Chapter 9
Dash
Our next family meeting takes place at a back corner table inside Sweet Butter, the café on the Buttercup Hill property, because my sister is hungry.
“Stop saying that,” PJ whines, right before taking a huge bite of an egg and bacon croissant.
“You’re the only one here who’s eating,” I observe, pointing at where our eldest brother Archer stews over a cup of coffee and Jax sips from a metal water bottle. I rolled in late because I slept late.
No one ever acts surprised when I’m late, just like they’re not surprised by my penchant for going out to bars and having a very active social life. It barely registers as an event if I have a late night. But for the last few nights, I haven’t been out at all. I’ve been up late with thoughts churning through my mind. Thoughts about a woman I never gave two brain cells worth of worry about until we ran into each other—twice.
I’m almost grateful for a family meeting, normally the bane of my existence, because it will force me not to think about Mallory Rutherford. And I need to stop thinking about her for fuck’s sake.
“They ordered. They just haven’t gotten their food yet.” There’s no point in arguing with her—or with any of my siblings, for that matter. I was born into a family as stubborn as it is loving, and each of us has a tendency to dig in when we think we’re right.
Beatrix comes in last and sits at the table without going to the counter to order anything. I’m about to point at her as an example of someone who clearly isn’t eating when the server brings over a latte and a croissant she’d apparently been holding for my sister.
PJ follows my gaze and gives me a smug nod.
“Fine, whatever.” I get up and go to the counter. If everyone else is eating, I’ll take my sweet time picking out something tasty from the case. No sense working on an empty stomach.
“Almond croissant’s always a good choice.” Jax’s voice over my shoulder sends a creep of dread down my spine. I didn’t mention anything to him about the fake boyfriend charade the other night, mainly because he can’t hear Mallory’s name without wanting to spit nails.
I never really understood where all the bad blood came from after what seemed like a harmless hookup, and I never cared enough to ask. Jax was a grumpy asshole for the year or so after his wife left him with their newborn daughter. In fact, he was a grumpy asshole right up until he met Ruby, our sommelier who talked her way into a job here by offering to be Jax’s nanny.
I will always have respect for Ruby, knowing what she had to put up with from Jax before he settled down and fell in love with her. Sometimes I wish she was our sibling instead of him. Kind, easygoing Ruby wouldn’t be growling in my ear.
Turning to face him, I see that my brother doesn’t have a scowl on his face for once. Having Ruby in his life really does agree with him, even if she did somehow allow him to grow the beard he’s currently sporting.
“Have you looked in the mirror today? The werewolf next door wants his razor back.”
“Fuck off.” He says it with a smile, which means I haven’t annoyed him nearly enough. And I feel the need to rib him more—it’s a little brother thing.
“Big words for an old man. Didn’t know you still had it in you.”
He smiles and I swear the guy has gone soft. So much so that I can’t even think of a way to taunt him. Maybe it’s me who’s gone soft, and I hate to think it has anything to do with Mallory, even though I can’t stop thinking about her.
“Did you know Mallory Rutherford was married?”
“She is?” Jax looks shocked.
“No, I mean, she was. She has an ex-husband.” It’s then I realize the barista has been waiting for me to pick out a pastry while I’ve been standing here gabbing about nothing. “Sorry, I’ll have a chocolate croissant.”
“And an almond one for me,” Jax pipes in, lowering his voice again when he tells me, “I didn’t know that. Was it a recent thing?”
“Not sure. I just know she has an ex. Met him, actually. Guy’s a super douche.” As the words leave my mouth, I realize there will be questions I’m not sure I’m prepared to answer.
“Yeah, that figures. She’s a lot to put up with.”
A defensive surge moves through my chest, and I find myself wanting to tell him he’s wrong about Mallory, even though I don’t know her well enough to say for sure.
“When did you meet him?” Jax asks. The blue of his eyes matches my own, but somehow, I doubt mine leave the piercing impression his do. I heard a woman once describe me as having bedroom eyes, whatever that means. If anything, I doubt she meant they had the discerning focus of the blue staring me down now.
“He was at the Dark Horse earlier this week. So was she. Seemed like there’s some bad blood there, made me curious whether you knew anything about him.”
“Nah, she never mentioned an ex. Not that we spent a whole lot of time talking the one drunken night we were together.”
“How can you hate her as much as you do based on that? I wouldn’t even think you’d remember a drunken night all those years ago.”
He rubs his hand over his face, and I wait for him to tell me to stay the hell out of his business, but he blinks a couple times blankly as if thinking back through time. I make a mental note to buy Ruby a gift because she’s toned my grouchy brother way down, and I like this guy more than the old version.
“It wasn’t the night we were together—not even sure I remember so much about that, if I’m being honest…” He blinks hard and the corner of his mouth hints at a smile. “It was what came afterward. She wanted it to mean something, and I just wasn’t in the headspace for that.”
“Seriously? That’s why you’ve badmouthed her all these years? Because you weren’t in the “headspace” to date her after your hookup, and she had the gall to suggest it?” It can’t be the whole story. Jax is a grump, but he’s not that much of an asshole.
The barista hands us matching white plates with our pastries, and we take them to the table where the rest of our siblings are already sitting. “Look, I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t in a good place after Annabelle left, and Mallory wants what she wants.”
“Which is what?” If there’s something to all the rumors I’ve heard about her latching onto any man she sees because she wants a husband, I need to know.
“It’s all about business with her. It may seem like she’s there for a good time, but there’s always something else at play. Whether it has something to do with Autumn Lake or her parents’ money or something else, she’s working an angle.”
Picking up my chocolate croissant, I let the buttery scent wash over me before taking a bite. “That’s what you thought she was doing after your one-night thing? Working you for something?”
He demolishes half his almond pastry in one bite and talks through the crumbs, shrugging. “I did at the time. Who knows? Maybe it just seemed that way because she kept on hinting to anyone who’d listen that she had some kind of claim on me.” He wipes the crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand and takes a seat next to PJ, who has all but demolished her breakfast. All that remains on her plate are pale flakes of croissant and a dab of ketchup.
“Could it be that your general foul mood until you met Ruby gave you a skewed perspective?” I’m needling him, but I also want to see if he’ll revise his prior take on Mallory. Again, I check myself when I realize that I care about what he thinks of her more than I should.
Jax picks up a white ceramic coffee cup and fills it from an urn on the table. “Yeah, I’d allow that. She did come with me to an event a while back and it was sort of okay. Maybe she’s not so terrible. Why the sudden interest?” He raises an eyebrow.
“No reason. Like I said, I ran into her, so it got me wondering.”
He locks eyes on me, assessing. My brother may be irritable, but he’s not dumb. I just hope my game face is good enough to persuade him there’s nothing there.
I’m saved from further questioning when Archer passes out stapled copies of financial reports, accompanied by a map of our property and the surrounding land.
“Why the map?” Beatrix asks, pushing her long, dark hair off her shoulders. It’s one of the few times she doesn’t have her hair in a clip or a bun or whatever, and she can’t stop fidgeting with it. After re-tucking the loose strands behind her ear, she gives in and twists it into a knot and points accusingly at the page we all have in our hands.
“Look at it and you’ll see,” Arch says calmly like a school teacher who’s willing to wait for us to get the point of his lesson.
We each study the map in front of us. PJ doodles on hers, connecting the squares that denote different types of grapes we grow and drawing circles around some areas that Archer has marked outside of our property.
Beatrix and Jax study the map silently, but I notice Jax’s knee bouncing next to me. He hates it when Archer tries to make him guess what he’s getting at because he hates being wrong.
“I see our property and a bunch of squares of stuff we don’t own,” I contribute, ready for one of my older siblings to jump down my throat and tell me I should stick to human resources issues. But we’re all in the family business together, and it’s as much my future as it is theirs. If Archer’s asking what we see, I’m going to tell him.
It surprises me when he nods. “Exactly. If we want to grow the business, we need to buy land to grow more grapes or buy them from growers in the same appellation. That means taking on new debt when we’re running on a shoestring until the new crops start producing. And now that Dad’s seen fit to buy our half brother a vineyard down the road, our options just became much more limited.”
“Why? We have funds, now that Colin invested in Buttercup Hill.” PJ looks sheepish as soon as she says it. She’s still not used to the fact that her fiancé, an astrophysicist tech billionaire from Silicon Valley, is now a large shareholder in our business. But the truth is he rescued us after our dad took half a billion dollars out of our winery and gave it to the half sibling we never knew about. Without Colin, we’d be up a creek and in debt.
As it is, none of us is certain how to handle the new family member who may have designs on the very same grapes and land we do.
“It’s not about funds. It’s about scarcity of resources.”
“Land,” I confirm.
Archer nods. “Look at this map and you’ll see that all the available land where we can either grow grapes or buy them is accounted for. None of it’s for sale and only the smallest growers have fruit we can buy.”
“Can’t we just cobble together a handful of small players until we have what we need?” Jax asks. Seems logical enough.
Archer takes a long sip of coffee. “You really want to juggle the finances on thirty small batch vineyards?”
“Thirty?” Jax swallows hard and grimaces.
“And we need to stay within our appellation so we can keep selling the same product at the same standards.”
“Maybe it’s time to branch out. Maybe we get into a different appellation and market it like a special edition. Peej can make a big push in that direction with the media. We make it a good thing instead of a bad one.” Beatrix always makes her ideas sound so logical and convincing that I’m ready to take out a pen and sign on the dotted line.
It falls to my more persnickety brothers to come up with all the reasons she’s wrong. And they always do.
“If we go outside to other regions, the soil is different, the microclimates are different. It’s not just about producing a special edition wine. It’s about knowing what we’re doing. I’m just getting my brain around the wine making here. I can’t add another appellation to my plate, or my brain’ll explode.”
He’s taken on the lion’s share of responsibilities since the five of us took over all the day-to-day running of the business from our father. His Alzheimer’s made it impossible for him to stay at the helm, and I’m grateful Archer jumped in with both feet.
“Is there an option three?” I ask.
Archer points at a few blank areas on the map. “Here and here. This is the land that could work if we can work out a deal with the owners somehow.”
I feel a pit in my stomach when my brain catches up, and I realize that one of the properties on the map is owned by the Rutherford family. Mallory’s parents are a couple of the original San Francisco natives who moved to the area and turned a small farm into an enormous one, but they’re notoriously against growing grapes on their acres of land. And they’ve turned down multimillion dollar offers to sell.
“So we’re trying to get into business with the Rutherfords?” Beatrix asks, turning her attention to me. “Hey, did you ever end up going out with Mallory?” Beatrix asks, tapping a pencil against the map right in the spot where the Rutherford property lies. I had the poor judgment to mention it to my siblings that Mallory texted to ask me out a couple weeks back, and now they’ll never forget it.
“No, not yet.” I feign disinterest as my stomach roils with discomfort. I could tell her about my upcoming date with Mallory, but I don’t want to. I’m not sure how I feel about the scrutiny when I’m fighting to keep her from taking over my every waking thought. It makes no sense after the little time I’ve spent with her, but she’s under my skin.
“Well, maybe you should,” PJ suggests. When I meet her eyes, I find her studying me with a serious expression.
Jax smirks and takes a slug from his coffee cup.
I fidget with my cup, which I’ve already drained, wishing I had something to distract everyone from their sudden fixation on me.
“You’re suggesting I take her to dinner and try to convince her to sell us some land?”
“Doesn’t just have to be talk.” Jax winks.
“Doubt he wants your sloppy seconds,” Archer says. A jolt of anger pierces my chest. I know it’s just locker room banter, and they probably expect me to join in, but I can’t.
“I’ll meet with her and see where her thoughts are.” I shrug and lean toward the middle of the table to refill my coffee. This doesn’t have to be a big deal. I can float the question over dinner and report back that she’s not interested in selling. No reason to make an issue out of it or let them know I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the woman since I kissed her.
“Who owns this land?” I point at the other large space.
“It’s parkland. Getting the government to sign off on commercial use might actually be easier than getting the Rutherfords to agree to sell, but first things first.”
I nod. First things first.
And the first on my list is deciding what restaurant to go to with Mallory.