Page 23 of Unrelenting
“So I guess you won’t be around as much.”
“Just for a few weeks until they’re broken in. It’s not as if you’ll miss me now you’re in love.”
“I’m not in love.” The denial sounds hollow even to my own ears.
I don’t know if I love Lucia exactly, but I have stronger feelings for her than I’ve had for any woman before.
“If you say so,” Benito says, unconvinced.
We don’t speak again as he drives along the motorway before taking the exit onto the quieter country roads that will take us to the vineyard.
When we reach the house, he parks and I jump out of the car.
“Tell you what,” I say, leaning back into the car as Benito unfastens his safety belt. “Why don’t you go bring Ricci here? I’ll see him in my office in thirty minutes.”
“You’re going to take another crack at him?”
“It can’t hurt to see if he wants something other than money.”
If there’s some way I can move this process along and close the sale, I want to explore it. After my failure to buy Gianetta’s from Lucia, I don’t want to lose out again.
As Benito drives off to pick up Ricci, I know he’ll deliver the old man to me whether he wants to meet me or not. There’s no refusing Benito when he makes a request.
I head into the house and go upstairs to the master bedroom. The place was barely habitable when I bought it, but thanks to my decorator, it’s now the perfect rural sanctuary.
She used a neutral palette throughout the house, adding in splashes of color here and there.
I can’t wait to take Lucia out here. She’ll be awed by the coffee shop and restaurant space and will undoubtedly take a keen interest in the production facilities.
Knowing I don’t have long before Benito returns with Mr. Ricci, I shower quickly. I towel dry my hair and run my fingers through it and then put on brown tailored shorts and a white polo shirt. I slip my feet into white canvas shoes.
It’s not my usual attire, but the mercury is off the scale already, and the day is only going to get hotter. I can’t run around the vineyard in jeans and a leather jacket.
By the time I get downstairs, Benito is already pulling up outside with Mr. Ricci in the passenger seat of his car. I grin. He’s like a Canadian Mountie. He always gets his man.
“Mr. Ricci.” I hold my hand out to greet him as I meet him in the hallway.
“Volante.” He reluctantly shakes my hand, releasing it quickly as if he fears being tainted somehow.
“Please come into my office. Can I get you a drink?”
“Espresso.”
I look over his shoulder to Benito, who escorted Ricci into the house. “Bring us two espressos.”
Benito scowls at me but heads for the kitchen anyway.
“Please,signore, take a seat.” I gesture toward the chair on the opposite side of the desk to where I usually sit.
“Cut the bullshit, boy. What do you want?”
I admire his courage in speaking to me as if I were some wayward teenager.
There aren’t many men like Alberto Ricci around. In his nineties now, he possesses an old school sense of honor. He’s not someone who yields easily. I could strong-arm him to get what I want, but I won’t.
Sure, he’d buckle eventually, but to exert enough pressure to win over a man of such integrity, I’d have to trade too big a piece of my soul.
Damiano thinks I’m going soft since I abandoned my plans to persuade Lucia to sell her restaurant and I refuse to bully Mr. Ricci, but this is my business. It’s not part of the holdings we control as a family.
