Chapter Two
Present Day
Mom and Dad were escaping to Italy for the third time since Grandpa died, so I had no idea why we needed to have a going away party. Again. Especially since we all just celebrated my brother, Laurent’s wedding to his beautiful bride, Phoebe. But here I was, sitting in Franc’s backyard, which was more like a park, complete with swings, slides, and the whole nine yards, watching my nephew race his bearded dragon for the hundredth time. Though most of the time Sally just lifted her head to the sun and closed her eyes.
It was a gorgeous warm day for mid-October, and I was trying to enjoy the unexpected warmth, but my fingers itched to tackle my mile-long to-do list. Any other Saturday I would have had it completed by now, but instead, I was looking at a million wedding pictures as if I wasn’t there in person or hadn’t seen a million social media posts with the same poses and the same people. I loved Phoebe, though, and she looked beautiful in her custom white dress, so I smiled my way through another round, acting as if it was the first time I was seeing them.
The entire family was here—all six siblings—except for my sister, Sherry, who was at the family vineyard, checking on the crew setting up for another wedding this season. People loved fall weddings, and I never understood why. It was the season of death. The flowers died. The grass died. The leaves were pretty, but it was just part of their death cycle. Soon they’d be a shriveled inconvenience on my lawn.
Then again, it was better than summer. If I wanted to sweat my ass off, I’d take a hot yoga class. At least then I wouldn’t be na?ve enough to think my makeup wouldn’t melt off my face and my hair wouldn’t frizz.
Rose, my youngest sister, ran after her boyfriend with a water balloon. Wyatt used a paper plate as a shield. They acted like they were twelve, when in reality, they were thirty. Their personalities were a little too carefree for me—I preferred not to get my pressed shirt and pants wet—but they were happy and perfectly matched. Seeing my baby sister happy made me happy.
I took my unused wine glass and rose from my seat, walking toward the table with the bottles of wine . If I couldn’t get my to-do list done, at least I could enjoy a glass of my favorite merlot. I finished pouring and went to my seat when Gio bounced toward me… and continued to bounce as he stood in front of me. “Aunt Char, guess what?”
“I don’t know,” I said because honestly, the things that came out of this kid’s mouth were as random as his father falling in love with his nanny.
“Did you know the red kangaroo can jump almost eleven feet in the air?” He pushed off the ground harder, and I smiled, not wanting to break it to the kid that no matter how hard he tried, he’d never jump that high.
“I did not know that.” That tidbit must not have made it to any Snapple caps.
“And did you know the males can grow to be five… feet… tall!” Gio’s voice rose with each word.
“I did not know that either.”
“That’s taller than me!”
“Sure is.”
He continued bouncing, and I almost put my hand out to stop him, but if he didn’t dispense his energy now Franc and Quinn wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. Though I’m not sure they’d sleep, anyway. Honeymoon stage and all.
“Why don’t you bounce over to Grandma and Grandpa and ask them if they know?” I nodded toward my parents, who were sitting around a firepit with my youngest brother, Rhone, and his best friend, Sutton.
“Okay!” Gio took off toward my parents.
I loved my nephew, but he was giving me motion sickness.
Sutton jumped up and swooped Gio in her arms, spinning him around. A string of giggles burst from him before she placed him on the ground, and he continued jumping right to my dad.
“Nice of you to pawn your nephew off on your parents.” Brady Noah sidled up next to me. The man was my brother’s best friend… and the biggest asshole on the planet.
“Fuck off.” I took a sip of my wine and closed my eyes, savoring the complexity of flavors. “I’m not in the mood for your shit today.”
“Just today? I would have guessed you haven’t been in the mood for me for twenty years.”
“Exactly, so go away.”
He rooted beside me, all six-foot-four of him. He’d always been tall, but after high school, he filled out. He was bulky, made up of solid muscle. An intimidating man.
Not that I noticed.
He smiled, and it brightened his face.
I’m still not noticing.
“Why would I leave when I can annoy the hell out of you?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, wanting to yank that stupid bun clear off his head. I swear he hadn’t cut his dark brown hair with natural light highlights—I had to pay for in order to achieve—in twenty freaking years. I wondered how much shampoo he went through, considering he washed his hair at all. Though, he stood close enough for me to smell his clean scent, like warm oak and spicy bergamot.
Then there was the beard. I swear he was devolving into a Neanderthal. Maybe that’s why he lived deep in the woods. Or he was a serial killer. Wouldn’t surprise me with his love of horror movies.
We stood in silence for what felt like an eternity but was probably no more than a minute. “Are you seriously just going to stand there to annoy me?”
“It’s a free country. I can stand where I want.”
“Well, technically, that’s not true. You can’t wander onto someone’s property and just stand there. You could get arrested for trespassing.”
He shook his head. “Do you always have to take everything so literal?”
“Do you always have to be around?” The words were a little harsher than I meant, but he was wearing on my nerves in a way that only he could.
“I know it kills you that I’m here, but your parents invited me.”
“Of course they did.” Brady was like their son. Mom might as well have given birth to him like my other four brothers. Brady could do no wrong, and my entire family put him on a pedestal, while I’d like to knock his ass off the damn pedestal. Everyone loved him. Except me. And because of that, I was the bitch.
But there was a time when I actually liked the jerk. Then he got kicked out of his house, and he was never the same. He was angry and bitter, and while that sucked, that didn’t give him the right to take it out on me. I hadn’t done shit to him but be a good friend. At least I thought we were friends. Now… now he was my enemy.
“You’re just mad they like me more than you.”
“Don’t you have a distillery to run?” I asked.
“I hired someone.”
“Look at you, finally making enough to hire help,” I said, masking the actual pride I felt for him with sarcasm. My specialty.
I might have hated him, but I could still remember the boy he once was. And I was happy for that boy who always dreamed of making something of himself, despite his circumstances.
He leaned in, his warm breath brushing against my ear. “It must kill you.” He pulled back, his green eyes locking on mine, a raw sharpness cutting through me before he smirked and walked away.
What the hell did that even mean? Why would his success kill me? I swear his dad must have knocked him in his head real good before he left home.
Quinn, my brother’s girlfriend and Gio’s former nanny, walked over to me, holding Sally’s leash. Apparently, she had a bearded dragon growing up, so she was well versed in all things beardies. I was convinced Sally was an escape artist in another life. She went missing more times than not. They really dropped the ball by not naming her Houdini.
“You okay?” Quinn asked, bumping my shoulder. She held a glass of white wine. Most likely pinot grigio. Franc was trying to find a wine she’d like. She’d never been a wine drinker before. Understandable, but if she was going to stick around our family who lived and breathed wine, she needed to get accustomed to it; it was at every birthday, every going away party, and basically every get together. Random dinner on a Wednesday night? Wine. I’d give her credit, though. She was trying.
“I’m fantastic,” I said to the woman who I once judged unfairly, but only because I thought she was after my brother’s money. If I had taken two seconds to have gotten to know her before jumping to conclusions, I would have realized Quinn didn’t have a scheming bone in her body. She was a good person and the perfect match for Franc.
I apologized for my behavior, and I was working on getting over the guilt I carried with me because of it. I tried to remind myself I did it to protect my family, and I would do anything to protect the ones I loved. But that also required me to eat crow when I was wrong. Which didn’t happen very often.
“I know it’s none of my business, but why do you and Brady hate each other so much? I’m not usually one for gossip, but I feel like there’s a juicy story there.”
I glanced over at her. She was only about an inch shorter than me. Her red hair fell in waves over her shoulders. Her brown eyes locked on mine, filling with patience yet a subtle sense of excitement.
My lips parted, but the words halted in my throat. The truth was…
“I have no idea.”