The Villa

next year. God, I didn't even make him pay. Didn't have the guts to make him pay."
    "Don't worry, she will." Helen leaned over, kissed the top of Pilar's head. No man like Tony should slip through life without paying, she thought.
    "And if you want to scald him a bit, I'll help you outline a divorce settlement that will leave him with permanent scars and one shriveled testicle."
    Pilar smiled a little. She could always count on Helen. "As entertaining as that might be, it'd just drag things out, and make it more difficult for Sophie. Helen, what the hell am I going to do with the new life that's been dumped in my lap?"
    "We'll think of something."
     
    Sophia was doing a lot of thinking herself. She was already getting a headache from reading the pages of the contract. She got the gist of it, even mired in the legalese. And the gist was La Signora maintained control as she always had. Over the next year Sophia would be expected to prove herself, which she'd thought she had. If she did, to her grandmother's satisfaction, some of that much-desired control would be passed to her hands.
    Well, she wanted it. She didn't much care for the way she'd have to go about getting it. But she could see the reasoning.
    The hardest part was in nearly always being able to see her grandmother's reasoning. Perhaps because, under it all, they thought so much alike.
    She had not taken a deep and intimate interest in the making of wine. Loving the vineyards for their beauty, knowing the basics wasn't the same as investing time, emotion and effort into them. And if she would one day step into her grandmother's place, she needed to do so.
    Maybe she preferred boardrooms to fermenting tanks, but…
    She glanced over at Tyler, who was scowling down at his own contract.
    This one took the tanks over the boardroom. That would make them a good business match, or contrast, she supposed. And he had every bit as much at stake as she did.
    Yes, La Signora had, once again, been as brilliant as she'd been ruthless. Now that her temper had cleared away to allow for cool common sense, she could see not only that it could work, but that it would.
    Unless Ty mucked things up.
    "You don't like it," she said.
    "What the hell's to like about it? It was a goddamn ambush."
    "Agreed. That's Nonna's style. Troops fall in line more quickly and in a more organized fashion when you order them to right before the battle. Give them too much time to think, they might desert the field. Are you thinking of deserting the field, Ty?"
    His gaze lifted, and she saw the steel in his eyes. Hard and cold. "I've run MacMillan for eight years. I'm not walking away from it."
    No, he wouldn't muck it up. "Okay. Let's start from there. You want what you want, I want what I want. How do we get it?" She pushed to her feet, paced. "Easier for you."
    "Why is that?"
    "I essentially give up my apartment and move back home. You get to stay right where you are. I have to take a crash course in winemaking, and all you have to do is socialize and go to a few meetings now and then."
    "You think that's easier? Socializing involves people. I don't like people. And while I'm going to meetings about things I don't give a rat's ass about, some guy I don't even know is going to be looking over my shoulder."
    "Mine, too," she snapped back. "Who the hell is this David Cutter?"
    "A suit," Ty said in disgust.
    "More than that," Sophia murmured. If she'd believed that, she wouldn't have been concerned. She knew how to handle suits. "We'll just have to find out how much more." That was something she could take care of very shortly, and very thoroughly. "And we're going to have to find a way to work with him, and each other. The last part shouldn't be that hard. We've known each other for years."
    She was moving fast where he preferred to pace himself. But damned if he wasn't going to keep up. "No, we haven't. I don't know you, or what you do or why you do it."
    She put her palms on the table, leaned forward. Her magnificent face moved close to his. "Sophia Tereza Maria Giambelli. I market wine. And I do it because I'm good at it. And in one year, I'm going to own twenty percent of one of the biggest, most successful and important wine companies in the world."
    He rose slowly, mimicked her pose. "You're going to have to be good at it, and a lot more for that. You're going to have to get your hands dirty, and get mud on your designer boots and ruin your pretty manicure."
    "Do you think I don't know how to