From Barcelona, with Love by Elizabeth Adler Read Free Book Online Page A

as he bowed over her hand, then took a seat opposite.
    â€œGood to see you too, Antonio,” she said, not meaning it either. It had hurt once but no longer mattered, except that he was Juan Pedro’s son and now ran the sherry business. Lorenza had handed him that job a year or two after she’d inherited the vineyards, after she had learned all she could about vines and grapes and terrain, and also made the decision to make wine as well as sherry. Antonio had been reluctant at first, though now he did a good job, even though he was a playboy who liked the good life and the clubs and cheated on his wife.
    Antonio’s home was, of necessity, in Jerez, in Andalusia, where sherry is produced, and where the Ravel family vineyards had existed for a couple of centuries. With easy access to the playgrounds of Marbella, and the Costa del Sol, where Antonio was a well-known figure, always with a pretty woman—who was definitely not his wife—the location suited him just fine. Anyway, he knew he was better off away from Barcelona and Lorenza’s long reach and knowing eye.
    â€œYou look beautiful,” he told her now, insincerely. “As always.”
    â€œWhy, thank you, Antonio. I wish your father could have been here to hear you say that. He always believed you thought me vulgar and too sexy for my own good. Or his.”
    â€œOh, God, Lorenza.” Antonio rolled up his eyes and fiddled with his Hermès tie, a pattern of tiny green turtles running on a pink background, a frivilous contrast to his impeccably cut dark blue pinstripe suit.
    â€œI like your tie,” Lorenza said, with a flash of mischief. “I’ve never figured out why men hate wearing ties when really it’s the only pretty thing they’re allowed. A touch of color, you know. Though,” she added, eyeing him up and then down again, “somehow I’ve always envisioned a winemaker as a man of the earth. You know, in khakis or blue jeans, an old plaid shirt. A man comfortable with himself.”
    Antonio had been given his hardworking grandfather’s name, plain and simple, but there was nothing plain and simple or hardworking about the grandson. He smoldered, silently now, thinking about his stepmother. He had never, ever, referred to Lorenza as his father’s “wife,” eliminating her any way he could from “the family” even though she now owned that family. Right now, Antonio felt like killing his stepmother but contented himself with a dark glare that, had Lorenza been looking, would have told her so. Before he could make a stinging reply the doorbell rang and Buena, who had been lurking behind it, quickly flung it open.
    This time Lorenza got up to greet her guest. She had always liked Floradelisa, Juan Pedro’s eldest daughter, and she believed the daughter liked her. At least she thought Floradelisa cared, and of all Juan Pedro’s children she was the simplest and most “real.”
    She was plump, and as dark as Antonio, but with blue eyes and a face as pale as a ghost, which was the reason her father had named her Floradelisa. With her pale skin, he said she reminded him of a lily flower. A fleur-de-lys or a Flora de lisa. Now, though, hugging her, Lorenza worried that her pale stepdaughter never saw the light of day.
    â€œFloradelisa,” Lorenza said.
    â€œLorenzita,” she said. And they both laughed at how silly it sounded.
    â€œYou’re working too hard, I can tell,” Lorenza said, knowing it was true. Floradelisa was a chef and owner of one of Barcelona’s most avant-garde restaurants, where she was known for her outrageous menus with desserts of vaporized berries, re-formed into miniature works of art, served with a chocolate skin so fine and thin it crackled in the mouth; and fusion sauces that were mere froths of nitrogenated cream; and tiny exquisite lamb chops that were three mouthfuls of melting delight, as well as other