Carmen kept up a steady patter of encouragement. “Come on, Spright. Almost there. Be a good boy and there’s another hamburger in it for you. Maybe something from the mini bar. Do you know what a mini bar is, Spright? Tiny bits of food at stupid prices.”
When they reached the room, they should have collapsed with relieved laughter, especially when Spright jumped up, bouncing gleefully between two beds until Crystal made him get down.
“Spright, mind your manners. This is a hotel,” she scolded the happy goat, who thrived on the attention.
It should have been hilarious.
That’s what Evan thought as he walked back to his room.
Instead, it was just sad. Simply because nothing was funny anymore.
Outside light leaked into the hotel room through the edges of the blackout curtains. Juan and Evan lay in their respective beds, motionless. Evan had thought Juan was asleep when he’d come in, so he washed up quietly, thinking it would be a relief to stop worrying about Carmen. Her feelings. Their arguments. The endless wondering about how she felt about him. It would be a relief, he thought, to go back to living for himself. Maybe the fire would be a fresh start. He didn’t want it that way, but he’d already decided that if his house burned, he wouldn’t rebuild. There would be too much to overcome.
He didn’t want to wake up every day and think about Carmen Alvarez.
“The cemetery is in the path of the fire,” Juan said into the dark.
Evan’s head twisted on the pillow, looking at the old man, whose hands were folded on the white sheets. “Maybe.”
“I’d still be there if you hadn’t come for me.”
Evan let that one sit a minute. “You’d have gotten out. You wouldn’t have slept that long.”
“Smoke might have gotten me. More people die of the smoke than the actual fire.”
Evan nodded in the dark. “You don’t know what would have happened. Crystal said you’d be okay. I believed her.”
He saw the old man nodding. “It’s hard to kill us old timers. You don’t get to be this age without knowing a few tricks.”
Evan knew the old man expected a laugh, but he couldn’t muster one. Not tonight. “I’m sure. I could sure learn a lot from you.”
Juan exhaled a long breath. “You know, my wife didn’t want to marry a recolector migrante. A migrant picker. She thought nobody would ever let un hombre mexicano learn anything about the wine business.” Juan pointed a finger at the ceiling. “All it took was one person to see my potential. Yes, it took a long time, but I never gave up. I knew what I wanted, and I kept working hard. Following my passion. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
Evan had underestimated Juan. “I think so.”
“Carmen isn’t the kind of girl you give up on.”
Evan didn’t want to explain that Carmen had told him, in no uncertain terms, that she didn’t want anything to do with him. The last thing he wanted to do was tell the old man that he’d kissed his daughter and she wanted to forget all about it. That he’d felt everything, and she’d wanted nothing. “She certainly isn’t, sir.”
He’d leave it at that.
His best wasn’t good enough.
Evan waited until the old man’s breathing fell into regular, slow rhythms. He opened the mini bar. Inside was a full-sized bottle of wine. He couldn’t read the label. It didn’t matter. He grabbed the wine opener from the desk and slipped outside.
Tonight was a good night for drinking alone.
Tomorrow he’d deal with the pain.
Twenty-Nine
The Girl Next Door
It was hard sleeping with a goat in the room. First, he snored. Then there was that funky, fusty smell, like a dog who came home reeking of eau de Something Dead. Then there was the heat. Air conditioning wasn’t keeping up with the number of bodies in the room. Carmen slipped into the bathroom to don a bathing suit she’d already had in the bottom of her bag. It was old and stretched, but nobody would see her. The goat bleated softly as she opened the door.
“So long, stinky,” Carmen whispered. She was already growing fond of the quirky, odiferous creature.
The pool lights were off. A sign said it was closed. The gate was locked, but Carmen found a way in through the landscaping. She brushed the peat from her soles and dove in, surfacing at the deep end. The water felt wonderful. Cool enough to be refreshing. She rolled over, luxuriating in the pool, enjoying the scattering of stars. Maybe that meant there was less smoke, less flames? She tried to enjoy the water on her skin, to not think of more troublesome things, kicking her way to the shallow end.
Someone was at the end of the pool. A man with a bottle on the table, slumped in a chair. Is that Evan? She dove under and surfaced at the edge, resting her elbows.
It was Evan.
“Whatcha drinking?”
He squinted in the dark, lifting his glass. “A Cab Sauvignon. Pretty good. Want some?”
Wine sounded good. She lifted herself effortlessly from the pool, wrapping herself in a towel. She saw his eyes appreciating her and then looking away. He offered his own glass. “I don’t have another one.”
She took it from him, taking a cautious sip. “Couldn’t sleep?”
He shook his head, almost snorting. “No. Not tonight.”
“Too worried about your vineyard?” She thought she was being solicitous, but he rolled his eyes.
“Um, no.”
She handed back the glass. “It is good.”
He took a long, greedy drink. “It’ll do the job.”
Carmen studied him, trying to understand this swift change in moods. He’d been elated when he’d delivered her father; then something had changed in the parking lot, after they’d talked about forgetting that regrettable, embarrassing incident. “Look, Evan, I just want you to know that I don’t hold it against you.”
He squinted at her. “Very big of you, I suppose.”
She flushed, happy for the dark. “We’ve all done stupid things.”
“As if you didn’t make the first move.”
“What?” Her voice carried in the dark. “By acting like—and I’m quoting here—a crazy Latina? Talk about a cultural stereotype. Yeah, we’re all completely loco with our big hoops and our sassy ways.” She stood up, bending over to whisper, inches from his ear. “You think your friend is the one with issues? Look in the mirror, Evan. You’re rattling around in your dream house, all alone. When someone gets the slightest bit close to you, you sabotage it or turn it into a competition. If you think I’m loco, think again. Tú eres el loco. Eres tú.” She padded across the patio in her bare feet, stopping to give him one last look. “I’ll pay you back for the room. This crazy Latina doesn’t want anything from you.”
It took Evan a moment to puzzle out what she was talking about. He jumped up so fast, he nearly fell into the pool. “Wait!” He rushed across the patio to her. She went around him. He dashed around her until she was nearly backed into the pool. He grabbed her by the shoulders. “Carmen, when you said forget about it—you meant the incident on the speaker phone in the car?”
She pulled herself away. “Yes.”
“I thought you meant the kiss.”
She rewrapped her towel, thinking about what exactly she’d said. “You thought I wanted to forget about the kiss?”
“Yes, in the driveway.” As if there was any other kiss in the history of the known world.
“That’s not what I meant.” Her voice was guarded.
He put his hand up to touch her face, but stopped. Both hands lifted as if in surrender. “Carmen, we’ve gotten—no, wait, I’ve gotten—so many things wrong. I didn’t respect your decision to run the winery. I didn’t take it, or you, seriously. Even when I couldn’t think about anything else but seeing your beautiful face every day, I was still trying to beat you. Trying to win. You’re right. I don’t know why.”
“I do.”
“Do I want to hear this?”
She shrugged. “Probably not.”
>
He winced. “Okay. Tell me.”
“You don’t really know how to be close to a woman.”
He sat with it for a moment, squinting, as if looking inward. He sighed. “Probably. But doesn’t that just make me like ninety percent of the guys out there?”
She nodded. “I don’t want ninety percent of the guys out there.”
He rubbed his forehead. “What if…” He shook his head.
“What?”
“What if we started over? And I did everything differently? If I went against all my instincts and tried just being with you. Listening to you. Learning from you and your family?” He grinned. “I am nothing if not a fast learner.”
She leaned in, smelling his soap and skin beneath the smokiness that clung to his clothing. “You want a do-over?”
He blinked, as if he couldn’t quite believe what she was saying. “Seriously?”
“What would you do differently?”
“Well, I’d introduce myself properly and ask you out. I’d pick you up in the Jeep and burn the Lamborghini. I’d take you out to dinner at the kind of restaurants where they focus on amazing food and don’t cater to pretentious wine snobs. I’d follow the best food trucks on Instagram and take you to them, hoping to convince you that I’m just a little bit cool. I’d make us picnics with sandwiches like Paolo’s, but even better.”
“Not possible.”
He lifted a finger. “Not done here.”
Carmen grinned. “Proceed.”
“I’d take you on boat rides and get to know your family, especially your father.”
Carmen nodded. “He’d like that. He also thinks I haven’t been fair to you, and he’s right.”
Evan nodded, allowing himself a small grin. “I’d never tell you what I know about making wine because your father and Paolo are the experts. Maybe I know how to run a business and maybe I don’t, because my work-life balance is not even a thing, as witnessed by how badly I screwed up with you. If I could do everything over, I’d spend every second of every day trying to make you laugh, just to see you happy.”
Carmen rolled her eyes. “That sounds exhausting.”
“I don’t think I could tone down the intensity. We hard-driving tech types really don’t know much about dialing it down.”
“Neither do I, Evan. It’s not like this has been all your fault.”
He sighed. “I just want a fresh start.”
“You know I’m not selling you Blue Hills.”
He nodded. “That hurts, a little.”
“It should. We’re the best vineyard in the state.”
He raised an eyebrow. “For now.”
“We’re not going to compete,” she reminded him, knowing that they would. A little.
“I would love that.”
Carmen sighed. It was no use. She did love a project. “So. You want to date?”
He nodded.
“Like normal people?”
“Yes. Absolutely. I want to date the girl next door.”
She grinned. “That’s me.”
He bent down to kiss her. “That’s you.”
Her towel fell off as she embraced him, kissing him in a way that promised much, much more.
Epilogue
Nine Months Later
Carmen looked into her mirror, smiling at her reflection, listening for the crunch of gravel on the driveway indicating that her date had arrived. It was like high school, down to the concert stubs tucked into the frame of her mirror: Dave Matthews at the Gorge (his idea), the Mexican band Los Ángeles Azules in Yakima (hers). Except she was running the winery. Thanks to the prayer group, the grapes had been harvested in time and the wine, although not yet aged, had convinced the bank to refinance the loan, allowing them to make smaller payments. A cellar full of aging wine counted as an asset.
Downstairs, guests were on the patio for a tasting. Not one of them knew that the winery had been threatened by fire less than a year ago. They were blissfully unaware that a change of wind had saved the very land upon which they stood, sipping the latest vintage. They were more interested in selfies in front of the magnificent view and the chance to tell their friends they’d visited the hot new place.
Carmen was reluctant to leave on a weekend, but Lola had insisted. She would be fine running the new tasting bar, she said, even though Saturday was their busiest night. They had a great cook and wait staff thanks to the profit-sharing plan Adella had engineered.
Carmen gazed out her bedroom window. A car wound its way up from the lake. Evan in his new Jeep. The Lamborghini was now a source of humor: Evan had had an early mid-life crisis. Now, he didn’t want to stick out, or scream, “I’m new. I’m rich. I’m an ass.”
When Carmen came downstairs, she had to pull Evan away from her father. They could talk soil erosion and acidity all night. Carmen wanted a night off, if there was such a thing. Evan seemed to learn something from every glass of wine he drank. He’d gotten his first bronze medal. It didn’t count, he said, until it was gold. Some things never changed.
Outside, the evening air was warm. Early spring was Carmen’s favorite time of year in Chelan. A time of promise, new beginnings, rich with possibility. As Carmen got into the Jeep with Evan, she reached across and kissed his cheek. He smelled of soap and minty toothpaste. He started the car, asking her if she wanted to meet Paolo and Stella for an early drink or head straight to dinner.
“Whatever you want. I’m all yours.” It was shockingly easy to say. As the Jeep passed through the orchard and down to the placid lake, Carmen felt something truly rare. An awareness that right now, in this very moment, she was utterly happy.
Sometimes, Carmen thought, life was simple. Sometimes you go looking for something and you find it.
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Blue Hills series
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to everyone at Bookouture, especially Hannah Bond, whose enthusiasm, positivity and energy has made the drudgery of editing so much more bearable. Also, thanks to Peta Nightingale, Gabrielle Chant, Kim Nash, Natasha Hodgson and Alexandra Holmes. You ladies are the literary equivalent to Spanx and make everything look much, much better.
Thanks to Mary Oaksmith Nichols and family for sharing your beautiful Lake Chelan house with my family, without which this book and so many good times, never would have happened.
My fellow authors: Melanie Bates, Angela Curran and Jesse Ewing-Frable. You’re all game changers in your own talented and hilarious way.
Thanks to SMS/AMS/CES for everything, always.
We – both author and publisher – hope you enjoyed this book. We believe that you can become a reader at any time in your life, but we’d love your help to give the next generation a head start.
Did you know that 9% of children d
on’t have a book of their own in their home, rising to 13% in disadvantaged families*? We’d like to try to change that by asking you to consider the role you could play in helping to build readers of the future.
We’d love you to get involved by sharing, borrowing, reading, buying or talking about a book with a child in your life and spreading the love of reading. We want to make sure the next generation continues to have access to books, wherever they come from.
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*As reported by the National Literacy Trust
Published by Bookouture in 2020
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Copyright © Ellyn Oaksmith, 2020
Ellyn Oaksmith has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
Summer at Orchard House: An utterly compelling and heart-warming summer romance (Blue Hills Book 1) Page 26
