Carmen called her best friend, Stella, a hairdresser in Chelan on Main Street. Stella was naturally nosy, sociable and had the perfect job for keeping her finger on the pulse of all things Chelan. If you wanted to keep a secret in Chelan, you didn’t go to Stella’s salon.
Stella answered on the first ring. “Hey, I’m with a client. Can I call you back?”
“Adella called me. Papi’s in trouble.”
Stella didn’t miss a beat. “Of course she called you. Why doesn’t she go check on your dad?”
“She’s busy with the kids.”
“Last I heard, kids were portable. Why can’t she throw them in the car and go see your dad? Why do you always have to be the one she asks, just because you don’t have kids?”
“I’m thinking about asking the Dragon Lady for a week off.”
Carmen could hear Stella suck in her breath. She wondered what color her friend’s hair was this week. Stella, like most hairdressers, like to mix it up. A lot. “Ohhhh. It’s been nice knowing you. Can I have your Levis?”
Carmen peered over her cubicle. Deena looked up from her computer, smiling kindly. “This isn’t making me feel any better, Stella.”
“Sorry. But everything you’ve told me about her makes her sound like Cruella de Vil. But listen, it’s your Papi. Go in there and explain things. Maybe she’ll grow a heart.”
Carmen thought of when Ben, their administrative assistant, had wanted time off to go to his grandmother’s funeral in Alaska. Felicity had said Ben couldn’t possibly have known the old lady very well if she lived way out in the sticks.
“You’re right. She has the mindset of a hungry crocodile, but what choice do you have? I mean, I can go check in on him if that’ll help.”
Papi loved Stella, but that wouldn’t help. Only family could dig into finances. “He’s thinking of selling the vineyard.”
Carmen heard the clattering of Stella dropping her phone. She could hear her friend yelling and a client asking what was wrong. A moment later Stella came back on. “You scared me. For a second I thought you said that your dad was thinking of selling the vineyard.”
“That’s what I said.”
“It’s like the end of the world.”
“Exaggerate much?”
“No, I’m totally serious. Your dad is like one of those old-world guys who’s completely connected to his vines. He’s like some walking, breathing advertisement for the American dream. Why would he sell?”
Hearing Stella say what was on Carmen’s own mind made her realize the severity of the whole thing. “The millionaire next door is trying to talk him into it.”
“The guy with the mid-life crisis yellow Lamborghini?”
“Yep.”
“That’s a shame. I don’t want to hate that guy because he’s seriously hot. And seriously rich.”
“And seriously trying to take advantage of Papi.”
“He just got fifty percent less hot, but he’s still rich.”
“Stella, I’m stressed out here. Could you not?”
“Okay, and I seriously have to get back to my client before she starts throwing brushes at me. Listen, this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to march into Dragon Lady’s office and explain to her that your dad just had a heart attack and you need to go home for at least a week.”
“But that’s lying.”
“Minor detail. Alzheimer’s and the hot guy next door trying to buy the vineyard is too much detail. Keep it simple.”
“On what planet is lying simple?”
“I’ve got to go. As soon as you know when you’ll be here, text me. This is going to take some Chardonnay and beach time.”
“Wait, I have one more question.”
“Go.”
“Even if I stop the guy and keep the winery, it’s obvious that Papi can’t do this on his own anymore. Who’s going to run the winery?” Carmen and her sisters, despite their father’s many attempts to interest them in viticulture, had wandered into other careers and motherhood. Except Lola, who had just wandered.
“You can.”
“Be serious. I don’t know anything about running a winery.”
“You think I knew anything about cutting hair before I opened a salon?” Carmen heard Stella talking to her client. “Of course, I went to cosmetology school.”
She hadn’t.
That was Stella. She threw herself into things and figured them out later. That was not Carmen. She was a deliberate, steady list-maker. Her lists of pros and cons were famous in her circle of friends.
“I can’t run a winery.”
“One thing at a time, Car. Go see Dragon Lady. Call me when you’re done. Also, what kind of flowers do you want at your funeral?”
Evan Hollister sipped the 2016 First Crush blend with his eyes closed. It’s not that he believed closing his eyes made a difference to his taste buds, it just made him look like he knew what he was doing. Evan’s wine master, Paolo Gentillo, was a fourth-generation wine master from the Piedmont region in Italy. With his tousled curls and Roman nose, Paolo had been born to sip Barolo in a town square whose buildings were older than America. Evan, however, had lured him to his winery in Chelan with a challenge: make a prizewinning Chelan wine to rival those of the big California vineyards. The First Crush blend was their third attempt. A challenge, and a big fat salary that grew the longer Paolo stayed.
It took a lot of money to keep one homesick Italian. Seattleites might flock to Chelan and pay big bucks to rent homes along its shores, but the Italian vintner might as well have been working on an oil rig. He hated it that much.
The men looked plucked from stereotypes of their respective countries. Paolo was wiry, dressed in a perfectly wrinkled linen shirt and thin cotton pants. His dark brown eyes looked sad beneath lush lashes. Evan looked like the high school quarterback, sharp-eyed, slim, broad-shouldered, his thick hair cut neatly. A polo shirt and aviator glasses completed the look.
Evan and Paolo were in the winery, the large warehouse-style barn that Evan had built of salvaged wood to house dozens of oak and steel casks, a tasting room and crushing vats for harvest time. It was up a winding dirt road from the vineyard estate where Evan lived—and increasingly, hosted weddings as a surprisingly necessary component to his winemaking business. Wedding guests drank the vineyard’s wine, returning home to spread the word. It was, according to Evan’s PR consultant Mandy, a necessary evil.
Weddings, Evan thought as the last sip of wine slid down his throat, were a tough business. Coming to this five years ago, Evan had thought that winemaking would be the challenge: keeping the vines healthy, the winery clean, the chemistry stable and timely. Getting the science right.
Hosting weddings seemed far more daunting. From what he’d seen at his friends’ weddings, they were a circus of moving parts, freighted with so much emotion. Overwhelmed, nervous brides, bossy mothers, fed up fathers and unruly children. When he’d first completed the remodel of his house, he’d agreed to host a college friend’s engagement party at Hollister Estate.
It was an unmitigated disaster. Someone broke a wineglass that his dog stepped on, necessitating a visit to the vet and a carpet cleaning. A couple brought their little child, who locked himself in the bathroom. Barry, Evan’s leggy, excitable rescue mutt, ate all the appetizers fifteen minutes before the guests arrived and then barfed them up into the pool. The steak entrées were trapped in a truck delayed by wildfire road closure. Two drunken guests got into a fist fight that ended up in the pool. A cat strolled across the patio with a mouse in his mouth, proudly depositing the bloody offering on the foot of the tipsy bride-to-be, slumped on the back stairs, sneaking a cigarette with her maid of honor.
The whole experience had made Evan wish for the old Microsoft days, when he’d been a rat on an endless wheel of deadlines and travel.
Almost.
One look out the winery door at the turquoise blue lake, the dusty sage hills, the orchards dotting the edge of the lake. This, this right her
e, Evan thought, was heaven. Blue sky, fragrant June orchards, a kiss of summer in the air.
“No, no, no, no, no!” Paolo broke his reverie.
Evan lowered his wineglass, opening his eyes. His wine master’s face was wrinkled into a disapproving frown. “The bouquet. It’s full, but missing the minerals. We cannot taste the land.”
Evan always had to think before he responded to Paolo. He didn’t want to sound stupid, but… tasting the land? He didn’t want his wine to taste like dirt. He wanted it to taste like sunshine. Like the smell of lake water drying on hot skin, like watching clouds. “It’s not bad.”
Paolo didn’t look convinced. “No. But do you want to kiss a woman who isn’t ugly? Or do you want to kiss a woman who is beautiful? Who smiles at you from her eyes?”
This was the problem with dealing with Italians, Evan thought. Why couldn’t the guy just say what he meant? Why did everything have to be compared to something else? Did it really take a poet to make wine? He was a businessman. And very good at solving problems. But comparing wine to dirt and women? No. He couldn’t do that.
“What would make it better?”
Paolo marched outside into the buttery June sun. Evan followed. After the cool dark of the cavernous winery, it took both men a moment to adjust their eyes. Below them, the lake curved around the northern hills, disappearing as it continued its way twenty miles further, stopping at the North Cascades mountain range to a land of breathtaking beauty. The sloping hills undulated with neat rows of grape vines hanging with ripening fruit, carefully tended as far as the eye could see. The neighboring vineyard to the west, separated by a stony path, belonged to Evan’s neighbor, Mr. Alvarez, who had come here from Mexico, working his way from a field laborer to winemaker to landowner in fifty years. The old guy was a legend, and rightly so. His vines were the oldest, most established in the valley, with rich soil eroded from the mineral hills that fed into a crevasse above the vineyard, leaching valuable acidity into the soil with each winter snow melt.
“Those vines.” Paolo pointed at his neighbor’s field. “You need the old vines to bring depth. Old vines lift minerals deep in the soil. Those vines will make you a real vintner. It’s in the land. It always comes back to the land.”
Evan frowned. Old Mr. Alvarez had promised to sell him the fields, then changed his mind multiple times. Every time they agreed on a price, the old man went incommunicado until Evan hunted him out at the Apple Cup café in town where he met his cronies for coffee and donuts after church. Compared to those grizzled old guys, Evan always felt like the shiny city slicker with his Patagonia gear and carefully groomed hair. The Apple Cup was a homey café that served biscuits and gravy, down Lake Street, four blocks away from the establishments all the tourists and city slickers like Evan frequented. Although Evan always drove his least flashy car, a Tesla, to the Apple Cup, it still stuck out like a sore thumb amid the beat-up Chevy pick-ups and Sunday-best Tahoes.
When Evan approached the booth at the back of the café, he always asked Mr. Alvarez to speak privately. Mr. Alvarez always said the same thing, waving with his hands around the booth. “Mis amigos can hear anything you got to say.”
Mr. Alvarez’s friends would look Evan up and down like he was an overpriced heifer on the auction block. Toothpicks shifted in mouths. Expressions remained stony. Evan knew they’d gossip like old women the second after he left but for now, they were Mount Rushmore.
Standing there in the worn café with its decorations of dried flowers and rusted farm implements, Evan felt solidly out of his element. He was never invited to sit down. Never offered a cup of weak coffee in a chipped porcelain mug. Evan would explain that he wanted to buy the vineyard. That they’d agreed on a price and that he’d been trying to call, but Mr. Alvarez wouldn’t pick up the phone.
Mr. Alvarez always looked genuinely surprised. “Sell my vines? The fruit of my labor? The fields that paid for my family to get an education, paid for Adella’s wedding? The land on which my wife took her last breath?”
“We talked about that, Mr. Alvarez. I don’t want to buy your entire estate, just the vineyard.”
Mr. Alvarez would laugh at this point. “My estate. You hear that? Like I’m some rich man.”
The old men would laugh, although Evan guessed that some of them had apple farms whose land was now worth millions, if they wanted to sell to developers eager to cash in on timeshare developments. Thanks to people like Evan, who drove up the prices, these men were now millionaires on paper.
Evan would point out that the price he offered Mr. Alvarez would, by most people’s estimates, make him a wealthy man. But the conversation would inevitably deteriorate into the old geezers lamenting how Chelan had changed since all the Microsoft money had poured into the land, as if Evan wasn’t standing right there, hat in hand, the living embodiment of all they despised.
“My daughter says I got to have weddings at the vineyard just to keep up!” Mr. Alvarez crowed. “She’s got a few lined up for next month.”
Evan felt his pain. Who needed weddings when you had grapes to crush in the fall? Pickers to line up. A festival to coordinate. The Fall Crush festival. Another thorn in his side. Evan wished he could talk to someone about the anxiety of helping plan the Fall Crush. Another thing he’d signed up for, hoping to get to know some locals. But all it meant was more work leading up to harvest time. He was supposed to get permits, sign up sponsors. Assign spaces for the food trucks. What a headache. So far, all the locals he’d met were ones hitting him up for donations for little league teams, the Fourth of July parade, the 4-H youth club and a myriad of high school teams, from mathletes to cheerleaders, when he’d knocked on their door hoping for sponsorship.
For a moment, Evan longed for an invitation to sit down. To commiserate with these men on the difficulty of running an ever-changing business. One that forced you into odd relationships with wedding planners, caterers and people who did things like make ice sculptures for a living and demanded space in your driveway for their refrigerated truck.
All Evan wanted to do was make wine. Prizewinning wine. Evan would love to talk to these men about his own struggles. Learn from them.
But Evan fell on the other side of the divide. He was new money. An interloper. He didn’t belong at the table at the Apple Cup, complaining about newcomers. He was a newcomer. So, he always left. Inevitably, before he even reached the door of the Apple Cup, he’d hear the loud guffaws of Mr. Alvarez and his cronies. It always made Evan angry—and maybe just a little bit lonely. Every Sunday a table of friends waited for Mr. Alvarez, eager to talk about the good old days. Before people like Evan showed up and ruined everything.
Felicity’s office was stark minimalist white with a view of gray Fifth Avenue skyscrapers. The joke was that she had a secret window opening to push out wayward employees.
Carmen looked at the tiny cars crawling through the Seattle traffic. It was a long way down.
Felicity tapped her blood red nails on her glossy white desk. A staccato noise that made Carmen even more nervous.
“Felicity, I have a situation—”
“Stop!” Felicity held an arm out, inches from Carmen’s face. Her skin was so paper white Carmen could see the blue veins on her wrist. “Stop right there. I’m so sick of you millennials whining about your rights. Your needs. Your tender little snowflake hearts. When I was your age, I was the first in the office and the last one out.” Carmen was the same, but didn’t think this was the time to point that out. “If a senior partner told me to pull an overnighter for a campaign, I didn’t blink. I kept a change of clothing in the office for just such an occasion. That’s how careers get made.” Felicity narrowed her eyes to a sliver, raising one perfectly arched brow. “Now, what do you have to tell me?
Carmen gulped. Her heart was beating so fast she could feel a vein pulsing in her throat. “My dad had a heart attack. I have to go to Chelan to take care of him for a week.”
Oh no. It just came out. That wasn’t what
Carmen had meant to say at all. She’d panicked and blurted out a lie.
Felicity blinked three times, tapped her long red nails on the white lacquered desk. “Is he in the hospital?”
Carmen felt her face burning. “Yes.” It came out with a squeak.
“And do you have a medical degree that I don’t know about?”
Carmen tilted her head. Was Felicity really this mean? “No.”
“So, your father is in the hospital being well looked after and you, a person with no medical training whatsoever, are required by his bedside? Not a doctor, or a nurse but a thirty-year-old marketing manager? That’s what you’re telling me?”
“Yes. I mean, he is my father.”
“I understand that. But how exactly is you being there going to make a difference?”
“I’m his daughter.”
“Understood. I have a father who had a triple bypass last year and miraculously, the hospital staff managed to perform the surgery without me.”
“I’m sorry about your father.”
“Don’t be.” Felicity sighed, gazing hopelessly out the window as if Carmen were a slow student who just didn’t get the concept. “I hate to burst your bubble, but this is a business. We work. We do not take vacations in the middle of work unless we schedule them with HR.”
“It isn’t a vacation.”
“A week in Chelan sure sounds like a vacation to me.” Felicity pointed to the outer office at all the staffers pretending to work, but tuning in for Felicity’s inevitable explosion. “We’d all like to bounce off to Chelan, take in some summer sun, maybe visit your dad while someone else takes care of him, leaving everyone else do the heavy lifting, wouldn’t we? I love Chelan as much as the next person, but I have a company to run, don’t I? Clients to serve, which right now I can’t because you’re interrupting me. Again.”
How could it go sideways so fast? “My dad lives in Chelan. He has Alzheimer’s.”
Felicity’s eyes flashed. “I thought you said he had a heart attack?”
Summer at Orchard House: An utterly compelling and heart-warming summer romance (Blue Hills Book 1) Page 2
