Pamela Browning - Heard It Through The Grapevine

“That’s not what I would call you.” For emphasis, she went to the door and flipped the Open sign so that it read Closed.

“I was going to buy—” he cast his gaze around wildly “—some sachets for my landlady.”

“At this moment, nothing in here is for sale. We officially closed at noon. Are you ready to go, Mia?”

“Yes, and I can’t wait to get there. Josh, you can ride in the front seat with Aunt Gina. We have to pick up Frankie ’cause his dad’s helping to cook the barbecue.”

“Oh, I forgot about Frankie,” Gina said. Frankie was at his accordion lesson about a half mile away. She had no idea what to do about Josh short of a knock-down, drag-out argument, which didn’t seem fair to Mia.

Shooting a go-eat-roadkill look in Josh’s direction, Gina grabbed her keys and ushered Mia out of the shop in front of her, with Josh following along behind. She had probably no more than a minute to think of some tactic that would send Josh on his way. So far, nothing had occurred to her. Nothing legal, anyway. Murder was not an option, and neither was assault. She could only hope that he would take the hint and back off.

Her red-and-white 1966 Ford Galaxie convertible was parked with its top down in its customary spot under the olive tree, and Mia climbed into the back seat.

“We could ride in my car,” Josh said.

“There is no ‘we’ as far as you’re concerned,” Gina retorted. She started the car.

“I invited Josh,” Mia piped in her clarion voice. “It would be rude to tell him he can’t go.”

Mia was into defining the differences between rude and polite these days, mostly because her parents emphasized good manners at their house. Gina, knowing this, wavered under the power of Mia’s righteous and expectant gaze.

“I invited him,” Mia repeated. Her voice was beginning to take on the aggrieved tone that preceded a bunch of difficult questions.

Gina exhaled and rolled her eyes. “Get in,” she said to Josh, who beamed.

He opened the door and slid in beside her with the air of someone who expected to be included all along. “Nice car,” he said.

She edged a glance toward the BMW parked near the door of the shop. “So is yours,” she pointed out as she backed out and turned.

“It’s rented,” he said. “I flew in a couple of days ago and had to have wheels.”

So he’d been here for a while and was only now getting around to saying hello? She could have taken offense at the delay if she cared anything about him. Which she most emphatically did not.

“Aunt Gina loves this car,” Mia said, squeezing her head through the gap between the front seats and sending a whiff of Juicy Fruit their way. She chomped on the gum enthusiastically.

“Mia, dear, would you mind leaning back?” Gina said, trying not to sound as annoyed with her niece as she felt.

“It is a fine car,” Josh said, taking in the restored upholstery, the gleaming knobs on the radio.

“My father bought it used when I was a kid,” she said. She didn’t add that she’d fallen in love with the Galaxie’s style and elegance from the first moment that her father wheeled it into their driveway. “He always meant to restore it and give it to me, and after he died, I discovered that he’d put money aside for years for the restoration. My cousin Rocco volunteered to do the work.” For a moment she had forgotten that she was talking to the man who’d broken her heart two years ago, and she fell silent as she headed down the bumpy road toward Vineyard Oaks, the winery that the Angelini family had owned ever since her grandfather, Gino, his brother and two sisters had bought it shortly after arriving in the United States sixty-seven years ago.

The vineyard, planted with merlot, sangiovese, petite syrah and zinfandel vines now stripped of their grapes, stretched out toward the distant mountain ranges on either side of the fertile valley. After a few minutes, Gina pulled the car over in front of a small house set back from the road, where Leo Buscani, retired Vineyard Oaks winemaker now accordion teacher, lived. A boy of eleven emerged, lugging an accordion case.

Mia bounced up and down. “That’s Frankie. He’s okay most of the time—for a boy, I mean. Get in back with me, Frankie. I’m being hos-spit-able.”

Frankie balked. “You’re going to spit on me?” he asked skeptically.

Mia dissolved into giggles. “That’s my new word. It means making someone welcome.”

Frankie chucked his accordion case in the back seat and climbed in after it. He was a captivating, curly-haired boy whose dark eyes snapped with merriment.

“Aunt Gina, Mr. Buscani says I’m the best student he’s ever had,” Frankie announced. “He wants me to join his accordion band.”

Everyone in the family was pleased that Frankie, who possessed an aptitude for getting into trouble, had taken so well to the accordion. Gina glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him. “That’s wonderful,” she said.

“Do you think Pop will let me?”

“Oh, Rocco will probably go for it.” Rocco and his son were closer than most, possibly because Frankie’s mother had died when he was only six.

When Frankie and Mia settled into a spirited discussion about whether or not she should give him her last stick of gum, which Frankie argued was only hospitable, Josh turned to Gina. “You’re more beautiful than ever,” he said in a low tone.

The compliment discombobulated her more than she liked to let on. “Yeah, right,” she said.

“I mean it, Gina.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why shouldn’t I? It’s true.”

Thanks to her Norwegian mother, Gina had grown up blond in a family of dark-haired, olive-skinned Italian-Americans, convinced that her light coloring wasn’t attractive. She’d longed to resemble the rest of the family for most of her life, but the only features she seemed to owe to the Italian side of her family were dark eyes and tawny skin. These days, she could finally accept that men found her beautiful, but she wasn’t in the mood to hear compliments from Joshua Corbett.

She kept her eyes focused forward. “You act as if nothing happened between us.”

Josh slid a cagey look in her direction. “More should happen, don’t you agree?”

She shook her head in disbelief. “Not if I can help it.”

“Would it change things if I told you that I wasn’t smart in the way I handled the Mr. Moneybags choice? That I realize it now? That I want to make amends?”

Gina bit back an exasperated retort. “Didn’t it work out with Tahoma?”

Josh kept his eyes focused on the road ahead. “The woman happened to be living with a boyfriend she never mentioned. After she walked away with the million dollars, I never heard from her again.”

“Bummer,” Gina said, trying unsuccessfully to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. She’d never liked Tahoma much, though she’d been cordial to her for the sake of the show. The woman had pranced around the chilly Scottish castle where the show was filmed thrusting her silicone-enhanced chest in front of the ever-present video cameras while stuffed into dresses the size of cocktail napkins. It was a wonder she hadn’t caught pneumonia.

“You live and you learn,” Josh said philosophically.

“Did it ever occur to you that I might be angry about losing the million dollars I would have won if you’d chosen me?” Of course it hadn’t; he was independently wealthy. The show’s publicity had touted him as being the scion of a prominent Boston family. Gina seemed to recall pictures of a huge mansion and a family of bluebloods with ties to the Mayflower.

He appeared disconcerted. “If you’ll recall, no one told me that the woman I chose would win that much money. I thought—”