Epilogue #2
“When we met, I wasn’t looking for this.” His smile is small, almost self-deprecating. “Honestly, I wasn’t looking for much of anything. My life was Eloise. Work. Home. The next day. Then the day after that.”
Beside him, Eloise shifts a little closer, and his hand rests briefly on her shoulder.
“After Anastasia left, I stopped thinking very far beyond those things. It was easier not to. The only thing that mattered was making sure Eloise was okay.” His gaze returns to mine. “Then you showed up.”
A laugh catches in my throat.
“You became part of our lives so gradually I don’t think I noticed it happening. One dinner. One school pickup. One afternoon in the vineyard. Then suddenly you weren’t someone visiting our world anymore. You were part of it.”
Alex smiles and lowers himself onto one knee in the dust between the rows. “And after that, you stopped being someone who was part of our lives and became part of our family.”
Beside him, Eloise presses both hands over her mouth, her eyes impossibly wide.
Alex takes the ring between his fingers before continuing.
“I love the life we’ve built together. I love Sunday dinners and school pickups.
I love that Eloise somehow trusts your opinion more than mine.
I love coming home and knowing you’re there.
I love making plans and automatically assuming you’re part of them. ”
The vineyard glows gold around us as the sun sinks lower behind the hills.
“I don’t know exactly what the future looks like,” he says quietly. “I just know I want to experience it with you. The good days. The difficult ones. The ordinary ones in between. I want more of all of it, and I want it with you.”
His gaze never leaves mine. “Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” I say immediately, because there is no version of this moment where I need more time. My voice breaks, and I laugh as I reach for him. “Of course I’ll marry you.”
Alex rises just enough to slide the ring onto my finger, and the moment it‘s in place, Eloise bursts forward like she has been physically holding herself back.
She throws her arms around both of us, wedging herself in the middle with a sound that is half laugh, half triumphant shout.
Alex pulls us close, and I bend over her, laughing through tears as she squeezes us with all the force in her small body.
When we finally ease apart, I keep one arm around Eloise and one hand in Alex’s. The ring glints on my finger as I look across the vineyard, where harvest waits just beyond the edge of this evening.
A year ago, I was searching for my future.
Now it’s standing beside me.
And I’ve never been more certain I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.
Thank you for reading Dr. Spencer. I hope you loved Alex and Josie’s story—and enjoyed returning to Paradise.
Their story isn’t quite over. Click the link below to receive an exclusive bonus scene featuring Alex, Josie, and Eloise.
[Read the Bonus Scene]
When you sign up, you’ll also join my email list. I’ll send you occasional newsletters with new-release updates, book sales, bonus content, and other news. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Not ready to leave Paradise? Keep reading for an early, unedited first chapter of Dr. Pierce, featuring Sera Dempsey and Nate Pierce.
One
Sera
Harvest has a rhythm all its own.
The winery office is quiet before sunrise, but by nine o’clock every phone seems to ring at once.
Trucks arrive without enough notice, someone is always short a driver, the cellar wants another forklift, the picking crews need more bins, and the accounting software inevitably decides the middle of October is the perfect time to update itself.
I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
A spreadsheet fills one monitor while the harvest schedule fills the other.
Every block has its own timeline, every tank its own destination, every truck its own route.
One change affects a dozen others. My job isn’t making wine.
Josie has that covered. My job is making sure everyone else has what they need to make it.
A knock sounds on my open office door before Mark sticks his head inside. “We’re almost out of macro bins.”
I look up from the spreadsheet. “Already?”
“The north crew outperformed the estimate.” He flips a page on his clipboard. “They’re filling them faster than we can cycle them back.”
I frown at tomorrow’s delivery schedule. “We’ve still got thirty coming from BC Fruit.”
“Yes, tomorrow morning.”
“Of course.” I rub a hand across my forehead before scanning the crush schedule again. “Steal a dozen from the lower crush pad for now.”
He made a note. “That’ll leave the cellar short.”
“Not if Jamie moves another twenty over from the equipment shed before lunch.”
Mark scribbles another note. “I’ll grab him.”
I trace my finger down the schedule until I find the next delivery. “And tell the truck from Block Twenty-Three not to arrive before one. Tank Six won’t be empty before then, and I don’t have anywhere to put the fruit.”
He glances at his watch, mentally rearranging the morning. “I’ll radio them now.”
“Thanks.”
He was already halfway down the hall before I call after him. “And Mark?”
He turns.
“If the north crew keeps picking at this pace, warn Josie she’s getting another surprise this afternoon.”
He laughs. “She’ll blame you.”
“She usually does.”
He disappears before I can ask another question.
I make one more note on tomorrow’s delivery schedule, save the spreadsheet, and glance at the clock. Ten-thirty.
If everything continues running this smoothly, I’ll probably only have three new disasters before lunch.
I grab my radio and head outside.
The familiar smells of harvest wrap around me the moment I step into the yard.
Fermenting grapes. Diesel. Wet earth. The sweet, unmistakable scent of crushed fruit drifting from the open cellar doors.
Forklifts weave between stacks of bins while a flatbed backs toward the crush pad under the watchful eye of two cellar hands arguing about something neither one will remember tomorrow.
I cross the yard toward the equipment barn, mentally working through tomorrow’s trucking schedule, when movement on the upper ridge catches my attention. A plume of dust.
I stop walking. “What the…” Nobody should be on that road.
The access road that divides Paradise Hill and Black Bear in the upper blocks. It climbs toward Lloyd Franklin’s property and isn’t meant for cars. It’s little more than a widened tractor path. During harvest we keep it clear for equipment, and even then only when we absolutely have to.
The dust grows thicker. A flash of black paint appears between the trees. Then sunlight glints off a chrome grille.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
A black Mercedes eases around the first switchback, moving far more cautiously than whoever drove it up there had a few minutes earlier. Even from this distance I can tell it’s one of those oversized luxury sedans with tires better suited to downtown Vancouver than a vineyard.
It’s also in trouble.
The driver has already passed the last place wide enough to turn around.
I don’t know whether he’s a tourist, someone hopelessly lost, or a salesperson who ignored every private road sign on the way up the hill, but he’s committed now.
Ahead of him the road narrows between a rock outcrop and fifty-year-old cabernet vines before climbing another quarter mile to Lloyd’s gate.
There isn’t room to turn a pickup around up there. That wide tire luxury Mercedes doesn’t stand a chance.
I unclip the radio from my belt. “Jamie?”
His voice crackles back almost immediately. “Go ahead.”
“I’m heading up the Franklin access road.”
A short pause. “Problem?”
“There’s a Mercedes out for a drive.”
Another pause. “Say again?”
“Some yahoo is exploring the access road.”
He laughs.
“I wish I was kidding.”
“He better not touch any of my grapes up there,” Josie cracks over the radio. “Those are due to be picked next week.”
I hook the radio back onto my belt and jog toward the side-by-side parked beside the barn. The engine starts on the first turn, and I steer around a forklift before heading toward the upper access road.
By the time I reach the first switchback, the Mercedes has stopped. The driver is standing beside the car with one hand on his hip, studying the road behind him. I slow the side-by-side to a crawl before bringing it to a stop a few feet away.
He turns at the sound of the engine, and for a second I’m caught off guard.
He’s taller than I’d expected, somewhere north of six feet, with dark hair that’s been raked back with one impatient hand and a navy quarter-zip pushed up to his forearms over a pair of well-worn jeans.
He looks more like someone heading to brunch than someone who just managed to wedge the biggest Mercedes I’ve ever seen onto a farm road built for tractors.
I climb out of the side-by-side and look from him to the Mercedes before following the road downhill.
“Well,” I say, “that’s unfortunate.”
He glances back at the car. “That’s one word for it.”
“You should’ve backed out at the cattle guard. That was your last chance.”
He studies the road again instead of the car. “I can figure out how to turn around.”
“You’ll have to back all the way down.” I walk another few feet down the road and look at the narrowing gap ahead. “You can’t go forward either.”
“I’m sure I can figure something out.”
I cross my arms. Who is this yahoo? “No. You touch one grape of Paradise Hill or Black Bear Vineyard, and you’ll have more problems than you ever thought possible.”
I expect excuses. Maybe a complaint about the road or a demand to know why it isn’t marked better. Instead, he waits for me to finish looking over the situation, as though we’re solving the same problem instead of arguing about whose fault it is.
I look back at him. “So you were out for a Sunday drive and missed all the private property signs?”
A smile tugs at one corner of his mouth. “No.”
“Are you lost?”
“Also no.”