7
Why had Nic kissed her?
As the question passed through her brain for the four thousandth time that day, Brenna found herself no closer to an answer. She didn’t know why he’d kissed her, and she sure didn’t know why she’d let him. It had been stupid. He was her…She hesitated. Not business partner, but something. The man had loaned her a lot of money. She shouldn’t go around kissing him. Their relationship had to be strictly business. Actually, in the best of all worlds they wouldn’t have a relationship at all. They would nod as they passed each other at the grocery store, nothing more.
But last night she’d done a lot more than nod. If she hadn’t come to her senses when she did, she probably would have been ripping off her clothes and begging him to take her.
She crossed to the large fermenting vat in the main building of the Marcelli Winery and checked the temperature of the pale liquid inside. After noting the number on her clipboard, she walked to the next vat.
It didn’t mean anything, she told herself. It couldn’t. She and Nic were old news. Last night had been…a warning, she decided. That was it. He’d kissed her, she kissed him back, and that was certainly something they couldn’t do. Not if she was going to stay sane, not to mention safe. As far as she was concerned, Nic Giovanni was still dangerous. Pathetic, but true. She would avoid him and thereby avoid the problem. And should she find herself in his company-because she was spending a lot of time at his place-she would treat him like a co-worker. There would be no intimate conversations, no lip locking of any kind, and certainly no naked body parts pressing and slipping together in a way designed to make both people feel as if their entire-
“Snap out of it,” she muttered as she walked to the next vat. “Work. Concentrate on work.”
Easier said than done when the yeasty smell filling the room reminded her of making love with Nic. She sighed. Why couldn’t he have been a car mechanic? Then they could have made love in an auto shop instead of a winery. She could easily go the rest of her life without smelling motor oil. Wine and wine-making scents, on the other hand, were impossible to avoid.
So why had he kissed her?
Brenna nearly screamed out loud when she realized she’d mentally circled around to the damn kiss again.
“Brenna? Are you in here?”
“Yes, Grandpa.”
A distraction, she thought. That was something.
She wove her way through the massive vats toward the door. Grandpa Lorenzo stood just inside the fermentation room. He held several sheets of paper in his hand. She recognized the brightly colored logo in the top corner and felt her need to scream increase. Judging from the look on the elder Marcelli’s face, this wasn’t going to go well.
“I have the new label designs,” he said when she stopped in front of him. “For the Reserve Chardonnay.”
She clutched her clipboard to her chest and vowed she would not react, no matter what he said.
Despite his seventy-plus years, her grandfather stood straight and tall, several inches taller than she. He might have gray in his hair, but his dark eyes were still young and expressive. They could flash with anger and disapproval. Gee, they were doing it right now. She braced herself for the complaint.
“What is this?” he asked, holding up the first design. “A horse? A goat? We now have animals on our labels?”
Abstract designs in cool colors swirled together in the center of the label, before bleeding out into the mossy green of the border.
“It’s not a goat,” she said. “It’s not anything. Just colors and shapes together.”
He turned the paper around so he could squint at it, then shook his head. “No goats.”
He flipped through the six remaining designs. “Too flashy. Too new. Why do we have to change the labels on the Reserve Chardonnay? The old labels work fine. People know what they look like. Simple. Marcelli Wines in big letters. Not this.”
He flung the sheet with the picture of the arch over the entrance to the winery at her. Brenna caught it and set the paper on her clipboard.
“We’ve been using the same label for five years, Grandpa. It’s time for a change.” She willed herself to be patient. “We discussed this. You agreed.”
He dismissed her with a flick of his hand. “I wouldn’t agree to such nonsense. I hate them all. Who did you hire to come up with these?”
Brenna’s teeth ached from grinding them together. “A firm in Los Angeles. I picked them because they were innovative and excited by the project.” She took the rest of the pages from him. “I happen to like what they’ve done.”
He frowned. “Not the goat.”
“It wasn’t my favorite, but I thought the others were great. Obviously you didn’t. I’ll phone them and have them send us out some more ideas.”
“Tell them to make the new labels like the old ones.”
“If you want them exactly the same, what’s the point in bothering with a new design?” She sucked in a breath. “I know our loyal customers recognize our label, but they would still find us with a new one, and we might attract new buyers.”
“So now you know what our buyers think, eh?”
“I’ve been reading up on marketing. I’ve given you several articles. Didn’t you look at them?”
He shrugged. “I’m busy. Besides, what do they know? My father started Marcelli Wines from nothing. He took this earth and he created all that you see around us. When they respect that, we’ll talk.”
Brenna wasn’t even sure who “they” were. Before she could ask, her grandfather sighed heavily and tossed the labels on the floor.
“You need to respect the old ways.”
Hardly a news flash, she thought as she gauged the distance to the door and wondered if running screaming into the afternoon would make her feel better. It wasn’t quite as good as running screaming into the night, but a woman had to make the best of what was available.
“I respect the old ways,” she said, striving for calm. “I’m also interested in what the new ways have to offer.”
He shook his head in obvious disgust. “Your brother, he would listen.”
Brenna was so stunned, she nearly dropped the clipboard. “What? My brother? The guy you’ve never even met? How on earth do you know what he would do or not do? That is such an unfair thing to say to me. If Joe has any interest at all in this winery, it’s only for the money.”
She would know. When she and Francesca had gone to meet Joe Larson, their long-lost brother, he’d shown little or no interest in the Marcelli family until he’d heard there was a winery worth about forty million dollars.
Lorenzo drew his thick eyebrows together. “The wine is in his blood.”
“I don’t think so. You can’t be serious about leaving everything to him.”
Her grandfather shrugged. “I do what I have to do.”
He turned and left.
Brenna sank onto the floor and rested her head on her knees. “This is not happening,” she murmured. Her eyes burned, her chest hurt. There was no way her grandfather could really leave the winery to someone he’d never met. Blood or no blood. And doing it just because Joe was a guy?
“This sucks,” she whispered.
It more than sucked. It hurt down to her bones. Of course she’d known that having a brother changed things, but she’d hoped she’d been wrong.
The designs for the labels lay where Grandpa Lorenzo had tossed them. Apparently her disagreements with him over the labels were the least of her problems. Things had gotten so difficult that she and her grandfather couldn’t go a day without arguing about something. Half the time she expected him to fire her. Except she was family and he couldn’t.
But he didn’t have to keep her in charge. If he hated everything she was trying to do, why not hire someone
