Summer at Orchard House: An utterly compelling and heart-warming summer romance (Blue Hills Book 1)

by Ellyn Oaksmith

  “He’s trying to put the Alvarez family out of business.”

  Paolo nodded. “Sí. But they were already having problems. I see the father walk up the hill to talk to the pickers, but he goes back down.”

  “He has memory problems.”

  Paolo nodded. “Sí, which is very sad, but the wine business is tough, bella.” His voice grew softer. “You can’t save a business like that unless you know very, very much.”

  “But you know very much, right?”

  Paolo shook his head. “No.”

  Stella moved towards him, batting her eyes. “Yes.”

  Paolo shook his head. “No.”

  Stella moved her face so close to his until their lips almost met. “Paolo Ricardo Gentillo. You can help me.”

  Paolo’s brown eyes met her blue ones. “I cannot.”

  “He can’t, but I can,” Stella said, pulling Carmen aside. She’d shown up after dinner, waltzing into the kitchen looking enviably fresh and well-rested.

  Carmen looked up from spooning leftovers into a Tupperware container. “Okay, let me finish in here and then we can talk.”

  Nathalie was doing the dishes, loading the washer as fast as she could. Stella pitched in, rolling up her sleeves and donning a canvas apron. Carmen stopped working for a moment, massaging a tight knot in her neck. “Thank you so much, Stell, but you don’t have to do this. This is my mess.”

  Stella dried the larger mixing bowls, stacking them up on the stone-topped island. “Remember when I borrowed my dad’s speedboat and we ran out of gas?”

  Sophomore year of high school, Carmen thought, smiling at the memory. “My feet had blisters for days.”

  Stella nodded. “Yeah, because you walked into town and back with the gas can.”

  Carmen nodded. “Yeah, back when our biggest problem was running out of gas, right?”

  Stella stopped drying. She grabbed her friend and hugged her. “Look, amiga. We’re gonna get through this. You gotta believe it. Nothing a little girl power can’t handle.”

  Carmen noticed Nathalie looking at them. “Come on over here.”

  They gathered the girl into their hug. She seemed grateful for the contact.

  Lola came into the kitchen with a stack of dishes. “Lemme get in on this!”

  The four girls hugged and smiled. When they drew apart, Stella made each one of them take off their aprons. “Listen. Here’s the deal. No arguments, okay? You are going into the living room and putting up your feet. I’m gonna finish up these dishes, and then I’m going to tell you what a certain person who knows a lot about wine told me.”

  “The elusive Paolo!” Lola said, eyes round. “I’ve heard about him. I’ve heard his accent is just like, boom,” she swept her hand across the counter. “Knocks women flat.”

  Stella grinned. “Don’t even get me started. It’s like nobody in this town has ever heard an Italian accent.” She herded them into the living room. “Go.”

  They’d all chosen a soft chair and put up their feet on the stone coffee table when Stella returned with a tray. “My mother always said that there is nothing ice cream can’t handle.”

  Nathalie perked up as she surveyed the bowls heaped with ice cream. On the side were toppings Stella had found in the pantry and fridge. Fran’s Ephemere Sauce, salted caramel, pecans, peanuts, M&M’s. It was, Carmen thought, so like Stella to provide spontaneous cheer, whip up something fabulous by opening a few cupboards.

  Stella pointed a finger at each one of them. “Eat your ice cream and I’ll be back with the good news.”

  “Thank you so much,” said Carmen with teary eyes. Was there a single part of her body that didn’t hurt?

  “Nuh-uh. Nobody can cry while they eat ice cream. Those are the rules. You got it?” Stella waited with raised brows until Carmen gave her a weak smile.

  Carmen licked the frozen spoon, swirling dark chocolate into her ice cream. How could she have ever forgotten what a fabulous best friend she’d chosen for herself when she was thirteen? Who knew that a decision she’d made that young could work out so well?

  Now if she could just get the crop in on time.

  She tried to concentrate on the icy sweetness melting in her mouth, trying, for the hundredth time that day, to not think of Evan.

  “You need to think strategically,” Stella said, perched on one end of the living room couch. Carmen was slumped on the other end, fighting to concentrate through a fog of exhaustion. Lola sat across from them, filing her nails. Nathalie had gone home. The guests were in the orchard, getting a lecture on making goat cheese. Those who were awake. The bulk of them were lying in bed, reading or on their phones, exhausted. A massage therapist had come out last night and had been swamped. She’d promised to come back with some friends from her massage school who were vacationing in Chelan.

  “My friend said that you need to take the slower pickers and have them run the fruit to the totes. He also said we should be crushing the fruit. I told him about the brix levels and he said you can’t mess around.”

  Lola looked up from her nails, rolling her eyes. “Why don’t you just say Paolo? We all know it’s Paolo.”

  Stella shook her head. “He could lose his job.”

  Lola flung her hands around the cavernous living room. “Who is going to tell? Me? The harvesters? They don’t even know him.”

  Stella stubbornly shook her head. “I don’t want to get him in trouble.”

  Carmen gave Lola a sharp look.

  Lola opened her mouth, annoyed. “What? I don’t see what the big deal is. Nobody is going to find out about him telling us anything.”

  “¡Es su trabajo estúpida!” Carmen snapped at her sister.

  Stella nodded. It was more than his work; it was his career. “Should I keep going?”

  Carmen nodded, giving her sister a warning glance. “Yes. Thank you. Lola will stop being an idiot. Right, Lola?”

  “Touchy,” Lola grumbled.

  “She cares about him!” Carmen said, with a little too much force. “What’s so hard to understand about that? Sometimes we have these feelings and they become impossible. They eat us up from the inside and become too hard to manage. It feels like we’re going to explode from…” Carmen’s voice trailed off as she realized she’d lost the thread. She stared out the window, chewing on a nail.

  Both women looked at Carmen with alarm.

  “Okaaaay,” Lola said.

  “Car?” Stella asked gently. “Everything okay?”

  Carmen snapped her mouth shut. “Fine. I’m fine. Back to the harvest, right?”

  There was a long awkward silence. Stella and Lola exchanging pointed looks before Stella spoke. “Right. Fine. Okay, where was I?”

  It was midnight by the time they got their strategy set. Without being asked, Stella had canceled all her hair appointments for the next day. Carmen tried to talk her out of it, knowing the financial hit would be significant, but Stella cut her short. “Stop it. You’d do the same for me.”

  “By giving people horrific haircuts?” Carmen asked.

  “Right. You’d ruin my business. That makes me the better friend.”

  Stella helped them come up with a list of plans they’d implement in the morning before they moved to the kitchen to prep for breakfast. Carmen was emptying the dishwasher and Stella and Lola were mixing up pancake batter when Stella asked to spend the night.

  Carmen turned, her hands full of coffee mugs. “I’d love that.”

  Stella covered the pancake batter with plastic wrap. “In the last few days, I’ve thought about this a lot. You guys aren’t just important to me, you’re important to Chelan. You’re one of the oldest wineries in the valley. We can’t let that go. I’m team Alvarez, all the way.”

  After the breakfast prep, Papi joined them, listening to Stella’s suggestions before leading them up to the vineyard, marking the spots where the crates should be stationed so the forklifts could move them in the morning. Papi showed them how the harvesters could work
as a team, each with a runner sending the fruit back. They’d take turns, although if someone couldn’t handle picking, serving as runner would provide a change in pace. They’d take water breaks together and eat in the fields, which they’d tried to avoid until now.

  The brix levels were too high. The fruit was dangerously close to producing wine that was high in alcohol that would distort the full-bodied flavor.

  Juan agreed that he would work with Lola in the winery, supervising the juice extraction from the fruit. They would get the juice into the casks as quickly as possible to allow the next crate into the press. They had to strain the juice several times through increasingly smaller sieves and ensure that all the casks had been rigorously cleaned. Juan would carefully check each batch, verifying that it was funneled into the right casks. It was a fast-paced, delicate operation requiring careful monitoring at every step. Carmen worried that her father might not be up to it. But it didn’t matter. He was all they had.

  They trooped back into Orchard House to snatch a few hours of sleep.

  Carmen stopped her friend at the bottom of the stairs. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  Stella rested her head on Carmen’s shoulder. “I do. Let me get some sleep.”

  Evan watched from his patio as the Blue Hills pickers held a meeting. He sipped his coffee as the sun rose over the eastern hills, painting the lake with swaths of dusty pink. Lola divided the harvesters into teams, handing each of them a water bottle, pointing to different parts of the fields. Totes were driven to stations by a harvester who drove the forklift. There were a few misses. At one point, the lowered forklift went into the dirt, lifting the vehicle’s rear wheels off the ground with the abrupt stop, nearly flinging the driver from the cage.

  It was a good system, Evan thought, and new to Blue Hills. The totes were at the foot of the hill instead of up the sides of the hill. People would run the fruit down rather than having the forklift drive up and down. The runner would ferry the fruit down the hill, freeing the forklift up to make warehouse runs. Very clever, Evan thought, wondering if it was Carmen’s idea.

  Evan had almost finished his coffee when Paolo joined him, gazing down the hill with his own cup, which he stared into mournfully, as if deeply disappointed with its contents. Evan studied the Italian. He was much happier these days, arriving on time, eager to work instead of dragging his feet and complaining endlessly about rural America. Thank you, Stella, Evan thought, before giving Paolo a double-take.

  Stella, who was Carmen’s best friend.

  “They’re getting organized.” Evan said, gauging his employee to see if he’d react. Evan had been explicit about Paolo not sharing harvest methods. Paolo hadn’t seemed to mind or push back. He’d even joked about not confusing work and romance, like an American. But what if he was? What if a chain of communication ran through Evan’s master vintner to Carmen? What if Paolo was helping the competition?

  “Yeah,” Paolo said, glancing at his phone while sipping his coffee. Two weeks ago, he would have been lamenting the brew, saying it was coffee-flavored water. Followed by complaints about the bland bread, the antiseptic grocery stores and the revolting restaurants. Now, he just showed up and went to work.

  Evan didn’t turn around as he spoke. “Why do you think they changed things up?”

  Paolo looked up from his phone, frowning. “Maybe they saw what we were doing?” He scratched his curls. “I don’t know.” Paolo finished his coffee in two gulps. “Have you been up to see how the press is doing since they changed the gears? I don’t want them running without one of us checking in.”

  Evan shook his head. Before he could respond, Paolo was headed up the hill, telling Evan to join when he could. There were some things he wanted to discuss.

  That was another thing: Paolo seemed to be taking on more and more work, experimenting with different varietals in his workshop in the cave, taking copious notes without explanation. He’d assumed that the grapes had been sourced for Hollister Estates.

  Had it been for Carmen’s benefit?

  What if Evan was contributing to his own demise?

  Evan eyed the Blue Hills workers as they hiked up to the vineyard.

  Carmen was walking back to the house, wearing an apron over her shorts. She paused for a moment on the steps. He could have sworn she glanced in his direction. He finished his coffee, wondering if it was just wishful thinking. He went into the kitchen to put his coffee mug away before joining Paolo in the winery. Had she been looking for him? Probably not. But it didn’t stop Evan from thinking about Carmen Alvarez for the rest of the day.

  Carmen paused on the steps before going inside to face the mountain of breakfast dishes. Evan was there, on his patio, peering down. She stopped herself from waving. Not to be friendly, but just to let him know that she saw him. She’d skipped watching him swim since the harvest had begun. She was furious about him stealing her cook and simply too tired, dropping into bed, conking out immediately. The alarm felt like it went off seconds later.

  The sunrise this morning was beautiful. Blush pink spreading across the sky like an unfurling rose. “Get up and enjoy this gift,” Mami would say, opening the curtains before kissing her daughter’s sleepy head, hidden in the covers. A gentle breeze ruffled Carmen’s hair now. She shut her eyes for a moment before opening them wide.

  Was the beautiful sunrise simply a result of dawn, or was it refracted ash from the up-lake fires? Would this be a replay of two summers ago, when she’d called her father hourly to make sure he’d been evacuated? Would her efforts be for nothing, as wildfires suffocated the fruit and stopped the harvesting? Carmen looked up again at Evan, but he seemed to be looking at the sky too. She went inside.

  Maybe they were worried about the same thing.

  They were both farmers battling the elements.

  Maybe, thought Carmen as she adjusted her apron, burying her hands in the soapy water, they had more in common than she thought.

  Carmen dried her hands when the phone rang. She picked it up without looking at the caller ID.

  “Hi, Carmen. It’s Evan.”

  She stayed quiet, worrying that, impossibly, he could tell what she’d been thinking.

  “Evan Hollister.”

  “I know. Hi, Evan.” She thought about sitting next to him on the rock. Their arms touching. His cold skin warming against hers. The deep breath she’d taken before bringing Mami into it. Moonlight, and the soft lap of the waves on the rock. She’d never sit on that rock again without thinking of him.

  “Hi,” his voice was softer. “How’s the harvest going?”

  She sighed. “We’ve got fainting pickers and jumping mice and we’re all exhausted, and you know what, Evan?”

  “What?”

  “The thing is, I’m just tired. Tired of going back and forth with you. I mean, the whole time we went for that swim it was… nice. That’s what it was—nice. Maybe more than nice.”

  “It was more, Carmen. You know it was.”

  “I do. What am I supposed to think then, when I find out that you’ve hired my cook right out from under me? That I’ve got twenty-eight people to feed and one sixteen-year-old kid to do the cooking? You do the math. Thousands of bushels on that hill that are going to rot because we can’t do this. We’re losing the battle. That’s how it’s going, Evan.”

  “I didn’t know…”

  “Of course not. You don’t know, because you have the best pickers money can buy. Theoretically, my pickers should be up to the job, but they aren’t. They aren’t pickers. They’re great people that we’ve basically tricked. We told them that we were going to give them this amazing experience and they’re so wiped out they can barely function. But they’re still here. They can be part of the end.” She was crying. “You’re happy, right?”

  “Carmen, I wish I was there.”

  She wiped her eyes. “Just… don’t. You want to gloat.”

  “I didn’t hire the cook away from you. My housekeeper did. I didn’t even kno
w where he came from until now. If you want, I’ll send him back over. And yes, I did get pickers because I could pay more. I think you’re giving those people a great experience. I’m sorry you are having such a hard time. I don’t want to be part of it.”

  “Spare me. You are the cause of it.”

  “Carmen, please. You can’t blame me for wanting the same things you do.”

  “Did you grow up here? Do you have a father who worked his entire life to build up this land and these vines?” She sighed. “Why did you call? To tell me that your grapes are in?”

  “I’m doing the set-up for the First Crush Festival.”

  She threw up her hand. “Of course you are. Because that’s how my life works. What now?”

  He was apologetic. “You were supposed to have your booth set up by today.”

  “That’s next week.”

  He paused for a long moment. “It starts Monday.”

  Carmen shrieked. “Oh no! You can’t be serious.”

  “Do you need help? I can come over or help build it, or whatever you need.”

  The last thing Carmen wanted was to be anywhere near Evan Hollister. “Oh, no. We’re good. Yes, um, we’ve just come back from Wenatchee with everything we need.”

  “Okay then, I’ll be at the fairgrounds. I can help you set up.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “Our display is the one with the corral.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. A corral?”

  Evan sounded embarrassed. “It’s a petting zoo.”

  “Right. Because small farm animals and wine go together so well.”

  “It wasn’t my idea.”

  “That seems to be a theme of yours.”

  “Carmen. Can’t we talk? I need to clear the air.”

  Carmen shook her head. “The air around here isn’t going to be clear until the end of summer. You’ve been living here long enough to know, Evan. Things are just starting to get heated up.”

  Carmen hung up, rushing upstairs. She hated to wake up Nathalie, who’d just gone to sleep after getting up at four to cook breakfast. The poor girl was running on fumes. But there was no way to avoid it. She’d have to do the dishes and get the lunch out by herself.