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The man raised his arms and slowly turned to face her.
Liz gasped. “Gabe Barzonni! What are you doing here? You’re trespassing.”
Gabe guiltily looked at the soil in the test tube, then flashed Liz a charming smile.
She frowned and continued to glare at him down the barrel of her shotgun.
Gabe chuckled. “Hi, Liz.”
She remained silent as she slowly lowered her gun. “Spill. What are you doing?”
“Actually, I came here to check out your tasting room. Very nice. I like the maple wood floors, by the way. Then your sommelier there—”
“Louisa,” Liz interjected.
“She’s very helpful. Said she’s from the Champagne region...” Gabe smiled winningly.
“I know where she’s from,” Liz growled. “And you’re beating around the bush. Why are you stealing my soil?”
“I wasn’t stealing, exactly.” He started to smile again, but catching Liz’s suspicious glare, he obviously thought better of it. “I was very impressed with the wines I tasted. Very impressed. I followed some other tourists out to the vineyard. Louisa told us we were free to walk around.”
“Sure you are. Among the cabernet grapes. Not over here.”
“I didn’t know,” he said. “Liz, can you please put the shotgun away? It makes me nervous.”
“Good,” she said, though she put the butt end on the ground and held the gun, by the barrel, at her side. “I like you being nervous. Maybe you’ll start telling me the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth.”
“Fine. Then dump the dirt.”
Gabe lowered his hands slowly and looked at the tube as if it held gold dust. “I wanted to test it is all. It’s a hobby of mine.”
“Yeah? Since when?”
“Liz, you know me. We went to high school together.”
She shook her head. “Hardly. I’m four years younger than you. I was a kid when your name was being plastered across the sports section of the newspaper for a touchdown or something.”
He glared at her. “A lot of touchdowns. We went to state.”
“You and I were never part of the same crowd. Okay?” She pointed at the vial. “Dump the dirt.”
“Fine,” Gabe replied. He reluctantly deposited the dirt on the ground.
“Now leave,” she ordered.
“Don’t be like that, Liz. Maybe we could go back to the tasting room and you could tell me more about these chardonnay grapes...”
“You don’t hear so well, Gabe. I want you to leave.”
Gabe threw his hands up in the air. “I’m leaving,” he said angrily. He shoved his test tube into the metal box he’d brought with him.
“I’m thrilled,” Liz said.
She watched as Gabe hoisted himself over the whitewashed wooden fence as if he’d been training for a gymnastics team. He walked past the tasting room and over to the gravel parking lot, got into a black Porsche convertible and drove away.
Liz knew the Barzonni family, though not all that well. She was most familiar with Gabe’s brother Nate, a cardiac surgeon, because he was engaged to one of her closest friends, Maddie Strong. Gabriel Barzonni was the eldest of the four Barzonni boys. As far as Liz could remember, none of the Barzonnis had ever come to visit her or her grandfather.
She couldn’t even remember the Barzonnis coming to her parents’ funeral. But then, she’d only been six years old, and she hadn’t really known the family at all. As far as Liz was concerned, she didn’t have a history with Gabe.
His trespassing was more than a little bit suspicious.
Clearly he wanted something. But what? The Barzonnis were hugely successful and owned a great deal of farmland. What could Gabe possibly want that Liz had?
The more she thought about him, the more her stomach churned and her nerves fired with alarm. She felt as if she’d just come upon an intruder during a home invasion. Yet this was a person she knew. Sort of.
She bent down and grabbed the handful of soil that had fallen out of Gabe’s test tube. His actions made no sense at all. He didn’t come from a family of thieves, and if he wanted to run some kind of local soil experiment, why hadn’t he just asked her permission to take samples? She would have been happy to help him out.
On the face of it, Liz had no real evidence against Gabe. She’d always had a highly suspicious nature, and her girlfriends often accused her of being paranoid. Maybe she’d developed the trait after the car accident that had killed her parents. Years of worrying about her aging grandfather and pushing herself to secure the future of the vineyard certainly hadn’t made her a more trusting person.
Liz pursed her lips. Intuition told her Gabe was up to something.
She rubbed her arms, trying to push down the hairs that had pricked up as they always did when danger loomed nearby.
“Something tells me I should keep you in my sights, Gabriel.”
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_b36e21a4-4c0d-56db-9977-b80cb772c4bb)
LIZ RODE THE ATV to the utility barn and put the vehicle away. She pulled her Remington Spartan 310 out of the boot and walked over to the worktable her father had coarsely constructed over twenty years ago. She ejected the shell from the chamber and placed it on the table.
She picked up the shotgun and peered down the over/under barrels, remembering what Gabe had looked like at the end of her sight. Despite her trepidation about his motives for trespassing, Liz had to laugh to herself. He’d been caught red-handed doing whatever it was he had been doing, and he’d tried to get out of it with his charm.
Liz pushed the trigger blade forward to select the top barrel of the gun, rather than the default bottom barrel. Then she checked the tang behind the top lever to make certain the safety was on, even though she believed the gun was empty. Both her father and grandfather had taught her to be very careful when cleaning and using weapons. She had to admit her mind hadn’t been set on safety when she’d threatened Gabe. She’d been reacting to her basest instinct: to protect herself and her land. Her suspicions were baseless, but every cell in her body told her Gabe Barzonni was a threat to everything she held sacred.
Remembering the moment she’d leveled her shotgun at him, she wondered if he’d actually felt he was in danger. Now that she thought back on the audacity it had taken for him to walk onto her property like a tourist and break into a clearly gated area to steal soil samples, she wondered if she’d be better off if she’d filled his backside with buckshot.
She oiled the gun and polished the walnut stock, then put the gun back in the boot, ready for her next encounter. The question was whether she would be facing beast or man.
Liz left the utility barn and walked across an open area next to the gravel parking lot. She noticed all the tourist cars were gone. If that were the case, then Louisa, her chef de cave, probably would not be in the tasting room, but would steal a few moments in the fermenting barn. Liz unlocked the door to the large natural wood building with green trim. The fermenting barn was where Liz stored barrique barrels and oak botti for the chardonnay and the cabernet sauvignon they made.
Two years ago, Liz had made a trip to the Château de la Marquetterie, which was located south of Épernay, France. She toured several of the smaller vineyards and inspected not just the vines, but the process of champagne-making, in the process finding her next obsession. Champagne. She knew still wine−making would never be enough for her challenge-driven psyche. Of all the difficult, time-consuming and nearly impossible ideas she’d ever had, an Indiana sparkling wine made from a hybrid of French chardonnay and pinot noir grapes was probably the most ambitious.
To execute the technically challenging process the way she had seen it done in France, Liz knew she’d need a chef de cave who believed in innovation as much as she did. She’d chosen twenty-four-year-old Louisa Bouchard. Louisa was smart and feisty, and was the seventh child and only daughter of a small champagne vintner in Éparnay who apparently was deaf, blind and dumb when it came to his headstrong daughter. When they met, Louisa had told Liz her father would only listen to her six older brothers. He always ignored her.
When Liz came to visit the Bouchard vineyards, Louisa was angry, frustrated and ready to break out.
Liz saw an opportunity and took it. She told Louisa she couldn’t promise her anything except free rein to create the first sparkling wines in Indiana. It was a world away from France, but Louisa was ready.
Louisa had been with Liz for over a year now, living in the apartment attached to the tasting room and obviously thriving in her life at Crenshaw Vineyards. Knowing Louisa had no friends in America, Liz made certain to include her in as many activities with her own friends as she could.
Still, Louisa appeared happiest when making wine and strolling among the grapes.
Liz believed their hearts were so much alike, they could have been sisters.
Liz entered the barn and walked among the stainless steel tanks, which would be filled to capacity during the grape harvest.
“Louisa! Are you here?” Liz shouted.
“Oui,” Louisa yelled from a distance, the hard heels of her leather boots thumping on the cement.
Louisa was of medium height, but her slight frame and taut muscles made her look like a couture model. She walked toward Liz with a practiced woman’s gait, the soft cotton fabric of her spring dress billowing around the tops of her boots and creating an ethereal effect.
“How was the tasting room this afternoon?” Liz asked. “Busy?”
“Very. I only came over here to find you,” Louisa said. “Where were you?”
“On the hill. You could have called if you needed me.”
“I did. Your phone...it’s not working.”
“Sure it is,” Liz replied, pulling it out of her pocket. “Oops. It was off.”
Louisa frowned. “I was going to tell you about the man. He wants you.”
“What man?”
“I don’t know his name,” Louisa replied, shaking her head. “He’s too beautiful. I don’t trust him.”
“Gabriel.”
“You know him?” Louisa asked, surprise illuminating her face.
“A little bit.” She shook her head. “His brother is going to marry Maddie Strong.”
“That was Nate’s brother?” Louisa asked. “Why does he want you?”
Liz bristled involuntarily in response to Louisa’s words. “If only I knew,” she said with exasperation. She didn’t realize she’d clenched her fists. Gabe didn’t want her personally. But he absolutely wanted something. She just had to figure out what she had in common with the thing it was he wanted.
“Ah. He stirs your blood. Makes you angry,” Louisa observed, peering with critical eyes at her boss.
“I just don’t trust him,” Liz replied uneasily.
Tires crunched on the gravel outside. “More tourists.” Liz smiled broadly, glad to have the conversation diverted from Gabriel Barzonni. “This is shaping up to be a good day for us.”
“Oui,” Louisa said as they walked out of the barn and into the bright sunlight.
Three cars had driven up nearly at the same time. One was an SUV with an Illinois license plate and two couples inside. The couples had just entered the tasting room. A sports car with a handsome pair in their mid-sixties pulled up beside a black Porsche convertible.
Liz stared disbelievingly at the shiny black car that looked as if it had just been detailed and polished.
Starched and pressed. Just like the owner.
“Gabe—” Liz breathed out his name with an undercurrent of frustration.
“Looks like he’s back,” Louisa said with a taunting grin, already walking away from Liz toward the tasting room. “I’m off to see to those guests. À tout à l’heure!”
“See you later,” Liz said, gazing past Louisa at the cluster of tourists. Gabe wasn’t among them.
Immediately suspecting him of going back to her vines, she spun around, her eyes tracking from one end of the vineyard to the other. He hadn’t had enough time to go very far.
She hurried around the corner of the tasting room and glanced up at the big white farmhouse with its wraparound porch. Climbing the three front steps to the beveled glass Victorian door was Gabe, a bouquet of flowers in his right hand.
“I’m not up there,” Liz shouted.
Gabe turned around as Liz marched forward.
“Hi,” he said, not taking his eyes off her. “You’re not armed this time, are you? Concealed .38? Maybe a poison dart in your clog?”
“Very funny,” she growled, gesturing at the flowers. “Those for my compost pile?”
“Uh, sure. You can do whatever you want with them.”
“Hmm.” She eyed the flowers and the cellophane sleeve around them. It still had the price tag on it. “Get those at the grocery store, did you?”
“Actually, yes. That’s where the closest florist was,” he said weakly. He thrust the flowers at her. “Please accept my apology.”
“Why don’t you just tell me the truth, Gabe. I won’t bite.”
“Ha! You’re just saying that because you aren’t toting—at the moment.”
“No, Gabe. I do want the truth,” she replied earnestly, taking the bouquet.
“I did tell you the truth. I needed some soil samples from your vineyard. I heard you were going to try to make real champagne out here. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t think we had the soil for that.”
“How did you hear that?” she asked, trailing off as she realized the answer. “From Nate?”
“Yeah. Don’t be mad at Maddie—she just let it slip. Nate swore me to secrecy. I haven’t told a soul.” He crossed his heart.
Liz shifted her weight and put her hand on her hip. “But that information intrigued you so much you snuck out here on a Saturday when you knew no one would be in the vineyard. And then you tried to take my dirt. Why?”
“I’m insatiably curious. I’ve studied pedology and agricultural soil science since college. I’m fascinated when a new pioneer hits the scene. Like you.”
“A pioneer? Some would call me a fool.” She snorted derisively.
“Not me. I think you may be the real genius.”
Liz drew in a breath and paused. She stared at him for a long moment. Louisa was right. He was really handsome, and it was her bet those good looks had gotten him out of many tight spots. She frowned. “You’re laying it on pretty thick, Gabe. I’m not buying it. There’s more here than your curiosity over what could have been idle gossip.”
