Chapter Eight
Eight
Ryker
I’m half a mile into sweating out last night’s beer on the elliptical when my phone buzzes. I almost ignore it—it’s my one damn day off—but the text tells me I can’t.
Tarryn: Urgent—lab results. Come quick.
That’s all it says. No context. No explanation. But if Tarryn says urgent, it is. Which means something’s really wrong.
Cutting my workout short, I take the world’s fastest shower and fire up the Armada, tires spitting gravel as I reverse out of the driveway.
It’s barely nine, and the sun is already stretching long across the hills, casting that golden glow over the vines.
Normally, I’d admire it. Today, it just pisses me off.
As I drive, my mind races through possibilities—bad infestation of leafhoppers? Contaminated rootstock? A fungus flare-up? But we’ve been on top of everything this year. Precise irrigation. New cover crop rotation. We even doubled up on soil testing for the new pinot block we planted last spring.
Block nine. The one down on the southern property line.
A bad feeling curls low in my gut.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m jogging across the gravel lot toward the barn, my hair still damp. Tarryn’s waiting like a storm cloud, arms crossed, lips pressed tight. She holds up a manila folder without a word.
I take it and flip it open. The second I scan the numbers, my stomach drops.
Root rot and the emitters are corroding. The soil pH is off. And the cover, which should be thriving in winter, is brown. Our newest pinot vines are dying.
“No,” I mutter, flipping to the next page like it’ll magically change. “This can’t be right. This is block nine? What rows?”
She nods. “Thirty-six to forty-five. All the plantings from last spring. We’re losing them.”
“Could it be the grafted vines we got from the grower?”
They have a guarantee, and they’ll replace them, if that’s the case.
“No. And before you ask, it’s not the drip system either.”
I look past her shoulder toward the trellis lines dipping gently up the hill, beyond that is Dempsey land.
“Jesus.” I run a hand down my face. “That’s a sixty-thousand-dollar loss.
Maybe more if whatever is affecting our grapes spreads.
” And that’s not just dollars. It’s the block we chose specifically because we knew the grapes just over the line on Dempsey land had won big awards.
And now, it’s rotting from the inside out. Pretty damn poetic.
“I had the lab run it twice,” Tarryn says. “It’s not a mistake. And it’s not frost. Or underwatering. This looks like contamination.”
I snap the folder closed, rage bubbling. “From what? Fertilizer? Herbicide drift?”
“This isn’t anything they’ve seen before,” she says with a sigh. “It could be sabotage.”
The word hangs between us.
“But we share the well in that parcel,” I note. “What affects us affects them.”
Tarryn’s nod is slow. “Yeah. And we noticed they had someone out to look at the well recently. Their vines don’t look like ours, but they’re not in top form either, I don’t think.”
“You think they’d kill our vines and sacrifice their own in the process?”
“I’m not saying that.”
“No. But you’re thinking it,” I counter.
Her silence says enough. Our families have both done worse over the generations.
I swallow hard. It was bad enough when this was just business, just vines and family rivalries. But now, it’s not.
Because I’ve seen Ginny Dempsey smile in the dark like she forgot the world hated us being in the same room.
Yet now, I’m staring at damage that might’ve come from her family’s side of the hilltop.
And I can’t stop wondering. She doesn’t have a lot to do with the agriculture.
She’s running the gift shop. If someone told her, would she warn me? Would she even know? Would she care?
I want to believe she doesn’t know. That this isn’t her fault. But if someone on her side did this, if this was intentional, then maybe there’s still something to this feud. And every moment I spend thinking about her—or worse—is a mistake.
Tarryn and I stand lost in thought until footsteps crunch across the gravel behind us.
Zach rounds the corner of the barn, wiping his hands on a rag. His face brightens when he sees us, like he’s just stumbled across old friends, not cousins who know he’s been gunning for their jobs since the day he was demoted from the tasting room to the fermenting warehouse.
“Hey,” he says. “You two look serious. Everything all right?”
“Just looking over some numbers,” I say, closing the folder. No need to invite him in.
Zach nods, glancing toward the barn. “I was hunting down the clipboard with yesterday’s brix readings. Thought maybe it got misfiled.”
“Vineyard logs are on my desk,” Tarryn offers. She sounds friendly enough, but not open. “Have you checked there?”
“Heading there now. Just figured I’d swing by since I saw you out here.”
Tarryn gives a polite smile. “Appreciate it. Let me know if anything looks off.”
He grins and tosses the rag over his shoulder. “You got it. Always happy to help.”
Zach glances at me over his shoulder as he goes. “Rumor has it you and Ginny Dempsey are a thing.”
My spine stiffens before I can stop it.
Tarryn’s head swivels toward me, eyes wide. “Seriously?”
I lift both hands. “No. She’s the maid of honor, and I’m the best man in Beckett and Sadie’s wedding. That’s all it is.”
Zach smirks. “Bar talk says otherwise. You two weren’t exactly subtle at Mikey’s the other night.”
Tarryn shakes her head. “I thought you hated her.”
“I don’t hate her,” I mutter.
“I won’t tell my dad,” Zach says with a wink. “But fair warning, if he finds out, he’ll lose his shit.”
I give him a look. “Your mom had an affair with Ginny’s dad. He has zero room to judge anything.”
Zach shrugs. “Never stopped him before.” He heads off toward the crush pad like he didn’t just drop a grenade in the dirt.
I didn’t want this to get complicated. But it already is. Every choice I make now feels like stepping into a trap, one I might’ve built myself.
Every move I make with Ginny—every glance, every smirk, every second too long in each other’s orbit—is being noticed. Catalogued. Whispered about.
Stupid small town.
One wrong move and I won’t just be the idiot who slept with the enemy. I’ll be the one who handed our family’s greatest grudge a front-row seat to our implosion.
“I’ll give him this,” I murmur. “Zach knows how to stay useful.”
Tarryn scoffs. “He’s trying to show he belongs here.”
“Or that he can run the place better than you can.”
She stares out at the vineyard. “Let him try. We’ll still be standing when he’s done.”
I watch him go, my jaw clenched. “Why’s he even still here?”
She exhales. “Because he’s family. And Dad doesn’t want the fight with Max.”
“He stole from the damn till. Fired Sadie because he felt threatened—”
“I know.”
“—and now he’s poking around like he’s waiting for the right moment to strike. Stirring shit about Ginny being in the wedding. Making veiled threats about starting drama like it’s sport.”
Tarryn’s voice drops. “Zach’s a problem, but Max is the one pulling his strings.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if he had a hand in this.” I motion toward the vineyard. “Getting both families riled up again, reigniting the old feud—it’s exactly the kind of chaos he thrives on.”
She tilts her head, considering. “I’ll talk to Dad. Fill him in on everything, including what Zach just had to say.”
I look down at the folder again, fingers tightening around the edges. “If someone’s trying to bury this vineyard—”
“They won’t,” she says fiercely.
But it seems to me someone already has a shovel in the dirt.