Seduced on the Red Carpet. Ann Christopher

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      “We can’t come,” said Rachel.

       “What?”

      “Not yet, but—”

      “Why not?”

      “—we want you to go ahead anyway. We’ll meet you there when filming’s finished.”

      “Filming was supposed to be finished today.”

      “Trust me, I know. But what can we do? And like I said, you go on ahead. Start without us.”

      Wow. She had a comedian on her hands. “Will you kindly explain how I’m supposed to start without you when the whole purpose of this little trip is for you to see your fiancé’s family winery and decide if you want to get married there? Do you want me to try on wedding dresses for you while I’m at it?”

      “Someone woke up on the wrong side of crabby today, didn’t they?”

      Livia had to snort at that. Staring at her suitcase, she thought about her options.

      Option 1: she could sit here on her butt and wonder if she should have her walls repainted.

      Option 2: she could take herself to Napa, sightsee, eat and drink to her heart’s content and wait for her friends to arrive in a few days. Then they could all eat and drink together.

      Okay. Decision made.

      “Fine,” Livia said ungraciously. “I’ll go by myself, but I’m not going to like it.”

      “Please forgive me.”

      “No,” Livia said, smiling.

      “Look at it this way,” Rachel said with all the nauseating smugness of a happily engaged woman who could look forward to an orgasm or two that night when she went to bed with her sexy man, “maybe you’ll meet someone nice while you’re there.”

      Livia balanced the phone on her shoulder and went back to searching for socks, which was hard to do since she’d rolled her eyes to the top of her head. Meet someone nice? Puh-lease. Nice men were rarer than white tigers on the moon.

      “Right. And maybe Donatella Versace will feature a plain white cotton dress with flat shoes during fashion week.”

      They both got a kick out of that unlikely image.

      Napa Valley was, in a word, spectacular.

      Having traveled all over the world, Livia didn’t use the word lightly, but it applied here. Whereas Las Vegas was spectacular in a tacky, glittery sort of way, and the Great Wall of China was spectacular in a humbling, majestic sort of way, Napa was spectacular in a quietly peaceful way. The gentle mountains, the waves of green trees now speckled with fall orange and the acres of lush vines—row after row, some red (red grapes, she’d read), some gold (white grapes), marching as far as her eye could see and seemingly past the horizon—all touched something deep in her spirit. This was a place that felt like it’d been transplanted from a previous century, and she wouldn’t be surprised if its lazy grace made the hands on her watch move a little more slowly than they did in New York or L.A.

      This was, in short, a place she could love.

      Once she got checked in to the guesthouse, that was.

      She parked her rental behind the main bed-and-breakfast, which was wedged into a hillside and larger than she’d expected, and popped the trunk for her luggage. The charming redbrick building had several gables and chimneys and—oooh, she liked those!—pretty little flower boxes at every window, all of which were filled with cheerful red blooms. Several guesthouses, one of which she assumed was hers, were scattered nearby, and there was a—

      Oh, wait. Was that a little girl?

      It was, about twenty feet away, peering around a tree at her. She was brown-skinned and cute, about five or six, with a head full of dark twists, a white T-shirt with blue shorts and a red bandage on one knee. Could she be any cuter?

      “Hello!” Livia smiled and waved. She was never quite sure about greeting strange children because she knew they’d all been taught not to talk to strangers. Hopefully she didn’t look too threatening. “Hello,” she called again. “My name is—”

      The girl scampered off, disappearing around the corner of the big house. Livia watched her go, trying not to get her feelings hurt. Well. So much for new friends, eh?

      Yeah, she thought as she bent to grab her suitcase. She loved it here.

      Something moved right behind her and smacked her in the butt. She shrieked, jumped, whirled and found herself face-to-face with a pony-sized creature who’d made himself at home sniffing her private parts.

      Another shriek welled in her throat, gathering steam, and her frantic brain was wondering how many of her four limbs he could rip off and devour before help arrived, when something weird happened. The thing backed up a couple of steps, cocked his head and studied her with benign interest. Probably not typical predator behavior, true, but that was no reason not to scream. She opened her mouth nice and wide and—

      Hold up. That wasn’t a pony. It was a dog. The world’s biggest and possibly goofiest dog.

      Snapping her jaws shut, she stared at the animal, who stared back. The darn thing’s head was well past her waist, which was quite impressive since she qualified for Amazon status at five feet eleven inches. He had big brown eyes, floppy ears, knobbly knees and gangly legs that made him look like the canine equivalent of a high school geek. His fur was the kind of brown with black slashes that the Dog Wrangler called—what was it?—a brindle pattern.

      A Great Dane. That’s what he was. So. Was he going to eat her or not?

      Apparently not. He had his big black nose working already, sniffing her, and she knew he’d like what he smelled because her signature fragrance was a light and lovely honeysuckle. Deciding to risk it, she reached out past his broad snout and scratched his ears. They were surprisingly silky, and the dog all but grinned at her in gratitude.

      What a sweetie! He wasn’t so bad—

      Without warning, the dog began barking at her, and each bark was the rough equivalent of a kibble-smelling cannon blast right in her face.

       Bark! Bark-bark! BARK!

      This pissed her off. One second ago they’d been new BFFs and now he wanted to take her head off for absolutely no reason? Uh-uh.

      Calling on the thousands of hours of The Dog Wrangler that she’d watched over the years, she stood her ground, arched her fingers into a claw and gave the dog a quick jabbing zap right on his hindquarters. Just like that—zap!

      This startled the dog, thank God, and he shut up midbark. Better than that, he yelped, backed away, dropped to his belly, rested his snout on his front paws and eyed her with newfound respect, almost as though he was waiting for her next command.

      Nodding with grim satisfaction, she put her hands on her hips and stared down at him, daring him to try anything funny with her ever again.

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