Page 110 of Gone With the Wine

He seems surprised that I’ve been so direct. His mouth opens, then closes.

Aunt Janet casts him a worried look.

“You don’t have a good reason, do you? It was just to exclude us.”

His lips thin. “You seem to not want to be part of the Lamberti family anymore.”

“What? That’s ridiculous. Why would you say that?”

“If you were part of the family, you’d let us keep the wineries together. We’d all work for Belmonte.”

I stare at him, then shake my head. “I wouldn’t be working for Belmonte, though. You wouldn’t hire me as a winemaker. Would you?”

“We have a winemaker. Vittorio is doing very well.”

“Exactly.” Old hurt and resentment rises up inside me on top of my already irked state, a pressure building in my chest. “I’d be working as a cellar rat forever if we kept the wineries together and I stayed here.”

He says nothing.

“That’s not what I want,” I tell him, the words coming out in a rush. “And that’s not what Nonna wanted. And you know that.”

His face tightens.

“You can’t believe I’ve been nominated for such a prestigious award, can you?” I demand. “You’ve never taken me seriously. You brushed off my ideas, and my attempts to create wines. You never bothered to see if I had any talent.” I raise my chin and hold his gaze. “Well, news flash. I do have talent. My boss in Argentina believed in me. I have opportunities there that I would never have here at Belmonte.”

“Or at Caparelli,” he points out.

My ire flares even hotter. “Why not Caparelli? Just because we’re basically starting over, doesn’t mean we can’t be successful with it. You keep making that mistake. And it’s really pissing me off.”

His chin jerks down and his forehead turns frowny.

“Bianca,” Aunt Janet says, clearly ill at ease.

I look at my aunt. She’s a nice lady, but she’ll always support her husband. “Well, thanks for a lovely evening,” I say crisply. “Even though you didn’t invite me.”

And I turn back to Jansen.

He frowns as I storm up to him. “Uh oh.”

My cousins have moved away to talk to other guests, so it’s just him and me.

“Yeah,” I snap. “Uh oh. Let’s go.”

“Okay.” He takes my hand and we start walking toward the driveway. “What happened?”

I shake off his touch. “I lost my shit.”

“Oh.”

“He pisses me off! Argh. I tried to be calm and unemotional and ask what was going on with leaving us out of this party, but he insulted us again, and…” I sigh. “I think I made things worse.”

We walk toward his truck in silence, other than the sound of our steps on the road and crickets in the grass.

Once in the truck, buckled up, I ask, “Why didn’t you tell me your wife cheated on you?”

There’s a beat, and then he says, “Because it doesn’t matter.”

“I think something like that matters.”

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