Rainy Day Friends Read online

  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 ‘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 sidenote: 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 her arms to cup them 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 résumé. “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, then he 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.

  “Good God, give it a rest,” Mia griped. “And you’re drooling. Get yourself together, woman. Yesterday you wanted to kill him, remember?”

  “Well, he is still a man,” Alyssa said. “If I didn’t want to kill him at least once a day, he’s not doing his job right.”

  “Please, God, tell me you’re almost done with the baby hormonal mood swings,” Mia said.

  “Hey, I’m hardly having any baby-hormone-related mood swings anymore.”

  Mia snorted and looked at Lanie. “FYI, whenever we’re in a situation where I happen to be the voice of reason, it’s probably an apocalypse sort of thing and you should save yourself.”

  “Whatever,” Alyssa said. “He’s hot and he’s mine, all mine.”

  “Yes,” Mia said. “We know. And he’s been yours since the second grade and you get to sleep with him later, so . . .”

  Alyssa laughed. “I know. Isn’t it great? All you need is love.”

  “I’m pretty sure we also need water, food, shelter, vodka, and Netflix.”

  “Well, excuse me for being happy.” Alyssa looked at Lanie. “Are you married, Lanie?”

  “Not anymore.” She took a bite of the most amazing fettuccine Alfredo she’d ever had and decided that maybe calories on Mondays didn’t count.

  “Was he an asshole?” Mia asked, her eyes curious but warmly so.

  “Actually, he’s dead.”

  Alyssa gasped. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked—”

  “No,” Lanie said, kicking herself for spilling the beans like that. “It’s okay. It’s been six months.” Six months, one week, and two days but hey, who was counting? She bypassed her water and reached for the wine after all. When in Rome . . .

  “That’s really not very long,” Alyssa said.

  “I’m really okay.” There was a reason for the quick recovery. Several, actually. They’d dated for six months and he’d been charming and charismatic, and new to love, she’d fallen fast. They’d gotten married and gone five years, the first half great, the second half not so much because she’d discovered they just weren’t right for each other. She’d not been able to put her finger on what had been wrong exactly, but it’d been undeniable that whatever they’d once shared had faded. But after Kyle had passed away, some things had come to light. Such as the fact that he’d hidden an addiction from her.

  A wife addiction.

  It’d gone a long way toward getting her over the hump of the grieving process. So had the fact that several other women had come out of the woodwork claiming to also be married to Kyle. Not that she intended to share that humiliation. Not now or ever.

  You’re my moon and my stars, he’d always told her.

  Yeah. Just one lie in a string of many, as it’d turned out . . .

  Cora came back around and Lanie nearly leapt up in relief. Work! Work was going to save her.

  “I see you’ve met some of my big, nosy, interfering, boisterous, loving family and survived to tell the tale,” Cora said, slipping an arm around Mia and gently squeezing.

  “Yes, and I’m all ready to get to it,” Lanie said.

  “Oh, not yet.” Cora gestured for her to stay seated. “No rush, there’s still fifteen minutes left of lunch.” And then she once again made her way around the tables, chatting with everyone she passed. “Girls,” she called out to the cupcake twins, who were now chasing each other around the other table. “Slow down, please!”

  At Lanie’s table, everyone had gotten deeply involved in a discussion on barrels. She was listening with half an ear to the differences in using American oak versus French oak when a man in a deputy sheriff’s uniform came in unnoticed through the French double doors. He was tall, built, and fully armed. His eyes were covered by dark aviator sunglasses, leaving his expression unreadable. And intimidating as hell.

  He strode directly toward her.

  “Scoot,” he said to the table, and since no one else scooted—in fact, no one else even looked over at him—Lanie scooted.

  “Thanks.” He sat, reaching past her to accept the plate that Mia handed to him without pausing her conversation with Alyssa. The plate was filled up to shockingly towering heights that surely no one human could consume.

  He caught Lanie staring.

  “That’s a lot of food,” she said inanely.

  “Hungry.” He grabbed a fork. “You’re the new hire.”

  “Lanie,” she said and watched in awe as he began to shovel in food like he hadn’t eaten in a week.

  “Mark,” he said afte
r swallowing a bite, something she appreciated because Kyle used to talk with his mouth full and it had driven her to want to kill him. Which, as it turned out, hadn’t been necessary. A heart attack had done that for her.

  Apparently cheating on a bunch of wives had been highly stressful. Go figure.

  “You must be a very brave woman,” Mark said.

  And for a horrifying minute, she was afraid she’d spoken of Kyle out loud, and she stared at him.

  “Taking on this job, this family,” he said. “They’re insane, you know. Every last one of them.”

  Because he had a disarming smile and was speaking with absolutely no malice, she knew he had to be kidding. But she still thought it rude considering they’d served him food. “They can’t be all that bad,” she said. “They’re feeding you, which you seem to be enjoying.”

  “Who wouldn’t enjoy it? It’s the best food in the land.”

  This was actually true. She watched him go at everything on his plate like it was a food-eating contest and he was in danger of coming in second place for the world championship. She shook her head in awe. “You’re going to get heartburn eating that fast.”

  “Better than not eating at all,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I’ve got ten minutes to be back on the road chasing the bad guys, and a lot of long, hungry hours ahead of me.”

  “One of those days, huh?”

  “One of those years,” he said. “But at least I’m not stuck here at the winery day in and day out.”

  She went brows up. “Are you making fun of my job at all?”

  “Making fun? No,” he said. “Offering sympathy, yes. You clearly have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. You could still make a break for it, you know.”

  That she herself had been thinking the very same thing only five minutes ago didn’t help. Suddenly feeling defensive for this job she hadn’t even started yet, she looked around her. The winery itself was clearly lovingly and beautifully taken care of. The yard in which they sat was lush and colorful and welcoming. Sure, the sheer number of people employed here was intimidating, as was the fact that they gathered every day to eat lunch and socialize. But she’d get used to it.

  Maybe.

  “I love my job,” she said.

  Mark grinned. “You’re on day one. And you haven’t started yet or you’d have finished your wine. Trust me, it’s going to be a rough ride, Lanie Jacobs.”

  Huh. So he definitely knew more about her than she knew about him. No big deal since she wasn’t all that interested in knowing more about him. “Surely given what you do for a living, you realize there’s nothing ‘rough’ about my job at all.”

  “I know I’d rather face down thugs and gangbangers daily than work in this looney bin.”

  She knew he was kidding, that he was in fact actually pretty funny, but she refused to be charmed. Fact was, she couldn’t have been charmed by any penis-carrying human being at the moment. “Right,” she said, “because clearly you’re here against your will, being held hostage and force-fed all this amazing food. How awful for you.”

  “Yeah, life’s a bitch.” He eyeballed the piece of cheese bread on her plate that she hadn’t touched. It was the last one.

  She nodded for him to take it and then watched in amazement as he put that away too. “I have to ask,” she said. “How in the world do you stay so . . .” She gestured with a hand toward his clearly well-taken-care-of body and struggled with a word to describe him. She supposed hot worked—if one was into big, annoying, perfectly fit alphas—not that she intended to say so, since she was pretty sure he knew exactly how good he looked.

  “How do I stay so . . . what?” he asked.

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that fishing for compliments is unattractive?”

  He surprised her by laughing, clearly completely unconcerned with what she thought of him. “My days tend to burn up a lot of calories,” he said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  He pushed his dark sunglasses to the top of his head, and she was leveled with dark eyes dancing with mischievousness. “Such cynicism in one so young.”

  A plate of cupcakes was passed down the table and Lanie eyed them, feeling her mouth water. She had only so much self-control and apparently she was at her limit because she took one, and then, with barely a pause, she grabbed a second as well. Realizing the deputy sheriff was watching her and looking amused while he was at it, she shrugged. “Sometimes I reward myself before I accomplish something. It’s called pre-award motivation.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Absolutely one hundred percent not,” she admitted and took a bite of one of the cupcakes, letting out a low moan before she could stop herself. “Oh. My. God.”

  His eyes darkened to black. “You sound like that cupcake is giving you quite the experience.”

  She held up a finger for silence, possibly having her first-ever public orgasm.

  He leaned in a little bit and since their thighs were already plastered together, he didn’t have to go far to speak directly into her ear. “Do you make those same sexy sounds when you—”

  She pointed at him again because she still couldn’t talk, and he just grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “I bet you do. And now I know what I’m going to be thinking about for the rest of the day.”

  “You’ll be too busy catching the bad guys, remember?”

  “I’m real good at multitasking,” he said.

  She let out a laugh, though it was rusty as hell. It’d been a while since she’d found something funny. Not that this changed her idea of him. He was still too sure of himself, too cocky, and she’d had enough of that to last a lifetime. But she also was good at multitasking and could both not like him and appreciate his sense of humor at the same time.

  What she couldn’t appreciate was when his smile turned warm and inviting, because for a minute something passed between them, something she couldn’t—or didn’t—intend to recognize.

  “Maybe I could call you sometime,” he said.

  Before she could turn him down politely, the little cupcake twins came running, leaping at him, one of them yelling, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy! Look what we got!”

  Catching them both with impressive ease, Mark stood, managing to somehow confiscate the cupcakes and set them aside before getting covered in chocolate. “Why is it,” he asked Lanie over their twin dark heads, “that when a child wants to show you something, they try to place it directly in your cornea?”

  Still completely floored, Lanie could only shake her head.

  Mark adjusted the girls so that they hung upside down off his back. This had them erupting in squeals of delight as he turned back to face Lanie again, two little ankles in each of his big hands. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said into her undoubtedly shocked face. “I think it every day.”

  Actually, even she had no idea what she was thinking except . . . he was a Capriotti? How had she not seen that coming?

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m one of them, which is why I get to bitch about them. And let me guess . . . you just decided you’re not going to answer my call?”

  Most definitely not, but before she could say so out loud Cora was back, going up on tiptoes to kiss Mark on the cheek. “Hey, baby. Heard you had a real tough night.”

  He shrugged.

  “You get enough to eat?” she asked. “Yes?” She eyed his empty plate and then, with a nod of satisfaction, reached up and ruffled his hair. “Good. But don’t for a single minute think, Marcus Antony Edward Capriotti, that I don’t know who sneaked your grandpa the cigars he was caught smoking last night.”

  From his seat at the table, “Grandpa,” aka Leonardo Antony Capriotti, lifted his hands as if to say, Who, me?

  Cora shook her head at both of them, helped the girls down from Mark’s broad shoulders, took them by the hand, and walked away.

  No, Lanie would most definitely not be taking the man’s call. And not for the reasons he’d assume either. She didn’t mind that he had kids. W
hat she minded was that here was a guy who appeared to have it all: close family, wonderful children, a killer smile, a hot body . . . without a single clue about just how damn lucky he was. It made her mad, actually.

  He took in her expression. “Okay, so you’re most definitely not going to take my call.”

  “It’s nothing personal,” she said. “I just don’t date . . .”

  “Dads?”

  Actually, as a direct result of no longer trusting love, not even one little teeny, tiny bit, she didn’t date anyone anymore, but that was none of his business.

  He looked at her for another beat and whatever lingering amusement he’d retained left him, and he simply nodded as he slid his sunglasses back over his eyes. “Good luck today,” he said. “You really are going to need it.”

  And then he was gone.

  He thought she’d judged him. She hated that he thought that, but it was best to let him think it. Certainly better than the truth, which was that the problem was her, all her. She inhaled a deep, shaky breath and turned, surprised to find not just Cora watching, but Mark’s sisters, grandpa, and several others she could only guess were also related.

  Note to self: Capriottis multiply when left unattended.

  Chapter 2

  Anxiety: Look out.

  Me: For what?

  Anxiety: Just look out.

  That night Lanie got into bed at eight o’clock with a book and a glass of wine. The book was because she liked the idea of reading and also because it made her feel like the wine was justified and not a necessity.

  Even if it was a necessity.

  The habit had started six months ago on the night of Kyle’s funeral, which was when Kyle’s boss had to tell her that another wife had popped up.

  Lanie had promptly moved out of the condo they’d lived in and rented a small town house in a different neighborhood. She hadn’t yet made it her own, so she didn’t have any plants or pets to worry about while she was gone, and any friends she’d had were work friends or had been Kyle’s friends as well, and everyone had seemed to fade away.