Intoxicating Read online

  Blinking, he sat up, trying to remember what had happened. They’d drunk the wine. Made love under a midnight moon in June.

  His heart skipped a beat.

  They’d fallen asleep.

  Now, Kiara was gone. The empty bottle of Decadent Midnight lay off to one side of the blanket.

  Where was Kiara?

  Freaking out, probably. Having realized they’d made love under the very circumstances she’d spent her life avoiding. His chest tightened at the thought of her regretting what they’d done. Wyatt didn’t regret it. Not at all. In fact, he was happy.

  Happier than he’d ever been in his life.

  Well, except for the part where Kiara had taken off.

  She was just scared. He didn’t blame her. He was scared too. He’d never felt like this about anyone. Hadn’t known such intense feelings were possible. He had to find her and calm her down. Reassure her that things hadn’t changed between them.

  But that was a lie, right? Because things had changed. He’d changed. She’d changed him. And he wanted so badly to believe he’d changed her too.

  Because if he hadn’t, he was out here alone.

  In love alone.

  Love.

  The word hung in his mind; it did not scare him.

  That was bizarre enough.

  But not only did the realization that he was in love with Kiara not scare him, he relished it. He couldn’t wait to tell her.

  She’s going to think it’s just because of the legend. She’d not going to believe it.

  Wyatt licked his lips, kneaded his forehead with two fingers. He was going to have to find a way to show her that it was true. Actions always spoke louder than words.

  And what of the fact that he’d never gotten around to telling her who he really was? When was he going to sandwich that in there? Before or after he told her that he’d fallen in love with her?

  I love you and, oh, by the way, I’m your nemesis.

  Wyatt blew out his breath. How had he gotten himself into this mess?

  Doesn’t matter. Just go find her. You’ll think of a way to talk yourself out of this. You always do. Right.

  Except his time, he didn’t want to be glib or charming, or joke his way into her heart. He wanted to be open and honest. He wanted her to love him at his core, not for the shine he could put on his image.

  Then he remembered Sonoma. That’s where she was.

  Get up! Get moving! Today is the competition. She’s got to be frantic trying to get everything loaded up and transported to the mainland. If you really want to prove you love her, get up and go help her.

  Wyatt sprang to his feet, grabbed up the blanket, the wine bottle and hurried down the hill.

  Twin Hearts looked so compelling in the morning light. Maybe even more compelling than they had looked in moonlight.

  All the other couples had disappeared. The parking lot, when he arrived there, lay empty. No vehicles in sight. Kiara had taken the van, gone off and left him.

  Why had she left him?

  Freak-out. She was having a freak-out.

  He could allow her that.

  In the meantime, he had a two-mile hike back to Bella Notte. If he ran, he could be there in twenty minutes.

  Resolutely, Wyatt took off.

  “HURRY, HURRY,” KIARA urged Maurice. “Let’s get the wine loaded up. I’ve got the bottles we’re taking stacked in the lab.”

  “Calm down,” her cousin said. “We’ve got plenty of time. We don’t have to check in until noon. It’s barely six now.”

  “I want to get there with plenty of time to spare. I want to make sure everything is perfect. I want—” To get out of here before Wyatt wakes up and comes looking for me and wants to talk.

  Panicked. She was panicked. Mainly because she was more concerned about the aftermath of spending the night with Wyatt up on Twin Hearts than she was about the competition, and that was distressing.

  This was wrong. Very wrong. Nothing mattered more to her than Bella Notte—except for her family—and they were part and parcel of the same thing. She couldn’t separate the two.

  But now, here she was thinking about the magic of last night. How special it had been, how she could feel herself losing control of a man who was supposed to have been nothing more than a casual summer fling.

  Kiara knew it wasn’t true. That no matter how much she told herself that Wyatt was just a guy, she knew she was lying to herself.

  Lying and hiding from her feelings.

  Stop it. Stop thinking about him.

  No matter how she chastised herself she could not keep from thinking about how his body felt buried inside hers. How he smelled so rich and sweet like the most sinful chocolates on earth. How she wanted to believe in the legend.

  Kiara’s intern, Lauren, came from the lab wheeling the crate of wine on a dolly. “You ready to load these?”

  “Yes, thank you, you’re a sweetheart for helping,” Kiara said, grateful.

  Maurice assisted Lauren loading up the crates.

  Grandmamma came from the house, headed over to the van. “I made cinnamon rolls for your trip.”

  “Thank you,” Kiara said, taking the sack that Grandmamma presented to her.

  Lauren turned, went back to the lab.

  Grandmamma put her hands on her hips, slanted her head, studied Kiara for a long moment.

  “What is it?” Kiara asked, a ripple of alarm sliding through her.

  “You look different,” Grandmamma said.

  Surely what she’d done the night before was not detectable on her face. She’d taken a shower, changed her clothes. Now, she ran a hand through her hair. “No, not different. I’m the same. Exactly the same.”

  Grandmamma stared as if she didn’t believe a word of it. “Where is Wyatt?”

  “I don’t know. Why should I know? It wasn’t my turn to look after him.”

  Grandmamma and Maurice exchanged a look.

  “Last night was the full moon,” Grandmamma announced.

  “Was it?” Kiara asked, trying to be cool and failing miserably.

  “It was.”

  Maurice and Grandmamma kept staring at her.

  “What?” she finally snapped, getting irritated.

  A sly smile curled her grandmother’s lips. “Nothing,” she said. “Enjoy your cinnamon rolls.”

  She strolled back into the house, but Kiara heard her humming beneath her breath. “Bella Notte.” She was humming “Bella Notte.”

  “My little cousin is finally in love.” Maurice laughed.

  “I’m not in love,” Kiara denied. “Not at all.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Where were you last night?”

  “That’s none of your business. And I’m not in love.”

  Maurice just laughed louder.

  Glowering, Kiara shoved the last crate into the back of the van. Then she climbed inside. “Are you coming or not?”

  “Oh,” Maurice said. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

  WYATT REACHED BELLA Notte, breathless and sweaty. He’d run the two miles in fifteen minutes with the blanket thrown over his shoulder and the bottle of Decadent Midnight tucked under his arm.

  The first person he saw when he arrived was Steve.

  Steve stared at him and shook his head. “Dude.”

  “What is it?”

  Steve’s eyes widened. “Um…you look a mess.”

  “Never mind that, where’s Kiara?”

  “Long gone. She took the morning ferry to the mainland.”

  Kiara went to the competition without him? He could see her leaving him on the peak. She’d been flustered and embarrassed, maybe even overwhelmed by her feelings. He got that, he was overwhelmed too, but to go off and leave him? Well, his feelings were hurt.

  “When’s the next ferry?”

  “Not for two hours.”

  He glanced at his watch. He could still make it to the competition by noon.

 
; He tried to call Kiara, but she didn’t—or wouldn’t—pick up.

  “Kiara,” he blurted, when it went to voice mail. “Please don’t shut me out like this. We have to talk. There’s something important I have to tell you. Something I should have told you last night. Call me as soon as you get this. I’m taking the next ferry to the mainland. I’m coming to Sonoma.”

  He hung up, feeling more guilt than he’d ever felt in his life. Perhaps he should have just told her in the phone message who he was, but he didn’t want to break the news to her like that. This was something he needed to tell her in person, face-to-face. He couldn’t take the easy way out.

  Then a chilling idea occurred to him. What if she’d somehow discovered who he was? That would explain the cold shoulder. But how could she have found out between last night and this morning? Maybe he talked in his sleep? It was a formidable thought. Losing her was a very real possibility.

  He went to the lab to kill time until the next ferry. Or at least that’s what he told himself. In all honesty, he went there because it was the closest he could come to being with Kiara. He opened the side door and walked in. He sat down at the stool where she had first interviewed him.

  Kiara.

  He gripped the table. If he lost her, he’d never forgive himself. That’s when he noticed the bottle of vinegar sitting on the desk. He got up to put it under the counter. Kiara kept a spotless, well-organized lab. Lauren had probably left it out. When he bent to put the vinegar in the acid cabinet, that’s when he saw the 50-cc syringe with the thin-gauge needle in the trash. Now, that was a health hazard. He knew Kiara had not done that.

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor.

  Wyatt didn’t know why, but he ducked behind the room divider. Guilty conscience most likely.

  The door opened.

  “It’s done,” the woman said, and he recognized the voice as Lauren’s. Was she talking to him? Had she seen him dive behind the divider?

  Feeling sheepish, he was about to come out when he heard her say, “The only thing Decadent Midnight will win now is a vinegar contest.”

  She must be on the phone.

  He thought of the vinegar bottle. Of the syringe in the trash can. A chill of dread moved through him.

  “No, thank you, Mr. DeSalme. I can’t wait to start working for you.”

  He almost couldn’t believe the implications of what she was saying. He didn’t want to believe it, but he knew exactly what his older brothers were capable of. They’d do a lot of underhanded things to win. Like send a corporate spy to monitor their competition. Or get an ambitious intern to spike the competition’s superior wine with vinegar.

  Rage propelled Wyatt from behind the divider. “What in the hell did you do?”

  Lauren shrieked, threw her phone in the air. “Jesus,” she cried and splayed a hand over her chest. “You scared the crap out of me.”

  He stalked toward her. She backpedaled fast. “My brothers put you up to spiking the wine Kiara took to the competition.”

  Lauren shrugged. “Prove it.”

  The look on her face was all the proof he needed. “Your fingerprints are bound to be all over the syringe and bottles.”

  “Big deal. I could have touched those things at any time. I work in the lab.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’re not getting away with it.”

  THE BEST OF the Best Award was being held at the Sonoma Civic Center as part of a four-day-long Fourth of July celebration. The streets were lined with banners welcoming visitors. Tourists packed shops and boutiques. The traffic coming into town moved at a crawl. Kiara had been here before and had expected the delay. It was several hours before they had to have their wine in front of the judges for the taste test, but they had to be registered by noon and it was eleven-fifteen now.

  She could feel the tension mounting. What if Decadent Midnight wasn’t as good as she thought it was? What if someone like DeSalme blew them out of the water?

  They were in DeSalme territory after all. Everywhere they looked signs advertised DeSalme Wineries. People carried shopping bags with the DeSalme Logo etched on them.

  What had she been thinking? A tiny family winery didn’t stand a chance up against the corporate wines. Those taste tests where consumers went for brand loyalty over taste haunted her.

  “Remember Chateau Montelena,” Maurice said, reading her mind.

  Chateau Montelena was a small winery in Napa Valley that in 1976 beat out a French chardonnay in a blind taste test in France known famously as the Judgment of Paris and immortalized in the film Bottle Shock. The wine had rocked the industry, proving once and for all that California chardonnays could compete with French wines.

  “If Chateau Montelena can score against the big boys, we can too.”

  Kiara glanced over at her cousin. She and Maurice had had their differences. Philosophically, they disagreed on almost everything. But they were family and right now, she felt closer to Maurice than anyone.

  “Thanks for holding my hand,” she said.

  “Hey, you and I clash a lot, but we’re both Romanos.” Maurice smiled. “Do you remember that time when we were kids and we visited the DeSalme Winery?”

  Kiara shook her head. “No.”

  “You were probably too young. I was around eight, so you would have been what, five?”

  “Why were we at DeSalme?”

  “That was before they went corporate. Back when Richard DeSalme was still running the place.”

  “Not ringing a bell.” She knew what Maurice was doing, trying to take her mind off the upcoming competition and she appreciated it.

  “They invited us to a big cookout, along with several other wine people.”

  Kiara cast her mind back. “Wait a minute. Did they have a swimming pool and horses?”

  “They did.”

  “Hmm, I do remember it. Vaguely.”

  “I’m Eric’s age. We got into a wrestling match. He beat me, but he cheated, put me in a full Nelson.”

  “Oh, well, your skills lie elsewhere, cousin.”

  A memory flitted. She remembered the smell of barbecue, a group of rowdy children running through vineyards, playing tag. She was “it” and she walked to the end of the row and there had been a boy about her own age, with compelling chocolate-brown eyes. An odd sensation ran through her. Eyes the same color as Wyatt’s.

  Wyatt.

  She felt badly about that. He’d tried to call her several times, but she’d let it go to voice mail. She still wasn’t ready to talk to him. Still hadn’t sorted out how she was going to deal with these scary feelings. Once this competition was behind her, she’d be ready to sit down with him and have an honest discussion.

  Maurice navigated the Civic Center parking lot, and parked in a spot reserved for contestants. Kiara quickly forget the memory as they took four crates from the back and loaded them onto the rolling dolly. She wondered if she’d been fooling herself. The wine was good. But did they honestly stand a chance of taking the Best of the Best against DeSalme?

  When they were finished loading, Maurice wheeled the dolly toward the Civic Center and Kiara trotted ahead so she could open the door for them. A blast of cool air hit them as they entered the long corridor leading to the event room where the judging would take place.

  The center was a bustle of activity. Contestants, judges and ancillary staff buzzing around, setting up. A news crew was on hand from a local news station. The walls of the corridors were plastered with advertising, most of it from wineries throughout California. Bella Notte hadn’t been able to afford the advertising that often ran to six figures.

  “I heard DeSalme is unveiling a new advertising campaign today,” Maurice said, reading her thoughts again.

  “We certainly can’t compete with them on that score.”

  “No worries.” Maurice grinned. “We’ll let our wine do the talking. After this, word of mouth will be all we need.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

 
“Stop thinking about that taste test you conducted in grad school. It was one test, years ago.”

  They had almost reached the door where contestants were supposed to enter. There, plastered from floor to ceiling was DeSalme’s new poster.

  The slogan read DeSalme, from our family to yours.

  But that’s not what stopped Kiara in her tracks, Maurice kept walking, not noticing that the panoramic poster had ensnared her.

  Beneath the slogan was a picture of the DeSalme winery, stretching out, classy and beautiful. To the left side of the poster, superimposed over the vineyards was a picture of the DeSalme brothers.

  She’d always thought there were just two DeSalmes, but this picture depicted three siblings, their names emblazed under their photos in elegant script. Scott. Eric. Wyatt.

  From the poster, Wyatt’s brown eyes met Kiara’s. His hair was cut short and he wasn’t wearing glasses, but it was Wyatt.

  It took her a second to process what she was seeing. Why was Wyatt Jordan’s picture on the poster for DeSalme wine?

  Did that mean…

  Oh, dear God. Her stomach lurched and for one horrible second, she thought she was going to throw up.

  The man who’d been working at Bella Notte for the past month, the man she’d just spent the night with on Twin Hearts. The man she’d shared a bottle of Decadent Midnight with under a full moon on the last day of June. The man she’d fallen in love with was up there on the poster with Scott and Eric DeSalme.

  The truth hit her with the force of an open-handed slap.

  Wyatt was a corporate spy.

  12

  Blind tasting: To taste wines without

  knowing their identity.

  “KIARA?” MAURICE CALLED her name.

  She stood there in a daze, her eyes fixed on Wyatt’s charming printed smile.

  Maurice followed her gaze. “What the hell?”

  The air-conditioning was chilling her to the bone. Slowly, haltingly, she faced her cousin. “Let’s go check in,” she said, keeping her voice completely emotionless.

  “That’s Wyatt.”

  “I see that.”

  “He’s a DeSalme.”

  “So it seems.”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “Did you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  She shook herself. “It’s getting late. We need to register.”