Page 30 of Saved by the CEO

Her annoyance from before all but forgotten, she reached out to touch his arm. “I’m sorry if it dredged up a lot of bad memories.”

At last, he shifted his gaze, turning from the grapes to where her fingers rested on his forearm. As always happened, when his eyes fell on her, the attention made her body tingle. “Not everyone is made to get married.”

True or not, his answer, with its lonely, resigned tone, hurt her to hear. Louisa found it hard to think of Nico as ever being lonely—the concepts Nico and alone seemed like polar opposites. But lines had suddenly appeared around his mouth and eyes as he spoke, lines that could only be etched from sadness.

“Sometimes we just pick the wrong person the first time around, is all,” she said, thinking of her own mistake.

“Sometimes. I should check the Brix content on these vines.” Pulling away from her touch, he reached for his satchel.

He didn’t want to talk about it. Fine. If anyone understood the need to bury past mistakes, she did, and if changing topics took the sadness away from his eyes, all the better.

Nico wasn’t the only one who hated to see another person sad.

“Are they ready for harvest?” she asked.

“You tell me.” Picking a grape, he pressed it to her lips. Louisa could taste the sweetness the moment she bit down. Once she moved past the feel of his fingers on her lips, that is. “Mmm, delicious.”

“If the sugar content matches up, I’ll tell the foreman to have his team start working this field tomorrow. By the time we finish, the other fields, yours, should be ready.”

“You mean they aren’t all ready at the same time?” She stole another grape. The fruit was still sweet, but it didn’t make her lips respond like the one he fed her had.

“Grapes on the northern side of the vineyard always ripen sooner. They’re on a slope angled to get the most sun throughout the day. Carlos used to call Northern grapes favorito della Natura because they got the most sunshine.”

“Nature’s favorites?”

“He had names for all the fields. The ones in the southern field he called scontroso—grumpy—because they were often slow to ripen.”

“Wouldn’t you be grumpy, too, if the other field was the favorite?”

“That’s what I used to tell him.”

Louisa smiled, imagining the two men walking the rows, nicknaming the plants. “Carlos sounds like a character.”

“He was a very wise man. A born winemaker.”

Whose fields would be ruined, but for Nico’s care. Guilt kicked at her conscience. If only she could have claimed her inheritance sooner. “I had no idea any of the Bertonellis ever existed,” she said. “My mother never talked about my father’s family.” Never talked about her father, period, actually. Geoffrey Harrison was a smooth-talking liar best left unmentioned.

“Don’t feel bad. I never knew he had relatives in America.”

“Tight family bonds, huh?” she said. The sarcasm came out more bitter than she meant.

“Trust me, family bonds aren’t always so wonderful. They can get in the way, too. Like baby sisters deciding you need to entertain them when they are pregnant and bored.”

Who did he think he was kidding? He’d loved Marianna’s visit yesterday and they both knew it.

“I would have killed for a brother or sister,” she said. “Most of my life, it was just my mom and me. We used to joke it was us against the world.”

“Must be upsetting for her to see her daughter being lambasted in the press. Have you talked to her?”

“No. She...um...” It was her turn to study the grape vines. How did she explain that she’d screwed up the one good relationship in her life? She’d love to blame Steven again, but this time she had only herself to blame. “I don’t want to bother her.”

Just as she recognized his evasion tactics, Nico recognized hers. “You don’t think your mother’s aware of what’s going on?” he asked.

“I’m sure she is, but...” But Louisa was too embarrassed to call and talk about it. “The two of us were estranged for a while. I don’t want to spoil things by bringing up bad news right as we’re getting on better footing.”

This wasn’t the direction she planned for their conversation to take. Seemed as though whenever the two of them talked lately, she found herself sharing some facet of her past she’d sworn to keep secret. Frightening, how easily she exposed herself to him, more frightening than her desire to lean on his shoulder, and yet at the same time, the words tumbled out without pause.

Perhaps it was because Nico accepted what she said without pushing for more. Like now, he simply nodded and, hands in his back pockets, began sauntering down the row. Made her feel, in spite of how easily the information came out, that she was in control of the information she chose to share.

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