A man ran toward her, a tire iron in his hand. He swung at her skull.
She flung her arm up.
The bar connected.
Pain, bleak and bitter, exploded through her nerves.
Ramming her from the side, he knocked her into the wall.
Luckily, the plaster beneath the flower-patterned paper was old and it crumbled under the impact of her head. Luckily . . .
Sarah woke with the sun shining in her face. For a moment, she couldn’t remember what had happened: why she was on the floor in the kitchen, why she could see through only one eye.
Then she did remember.
An intruder. Get out!
She sat up. Her forearm flopped uselessly at her side. Agony struck her in waves. She wanted to vomit, but she didn’t dare. She was afraid to move. She was afraid to stay. She listened to the house, to the familiar silence, and realized the hot breeze was blowing in her face. Little by little she turned her head to look.
The back door was open.
He was gone.
Slowly, slowly, each inch a new torture, she withered back onto the floor, an old, hurt woman who didn’t want to face what would happen next.
She lay there, eyes closed, fighting the nausea, grappling with the reality of her situation.
If he was still hanging around, she was in trouble. But he could have finished her off while she was unconscious, so probably he’d hit her and left.
She wondered if he had instructions to hurt her, as a warning, or if that had been panic on his part. She hoped it was panic; she hated to think of the state of a man’s soul when he willingly sabotaged and attacked an old woman.
She hated even worse to think of the man who must have ordered the attack. But then, his soul had been damned years ago.
No matter how much it hurt, she had to get up, get to the phone, call . . . Oh, God, her grandsons were going to have a fit when they heard what had happened.
But she had no choice. There was blood on the floor and she was pretty sure she had a concussion, so gradually she opened her eyes—no, her eye—again.
Huh. By some instinct, she’d managed to hang on to her cell phone.
Good job, Sarah.
Squinting at the numbers on the touch screen, she dialed 911 and talked to the dispatcher—a dispatcher who knew her, of course. Almost everybody in Bella Valley did. By the time the conversation was over, Sarah knew she didn’t have to worry about calling the boys. They’d find out through the grapevine. They’d be here in no time.
Instead she went through the painstaking process of making a conference call to her sisters-in-law, one on Far Island and one on the Washington coast.
She didn’t waste time with a greeting. She simply said what needed to be said. “It’s started again.”
T
radition.
Tradition had governed the Di Luca family for an eternity.
Tradition had governed Bella Valley for one hundred and twenty years.
Until Brooke Petersson moved to Bella Valley, she’d never seen that kind of tradition at work.
Oh, she understood tradition. Until she was eleven, she was an Air Force brat, and if there was one thing the military did well, it was traditions. But family traditions . . . not so much.
Her father, Captain Kenneth Petersson, was a fighter pilot, born in Minnesota, tall, tanned, blond, blue eyed, and broad shouldered, with a mother who made lutefisk and a father who ate it. Brooke had lived with her grandparents while her parents were both deployed to various hot spots in the world, and while she didn’t enjoy that—she was nine; she missed her daddy and mama—she discovered what it meant to be half Swedish. That gave her the sense of having roots, which, since the family moved about once a year, she really didn’t.
But Brooke’s mother, Kathy, was from Oklahoma, straight black hair, striking blue eyes, curvaceous figure, with pale skin that burned unless she was wearing
SPF
50. So the next year, when her mother was back from her assignment in the Middle East and the two of them were living on the base in San Antonio, Brooke made a friend who was red-haired and freckled, who sounded like Enya when she sang, and whose parents were from Ireland and spoke with a brogue. The Mc-Brians were Catholic, had six kids and another on the way, and were even poorer than most of the Air Force families. But Brooke ignored their lack of furniture and bare walls and focused on the family, so loud, so vital, so wrapped up in religion and their tales of the Old Country, so unlike her own with its comings and goings and long stretches of loneliness. . . .
So the next time she visited her grandmother in Oklahoma, she asked in a hopeful voice if they were Irish. Her grandmother, a formidable woman who had raised three kids with no help from anybody, turned on Brooke, put her finger in her face, and said, “We’re not Irish, we’re not Mexican, we’re not French, we’re not any of those nationalities. We’re Americans, and don’t you ever forget it.”
It wasn’t the answer Brooke was looking for, but she wasn’t dumb enough to complain. She shut her mouth and looked for something else to concentrate on—and found it in her parents’ bitter divorce.
That broke every tradition and vow she’d ever imagined.
That had broken her life and her heart.
In Bella Valley, Brooke had quickly learned from the Di Lucas that their kind of family traditions were different. The Di Luca family was American, sure. Ippolito Di Luca had immigrated to California in the late nineteenth century, married an Italian girl whose father owned a swath of land and vineyards in Bella Valley, and every child born to the family since had been born in the United States and spoke English as their native tongue.
But the Di Lucas had hung on to the essence of being Italian. They gestured when they talked. They drank wine. They corresponded with the family in the Old Country. They ate Italian. Northern Italian, to be specific. Not that the Di Lucas never got Chinese takeout or made a turkey for Thanksgiving, but every one of them knew their way around a pot of golden, slowly simmering polenta—and God forbid some well-intentioned fool should mention instant polenta. The Di Lucas flirted. . . . Brooke didn’t understand how flirting could be passed down as an Italian tradition, but it was. Every one of the Di Luca men and women used charm like a condiment, to bring flavor and pleasure to a relationship.
The Di Luca traditions meant that when they liked someone, they adopted that person into their family. Brooke knew that firsthand; she had been a part of the family almost from her first day in Bella Valley, and no matter what happened in her life, she was still one of them, almost a daughter, completely a friend.
The Di Luca traditions also meant that when someone got hurt, cards, flowers, and phone calls flooded in and the nearest and dearest gathered close.
So when Rafe Di Luca strode through the door into Sarah’s hospital room, Brooke had been expecting him. Waiting for him . . .
But neither knowledge nor foresight could ease the sweet, familiar shock of recognition. That long stride, that stern profile, that carved body displayed so pleasantly in blue denim and black leather . . .
He nodded at his two brothers.
At thirty-four, Eli was the oldest, the tallest, the least likely to shoot off his mouth and get in a fight—and the most likely to win if he did.
At twenty-eight, Noah was three years younger than Rafe, with the Di Luca family head of curly black hair and a pair of green eyes that had turned many women’s heads.
The resemblance between the brothers was strong, but Rafe was the son who looked most like his father— heart-stoppingly handsome—and acted least like him, for the dangers he faced every day were not the fevered imaginings of some scriptwriter, but real and terrifying.
Brooke braced herself for the moment when his heated gaze touched her.
He didn’t seem to notice her sitting in the corner. Didn’t even glance in her direction.
Even so, the room grew smaller, the air warmer and more concentrated, Brooke’s heartbeat slower, stronger, each throb spreading heat and life and pleasure.
So many years had passed since she’d seen him for the first time, on her beginning day of the new school, when he plucked her out of the crowd and summoned her with a jerk of his head, and she giggled like . . . like the prepubescent girl she had been and tagged after him like a love-starved puppy.
Even so many years later, the memory made her wince.
Today, all the Rafe Di Luca charm was bent on his grandmother.
“Raffaello, I have been waiting for you.” A trembling smile broke across Sarah’s face, and she extended her good hand.
Rafe stopped a few feet from the bed and assessed her—the broken arm, the battered face, the IV in her arm—and shook his head with mocking reproval. “Nonna, how many times have I told you not to get in bar fights?”
For the first time since she’d been attacked, Sarah chuckled. “I learned everything I know about getting in trouble from my grandsons.”
He lowered the silver rail and leaned close, put his cheek against hers and closed his eyes. “You scared me half to death,” he murmured.
Sentiment clogged Brooke’s throat.
No matter what she thought of Rafe, she knew his adoration for his grandmother ran deep and true.
As he straightened, he smiled at Sarah. “Now—tell me the truth. Why were you in a bar fight?”
“You should see the other guy.” Sarah smiled back, but no eighty-year-old could have her head bandaged and a cast on her arm without some wear and tear, and the flush of happiness Rafe’s arrival brought quickly faded.
Rafe saw it, of course. He saw everything. Cradling her hand, he turned to his brothers. “What do we know about the perp?”
“Not a damned thing.” Noah bit off his words. “Nonna was unconscious probably a half hour, which gave him plenty of time to get away. We think she arrived right after he broke in—or rather, walked in, since she never locks her doors—”
“Don’t need to,” she said.
Like male versions of the Fates, the three brothers turned in unison and glared at her.
“This proves you do, Nonna,” Rafe said.
She snorted.
Brooke hid a grin.
To Noah, Rafe said, “Go on.”
“We couldn’t see that the perp disturbed anything,” Noah said. “He hid in the cellar, then rushed out, attacked her, and ran away.”
Rafe’s expression became cold interest. “So he was panicked . . . or he was sent there to attack her.”
“Who’s going to attack an elderly woman?” Eli ran the winery. He called himself just a farmer. Yes, maybe. But he had also proved to have the Di Luca way with wines, creating reds that consistently ranked in the top ten percent of the reviews. Neither of the other two Di Luca brothers had the nose, the art, the sensibility, and in the circle of the larger Di Luca family, Eli was venerated.
In this bleak hospital room, of course, he was merely one of the brothers.
“People do all kinds of heinous things for money, for fun.” All too obviously, Rafe knew what he was talking about. “Did you see him, Nonna?”
She shook her head, and winced. “No. Ski mask. But definitely a big man, white, tall, fit, young. Of course, at my age I think everyone’s young.”
“At your height, you think everyone’s tall, too,” Eli said.
“Eliseo, come over here so I can swat you.” But Sarah was smiling again, and when Eli leaned over the other side of the bed, she gave him a mocking sock to the chin.
“Good point, Eli. Was he as tall as me, Nonna?” Rafe asked.
“No.” She sighed. “I’d say six-foot or a little below.”
“Oh, good. That narrows it down to about five thousand guys here in Bella Terra.” Rafe smiled his crooked smile.
Brooke told herself that when he smiled like that, he looked like Novocain was working on one side of his mouth.
But that wasn’t true. Instead, in his jeans and black leather jacket, he resembled a tough, half-amused, world-weary Gerard Butler. She’d seen that expression work magic on women from around the world. She’d felt the impact herself.
She felt it now, and it wasn’t even aimed at her.
“The police said the burglar might be a vagrant,” Noah said.
“Everybody always wants to think it’s a vagrant rather than someone who lives in their nice little town.” Rafe’s cynicism grated on Brooke’s nerves.
And on Sarah’s, for she stirred restlessly, and winced.
He turned to her right away. “Don’t worry, Nonna. We’ll keep you safe. No one’s going to hurt you again.”
At once, Sarah recognized her chance to get her way. “At home. Promise me I can stay at my home.”
The brothers exchanged exasperated, helpless glances.
“Nonna, it would be so much easier if you’d stay at the resort,” Noah said.
“Or with me. You know you love my house.” Eli had finished his new home on Gunfighter Ridge overlooking the glimmer of Bella Creek. “I’ve got a guest cottage. You can be alone as much as you like.”
“In my own house,” Sarah said stubbornly, but her voice trembled and a single tear slid down the soft wrinkled cheek.
Sarah never cried, and that one tear broke the guys.
“I’ll keep you safe in your house,” Rafe promised.
“I know. I trust you.” She smiled, but her lips trembled. “I’m not afraid for myself. But if something happened to one of my boys, I couldn’t live with myself.”
Real amusement lit Rafe’s face. “I’ll take care of my feeble brothers.”
“Yeah, Nonna, Rafe’ll take care of us.” Eli used sarcasm like a weapon. “Nothing can happen to him. As long as the mugger hits him on the head, Rafe’ll be fine.”
“They have knives. They have guns,” Sarah said fretfully. “Even after all these years, he’s so angry. . . .”
Brooke came slowly to her feet.
The brothers all leaned forward, intent on their grandmother’s face.
“Who, Nonna?” Rafe’s voice was the soft rasp of velvet. “Who are you afraid of?”
“What?” Sarah looked puzzled. “I’m not afraid of anybody. I just want you to be careful.”
The brothers exchanged glances, and nodded. Brooke could almost see the communication between them—
Later
.
“I’m going to have to have someone stay with you,” Rafe said firmly.