Stake?
Oh God, Christina and Antonio. She’d turned their fairy-tale wedding into a mockery. They must hate her. Everyone must hate her. Dani. Rafe. Nico. They loved Monte Calanetti; all they wanted was for their village to thrive, and she was tainting the town with scandal. How could she ever show her face in town again?
The phone rang. Louisa jumped. Don’t answer it. It could be a reporter. Old habits, buried but not forgotten, kicked right in.
Not a reporter, thank goodness. The bank. The name appeared under the number on her call screen. One guess as to why they were calling. Forcing air into her lungs, she answered.
“Signorina Harrison?” an unfamiliar female voice asked.
“Y-yes.” Louisa fought to keep her voice from shaking, and lost.
“I’m calling for Signor Merloni. He’s asked me to tell you he can’t meet with you today. Something has suddenly come up.”
“Right. Of course.” What a surprise. A lump formed in her throat. Only pride—or maybe it was masochism—made her hang on the line and go through the motions. “Did...did Signor Merloni give you a new date?”
“No, he did not,” the woman replied. “I’m afraid his calendar is full for the next several weeks. He’s going to have to call you when a time becomes available.”
And so the ostracism started. Louisa knew the drill. Signor Merloni wouldn’t call back. No one would.
They never did.
Phone dropping from her fingers, Louisa stumbled toward the terrace doors, toward the fresh air and rolling hills she’d come to see as home, only to stop short. Paparazzi could be lurking anywhere, their telephoto lenses poised to snag the next exclusive shot of Luscious Louisa. They could be hiding this moment among the grapevines.
So much for going outside. Backing away, she sank into the cushions when her calves collided with the sofa. What now? She couldn’t call anyone. She couldn’t go outside.
It was just like before. She was a prisoner in her own home.
Damn you, Steven. Even in prison, he was still controlling her life.
* * *
The Brix level matched the portable reading exactly. Nico wasn’t surprised. When it came to grapes, he was seldom wrong. Of course not. Making wine is the only thing you really care about.
The voice in his head, which sounded suspiciously like his former fiancée’s, was wrong. Making wine wasn’t the only thing he cared about; there was his family, too. And tradition, although tradition involved winemaking so perhaps they were one and the same. Still, while he found great satisfaction in bottling the perfect vintage, if Amatucci Vineyards collapsed tomorrow, he wouldn’t collapse in despair. That was his parents’ domain. If he couldn’t make wine anymore, he would cope, the same way he’d coped when Floriana had walked out on him, or whenever he’d come home to discover his parents had broken up—again. Dispassion, when you thought about it, was a blessing. Heaven knew it had saved him from going mad when growing up.
If the trade-off for sanity meant living a life alone, then so be it.
Why was he even thinking about this? Louisa’s comment about needing time for herself, that’s why. Someone had hurt Louisa badly enough that she’d fled to Italy. Her pain was too close to the mistakes he’d made with Floriana. Poor, sweet Floriana. He’d tried so hard to want her properly, but his tepid heart wouldn’t—couldn’t.
Was the man who’d broken Louisa’s heart trying to be something he wasn’t, too? Hard to believe a man would throw her over for any other reason.
“Mario, could you turn down the volume?” he hollered. He could hear the television from in here.
Leaving the beakers he’d been measuring on his lab table, he left his office and walked into the main processing area where Mario and his production manager, Vitale, stood watching the portable television they had dragged from the break room.
“Last time I checked, football didn’t need to be played at top volume,” he said. With the equipment being readied for harvest, it didn’t take much for the noise to reverberate through the empty plant. He motioned for Giuseppe to hand him the remote control. “I didn’t know there was a match today.”
“Not football, signor, the news,” Mario replied.
“You brought the television in here to watch the news?” That would be a first. Football reigned supreme.
“Si,” Giuseppe replied. “Vitale’s wife called to say they were talking about Monte Calanetti.”
Again? Nico would have thought they were done discussing the royal wedding by now. “Must be a slow news...” He stopped as Louisa’s face suddenly appeared on the screen. It wasn’t a recent photo, she was far more dressed up than usual, and it showed her with a man Nico didn’t recognize. A very handsome man, he noticed, irritably.
The caption beneath read Luscious Louisa—Back Again?
Luscious Louisa?
“Isn’t that the woman who owns the palazzo?” Vitale looked over at him.
Nico didn’t answer, but the news reader droned on. “...key witness in prosecuting her husband, Steven Clark, for investment fraud and money laundering. Clark is currently serving seventy-five years...”
He remembered reading about the case. Clark’s pyramid scheme had been a huge scandal. Several European businessmen had lost millions investing with him. And Louisa had been his wife and testified against him?
No wonder she’d run to Italy.
Another picture was on the screen; one from the royal wedding. Nico gritted his teeth as a thousand different emotions ran through him. The presenter was talking about Louisa as if she were some kind of siren who’d led Clark to his doom. Had they met the woman? Alluring, yes, but dishonest? Corrupt?
His ringtone cut into his thoughts. Keeping his eyes on the television, he pulled his phone from his back pocket.
“Have you seen the news?” Dani asked when he answered.
“Watching it right now,” he replied. On-screen, the presenter had moved on to a different headline.
“The story’s on every channel. It’s all anyone in the restaurant can talk about.”
It’s untrue, he corrected silently. The ferocity of his certainty surprised him. He had not one shred of evidence to support his belief, and yet he knew in his bones that Louisa wasn’t guilty of anything. One merely had to look in her eyes to know that whatever the press said, they didn’t have the entire story.
“Did you know?” he asked Dani. Rafe’s wife was Louisa’s closest friend. If Louisa had told anyone of her past...
“No. She never talks about her life before she got here,” Dani answered. “Hell, she barely talks about herself.”
Nico’s gut unclenched. Silly, but he’d felt strangely hurt at the idea of Louisa sharing her secrets with someone else.
“There
