About That Kiss:A Heartbreaker Bay Novel(52)

They all burst into applause and Lanie wished for a big, black hole to  sink into and vanish. "Hi," she managed and gave a little wave. She must  have pulled off the correct level of civility because everyone went  back to eating and joking and talking amongst themselves. "Are you  really related to all of them?" she asked Cora, watching two little  girls, twins given their matching toothless smiles, happily eating  chocolate cupcakes, half of which were all over their faces.

Cora laughed. "Just about. I've got a big family. You?"

"No."

"Single?"

"Yes." Lanie's current relationship status: sleeping diagonally across her bed.

Cora smiled. "Well, I'll be happy to share my people, there's certainly  enough of us to go around. Hey," she yelled, cupping a hand around her  mouth. "Someone take the girls in to wash up, and no more cupcakes or  they'll be bouncing off the walls."

So the cupcakes were a problem, but wine at lunch wasn't. Good to know.

Cora smiled at Lanie's expression, clearing reading her thoughts. "We're  Californians," she said. "We're serious about our wine but laid-back  about everything else. In fact, maybe that should be our tagline. Now  come, have a seat." She drew Lanie over to the tables. "We'll get to  work soon enough."

There was an impressive amount of food, all of it Italian, all of it  fragrant and delicious looking. Lanie's heart said definitely to both  the wine and the lasagna, but her pants said holy shit woman, find a  salad instead.         

     



 

Cora gave a nudge to the woman at the end of the table who looked to be  around Lanie's age with silky dark hair and matching eyes. "Scoot," Cora  said.

The woman scooted. So did everyone else, allowing a space on the end for Lanie.

"Sit," Cora told Lanie. "Eat. Make merry."

"But-"

"Oh, and be careful of that one," Cora said, pointing to the woman  directly across from Lanie, this one in her early twenties with the same  gorgeous dark hair and eyes as the other. "Her bad attitude can be  contagious."

"Gee, thanks, mom," she said with an impressive eyeroll.

Cora blew her daughter a kiss and fluttered away, grabbing a bottle of  wine from the middle of one of the tables and refilling glasses as she  went.

"One of these days I'm gonna roll my eyes so hard I'm going to go blind," her daughter muttered.

The twins ran back through, still giggling, still looking like they'd  bathed in chocolate, which caused a bit of commotion. Trying to remain  inconspicuous, Lanie pulled her lunch out of her bag, a homemade salad  in a container, sans dressing.

"Are you kidding me?" Cora's daughter asked. "Do you want her to come  back here and yell at us for not feeding you properly? Put that away."  She stood up, reached for a stack of plates in the middle of the table  and handed Lanie one. "Here. Now fill it up and eat, and for God's sake,  look happy while you're at it or she'll have my ass."

Lanie eyeballed the casserole dishes lining the center of the tables. Spaghetti, lasagna . . .

"Don't worry, it all tastes as good as it looks," an old man said from  the middle of the table. There was no hair on his head, but he did have a  large patch of gray steel fuzz on his chest sticking out from the top  of his polo shirt. His olive complexion had seen at least seven decades  of sun, but his smile was pure little boy mischief. "And don't worry  about your cholesterol either," he added. "I'm seventy-five and I've  eaten like this every single day of my life." He leaned across the table  and shook her hand. "Leonardo Antony Capriotti. And this is my  sweetheart of fifty-four years, Adelina Capriotti. I'd use her middle  name, but she refuses to sleep with me when I do that."

The older woman next to him was teeny, her white hair in a tight bun on  her head, her spectacles low on her nose, her smile mischievous. "Gotta  keep him in line, you know. Nice to meet you."

Lanie knew from her research on the company that it'd been Leonardo and  Adelina to start this winery back in the seventies, though they'd since  handed over the day-to-day reins to their daughter, who Lanie now  realized was her boss Cora. "Nice to meet you both," she said.

"Likewise. You're going to give us a new updated look and make me look good," he said. "Right?"

"Right," she said and hoped that was actually true.

He smiled. "I like you. Now eat."

If she ate any of this stuff, she'd need a nap by mid-afternoon. But not  wanting to insult anyone, she scooped as little as she felt she could  get away with onto her plate and pushed it around with her fork, trying  to resist temptation.

"Uh oh," Cora's daughter said. "We have a diet-er."

"Stop it," the woman next to Lanie said. "You'll scare her away and end up right back on mom's shit list."

Cora's daughter, whose shirt read Live, Laugh, and Leave Me The Hell  Alone, snorted. "We both know that I never get off the shit list. I just  move up and down on it. Mom's impossible to please."

"Don't listen to her," the other woman said to Lanie. "I'm Alyssa, by  the way. And Grumpy-Ass over there is my baby sister, Mia."

Mia waved and reached for the bread basket. "I'm giving up on getting a  bikini body so pass the butter, please. Grandma says the good lord put  alcohol and carbs on this planet for a reason and I'll be damned if I'm  going to let him down."

Her grandma toasted her.

"Mia and I work here at the winery," Alyssa said and gently patted the  cloth-wrapped little bundle swaddled to her chest. "This is Elsa, my  youngest."         

     



 

"Elsa, like the princess?" Lanie asked.

"More like the queen," Alyssa said with a smile, rubbing her infant's tush. "She's going to rule this roost someday."

"Who are you kidding?" Mia asked. "Mom's going to hold the reins until  she's three hundred years old. That's how long witches live, you know."

Lanie wasn't sure how to react. After all, that witch was now her boss.

"You're scaring her off again," Alyssa said and looked at Lanie. "We  love mom madly, I promise. Mia's just bitchy because she got dumped last  night, was late for work this morning, and got read the riot act. She  thinks life sucks."

"Yeah well, life does suck," Mia said. "It sucks donkey balls. And this  whole waking up every morning thing is getting a bit excessive. But  Alyssa's right. Don't listen to me. Sarcasm. It's how I hug."

Alyssa reached across the table and squeezed her sister's hand in her  own, her eyes soft. "Are you going to tell me what happened? I thought  you liked this one."

Mia shrugged. "I was texting him and he was only responding occasionally  with a 'K.' I mean I have no idea what ‘K' even means. Am I to assume  he intended to type ‘ok' but was stabbed and couldn't expend the energy  to type an extra whole letter?"

Alyssa sucked her lips into her mouth in a clear attempt not to laugh.  "Tell me you didn't ask him that and then get broken up with by text."

"Well, dear know-it-all sister, that's exactly what happened. And now  I've got a new motto: Don't waste your good boob years on a guy that  doesn't deserve them. Oh, and side note: No man does. Men suck."

Lanie let out a completely inadvertent snort of agreement and both women looked over at her.

"Well, they do," she said. "Suck."

"See, I knew I was going to like you." Mia reached for a bottle of red and gestured with it in Lanie's direction.

She shook her head. "Water's good, thanks."

Mia nodded. "I like water too. It solves a lot of problems. Wanna lose  weight? Drink water. Tired of your man? Drown him." She paused and  cocked her head in thought. "In hindsight, I should've gone that route .  . ."

A man came out onto the patio, searched the tables and focused in on  Alyssa. He came up behind her, cupped her face and tilted it up for his  kiss. And he wasn't shy about it either, smiling intimately into her  eyes first. Running his hands down hers arms to cup around the baby, he  pulled back an inch. "How are my girls?" he murmured.

"Jeez, careful or she'll suffocate," Mia said.

"Hmm." The man kissed Alyssa again, longer this time before finally  lifting his head. "What a way to go." He turned to Lanie and smiled.  "Welcome. I'm Owen Booker, the winemaker."

Alyssa, looking a little dazed, licked her lips. "And husband," she  added to his resume. "He's my husband." She beamed. "I somehow managed  to land the best winemaker in the country."

Owen laughed softly and borrowed her fork to take a bite of her pasta.  "I'll see you at the afternoon meeting," he said, bent and brushed a  kiss on Elsa's little head, and walked off.

Alyssa watched him go. Specifically watched his ass, letting out a theatrical sigh.