LITMIR.BIZ

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Mia’s eyes sparkled up at him. She ducked under the counter and bobbed back up with the Harry Potter book, careful to mark her place with the ticktacktoe paper. “You can explain everything to Aunt Gina when we’re at crush. You can’t miss it. It’s bad luck if someone doesn’t go.”

      Gina set her straight. “That only applies to family members, Mia. It doesn’t apply to people you’ve invited for no reason at all.”

      “But, Aunt Gina, I invited Josh because he likes I Love Lucy,” Mia said, frowning. “My mom says that we can invite anyone to crush. She says it’s hospital.”

      “I think you mean hospitable, Mia. It means making people welcome. And we don’t have to show that kind of courtesy to Mr. Corbett.”

      “But, Gina, we’re old friends,” said Josh. “Doesn’t that count for something?” He beamed the full wattage of his smile on Gina, who immediately steeled herself against his charm.

      “We were friends,” Gina corrected him. Turning her back on Josh, she said, “Mia, I have to run upstairs and get my jacket.” The October day was cool, and the night might become chilly.

      “Please hurry,” Mia said. “We don’t want to be late.”

      With one last scalding look over her shoulder at Josh, Gina ran up the stairs of the rustic stone cottage that served as both shop and living quarters. When she returned, Mia was pulling on her own sweater, a cable knit in bright purple.

      “Now we can leave,” Gina said.

      “When you have a customer?” Josh asked plaintively.

      “That’s not what I would call you.” For emphasis, she went to the door and flipped the Open sign so that it read Closed.

      “I was going to buy—” he cast his gaze around wildly “—some sachets for my landlady.”

      “At this moment, nothing in here is for sale. We officially closed at noon. Are you ready to go, Mia?”

      “Yes, and I can’t wait to get there. Josh, you can ride in the front seat with Aunt Gina. We have to pick up Frankie ’cause his dad’s helping to cook the barbecue.”

      “Oh, I forgot about Frankie,” Gina said. Frankie was at his accordion lesson about a half mile away. She had no idea what to do about Josh short of a knock-down, drag-out argument, which didn’t seem fair to Mia.

      Shooting a go-eat-roadkill look in Josh’s direction, Gina grabbed her keys and ushered Mia out of the shop in front of her, with Josh following along behind. She had probably no more than a minute to think of some tactic that would send Josh on his way. So far, nothing had occurred to her. Nothing legal, anyway. Murder was not an option, and neither was assault. She could only hope that he would take the hint and back off.

      Her red-and-white 1966 Ford Galaxie convertible was parked with its top down in its customary spot under the olive tree, and Mia climbed into the back seat.

      “We could ride in my car,” Josh said.

      “There is no ‘we’ as far as you’re concerned,” Gina retorted. She started the car.

      “I invited Josh,” Mia piped in her clarion voice. “It would be rude to tell him he can’t go.”

      Mia was into defining the differences between rude and polite these days, mostly because her parents emphasized good manners at their house. Gina, knowing this, wavered under the power of Mia’s righteous and expectant gaze.

      “I invited him,” Mia repeated. Her voice was beginning to take on the aggrieved tone that preceded a bunch of difficult questions.

      Gina exhaled and rolled her eyes. “Get in,” she said to Josh, who beamed.

      He opened the door and slid in beside her with the air of someone who expected to be included all along. “Nice car,” he said.

      She edged a glance toward the BMW parked near the door of the shop. “So is yours,” she pointed out as she backed out and turned.

      “It’s rented,” he said. “I flew in a couple of days ago and had to have wheels.”

      So he’d been here for a while and was only now getting around to saying hello? She could have taken offense at the delay if she cared anything about him. Which she most emphatically did not.

      “Aunt Gina loves this car,” Mia said, squeezing her head through the gap between the front seats and sending a whiff of Juicy Fruit their way. She chomped on the gum enthusiastically.

      “Mia, dear, would you mind leaning back?” Gina said, trying not to sound as annoyed with her niece as she felt.

      “It is a fine car,” Josh said, taking in the restored upholstery, the gleaming knobs on the radio.

      “My father bought it used when I was a kid,” she said. She didn’t add that she’d fallen in love with the Galaxie’s style and elegance from the first moment that her father wheeled it into their driveway. “He always meant to restore it and give it to me, and after he died, I discovered that he’d put money aside for years for the restoration. My cousin Rocco volunteered to do the work.” For a moment she had forgotten that she was talking to the man who’d broken her heart two years ago, and she fell silent as she headed down the bumpy road toward Vineyard Oaks, the winery that the Angelini family had owned ever since her grandfather, Gino, his brother and two sisters had bought it shortly after arriving in the United States sixty-seven years ago.

      The vineyard, planted with merlot, sangiovese, petite syrah and zinfandel vines now stripped of their grapes, stretched out toward the distant mountain ranges on either side of the fertile valley. After a few minutes, Gina pulled the car over in front of a small house set back from the road, where Leo Buscani, retired Vineyard Oaks winemaker now accordion teacher, lived. A boy of eleven emerged, lugging an accordion case.

      Mia bounced up and down. “That’s Frankie. He’s okay most of the time—for a boy, I mean. Get in back with me, Frankie. I’m being hos-spit-able.”

      Frankie balked. “You’re going to spit on me?” he asked skeptically.

      Mia dissolved into giggles. “That’s my new word. It means making someone welcome.”

      Frankie chucked his accordion case in the back seat and climbed in after it. He was a captivating, curly-haired boy whose dark eyes snapped with merriment.

      “Aunt Gina, Mr. Buscani says I’m the best student he’s ever had,” Frankie announced. “He wants me to join his accordion band.”

      Everyone in the family was pleased that Frankie, who possessed an aptitude for getting into trouble, had taken so well to the accordion. Gina glanced over her shoulder and smiled at him. “That’s wonderful,” she said.

      “Do you think Pop will let me?”

      “Oh, Rocco will probably go for it.” Rocco and his son were closer than most, possibly because Frankie’s mother had died when he was only six.

      When Frankie and Mia settled into a spirited discussion about whether or not she should give him her last stick of gum, which Frankie argued was only hospitable, Josh turned to Gina. “You’re more beautiful than ever,” he said in a low tone.

      The compliment discombobulated her more than she liked to let on. “Yeah, right,” she said.

      “I mean it, Gina.”

      “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

      “Why shouldn’t I? It’s true.”

      Thanks to her Norwegian mother, Gina had grown up blond in a family of dark-haired, olive-skinned Italian-Americans, convinced that her light coloring wasn’t attractive. She’d longed to resemble the rest of the family for most of her life, but the only features she seemed to owe to the Italian side of her family were dark eyes and tawny skin. These days, she could finally accept that men found her beautiful, but she wasn’t in the mood to hear compliments

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