Secrets Of Bella Terra Read Free

from Oklahoma, straight black hair, striking blue eyes, curvaceous figure, with pale skin that burned unless she was wearing SPF 50. So the next year, when her mother was back from her assignment in the Middle East and the two of them were living on the base in San Antonio, Brooke made a friend who was red-haired and freckled, who sounded like Enya when she sang, and whose parents were from Ireland and spoke with a brogue. The Mc-Brians were Catholic, had six kids and another on the way, and were even poorer than most of the Air Force families. But Brooke ignored their lack of furniture and bare walls and focused on the family, so loud, so vital, so wrapped up in religion and their tales of the Old Country, so unlike her own with its comings and goings and long stretches of loneliness. . . .
    So the next time she visited her grandmother in Oklahoma, she asked in a hopeful voice if they were Irish. Her grandmother, a formidable woman who had raised three kids with no help from anybody, turned on Brooke, put her finger in her face, and said, “We’re not Irish, we’re not Mexican, we’re not French, we’re not any of those nationalities. We’re Americans, and don’t you ever forget it.”
    It wasn’t the answer Brooke was looking for, but she wasn’t dumb enough to complain. She shut her mouth and looked for something else to concentrate on—and found it in her parents’ bitter divorce.
    That broke every tradition and vow she’d ever imagined.
    That had broken her life and her heart.
    In Bella Valley, Brooke had quickly learned from the Di Lucas that their kind of family traditions were different. The Di Luca family was American, sure. Ippolito Di Luca had immigrated to California in the late nineteenth century, married an Italian girl whose father owned a swath of land and vineyards in Bella Valley, and every child born to the family since had been born in the United States and spoke English as their native tongue.
    But the Di Lucas had hung on to the essence of being Italian. They gestured when they talked. They drank wine. They corresponded with the family in the Old Country. They ate Italian. Northern Italian, to be specific. Not that the Di Lucas never got Chinese takeout or made a turkey for Thanksgiving, but every one of them knew their way around a pot of golden, slowly simmering polenta—and God forbid some well-intentioned fool should mention instant polenta. The Di Lucas flirted. . . . Brooke didn’t understand how flirting could be passed down as an Italian tradition, but it was. Every one of the Di Luca men and women used charm like a condiment, to bring flavor and pleasure to a relationship.
    The Di Luca traditions meant that when they liked someone, they adopted that person into their family. Brooke knew that firsthand; she had been a part of the family almost from her first day in Bella Valley, and no matter what happened in her life, she was still one of them, almost a daughter, completely a friend.
    The Di Luca traditions also meant that when someone got hurt, cards, flowers, and phone calls flooded in and the nearest and dearest gathered close.
    So when Rafe Di Luca strode through the door into Sarah’s hospital room, Brooke had been expecting him. Waiting for him . . .
    But neither knowledge nor foresight could ease the sweet, familiar shock of recognition. That long stride, that stern profile, that carved body displayed so pleasantly in blue denim and black leather . . .
    He nodded at his two brothers.
    At thirty-four, Eli was the oldest, the tallest, the least likely to shoot off his mouth and get in a fight—and the most likely to win if he did.
    At twenty-eight, Noah was three years younger than Rafe, with the Di Luca family head of curly black hair and a pair of green eyes that had turned many women’s heads.
    The resemblance between the brothers was strong, but Rafe was the son who looked most like his father— heart-stoppingly handsome—and acted least like him, for the dangers he