Page 73 of With Wine Comes War

“Approximately $500,000.” I ran my hands through my hair and sat back in my chair.

I guess I don’t have a choice. I don’t think I should tell Alex about this right now. She’d freak not knowing who did this.

“This is so weird. Who would know Alex and would do this?” I asked more to myself than Harrison. My nerves were on edge now.

“No idea. I’ll make the arrangements tomorrow for the jet. I’ll go with you.” I was shocked he wanted to be a part of this aspect of the deal, but he had been different the past couple of weeks. I thanked him and decided to call Grant and see where he wanted to meet.

Right before I dialed, the name Santoro scrolled across my screen. This ought to be interesting. I answered and said, “Roman King.”

Mr. Santoro replied, “Roman, how are you? Alessandro Santoro.”

“Alessandro, good to hear from you. What can I do for you?”

“Well, you see, we bought some property about thirty minutes north of the city to start a winery and we’re going to need someone to do the renovations. I was wondering if we could meet up here at the new place and talk about what that might look like.”

Now that was interesting. I had no idea that they could do that since there was no commercial zoning. Had something changed, I wondered?

“You and Alex, both told me you couldn’t get commercial zoning. Did you find something else?” My curiosity got the best of me.

He laughed and said, “No, we had our hearts set on this place and if you want something bad enough and it’s meant to be, things always seem to work out. Don’t you agree?” That made me laugh, thinking about Alex.

“You know, I’m going to have to agree with you on that.”

“Do you think you and Alex could meet us on the property tomorrow afternoon and talk about the plans? Maybe stay for dinner?”

“I’ll talk to Alex tonight and see if that would work. She’s got some exercise classes she takes several times a week, so I’ll let you know. She may be able to join us after, for dinner, if that would work.” He agreed and I hung up and dialed Grant.

“Roman, sorry about the secretive message.”

“No worries, what’s up?”

“We need to talk. I’ll text you the address and meet you there. Can you be there in an hour?”

“Yeah, does Alex…” He cut me off and said, “Alex doesn’t know about this, and I’d like to keep it that way for now.”

“This sounds serious and a little shady. Are we on the up and up with whatever this is?” He chuckled. “Yes, it’s just information, but it’s important and it can’t be done over the phone or in my or your office.”

He texted me an address and we hung up. This was getting weirder by the minute. I plugged in the address. It was a very trendy expensive Italian restaurant. Well, that’s fine because I’m hungry, and he can buy lunch for all the hassle and weirdness. I had Amelia block off an extra hour and asked her if everything else was okay. She said it was and that she had the plane ready to go for Texas in the morning, a hotel and got the other meetings rescheduled.

***

ALEX

I kind of expected him to be waiting there until I came back down.

If I was going to do this moving in thing with Roman, I needed to get some things from my place that were pieces of me. I took two pictures off the bookshelf. One was a family vacation shot, and the other was of me and the girls with their families at a birthday for one of the kids a couple years ago. I’d wanted to add a picture of me and Roman somewhere in there too, but for right now, I just needed this representation, so I didn’t feel like I was living in his house.

When the valet pulled up my car I climbed in and inhaled deeply. I missed the smell she had that relaxed me and the dark tinted windows that concealed me from the craziness of the outside world. Damn it felt good to be driving Betty again. I never thought I would miss driving my car so much.

I had a meeting with Grant this morning. We were going to conference call Matt so I could get the low down on where they were in the search for a relocation area for the Burrow Township residents. After thinking about the list of things I had to do today, I turned up the volume on my stereo to drown everything out until I got to the office. It was all starting to get bunched up in my head and it felt more like chaos than a to do list.

I stopped at the reception desk to say hi to our new receptionist Felicity. She seemed even more nervous around me now than the first time I met her. I wondered what that was about. I walked past Grant’s office, but he was on the phone, so I waved and went down the hall to see Shay.

“Hey girl, how short is my schedule today?” My to do list might be long but I haven't been in the office in three weeks so I couldn't have that much scheduled.

“You have one meeting with Grant and Matt this morning and then you’re picking up Darius Jackson and taking him to the District 5 area to scope out the neighborhood. Then you’re supposed to go toa couple of places that Grant and Matt were looking at— to see what you think.”

“Anything else?”

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