Page 18 of The Billionaire's Bad News Baby

“So, do you like the wine?”

The afternoon was just as dark and gloomy as the morning had been. The rain still cascaded in sheets against the windows, seeming like it was washing the whole island clean, and it was hard to tell if the rushing sound around the villa was from the ocean waves, the wind or the rain. All of it melded together into a white noise that Kayla was starting to get used to.

Breakfast had stretched on for hours as she and Elio had talked, sitting at the kitchen counter and drinking more coffee than was probably medically safe. Kayla probably wasn’t going to sleep for a week, but it had been so delicious that every time Elio had offered a refill, she said yes. Elio, apparently, was a caffeine addict through and through and thought nothing of brewing a new cup immediately after the first was finished. And quite frankly, Kayla, even if she was teased for it, was determined to make the most of the ingredients that were on this island, be they root vegetables, liquid or otherwise.

Kayla had cleaned the kitchen as well as she possibly could, determined to be a good houseguest. In the end, Elio had ended up helping, having accepted that she wasn’t going to give up on it. So they had talked about nothing in particular, throwing jabs across the room at one another as they drank too much coffee and cleaned the kitchen together while the rain poured outside. It had all been weirdly domestic, and Kayla was stuck with the fact that she felt comfortable with Elio. In any sane universe, she should be hiding out in the guest suite, waiting for the storm to calm enough for her to get out of dodge and back to the mainland, away from the reclusive billionaire who was being sued for grievous bodily harm.

Instead, they’d followed each other around as if attached at the hip until now, when they had migrated to a beautiful living room that looked out onto the ocean. Not that you could see it with the rain throwing itself against the window, but Kayla was still impressed by the idea of the view.

And for this conversation, at least, there was wine. They sat on a sofa and Elio brought out a vintage bottle covered in dust that was probably worth more than Kayla’s monthly rent, popping the cork out as if it were no big deal. Watching someone from such a different tax bracket go about their day was like watching a particularly interesting specimen at a zoo, or an alien that had failed to assimilate into human life.

“Kayla?” he asked, tilting his head.

“Sorry, what was the question?”

“Do you like the wine?”

The answer seemed really important to him, the way he was looking at her so earnestly. It would be so easy to keep teasing him, the way they’d been poking fun at each other all day. But Kayla trusted her instincts and replied seriously, to this one question at least.

“I do,” she said, smothering a smile when Elio was so obviously pleased by the answer. “I don’t know much about fancy wine,” she said as a disclaimer. “But I like this very much.”

Elio looked like a little bird fluffing up his feathers at that, and it was probably one of the most adorable things Kayla had ever seen. But she really couldn’t help herself, and the need to push his buttons was getting stronger by the minute. She was only human, after all.

“You make fun of me for going on about tomatoes,” she said, “but you seem to really like wine, buddy.”

“It is my job. The vineyards out there aren’t just for show.”

Kayla really had assumed that they were just there for decoration, turning her head to look out the window on instinct, even though the vines were all obscured by the rain.

“Did you make this?” Kayla asked, gesturing to the glass in her hand.

“No, that’s just something that was lying around.”

Just something lying around. On his private island. Rich people really did live in a different world.

“Why wine?” she asked, sipping at the maroon liquid that really was very good. Even for something that had just been lying around.

“Why do I make it?” Elio asked.

“Yeah.”

He shrugged, swirling his own glass around and sniffing it like people did on TV. Kayla hadn’t known people actually did that… It seemed she was learning a whole bunch of things.

“My father ran the business before me,” Elio said, watching the rain hurl itself against the window. “And it had been successful, very successful. But the business had only a department for wine, for liquor, for importing different wines and liquors. He had been thinking about also getting into sodas… I took over and simplified the whole thing, boiled it down to doing one thing and doing it better than anybody else…”

He trailed off, looking back up at her as if just realizing that he’d gotten carried away with the story. Kayla just smiled and nodded, like encouraging a small kitten to continue to trust you.

“And you chose to focus on wine?”

Elio cleared his throat. “Uh, yes.”

“Because it’s your favorite?”

Elio shrugged again, but Kayla was determined to pull him back out of the shell he’d suddenly gone into.

“It seems like it worked?” she prodded.

“There’s a history to wine,” Elio said, his voice almost reverent now that he was back on his favorite topic. “It was the drink of kings and royalty, and even now it’s the most sophisticated drink there is. Champagne is frivolous, best kept for special occasions, but wine is something that can be incorporated into everyone’s life, no matter the occasion. At the end of the day, it’s just fermented grape juice, but there’s a whole story around it, especially in Italy. If I was going to build a whole brand around something, then it seemed like the most obvious choice, objectively speaking, but even then, if you’re going to stake your business on a brand, become the face of it, be its main cheerleader then at the very least you have to like your own product. My father was very successful when he was in charge, but there was a reason the business plateaued at a certain point… I don’t think he ever actually felt that strongly about any of it.”

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