Chapter 3
Marigold gripped the steering wheel of her ancient Honda Civic and stared through the windshield at row upon row of perfectly aligned vines, their leaves catching the late afternoon light like green flames. Beyond them, the land rolled gently upwards towards the surrounding mountains
*Beautiful,* some traitorous part of her brain whispered. *This is beautiful.*
She told that part to shut up.
It had taken her three days to accept the inevitable—that she would have to come here, to stand on his land and breathe his air and somehow maintain the professional distance she'd been clinging to like a life raft in a hurricane.
The email he'd sent had been infuriatingly reasonable. *We should walk the grounds together so you can see the layout. Bring comfortable shoes.*
No flirtation. No teasing. Just… logistics.
It was the normalcy of it that had finally broken her resistance. That, and the fact that she genuinely did need to see the venue before she could finalize anything with vendors.
"This is a business meeting," she told her reflection in the rearview mirror. "A professional site visit. You are going to be calm, collected, and completely unaffected by—"
A tap on her window made her jump hard enough to bang her elbow against the door.
Thallos stood outside, grinning down at her through the glass. His horns caught the sunlight, small and curved and somehow elegant where they rose from the waves of his light brown hair. His golden-brown eyes crinkled at the corners.
"Talking to yourself?" he asked, his voice muffled by the window. "Should I come back?"
She took a deep breath, smoothed her expression into something she hoped resembled professionalism, and opened the car door.
"I was reviewing my notes."
"Out loud."
"Some people process verbally."
"And some people psych themselves up before entering enemy territory." He stepped back to give her room to exit, his hooves crunching softly on the gravel. "Which category do you fall into, Marigold Bloom?"
She refused to answer that. Instead, she reached back into the car for the tote bag stuffed with folders and her color-coded notebook and approximately fifteen pens because she'd learned never to trust just one.
When she straightened and turned to face him properly, she had to fight not to react.
He looked… different here. More at ease, maybe. More himself. He was wearing a simple white t-shirt that clung to his chest in a way that made her shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and the fabric moved against his broad shoulders as he gestured toward the vines.
"Welcome to Thallos Fine Wines. Want the tour?"
"I thought that was the point."
"The point is to assess the venue for the festival." He started walking, clearly expecting her to follow. "The tour is a bonus."
She followed. What else could she do?
The gravel path wound between the first rows of vines, close enough that she could have reached out and touched the leaves.
The plants were healthy—even with her limited knowledge of viticulture, she could see that.
Full and green and heavy with clusters of developing grapes, not yet ripe but promising.
"These are the Riesling vines," Thallos said, his voice taking on a different quality.
Softer. More genuine. "My mother planted them thirty-two years ago, when my parents first bought the property.
They'd come from Greece with nothing but a dream and—" He stopped, shook his head slightly.
"Sorry. You don't need the family history. "
"No, I—" Marigold hesitated, caught off guard by the sudden shift in his demeanor. "You can tell me. If you want."
He glanced at her, something flickering behind his eyes.
"My mother always said that wine is just time made drinkable. That when you taste a vintage, you're tasting the year it grew—the rain, the sun, the soil. The care that went into tending it." His hand brushed one of the leaves, almost a caress. "She died four years ago. Ovarian cancer."
"I'm sorry."
"Me too." He said it simply, without self-pity, and then the moment passed. The grin returned, though she thought it looked slightly more practiced than before. "Come on. I want to show you the main lawn."
The main lawn was, objectively speaking, perfect.
It spread out behind the tasting room in a gentle sweep of green, bordered on three sides by vines and on the fourth by the stone buildings of the winery complex.
A massive old oak tree stood near one corner, its branches spreading wide enough to shade a significant portion of the space.
Near the tree, a small wooden stage had been erected—temporary but sturdy.
"The band sets up there," he said, following her gaze. "For summer concerts, wine releases, that sort of thing. We can expand it for the festival, add lighting, whatever you need."
She pulled out her notebook and began sketching a rough layout. "How many people can the lawn accommodate?"
"Comfortably? About five hundred."
"The vendors—where would they set up?"
"Along the north edge, usually." He pointed. "We run temporary power lines from the main building. There's water access near the winery, and we can bring in portable facilities."
She nodded, still sketching. "Parking?"
"The main lot holds two hundred cars. Overflow goes into the lower field."
*He's thought this through*, she realized reluctantly. *He actually knows what he's doing.*
It was annoying. She'd been half-hoping to find obvious problems, logistical nightmares that would justify her reluctance to be here. Instead, she was looking at a venue that was genuinely, frustratingly ideal.
"This will work," she admitted, still not looking at him. "The layout is good. Better than good, actually."
"Praise from the florist." His voice was warm with amusement. "I'm honored."
"Don't be. It's just an observation."
"Everything with you is *just* something." He moved closer, and she felt the warmth of him even though they weren't touching. "Just an observation. Just business. Just—"
"Can we see the tasting room?"
He paused, and she could feel him watching her. Assessing. Deciding something.
"This way," he said finally, and led her toward the main building.
The tasting room stole her breath.
She hadn't been expecting it. The exterior of the building was attractive enough—local stone, clean lines, a broad porch with rocking chairs overlooking the vineyard—but the interior was something else entirely.
Exposed beam ceiling soaring overhead, dark wood against whitewashed stone.
Wide windows letting in floods of golden afternoon light.
A bar that seemed to go on forever, made of reclaimed oak so old and polished it glowed like amber.
Behind it, a wall of wine bottles arranged in precise rows, their labels creating an abstract mosaic of color.
And everywhere, subtle touches that spoke of care. Fresh flowers on each table—not her arrangements, but lovely nonetheless. Soft jazz drifting from hidden speakers. The faint, intoxicating scent of aged wood and good wine.
"You designed this," she heard herself say.
Thallos had moved behind the bar, his hooves clicking softly on the flagstone floor. He looked up, surprised.
"What makes you say that?"
"The attention to detail. The way everything fits." She gestured vaguely at the space around her. "It's intentional. All of it."
Something shifted in his expression—pleasure, maybe, or something deeper.
"My mother designed it," he said quietly. "I just finished building it."
Before she could respond to that, he was pulling glasses from a rack overhead and setting them on the bar.
"Sit," he said, nodding toward one of the high stools. "You can't properly assess our wine options without tasting them."
"I don't think that's necessary—"
"It's absolutely necessary." He uncorked a bottle with a single smooth motion, the sound oddly intimate in the quiet room. "You're the co-chair of a festival being held at a vineyard. You need to know what we're offering. Quality control."
"I have to drive home."
"Then we'll keep the pours small." He was already filling the first glass, a pale gold liquid that caught the light like captured sunshine. "Besides, you look like you could use a drink."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you've been holding yourself so tightly since you got here that I'm surprised you haven't pulled a muscle." He slid the glass toward her, his fingers brushing the stem. "Relax, little flower. I'm not going to bite."
She should refuse. She should maintain the walls she'd been carefully constructing since the moment Ellie Sanderson had nominated her for this ridiculous position. Instead, she climbed onto the bar stool and reached for the glass.
*One taste,* she told herself. *For quality control.*
The wine was extraordinary.
She hadn't been expecting that either. She'd been prepared for decent—good, even, given the reputation she'd heard whispered about in town.
But this was something else entirely. It hit her tongue with a burst of bright citrus that mellowed into something richer, more complex.
Honey and stone fruit and a clean mineral finish that made her want another sip immediately.
"That's our 2019 Riesling," he said, watching her reaction. "The vines my mother planted."
"It's…" She searched for words. "It's really good."
"You sound surprised."
"I'm not—" She took another sip, buying herself time. "I don't know much about wine. I wasn't sure what to expect."
"That's honest, at least." He poured himself a small measure of the same wine, swirling it in his glass. "Most people pretend expertise they don't have. Make up flavor notes that don't exist. I appreciate that you're not doing that."
"I'm not a good liar."
"No." His eyes met hers over the rim of his glass. "I don't think you are."
They tasted four more wines over the next hour.