Moonlight and Roses

Zack didn’t say anything, although for a moment she thought she saw something contradictory flicker in his expression. Then it was gone.

“Well, that’s not all it is to me.” She glanced back out the window. Her voice was low, her tone reverent when she added, “My dad and I built Medallion from nothing. It’s…it’s my life.”

CHAPTER TWO

ZACK spent the following week getting acquainted with the winery’s day-to-day operations and the people who performed them. As he’d told Jaye on the first day, other than the manager and the vintner, he didn’t have any immediate plans to let people go, change their duties or make new hires, but neither did he intend to maintain the status quo. He saw potential at Medallion for greater profit, just as he saw potential for a superior product. He planned to achieve both.

Zack had something to prove.

He was sitting at his desk late Friday going through invoices when the telephone rang. It was his mother.

“I thought I’d call since you haven’t.” Judith Holland’s tone held teasing censure as well as a little hurt. He regretted that. It wasn’t his intention to wound her.

“Sorry. It’s been a busy couple weeks. The harvest is beginning,” he said.

“Here, too.” It was her subtle way of saying she didn’t buy his excuse.

“How is it looking?” he couldn’t help asking. Hearing her voice had made him a little homesick for California and the vineyard he’d left behind. Winemaking was in his blood. It had been in the Holland blood for three generations.

“Good,” she said. “Ross says it will be a better yield than last year, especially for the Sangioveses.”

“That must please Dad.” The Italian varietal was one of his father’s personal favorites.

“It does. Phillip thinks we should expand that section of the vineyard and increase our production, given the rise in popularity of the wine.”

“Of course he does.” Zack’s mood soured. He’d suggested the very same thing to his father two years ago without success, but only because Phillip had been against it at the time.

Phillip was Zack’s cousin but the two men were more like brothers. They had been raised together after a car accident had left a four-year-old Phillip orphaned. Zack had been two at the time. Over the years the pair had butted heads often, enjoying what his mother termed sibling rivalry. It had run deeper than that. Now as adults, Holland Farms and their opposing visions for it posed the biggest source of friction.

No matter what innovations or changes Zack proposed, to make the staid winery stand out in a changing and ever more competitive marketplace, his cousin effectively vetoed them. It wasn’t that Phillip had any more say or power than Zack did. No, what he had was more damning. He had Zack’s father’s ear. He’d always had his father’s ear.

“How is old Phil these days?” Zack drawled. “Still sitting to the right hand of the father?”

“Zackary.” Judith’s tone sounded more weary than scolding.

“Sorry.” And he was. He hadn’t meant to put his mother in the middle.

She seemed satisfied with the apology. “Your cousin is well.”

“And Mira?”

“She’s well, too.” The words came out slowly.

“They’re still together then?” he asked.

Zack’s fiancée’s affections had soured quickly when he began talking about selling off his share of Holland Farms and shopping for his own vineyard. Soon after ending things with Zack, she’d turned up on Phillip’s arm at his family’s annual charity ball. It had been a hell of blow to his ego to learn that she’d considered the vineyard to be Zack’s most appealing attribute.

“Yes.” Judith cleared her throat before continuing. “In fact, she and Phillip recently became engaged.”

It wasn’t heartache he felt. He’d moved beyond that. What was left was bitterness. “Proof that one Holland is as good as the next as long as he comes with a stake in the land,” he sneered.

“Zackary, please. It’s been nearly a year. Don’t be like that.”

“Like what, Mother? Honest?” He snorted. “Apparently I’m the only one so afflicted in our family. Everyone else just tiptoes around the fact that my cousin has always taken what belongs to me.”

She didn’t dispute that. Instead, she said, “They love one another.”

“They love Holland and the lifestyle it affords them,” Zack countered.

“You used to love Holland, too.”

“Yes. I loved it enough to want to see it evolve.” He let out a sigh. “It’s not worth getting into again. Not over the phone and not with you, Mom.” She’d always been in his corner. “I know you supported my ideas.”

“I did and I still do. I know you’ll do well.” There was a hitch in her voice when she said, “I just wish Michigan weren’t so far away.”

“It’s just a plane ride,” he said lightly.

“Yes, just a plane ride,” she repeated. Then, “Are you upset about Mira?”

“Not the way you think.”

“Good. Mira is a nice young woman, but she wasn’t right for you, Zack. You never would have been happy married to her,” Judith said.

“That much we can agree on. So, when are they planning to make it official?”

“In the spring.” She hesitated a moment before asking, “You’ll come home for the wedding, won’t you?”

“What and ruin my black sheep image?” His laughter held no humor. “Sorry, Mom. I think I’ll send my regrets.”

“There will always be a place for you here.” Judith’s voice was low, broken.

“I know that’s how you feel, Mom, and I appreciate it. Really, I do.” Left unsaid was that his father and cousin had long made him feel like an outsider. Mira’s defection had been the final straw. There would be no going back, at least not until he’d achieved some of the ambitious goals he’d set for himself.

“Are you happy?” his mother asked quietly.

“I’m getting there.” The reply wasn’t only for her benefit. Zack meant it.

“That’s good. I want you to be happy even more than I want you here. I love you.”

“I love you, too, Mom.”

After hanging up, he decided to call it a day. The sun had set already, and he was tired and not likely to get much more done—especially now. He felt too unsettled, too restless to sit behind his desk and sift through papers. His stomach rumbled noisily and he realized he was also hungry.

When he stepped out of his office, he noticed that Jaye was still in hers. Through the open door, he could see her hunched at her desk, reading a report. Her hair was in its usual utilitarian braid and she wore a flannel shirt that looked to be at least a couple of sizes too large. A bottle of spring water sat open next to her elbow, and she was munching on a granola bar.

He stopped at her door. “Please tell me that’s not your dinner,” he said.

Jaye glanced up at the sound of his voice and blinked as if trying to focus. In the past week Zack had learned one thing about her: she was no slacker. The woman put in long hours and gave everything she worked on her undivided attention.