Gabe spoke, and the party shifted into full swing. The city’s most influential embraced their chemistry matches with a good-natured enthusiasm that eased the tension in her shoulders, freeing Alex up to man a jam-packed schedule of media and blogger interviews with all three De Campo men. By the time she’d done the bulk of them, she knew the Angel’s Share was a hit. The wine columnists and bloggers tasted it in their exclusive cellar appointments, scratched their heads, tasted it again and almost unanimously declared it spectacular. Where it fit into the current market, they couldn’t say. But they had a smile on their face as they delivered the punch line.
It occurred to Alex as she led her second-to-last interview up the cellar stairs that maybe she could work from Napa this week. Yes, she had three new business proposals on her desk, but one was from Jordan, which she didn’t intend to accept, despite its multimillion-dollar value, and the other two were relatively straightforward. Ones she could do in her sleep. Which led to the thought of how feasible it would be to work bicoastal on a regular basis. Deciding that was descending into crazy talk, she snuffed it out of her head and shook the blogger’s hand.
“Ready for my last one,” she told Emily. “Please say it’s my last one.”
“It’s your last one. Marc Levine. Wine importer. Does a blog on the side. Attracts a hundred thousand visitors a month.”
“Impressive,” Alex murmured. “Who does he want?”
“Gabe.”
The blogger sounded familiar. Emily pointed him out—a tall, hook-nosed, blond-haired man standing at the far bar with a striking redheaded companion. She was far more attractive than him and younger, and for this reason Alex’s gaze lingered a bit longer than usual. She was lovely, dis— The thought jammed in her head. She was Cassandra Lane—Jordan’s ex-wife. The woman who had arrived home from France to find Alex and her husband in bed together.
How had she not remembered Cassandra was married to a wine guy?
She turned her back on the couple, her breath coming in short, staccato bursts, but not before the redheaded woman’s eyes flashed with a recognition Alex had dearly hoped to avoid. Dammit.
“Take this one,” she muttered to Emily, who gave her a confused look, but trotted off toward the couple. Alex walked straight into the kitchen and leaned against a wall, her knees trembling as she ignored the curious looks of the catering staff. Five years had passed since that night Cassandra had walked in on her and Jordan, but it felt like five minutes.
I didn’t know, she wanted to go out there and cry to Cassandra Lane. I never knew. But what good would it do now?
She emerged from the kitchen ten minutes later, as composed as she could make herself and intent on avoiding Cassandra at all costs. She was on her way to get another case of wine from the cellar when the redhead stepped away from the wall and into her path.
“Alex.”
The other woman wore a perfectly composed look, but she could sense the raw emotion pulsing beneath her alabaster skin. Her gaze moved over Alex as though she were studying a piece of art. “He always said you were nothing, but I have a feeling you were way more than that. I think he was in love with you.”
Alex felt the ground give way beneath her feet. The room whirled around her in a film strip of dark shadows that threatened to engulf her and never let her go. She could not go back there. She could never go back there.
Shrieking laughter jerked her head back. A woman to the left of them had had too much to drink. “Jordan told me you were divorced,” she said harshly. “I am so sorry.”
“How could you not know?” the other woman demanded. “How could you not know the man had a whole other life going on?”
“You were in France. Jordan and I both worked twenty-four-seven. It was—” she waved her hand in the air “—all over the place.”
“It was in our apartment,” Cassandra hissed. “Nothing clued you in? Not the fact he didn’t introduce you to his friends? To his children? That he didn’t bring you to the house in Long Island?”
The questions slammed into her, one after another, vicious blows to the solar plexus. It was the one thing she couldn’t get past. How had she not seen those signs? How, in six months, had she never experienced any of that? She pulled in a breath, but it was hard to draw in air. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to know. Maybe she’d been so happy to be loved she’d disregarded anything that didn’t fit.
“I should go,” she murmured. “Nothing good is going to come of this.”
“You’re damn right,” the other woman broke out, her voice rising. “I hope you were worth the thirty-million-dollar divorce settlement, Alex. I really do.”
“I’m sure I wasn’t.” She swung around and started through the crowd. The feeling that the past was chasing her chilled her skin, made her shoulder her way through the tightly packed collection of bodies at a half run. But she would never be able to run fast enough to escape the past. Her haunted gaze found Marc Levine and Gabe in front of her, returning from their interview. The fact that Cassandra could convince Marc to trash Gabe’s wine sent a wave of panic through her. If someone had created her worst nightmare, this would have been it.
“Grazie,” Gabe murmured to Marc, his gaze on Alex’s face. “Let me know if there’s anything else we can get you.”
They shook hands. The other man strode off into the crowd. Gabe moved to her side. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to talk to you.” Before she could back out of it, before she could convince herself she could bury it yet again. “In private.”
His gaze narrowed. “The cellar?”
She nodded. The cooler temperatures of the carved mahogany cellar made Alex’s already-frozen limbs tremble. Gabe stood, feet spread apart in front of her, arms crossed over his chest, a wary look on his face. “If this is about our conversation from earlier, I—”
“It’s not.” The stilted nature of her response sharpened his gaze. She pressed her palms against her thighs and stared down at them. Where to start? How to make him understand? “Jordan Lane was my client—you know that. Cassandra Levine, the wife of the blogger you just met, is his former wife.”
He lifted a brow. “I didn’t know that.”
She took a deep breath. “I was twenty-two when we took Jordan’s business on, extremely junior. He was very hands-on, wanted to be involved on all levels. His business was worth a small fortune to our firm, so when he asked for me to work on his account, they said yes even though I was far too inexperienced.”
“He wanted you,” Gabe said flatly.
She wrapped her arms around herself. How clear it was looking at it from the outside. “Yes.”
“I really don’t like where this is going, Lex.” The banked hostility she saw rise in his eyes made her insides tighten. She lifted a shaky hand and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “He was thirteen years my senior. Brilliant. We started spending a ton of time together working, and one night he asked me to meet him in his hotel suite.” She sank her teeth into her bottom lip. “We—”
“Tell me you didn’t sleep with him.”
She cringed. “I did.”
“While he was married?”
“I didn’t know,” she said forcefully. “He’d told me he was divorced. That his ex-wife was off working in France.”
“Maledizione, Alex.” He threw up his hands. “You know my history on this.”
“I know.” She took a step toward him. “That’s why I’m telling you. This wasn’t anything like it was with Darya, Gabe, I didn’t know he was married.”
“His wife being upstairs didn’t spur this little episode of honesty?”
She steeled herself against the panic that climbed her throat. “I wanted to tell you. I did. But when Lilly told me what Darya did, I didn’t think you’d understand.”
“I don’t understand.” His big body radiated fury. “All this week when I’ve been struggling with how to deal with Lane, you were keeping this from me?”
She pressed her hands to her temples. “I was scared.”
“You should have told me,” he bellowed, making her heart pound. “He stole my wine, Alex. He’s trying to destroy me. How do I know you aren’t a part of this? You came after me. You wanted this job.”
Her pounding heart stopped in midbeat. “You don’t mean that.”
He clenched his hands by his sides, nostrils flaring. “All I asked from you was honesty, Lex. The rest of your baggage I could deal with. But you couldn’t even give me that.”
“You don’t understand.” She begged him with her eyes to listen. “I almost lost my job over this. I was part of a thirty-million-dollar divorce settlement. My agency told me to keep my mouth shut and never speak a word of it.”
“You don’t work for them now.”
“Reputation is still everything in my business.” Frustration and despair edged her voice. “No one would hire me if I was associated with a scandal like that. My business wouldn’t survive. Dammit, Gabe, I was a stupid young girl who made a big mistake. I should never have gotten involved with a client, regardless of whether or not he was a married man.”