Chapter 14
Ani
DePietro Winery was extravagant. The Vatican of wineries. That was its gimmick, with Roman columns, Donatello replicas, and an imposing fortress of Italian cypress trees.
Ani and Raffi cut through the winery building toward the back garden area, where the fountain was that Raffi had his heart set on. He didn’t want an exact copy, but the overall feel was supposedly what Raffi had in mind. And Ani knew it was a terrible idea.
They reached the monstrosity in question, a massive, deep fountain set against a wall, with statues and sculptures growing out of its every surface. A couple of the designs nearly grazed Ani’s head as she poked around the place.
“DePietro must have taken out so much insurance against this fountain. Look at this thing.”
“You’re always talking about liability. Were you a lawyer in a past life or something?”
Ani flushed, because she wasn’t exactly.
Her sister was the lawyer, corporate and successful.
Ani had been the lawyers’ servant and whipping boy, and her office was a rundown, badly managed firm that dealt with complex litigation, usually in the torts realm.
So yes, she was always thinking about liability and how to avoid a nasty lawsuit.
In her line of business, it was good to think that way.
Weddings were full of potential disasters, beyond just the groom unexpectedly smashing cake into the bride’s face.
Put a bunch of people in a room with an open bar and candles and wine glasses and sparklers, and injury is imminent.
“I was a paralegal, actually.”
“What? But you’re a wedding planner. The wedding planner, in my mind.”
Ani smiled at that, warmth blooming in her cheeks.
“The wedding planner.” His words settled onto her like embers, small but glowing, sneaking past her defenses before she could swat them away.
“Thanks, but yeah, I really was. Broke away from it four years ago and started the wedding planning business from scratch.”
Raffi regarded her with something like awe. “That’s a huge change.”
She shrugged. “You know a thing or two about huge changes.”
“But I was always in school, and school was always being paid for. And the winery? I didn’t start it from scratch. It was handed to me.” He shot her a look, one brow slightly raised. “As someone may have pointed out to me the day we met.”
Ani’s stomach twisted. God. Had she really said that? To his face? She cleared her throat, suddenly very interested in the stitching on her sleeve. “Ah. Yeah. That…may have been me.”
Raffi smirked but didn’t push. “You, meanwhile, took an actual risk.”
“Maybe,” she said, ducking her head slightly, hiding a smile.
Then, grasping for a shift in conversation before her embarrassment could fully settle in, she looked around and asked, “Speaking of risk, do you see the potential pitfalls here?”
He waved off her concerns, peering over the edge of the fountain. “We won’t make it as ridiculously deep, and we’ll raise the wall so guests can’t tumble in.” He gestured to the low, very trippable wall. “It’ll be great. Distinct from DePietro’s but in a similar style.”
“Sure, but think about how it’s going to look overall. It has to be backed up against the winery, and it’s going to distract from all the other elements in the garden. You want something that flows—literally—with the rest of the garden’s vibe.”
“If we’re building a fountain anyway, shouldn’t we make it as showy as possible?”
“You are so Armenian.”
“And you are so Americanized.”
Ani smirked. “Hey, my entire career is to make one day of everyone’s life as opulent as possible.”
“Touché,” Raffi conceded.
“I don’t need my house to look like Versailles, though,” Ani continued, “and you don’t need your winery to, either. Come, look at these.”
She directed Raffi toward a separate water feature, where the fountains flowed alongside the walkway, forming a path.
“I was thinking more like these, but around the ceremony area where the dome is. Could make it really stand out and delineate it from the rest of the garden.”
He seemed to consider her words, when a woman’s voice rang out. “Raffi? Is that—yes, it’s you!”
A slender blonde woman in a tight-fitting, cleavage-showing power dress rushed toward him and embraced him in a way that made Ani’s blood pressure rise.
“Oh, hey,” Raffi said, his body going a little too still, like someone bracing for impact. He gave a half-hearted pat on her back, the kind that suggested he wasn’t sure how long this was supposed to last. His huge sunglasses still covered his eyes.
“I haven’t seen you since that mixer at the Langstons’. You know…”
Raffi coughed. “That was a while back.”
“I know! Where have you been hiding, mister?”
That “mister” was when Ani strode away. Clearly, this was a woman Raffi had slept with. Model pretty, bubbly, the drip of money all over her. The type he went for.
A cool breeze cut through the warm April afternoon. Her stomach twisted, tight and cold, a slow-spreading ache she hadn’t braced for.
He’d been kind today—sweet, even. Thoughtful in a way she hadn’t expected from someone like him. And maybe that’s why it stung more than it should.
And the dresses he bought her. They had felt meaningful. But now, with that woman’s easy laughter still ringing in her ears, it felt cheapened.
Unknowingly, Ani was making her way back toward the gaudy fountain. Walking without a destination, only wanting to put distance between herself and him.
When he handed her the gifts, though, he seemed embarrassed, not suave and debonair, not dashing in a con man sort of way. He was nervous. He wanted her to like them. He wanted to get it right.
But. But.
She didn’t know what to do. She found herself drawn to Raffi, felt that the man she’d come to know was different from his reputation, but—
That was when her shoe caught hard against something solid—a hidden ledge? A loose stone? She didn’t have time to figure it out before her legs lurched violently out from under her.
She was weightless for a moment, then the impact came, sudden and merciless.
The shock of cold water punched the air from her lungs, biting through fabric, skin, bone. It took her a moment to register the icy grip seeping into every inch of her, the way her clothes clung to her like dead weight. She’d fallen into the goddamn liability fountain.
Her first instinct was to scramble upward, but something was pulling her down.
Standing up shouldn’t have been a problem, except the water was heavier than it should have been, except—
Suddenly her back and butt slammed into something hard, the jarring force rattling through her bones. It was so dark and murky in here, she couldn’t see a damn thing. A deep, mechanical whirring hummed beneath her, vibrating through the water. A pump.
Shit.
Ani twisted and tried to push away, but her limbs slipped uselessly on the algae-slick bottom of the fountain, her pulse hammering faster now, her chest tightening like a vise. At some point, she’d lost her shoes.
The hem of her dress was stuck and being sucked into the pump more and more.
She yanked hard—nothing. Shit, shit, shit.
Ani got to her knees, which were still slipping along the bottom, and she just barely broke the surface, gasping—yes, air!
—but she then slipped again and swallowed a mouthful of foul, grimy fountain water.
The suction continued to pull at her dress, pinning her underwater.
Panic surged through her chest. How many more breaths could she steal like that, how much more water could she swallow before, before…