Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
A rcher
“Is it weird to miss a person when they’re not a rightful part of your life? Wait, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”
Stopping at a lookout point on the hill that gives our winery its name, Colin holds up one of the hiking poles he insists on using. “What if I want to answer?”
I groan. “I still don’t want to know.”
It’s been a couple weeks since I helped Ella fix her tire, and she’s been an obsessive thought on my mind ever since. The image of her in those tiny shorts—and without the shorts or any clothes at all—continues to haunt me, growing stronger each day that I don’t see her. The way she reacted when I held her up to keep her from wobbling. Her surprised look after she hugged me. I refuse to believe she felt nothing. But the idea that she felt something haunts me even more.
Then what?
It’s a bluebird sky day, not even a hint of a cloud, and no one’s on the trail. Feels like a gift. Colin and I take this hike about once a week, a habit we got into when he moved to Buttercup Hill to get out of the spotlight after making a poorly-timed statement to the media and tanking his company’s stock.
He and PJ started dating on the sly, but I’ve managed to get over it now that it’s clear to me they’re meant for each other. Not to mention that he’s the one who stepped in to save us from our first round of financial ruin a couple years back, so I don’t rib him nearly as much about being with my sister as I’d like to.
“I assume we’re talking about the actress.”
I use the hem of my shirt to wipe the sweat from my face. It leaves a stain in the gray fabric, but Colin’s the last guy who’d judge. Looking out at the view—miles of grapevines in orderly lines, a little residual burn from the fire that burned part of Buttercup Hill and a lot of Graham’s land, and all the various homes of my siblings fanned out on the property—I always feel calm. Perspective. Literal perspective.
“Yeah. Ella. How’d you know?”
“It’s all PJ can talk about. Ella this, Ella that. You’d think the royal family was having a wedding here.”
Colin famously keeps his head in the sand when it comes to celebrity culture. I’ve never heard him relay a piece of gossip and frankly, I’m surprised he’s heard about Ella. The guy really does only care about space.
“Apparently she and Callum whatever-his-name-is are considered Hollywood royalty.” I spit the words out, still annoyed by how disinterested Callum seemed in his own wedding. “Though he’s kind of a douchebag if you ask me.”
“Not a country music fan, then?”
“Nope.”
Colin bends down to stretch his calves before we hike down. It’s part of the ritual of hiking—waiting for him to go through a series of stretches before we start, halfway through, and at the end. He’s the best-stretched hiker I’ve ever met, and knowing him, there’s some science behind it. I don’t stretch after I run, so I don’t bother after hiking either. It’s never been a problem.
“You like her.”
“She’s fine. She’s a client.”
Colin chuckles and shakes his head. “Keep telling yourself that, but you don’t talk about clients, and you haven’t been able to shut up about her. If you think you don’t have a thing for her, you’re in denial.”
Looking out over Napa Valley, I take a moment to notice how quiet it is up here. It’s normally where I go for some peace and quiet, but today I can’t escape my best friend yammering in my ear. Or my own thoughts.
Maybe he’s right. Even if I wish it wasn’t true. “I don’t want to have a thing for her, trust me. Even if her fiancé is an asshat who clearly doesn’t deserve her, she’s engaged to him. That’s a line in the sand I’d never think of crossing.”
Annoyed, I look out at the view. Why does the sky have to be so damn blue? I could use a few clouds and a storm right now to match my miserable mood.
“I don’t want to like her,” I admit.
“I get it. That’s what’s mysterious about the human heart. It kind of does what it wants without our heads being involved.”
I roll my eyes. “Is that some mystery of the universe you discovered while you were looking at Saturn one day? Jesus.”
“It’s common sense,” he says. “And it was Jupiter, asshole.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got that right about the heart going rogue. I can’t figure out what she sees in him. I saw the two of them together and I swear, there was zero chemistry.”
He laughs. “Is there a tiny chance you only saw what you wanted to see?”
“Um, yeah, genius.”
“Not an insult.” Done with his stretches, Colin eyes the trail that will take us back to Buttercup Hill and plants his poles in the dirt. “Ready? ”
“Sure.”
We take a last look at the view from the top.
“Here’s what I’m loving,” Colin says, pulling off his baseball cap, ruffling his hair, and putting it back on facing backward.
I let out a sigh. “Oh, here we go. What is it, some kind of interplanetary connection you saw through your telescope last night?”
He chuckles and I appreciate that I can still give my billionaire former college roommate shit about his nerdy love for space. In some ways, Ella reminds me of him, which is nuts because they couldn’t be more different. Except that they’re both pathologically nice, extremely successful at what they do, and a little misunderstood by the rest of the world.
“This is the first time in years I’ve seen you excited about something. Anything. And you deserve to be excited. Even if she’s engaged, it’s the start of you getting in touch with that organ beating in your chest that you’ve ignored for half your dumb life. Maybe it’s a sign you can finally get out from under your dad’s thumb and live your own life.”
I start hiking down, not wanting to get into my “dad baggage,” as Colin calls it. He’s known me long enough to remember how hard I worked to impress my dad in college and how little acknowledgement I got for it. Football player? A shrug. A 4.0 GPA? To be expected. The only thing I’ve ever done that made my dad seem even a tiny bit impressed was learn about wine making. And that was before his dementia took away his ability to run the winery he built from nothing into the powerhouse it is today.
“I’m living my life. I’m just doing it within the constraints of a job I didn’t ask for because my siblings are all pulling their weight and I need to pull mine.”
“Not really the same thing when you do it with constraints.”
A jogger blows past us going uphill and we both shake our heads at the try-hard. “So getting back to your question, the issue isn’t that you miss her—that’s awesome. The issue is that you don’t think she’s a rightful part of your life. How can you change that?”
It’s why I like Colin so much. Where most people see roadblocks, he sees challenges.
“She’d have to break up with her fiancé.” I can’t believe I’m even saying the words. They’re an impossibility.
Colin nods gamely, not seeming to see the problem. “Great. I know you, and you wouldn’t even say the words out loud if some part of you didn’t believe in the possibility.”
I think about that. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I should utter the thought that’s been bouncing in my head since I saw Callum and Ella together and had to restrain myself from punching his lights out just to put some daylight between them.
“What if she doesn’t love him? What if it’s some kind of publicity stunt or something she’d walk away from if she met the right guy?” I suggest.
Colin picks up his pace, which he only does when he likes an idea.
“Then I think you need to do everything in your power to find out.”
It’s lucky for me that PJ’s office is down the hall from mine, so I overheard it when she scheduled a photo shoot for today with Town and Country magazine. From my office window, I see the convoy of cars arrive at noon and I hear the tromp of feet downstairs as PJ shows everyone around. But I see no small blue car, and my heart sinks.
It’s just as well , I remind myself. The more time I spend with Ella, the more time I want to spend with her and that has to stop. Like Jax and Carson said, it’s not healthy to spend this much time thinking about a woman I can never have. At best, it’s a distraction. At worst, it will derail me from doing my job. I can’t afford either one.
The voices fade away as PJ leads the group outside, and I refocus my attention on the pile of papers on my desk. Maybe somewhere in the mess is an explanation for what my father was thinking when he decided it made sense to torch our winery.
An hour later, I’m nearing the bottom of the pile—mostly financial reports and contracts with vendors who will sell our wine nationwide. I need to update all of them and make sure the terms are more favorable next year or we’ll never turn a profit. Right now the margins are so small, that if even one wine distributor decides not to carry Buttercup Hill wine next year, our numbers will tank.
I pick up the phone and dial one of the reps who’s been dodging my calls. It could be that he’s just busy, but he could also be avoiding confrontation. He answers on the first ring, a good sign.
“Hey Joe, it’s Archer at Buttercup Hill.”
“I’m terrible. I owe you a call.”
He owes me six, but I won’t split hairs. “No worries. I’m working on next year’s contracts with Wine House and More Wines, and I want to make sure you get in on this year’s reserve wines before they’re all accounted for.” I sound as friendly as I can manage while holding my breath, half expecting him to level me with bad news.
“Right, right. That’s what I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. I need to reduce our quantities for next year. I’m sure you know, there’s less demand industry-wide. Millennials are drinking hard kombucha and mocktails.”
It feels like a stone bottoming out in my gut. It’s one thing to lose business from one distributor, but I hate to think it’s an industry-wide trend. This could be the blow that kills our numbers unless I can find someone else to buy the wine he doesn’t want .
I see Ella walk out of the tasting room and say goodbye to the photographers and journalists who PJ is herding in the other direction. Realizing she’s probably about to leave, my adrenaline shoots through the sky. “Fine, fine. Whatever quantity you need. We’ll work it out.”
Poor business decisions, rushed negotiations…is this what it means to crave another person from the depths of your soul? Fuck me, because I’m already past the point of no return.
I manage to slow my roll by the time I get outside, wandering over to where Ella still stands on the gravel drive.
“Did the rom-com princess lose her car?”
She rolls her eyes, but I don’t miss how the flush colors her cheeks or the way she smiles—her real smile, not the one she saves for the screen. “The magazine sent a town car to drive me. And why do you keep calling me that?”
I study her pursed, heart-shaped mouth, the high rosy cheekbones and mass of wild hair that begs to be twisted around a man’s hand while he ravishes those lips, and shake my head. “What do you want me to call you?”
“Ella is fine.”
“Okay, princess.” I’m like the schoolyard punk who can’t stop pulling the hair of the girl he likes.
She huffs a laugh. “Seems like you don’t wait for permission to do what you want.”
We walk in silence past the lake on the property where two swans are out today, puffing their feathers as though they know Ella is important. I want to tell them to relax. But I’m finding it a bit hard to relax myself as she strides next to me. The light floral scent of her perfume dances around us like a fairy cloud and the golden highlights of her hair keep catching the sun.
“It suits you,” I mutter to myself.
“Sorry, what?”
“Nothing.” Guess I need to watch my volume when I’m muttering near someone with perfect hearing .
“I heard you.” She says it like a warning, one I’ll ignore.
“So why’d you ask what I said?”
Another eye roll. “I’m not some diva who makes demands on other people and has to be waited on.”
I point out the swans, who are sailing along next to us as we round the last curve in the path next to the lake. They seem to be keeping pace, as though they’re in on the conversation.
“Didn’t say you were. You just look like a princess to me.”
She makes a disgusted noise that has the swans turning around and heading the other way.
“Problem?”
“Um, yeah. You don’t even know me and you’re forming opinions based on, what? A job I have that you know nothing about? Seems like you’re the princess.”
I huff a laugh at that. “First person who’s ever called me a princess.”
She shrugs. “Maybe I’m the first one who’s been honest.”
I should have a retort, but the comment is so surprising that I’m left with thoughts instead of words. Namely that she’s not afraid of me, which puts her in a very small category of mostly family members, and even some of them steer clear.
“Okay, I’ll bite. Since you’re being honest, what do you hate about being called a rom-com princess? Isn’t that kind of your bread and butter?”
“At work, sure. But people assume I’m just like the characters I play—sweet but clueless, can’t keep a man, too na?ve to understand the vagaries of the real world. America’s sweetheart. But it’s just a role, and frankly, I’m tired of it.” She looks at me, as if daring me to say I’ve made no such assumptions about her, but I can’t.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s tour the tasting room. It’s the only thing you haven’t seen yet. You can tell me how you became America’s sweetheart, and I’ll pour you wine and make you forget about it for a while. ”
I should have my head examined. If wine shops are scaling back, I need to put my head down and figure out how to make up the shortfall. But that’s been the story of my life for longer than I can remember, and I’m damn tired. Even if she is engaged, Ella is the first person in a long time who’s made me want to work less. Drinking wine with her instead of working will surely bite me in the ass, but I can’t make myself say no to this woman.
Can’t.
Won’t.