The Villa

silk. His mouth was firm, and took from her with endless and devastating patience.
    No wildness here, no greed. No brilliant flashes of urgency. Tonight was to savor and soothe. To offer and welcome.
    The first crest was like being lifted onto clouds.
    She moaned under him, one long, low sound as her body bowed fluidly to his. Satisfaction and surrender. She skimmed her fingers in his hair, saw the shades of it shift in the light and shadow. He did that, she thought as she lost herself in him. Shifted and changed. There were so many facets to him.
    And here, gently, he was showing her yet another. Her fingers curled, drawing him down until mouth met mouth, and she could answer.
    In the dark, he could see the glint of the candlelight in her eyes, gold dust splashed over rich pools. The air was scented sweet. She watched him, and he watched her as he slipped inside her.
    "This is different," he told her, and touched his mouth to hers as she shook her head. "This is different. Yesterday I wanted you. Tonight, I need you."
    Her vision blurred with tears. Her lips trembled with words she didn't know how to say. And then she was so full of him, she could only sob out his name, and give.

CHAPTER NINETEEN
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    What did a seventy-three-year-old winemaker from Italy have in common with a thirty-six-year-old sales executive from California? Giambelli, David thought. It was the only link he could find between them.
    Except the manner of their deaths.
    Tests on the exhumed body of Bernardo Baptista had confirmed he'd ingested a dangerous dosage of digitalis, along with his Merlot. It couldn't be construed as a coincidence. Police on both sides of the Atlantic were calling it homicide and the Giambelli wine the murder weapon.
    But why? What motive linked Margaret Bowers and Baptista?
    He left his children tucked in their beds, and after checking on the Giambelli vineyards, drove toward MacMillan. As the temperature had dropped, he and Paulie had turned on the sprinklers, had walked the rows as water coated the vines and the thin skin of ice formed a protective shield against the threatening hard frost. He knew Paulie would stand watch through the night, making certain there was a constant and steady flow of water. Predawn temperatures were forecast to hover near the critical twenty-nine-degree mark.
    In an instant, vines could be murdered as efficiently and as ruthlessly as people.
    This, at least, he could control. He could understand the brutality of nature, and fight it. How could a rational person understand cold-blooded and seemingly random murder?
    He could see the fine mist of water swirling over the MacMillan vines, the tiny drops going to glimmer in the cold light of the moon. He pulled on his gloves, grabbed his thermos of coffee and left the car to walk in the freezing damp.
    He found Tyler sitting on an overturned crate, sipping from his own thermos. "Thought you might be by." In invitation, Ty banged the toe of his boot on another crate. "Pull up a chair."
    "Where's your foreman?"
    "Sent him home just a bit ago. No point in both of us losing a night's sleep." The truth was Ty liked sitting alone in the vineyard, thinking his thoughts while the sprinklers hissed.
    "We're doing all we can do." Ty shrugged, scanning the rows that turned to a fairyland of sparkle under the lights. "System's running smooth."
    David settled down, uncapped his thermos. Like Ty he wore a ski cap pulled over his head and a thick jacket that repelled both cold and damp. "Paulie took the watch at Giambelli. Frost alarms went off just after midnight. We were already prepped for it."
    "This one's usual for the end of March. It's the ones that sneak in on you at the end of April, into May. I got it covered here, if you want to get some sleep."
    "Nobody's getting much of that lately. Did you know Baptista?"
    "Not really. My grandfather did. La Signora's taking it hard. Not that she'll let it show," he said. "Not outside the family, and not much inside, for that matter. But she's knocked back by it. They all are—the Giambelli women."
    "Product tampering—"
    "It's not just that. That's the business end. This is personal. They went over for the funeral when he died. I guess Sophia thought of him as a kind of mascot. Said he used to sneak her candy. Poor old bastard."
    David hunched forward, holding the thermos cup of coffee between his knees. "I've been thinking on it, trying to find the real connection. Probably a waste of time