Ch 7 – Jax
“ I ’m going to die old, fabulous, and alone!” Everly wept as the Crazy Cat Ladies huddled around her at The Rose and Thorn winery. She threw back a heavy slug of rosé from her glass. It was the third free pour Jax had given her.
Jax hovered between Alanna and Layla. Technically, she shouldn’t be lingering at their small, crowded table since she was on duty. But Everly was clearly in distress. She needed comforting, and wasn’t Theo always telling Jax she needed to work on her customer service skills?
“It couldn’t have been that bad,” Tess said, gently rubbing Everly’s back.
“I told him I was a crazy cat lady,” Everly moaned.
Willow’s delicate eyebrows bunched. “But . . . you are a crazy cat lady.”
“But I wasn’t going to drop that bombshell until we’d at least slept together and Rico was already hopelessly ensnared, mind, body, and soul,” Everly responded. Another gulp of wine finished her glass.
Alanna let out a snort before taking a long, appreciative sip from her own glass .
“You dodged a bullet,” she assured Everly. “Rico Torres has never cared about anyone except himself. He was unbearable in high school.”
“I think it was a coping mechanism,” Layla spoke up. “He wasn’t always treated so well.”
“I could have changed him,” Everly whimpered. “My love would have fixed all the broken pieces of his soul.”
“Honestly, I wasn’t super impressed by him.” Jax dipped across the table to pick up Everly’s empty glass. Mostly true. Rico’s cheesy pickup lines were vomit-inducing to be sure, and the man had an ego the size of an exoplanet. Yet, she’d also felt drawn to him.
Well, he was hot as sin, and Jax wasn’t blind. She might have spent the last two years ignoring her libido, but the traitorous thing was obviously still alive and looking to get its groove back.
“What did you two talk about?” Everly asked, suddenly skewering Jax with a suspicious glare.
“Nothing.” Jax shrugged. “I told him about your cookies.”
“You did?” Everly immediately perked up. “Maybe he loves cookies.”
“Oh, I’m sure he does,” Layla eagerly agreed.
Across the winery, a man made eye contact with Jax and lifted a finger to get her attention. In the past, a Saturday evening at The Rose and Thorn meant making small talk with the few regulars just to get through the hours or secretly timing her boss, Theo, when some poor sap asked him to make a recommendation from the tasting menu. (Current record for nonstop wine talk: 11 minutes, 26 seconds.)
These days, work actually meant, well, work. Thanks to Alanna’s PR efforts, the place was hopping. New faces surrounded tables, and nearly every spot at the tasting bar was filled with a body .
“Sorry, ladies, duty calls,” Jax told the table. “I’ll swing back around in a few minutes.”
“Keep ’em coming,” Everly said miserably.
Ouch . Jax pulled a lollipop from her pocket and shoved it in her mouth as she made her way across the winery. This right here was exactly why relationships were so overrated. Put your heart out there and it’s liable to end up as a wet, mangled mess under the heel of a certain hella hot reporter.
“Miss, can we get our check?” a woman asked at another table as she passed.
“Sure thing,” Jax answered.
She glanced at the bar and could barely make out the top of Theo’s head as he moved between the line of guests, greeting a regular, offering a pour, and answering questions from a group of three women wearing nearly identical sundresses.
Chardonnay for that crowd, she thought just as Theo hefted the bottle of bubbly and the women nodded enthusiastically.
They really needed to hire another server, but Theo was holding the spot open for Haley when she returned from rehab. The man didn’t have a soft spot so much as he was a walking, talking, fully sentient soft spot. It made working for him both a joy and utterly exasperating. Part of Jax’s unofficial job description, as far as she was concerned, included protecting Theo from himself as well as anyone who might try to walk all over him.
Case in point . . .
“There’s a spill near the front door,” Breanna said rushing in from the back patio, dirty-blond curls bouncing around her shoulders. Theo’s girlfriend shoved a tray of empty glasses at Jax. “Take this to the bar and clean up the spill before someone takes a prat fall and sues us.” Without another word, the slender woman spun and disappeared back into the crowd.
Sure, if forced at gunpoint, Jax might admit that working with Breanna was slightly better than being torn apart by a mob of angry customers with empty wineglasses. Still, it was a close call, especially when Breanna made it known every single God damn day how she was “sacrificing” her career to help Theo in his time of need.
Yeah, as if her life-coaching and massage business was going gangbusters. Before pitching in at the winery, Breanna seemed to spend most of her time hitting two yoga classes a day and posting nonsense memes on Insta about manifesting success and eating your body weight in turmeric every day to stave off cancer. Everyone in town knew she leeched off her trust fund and lived with Theo at the winery rent-free. The only thing Breanna had ever “manifested” was a personality as pleasant as nails on a chalkboard.
Jax took three orders, dropped off the tray, and pulled a receipt for Mr. Grumpy Finger Wave. After filling the orders and handing over the receipt, she grabbed a mop, bucket, and another bottle of rosé. When she made it back to the Crazy Cat Lady table, Everly gave her a hollow, hopeless look.
“What took you so long? I practically died from withdrawal.”
“Blame her.” Jax checked her hip at Alanna. “Place is busy.”
“Damn right it is,” Alanna crowed. “And this is only the beginning.
“Sooooooo.” Layla stretched the word like an operatic solo. “I’ve picked a book for our club.”
“Wait, aren’t we already in a club?” Alanna arched an eyebrow.
“I think she means the book club,” Willow offered softly. The younger woman sat with her back against the wall, her eyes darting across the tasting room with a slight sheen of panic. An untouched glass of water sat in front of her .
“Shit, I forgot about the book club,” Alanna responded. “I didn’t agree to that, did I?”
“OhmyGod Yes,” Everly heaved. “Please. I need this right now. What’ve you got, Layla?”
“It’s a thriller romance, and it’s a little spicy. It’s called . . .” Layla paused for effect, her big blue eyes dancing with excitement. “ Exit Wounds .” She tapped through a few screens on her phone, then released a small, giggly sigh as she read.
“Naomie Adams might be married to her job as a high-powered attorney, but it beats her last, soul-shattering relationship. Luckily, she’s put those demons behind her, including her sister’s damning betrayal. When her estranged sister, Abigail, leaves Naomie a desperate message, Naomie ignores it. The next day Abigail is dead. The cops rule the death a suicide, but the facts don’t add up. On her own and suspicious that the police know more than they’re saying, Naomie has nowhere else to turn except to Vincent Trent—private eye, hopeless drunk, Abigail’s past lover . . . and Naomie’s ex-fiancé.”
“Oooooooh.” Everly clapped her hands together. “That sounds perfect. I love romantic thrillers. Bullets, explosions, and we-almost-just-died sex. Yes, gimmie, gimmie, gimmie.” She reached out and made grabby motions toward Layla.
“Eh.” Tess shrugged. “It’s probably better than the Cheers marathons I’ve been watching lately.”
“Oh God, Tess. Cheers ?” Alanna looked appalled. “If you want to slowly dissolve your soul in battery acid, at least watch a trashy reality show like the rest of us. Might I suggest season 206 of The Bachelor ?”
“Jax!”
Her head whipped around. At the tasting bar, Breanna frowned and made a motion that could either signify mopping or a witch stirring a bubbling cauldron. The latter movement should be very familiar to her.
“Good luck reading your smut,” Jax said to the ladies. She hefted her mop. “I’ve got some floor wine to mourn.”
“Poor floor wine.” Everly pulled her own glass toward her generous bosom protectively.
“A spill?” Willow’s voice was a squeak of terror. Her head whipped around. “What if . . . what if someone slips?”
Tess reached over as if propelled by instinct and rubbed Willow’s shoulder. “Jax is going to clean it up, honey.”
“Yup, on my way now.” Jax lifted the mop and waved it.
Willow did not look appeased. In fact, the young woman’s face was even paler than usual. Weird , Jax thought. Maybe Willow had been an OSHA employee in another life?
After a quick room scan, Jax spotted the spill in a corner near the door and pulled the bucket and mop toward it. Just as she plunged the mop into the bucket, the front door swung open, nearly smashing her against the wall.
Mayor Calvin Bishop strutted into the winery followed closely by Cal Jr. The father-son duo sported nearly identical Gucci suits and matching toothy grins. The younger Bishop was practically a clone of his father with a little less beer belly and a little more gelled hair. Both men wore those clunky watches embedded with little diamonds along the face for that extra “just in case you didn’t know I was richer than you” look.
“Hey, babe! Didn’t know you were here.” Cal stopped at the Crazy Cat Lady table, swooped down, and gave Layla a hungry kiss on the lips. “Ladies,” he said to the table, then, after a nearly imperceptible pause, “Alanna. ”
“Cal, always a delight.” Alanna’s voice contained all the enthusiasm of a vegan at a butcher’s shop.
“What are you doing here?” Layla’s face radiated a warm smile. Either she didn’t notice the cold war occurring between her fiancé and sister or, through an intense application of magical thinking, chose to ignore it.
“Dad just needs to talk a little shop with Theo.” Cal’s smile looked anything but endearing. Jax didn’t like that smile one bit. Theo and the mayor were not friends. More like mutually distrusted acquaintances. Probably had something to do with the fact that Theo didn’t kowtow to the guy or pretend Bishop was the beneficent ruler of Yucca Hills, like half the other business owners in the area.
“Mind if I sit in for a bit?” Cal asked the table, swinging into a chair before anyone responded.
Jax edged a little closer. Were the town’s very own nepo-baby and his father up to something?
“So, what are we talking about?” Cal asked.
“The utter ruination of my love life,” Everly moaned.
“She’s had a little setback with a guy she likes,” Layla explained to her fiancé.
“Loves!” Everly corrected. “I don’t like him. I LOVE him!” Her cat earrings swung as she tossed her head.
“Oh shit. Well, that deserves more wine.” Cal leaned forward as if sharing insider information with the women. “This place isn’t as good as the Desert Bloom, but we’ll make do. Right, ladies?”
Desert Bloom—that would be the fancy new winery and bistro that had opened across town. From what Jax had heard, the place was gorgeous, the menu prices soul-sucking, and the wine absolute shit.
“Hey, miss. You work here?” Cal beckoned Jax over to the table with two fingers .
Nope, just like to mop random businesses for fun, she thought. It’s a lovable little character quirk the whole town indulges.
“That’s Jax,” Layla spoke, her fingers pulling her braid over her shoulder. “She’s part of our cat club.”
“Oh, but you do work here, right?” Cal asked as Jax approached the table.
“I do,” she responded. And I’ve served you about a dozen times. Before the Desert Bloom opened earlier in the year, Cal often held business meetings at The Rose and Thorn. Though, considering the convos were far more likely to contain coarse jokes and golf score humble brags than business talk, the visits seemed more like an excuse to day drink on his company credit card.
“What can I get you?” Jax asked now.
Cal didn’t even look at the tasting menu. “Most expensive bottle. Price is no obstacle.” He spoke the words with the supreme confidence only too much money could endow.
Everly’s eyebrows jumped. Then she turned to Jax with a grin. “You heard the man. Your most expensive bottle. It’s my hour of need, after all.”
Layla gazed down at the table. Tess seemed less than impressed with the proceedings. Willow kept glancing over her shoulder at the damp spot left from the mopping. And Alanna, well, she seemed to be trying to set Cal’s dark, heavily shellacked hair on fire with her eyes.
Irony was, Theo’s most expensive bottle—at least the one for sale to the public—was only $45. Her boss hated the pretentiousness that often seemed embedded in wine culture. To him, a great bottle of wine shared among friends should never cost more than $50.
Obsession, Alanna mouthed to her.
Jax raised an eyebrow. Alanna knew better than anyone that Obsession wasn’t on the menu. Theo’s not-so-secret secret red blend was his white—make that scarlet—whale. He’d been fussing with the recipe forever, possibly since birth. Jax imagined her boss coming out of the womb, already frowning about yeast ratios and soil chemistry. He’d finally found the courage to open the latest micro-batch just a few months earlier and believed it to be the best version yet.
Theo jealously guarded the batch. Technically, Jax wasn’t even allowed to acknowledge its existence. That didn’t stop her from occasionally bending the rules and judiciously offering bottles to a worthy few.
Alanna widened her eyes and Jax shook her head. She’d already given a bottle of Obsession to Alanna during her romantic-as-shit date with Sully last month. Sure, Jax had received a handful of chips and salsa from Valentina’s Cantina for her trouble, but that was practically just a service fee.
Theo was already in a tizzy about entering Obsession into the Southern California Wine and Spirits Jamboree in two weeks. He didn’t want anyone even whispering the wine’s name before the competition. If another bottle accidentally walked off the shelf in the back, he might have a meltdown.
“So, you ladies are never going to believe how many cars we sold at the dealership this week.” Cal slung a possessive arm over Layla’s shoulder. “I had to really crack the whip on my guys, but we exceeded our numbers.”
Alanna tipped her head at Cal, made a gun with her thumb and forefinger, and pointed it at her head. Cal glanced at Alanna and she immediately pretended to pat down her short hair. As soon as Cal looked away, Alanna made a begging motion.
Fine, Jax mouthed. You owe me.
Alanna nodded enthusiastically .
“She gets it,” Cal said, smiling at Alanna. “You can’t let your underlings out of your sight for a moment.”
All across the table, eyes glazed over. Willow seemed to be trying to turtle into the neck of her T-shirt.
Sucking on the last remnants of her lemon-flavored lollipop, Jax tromped through the winery, lugging the bucket and mop with her. Halfway across the tasting room, she stumbled, almost bumping into a table.
“Sorry,” she muttered to the surprised sundress triplets, and looked down at her boots. Yep, untied again. The laces seemed impervious to every knotting technique she tried. After tying her boots, she swung around the bar.
“Where have you been?” Breanna hissed. She now manned the tasting bar alone, a look of panic on her face as she poured far too much tempranillo into a delighted woman’s glass. Others gathered round, empty glasses on the bar in front of them. “Help me with this.”
Pushing the mop and bucket to the back of the bar, Jax tossed her finished lollipop stick in the trash and dove into the chaos. She was a wine fountain. No, a wine waterfall. No, a wine bazooka, pulling bottles from beneath the bar with both hands and uncorking them in seconds flat. She rained down tastings and full pours. She made recommendations with gleeful abandon and topped off Jerry’s glass of malbec just for fun.
Jerry—70 years old, still pissed about the invention of the internet, and a daily patron—blew her a kiss.
In five minutes, Jax had the bar under control. Or at least the crowd seemed like it wouldn’t be hacking up the chairs to build a guillotine for the moment .
“I’ve got to grab a bottle from the back, then I’ll do a sweep of the room and come back up to help,” Jax told Breanna. Hopefully, Theo’s girlfriend could manage the tasting bar by herself for that long.
“Get back fast,” Breanna said. “Theo left me all alone. I’m drowning here.”
Jax swept a gaze across the tasting bar. Eight people. Not a slow day, to be sure, but manageable for most people. Breanna, of course, was not most people. “My feet hurt so bad,” she whined. “I told Theo to buy us standing mats. I’m going to get spider veins from this.”
Jax looked at Breanna’s cute pink heels—little white bows sat on the front of each shoe— then at her own black boots. Without a word, she ducked into the back room.
Ahhhhhh. The noise of the winery faded in volume as Jax stepped into the shadowed space. She let out a long breath as her shoulders finally relaxed. The back room wasn’t exactly an oasis, but it worked in a pinch. A faint scent of oak infused the room. The huge industrial shelves in the front of the room contained standing rows of tasting bottles.
The white wines fermented in steel tanks in a different building on the property, but massive wine barrels sat on the back shelves in this room, slowly aging Theo’s reds. In the diffuse light, Jax could almost feel the slow, inevitable transformation occurring within each barrel as the yeast ate through the sugars of the grapes, turning juice into wine while the oak added its own flavors to the mix.
Wine was a slow process, as much art as science. Years were nothing; whole decades and generations were simply the price for a taste of greatness. Maybe that’s why Jax found this place so relaxing.
“No, absolutely not!” Theo’s voice echoed from deep within the room.
Jax stiffened, her hand still outstretched toward the secret stash of Obsession she kept behind a stack of damaged barrels. Theo was clearly angry. But Theo never got angry. Not unless you talked shit about using native yeasts. And even then, the most you got from the man was an exasperated sigh and a lecture on how the complex flavors offered by native yeasts made it worth the risk in small batches.
“Just think about it,” said a second voice, deep and humorless.
“Don’t need to. No deal,” Theo shot back immediately.
“That’s a real bad decision, my friend.”
“I know who my friends are.” Theo’s voice was low and threatening. “And you’re not one of them.”
If Jax were a wolf, her hackles would rise, her lips curling back to reveal her knifelike canines. Jax wished she were a wolf. She wished she could strike fear into the heart of any man who would threaten her boss.
The sound of footsteps came toward her. Jax stepped away from the damaged barrels and stood to face her new enemy. Mayor Bishop rounded a shelf, face flushed and an ugly scowl in place of the usual smug smile. That scowl vanished when he saw Jax.
He must have noticed the glitter of fury in her eyes or the way her hands were tightened into fists.
“Nothing to worry about, little lady,” he said. “Me and your boss were just having a little discussion.”
“Stand down, Jax.” Theo appeared behind the mayor, his brown eyes hard and his mouth set tight.
“You might just want to reconsider,” the mayor said to Theo. “Before it’s too late.” With his usual pompous swagger, he brushed by Jax and re-entered the tasting room, leaving behind a suffocating cloud of cologne in his wake .
“What the hell was that about?” Jax demanded. Maybe in other companies, the boss didn’t talk shop with the employees. Not at The Rose and Thorn. You worked here, you were family.
Theo kept watch on the doorway for another second, then sighed. His shoulders slumped, and he offered Jax a tired smile.
“Nothing important,” he said. “The mayor’s just trying to ruin me, is all.”