First Love - [Bridesmaid's Chronicles 04] Page 4
Not an auspicious moment , he thought. For the first time that he could remember, he'd flat-out lied to his father. He wasn't in control. And that fact bothered him almost as much as the lie.
Frustrated, he headed out of his office toward the front sales floor and tasting room. The vineyard was located just off of Highway 290. Ercel Sonntag had built the limestone building that nestled at the end of a tree-lined caliche drive. Once the family home, it had been converted to guest and servant quarters after the big house had been built, then later turned into the base of operations for the winery. Now the building housed the administrative offices and sales floor for the winery, and Roman had ensured that it looked the part.
He'd brought in professional landscapers to trim and shape the bushes that complemented the acres of vineyard surrounding the building. Flower beds overflowed near the front and back porch, their fragrance mingling enticingly with the heady scent of the ripening grapes.
Inside, the place was kept cool by the thick limestone walls, the well-worn oak floors inviting strangers and friends alike. Amy and two others worked there full time, manning the phones to take orders from out-of-area customers, and overseeing wine tastings for the many tourists who came through, eager to try a local wine. The store also sold wine-related paraphernalia such as glasses, openers, decorative bottle stoppers and books dedicated to the art of wine.
And, if a guest made arrangements in advance, Roman was happy to give a complete tour of the facilities.
A long tasting bar filled one end of the room, and a set of French doors beyond that opened onto an outdoor area with wrought iron tables and chairs where guests could sit and sip wine, enjoying the scenery and the company.
The employees-only area began to the right of the tasting bar, marked by a long thin corridor off of which were Roman's office and a smaller office for Roman's father. The door at the end of the hallway accessed the outside, where a sidewalk led to the back building that housed the fermentation tanks and other equipment. A set of narrow stairs just off the back door led down into the basement wine cellar.
Those areas weren't the only places off-limits to the public. Roman was currently living in the upstairs apartment, a twelve-hundred-square-foot suite that Julia swore they should turn into an elegant bed-and-breakfast retreat once the couple moved into Sonntag House. That the stately mansion he was currently remodeling would eventually be their home was a bit ironic, especially considering it was the flash point for their families' feud.
Roman wasn't currently worrying about his present or future living quarters, however. At the moment, he had plenty of other things to occupy his mind.
As Roman moved from his office into the public area, he saw that Amy was busy with a harried-looking couple bickering over whether to purchase a bottle of port or Riesling. He considered suggesting they compromise and buy both, but he could see easily enough that this couple would only say no.
That far apart with regard to their wine, and it was likely they were far apart on everything else important in their relationship.
He was about to say something anyway, just to test his own theory, when the bell above the door jingled. He turned, expecting new customers, and was delighted when Alex and Syd walked in. His heart stuttered a bit, and he held his breath, expecting Julia to traipse in after her sister. When the door merely banged shut, he frowned, and Syd laughed.
"Roman, I'm sorry I ever doubted you. You're so in love with my sister it's almost pathetic."
Roman raised his brows. "I'm not sure if I've just been insulted or complimented."
"Just stating a fact," she said, looking absurdly pleased with herself.
"Jersey's in a mood," Alex said, lifting her hand for a soft kiss to lighten the sting of the nickname.
"I am," she admitted. "But that doesn't change the fact that Roman's smitten." She grinned, broad and wide. "You should've seen the look on your face when you realized Julia wasn't behind me. Like a little boy who just found out there's no Santa Claus."
He didn't bother to deny it, especially since he had a feeling she wasn't exaggerating in the slightest. "Rather than stand there and tell me how disappointed I am that Julia's not with you, why don't you tell me where she is? For that matter, why are you with Alex and not her? I thought this was supposed to be a shopping day. Julia even left Carter at the front desk. Alone. For the entire day. She woke up twice last night afraid she'd made a terrible mistake, certain he'd accidentally rekey all of the guest rooms or somehow manage to drain the pool."
"That was our plan," Syd agreed. "Something came up."
"Carter crashed the system? All the reservations and accounts have been erased?"
"No, that would be an inconvenience. This qualifies as a disaster." She paused, looked Roman in the eye. "Our father came into town a day early."
Roman didn't waste any time. He headed for the door, reaching into his pocket as he walked to make sure he had his car keys.
"She wanted me to tell you she could use some rescuing," Syd said, even though it was wholly unnecessary. Roman was already in full-fledged rescue mode. "Just so you know, Pop seemed, um, less than excited about the wedding."
"I can't say I'm terribly surprised. If she calls you, tell her I'm on my way." He'd rescue Julia; that was a given. But the bonus was that at long last he'd get to give Marv Spinelli a piece of his mind.
And as he pushed through the door into the thick Texas heat, he realized that his earlier despondency had lifted. Amazing what the possibility of confrontation could do for a man's mood.
* * *
Chapter Three
Don't skimp on transportation. Do you really want to be the bride who left her wedding in a Ford Fiesta with tennis shoes tied to the back and "Getting Laid Tonight" written in shaving cream on the window? Not for you, darling. You go in style a black limo , a driver in livery, and rose petals strewn along the walkway to the Rolls. Trust us. It's not an expense. It's a necessity .
from The Bad Girls' Guide to a Very Good
Wedding
Julia looked wistfully out the limo's window as they passed by the motel for the third time. She'd kept quiet during the ride, even though she knew Marv had ordered the driver to cruise through the town for no more reason than to show the locals that Marv Spinelli had arrived. Thank God the windows were tinted; she could postpone crawling under a rock for at least one more day.
Marv pointed one thick finger at her as he shook his head. "I don't know, Princess. I just don't know about you. I thought I knew my baby girl, but I ain't never imagined you'd pull a stunt like this."
"I'm getting married, Pop. I'm not swinging on a trapeze."
"Married?" he barked, his face blotching a deep red. "You're not getting married. You're stabbin' the family in the back. You're ripping my guts out and spilling them all over the floor of this here limousine. That's what you're doing." He crossed his arms and rocked a bit as if he were trying to burrow back into the leather seat.
Julia kept her mouth firmly closed, prepared to wait him out. She didn't doubt Marv's emotionthe man was definitely in a full-blown snit. But she also knew that her father tended to let any injury, real or imagined, build up in his head until it became so big and all-consuming that it had no choice but to explode out of him. For days now, Marv had been stewing, the pressure building and building without Julia there to lay into. But she was there now, and Marv was letting her have it in typical Marv fashion.
"Never thought you'd be a traitor, Princess. Your hardheaded sister, maybe, but not my baby girl."
"Marv" Myrna pressed her hand against Marv's thigh. "Your blood pressure."
Marv scowled, drew in a deep breath, then smiled. Or tried to, anyway. He looked more like a pudgy three-year-old trussed up in his holiday best and trying desperately to smile for the camera.
After a moment, he held out his arms and wiggled his fingers. The explosion, apparently, was over. "I'm sorry, Princess. Come give your old man a hug."
She wanted
to stay mad at him, to keep her ire up and keep him at a distance. But he was her pop, and although he could be a clueless pain in the ass at times, she still loved him. Most of all, though, she wanted his approval. She always had, even though she'd never really gotten it. And so now she moved across the small space to give him a hug. She closed her eyes and squeezed tight, breathing in the unpleasant but familiar scent of tobacco mixed with Old Spice, a scent he continued to apply even though she bought him new colognes and aftershaves for every birthday and Christmas. Marv, being Marv, never seemed to take the hint.
"That's my princess," he said, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing her tight. "Shouldn't never have sent you down here. Too much pressure. Not the way you were built, you know? Shoulda known better than to dump all that responsibility on you."
She frowned, and wormed her way free as the limo pulled to a stop in front of the Motor Inn. "It's not too much pressure, Pop. I like it here."
"You like it here? Yeah, well, I guess so, if you're banging a cowboy. But what about my motel?"
She stiffened, then counted to ten as she pushed open the limo door and stepped into the parking lot. She was not going to cry. " My motel is doing just fine. Our receivables have increased by over twenty percent, which is what you wanted, right? In fact, we've been at ninety-six percent occupancy for the last six weeks."
"Oh-ho! Listen to you. Your brainiac sister been giving you word power lessons?"
She lifted her chin, ignoring his dig. "I intend to get that up to ninety-eight percent by the end of summer."
Marv barreled out of the limo, then held his hand out for Myrna. "You hear that, babydoll? Our little princess is a motel mogul."
"Damn it, Pop. I've been working my tail off here. Did you know there were fleas in some of the rooms? Fleas ! And rats. And mattresses that streetwalkers would have refused to do business on. The place was a wreck, Pop. And look at it now. I'm doing a good job. A damn good job, actually."
"You're doing a good job," he repeated, deadpan. "You listen to me, Princess, and don't forget who you're talking to. I'm the one who built an empire starting with one broken-down little motel in South River. And I'm the one who worked my tail off making sure you and your sister never have to worry about having money. And I'm the one who knows damn well that you can't be doing a good job on my motel and banging your cowboy"
"Pop!"
" and planning a wedding and reading all them damn fashion magazines and burning a hole in your credit cards. I've seen the statements, Princess, and it ain't like you gave up shopping when you moved to the Lone Star State."
She looked down, dragged the toe of her Jimmy Choo sandal in the thin layer of dust on the driveway. "There are nice malls in Austin and San Antonio. I had to check them out."
"And what's all this?" he asked, swinging his arm wide to indicate the giant clay pots overflowing with colorful flowers. They didn't completely camouflage the brown and mustard building, but at least they gave it some flair. If Marv wouldn't pony up the money for new paint, she was going to get the high school shop kids to build a trellis. And then she was going to try to hide the facade under blooming flowers.
She wished she had money of her own to use to make the Inn prettier, but she had only the measly salary her pop paid her and the miniscule budget Marv had allotted for the Texas-based Inn.
She and Syd both had trust funds, of course, but Marv had set those up so that she had no access to the money for several more years. It was just too depressing, really. All those dollars that she could be spending on shoes and handbags and paint and flowers, just sitting in a brokerage account doing nothing. But since she couldn't get at the money except under some really obscure circumstanceslike emergency surgeryshe'd trained herself to not even think about it.
"Yo! I'm asking you a question, Princess."
She licked her lips. "Urn, they're flowers, Pop."
"No? Ya think? I couldn't see that with my own two eyes, I need you to tell me they're flowers?" He waved a hand. "You wanna tell me why all this froufrou crap is mucking up the place?"
"Ambiance, Pop," Julia said. She pressed her fingertips to her temple and rubbed, hoping to forestall the migraine that was about to hammer its way into her brain.
"Ambiance, my ass. Colossal waste of money, that's what it is."
"I got the flowers at a ninety-five percent discount. Pop." That had been one of her first tasks when he'd banished her to the Motor Innmaking the place look more attractive. Someplace a traveler might want to stay, not someplace they were stuck because all the darling bed-and-breakfasts were full up. She'd gone to a local nursery, chatted up the owner, and made a deal for all of their near-death flowers. Julia hadn't been able to resuscitate every posy she'd bought, but she had a track record that a trauma surgeon would envy, that was for sure. "They make the place look prettier. Syd agrees," she added weakly, when he just stared at her. Syd and Pop might go at it like bar brawlers on occasion, but Marv never questioned his eldest daughter's good sense. No, those kinds of criticisms were reserved for his pretty little princess.
Marv harrumphed a bit, then headed for the door. "Maybe you got a good deal on the plants," he said, "but for the money you spent on the pots, you coulda stocked a year's supply of toilet paper."
"The pots weren't expensive, Pop. Texas is pretty close to Mexico, remember? We just took a weekend and went over the border."
Even with the very minimal investment, though, Julia had to admit that Marv was probably right. The off-brand of toilet paper he'd earmarked for the motels cost next to nothingand you could tell. Last week the supply room had finally gone empty and i she'd had Carter, her part-time front desk clerk, order a fluffier brand from the wholesaler. There were some things, she thought with a shudder, that simply shouldn't be scrimped on.
Marv grunted in response, holding the door open for her and Myrna. "That was smart," he admitted grudgingly as the door shut behind him. "Don't need to be spending hard-earned capital on sprucing the place up, but if you can do it on the cheap, you're sure to get a return on your investment."
Julia stared, not quite willing to believe her father had paid her a compliment. Amazing. And since Julia wasn't in the habit of carrying a tape recorder on her person, entirely unprovable. Syd would never in a million years believe it.
"Don't go getting a big head," he said. "I'll eat my shorts if you were as smart with the rest of the operations as you were with prettying up the place."
Bizarrely, Julia relaxed slightly with the dressing-down. That was the father she recognized. Marv the ass she knew how to handle. Warm and fuzzy Marv was a mystery.
He grunted again, this time at Carter, who was staring at him from behind the front desk, his mouth hanging open as he goggled at the short, Jersey-fied Napoleon.
"Uh," Carter said, "it's, uh, been real quiet, Ms. Spinelli, ma'am."
"Thanks, Carter. You got a room ready for my parents, right?"
The kid sprang to action. "Oh, yeah. Absolutely. 143. So, uh, can I do anything for you now? Vacuum the halls? Restock the vending machines?"
With great effort, Julia managed not to smile. Carter wasn't a bad employee, but he was hardly a self-starter, and now his motive was perfectly clear: He wanted the hell away from Marv.
She decided to toss him a bone, both because she felt sorry for him and because if Marv decided to rail on her some more, she really didn't want her employee watching it. "Actually, that would be great. And if you could take my parents' luggage back, too, I'd appreciate it."
"No problem," Carter said, gratitude practically dripping off him.
She waited, watching as he shoved two bags under his arms and grabbed two others by the handles. As he trundled off, she reluctantly turned back to her father. "So, um, do you want to look at the books? Everything's in order. I had Syd go over them last weekend and everything."
Since Syd was also a CPA, Julia hoped that the fact that she'd enlisted her sister to do a mini-audit of the motel's records would
score points with Marv. Especially since she'd passed the audit with flying colors.
Marv took off his polyester jacket, revealing dark sweat stains as he lifted his arm to toss the hideous garment over one of the lobby chairs. "Do I look like I'm in the mood to go over your records? Of course they're in order, because I'd have to fire your pretty ass if they weren't, wouldn't I?" * "Oh." Julia tried not to look too disappointed. The truth was, Julia had spent her first week at the motel teaching herself the basics of bookkeeping. She'd even cancelled plans to attend a trunk show in San Antonio, which was evidence of how important making a success of this motel was to her. At the time, she hadn't yet met Roman, nor had she been seduced by Fredericksburg's charm. No, in her first week all she'd wanted to do was nail the job to the wall and prove to her father that she had some brains under her naturally blond (albeit chemically enhanced) hair.
Last weekend, her efforts had paid off. Syd had taken two entire days away from Alex, locked herself up in the motel office, then had been unable to hide her grin when she emerged, exhausted but wired on coffee. She'd given Julia a big hug and congratulated her on having all the books in order. Roman, bless him, had taken the four of them to dinner to celebrate, and they'd all got stinking drunk on champagne. The victory, Julia thought, was even sweeter than the time Syd had relentlessly beaten basic algebra into Julia's head so that she couldwith a heck of a lot of effortmove from ninth to tenth grade.
But while Julia might have been giddy from Syd's praise of her accounting efforts, Marv didn't even care, and that pissed her off. If she hadn't gotten engaged to his old nemesis's son, would he have even bothered to check on the daughter he'd shipped off to Siberia? Did he care how hard she'd been working or how much she'd increased the motel's occupancy? How much she'd managed to get the townspeople to support the ugly eyesore instead of shun it?
No, he didn't. And although Julia opened her mouth to tell him, somehow the words didn't come out. Somehow, the words never managed to come out when she was around Marv.