Free The Gemini Deception by Kim Baldwin, Xenia Alexiou Page B

eighty kilometers southwest of Florence, was ideal for producing quality wines. The silty soil was rich in minerals and the weather was moderate, with a minimal variation in temperature during the long growing season. Harper’s estate was also ideally situated, facing west, which gave her grapes optimum sunlight and exposure to the gentle sea breezes.
    She’d also renovated the two-hundred-year-old farmhouse, which had a glorious panoramic view of the Mediterranean. Built of stone, with dark wood beams and floors, the two-story structure now had an updated interior and modern conveniences, as well as a large gun safe where she kept her weapons. Outside, where she spent most of her off time when the weather was pleasant, was a large stone terrace with a massive brick fireplace that she and Pepo had built together.
    Harper walked the short distance home and built a fire in the fireplace, like she did every evening, and relaxed before it with a glass of her own wine. Normally, Angelo would lie at her feet and she would occasionally pat him and talk to him about what needed to be done the next day, but now she quietly stared at the flames and listened to the trees rustle in the soft wind.
    When Pepo had fallen gravely ill five years ago, he told her he would always be with her in the wind and in the leaves. Now, every time Harper heard that sound, she imagined him watching over her, giving her strength when she was tired and praising her when she managed to come back home in one piece.
    Although the EOO held its operatives to strict privacy regulations concerning their work and involvement in whatever they were hired to do—they all were raised to conceal their identity—Harper had confided in Pepo. Living as closely as they did, it hadn’t taken him long to realize something was different about her. She would disappear for weeks at a time, sometimes returning beaten and broken, at other times distant or angry. At first, he thought it had to do with family matters, until she told him she didn’t have a family. Then he thought it involved a man, until she told him she was gay, and finally, when he thought it concerned health issues, she sat him down and told him the truth, or at least part of it. Harper didn’t mention the EOO, but she did tell him she worked security for an international private contractor.
    Pepo vowed to never ask anything about her work or her physical or mental state when she returned from assignments. From then on, he would seat her by the outdoor fireplace, pour her a glass of wine, and talk about vines. Harper came to love him like the father she never had and considered him her family. When he died, a small part of her died with him, but she knew he would live on in the wine.
    She heard a sound in the far distance, too brief to make out precisely what it was. She didn’t get up, but she did grab the shotgun at her feet. Here, up in the mountains, she would regularly spot a wolf, and although she’d never had any problems with the animals, other villagers had been attacked. She listened a while longer, then smiled and set down her weapon. “Hey, you missed the ceremony,” she said without turning around.
    “I’m sorry,” Monica replied as she bent to kiss Harper’s shoulder. “I couldn’t get away from work.”
    “I figured.”
    “Are you coping?”
    “I’m fine.” Harper tried to smile as the attractive blonde came around to face her. “You know how it is.”
    Harper had met Monica three years earlier on a flight back to Italy from the U.S. Monica was in the olive-oil business and had her own production factory. They spent the whole flight talking about the differences between the tree and the vine and the similarities between the business aspects of selling. What had started out as a friendship soon turned into a sexually open relationship, and both were content with that status since neither had the time nor interest in anything serious or binding. Harper had come to care a lot for