My mother grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Are you nervous?”
The golf cart putt-putted up the trail. Technically, it whirred, not putted, but the speed was putt-putt speed, if you know what I mean. Like, we could have gotten out and walked faster.
“I wasn’t nervous until you asked.” Indeed my palms were beginning to sweat in the dry heat, with the eleven o’clock sun high overhead. The golf cart had a canopy, but the sun on my one exposed arm was sizzling through my light application of sunscreen.
We crested the hill, and the driver stopped the cart for a moment as we took in the view. “Welcome to the winery,” he said.
The rolling hills and grape fields looked surprisingly Italian, for American soil. The square fields were bordered by fences of green trees with impossibly round, perfect silhouettes.
“Stunning,” said my mother.
“I’m all turned around,” said my father. “Which way is north?”
My mother answered, “Your phone has that compass thing.”
“I’m sure this young man knows where north is. Sometimes it’s nice to talk to a human being rather than pointing your nose at your phone all the time.”
My mother shot me a look, then mimed the motion of zipping her lips shut. The resort employee didn’t know which way was north, but eventually the two of them figured it out.
We pulled up to the resort, which had a grand entryway with tall wood pillars on either side of glass doors. The building itself looked like a golf club in Architectural Digest, with rich honey wood mixed with modern steel and glass. Inside, it smelled like wine—so much like wine, that I wondered if they brewed and stored the stuff right in the same building.
“Smells like wine in here,” my mother said to the woman checking us in at the front desk. “Do they make the wine right inside this building?”
The woman smiled politely. “This is a fully-functioning winery! You’ll notice when you turn on the taps in your room, that red and white comes out of the spigot.” She looked down at the computer. “Oh, there’s a note on here that you’d prefer hot and cold water, so I’ll just flip the switch.”
My father and mother turned slowly toward me, both of them with confused/amused smiles.
“Interesting place,” my father said.
The woman continued with some more joking information about the resort, including a bit about the frames of the beds being made from cork, in case of grape juice floods.
The resort wasn’t at all as formal as I’d expected.
As we walked toward our rooms, through beautiful hallways dotted with portholes in the floor that revealed glimpses of the working winery below, I silently awarded Dalton Deangelo ten points. Say what you will about the guy, he picked a great location for our families to meet.
My parents went into their suite, saying they needed two hours to “freshen up” before we were to meet for lunch in the dining room.
How they needed two hours to “freshen up” after a flight that was barely that long would have been anyone’s guess… if not for my mother’s giggles and not-so-subtle whispers to my father.
They went off to do old-married-people things, and I checked into my room, looking forward to having a nap.
As I opened the door, two things surprised me:
1. Vern was a genius butler and had somehow gotten my bag into my room ahead of me.
2. There was a shocking blood trail leading to the bed.
WAIT! No, it wasn’t a blood trail at all, but dark red flower petals. And I was not alone in the room.
CHAPTER 26
“Don’t be scared,” said the man reclining on the large bed. “It’s just me. Your soon-to-be husband. I wore your favorite shirt.”
He stuck his finger out through one of the holes of his gray T-shirt with the graffiti-style print.
“You look weird. Are you wearing eyeliner?”
He laughed and rubbed his eyelids. “It’s pronounced guyliner. Don’t you read In Style?”
I stood awkwardly next to my luggage, fiddling with the handle. Damn it, but just seeing Dalton Deangelo’s lean, sexy body sprawled out on the bed was causing a panic in my panties.
“Why are you over there?” he asked. “Don’t you want to see where the rose petals lead?”
The line of red petals ran from the door, around the bed. Unlike the fancy suite in San Francisco, this was a modest single room, with the bed in the middle of the room and a small sitting area over in the corner. I kicked off my shoes and walked along the plush carpet, over to the other side of the bed, where I found a red pile of stuff: more petals, and some fabric. I bent over and picked up the fabric, shaking it out.
“Boxers?”