Chapter 45
NOLAN
Beer. Huh.
This time last year, starting a sideline would have been out of the question—Nolan had been stretched thin, constantly trying to keep his head above water with the admin, the maintenance, and overseeing the entire production process.
Then Alexa came back into his life.
And Alexa was a survivor. In Blackstone House, she’d gone from eking out a living from dark corners of the internet to making more money than the rest of them combined.
Even after she left everything she knew and disappeared into the night, he hadn’t doubted that she’d make a success of her life.
He’d just never imagined how much of a success.
Now, her carefully cultivated friends had become his as well, and he also understood how she’d conquered the corporate world.
She made decisions, and she acted on them.
Like at Dionysus, for example.
In the week after the fire, Jay Monroe had come to visit, and together, the two of them had torn into the inner workings of the winery.
The finances, the staffing, the fabric of the estate itself.
The verdict? Nolan needed an office manager, so they hired one.
Her name was Mayra, and she’d recently moved to the US from El Salvador, where she’d worked as an accountant until her husband fell victim to gang violence.
Then they’d hired a maintenance manager to help out.
Another woman, which surprised Nolan, but Alexa felt comfortable around her, and that was the only thing that mattered.
Rosario had an engineering degree from Universidad Don Bosco and a young daughter named Gabriela who’d taken a real liking to Juno, and vice versa.
The two new hires had taken the pressure off Nolan, leaving him to focus on the thing he enjoyed the most—winemaking. And possibly brewing beer as well, now that he had the time to do it.
As he walked hand in hand through the house with Alexa, he was so busy thinking through the logistics—supplies, fermentation, bottling, storage—that he didn’t notice she’d gone quiet. Suddenly, she stopped.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
A chill ran through him. What was “this”? The socialising? Having at least three different jobs? Their relationship? Fuck, had he screwed up there?
“Do what?”
“Keep avoiding the sex.”
Was that all? Thank goodness. “I can live without sex. I can’t live without you.”
“Yes, I know, but it means Uncle Porter still has an element of control over me, and I hate that.”
“Well, anytime you want to—”
“Now.”
“Now?”
“Yup. But not in the bedroom.”
Because that’s where the monster always came to her.
“Uh… You’ve had a few glasses of wine, babe. I’m not sure—”
“I am. And don’t tell me you’re not up for it because I can see the bulge in your pants.”
It was those fucking shoes. Nolan had been half hard for most of the evening, but he thought he’d done a reasonable job of hiding it. And he couldn’t lie—he wanted to slide inside her and feel that slick heat tighten around him, but he didn’t want her to regret anything in the morning.
“How about we take a rain check until tomorrow?”
“How about you make me a double espresso if you’re worried I’m drunk? Do you want me to sign a waiver?”
“I’m not going to win this argument, am I?”
She stood on tiptoe and patted him on the cheek. “Smart man, you get it.”
Blood surged through Nolan’s veins, most of it heading south. She wanted this? She wanted his cock inside her? Then who was he to fight it? He picked her up, and instead of climbing the stairs, he headed back toward the kitchen.
“I was kidding about the coffee,” she said. “But I’ll sign the waiver.”
“I know.” He didn’t care about the coffee. Instead, he stooped to pick up the shoes, one with a slightly chewed heel, then lifted Alexa into his arms and shouldered open the back door.
“Wait, where are we going?”
“You said no bedroom.”
“Yes, but I didn’t say no house.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Of course, but—”
“Then hush your sweet mouth.”
For once, she did as she was told. Alexa didn’t utter a word as he carried her along the driveway, past the burnt-out cottage with its exoskeleton of scaffolding, past the grove of trees, past the winery, and into the mine.
The electronic keypad glowed beside the inner portcullis, and he punched in the code.
Yes, the portcullis.
Around the same time Jay arrived, André had swept back into town, this time followed by a small army of builders, decorators, plumbers, electricians, and carpenters.
Alexa said that if the estate was to be her new home, she didn’t want any reminders of Rayna in it, a position Nolan well understood.
That crazy bitch had nearly stolen his future, and a part of him wished he could go back and kill her again, but more painfully, although he’d never admit that to anyone.
Nolan’s en-suite was torn out for the second time, and then André had turned his sights on the tasting room.
Perhaps his gasp of horror was overdone, but Nolan had to admit the man’s creative vision was far more spectacular than Rayna’s.
Gone was the sleek, modern look, replaced by “dungeon lux.” Think medieval finery with a hint of the macabre.
Velvet banquettes and flaming sconces, a stone table that could have come straight out of Camelot, swords hanging on the walls above suits of armour, and a huge tapestry depicting the hills behind the winery.
The tasting sinks were made from petrified wood, and a hand-forged wrought-iron chandelier glittered above it all.
The best part?
Alexa hadn’t seen any of it yet.
Last week, she’d been away on a business trip with Chase and Jay, and since Nolan wanted the new look to be a surprise, he might have told her it was a ways off from being finished yet.
Once the portcullis rolled open with a satisfying clank, he turned on the lights, scooped her up again, and strode along the glass walkway suspended over the old railroad track.
Before, the rails had been covered by wood, but they’d had to rip up the planks in order to use a railroad trolley to move the table into place.
André said it would be a shame to cover up such a cool old feature, and voila, the glass had appeared.
Turned out that when you threw enough money at a project, things happened really, really fast. Alexa wouldn’t tell him how much all this stuff cost, but she said that in the time André’s army had been at the estate, she’d earned more than she spent.
Hot damn.
Nolan still pinched himself every morning he woke up beside her.
“What the hell happened down here?” she asked.
“André.”
“Don’t tell me, in a past life he was Richard the Lionheart?”
“Something like that. The swords were shipped in from England.”
They reached the tasting room, and he turned a three-sixty, slowly so she could see every detail. Actually, not quite every detail. There was still one surprise left.
“I kind of like it,” she said.
“Kind of like it? It’s fucking spectacular.
” Nolan picked up the remote and shut off the main lights.
Another click, and small alcoves set into the wall lit up, each holding a piece of art.
A statue, a chalice, a painting. He pointed to his favourite, a stone sculpture of a German shepherd. “A friend of Mayra’s made that one.”
“Cute. It reminds me of Juno.”
“Look behind it.” Nolan took a couple of steps closer. “See?”
“Is that…is that gold?”
“André brought in a stonemason.” And a structural engineer, just in case. “The stonemason worked with natural fissures to make the alcoves and struck gold, quite literally.”
Alexa didn’t know it yet, but André’s friend Guillermo had some of that gold, plus the original diamond from the swimming hole. When the time was right, Nolan hoped she’d wear it on her ring finger.
She began laughing. “If ghosts are a thing, I bet there’re a lot of pissed-off forty-niners.”
“Not quite all of them. Now that I have more time, I’ve started going through Grandpa’s shelves, and he kept even more stuff than I thought.
Not just his own books and papers, but his father’s and his grandfather’s and more.
I found my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s journal—I think that’s right.
A bunch of ‘greats’ anyway. He made a small fortune during the Gold Rush. ”
“He was a prospector?”
“Nope. He was the guy who sold pickaxes and gold pans, plus he owned a saloon. But even though he was making money, he hated the damage being done to the landscape, so when this place came up for sale…”
“He bought it to stop miners from digging up the entire hillside?”
“Exactly. And going down through the generations, each of the Calder men became…a guardian, I guess.”
“Of the land?”
“And everything on it.”
“Which is why your grandpa left it to you instead of your Uncle David, the property developer?”
Nolan nodded. “David would have parcelled it up and sold it off piece by piece to the highest bidders. When he challenged the will, I thought I’d lose the place, and I probably would have if an attorney hadn’t agreed to help me pro bono.”
“Is now a good time to confess that he wasn’t actually working pro bono?”
For a moment, Nolan just stared at her, but then it was his turn to laugh. Honestly, why was he even surprised?
“I love you.” And he was about to show her how much when he realised they had a problem and cursed. “Fuck, I left the condoms in the house.”
“I’m taking birth control pills.”
Was she saying what he thought she was saying…?
“I don’t have any STIs, I swear.”
He’d gotten tested after Lisanne left, just in case, and it had only been him and his hand since then. As witnessed by Alexa, a ransomware gang, and a bevy of online porn fans.
“I already know that,” Alexa said.
“What did you do, hack my medical records?”
“Why do you ask such dumb questions? I’m okay too. The whole time I was living in Blackstone House, I was scared in case Uncle Porter gave me some gross disease.”
“You didn’t check his medical records?”
“Of course I did, but some men are too stubborn to visit a doctor. Eventually, he did get diagnosed with gonorrhoea, but not until gunk started coming out of his you-know-what. You want to hear the fun part?”
“There’s a fun part of gonorrhoea?”
“Aunt Veronica always opened the mail, so he ticked the box to get the test results emailed. Guess who went in and changed it?”
“She found out?”
“I watched the fight through their indoor pet camera. She threw a saucepan at him, and she got the house in the divorce. I didn’t much like her either, but…” Alexa shrugged. “It was the better outcome.”
“If you’d told me what happened, I would’ve helped you.”
“I know, but back then, I just couldn’t talk about all that stuff. Plus I was scared to get the results. But Jay made me go to the clinic eventually, and I was fine.”
Nolan set Alexa down on the table and slipped the shoes back onto her feet. When she opened her mouth to protest, he held up a hand.
“I want those heels digging into my ass, okay?” He kissed her forehead, as was his habit. “It’s something I’ve spent way too much time thinking about.”
And he knew he had to make this different. Keep her mind off the past and on the present. A table instead of a bed. A designer dress instead of pyjamas or her school uniform. Conversation instead of “shhh, don’t wake your parents.”
Alexa was comfortable with his mouth now, so that’s where he started.
With a taste. The stylist had put her in tiny lacy panties that barely covered anything, and they were already soaked through.
Nolan peeled them down her legs and pocketed them, a souvenir of an evening he’d remember for all the right reasons.
He knew she was close when her thighs pressed against his ears and her fingernails raked his scalp.
And so he stopped.
“More,” she demanded.
“Good things come to those who wait.”
“And assholes who don’t deliver get fired.”
“I’ll deliver, baby.”
Finally, finally, he freed his aching cock. She didn’t say a word as he slid into her bare, just screwed her eyes shut and sucked in a breath.
“You okay?” he asked. “Does it hurt?”
“Not hurt, exactly.”
“You want me to stop?”
“No.”
Slowly, so slowly, he began to move, and fuck, she was tight. He added a finger into the game and sensed when she started to relax.
“Oh,” she said on a moan.
“That’s a good ‘oh’?”
“No need to sound so smug about it.”
That was when he knew everything would be okay. Better than okay, great even. He adjusted the angle of his hips and smiled at her gasp.
“How are you liking mostly straight dick now?”
“Do that thing again.”
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
“That thing with the curve and the— Yes! Oh fuck, oh fuck…”
She tightened around him, and he’d have bruises from those shoes in the morning. Battle wounds. Badges of honour. He gave in and released, unable to hold on any longer, and then he kissed his girl breathless.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.” Alexa lay back on the cool stone and sighed, but the sigh quickly turned into a snort. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Is that André on the damn ceiling?”
“Look closer; we’re all there. I tried to tell him the Sistine Chapel wasn’t very ‘dungeon,’ but he had this vision…”