I walked out onto the path of trees we had just planted in amongst the old black walnuts and willows. I touched one of the lemon trees and smiled. It would one day be my legacy. Albero di Limone was the name of my label, or Lemon Tree Winery for Americans.
The path led to the villas I had made for the guests. There were two, each functioned as a 60-room inn. It was perfect. They were mock-ups, not exact, of the villa Daniela and Tex had been married at. The view was of the vineyard and the sea. The hills with the vineyard was my favorite view, but I was alone in that. Everyone else loved that Carolina coastline.
We even had storm reservations for storm watchers who could come on short notice. If a storm was hitting, the room instantly was reserved for them. Some people were crazy and liked watching storms. They made me nervous.
The butlers were in proper attire and ready to serve. I scanned each one as I walked past, "You ready?"
They nodded.
I walked past it to the far side of the property, where the best view was. Our house was there, tucked away in the trees. It matched the villa in Rome but with considerably better updates. I walked in the front door. Mike and my mom were arguing.
Or rather she was yelling at him, "You can't, Mike, stop being such a…"
"Mom!"
She looked at me and blushed, "Sorry dear, we were just discussing the fact he was going to sign autographs at the winery. He, Lucian, and Will are all in protest."
I lifted my hand to my heart, "I think I'm having a heart attack and you two are fighting about autographs? Where the hell is Brandi? Jesus. I need someone to make sure those boys don’t drink anything. They looked shifty. Has anyone made sure the rooms are all clean? Vince, Tex, Daniela, Sal, and Arthur will be here any moment. Sal and Arthur have women with them. I had the driver bringing them from the airport, but I didn’t know about the women. I mean, I should have assumed there would have been dates and I didn't. I am not good at this planning stuff."
Mike ignored everything I said and walked towards me. He scooped me up and carried me up the huge stairs. I wiggled, "France, stop messing with me. Mom! Mom, go and get Muriel and tell her that she can't feed those boys liquor. MOM!"
Mike opened our double doors and walked across the room to our bed. He tossed me onto it and walked back to close the doors.
"Mike, I can't do this right now. I have a thousand things to do, I don’t have time for this."
He jumped onto the bed, making it rock like a boat, "Deep breaths, Jack."
I gave him my dead-inside look. He snorted, "You are so dramatic. When we got out in the second round of playoff games, you never saw me getting all dramatic. I shook gloves and skated off the ice. Now you gotta just let tonight be what it will. You got a whole team helping you here, but it doesn’t work if you don’t trust them."
I almost growled, "France, I need to make sure everything is going to go smoothly."
"Stanley has helped every step of the way. The sommelier has tasted everything we are about to serve. You have all the right people in all the right places. The chef already let me taste everything he made and it was good. Real good. The decorations look top notch and the bride and groom are in their room with Abby, getting ready. Why don’t you just lay back here for a minute with me and think about how nice it is that you can do all this stuff."
I sighed, "I can't even relax here. I thought this would be more relaxing but I owe you so much. I was looking at the villas and our house and it hit me, I will probably never make enough money to pay you back. Ever. What if it's never mine?"
When he didn’t answer, I glanced over at him. He looked dead inside when he spoke softly, "Your mom gave me all that money. She didn’t want me to tell you. That’s what we were fighting about. It was all yours anyway, all your inheritance."
My stomach dropped, "My dad paid for it all?"
He pinched the bridge of his nose, "Jack, you paid for it all. Your mom had your trust fund reinstated. You own this whole place. She and Muriel wanted me to make it look like I paid, but I never did."
I felt sick, "I can't talk about this now." I got up from the bed, but he got up fast and pulled me back to the bed.
"Too bad, ‘cause you're going to."
My tone dropped down to calm-like anger, "I can't believe you would lie to me like that."
He dropped to his knees, between my legs, "You have made me live in sin with you for a year, as your mother calls it. You don’t want to talk about marriage or babies or us ever being anything beyond what we are now. You want your own identity and you want to earn this place so bad that you're pushing me away. I don’t want this money to be between us anymore. What's mine is yours, and if you had just let me do it, I would have given you the damned vineyard. But I know you. I knew you would insist on paying for it. So your mom took money from your inheritance and gave it to me to cover the vineyard and all the renovations. Now you know."
I had a thousand excuses for the thing he'd said, but I didn’t know how to say them. I sat there staring at him.
His eyes filled with something not good, "I guess now that you don’t owe me and you own this place, you will have to choose if you want to be with me or not. But I'm done with this living arrangement, and I'm done with you holding that fucking money over my head." He got up and left the room.
I sat there and watched the door close. It felt bad.
I got up and followed him out of the room, but he was gone when I got downstairs.
Muriel gave me a look. I nodded, "I know."
Mom came into the room with a sheepish look, "We just wanted you to have it. We never thought about the fact that it would make a wedge between you and Mike. He wanted to tell you from the start but we made him promise not to."
Muriel got up from the chair and stood next to my mom. I sighed, "Thank you." I forced a smile on my face.
Muriel laughed and my mother gave me a scowl, "Oh, if you're upset, just say it."
I slumped into a chair in the nook, "Mom, how could you?"
She sat across from me and picked at a bowl of grapes, "How could I what? Use the trust fund money that I had protected for you to purchase your dream that your father stifled? Yes, how dare I try to make up for the fact I was never much of a mother." She got up and walked away from the table. None of us knew how to fight in a healthy way.
Muriel gave me a nasty look but my mother turned back around with a vengeance. She nearly spat at me, she spoke so harshly, "Your grandfather left you that money because he loved you. He always loved you and Brandi. He always wanted you to be safe and happy. If he had known you wanted a vineyard with a bunch of villas he would have bought it and made it so. You will not be ungrateful. I never raised you to be rude. Not to someone's face." She turned and left for real this time.
Muriel gave me a smile, "I like to think of it as payment for all those years of wearing the right thing and saying the right thing and being the right thing. A minute is a precious thing to waste being unhappy. Every minute had a dollar value. Your father got a bargain, if you ask me." She winked and walked out after my mother.
I looked out at the trees and gardens. I got up and ran from the house along the path. I ran down the grass path to the beach. He was sitting there, in the spot where we had gotten sand in all our bits.
I sat next to him but he didn’t move. The sea looked grey and ready to storm, regardless of the beautiful day.
I nudged him, "I am grateful I have someone like you who gives me the thing I need, even when my stubborn ass can't see that I need it."
He sat stoic so I continued, "I'm grateful that no matter what, you didn’t give up on me. You let me finish the renos and make this place what I wanted it to be, before you told me I was actually borrowing my own money. I never would have finished if I thought it was my father's."
I looked out at the choppy water, "But most of all, I am grateful that two years ago, when my pride and my heart and my mind were all broken, they managed to think of you in their moment of despair. The first thing I did when I caught Phil cheating, was drive to you. You were my autopilot and my safe haven. You were home, safety, and happiness and I knew that then."
He wrapped an arm around me, pulling me into him. He kissed the top of my head, "Will you marry me?"
I smiled, "I will."
"When?"
He smiled, "I'd say in an hour but Will and Brandi are getting married. How about in a week?"
I looked into his eyes and saw myself. I hoped it would stay like that forever—me in his eyes like I was the only thing he saw.
I nodded, "I'm sure Mom and Muriel can whip something up and we'll just keep the decorations up."
He laughed, "Promise, ‘cause if I call my momma there is no turning back."
I leaned in, brushing my lips against his, "Let's go call her now."
He kissed me hard, pressing himself against me and pushing me back in the sand, "Let's call her in an hour."
I laughed and pushed back, "No way. I had a hell of a time getting all that sand out of my butt."
He looked into my eyes and brushed his hand along my face. He pushed the hair out of my face and nodded, "You know you have to change your name to mine, right?"
I scowled, "No Croix?"
He shook his head, "No. Croix-France sounds completely insane."
I laughed and nodded, "Okay."
"Do you have any demands?"
I shook my head, "Just you." We were about to seal the deal with a kiss, when I opened my eyes, "And no signing autographs in my winery. Mom's right, it's tacky."
He laughed, "I was the one saying no. She was saying yes."
I shook my head, "What has become of that woman?"
"When she decided to stop taking pills and drinking away the pain, all those feelings came out with force. Now she's damned near crazy."
I would have laughed but I knew that feeling. The time I'd spent in New York as a waitress had been the same for me. I had been feeling things for the first time and it was bad, horrid even.