Chapter 20
Char drove up to Diablo alone.
As supportive as they were, Meri and Savvy didn’t relish consuming all those starchy calories alongside Char’s exuberant team of field hockey players.
Not that her sisters weren’t helping. Meri was designing an original silver necklace for the auction, and Savvy was donating a free legal consultation, plus manning the donation website. And both were actively scouring the valley for more contributions in their free time.
Besides, Papa would really have kittens if all three of them missed his dinner party.
Although now Char was beginning to wish she were staying home, too.
She drove northward in the fading summer light, knowing that the news about the Southside Migrant Camp fire would be fresh in everyone’s mind, thanks to that story in the press. The nearer she got to Diablo, the more she dreaded walking into the restaurant. Would she enter to find people whispering behind their hands? Might some actually hold her culpable for a tragedy that happened seven years ago, when she wasn’t even in California?
She told herself she was blowing things out of proportion, but experience had taught her just the opposite. Napa Valley had an air of sophistication, but the native population was small and news traveled fast. And the irony of this story was just too juicy to ignore.
Two ambitious young upstarts, pitted against each other by circumstances: female against male . . . one richly bred and poorly raised, the other the son of a simple public servant . . . whose families were intertwined with disaster.
With a scoop like that, the other teams would be lucky to get any press at all.
Yet what worried Char most was Ryder’s reaction. How would he be taking the news? Would he treat her any differently? Blame her for his dad’s death? What if he completely shunned her? That dreadful possibility sunk in her belly like a twenty-pound dumbbell.
Because for some reason, she liked Ryder. Yeah, he was gorgeous. That was a given. But there was more to this movie star than that. He had substance. Intelligence. A curious mind that she found infinitely more alluring than mere good looks.
And the way he’d commanded her eyes when he kissed her . . . how his hand seared her skin through her thin silk top the other night . . .
But now everything had changed. And she was terrified of how he would react and how he might treat her.
She made an admittedly cowardly decision. As much as she wanted to be near him, she would stay out of his way tonight. He’d no doubt be relieved not to be forced to converse with the daughter of the man who was implicated in his father’s death.
But then she remembered: He didn’t read the stuff that was written about himself. Or so he said. She could only hope.
Ryder maneuvered a seat to face the door. When Char entered Diablo, a jolt of electricity crackled across the room, connecting them, and he started to rise from his seat. But when their eyes met, hers seemed guarded, worried. And then she looked away.
His heart sank and then so did his butt. Instead of the warmth he’d been hoping for, now this.
Christ, the woman’s moods were as unpredictable as a house fire in a windstorm. Pride shaken, he nodded a curt greeting and then went back to his plate. But his appetite for his fettuccine was gone.
Is this how she wanted to play it? Warm one day, cool the next? So be it. He’d use tonight for what it was meant to be: team building, pure and simple.
Life had been way simpler before he’d started dealing with her, anyway, and now was an excellent time to stop. Right now, on the eve of the half. He’d run better, anyway, without the distraction of a woman on his mind. Even if she was hot and smart and interesting all at the same time.
No, there was nothing forcing Ryder to interact with Char, simply because they’d be in the same room tonight, loading up on carbs. He would just hang with his team and pay no mind to the woman who’d been mucking up his life from the moment he’d run into her.
But even looking down at his plate, an intense awareness of her body as she threaded her way through the tables lingered. And all through the meal and the rallying speeches, he couldn’t shake the impression that she felt his presence, too.
A wave of white foam sloshed over the side of the third pitcher of beer when the waitress thumped it down. Ryder’s mates refilled their mugs, their voices growing louder in the rising din of the rustic eatery.
The long, narrow room was coming alive with talk, music, and movement, now that the plates were being cleared. The athletes hopped between tables, touching base with friends from competing teams, trying to assuage the prerace jitters.
Ryder turned down a fourth pitcher and asked for the check.
High time he rounded up his team. He shook his head when he spotted several of his men up at the bar. He liked the occasional beer as much as the next guy, but he was dead serious about winning this race. He wanted that building.
As he sidestepped his way to the front, he glimpsed another familiar face there, her pretty pink lips sipping from a water glass with a lemon slice wedged on its rim.
For the last two hours they’d avoided each other, but there was no going back now. Much as he hated to be a buzzkill, he wanted to get his men out of there, and he had to pass by her to do it.
He reached the bar just in time to overhear Dan complaining bitterly to Joe, the FRF treasurer.
“If you ask me, the St. Pierres have a hell of a long way to go to make up for what they’ve taken away from this valley.”
A sturdy woman in a tee with the Chardonnay’s Children logo on the back jabbed Dan on the shoulder. At just under six feet tall, she stood eye to eye with Dan.
“Just a minute, mister. For your information, Chardonnay St. Pierre has already done ‘a hell of a lot’ for this valley. She’s worked at the food bank, raised money for a bunch of charities, and advocated for migrants. So I don’t think—”
“Lady, I don’t give two shits what you think.” Dan eyed her critically. “If Princess St. Pierre really wants to atone for her old man’s sins, she oughta be running this race for the firemen, not the Mexicans. St. Pierre thinks the Southside catastrophe’s all water under the bridge. That a firefighter’s life was expendable—”
Smack!
The woman’s palm made solid contact with Dan’s face.
Suddenly Ryder remembered where he’d seen her before: running with Char’s team out along Solano.
Dan blinked in stunned confusion. His fingertips flew to his jaw, his green eyes growing mean. Then, faster than a shot, he jabbed his aggressor in the center of her breastbone with the heel of his hand.
She staggered. Flushing, she regained her footing. Among the crowd, the risk-averse edged away, while the curious swelled forward.
“Stop it!” Char somehow reached in, a willow between two oaks, and planted a palm on each combatant’s chest. What the hell was she doing? Neither one paid the slightest attention to her, let alone budged.
But then the amazon lunged again, inciting a wicked grin to overspread Dan’s face. She might be big, but he was experienced. He blocked with his left arm while his right grabbed a fistful of her shirt. He yanked forward and then shoved back, slamming her butt-first into two other women, toppling all three in a domino effect.
It was enough to have given most people whiplash. But this one still wasn’t through. She was up in a flash, yanking off a bystander’s restraining hand.
Someone screamed, and the bartender grabbed his phone.
Ryder had never pegged Dan for the type who’d lay hands on a woman—even if the woman was the size of a UCLA linebacker.
The woman was a glutton for punishment. She was coming back yet again for more.
It was Hail Mary time. Ryder drew back his fist and let it fly. His knuckles scraped soft flesh en route to Dan’s bony nose.
Like spin art, a fine red spray from Dan’s nostrils dotted everything and everyone within range as Dan careened sideways, crashing into some chairs. There his own teammates pounced on him, grunts and yells drifting up from the floor as he tried to fight them off.
Char looked down at her white tee and gasped at the scarlet dots sprinkling it.
“We got ’em,” yelled Joe from amid the bodies on the floor.
Ryder’s knuckles stung like a son of a bitch. And his throat was still raw from the brushfire. But all he could think of was—damn it—why had Char gone and stuck her head right into the path of his fist?
He seized her by the shoulders and frantically scrutinized her face. Her cheek was beginning to pinken where he’d sideswiped her, and he reached out tentatively.
“You okay, baby?” he asked, low enough so that only she could hear.
She gave him a dazed-looking nod.
“Ice,” he yelled to the bartender, his voice cracking. He caught the plastic bag midair even as he ducked his head to cough again.
“C’mon.”
The cops would be there any minute. He snatched one of Char’s hands, pressed the crunchy cold icepack into her other one, then used his body to carve a path toward the door, dragging her behind.
To hell with the team.
And if she wanted to sue him later for socking her, she could. But right now all he could think of was getting her out of there, out of the public eye.
As Ryder hauled her through the parking lot toward his pickup, the wail of a distant siren grew louder by the second.
He swung open the passenger door, stuffed her in, and sprinted around to the driver’s side.
“What about my car?”
“Throw me your keys. I’ll drive you up to get it tomorrow, after the race. Or, if you’re tied up, I’ve got two kid brothers who’d love to get their hands on a CL-Class.”
“This is all my fault,” she said as the truck lurched over the curb and turned south on 29. “I was avoiding you tonight, but that was wrong. We need to talk. . . .”
A sickening shame washed over her as she faced the inevitability of discussing Papa’s connection to the migrant camp fire.
But Ryder’s thoughts were clearly elsewhere.
“Just keep that ice on your face while I get us out of here.”
Gingerly, she touched the coolness to her cheekbone. She couldn’t decide which hurt most: the bruise, the ice, or the fact that gossip about Papa had ruined the prerace supper for everyone.
A single black-and-white car, lights flashing, passed them going in the opposite direction.
“Thanks,” she said in a subdued voice.
“You can’t afford any more notoriety.”
Char lowered the ice pack and turned to him. “How do you know?”
Here it came. She braced herself for his accusations.
When he didn’t respond, she asked more sharply, “What about my notoriety?”
It was making her crazy, not knowing what he knew.
In the dark, he sighed audibly.
“My mom told me some stuff. She’s lived in Napa city all her life. She knows everyone. Hears everything.”
“Like what, exactly?” Char braced herself for the worst, taking scant comfort in the idea that he couldn’t be that outraged, or he wouldn’t be here, driving her home. Or—to wherever they were headed.
“It’s not important.” Whatever dreck he’d heard, he was downplaying it. That much was for sure.
“How’s your cheek? Keep that ice on it.”
“Just tell me what you’ve heard. I’ll tell you which parts are true or not.”
He slid down the windows, letting in the night air—unusually balmy for early June—and combed his fingers through his hair.
Char sat stiffly, waiting. But after a few minutes, the steady whoosh of tires on pavement helped normalize her heart rate, and her spine relaxed a bit. There, in the shadowy cab of his truck, his striking good looks were obscured. And he couldn’t see her, either . . . or her top-of-the-line running shoes . . . her one-of-a-kind silver jewelry. For the moment, he wasn’t an egotistical movie star, and she wasn’t an empty-headed heiress. For just this moment, she could almost pretend they were ordinary people with ordinary lives.
And ordinary, if powerful, feelings.
She nursed a perverse hope that he might still be aware of her rose perfume, even with the cross breeze from the open windows diluting it.
“Okay. To start, Mom said you were pretty well known around here.”
Char rolled her eyes and made a face, though it was useless in the gloom.
“You can do better than that. You want some help? How’s this: I have four living male relatives, and all of them have been in jail at least once. Even as we speak, my cousin is locked up in the drug treatment facility in Corcoran.
“The last time Papa was arrested was just last week, for shooting at an eagle on our property—I know you heard about that,” she added with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “Props to Miranda. Is that enough? Hold on, ’cause I’m just getting started. Maman left us for some lowlife player when I was ten and got herself killed in a car crash down in South America. My sisters and I were sent packing, all the way across the country. And ever since, Papa’s been an active member of the tramp-of-the-month club.”
That last remark made Ryder laugh, which led to a coughing spasm.
“Are you okay?”
He nodded vigorously but couldn’t yet speak.
Then Char remembered.
“The fire alarm, when you tore off in the middle of your run yesterday! We saw you and your team, hightailing it back to your cars . . . and then you were on the evening news, fighting that brushfire.”
He snorted. “That’s the press for you—making it all about one part-time firefighter. Did the reporter even talk to the chief?”
“You didn’t see the news?”
“I told you before, it’s not like I google myself every morning.”
He took a swig from the water bottle in the console, which calmed his windpipe.
“How are you going to run tomorrow with that sore throat?”
Dark as it was, she sensed his droll smile from the way his chin rose.
“Best you worry about yourself, little lady,” he said in a bad John Wayne imitation. “Team Chardonnay’s gonna get an ass-kicking tomorrow.”
He was being incredibly generous, using humor to let her off the hook before she’d confessed the most damning part of her lurid family history.
“Are you talkin’ trash to me?” she teased back.
“I’m dead serious. I just run for fun. But Dan runs an eight-minute mile. He’s my main man.”
And now, to her disappointment, they were almost at her house.
He turned right at the tasteful “Domaine St. Pierre” sign.
So. He was taking her home. This was the first time they’d ever been truly alone together, and now it was ending.
Despite the disaster at Diablo, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so gloriously alive.