. There was no insistence in the move. No coaxing, either. Just:
I’m here; I want in.

Like he had the right. Like they belonged together.

If it went on like this—Liam controlling, Giuliana yielding—the one to break would be her. But she stayed paralyzed, the beat of her heart doubling and then her blood burning through her veins as he stroked against her tongue. Oh, God. Her breasts swelled; there was an aching emptiness between her thighs. She had to find a way to redistribute the power and survive the need.

Flushed with desire, she went on tiptoe to make the mouth-to-mouth fit tighter. She felt Liam stiffen. And then she knew what to do:
Give in to passion,
a voice inside her whispered.
Give in to passion instead of giving in to him.

One by one, her fingers released their hold on the wood. Though their mouths were tightly joined now, he was still controlling the kiss, his tongue making sure but measured strokes inside her mouth. Heat was pouring from her flesh and her nipples tightened to even harder points.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she moved in to rub them against his chest.

He jerked, but she didn’t let him disengage. Instead, she pressed closer, reveling in the hard planes of his body along the soft curves of hers. He was aroused, his erection thick and long against her belly. As she pushed her hips forward, his hand speared through her hair to change the angle of the kiss.

His tongue drove harder into her mouth. She writhed against him as he thrust his thigh between her legs. Denim rode against her bare skin and then pressed upward, providing both sweet relief and exquisite torture to the pulsing flesh behind the thin fabric of her panties.

He stepped into her, forcing her backward until the small of her back met the lip of the dresser. She slung a leg around the back of one of his, allowing the most sensitive part of her to more fully meet his uncompromising muscle. Liam grunted, a primitive sound of pleasure, and she sucked on his tongue, thrilled by it.

His hand, hot, hard, crawled along the side of her leg, taking the hem of her short summer skirt with it. His fingers slid under her panties to palm her bottom and his mouth moved, too, breaking free for a breath and then running along her cheek to her ear.

“What are you up to?” he muttered, then bit her lobe.

At the small sting, she bowed into his body. Her clitoris stroked his firm leg. “No good,” she whispered. Because she wasn’t going to be that—good, subdued, careful—she was going to please herself by letting go and taking him, by hell, along with her. Still riding the sweet, unsatisfying pressure of his thigh, she shifted one hand to the front of his button-down shirt. Blind to anything but the roar of greedy need in her blood, she undid it by touch, her fingertips rasping against his bare skin as she found the next fastening.

His breath was ragged in her ear.
Yes.
When she parted the fabric, she placed her mouth against the slamming beat of his heart at the center of his chest then slid her mouth across to his pointed nipple. With the flat of her tongue, she stroked across it, his groan making the tips of her own breasts tingle.

“Stop,” he commanded, his fingers tightening in her hair. He yanked her head back to press his mouth fiercely to hers. Refusing to be distracted, she thumbed the damp protruding nub and then trailed her hand to the button of his jeans.

“Stop,” he said once more, his mouth still against hers.

But he wasn’t in charge here. Passion was running the show and it was telling her to expose him. Touch him. Take him.

She did that, popping the metal button, finding the zipper’s tab, then sliding beneath his boxers to wrap her fingers around his heavy shaft. He dropped one hand to grab at hers, but she ignored the protest and stroked, her palm sliding from the silky head to the thick base.

“Giuliana.” His voice was tight. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Oh, please. She’d first touched him like this when she was seventeen years old, his breath loud in the confines of his car, her own caught somewhere between her heart and her throat. She’d loved the smooth and strong heat of him against her palm, she’d loved the certainty that she could make him shudder.

“Now is not the time,” he muttered, his hand trying once again to brush hers away.

She tightened her hold, and he groaned again. His thigh pushed harder between her legs and she stifled her own sound of passion by leaning into his chest again and fastening her mouth on the rise of his pectoral. As she sucked there, he jerked and his erection leapt in her grip.

In the distance, she heard bells. Ignoring the non sequitur of a sound, she shortened her strokes on his flesh, sucked harder on his chest, rubbed at the ache between her legs by using the strong column of his thigh. More bells. More strokes.

“Hell!” Liam broke away from her. His hands refastened his jeans in a blink, then pushed through his hair. “Didn’t you hear the doorbell?” he ground out.

She was staring at his heaving chest, revealed by the open shirt. No, she was staring at the mark her mouth had made on him. “Oops,” she said. Liam Bennett. With a hickey.

He glanced down. When he looked back up there was a burn of color riding his high cheekbones. “I’m getting the door.” He brushed past her.

She trailed at a safe distance. When he reached the foyer, he glanced over his shoulder and caught her leaning against a wall, her gaze on him. The look he gave her couldn’t be any less cool. If she hadn’t yet shattered him, she’d at least fractured his unflappable reserve.

Smirking a little, she wiggled her fingers in a little wave. Hah. Now who had the upper hand?

He pulled open the door. A familiar foursome—her sisters and their spouses—stood on the other side, their arms full of groceries. “Hey, there.” Stevie saluted them with a baguette.

A new flush tumbled down Giuliana’s skin and she straightened. “What . . .” She had to clear her throat while she tugged on the end of her skirt. Was everything in place? At least Liam had half done-up his shirt. “What are you doing here?”

“Dinner.” Allie traipsed inside first, the rest of them trailing. “Liam didn’t tell you? He invited us to a potluck.”

Their noisy takeover of the kitchen covered a multitude of almost-sins. She managed to hustle back to the room she’d been assigned, where she ran a comb through her hair and ensured that her clothes were not askew. The battle between herself and Liam should be a private one.

As head of the Baci family, she had to ensure her sisters knew she was capable of making clear and cogent decisions. They might misconstrue the fiery interlude she’d just shared with him as something showing poor judgment rather than a logical and self-protective attempt to knock away his hard shell and prove that he was human. She had to prove to them both that he didn’t hold all the power.

On her way back down the stairs, she glimpsed Liam and Penn on a side patio, hovering around a twenty-second-century barbecue. It had enough dials and burners and grates to fly an entire side of beef to the moon.

She drifted toward the half-open door, amused despite herself by their identical fascination with the piece of cooking equipment. They were so alike in looks and other ways—and then so not. While Penn approached the world with the happy smile of a man with his fingertips on the brass ring, Liam was the kind who sat back on his carousel horse and eyed the prize from a distance, coldly calculating whether the bright piece of metal was worth his time and effort.

Whether it had true value.

Just as she was about to move on, their voices reached her. “I met a woman,” Penn said. He was practicing with a pair of long, shiny tongs, closing and opening them.

Liam stiffened, then shot his half brother a glance. “Allie’s like a sister to me,” he warned.

Giuliana stared at Liam, noticing that Penn did, too. Her Hollywood-handsome brother-in-law was devoted to his wife, and it startled her that Liam seemed to doubt that so easily.

It seemed to jolt Penn, too. “What conclusion are you jumping to?” he demanded of the half brother just a few months older than him. “I could be talking about a bank teller. A TV producer. That crone who keeps trying to give me parking tickets around the town square. She loiters by my truck, you know. I’ve a mind to call the cops.”

“
She’s
a cop. Sort of. Sharon Lightwell’s been Edenville’s traffic enforcement officer for forty-seven years. I bet she just wants to meet you, Penn.”

He shifted his shoulders. “She wants more than to meet me. Every time I get near her, she starts unbuttoning her uniform blouse.”

Giuliana smothered her laugh. Upon spotting Penn, his fans had an interesting habit of shouting “Build me up!” after the name of his show, then throwing off their shirts in exchange for one of his program’s logo tees. He carried a stack of them wherever he went, but since his marriage, he’d taken painstaking care to avert his gaze from any half-dressed female forms.

“In any case,” Penn grumbled, “I’m not the least bit interested in any woman
but
my wife.”

“Fine,” Liam said.

Giuliana almost moved on then, but there was something in the silence stretching between the two men that fixed her feet to the floor.

“But, uh,” Penn started. He snapped the tongs a few times as if trying to capture his next words.

“‘ But, uh’?”

“Does the name Erin Bell mean anything to you?”

Liam froze. “Why did she speak to you?”

“Met her at some tasting room in town. Alessandra introduced us.”

“Steer clear.” His jaw was hard. A muscle ticked in his cheek.

“I think I already plowed into the garbage. Dear old dad . . . ?”

Liam didn’t look at his half brother. The man who’d fathered them, Calvin Bennett, had been considered an upstanding citizen until his death when his will had revealed he’d fathered two illegitimate children from separate relationships outside his marriage. “Why would you say that?”

“Because you look like you’re about to explode,” Penn said quietly.

And he did. Giuliana’s eyes widened. The distant, self-contained man that Liam had become—something she’d first had glimpses of when they were young—was vibrating with suppressed emotion. Fury, she thought. Or maybe disgust.

“She said she was a real good friend of your mother’s,” the Hollywood star continued.

When Liam didn’t answer, he spoke again. “You can talk to me,” Penn said. “You’re my brother. Let me help.”

“Then track down the others and get on with dinner. That’s why I asked you guys here.”

“You asked us to come over and ease the transition for Jules. Make her comfortable.”

“Yeah. So make her smile then, damn it,” Liam said. “And pour enough wine down her throat and insist she fork enough food into her belly that she finally gets a good night’s rest. She’ll resist me if I push, but her sisters, and you and Jack, can make that happen.”

Oh. Now
she
was a little rattled. Her family was here because Liam was worried about her. Because he wanted to take care of her. She heard it in his voice. Saw it in the look he shot his half brother.

“Okay,” Penn said. “But about this Erin Bell—”

“Don’t mention her name to me again.” He started striding for the door she was lurking beside, so she had to hurriedly draw back, taking refuge behind the half-closed door of a powder room.

She saw Liam’s taut expression as he passed her hiding place, and the view of this new side of him pierced the middle of her chest. Calvin Bennett’s nasty past punctured some place in Liam just as deep. Wrapping her arms around herself, she closed her eyes. This was something she hadn’t considered in her bid to equalize their relationship and melt his chill.

If she was around him when his brittle composure broke, then she could become dangerously close to him again.