Season of Change

Soft whispers drifted to them from downstairs.

Slade smiled broadly, like a papa bear finding joy in his cubs.

Whoa. Mr. Perfect loves his Goth girls.

It surprised Christine so much she was sure she reflected his grin right back at him. The humanness—so unexpected—explained why his everyday-guy business partners put up with him.

The whispers stopped.

“You’ll get blinds or something up here, I assume.” Christine quickly filled the void.

“Plantation shutters.” He was still smiling at her, as if they’d shared a private moment and he wasn’t ready to let the feeling go. “Let’s check out the main winery.”

Maybe he wasn’t all staid ego and self-image. Maybe he’d had a business meeting earlier. Maybe he’d had a meeting before every time she’d met him previously. That would explain why she’d never seen him without a tie. But there was something about his rigid posture that negated that hypothesis.

From the farmhouse, they crossed the circular drive toward a barnlike structure on the same property. They’d only just broken ground on it when Christine first interviewed. She hadn’t imagined it would look so welcoming and yet be so huge, nestled amid row after row of grapevines.

Untended, overgrown grapevines.

The road to harvest wouldn’t be easy.

The heat pressed down on her once more, like heavy hands on her shoulders. Christine didn’t know how Slade could stand wearing a tie. The only concession he’d made to the heat was rolling up his shirtsleeves, revealing well-muscled, tan forearms.

Christine stepped through the forty-foot high double doors into the cavernous, blessedly cooler would-be winery. The new-construction smell was less noticeable here with the doors thrown open. It was empty, just metal support beams, concrete, and wood. But to her, it was paradise. She could easily visualize how to fill it with equipment.

“This was the site of the original barn, which we were unable to salvage.” Was that a wistful note in his voice? “We built this to look like the original homestead, but big enough to accommodate processing up to eighty thousand cases of wine.”

Eighty thousand cases?

Each case contained twelve bottles. He was talking close to a million bottles.

Red flag. Serious red flag.

“Slade.” She carefully kept her voice even, her expression polite. “As I understand it, you only own forty acres of vineyard. That’s enough to produce about five thousand cases.” Seventy-five thousand less than his planned capacity.

Christine tried to ignore the alarm buzzing in her head. She’d been hired to produce boutique wine in small quantities, hired to obtain top ratings and reviews, hired to help build Harmony Valley Vineyards into something prestigious and rare. Eighty thousand cases crossed the border from rare territory into the gray zone, flirting with a fall into the quirky, quaffable territory occupied by wine costing less than ten bucks a bottle. Wines with cartoony icons and names like My Boyfriend’s Favorite Red or Bow Tie Bordeaux.

“What’s the use of starting a company if you don’t plan for growth? It’s where we need to be in five years.” He stepped from the light into the shadows, his gaze on her intense. “Does success scare you?”

“No.” Failure did. As her dad so often reminded Christine, her reputation was only as good as her last score in the bible of wine-review magazines. In just a few months, she’d find out in print if she was a scapegoat at Ippolito Cellars or if she’d dodged a bullet by leaving when her wine-making principles were undermined. “Fine wine can’t be rushed.”

Faith and Grace watched their exchange closely, holding hands as if they were in some kind of horror movie, ready to unleash deadly powers if Christine took this argument too far.

Yes, Christine had no social life. Yes, she watched too many scary films. Yes, she might have leaped into this job too quickly, since Slade seemed more interested in volume than quality.

“We should talk.” A classic brush-off line from a boss who’d already made up his mind.

That alarm in her head buzzed louder.

“But let’s get out of the heat before we discuss it further. You remember where El Rosal is? On the town square?” At her nod, he stepped out beneath the blazing sun, which painted silver-blue highlights in his black hair, as if he were a hunky rock star and she was just one of the little people in the audience dancing to the beat of his hypnotic drum.

Wilting in the heat, Christine trailed behind his two Goth girls, reluctantly contemplating her next job search.

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN HE’D HIRED Christine, everything about her had looked top-shelf, from her designer shoes to her carefully coiffed blond hair. She’d presented herself as the kind of woman Slade admired—beautiful, confident, someone he could count on, and with a genuineness that Evangeline lacked. He’d voted to hire Christine because she’d represent their winery to the world the way he would—with take-charge, bulletproof class.

Now he’d count her as...he’d count her as...

He wasn’t sure how to classify Christine.

“What part of my five-year plan don’t you like?” Slade waited to broach the subject until they were seated at an inside table at El Rosal and the girls had wordlessly withdrawn to the restroom. “Five thousand year one. Ten year two. Twenty. Forty. Eighty. In five years, we’ll be the biggest employer around. And that’s what this town needs, a big employer.”

Christine’s cheeks were flushed from the heat, making her look like a porcelain doll, one with sapphire-blue eyes and dark blond hair, similar to the dolls he’d given to the twins one Christmas. Sure, her mouth was a little bit too wide, but she had a friendly smile, which he hadn’t seen since he’d talked about how much wine he wanted to make.

“It all looks good on paper.” Christine slowly spun her water glass. “Like the way I thought giving up the lease on my Audi was a good idea, since I can walk to work here. Trust me when I say I miss my Audi.”

Recalling how her current dented ride shook at shutoff, Slade nodded.

“But, Slade, no one’s made high-quality wine with Harmony Valley grapes in decades. From what I gather, the few people who grow grapes here sell them to a bulk wine distributor, who sells them to a jug wine producer.” Her shoulders shook slightly, as if she was containing a shudder.

“It doesn’t mean fine wines can’t be made here.”

“It doesn’t mean it’ll be easy.” The tension at the corners of her mouth hadn’t been there ealier.

“Nothing about this winery has been easy.” An understatement. Approvals, permits, and zoning had taken twice as long as planned. The barn conversion had turned into a demolition and full rebuild. Slade and his partners should have left Harmony Valley months ago. It was time to stop the budget hemorrhage on the winery, close the loop on this project, and get back to what they did best—designing game applications.

“One thing I didn’t see today is your wine cave.”

“Wine cave?” Slade echoed as if he was in a cavern.

“Yeah, the wine cave. Where you store wine.” There was a tentative note in her voice, as if she was starting to doubt her decision to come work for them.

“There aren’t any caves around here.” And as far as Slade knew, it wasn’t a prerequisite to having a winery.

“It doesn’t have to be a cave. For energy efficiency, many wineries build their storage facilities belowground.”

That sounded expensive. Slade’s palms dampened. “Won’t we be storing the wine in the winery?” Granted, he and his partners were beer guys, but they’d hired a consultant—a friend of a friend of Flynn’s who worked for a winery in Monterey—for input on winery requirements.

The twins returned from the bathroom under scrutiny of Harmony Valley residents, who’d probably never seen preteens in wigs and Goth gear when it wasn’t Halloween. Their Gothness stood out amid the myriad of bright primary colors that had been used to paint every chair, table, and wall in the Mexican restaurant.

Slade’s next-door neighbor, who was the town’s retired undertaker and former cemetery owner, sat two tables over. Hiro Takata had a perpetual hunch to his shoulders, a consistently rumpled wardrobe, and the kindly aging face of his Japanese ancestors. He’d been there the day of Slade’s horrendous mistake, although he’d never said anything to anyone, not even Slade. “These your girls?”

“Yes.” Slade hoped his smile said what a proud dad he was. He pictured them in conservative jeans shorts, pink T-shirts, with dark hair and no makeup. His smile came a little easier.

“What are they auditioning for?” Takata hiccup-belched.

Slade held on to his proud-dad-no-matter-what smile. “They’re playing dress up.” He hoped.