Chapter 2
Mallory
Present Day
You know those days when it seems like you might actually escape without your whole life falling apart? Those days when it seems like everything will work out, and you actually take the first optimistic breath and start to believe?
I’m having one of those days.
The sun is high in the sky on one of those late summer afternoons that feels like it might go on and on without ever getting dark. Of course, I know better because day always melts into night eventually, but for the moment, I feel the optimism of an endless summer day.
Sitting at the small desk in my office that overlooks the acres of farmland my family calls home in Napa Valley, I stare out at acres of green. It’s mostly wild plants and grasses where a handful of horses and sheep graze, but I see potential.
Even as a kid with long pigtails my mom curled into ringlets, I saw something more than what met the eye when I studied our land from this very window. Back then, it was a spare bedroom where the occasional visiting aunt or family friend would stay. The twin daybed is all that remains of that bygone era. I keep it because I occasionally take a power nap during the workday, and it’s more comfortable than sleeping on a couch.
Otherwise, the room is all business with streamlined office furniture, file cabinets, an ergonomic desk chair, and bookshelves, all stained the pale natural color of light wood. The shelves are crammed with accounting books, financial planners, and corporate finance textbooks I’ve accumulated over the past four years of taking classes to earn my business degree.
The only people who know I’ve been learning about entrepreneurship are my professors and my fellow students, and that’s the way I want it.
I inhale the fragrant air that slips through the open window and think about how I’d like to spend the rest of my day. Maybe a walk around the perimeter of the property, which sits at the foot of a sweeping hill covered in grapevines. Almost everyone around here is serious about farming grapes and producing wine—everyone except my parents.
Ironic that they own one of the largest pieces of land and have little interest in making wine.
Or just dumb.
But I’m about to turn thirty-three in a few months, and according to the trust they set up ages ago, I’ll be the sole owner of Autumn Lake Cellars, which is currently two hundred acres of land and a barely-there winery they started a few decades ago. I don’t intend to waste a moment of time when that happens.
Hence my business education and the whiteboard in my office with columns, arrows, and lists of big plans. Seeing my dreams for our property delineated on the board always calms me even though I’ve been chomping at the bit like a racehorse for ten years and the dreams have been nothing more than…dreams.
My eye catches on a plume of dust outside the window, indicating someone is driving up the unpaved road leading from the main highway.
Unlike most of the large wineries around here, I don’t get a lot of visitors because we don’t give tastings or tours. The only people who come up the drive are the workers who tend to the farmland, and they all finished their work hours ago, before the heat of midday.
There’s no reason for anyone to be here, and when I see the dark blue of a Mercedes sedan driving through the haze of dust, my stomach lurches. I know that car, if only because the man driving it was here a month ago talking to my parents before their most recent trip.
I nearly blew my top then, and I’m about to do it again now.
Rushing down the stairs of the clapboard house that doubles as our business office and the main entry of Autumn Lake Cellars, I shove the loose strands of my long hair behind my ears and attempt to tame them. I have a habit of twisting my hair into a bun and securing it with a pencil while I’m working, but by the end of the day, it’s a twirly mess.
Then I silently yell at myself for caring about how I look, especially in front of this man.
Yanking open the front door to the house, I see the dust settling around Felix Sutton’s too-expensive car. Then I see the man himself shove open the driver’s door and step out in his brown loafers and expensive suit.
I can’t believe I ever looked at him and found him remotely attractive. Now, I just want him off our property before he decides it’s his right to come any further.
His fake smile puts his overly white teeth on full display in the afternoon sun. They’re like bleached seashells that have been left outside for too long. “Mal,” he says, extending his hands.
I fold my arms over my chest and give him a blank expression like I barely know who he is.
He keeps advancing, and I hold my ground with my most agreeable face plastered on, unwilling to let him see how much he irks me because it only fuels him.
It’s a game we’ve played for years, ever since our yearlong marriage proved to be a massive case of me getting played. He wanted me for my family tree—my position as the only heir to my parents’ land fortune—and he was well-positioned to inherit half of what I inherit. Not anymore—thank you, divorce.
Basic stupidity on my part, thinking that love would last and he wouldn’t turn out to be a snake in the grass.
Now I’m business-savvy and done with love. Smarter outlook, if you ask me.
“You’re like a bad penny. Keep turning up,” I say without changing my facial expression. I wish I could take the high road and pretend his coming here doesn’t bug me, but I’m human. I’d like to turn on the hose and blast him off my property.
No, I’ll get rid of him more quickly if I listen to whatever bullshit thing he came here to say, nod politely, and turn him away.
He smiles as though I haven’t just insulted him. “Good to see you too.”
High road, one. Me, zero.
“Right. What’s up, Felix?”
He shrugs as though he’s thinking about what he wants to say. He always knows, so it’s a game.
Taking a step forward, he comes too close to me, daring me to step backward. But I don’t. I’m not giving him an inch. Arms still crossed, I look upward and meet his eyes, which are a sickly shade of green. Like algae. Or poison oak. I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before we were married.
Guess love really is blind.
Most people find him utterly charming, seeing his inside jokes and handsy behavior as a sign that they’ve reached the inner circle. Inner circle of hell, perhaps. But other people’s failure to read him is old news by now. It doesn’t surprise me that Felix Sutton breezes through life, pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes. It’s just his way.
And yes, I fell for it too. Even before we started dating, he hovered close to me, massaged my shoulders, and put an arm around me in a slightly possessive way that I found harmless at the time. I even found it a little endearing.
Ugh.
“This is me coming with my hat in hand.” He extends his hand, but it contains no hat. He doesn’t seem to notice.
“Why?”
He leans even closer to me. I inhale a lungful of his cologne, which has a musky top note that makes me shudder at the memory of being with him. I can see his pores, which seem larger than they should be for a normal person, but maybe it’s because he’s two inches from my face.
I take a step forward so abruptly that he pitches backward and nearly loses his balance. He gives up on the physical intimidation and starts walking in a circle on the driveway. I’m about one minute from calling the cops and having them clear him off my property.
“We oughtta mend fences. I know you’re not dumb, Mal. You see an opportunity when it presents itself, and I’m here. I’m an opportunity.”
It takes all my self-control not to laugh in his face. “What kind of opportunity is that?” I ask calmly. I’ve seen his car coming and going from our property over the past few months, and I can’t understand why my parents put up with him. But they’ve always liked the guy, and they’ve never seen him as the twat he is.
After we got divorced, he kept up a relationship with them, visiting monthly and sending them holiday and birthday gifts. It annoyed me because it meant I had to see him occasionally in passing, but it seemed harmless enough.
My parents are good people, but they have a blind spot when it comes to sussing out disingenuous turds, and unfortunately, this town is full of them. There’s always someone trying to sweet-talk them into selling a parcel of their land, and they always smile and nod along.
Fortunately, what my parents lack in cynicism, they make up for with stubbornness. They’ll never sell, plain and simple. Our land will always be our land, and it’s worth millions.
“My parents aren’t here. They’re still in Europe,” I tell Felix, even though I know he knows because I told him the same thing last week.
My parents, who live in a small house at the other end of our property, have been working at a farm in France for the past month. You’d think there would be enough for them to do on our own piece of land, but they’re volunteering to pick produce for other people in exchange for room and board. They do it nearly every year during harvesting months, which landed them in Croatia picking olives last fall and in South America last spring. Different countries every time. My parents are more interested in doddering around on other people’s farms and milking their cows than they are in talking business with people around here.
When I was younger, their granola hippie ways pushed me to go in the opposite direction, chasing fashion trends, burning up every credit card reader in town, watching makeup and hair tutorials, and styling my look before I knew what a look even was.
Thinking back, it was childish. It resulted in people seeing me as a hollow fashion plate, and I may need to change some minds when the calendar page flips on my birthday.
For years, I ran business ideas by my parents, trying to convince them to grow grapes on our land or lease some of the acreage to other wine growers. We’re lucky enough to live on prime property in a sought-after appellation. We wouldn’t have to sell any of the land, but we could still run a robust business and turn more of a profit.
But my parents would never hear of it. For all their counterculture ways, they were traditional in one very inconvenient area—they believed that I should get married, have babies, and let my husband be the “career mind” in the family. I trotted out every Equal Rights Amendment piece of evidence to the contrary and made a strong case for “doing it all,” but my mother had her doubts.
“I don’t know why you’d make things harder on yourself than they need to be,” she’d say when I floated my ideas about the business side of Autumn Lake. They wanted grandkids from me, not business ideas.
Then I met Felix. He too liked the idea of “being a part of the storied Rutherford family,” as he put it, and he told my parents exactly what they wanted to hear. He’d be the squeeze-bottle ketchup to my crisp French fries, the lid to my boiling pot. They ate it up like a Thanksgiving feast.
When I married Felix, I convinced myself that maybe I could have it both ways. My parents would see that I took their desires seriously and partnered up with a man. And I lived with the delusion that my new husband would take my dreams seriously and help me achieve them like the blob of ketchup he was.
Wrong and double wrong.
He was in it for himself, and as soon as I realized that he’d never really love me, I sent him packing.
Except that here he is.
“I’m here to see you. I decided it’s time we talk turkey.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“It means that you have a birthday coming up, so we need a plan for how to run this place once we inherit.”
I almost laugh because the idea of me including him in any sort of plan is nonsense.
“We? You sure you don’t have your pronouns confused? You’re not inheriting anything.”
It happens so slowly, with such deliberate pleasure on Felix’s behalf, that I almost don’t see it. His face morphs into the most satisfied, shit-eating, buffoon of a smile. One second, he looks like his same boring self, and the next, he’s grinning like the Joker.
“Of course I am. Unless you’ve been lying about your age.”
“I haven’t lied about anything. I’m turning thirty-three, and I’ll inherit Autumn Lake. You will get your flabby ass off my property, and after that, my day will improve.”
He stares at me as though he’s waiting for me to flinch. Or let him in on the joke. Then his grin gets so big I’m afraid he might crack his lips and bleed all over my driveway, which would be irritating and messy.
“You don’t know.” He slaps his forehead. “You really don’t know.”
He’s right. I really don’t know why I haven’t turned on the water hose yet.
But something in the self-satisfied way he’s still hovering makes me a tiny bit nervous. We filed the divorce papers, right? I’d remember forgetting to do something like that. So what’s he going on about?
“I give up, Felix. What don’t I know?”
“That your parents love me. They know how good I am for you, and they know I only want the best for you.”
“Questionable. But what’s your point?”
“We’re partners. Your inheritance is to be shared with me as your husband.”
I laugh. Clearly, he’s gone ‘round the bend.
“You are not my husband.”
“Not in deed, but in spirit. That’s how your parents see it. They’ve explicitly retained me as supervisor for all the property you inherit.”
“What the actual fuck?” I wish he didn’t get my goat, but I can’t help it. Even if he’s lying, it’s too much to bear.
“Partners, Mal. We’re going to be partners.”
“Okay, first of all, assuming what you’re saying has any remote possibility of being true, what makes you think I need you as my partner?”
He runs a hand through his hair, or at least he tries. There’s so much gel holding it in place that his hand gets stuck halfway through, and he has to extricate his fingers. “You’re going to inherit a big responsibility, and you’re going to need help.”
“Says who?”
A laugh barks from him. “Anyone who knows anything about business.”
“Great. I’ll find one of those people if I need help.”
“Be serious, Mal. This could really work. I’m good on the business end, and you could keep up appearances and be the face of the place.”
“Wow, thank you for allowing me to be the ‘face’ of my own family business, one I can’t possibly run without your help.” My sarcasm and the slight shake in my voice betray my attempt to act like I’m immune to Felix’s implication that I need help. I hope he doesn’t notice, but from the way he licks his lips, I feel like the prey of a puma who just cornered his dinner.
That’s the problem with being married to a person. Even though it didn’t last beyond a year, our marriage allowed Felix to know things about me that other people don’t. The guy isn’t especially observant, but he eventually learned how to read when I’m bluffing my confidence.
It doesn’t happen that often and shouldn’t be happening now. I’ve put in the work, and I will soon have a degree to prove it, but if I breathe a word to Felix about my business chops, he’ll find a way to sabotage me.
“Your parents are looking out for you. Making sure you have someone with your best interests at heart—and theirs—to help you manage all of this.” He spreads his arms wide, and I vow to do whatever it takes to make sure he doesn’t manage a postage stamp-size piece of dirt.
“If they told you that, you should assume questionable mental health. Nothing would be binding.”
“I have it in writing. And they’re fine. I should know. I spend enough time with them.” He says that last part with an eye roll, and it hits me for the first time that this has been his plan all along—or at least since the divorce—to sweet-talk my parents into keeping him around.
“This isn’t happening. I’ll talk them out of it. You can forget about whatever little megalomaniacal plan you’ve concocted. The day we got divorced was the day you lost any claim on this land.”
He tries again to comb his fingers through his hair. Again, they get stuck, and now his hair stands up like a cock’s comb. Appropriate.
“I’m playing nice for now and offering to include you, but I don’t have to be a good guy.”
“You couldn’t possibly be one, so we’re on the same page there.”
He licks his lips again, and I wonder why he’s salivating over an opportunity he’ll never get. If he fooled my parents with his cocky smile, I’ll talk them right out of it. I’m their only child. They’ll side with me.
Right?
Turning for the house, I leave Felix standing on the driveway without indulging this conversation further.
Grabbing my phone, I tap the app for our garden sprinklers, which I should have gotten fixed a while ago. They have a habit of spraying the driveway instead of hitting the flowers.
A second later, I hear an aggravated shout when they douse Felix’s shirt and stupid hair.
A few seconds after that, I hear a car tearing away from the property. Good. Only place for a bad penny like him is under the heel of my designer stiletto shoe.