Chapter 2
KICK
Igot up on Christmas morning and tried calling Isabel. Six rings, then voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. What could I say that I hadn’t already?
It had been three weeks. Three weeks of unanswered texts and calls. Three weeks of silence so complete I started to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing—the year of unexpected connection, the night in October, all of it.
Then last night—Christmas Eve—she’d answered, and after I told her how sorry I was, she said she forgave me in a way that suggested no forgiveness at all.
I understand. We can move past this.
She sounded cold. Like she’d given in and told me what I wanted to hear, but meant none of it.
I stared at her name on my screen. I could press call again. Listen to it ring until voicemail picked up. Repeat the cycle I’d been stuck in for days.
Instead, I tossed the phone on the passenger seat and started my truck.
I almost didn’t go to my mother’s house for our annual family dinner.
After what I’d done—betraying Snapper’s trust not once but twice, and telling Isabel about the auction arrangement that had caused all the chaos—I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome.
Part of me wondered if they were all hoping I wouldn’t show.
But the thought of sitting alone in my house while they gathered without me was unbearable.
When I arrived, I sat in my vehicle for several seconds, my hands gripping the steering wheel. Then I saw Snapper come out the door. I got out, and when we came face-to-face in the driveway, I braced myself for him to tell me to leave.
Instead, he gathered me in an embrace that nearly broke me.
“Get your ass inside,” he said when we stepped apart. “Ma’s frantic.”
The kitchen was crowded with my brothers, sister, and their families. There was an overall sense of giddiness in the room that I knew had nothing to do with my arrival. Then Saffron’s left hand caught the light, and I went still.
“Holy shit. You’re engaged,” I blurted.
Snapper’s grin said it all, but so did the forgiveness in his eyes. I’d been so wrapped up in my own mess that I’d nearly missed one of the most important moments of my brother’s life.
The rest of the day passed in a blur of congratulations and family and trying not to think of the woman I desperately wanted to talk to. Trying not to wonder if her distance on Christmas Eve was all I’d ever get from her again.
By the time I got home, it was late. As much as I wanted to reach her, give it one more try, I went to bed instead.
But the following morning, I gave in.
I pressed call. The phone rang. Once. Twice. Three times. I was ready to hang up when—
“Hello?”
She caught me off guard. I’d expected to hear the same recorded greeting I always did. “Hey. I, uh—I’ve been trying to get a hold of you.”
“I know.”
“I hope I’m not catching you in the middle of something.” I rolled my eyes. Why had I given her the perfect out to end the call, just when she’d finally picked up?
I heard rustling in the background, footsteps maybe. “I’m trying to arrange for a car service to take me to the airport.”
What she said took a moment to sink in. “You’re leaving?”
“I’m going to Italy.”
My chest tightened. Italy, where the Van Orrs owned a villa she’d mentioned once or twice over the past year. “When?”
“My flight’s at noon.”
“I can drive you,” I offered.
The silence on the other end went on for so long that I thought she’d hung up. I waited for the refusal, for her to tell me she didn’t need anything from me, that she’d already made arrangements.
“Okay,” she said quietly.
“What time do you need to leave?” I asked.
“About an hour? That should give me enough time.”
“I’ll be there.”
The line went dead. No goodbye, no thanks for offering. Just disconnection.
I arrived at the Van Orr estate fifteen minutes early because I couldn’t make myself wait any longer. My truck idled at the gate while I tried to figure out what I was going to say to her.
A year ago, we’d hated each other. I’d thought she was a spoiled princess who enjoyed making a spectacle of herself at the bachelor auction every year, chasing after Snapper as if he were some prize to be won. She’d thought I was a judgmental ass who looked down on her from my moral high ground.
We’d both been right and completely wrong.
My heart raced when the gate opened with a mechanical groan, and I drove through.
Isabel came out before I cut the engine, carrying an expensive black suitcase with her initials embossed in gold.
She looked exhausted. Her face was pale in the winter light, and her movements were slow and deliberate, as though everything hurt.
The cashmere sweater and jeans she wore hung looser than I remembered, and the dark circles under her eyes made her look fragile in ways that made my chest ache.
I got out and moved to take her bag. “You feeling okay?”
“I’m fine.” She wouldn’t look at me, her gaze fixed somewhere over my left shoulder.
I loaded her bag into the rear seat, but before I could go around and open her door, she was already in the passenger seat.
“So—”
“Kick.” She turned to face me. “I really don’t want to talk. I’m just not up to it.”
I nodded, put the truck in gear, and headed toward the highway. The quiet between us felt oppressive, but she didn’t want to talk. I doubted that meant she’d want to listen instead.
I glanced over at her and how her hands were folded on her lap as though she was holding herself together through sheer will.
As we continued in painful silence, I got lost in thought, remembering earlier this month in her father’s cellar. We’d gone to retrieve the private family reserve bottles needed to complete the Christmas Blessing Wine, only to discover they were gone. Isabel had taken them.
Facing her father, Snapper, Saffron, and me, she’d broken down and confessed everything.
How I’d told her about the auction—about Snapper paying Saffron to bid against her for years just to avoid taking her on a date.
How hurt and angry she’d been. How she’d come to the cellar that night, intending to smash every bottle, to destroy any chance they’d have of finishing the wine.
But she hadn’t been able to go through with it.
I’d watched it all unfold, knowing I caused it. Knowing my big mouth had nearly cost Saffron’s family everything.
I’d tried talking to Isabel afterward. Tried to apologize for the things I said to her, to explain that I was wrong, that I’d lashed out because I knew what was at stake.
She looked right through me as though I were made of glass.
I glanced at her now. She was staring out the window, her profile sharp against the gray sky. The Isabel I’d known—the one who’d sat with me in that bar a year ago and let her walls down—felt distant. Unreachable.
Things between her and me had changed after last year’s Wicked Winemakers’ Ball.
I’d gone to a bar after the annual fundraising event, needing a drink and some distance from the circus.
The bachelor auction my sister—the ball’s chairperson—forced me to participate in always left me tense.
I hated watching my brothers and friends paraded around while women bid ridiculous amounts of money for the privilege of one date. More, I hated having to do it myself.
A half hour later, I was on my second beer when Isabel walked in.
The red gown she’d had on earlier was gone, traded for jeans and a sweater.
Her hair hung loose around her shoulders instead of being pinned up in the elaborate style it had been in.
We’d sat on opposite ends of the bar at first, both pretending the other didn’t exist.
But she didn’t leave. And eventually, I gave in and moved to the stool beside her.
At first, we bickered with the same rhythm we always did—sharp and cutting. Then she ordered another glass of wine, and I made some comment concerning her bidding on Snapper again. Instead of the snippy comeback I expected, her shoulders dropped like the fight went out of her.
“You want to know the real reason I do it?” She turned to look at me, and her eyes were different. Vulnerable in ways I’d never witnessed. “It’s not about Snapper. It’s never been about Snapper.”
I waited, unsure where this was going.
“It’s about winning.” She laughed, but the sound was hollow, empty of humor. “Pathetic, right? I have money, status, all of it, and I’m spending thousands of dollars a year just to feel as though I’m not invisible.”
The admission hit me hard. Because I’d seen it then—her loneliness and the practiced smile she showed everyone while connecting with no one. The daughter raised by boarding schools and absent parents, shipped off so they could travel the world without the burden of a child.
She tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear, and the gesture was so unguarded, so unlike the polished princess everyone else saw, that my entire perception of her shifted in that moment.
“You’re not invisible,” I said.
She met my eyes and held my gaze. “Yes, I am. Why do you think I’m sitting alone in a bar?”
That night had started something neither of us understood.
Over the next year, we’d stayed in occasional contact.
A text when one of us thought of the other.
A conversation when I was in town between rodeos.
Nothing serious or complicated, just an unexpected connection neither of us wanted to let go.
Until the day after the same event this year, when I’d destroyed it by saying things I couldn’t take back.
“How long will you be in Italy?” I asked when we were halfway to the airport.
“I don’t know. A while,” she said quietly.
What did that mean? A week? A month? Longer?
I wanted to bring up Christmas Eve, to understand why she’d said she forgave me when she clearly hadn’t. To explain in a way that might actually reach her this time. “When I said I was sorry—”
“I forgave you.” Her words were clipped. “Can we leave it at that?”