Chapter 15
NOLAN
“Uh, that’s an interesting outfit.” Nolan’s eyes widened slightly as Marielle climbed into his truck wearing a red lace-up corset, a ruffle skirt, fishnets, and high-heeled boots. “Am I underdressed?”
“Oh, not at all,” she assured him. “All the men will be wearing jeans and cowboy boots.”
“And the women will be wearing…those kinds of clothes?”
“Antonella thought it would be fun to dress up.”
Really? Antonella Cranston always seemed to take herself way too seriously, and on the rare occasions Nolan had seen her off a horse, she’d been wearing designer jeans and a dress shirt. He couldn’t imagine her in Wild West brothel garb.
Still, not his problem. After a hellish day spent fixing a jam in the destemming machine—a gasket had sheared clean through, and he’d had to drive to Sacramento to pick up a replacement—he hadn’t even wanted to come tonight.
But he needed to keep the Cranstons onside, especially if shit kept going south at the current rate.
After the Lisanne issue last year, Everett Cranston had offered to buy a stretch of land at the southern end of the Dionysus Estate, not part of the vineyard itself but a large, sweeping pasture and a forested area that blanketed the hillside to the east. Antonella liked to ride on the trails that crisscrossed through the trees, and Everett said that long-term, they could always use more grazing land as they expanded their horse-breeding operation.
He’d offered a reasonable price, said there was no time limit, but if Nolan ever decided to sell, he wanted first refusal.
Right now, Nolan was holding on because he could also use that land to expand in the future.
Plant a different variety of grapes, extend his olive grove, build more guest accommodation.
And somewhere deep in the back of his mind, he’d always wondered whether, if he had a kid, would they want a horse of their own?
Then there were the memories… Walking up the hill with his grandpa, following the stream that meandered through the trees, searching the crystal-clear waters for fish or flecks of gold that had escaped the California Gold Rush.
Learning about the wildlife, collecting weird-shaped rocks, picnicking in the clearing at the top of the slope.
So many of Nolan’s childhood memories were tainted now, ruined by what his father had done.
But he still believed his grandpa had been a good man.
And he didn’t want to sell off the landscape that underpinned those memories if he could avoid it.
The drive to the Cranston property didn’t take long, and when they walked around the back of the house, Nolan saw he’d been half wrong.
Marielle wasn’t the only person wearing ruffles.
No, Betsy Priner was sporting a saloon girl outfit too, but Betsy had been dressing that way day in, day out for the past seventy years, and she wasn’t going to change now.
And the Dempsey twins were in frilly skirts, both looking shy but cute as buttons, which was only to be expected, seeing as they were four years old.
As for Antonella, she was also wearing a dress, but a sleek, expensive-looking blue one teamed with a necklace that was probably made from real sapphires. Her eyes saucered as she approached.
“Marielle, you look, uh, fabulous.”
“Why, thank you. I thought a few more people might have made the effort.”
“The most important thing is for everyone to be comfortable with what they’re wearing. Can I get you folks a drink? We have cocktails, beer, a selection of Nolan’s lovely wine, and soda, of course.”
“I’d love a cocktail, and Nolan will have a beer.”
“A soda,” he corrected. “I’m driving.”
“One cocktail, one soda. There are appetisers under the pergola, and the rest of the food will be ready soon, if Everett stops talking long enough to put the steaks on the grill.”
“Could I trouble you for some chicken wings?” Marielle asked. “No spices.”
Antonella half rolled her eyes and caught herself. “Let me see what we can do.”
As she moved off, Marielle pursed her lips. “I can’t believe she’s wearing such a boring dress. It was her idea to have a themed party.”
“It was?”
“She sent an email last week, and hardly anyone seems to have read it.”
“An email?” Nolan repeated.
“Yes, an email. I’m beginning to think she doesn’t like me. First, she bought all those cushions from a boutique in LA, and now this?”
“Sorry, what cushions?”
“For her sunroom. We were talking about custom options, and the next thing I know, she’s already bought them.”
“Maybe she just saw what she wanted and figured it would be quicker?”
Marielle huffed. “What happened to community spirit? Can you go get my drink? I need to find the powder room and loosen this corset, then we have to speak with the Cunninghams.”
“We do?”
“I heard a pipe broke in their bathroom while they were away last week. They didn’t come home until Friday, and apparently, it was like Niagara Falls in there. They’ll definitely be needing to redecorate.”
“Isn’t it a bit soon to start with the sales pitch?” Nolan asked. “Shouldn’t you wait until the house has dried out?”
“You snooze, you lose. Got to strike while the iron’s hot.”
Nolan stared after Marielle for a moment as she sashayed away.
The more time he spent with her, the more relieved he became that he’d tried to keep her at arm’s length.
At first, she’d acted charming, and he’d been grateful when she stepped in to organise his mess of a life as well as overhauling the tasting room, the guest cottages, his home…
And she was a talented designer. Before Marielle moved to Mason’s Hill, Lisanne had tried hiring two different decorators, and both had been a disaster.
For the showpiece in the mine, they’d used a lady named Wanda from Sacramento, who presented them with an eye-watering bill for a Temu tasting room.
The sinks leaked, the table wobbled, the decals she’d stuck to the walls had begun peeling a week after she left, and those were the least of the problems. And the second hire?
She’d described herself as an “aesthetic architect” and tackled the smaller tasting room attached to the on-site shop.
One journalist had described the decor as “confused,” and another had written that “the room unfolds like a painter’s palette gone riotous, a spectacle so exuberantly layered it hovers in that delicious borderland between genius and bad taste. ”
When Nolan decided to target the top end of the market, he’d soon realised that selling the aesthetic and the experience was almost as important as selling the wine itself, so having facilities that appealed to his well-heeled guests was vital.
Marielle had snapped her fingers, said, “Understated elegance is what you need,” and fixed that shit.
Now Nolan was stuck with her, at least until the rehab project was finished.
And then there was Alexa.
As Chase carried her bags out to their rented BMW on Sunday evening, Nolan had tripped over the words he might come to regret.
“I want you to come back.”
Having her around wasn’t easy, but the thought of never seeing her again was worse. He’d take awkward friendship over nothing. Anyhow, Alexa had just shrugged and headed out to the car, leaving Nolan none the wiser about her plans.
Now, he fired off a message:
Nolan
Ruffles?
He spotted Roy Leland across the yard with his wife, a beer in his hand—because he’d never drink Dionysus wine—and performed an avoidance manoeuvre, only to back into Donna Hayes. Something splashed over his shirt. Red wine? No, cola, which wasn’t much better.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Donna exclaimed. “Here, let me…”
She dabbed at Nolan’s shirt with a napkin, but the napkin had ketchup on it, so that only made things worse.
Now he looked as if he’d committed a murder.
Ironic, given both his heritage and what was to come.
But that day, he was still blissfully ignorant about the future, so he just stepped back as she began freaking out.
“Aw, heck! I didn’t mean to… I’ll launder your shirt. Or pay for the dry cleaning? Or…or buy you a new one?”
Her husband ambled up behind her, beer in hand, probably his third or fourth if his unfocused eyes and unsteady gait were anything to go by.
“Now what you done, woman?”
Donna was a sweet lady who’d made many mistakes, and the biggest one was her marriage to Bo Hayes.
Having two sons with him ran a close second.
Tucker and Wyatt took after their old man, and while Nolan didn’t mind Antonella riding on his land, he’d lost count of the times he’d cleared the Hayes boys out of the forest. They hunted rabbits, they waded through the stream with gold pans in an attempt to find an elusive nugget, and on one occasion, he’d caught them burying stolen property at the base of an old blue oak.
After every incident, Donna promised it wouldn’t happen again, but Bo just laughed it off and said, “Boys will be boys.” Asshole.
“It’s fine,” Nolan told Donna. “This is an old shirt.”
“I think a few drops splashed on your jeans too.”
“Not the first time, won’t be the last.”
“She never does look where she’s going,” Bo put in. “Always trippin’ over something or other.”
Yeah, right. Nolan didn’t doubt that Donna’s regular bruises had a different explanation, but whenever he asked if she was okay, she shrugged off the damage with, “I fell over the step,” or, “I caught my hand in a drawer.”
Once or twice, she’d packed a bag and fled to her sister’s place in Modesto, but she always came back.
Nolan had a secret fear that someday, her body would end up buried in his forest, but in an off-the-record chat, the local sheriff told Nolan that unless Donna reported her husband, there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do.
And if Nolan gave in to temptation and knocked Bo’s teeth out—he wasn’t usually a violent man, honest—then he’d be the one in jail.