The human body is 90 percent water, so basically we’re all just cucumbers with anxiety.
Over the next week, Lanie learned something about herself that she’d not paid any attention to in the past. She liked her work, a lot. But something odd was happening to her resolve of remaining emotionally distant.
She found herself sucked into the daily life of this beautiful place. And not just with the twins either, although they spent a lot of time underfoot. Literally. They loved Lanie’s shoes—one of her vices—so they were constantly coming in after school to see which pair she was wearing that day, waiting to try them on. Lanie had actually brought in two spare sets to her desk today so the twins could each wear a pair at the same time, although she’d had to chase Gracie away from stealing them—twice. She’d finally gone back to her cottage for a pair of her old sneakers and given them to the dog.
Emotionally distant, her ass . . .
The offices were ramping up for the upcoming tourist and wedding season, and everyone was working hard. Uncle Jack’s very spoiled teenage twin grandkids were working as office assistants and Mia had them running ragged, as she was overworked herself. When they complained that she was being mean, Mia brought Holden into the office.
He was a good-looking guy in his early twenties and in his prime, though at the moment he appeared to be done in. He wore jeans, a white T-shirt covered in various stains, was sunburned, and looked like he needed a nap and a burger and not in any particular order. “What can I do for you?” he asked Mia in a polite voice.
Mia looked at her cousins while jabbing a finger at Holden. “There,” she said. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes,” one of them said. “He’s got a southern accent. It’s cute. He’s cute. Twice this week we’ve seen him trying to make friends with River, but she’s mean to him. We wanted to be . . . not mean to him. But Grandpa told us if we tried to date him he’d take away our phones.”
Holden grimaced but didn’t say anything, just looked at Mia, brows raised. Waiting.
Mia shook her head at her cousins in disbelief. “So you’re disrespectful on top of spoiled.” She sighed. “Just like me. But unlike me, you’re not going to take another decade to get things right. Holden is one of our best employees.”
Holden looked a little surprised at this.
“He works his ass off,” Mia said. “He’s been at it since four thirty this morning and he should be off work now, but you know what? I called and he came in to ask me how he could help. That’s pride of workmanship and dedication, and it’s rewarded here. But those rewards have to be earned. Go tell Owen that I sent you out there to scrub barrels.”
They both opened their mouths in protest, but Mia lifted a hand and said, “File your complaints with someone who cares. I’m done with you in these offices today. Come back when you understand hard work.” She waited until they were gone. “I’d pray for strength and patience,” she said to Lanie. “But then I’d need to pray for bail money too.” Then she turned to Holden. “How’s that new truck?”
For the first time he dropped his deadpan expression and grinned, and Lanie saw a glimpse of his personality.
“Fuckin’ rocks,” he said. “I can’t believe your mom and Grandpa got it for me.”
“Our horse wrangler needs a truck for his image.” Mia tossed him a soda from the fridge, and he thanked her and left. When he was gone, Mia said, “He’s a great kid.”
“He’s not a kid, he’s your age,” Lanie said.
“I know. And I’ve had a crush on him since he first showed up here at age fifteen, beaten half to death and on his own.” She lifted a shoulder. “You know my mom, she collects lost souls. So she took him in and he’s been family ever since. Just about broke her heart when he went into the army two years ago, but he said he had to find his own way. He’s on leave for another month-ish.”
“So you no longer have a crush on him?”
“Oh, I do,” Mia said. “But Mom long ago told me that if I ever slept with him, she’d take away my phone.”
Lanie laughed. “So you really do get your cousins.”
“Yep.”
Lanie shook her head. “But I’m pretty sure no one tells you what to do.”
“There’s that . . .” Mia looked at the door where Holden had vanished and sighed. “But he’s done being wild and I’m just getting going. I don’t want to be reined in.”
Cora poked her head in. “Scrubbing barrels?” she asked.
Mia sighed. “Those little tattletales. I suppose you want me to go easier on them.”
“On the contrary,” Cora said. “Holden caught them smoking weed in the storage shed yesterday so I vote for doubling whatever workload you’ve got for them. My favorite punishment is making them work in the barn with their hands tied together so they learn teamwork.” Then she winked at them both and left.
Lanie went to bed early, tired but . . . feeling pretty good. She was actually starting to enjoy herself here. Yeah, the winery was like a small town, complete with the gossip mill, and lunch continued to be a daily telenovela, but at least she was no longer the New Girl. River had fallen into that role. Oddly enough, Lanie was pretty sure River was avoiding her at all costs, but that didn’t bother Lanie any. The girl was young, apparently very alone, and the Capriottis had gathered her to their collective bosom.
Not a surprise, given who Cora was. “She’s a baby having a baby,” she’d told Lanie quietly that first day. “She was living out of her car and I think she’s running away from something. Or someone.”
Say what you wanted about the Capriottis, but they were a protective, loyal bunch and they rallied around their own.
Unlike Lanie, River took to the attention, easily embracing the family. Lanie had to admire the spirit, but she was still happy at the farthest corner of the farthest table. She’d gone back to eating her bagged lunches. She’d had to, for the sake of her clothes. Nobody liked it and they teased her about it, but . . . they let her be.
And that was the thing she was just starting to understand. As busybody and in everyone’s business as they were, they understood individuality.
As often as he could manage, Mark showed up, blowing in like a wild force of nature, looking badass in his uniform as he accepted a huge plate of food from one of his sisters or his mom, shoved his lunch in his mouth, loved up on his girls, and blew back out again.
Which was a relief. For whatever reason, he just wasn’t as easy to ignore as the rest of the Capriottis, especially as he was cool and distant now, not giving her that flirty smile as he had at first.
She deserved that. She’d earned that. And it was exactly how she wanted things. At least she believed it during the days, but the long, lonely nights . . . they told her something else entirely.
Which she steadfastly ignored.
One afternoon at the end of her third week, she was deep in computer mode, working on the different specs required for the variety of media she was creating, from billboards to boxes to sell sheets to stationery, when she realized her neck was burning like maybe she was being watched. Lifting her head, she found four eyes on her.
Sam and Sierra were leaning against the far corner of her desk. “You two need to wear bells,” she said.
Samantha smiled. “Grandma says that too!”
Sierra nodded and Lanie felt her own smile curve her mouth. Sierra had gone from never making eye contact to actually smiling at her. She still hadn’t spoken, but then again, there probably was no real need when Samantha spoke at one hundred miles per hour for all of them. “You two aren’t my Secret Santa, are you?” she asked. She nudged her chin toward a mug of coffee that had appeared on her desk when she’d gone on break. And it hadn’t been the first time either. She owed someone a most heartfelt thank-you. “Someone keeps leaving me a new coffee with three sugars in it, just the way I like it.”
“We’re not allowed to touch the coffeemaker,” Sam said. “Not since the time we put peanut butter and chocolate chips in it to try and make a peanut butter hot chocolate. It sorta exploded.”
“Okay,” Lanie said. “Good to know.”
“That’s what I told Grandma, but she still got mad. We’ve got a question.”
“I don’t know how to make peanut butter hot chocolate,” Lanie said.
“No,” Sam said. “We want to know where babies come from.”
Lanie choked on the coffee her Secret Santa had left her, spilling it down the front of herself.
Sierra patted her sweetly on the back and silently offered her a napkin.
Samantha just waited patiently for her answer.
“You know,” Lanie finally said, swiping her chin. “Maybe this is a question for your dad.”
“Oh, we’re going to ask him too, but Tommy at school just told us a gross story about how his dog pooped out her puppies and that it was really, really icky. Do you think that human babies get pooped out too?”
God help her. “Uh . . .”
Luckily she didn’t have to figure out an end to that sentence because Mark himself appeared in the doorway. He took one look at his girls crawling all over her desk and looked pained. “What have I told you about leaving Miss Lanie alone?”
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” Samantha shouted in glee. “Miss Lanie was just about to tell us where human babies come from!”
Mark’s brows arched so high they vanished into his hairline and he too took a stance leaning against her desk, all long and leanly muscled, armed to the teeth, his expression mockingly expectant. “Was she now?”
Lanie narrowed her eyes, but all he did was smirk, the ass.
“’Cuz, Daddy! Tommy said his dog pooped out her babies! But we’re not borned like that, right? Where did we come from?”
Mark’s expression softened as he picked her up and swung her around to hang off his back piggy-back style. Then he reached his arms out for Sierra, who took a flying leap for him. “You both came straight from heaven,” he said.
This invoked peals of giggles, and then Sam had one more question. “Daddy, will I have kids from heaven too?”
“Someday,” he said. Then he paused. “Just promise me you’ll ignore boys who text you after eleven o’clock at night.”
“Well, duh,” she said. “I’m sleeping then.”
Mark smiled and he turned to the door to leave, but paused, looking back at Lanie.
“Sorry for the intrusion,” he said.
“They’re never an intrusion,” she said and was shocked to realize she meant it.
He registered her words with a single nod of his head. Then he walked out with the girls, one upside down and one right side up, both beaming from ear to ear and absolutely not tugging at her cold, hard heart.
But only a little tug, she told herself. She needed to remember why she was here. To reset her life after Kyle had detonated it. With his $100,000 life-insurance policy payout in her bank account, she’d had the luxury of making this temporary change to recover. Not to get involved in these people’s lives.
Period.
IT WAS NEAR the end of the day when Lanie walked by the front reception room and found River looking more green than the grass out front. River was still keeping her distance, so Lanie’s first instinct was to keep walking, but she couldn’t do it. “Hey, you okay?”
River held up a finger, closed her eyes, and did some deep breathing while rubbing her belly.
“Do you need a doctor?”
“No!” River drew in a careful breath. “I can’t afford one right now, but I’m okay and so’s the baby. I just still get morning sickness all day sometimes—” She broke off and moaned a little, and if possible went even greener. When the desk phone beside her rang, she moaned again and grabbed the trash can.
Oh shit, Lanie thought, wanting to take a big step backward. And maybe two weeks ago she’d have done just that, but one thing working here had taught her, they were a team.
Dammit.
So she leaned past River hunched miserably over her trash can and grabbed the phone. “Capriotti Winery.”
“You’re supposed to say how can I help you?” River managed to whisper.
“How can I help you?” Lanie added into the phone.
“Yeah, hi,” came a nasally female voice. “I’d like to book a wedding for this coming Saturday for me and my husband. Well, husband-to-be. Okay, so he doesn’t know he’s my husband-to-be—he hasn’t asked me yet, but he’s going to. Tonight, if he knows what’s good for him. But in any case, I want to book our wedding for Saturday.”
Lanie didn’t know much about running the front desk, but she knew this much. “We’re booked out the next six months of Saturdays.”
“Okay, fine, we’ll take Sunday. Or Friday, but I’d expect a deep discount to get married on Friday, so—”
“No,” Lanie said. “All days are booked out six months.”
“Are you shittin’ me?”
Lanie looked over at River, who’d gotten her color back somewhat. Or at least she’d gone from green to a sort of opal. River shook her head and Lanie said into the phone, “Nope, I’m not ‘shittin’ you,’ we’re booked solid.”
River let out a horrified laugh and shook her head no a little frantically.
“Well, that’s just crap!” the bride-to-be said in Lanie’s ear. “I’m going to stop drinking your wines immediately!”
Click.
Lanie shrugged and set the phone down. “Her loss. We make some damn fine wine. Do you deal with this stuff all day long?”
“Well, not exactly like that,” River said. “You’re supposed to be nicer.”
“She hung up on me.”
“I take it you’ve never been in a customer service job, like waitressing.”
Lanie shook her head.
“You’re supposed to make the customers happy.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure she was a lost cause.” Lanie pulled her blueberry-vanilla snack bar from her pocket and handed it over to River.
“What’s this?” River asked.
“It’ll give you a little energy boost and maybe soothe your tummy while it’s at it.”
River shook her head. “I can’t take your snack.”
“Sure you can, as I took it from the basket in the staff room. You need to keep a little something in your stomach.”
River stared at her. “Why are you helping me?”
Lanie didn’t quite understand the question. “Because I really wanted the chocolate chip bar anyway, so now I can just go back and—”
“You answered the phone for me. You gave me your snack.”
“Yeah,” Lanie said slowly. “That’s what they do here, help each other.”
“It’s just . . . not what I’m used to,” River said very quietly.
And Lanie, who kept promising herself not to get attached to anyone except the twins—and kept failing spectacularly, by the way—sighed because she felt her heart squeezing yet again. “Honestly? Me either,” she admitted. “But this is a good place. And good people. You’re safe here—you know that, right?”
River broke the eye contact just as the mail carrier came in with a huge stack of mail. He smiled at River and tossed her a package. “Looks like you got another one,” he said and winked.
“Another what?” Lanie asked.
“Someone keeps sending me baby stuff from different online stores. And books too.” She hugged the package to her chest.
Alyssa arrived with steam coming out of her ears. “You know what’s sucky?” she asked the room. “When your husband asks if you’re mad at him and you say no and he believes you!”
River and Lanie looked at each other in confusion.
“Let me spell it out for you,” Alyssa said. “I’m never speaking to my husband again.” And then she proceeded to go lock herself in the employee room.
Which wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that both the refrigerator and the copy machine were in that room. Lanie, needing both her snack and some copies made, was the first to discover Alyssa’s shut-in.
“Go away,” Alyssa called through the door. “Especially if your name is Owen.”
“It’s not,” Lanie said. Her stomach growled. “Maybe you could just hand me a—”
“Not until you tell Owen that he’s never going to get laid again.”
“He’s not here.”
“Then text him.”
Lanie blew out a breath. “Alyssa—”
“Text him!” And then she rattled off his phone number.
River came up next to Lanie. “I need to make copies,” she said.
“No one’s making copies!” Alyssa yelled through the door.
River looked at Lanie.
Lanie sighed and pulled out her phone and texted Owen: Your wife has gone over the edge.
The return text was immediate: Baby hormones are a bitch.
“Well?” Alyssa demanded. “What did he say? Did you tell him he was never getting laid again? Ever?”
Lanie didn’t answer because she was busy texting Owen back: If you value your future sex life, you might want to come down here.
This time she got no answer.
“Well?” Alyssa demanded. “What did he say?”
“I’m waiting to hear.”
“Husbands are dumb,” Alyssa said. “Men are dumb.”
“Not all of them,” Lanie said. “Some are good.”
“Which was your husband? Good or dumb?”
River seemed to be hanging on whatever answer Lanie had, but she wasn’t going to touch that one, not when the truth was she’d married a man who’d appeared too good to be true and she should’ve realized she was buying a really great act. But he’d taken out the trash and he’d made her laugh, and she’d settled for a lot less than she’d meant to. “I thought he was a good guy, but it turns out I was wrong,” she admitted. “Very wrong. But Alyssa, I’ve seen Owen with you. He really is one of the good ones.”
“Yeah.” Alyssa sighed. “I know. Did he respond?”
No. So Lanie decided to wing it. “He said he loves you very much and that the two of you can work this out in private, somewhere other than the employee room,” she said, grimacing at River, who was still standing there, now wide-eyed and slack-jawed, presumably impressed by her lying skills.
“Oh.” Alyssa sounded somewhat mollified. “Did he say anything else?”
“Uh . . .” She looked at River, who bit her lower lip and gave her a say more gesture. Lanie closed her eyes and thought about what she might want to hear from the love of her life. But here was the problem: she’d never had a real love of her life.
Oh, Kyle had played the part. He’d romanced her—hard too. And he’d been good at it. But the thing was, love wasn’t in the bouquet of flowers or the romantic, candle-lit dinners. It was in the everyday stuff, like knowing when your person was tired and needed help, understanding what made them tick, what to do to soothe and comfort.
How to be at their back when their back was up against a wall.
She knew from what she’d seen of Alyssa and Owen that they had that kind of love. So she made it all up. “He wants to take you out, just the two of you, somewhere special where he can tell you how attractive and gorgeous and amazing you are.”
“We don’t have a babysitter.”
Okay, so she shouldn’t have, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. “Your brother said he’d babysit.”
An almost inaudible snort had her turning around. Mark stood next to River in full uniform, arms crossed, dark sunglasses on, looking intimidating as hell. At just the sight of him, River let out a little squeak of surprise and/or terror and took a step toward Lanie. Lanie slipped her hand in hers and squeezed lightly.
“Do I need to haul you in for lying your cute ass off?” Mark asked Lanie, his tone sardonic and maybe slightly amused.
She simply pointed to the still-closed door. “This is on you.”
“Me?” He removed his sunglasses and gave a look of disbelief. “How do you figure?”
“You’ve got a penis, don’t you?”
River let out a horrified, choked laugh and covered her mouth.
Mark didn’t take his eyes off Lanie. “I do in fact have a penis.”
River pulled free of Lanie’s hand. “I’ve gotta go back to my desk.” And then she vanished faster than an almost seven months’ pregnant woman should be able to move.
“I’m out too,” Lanie said. “You people are exhausting!” With that, she stalked through the place, heading toward the office, where she worked for a few hours without pause. Finally her stomach told her it was going to riot if she didn’t put something in it. She looked up and realized everyone was gone for the day. Telling herself to just grab another snack so she could finish up the last of her stuff for the day, she ran to the employee room and took another bar. When she got back to her desk, Uncle Jack was there. Baby Elsa was in her baby seat on top of Lanie’s desk, her eyes screwed shut, her mouth wide open as she wailed at top decibel, her tiny fists waving in the air as she let anyone and everyone within a twenty-mile radius know that she was one seriously pissed-off baby.
“Sorry,” Jack said, standing, saying something that couldn’t be heard over the sheer volume of the baby’s cries.
“What?” Lanie yelled.
“I took on babysitting but I can’t get her to be quiet. I’ve tried everything!” he yelled back.
“I thought Mark was in charge!”
“I told him I wanted to do it! I was clearly temporarily insane!”
Just then Mark appeared and did what he did best—took charge. He leaned in and scooped up the baby. “What’s the fuss, cute stuff?” the big, bad, tough sheriff crooned softly, his fingers tracing the outlines of Elsa’s cheeks, wiping away her tears.
She immediately stopped with the screaming to stare up at Mark in that total absorption babies have when they’ve encountered something new and exciting.
He laid her against his broad-as-a-mountain shoulder and patted her back.
Elsa burped once and beamed a drooly smile at Mark that could’ve melted the polar ice caps. She then went on to babble and coo at him, all while pumping and waving her arms and legs like a very happy camper.
He smiled at her and kissed her forehead.
This caused a long string of “goo-goo-ba-ba” before Elsa stuck her thumb in her mouth.
Both Lanie and Uncle Jack stared at Mark, probably with the exact same absorption Elsa had. “How?” Jack asked.
Mark shrugged as the baby’s tiny hand gripped one of his fingers in a baby death grip, like she was never letting him go.
Lanie couldn’t blame her. She probably wouldn’t want to let go either. Also, she was stunned. Was no female on earth immune to the Capriotti charm?
As if he could read her thoughts, he gave her a steady gaze that did funny things to her insides she couldn’t have explained to save her life.
“You’ve got the touch,” Uncle Jack said.
No kidding, Lanie thought.
“It’s like you’re Batman, Superman, and Prince Charming all wrapped up in one,” Uncle Jack said.
And Lanie couldn’t help it, she snorted.
Mark grimaced and handed the baby back to Uncle Jack. He then took Lanie by the hand. “We’ve got a thing.”