Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
B eatrix
I don’t know what I was thinking. The last thing I need in my already-packed schedule is a dog. Or rather, the last thing I need is to be entangled with Dominick Renaldi. Why couldn’t I let one and done be done ?
Sex with him did cure me of the testy attitude I’d been sporting for weeks. Julie was right, which is why she’s the best assistant I’ll ever have and also why I’ll pay her bonuses on top of bonuses to keep her. I’ve been much more focused in the week since our afternoon of orgasms—much more able to put in the hours needed to finalize construction on the lobby of the inn. If all goes perfectly, we’ll be open right on time before PJ’s wedding.
But now I have Ren’s dopey dog to deal with, and I just may be falling in love with the furry little beast. Each morning, he slathers my face with kisses to wake me up. He’s been sleeping on the floor right beside my bed, which is where I put the fluffy new dog bed I bought after he’d been with me for only a day. I didn’t like the way he looked splayed flat on the hardwood floor. Yes, I know he has fur on his belly, but my house gets cold at night, and I thought he could do better.
Ren keeps texting, thanking me and asking how Tru’s doing. I keep my responses brief and all-business.
Me: He’s fine
Ren: Just fine?
Me: He’s great
Ren: Hope he’s not causing trouble
Me: No, you’re the one causing trouble by texting me eighty times a day
Ren: Just being a doting dog dad
Me: Well, dog dad, you may need to up your game because he loves it at Trixie’s dog spa
Truman seems to be enjoying his new dog bed, so I send Ren photo proof. I send him a picture of Truman sleeping soundly on his bed and a second one of him racing through the vineyards with my niece, Fiona, who’s already asked her dad if they could get a puppy. Jax, my middle brother, was none too happy about that, but Fiona has him wrapped around her little finger. I wouldn’t be surprised if a new dog shows up at their house before Truman goes home. Jax’s fiancée Ruby is a dog lover, so it’s practically a done deal.
I text Ren a video of Fiona chasing Truman in a circle on the grass in her yard until she falls to the ground, exhausted and laughing. Then another video of him loping with her through the vineyards at sunset. A third of him sleeping on the rug at my feet while I watch an episode of Top Chef .
What am I doing?
I barely have time to meet with the contractors at the inn and approve the fall menus and event calendar at Butter and Rosemary. I’m rescheduling meetings in order to hike with the dog of my former boyfriend who I don’t even like. I should have my head examined for even considering dog sitting. Especially for Ren.
And yet, here I sit in my office at the restaurant, flipping through a binder of paint samples and thinking about what I’d do with the main house on Ren’s property. I’m mad at myself for letting him disrupt my thoughts at work. I’m even more mad at myself for doing him a favor after our history.
But I’m not doing it for Ren, I rationalize. It’s for Truman, because I can’t stand the thought of him in a crate.
Ren: Nice. Pretty sweet setup
Me: Yup
Ren: I’m a little jealous he got to see your bedroom before me
Me: Get over it because you’re never seeing my bedroom
In case he somehow didn’t get the memo, we are not going to have a repeat of last week. After he comes to get Truman, I doubt I’ll see him again. No future awkwardness, no questions about what things mean, no repeat performances. Even if we’re sharing custody of his dog while he’s with his mom.
Ren: You say that now, but a man can dream, no?
Me: A man should know better
Ren: He doesn’t
Honestly, I don’t know what to make of him. The flirtatious texts feel like the guy I used to know, but that was before he broke my heart. He has no right to flirt with me now. And I need to focus on my job.
I need to decide which company to hire to install wet steam rooms and dry saunas, but today those tasks feel like a burden.
What is happening to you? You used to nerd out on details like that.
I’m probably just suffering from burnout. I shouldn’t have told my family I could handle renovating the inn along with running both restaurants. I like a challenge, but I have to admit it’s more work than I want to be doing. I can’t remember when I’ve slept more than five hours a night, and it’s starting to take a toll on my energy level during the day.
“Did you eat?” My sister, PJ, sends a plate of scones down the big plank table in the employee kitchen down toward where I’m daydreaming. I catch the sliding plate before it careens off the edge of the table and pluck a scone from the pile. I don’t have much of an appetite, but we don’t have scones on the menu at Sweet Butter, which means our youngest brother, Dash, baked them himself. He’s two years younger than me, but miles ahead as a chef, so I have no doubt he found the recipe on some fancy blog and made it even better.
I look up and see Dash eyeing me, waiting for me to take a bite. I break off a corner and let the pastry dissolve on my tongue. Oh my God, it’s like a dreamy slice of heaven. I realize I actually am hungry and take another, larger bite before giving him a thumbs-up.
He grins and gulps down some coffee.
I debate texting Ren a response, but I don’t want to encourage his flirting. And I hate to admit that a tiny part of me likes it a little bit. It’s the most interesting my social life has been in years, even if I don’t plan to see him after he picks up his dog.
“This is your meeting.” My oldest brother, Archer, looks down at the screen of my phone, which I shut off before he can read the texts. Then I look up at his usual grouchy face to ascertain whether he saw anything. His expression only tells that he’s as impatient as always. He’s worn a permanent scowl ever since he took over running Buttercup Hill after our father’s Alzheimer’s disease advanced to a point where he was declared legally unable to run the company.
Unlike my siblings, I don’t blame Archer for the scowl or his irritable moods. He inherited the most stressful job, one he never asked for, and we’ve been digging out from one financial disaster after another since we each took on bigger roles last year.
Looking around, I see all my siblings present, even if busy dawdling over the coffee machine and nibbling on Dash’s baked goods. “Right. I’m ready. Should we start?”
Archer nods and pulls a chair out. Its scraping noise against the raw cement floor draws everyone’s attention, so I start circulating the design boards I’ve put together in the days since I picked up the fabrics last week. “These are the color schemes for the inn. The lobby is here, all designed to complement the rustic chic vibe of the old brown barn and the tasting rooms, but it’s being updated with vintage lighting fixtures and an oversized hearth.” I point out these details on one board before moving to the next one.
“Rooms will all have natural woods, earth tones mixed with bright accents, modern and clean design mixed with antique finds that will give each room an individual charm,” I explain.
PJ points to the board with the new fabric swatches. “All the rooms will be identical, right?”
“Not exactly. We want them all to have a similar look, but the rooms aren’t all the same shape and size.” I walk over and tip the board against the back of a chair. “The suites will have a living room area with these fabrics. This on the couch, these on the pillows.” I point to a peach and white paisley print and a brighter accent pattern with stripes and a third in contrasting floral.
Dash and PJ nod and make sounds of approval. Jax is busy staring at his phone, which only means he’s going to go with whatever I recommend. He handles finances and has had his feet to the fire because we’ve been bleeding money, so we sort of have a tacit agreement that I won’t mess with his area of the business, and he’ll stay out of mine.
Archer and I have no such agreement, and I ready myself for pushback as soon as I finish presenting all of the design changes.
“I’m not seeing it, Trix. Sorry.” Archer crosses his arms and looks from the design boards to me. I don’t take offense at his tone or his questioning. It’s his job to run the winery, which is a multimillion-dollar business, so he’d be remiss if he didn’t sweat the details. And I sure don’t want his job.
“What aren’t you seeing?”
He flicks a hand at the boards. “You’re just changing fabrics? We’re rebranding the inn as an unrivaled wine country experience. This just looks like any other room at any other hotel, no offense.”
I love when people say “no offense” right after they’ve said something offensive. Archer knows this is only a part of what’s different at the inn because I’ve told him as much. My other siblings know too. “None taken. This is just the design piece. The visual. The point is that there’s a calm aesthetic from the moment a guest enters the lobby of the inn right on through the last look at a room before going to sleep. Relaxing music will play in the common areas and in each room when a guest enters. We’re adding a gym, a spa, and pickleball courts, which will be available exclusively to guests and a short list of local residents who need to apply for the privilege. The point is to create scarcity and exclusivity.”
Archer nods. I’m using buzzwords that resonate with him. “Sounding better. So we’re marketing the inn facilities to a handpicked few. I like that.” Just like I knew he would.
Dash pipes up, raising his hand like he’s in school. “This is looking great. I just recruited a concierge who I think you’ll love. Lured him away from Meadow Hill, and he was the reason that place has the reputation it does. ”
Meadow Hill produces small-batch wines priced so high none of us believed they’d sell a single bottle. Instead, their vintages sold out in the first hour and inspired half the wineries in the area to come out with their own exclusive editions. “That’s a good get, Dash. Can’t wait to meet him.”
I’ll never admit it out loud, but he’s my favorite sibling. We’ve always had each other’s backs, even though he’s two years younger than me and we didn’t interact much as kids. His friends were boys and might as well have been a decade younger for how interested my friends were in having him around. Once we got older, I came to really appreciate the steady, sweet guy he turned out to be.
“I know Ruby would love to work on an exclusive wine list for the inn,” Jax says.
“Thanks.” Ruby, Jax’s fiancée and our newest sommelier at Butter and Rosemary, is the best at her job. I’m grateful Jax is jumping on board with the concept. That just leaves Archer to sign off officially.
He looks around the room but says nothing. Pushes his chair back and goes over to inspect the design boards at close range. Then he nods, sits back at the table, and shakes his head. “I talked to the Fire Investigator yesterday, and they have no leads.”
I’d worried that would be the case. We’ve been waiting a month since a fire burned through our half brother’s vineyards one night out of the blue. We later found out from the fire department that the fire was started on a corner of Buttercup Hill, but the winds blew it away from our land and ignited Graham’s vineyards next door. Thankfully, the winds died down enough while the firefighters were battling the blaze that he didn’t lose too much of his crop, but the bigger issue is why someone set a fire in the first place.
My family’s relationship with Graham is precarious and new, so we’ve all kept it under wraps. There’s no way to know if whoever set the fire was trying to burn our property or Graham’s as well. Either way, though, we now have an uneasy bond against a common threat.
And so far, all the investigations have turned up nothing.
“I don’t get how that’s possible,” Jax says. “It’s their job to investigate arson. That’s what they do.” He spreads his hands out like it should be obvious.
Archer rubs a hand over the stubble on his chin, which I’ve noticed has the first hints of a graying beard if he were to let it grow into a full beard. It makes him look more seasoned, and also exhausted. Like the rest of us.
“Don’t know what to tell you. They haven’t found anything that leads anywhere substantial. It was literally a Duraflame log tossed from the road onto our property. No cameras picked it up. Could’ve been anyone.”
“We should get more cameras,” Jax says. “I’ll meet with the security company and go over our system.”
Archer nods. “So here’s where we stand with production.” He passes a sheet to each of us. It’s covered in columns of numbers I don’t bother to read because I know he’ll explain everything anyway. “In order to meet our quarterly growth targets and keep shareholders off our backs, we need to buy grapes from Graham. Autumn Lake will sell to us as soon as their vines are established and producing fruit, but that’s a couple years off. Even after the fire, he’s producing enough to get us where we need to be, but it means we’re in business with a guy I’d just as soon forget exists. Anyone have a problem with that?”
The question is met with silence as we all accept that we’re between a rock and a hard place.
My phone pings. Ren has sent me a gif of a disco dancer moving across the floor with moves like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever . The guy in the image looks a lot like Ren, so much so that I expand it a little. It’s not him, and I roll my eyes at myself for believing it could be.
Me: Seems like you have a little too much time on your hands
Ren: Nah, Coach is working us to the boner
Me: ??
Ren: The BONE. Damn autocorrect. My phone is not my friend
Me: Or maybe it knows you too well
Ren: Come again?
Me: (eye-roll emoji)
Ren: I’ll take that as a yes
I don’t realize that I’m grinning at my phone until PJ nudges me. “What are you smiling at?” I feel my cheeks heat as I stash my phone under a pile of papers on the table. “Nothing. Just Julie.”
PJ gives me a skeptical nod, and I redirect my attention back to the meeting. I need to focus on how to speed up the renovation so our winery can start putting money into the coffers instead of spending it. Once my siblings see that we can sustain the higher prices we’re charging for rooms, everyone will calm down. I know they will.
I should not be thinking about a hot guy who brought me orgasms on a silver platter of hard pecs and abs. I don’t trust him, and I don’t like him.
And after he picks up Truman, I won’t see him again.