Almost Lover

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission of the author except where permitted by law.

  Published by CAMPBELL REINHARDT

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2014 Steph Campbell & Liz Reinhardt

  All rights reserved.

  Jordan presses her hands together like she’s in the middle of fervent prayer, but I know her, and I know she’s just overthinking things. Like always. She’s talking herself out of this. Out of us.

  She touches her fingertips to her lips, her eyes closed.

  For one stupid, fleeting second I feel like I’ve got a shot at fixing this. That I can reset the clock. That I won’t end up thirty years from now explaining to my grandkids how I let the love of my life walk away. I hate that I’m good at the things I don’t give a shit about, but I’m terrible at the things I care the most about. I hate that I’m terrible at us.

  “Jordan—” I start.

  “No. Let me talk, Enzo.” she says. “Let me talk because we both know that there’s nothing you can say to change what is so just…please don’t try. You can’t pull me into the wine cellar and kiss away all of the things that stand in our way, no matter how much we both want that to be true.” I guess this is irony. I left my hometown with a broken heart, only to show up here and break one. Nice job, Enzo.

  “Maybe.” Her lip gives the tiniest quiver, and it takes every ounce of strength I have in me not to grab her and pull her in—pull that lip into my mouth and shut all this down. “Maybe in some alternate universe we could have been something. Maybe in some other time.” She links her fingers together and stares down at them. Then does the most Jordan thing she can, and tries to make a joke. “But there’s no shortage of girls, Enzo, you’ll bounce back.”

  “Don’t do that,” I say. I take one step closer to her. I couldn’t give a shit less about any other girl. I’m terrified that I’m letting the right one slip through my fingers right now and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

  “Hey,” she gives a half-hearted attempt at a smile and a small shrug of her shoulder, like this is casual.

  Like this is nothing.

  Like this is over.

  “We almost were, right? That’s got to count for something.”

  This entire wedding would make my mother snort with disdain. It’s like I can hear her murmuring in my ear all those things that make me cringe whenever she voices them in public—too loudly and without giving a crap who overhears—because my mom thinks being unfailingly honest is way more important than being socially polite.

  Roses? Red roses? I’d make a joke about how generic they are, but the joke would be a cliché. Sort of like your father’s child bride. By the way, did she peruse her collection of Bob Mackie Barbie dolls for wedding dress ideas? She looks like a background dancer for some Vegas wedding magic show.

  “Jordan?” Dad puts his arm around me, and I nestle into the solid weight of it, elbowing Mom’s snark out of my brain for the moment. “You have no idea how much this means to Jennifer. She’s over the moon about this.”

  “Of course.” I smile, this particular, practiced smile that’s all teeth and squinty eyes. I always hope it’ll be bright enough to trick anyone who isn’t looking closely into thinking I’m actually happy. And it usually works. “Jennifer wanted…family…standing with her. So. Here I am.”

  I choke around the word that’s so silly I’m embarrassed to have said it. Because—as cordial as my father’s fiancée and I manage to be to each other—there’s no way I consider her family. Not by any stretch. Though I go out of my way to be nice. Maybe to combat how intensely mean my mother is about her. Plus, she’s kind of undeniably pathetic.

  Poor Jennifer, the near-orphan with a heart of gold and a thousand and one sob stories that never quite add up. My gut feeling is that my dad’s pretty young wife is only slightly shady behind those wide anime eyes and all that damn wavy blonde hair.

  She looks like a mermaid.

  Or a cartoon.

  Or a mermaid cartoon who’s trying to pull the wool over your eyes all the time. But I think all her weird lies about nefarious or tragically dead relatives are just a cover for the fact that her people are most likely Bud-drinking, Nascar-watching West Virginians she doesn’t want my dad or any of his rich, cultured friends to meet. Hence, she planned a slightly tacky, completely flamboyant wedding all on her own, and here I am, standing as a bridesmaid because I’m “the only real family she has to stand with her.”

  In a strapless scarlet dress that droops off my non-curves and a pair of elbow-high white gloves that are over-the-top humiliating. I refused to let my mother even lay eyes on the dress, because I was going to have a hard enough time wearing it for the few hours I had to, never mind having my mother cackle about how ridiculous I would look in it for weeks before.

  “How’s your mother?” Dad’s entire frame goes stiff and his mouth twitches to one side.

  I ignore the look and skirt the question. “She’s great. Don’t you have to be somewhere? Jennifer was freaking out about getting this started on time.”

  But Dad is persistent when he wants information, and even though he’s marrying Jennifer today—there’s still a piece of him that needs to know what Mom’s doing at all times.

  “And Golden Leaf?”

  Now his look goes from rigid to wrinkled. The spaces between and around his eyes fill with deep worry lines, and they bracket his mouth, too. The vineyard has and always will be my mother’s heart and soul. Most days it feels like it’s more her child than I am. But that place has an undeniable magic my father never could deny.

  Sometimes I think the vineyard kept them together for a good five years beyond the time when their marriage had coughed its last, horrible death rattle.

  “S’okay,” I mumble, because I cannot betray my mother by telling my father the way she pores over the ledgers until it’s nearly dawn and spends hours wedged between the oak barrels, sipping and sighing with worry.

  “She looked thin when I last saw her. Frail, even.”

  Ironic that he cares so much now, notices more now. If he’d given her this much attention during those last few rocky years of their marriage, they probably could have avoided the entire, messy divorce.

  “She was making selections for a local contest the last time you saw her,” I rationalize. “You know that always gets her edgy.”

  “Used to be only the big national contests set her on edge. The local ones? She was so calm and collected when it came to those.” My dad raises his dark eyebrows and shakes his head. “She makes wine. You’d think all that sampling would mellow her.”

  I shrug.

  Wine is more than a drink to my mother. It’s lifeblood. It’s an obsession. I’ve never seen my mother so much as tipsy. She has way too much respect for the wine and for her job as caretaker of it. When I think of Pollock and his splatters or Plath and her poetic angst or Child and her beef bourguignon, I add my mother into the mix. She’s a completely focused, passionate artist, and wine is her medium.

  “I wanted to use Golden Leaf for the wedding,” Dad says, his voice ragged with frustration.

  It was a long, growly fight, with both of them presenting their cases to me and insisting I petition the other to ‘just be reasonable for once.’

  Dad pointed out how many wealthy, wine-loving people would attend, how good it would be for publicity.

  Mom serenely insisted she’d rather scoop her eyes
from her skull with a dull spoon than live with the image of Jennifer gulping down our crisp, sharply-sweet Riesling before she went to do the YMCA with her gauche friends.

  In the end, as usual, Mom’s pride won out and Golden Leaf limped on in proud silence.

  “Dad, please,” I beg. “It wasn’t my choice, and it’s a moot point now. Look, I better go make sure Jennifer is okay. Alright?” I wait, and his when dark eyes meet mine.

  I can see shades of regret and longing in them. There’s a lot I know he wants to say. Very little is probably appropriate to speak aloud on the day he’s supposed to marry the woman he supposedly loves: a woman who is not my mother.

  “Alright, kiddo. What would I do without you?” He kisses my hair just over the curve of my ear.

  I squeeze his hand, my thumb bumping over the smooth, worn indent where his wedding ring sat for twenty five years: long enough that, even though he took it off for good three years ago, the ghost of it still marks him.

  I should go find Jennifer, but she has an entire entourage of perfectly doting, giggly trophy wives and spoiled debutantes who are saying those happy things someone should say to you on your wedding day. I would say those things if I had to, but I’d prefer if I didn’t have to. Not when Mom and Dad are still mourning the remnants of a marriage neither one ever quite believed would end.

  Not when I’m not at all sure how I feel about any of this.

  What I need is a distraction. What I see is a wine tent going up.

  Slowly. Awkwardly.

  It’s not as nice as the ones my mother orders for events, which cost a small fortune, but are gorgeously detailed and insanely easy to put together—the only requirements that mattered when my mother was choosing, regardless of how little extra we had to spend on them.

  This one has no elegant details and seems the opposite of easy to put together. There is a guy crouched over the canopy piece, trying to fit together two long, hollow bars that aren’t cooperating. Not the way he’s trying to snap them together anyway.

  “Reverse the one in your left hand,” I suggest.

  His broad back stiffens and his shoulders go still. When he looks over his shoulder at me, I expect him to be annoyed, but he’s smiling. He turns his attention to the bar in his left hand, flips it, and gives a low whistle when it slides in smoothly.

  He hops to his feet, agile and so energized, I feel the excitement snapping off of him and crackling in the air.

  “Enzo Rodriguez. You looking for work? Because I’ll put a good word in with my boss if you are.” His eyes slide over me in a way that makes me feel full and ready…for what I’m not sure. “Meaning I’ll beg her on my knees to take you on. I was starting to sweat, wondering if I’d ever get that damn thing up.”

  I shake the hand he extended. His skin is warm, even through my glove, and the callouses on his fingers snag on some of the loose threads. I have a strange urge to grab the glove in my teeth and rip it off so I can feel his hand on mine, skin to skin.

  “Jordan Caletti. And thank you for the offer, Enzo, but I happen to have a job I can’t leave.”

  “You love it that much?” There’s a hint of admiration in his eyes, and I half hate to stomp it out.

  “No. I actually can’t leave, like I have no choice. It’s a family gig, so it’s pretty much life-long indentured service.”

  His dark brows lift high for a second, and he gives me a rueful smile that lets me know he’s been there.

  “My parents have a couple furniture stores down south. When I told my father I’d moved up north, I swear to you, he didn’t even ask what my plans were. He just said, ‘I can finally open a branch in Northern California.’ He was about ready to disown me when he found out I wasn’t interested in hocking loveseats, you know?”

  I watch the way his lips curl when he says ‘loveseats.’ I wish I could find a way to work that word into our conversation again, and I wonder why my skin prickles when such a domestic word comes out of his mouth.

  “I do know,” I say and strangle the sigh that’s always on my lips when I think about Golden Leaf. “I mean, not about loveseats exactly, but overbearing parents? I’m pretty much an expert. Well, I’m glad you put your foot down. It gives those of us who are still suffering in bondage some hope.”

  When he laughs, his wide, gorgeous shoulders bump up and down.

  “I’ll tell you what.” He gives me that look again, like he would use his eyes to pull down the zipper on this dress if he could. “I was a little bummed I agreed to the overtime while I was wrestling this stupid thing up. But now I’m feeling like it was all a damn good idea.”

  I hold my breath and let that honeyed voice run over my ears. His eyes looked brown when he first glanced my way, but now I see the spokes of soft green and gold in them. They’re hazel. Hazel eyes are notorious for changing color according to a person’s mood, and I want to know what color they would turn if I kissed him.

  My entire body simmers at that thought, and I know I should get going. Fast.

  “I, uh…I better get over there.” I point one gloved finger toward the garden area covered with draping, heavy red roses and already packed full of guests.

  “Find me later.” The words drop out of his mouth with an easy, lazy command that makes my arms bristle with goose bumps.

  “I’ll do that. I’ll just look for the falling down tent.” My heart flutters when he laughs again. “By the way, the piece in your right hand goes into the curved piece by your feet.”

  He looks down and I get a better view of his neck, a dark caramel I want to lick. I can see the peak of a tattoo’s design on his chest when he stretches down to pick up the curved metal.

  “Stay and help me.” He puts his big hands together, prayer-style and that smile…it’s so damn sweet, it burns.

  “Sorry.” I hold my arms out at my sides to show off my silly outfit. “I’ve got a minor role in this production.”

  “Break a leg.” He jerks his chin my way, those highly kissable lips pursed like he knows he’s about to say something he probably shouldn’t. “And try not to steal the show, gorgeous. Not fair to the bride, you know?”

  My brain is already snapping to be ready with an answer to those words—which just curled around my heart and sunk low down in my body—but I have to cut it short, because I hear the violins tuning.

  “Shit. I’m late!” I turn around and rush to the ceremony site as fast as my column dress will let me, refusing to turn back and check if those hazel eyes are watching me as I go.

  Nope. I will not peek.

  No matter how badly I want to see exactly what shade of golden-green they become when they watch something they want walk away. Because I already care too much, even though I know from experience this was just a little fun flirting that will fizzle before it gets started.

  I manage not to trip as I maneuver over peoples’ satin heels and shiny shoes, wiggling to the front so I can join a line of identically clad women. The main difference between me and the other six bridesmaids is I’m silicone free, so my dress sags where theirs cling and scream ‘vavavoom.’

  I hold my bouquet of fat red roses, swallowing the swear that bubbles up when a missed thorn digs into my palm. I turn with the other girls and paste on a wide smile as Jennifer starts down the aisle.

  There’s no denying she’s a pretty person, but her wedding outfit would have made Cher jealous in the eighties. She’s like the polar opposite of my elegant, classically gorgeous mother. I eye my father to see his reaction, but his face is the unreadable blank it’s been so often the last few months. The other bridesmaids wiggle and let out muffled squeals of girlish delight over their friend’s insane get-up.

  I can’t help but think that one of these overly made-up sexpots will probably wind up dragging Enzo Rodriguez into some dark corner by that hastily knotted tie of his.

  I’m funny. I’m smart as hell. And I love sex. But no matter how much a guy might like me initially, I don’t have that sex appeal that can draw
him in and keep his attention. My last serious boyfriend said we just had no chemistry.

  My mother said he was still coming to terms with his homosexuality, and we were both idiots for neglecting to notice.

  The problem is, I’d heard variations of that exact thing from guys more often than I like to admit, and my gaydar isn’t that off.

  Anyway, part of the reason I don’t mind when a flirting session with a hot guy goes just a little too far is because I know for sure it’s actually not going anywhere. Enzo will have his eye on some sexier, prettier girl by the time cocktail hour is over, and I’ll just pray dinner isn’t based around some weird health-food fad Jennifer bought into and that the music doesn’t totally suck.

  There’s always my gawky cousin Eddie to hang with when I wind up alone. He’s a totally unpretentious and enthusiastic dancer, and some of my funnest childhood memories include shimmying to the electric slide with him. Enzo was awesome to spar with for a few minutes, but guys that charming and hot have their pick of women, and I don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of competing in the land of plastic surgery and physical perfection.

  The white witch Jennifer found to conduct the ceremony—and that’s not a joke, the woman is an actual, practicing Wiccan—is binding Jennifer’s wrist to Dad’s with a hemp rope. I’m not listening to the specifics of the ceremony because I don’t want there to be any random eye-rolling pictures that I’ll have to explain later. Jennifer didn’t want to use up any Napa Valley Sundays attending a church to find a minister to marry them, so she got a friend of a friend to find anyone who was willing to let them read their own cheeseball vows to each other. Since meeting her witchy officiator, she’s watched The Craft a dozen times and bought a lot of heavily scented candles that she burns incessantly.

  Mom says she’s easily influenced, like all weak-minded people.

  I wonder if the marriage is even valid.

  I guess anyone can get an online certification to officiate if they want. I stare down the long white silk runner littered with red rose petals and don’t focus on the words that will bind my father to this woman. Who’s not a bad woman.