The Wedding Bargain

“For sure. Good night, guys. I guess I’ll see you Friday.” She usually dropped in on Thursday even though it was her night off, but Paige was moving into a new apartment and Jess had promised to help her pack.

After they left she picked up the coaster that had Michael’s number on it, and it dawned on her that she didn’t even know his last name. She put the coaster under the tray in the cash drawer and reached for his sunglasses. The next thing she knew, she had them on. She looked at herself in the mirror behind the rows of bottles.

“What the hell are you doing?” She whipped them off again. “Mooning around over some guy who’ll probably turn out to be a total jerk.”

When it came to men, she had lousy luck, and she blamed that on her mother. Roxanne Bennett was a slut, no two ways about it. She had a habit of hooking up with losers who didn’t give a damn about her or her daughter, and Jess’s father had been one of them. There’d been countless nights when Jess heard her mother stumble in after the bars closed, laughing and shushing some loudmouthed guy, telling him not to wake up her kid. And the morning after, how many times had a strange man caught her off guard in the kitchen and scared the crap out of her while she was making peanut butter sandwiches—one for breakfast and another for lunch—and hoping to sneak out to school before her mother and the creep du jour woke up?

“Stop it,” she said to her reflection. The past was the past. With her granddad’s help she’d put it behind her a long time ago, and the best way to keep it in the past was to not let herself think about it.

Michael was nothing like the men her mother had dragged into their lives, but he was very sure of himself, cocky even, and clearly successful. He was the kind of man who liked getting what he wanted, and she had a feeling he wanted her bar.

Still, she was going out for dinner with one of the sexiest men she had ever met. One of? He could be a contender for the sexiest man alive. A man who was going to pick her up next week in that flashy car of his and take her out to dinner to discuss business, and she had absolutely nothing to wear. For the first time in her life she wished she had a clue about what kind of clothes a woman wore to a business dinner with a man who drove a Porsche and wore designer shades.

Rory had enough fashion sense for both of them, but she was on her honeymoon, and Nicola’s expensive tastes would put her in the poorhouse. Jess reached for the phone and punched in Paige’s number. She was up to her eyeballs in packing boxes but this was a fashion nine-one-one call, after all, and there was a first time for everything. Paige would understand.

TO BEAT THE MORNING rush hour, Michael got up at dawn and drove through the still-slumbering city and north across the Golden Gate. That morning the bridge and the bay were frosted with a thick layer of fog, but a quick glance over his shoulder showed the lights of the city still sparkled against the lightening sky. He’d made this hour-and-a-half commute more times than he could count, but he never tired of the scenery, especially at sunrise. Now with the city behind him, he looked forward to going home.

For the past few years, business had drawn him into the city more and more frequently and he had finally rented an apartment in Nob Hill so he had a home base. Or at least a place to stay and a place to entertain business colleagues as often as required. The plan had been to buy a condo or a town house, but he hadn’t found the time or the need to get that settled. Living in the city had taken some getting used to, but now he appreciated the noise and chaotic confusion as much as he cherished the order and symmetry of the countryside and vineyards that had been his backyard since childhood.

In a couple of hours the roads would be busy with the tour buses that were the bread and butter for many of the smaller wineries and still a welcome addition to the bigger enterprises like Morgan Estate. As his car made quick work of the miles, he took in the sprawling, linear vineyards and tried to run through a mental inventory of everything he needed to cover at his meetings that morning, but his mind kept drifting to dinner with Jess next week.

Where should he take her? Most of the women he’d dated preferred someplace elegant and expensive, but he could tell that wasn’t her style. They could drive up here to the valley—he knew of several out-of-the-way places—but it was too soon for that, he decided. Besides, this was a business dinner, not a date.

He could take her to his wine bar at Fisherman’s Wharf, or they could stay in SoMa. Come to think of it…maybe they should do both. He smiled and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He had an idea that just might work, in more ways than one.

The sun was well up by the time he arrived at the house and he looked forward to joining his family for breakfast. Instead of driving into his space in the garage, he pulled up on the cobblestone roundabout by the front entrance and popped the trunk. He slung the leather strap of his briefcase over his shoulder, took out the big, bright, professionally wrapped package and slammed the trunk shut.

Right on cue, the front door flew open.

“Mikey! Mikey!” His brother had given him the childish nickname years ago and continued to use it because he’d never been able to wrap his tongue around the L in Michael.

“Hey, Ben. What are you up to this morning?” This adult-sized child’s soft, round features and ear-to-ear grin never failed to bring out Michael’s protective instincts.

“Fix my car today?” Ben asked.

“We’re not going to work on the car today, sport,” he said, more than happy to let his brother take ownership of a car he would someday be able to ride in but would never be able to drive. “It’s your birthday, remember?”

Ben reached for the gift, the pudgy fingers of both hands splayed. “My present?”

“It sure is, but you have to wait till your party to open it.”

“Open it now!”

Too late, Michael realized he should have left the gift in the trunk until Ben was otherwise occupied. “Where’s Poppy?” he asked.

The diversion tactic worked. Ben spun around and ran into the house as fast as his stocky legs would carry him, yelling, “Pop! Pop! Poppy!”

“Honey, why are you shouting?” Their mother’s calm, melodic voice drifted through the house.

“Mikey’s home! Where’s Poppy?”

“Michael? Are you here already?”

“Yes, I am,” he called to her. “I’ll be right there.” He nudged open the door to his father’s den off the foyer, stashed Ben’s gift in a cabinet and set his briefcase on the floor next to the desk. He didn’t think of this room as his office, although it’s where he worked when he was here. He could still picture his father sitting in one of the big, coffee-colored leather armchairs by the gas fireplace, reading, and he could even detect the faint smell of pipe tobacco. It had been the only room in the house where his father smoked. After eight years, Michael wasn’t sure if the scent still lingered in the room or just in his memory.

He left the den and followed his nose to the kitchen.

“You’re earlier than usual.” His mother reached up and gave him a hug, then presented one lightly powdered cheek for a kiss. She was one of those rare women who appeared in the kitchen first thing in the morning fully dressed, hair done and makeup applied, long before anyone else in the family was awake.

“I’m meeting with Ginny this morning, then I have a working lunch with Drew Attwell at the winery. That should wrap up by two at the latest, and then I’ll come back and spend the rest of the afternoon with Ben.”

“Thank you. He’s been asking about you every five minutes. I haven’t seen Drew in a while. How’s he doing these days?”

“Working as hard as ever. He’s the best winemaker in the valley, in my opinion, and I don’t think you’ll find many people who’ll disagree.” He picked up a fresh scone, still warm from the oven, broke it in half and inhaled the scent of finely grated orange peel. “Smells delicious. I was counting on being here in time for breakfast.”

She smiled up at him. “I thought you might be. That’s why I baked them.”

His mother’s scones were the best in the world, bar none. “Thanks. These are delicious, as always.”

“Vanessa didn’t come up with you?”

This was bound to come up sooner or later, so he might as well get it over with. “We’re not seeing each other anymore.”

Sophia had started to load the dishwasher, but she stopped and gave him one of her intense stares. “I’m sorry to hear that. What happened?”

“She’s looking for greener pastures.” As in the color-of-money green.

“Hard to imagine her finding a better catch than you.”

And Vanessa had seen him as exactly that—a good catch. It hadn’t taken him long to realize their relationship was going nowhere, and if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with business he would have broken things off himself. Better that she’d been the one to end it, though. Fewer hard feelings on her part and none on his.

“She was looking for an engagement ring,” he said. The bigger and more expensive, the better. Problem was, he was not in the market for a trophy wife. “I didn’t give her one.”

“Michael, you’re thirty-seven. I know you have a good life, but I would like to see you settled with a wife and family.”

With an emphasis on family. Sophia Morgan was extremely proud of her children’s accomplishments and at the same time intensely disappointed that so far not one of them had produced a grandchild. She reminded them of that shortcoming every chance she got.

“It’ll happen when it happens, Mom.” Just not with a gold digger like Vanessa.

Jess, by comparison, struck him as a woman with a mind of her own and an unwillingness to settle for being anybody’s trophy wife, although she was certainly stunning enough to pass for one, even in a well-worn pair of blue jeans and a baggy man’s shirt. There’d never been a shortage of women for him to take to dinner, but it had been ages since he’d been in such a hurry to invite one to join him. He was looking forward to next Thursday, and he had a hunch Jess was, too, if for no other reason than to satisfy her curiosity about him and check out the latest competition for the Whiskey Sour.

“So, any prospects?” his mother asked.

“Not so far.” There was no point in telling her about Jess, because the tiny, insignificant detail of them not yet having had a first date would not stop from her from daydreaming about bridal registries and grandbabies.

“Poppy!” Ben had flung open the French doors off the breakfast room and an energetic little ball of white fluff tore through the kitchen and tackled Michael’s shoe.

Michael scooped the little dog into his arms. “How is she?” he asked Ben.