Be Mine Forever (A St. Helena Vineyard Novel) Read online

  Also in Marina Adair’s St. Helena Vineyard Series

  Kissing Under the Mistletoe

  Summer in Napa

  Autumn in the Vineyard

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2014 Marina Adair

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  ISBN-13: 9781612184739

  ISBN-10: 1612184731

  Cover design by Kerrie Robertson

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013915254

  To my amazing critique partner, Brittney, for the friendship, never-ending belief, and around-the-clock tech support. This journey wouldn’t be the same without you.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  SNEAK PEEK: FROM THE MOMENT WE MET

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  Trey DeLuca hated hospitals. Almost as much as he hated himself right now.

  Four calls. He’d received four calls over the past two days from his family, which he’d selfishly chosen to ignore. Another three came in while he’d been in transit from Paris to San Francisco. All from his oldest brother, Gabe. And all with the same message: Call me.

  So he had. And was sent straight to voice mail.

  Trey reached the emergency room entrance and was hit by the smell of ammonia and a sterile vibe that gave him the willies. It was a pretty quiet night. Most of the seats in the waiting room were empty. Then again, St. Helena, California, with its not-quite-six-thousand residents, wasn’t exactly a hive of activity.

  Stopping at the information desk, he tugged his coat tighter around him, sending rain drops scattering to the floor. “Excuse me, can you tell me what room ChiChi Ryo is in?”

  “Sure, Mr. um…” the woman standing behind the nurses’ station looked up from the computer screen and trailed off with a smile.

  “DeLuca. I’m her grandson.”

  “Hey, Trey. It’s been a while.” Her smile grew…flirtier. She came out from behind the desk and gave him a hug—the kind of hug that people who had history shared, the sweaty and gasping-for-air kind of history. She pulled back, a little frown creasing her forehead. “Kayla, remember?”

  Blonde with a tight body and nice rack. She was hot too. Even in those scrubs. But familiar? Trey couldn’t say. Had he not been jet-lagged and crazy with worry, he might have been able to place her face, or that cute little ass, but right now all he could focus on was his nonna’s message. The one begging him to come home, telling him that she needed him by her side.

  At first he’d just thought it was one of ChiChi’s “stop breaking your grandmother’s heart and come home” calls—something he avoided as much as possible since it meant caving in to the guilt and agreeing to an elongated happy-family stay—so he’d ignored it. Then he’d received a call from each one of his three brothers, in succession, telling him to zip up his pants and get home, ASAP. Which would have been funny, except that Trey’s pants had been firmly fastened since last fall when his only remaining single brother, Nate, finally succumbed to domestication.

  Christ, even Marc, the known playboy of the family, was leashed, trading in his man-card for a minivan, and leaving Trey the odd man out.

  Yeah, nothing about this situation was funny.

  “Right, Kayla. Good to see you again,” he lied.

  “How long are you in town for?” she asked, her tone a flat-out offer.

  “I’m not sure, but—”

  The two swinging metal doors crashed open and a gust of moist, cold wind blasted through the emergency ward. Orders and commands were shouted, and the room erupted into chaos while three paramedics pushed a bruised and bloodied woman on a gurney right past them into one of the surgical bays.

  Just watching the fluid bags swinging made Trey think of needles—and that made him queasy.

  Eyes back on the pretty nurse and off the team of green scrubs now rushing down the corridor talking in elevated voices, Trey said, “I really need to see my nonna. My brother texted me that they were here but didn’t tell me what room.”

  That was when Trey had lost it. Four little words on a screen had him struggling for breath, struggling to keep it together.

  At St. Helena Memorial.

  “I can help with that. She’s on the third floor. West side of the hospital. Last door on your right,” she said without even consulting the screen, which did not make him feel any better. “Do you know where that is or do you want me to walk you there? Better yet, if you want to wait, I get off in ten minutes.”

  She could not have been more obvious if she’d written her number on his forehead.

  “Thanks, but I’ve got it,” Trey said, already heading toward the elevator.

  He knew every inch of this hospital. His parents had died here over a decade ago, after he’d lied about being sick so that they’d come home early. Only their sedan had driven over the embankment, head-on into a concrete pylon.

  Trey exited the elevator on the third floor and made his way past another nurses’ station decorated with cut-out hearts, down the corridor, stopping at the last door. He took a deep breath and tried to get his hands to stop shaking. Latex, iodine, and that cooked cabbage smell notorious with hospital cafeterias only made the shaking worse.

  God, he just needed her to be okay.

  Trey pushed opened the door, took one step inside, and froze.

  Holy Christ, if the smell of Bengay didn’t make him want to run for it, the sight of saggy breasts slung up in sequins did.

  He’d been played. They’d dangled his grandmother’s health in front of him and he’d come running. Instead of lying on her deathbed with his family standing in silent vigil, his nonna was at the back of a small cafeteria, where the tables and chairs had been shoved up against the wall to create a makeshift dance floor, draped over some silver fox’s arm as though he’d caught her mid-faint.

  Dressed in a flowy red dress and matching orthopedic shoes, and wearing enough hair spray to ignite with a single spark, ChiChi sashayed around the floor, twirling through a good portion of the town’s retired sector, and going for the dramatic dip under a giant poster that read: ST. HELENA’S SALSA SOCIETY: WE PUT THE HEAT BACK IN WINTER.

  “Trey?” ChiChi said mid-toe flick, looking about as startled to see Trey as Trey was when she adjusted her goods and—ah, Christ, he had to look away. “You came?”

  “You say that as though you didn’t leave a half-dozen cryptic messages on my cell implying that I needed to come home before it was too late.”

  “And here you are, such a good boy,” ChiChi praised, smoothing a hand over her gray updo and coming o
ver to give him two kisses to the cheeks. “Just in time for—”

  “You’d better say ‘my resuscitation.’” He ran a hand down his face. “I thought you were…”

  Dead. He’d thought she was dead. He’d spent the past eighteen hours on an airplane, praying he’d make it in time to tell his grandmother he loved her, and berating himself for being a selfish prick for staying as far away as possible from his family. He wasn’t even sure what time zone he was in anymore. “You said it was a matter of life or death. Christ, Nonna.”

  “Watch your language,” she chided. “And this is life or death. The Winter Garden Gala is less than a month away.”

  Trey exhaled a weary breath. “I walked out of a meeting with our biggest French buyer, went straight to the airport, flew here, then went to the hotel where I borrowed Marc’s minivan.” He threw up his arms. “A minivan, for God’s sake, so I could come straight here. In the same suit I’ve been wearing since yesterday. All so that we could talk about the Gala?”

  “Why, yes,” ChiChi said as though he were the dramatic one. “Because you, my favorite grandson, get to be my dance partner and I wanted to tell you in person. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  Yeah, wonderful.

  Trey let his head fall back and stared at the disco ball spinning overhead, as he worked overtime not to lose it. St. Helena might not be Dancing with the Stars, but people here took their swing time seriously. And the Winter Garden Gala, the Valentine’s Day celebration put on by the St. Helena Garden Society, was pretty much the hottest ticket in town.

  “Gabe is your favorite.” And better with this kind of stuff, he thought, remembering the last time he’d gone to the Gala.

  Trey had been fifteen and his mom was a nominee for Winter Garden of the Year. With his dad stuck in a snowstorm in Chicago, his brothers claiming two left feet, and Trey having had seven years of parental-enforced dance lessons, he was the only possible candidate to partner with his mom in the celebratory waltz that was held every year during the Gala.

  Only Mollie Miner, with her blonde hair and way-too-full Cs for a sophomore, had asked him to meet her in the garden. Even at fifteen, Trey knew that she wasn’t looking to waltz. And since dancing with his mom in front of the entire town sounded like social suicide, he’d snuck out to meet More Than a Handful Mollie.

  They’d rounded second that night, Mollie had turned out to be a bra stuffer, Trey missed the waltz, and four months later his mom died.

  “Yes, well, Gabe is busy being a husband and proud papa.” ChiChi patted his cheek. “And you drew the short straw.”

  “I wasn’t here to draw.”

  Every year the brothers drew straws to see who “got” to escort ChiChi and partner with her in the waltz. And every year Trey somehow managed to weasel out of it. Apparently this Valentine’s Day, his brothers and Cupid had their pointy little arrows aimed at Trey. Too bad for them, tomorrow morning he was going to be on the next flight back to Anywhere But Here.

  Being home was hard enough. Being home around Valentine’s Day was not going to happen.

  “No, you weren’t. You were off to God knows where, with Lord knows who,” ChiChi said. Trey had been at a wine conference. In Paris. Alone. Selling the family’s wine. “So, I drew for you.”

  “And just how many straws were there to draw from?”

  “One. Congratulations, dear.” ChiChi clapped as though he were the luckiest man in the world. And maybe he was. His grandma was alive. Which was the only thing keeping him from wringing her neck, because underneath the anger at being misled, a deep relief poured through him. But there was no way he was going to that dance. One of his brothers would have to man up.

  The door to the cafeteria opened, causing everyone in the room to turn, and every man in the room to smile. Trey glanced over his shoulder as a tiny woman entered, burrowed under a bright-yellow rain slicker and a sorry looking blue-and-white knit cap. She was carrying a broken umbrella, which explained the drowned kitten look, and a duffle bag big enough to hide in.

  “Sorry I’m late,” a sweet but slightly harassed voice came from beneath the slicker as she struggled to pull it over her head—only the wet vinyl got stuck. “Some jackass in a minivan parked diagonally taking up three spaces so I had to circle the lot a few times.”

  “Maybe they were in a rush because of a family emergency,” Trey said, sending ChiChi a stern glare.

  “Yeah, well.” The woman, who he assumed was the dance instructor, dropped the broken umbrella to the floor to work harder on that raincoat. “There were no more spots, I looked. So after five laps I decided to squeeze in beside him. I mean, I figured my car is pretty compact. It should fit, right?”

  Trey hoped to hell it had. Otherwise he was going to have to explain to Marc how he’d “borrowed” and dented his new minivan. Which kind of served him right for trading in his truck for one.

  “Wrong.” Giving up on the buttons, she reached down for the hem and tugged up. “I heard the scraping of metal and instead of stopping, I panicked and gunned it.”

  Trey’s stomach bottomed out. Scraping? Minivan or not, Marc was going to kill him.

  “Oh dear, are you okay, Sara?” ChiChi said, concern lacing her voice as she took a step forward. Several other worried hums erupted from the senior gallery.

  “Outside of eating my front bumper, the minivan looks fine.” Which explained her shaking hands. And the way she was frantically fumbling to get out of her coat. “I left a note, but the wind blew it away. I stood out there for a few minutes waiting for the owner to come out.”

  Her movements were jerky with what Trey thought was frustration and a good dose of adrenaline. In fact, if she wasn’t careful in her disrobing, someone was going to get hurt. One of the senior males with bad hips and dentures was already closing in to help.

  With a frustrated huff, she dropped the duffle bag, bent at the waist, and started shimmying out of the slicker and—holy shit—a shapely, sequin-clad, nowhere-near-qualified-for-a-senior-discount ass emerged from beneath the raincoat.

  Trey had always considered himself a leg man, loved them long and wrapped around his middle. But after seeing that exquisite heart-shaped handful, he was a changed man. Not that her legs weren’t toned and silky. But that backside? Perfection.

  “You need help?” Harvey Peterson, the town’s podiatrist asked, his hands already reaching for her waist.

  “No, I’m fine. Really, Harvey.” If anything, Mr. Peterson’s offer got her moving even faster.

  Harvey, however, looked disappointed. Trey felt for the guy.

  He stepped around the forming crowd, so as not to lose the view, while Sara wrenched and yanked the wet material until she made some progress and—thank you, Jesus—it got stuck on an even more incredible set of breasts—on the smaller side, maybe a full B, but incredible all the same. And they were just as slick as the rest of her.

  Always the gentleman, Trey stepped forward to do his part, lending his hands to the cause. “Here, let me help.”

  “I’m fine, really,” she said, her hands batting at his, which rested on her hips to steady her. And yeah, she was tiny but packing a ton of delicious curves.

  “Sorry, can’t hear you through the material,” he lied, grabbing her wrists and guiding them to the bottom hem of her thin tank top. “But if you don’t stop flopping around you’re going to take someone out. Or,” he leaned in and quietly added, “give Harvey over there the chance to goose you and call it an accident.”

  She froze.

  “So, work with me here. Hold your top down so I can pull the slicker up and…”

  “Okay,” Sara whispered. “Better?”

  Abso-fucking-lutely. First, the woman did just as he asked—that in itself was a miracle. Second, she pulled a tad too hard, causing the scoop of her neckline to ride blessedly low, giving him an inspiring view of teal lace and tan cleava
ge. The best part was when he gave the final tug and the slicker and knit cap came up and off, leaving behind the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  Which didn’t make sense. Trey had been around a lot of beautiful women. Spent the past few years traveling the world and getting up close and personal with a good number of them. Women who were stilettoed, stacked, smoking hot, and satisfied with one night. This woman was maybe five-two with bouncy brown hair, girl-next-door freckles, and a pair of no-nonsense shoes that were definitely more Mary Ann than Ginger. And he was a Ginger kind of guy. Always had been.

  Nothing about her said simple, short term, or easily impressed, so why then was he having a hard time breathing?

  Dry spell. That was it. The main reason he was staring at Pollyanna had nothing to do with the way those big brown eyes seemed to look right through all of his bullshit, or the way her sweet kiss-me mouth curved up into a smile that made his pulse pound. Nope, the simple truth was, it had been way too long since he’d gotten laid.

  “Isn’t this interesting?” ChiChi murmured, patting Trey on the back, no doubt already picking out great-grandbaby names. “Sara, this gentleman here is my grandson. My favorite grandson.”

  “Thank you, favorite grandson.” Sara smiled, two little dimples winking his way. He’d never been into dimples, but on her they worked.

  “My pleasure,” Trey said, wondering what kind of dance she taught and if she would be open to a private lesson—of the tangled-sheets variety.

  He flashed her that smile he knew women loved, because why the hell not? Flirting with a pretty woman seemed like a much better way to spend his evening than arguing with his brothers or making funeral arrangements.

  She tried not to smile, but one slipped out and—hello sunshine—it even lit up her eyes, which had little flecks of gold and green in them, making them distinctly hazel.

  “Shouldn’t you two exchange information?” ChiChi nudged.

  Right. The minivan. “It seems silly since I’ve already helped you undress, but I guess we’ve reached the information portion of the evening where I ask for your name, number, and if there is anyone at home you can call?”