by Amy Gamet
Rafael drove the forklift, bringing a huge bin of freshly-picked grapes to the crush pad, but in his mind he was still in bed with Melanie. Their night together was incredible, more than he could have imagined, and he wanted to run down to the tasting room, take her up to his office, and go for a repeat session.
He dumped the load of grapes into the crusher.
In a month or two, all of this would be his.
Ten years ago, he would never have believed he could attain so much in his life, have so much that he cared for. And now the bank was drawing up the papers for the loan, and he was about to become the new owner of Crescent Moon Vineyards.
Annie walked over to him and waved her arms. He cut the engine. “Yeah?”
“Your father’s here to see you.”
The moment seemed to crystalize. He shook his head. “What?”
“Your father. He’s in the tasting room. Doris just called up, but you didn’t hear your phone.”
His father. In the tasting room.
Rafael climbed down and headed for his truck. Melanie was in the tasting room, too, and his legs moved more quickly. Angry curses rang through his head. What had possessed the man to show up here? For as much as Rafael had anticipated the effect his father’s release might have on the community, he never thought for a single moment his father would come looking for his long lost son.
Martin Delacruz wasn’t taken with such niceties.
He must want something.
Of course. How he have been so stupid? His father was here for a handout, a piece of the pie Rafael had just been ogling.
No way he’s going to get a single dime.
He sped down the hill and parked his truck beside the building, all but running inside. He burst through the doors.
Melanie looked up from behind the bar, her eyes wide.
Then his father turned around to face him.
He still had a full head of hair, now peppered with gray. His skin was deeply tanned, just as Rafael remembered it, though surely now it was from time spent in a prison yard instead of a field full of fruit. But more than anything, Rafael could see himself in his father’s features, and the resemblance disgraced him.
“Rafael,” his father said, his mouth forming a tight smile. “My son.”
The words struck Rafael in his middle, forcing his spirit to buckle and bend. “What are you want?”
“To see you.” He stood and approached Rafael. “My eyes have missed your face. I was hoping you would visit me, but now I can see what a long journey it is from here to there. I’d just assumed you’d gone home when they took me in.”
Just like that.
As if the younger version of himself had been capable of packing up his things and making the trek back to New York City on his own. As if he hadn’t been on the run himself, forced to steal blankets to stay warm, to scrounge for food like an animal.
“How did you find me?”
“My parole officer helped me.”
From the corner of his eye, Rafael saw Melanie and Doris exchange a look. He gritted his teeth. “You shouldn’t have come. I don’t want to see you.”
“I treated you badly, and for that I am sorry. But I’ve changed. I am no longer the same man you knew.”
“I don’t care.”
Martin tilted his head. “No?”
“No.” He nodded to a single suitcase by the bar. “Take your things and go.”
“I have come to right the wrongs I have committed.”
Rafael snickered. “Only God can raise the dead.”
Martin lowered his head. “Sí, that is true, and I will forever regret what I have done. But I can be a better father to you. That, at least, I can fix.”
“I feel nothing but shame when you call me your son.” Rafael pulled out his wallet and a stack of bills, throwing them on the bar. “Now get out of this room. Get out of this town. Get out of my life. For good, this time, Martin.”
“I beg your forgiveness…”
“Get out!” he slammed his fist on the bar, making Melanie jump.
Martin turned to Melanie. “Thank you for your kindness, Miss.”
Rafael took three quick steps toward his father. “Don’t you speak to her. Don’t even look at her. Just go.”
* * *
“How could you do that to your dad?” Melanie asked, her eyes beseeching.
“Excuse me?”
“How could you send him away like that? He doesn’t have anyone except you. He doesn’t have anywhere to go. What’s going to happen to him?”
“Maybe he can find some scraps of garbage to eat from the trash.”
She crossed her arms in front of her. “Oh, I see. He left you to fend for yourself, so now you’re leaving him to fend for himself.”
“Something like that.”
Rafael’s face was so cold and expressionless, it frightened her just to look at it. “Everyone deserves a second chance.”
“He shot a thirty year-old man dead in the middle of a crowded bar, because the guy wouldn’t give him the twenty bucks my dad conned out of him playing pool.”
Melanie put a hand to her chest. “Oh, my goodness.”
“I think that guy deserved another chance, but he isn’t going to get one, so why should my father?”
She took a deep breath. No matter how horrible the man’s crime, he was still Rafael’s father. “He made a mistake. A big one. But he cares about you, and he needs your help.”
“You’re suggesting I allow him into my life?” He shook his head. “That man is poison, Melanie. All he knows is how to destroy things. You always want to take care of everybody, but that man never cared what happened to me, and I don’t care what happens to him. End of story.”
She shook her head. “How can you say that about your own father? How can you just leave him to fend for himself?”
“Stay out of it, Melanie. It doesn’t concern you.”
“It doesn’t concern me? After last night, you’re going to tell me it doesn’t concern me?”
He put his hands out in front of him. “Don’t confuse the situation. Last night was terrific. But one thing has nothing to do with the other.”
“I see.” She reached under the bar and grabbed her purse. “I wish I could be as compartmentalized as you are, Rafael. But intimacy to me means sharing a lot more than my body with someone. I thought you were interested in me as a person. Interested in my life, just like I was interested in yours. But obviously last night was just sex for you.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“What about you, huh? Waiting for Greg to come back, taking me to bed but telling me the whole thing’s off if he walks in the door. Who’s not taking our relationship seriously?”
“I admitted to you that I was confused about my feelings.”
“Oh, well then that makes it okay.”
“You’re twisting this whole situation around, trying to make it about me and our relationship, because you can’t deal with your feelings about your father.”
“Nothing to deal with. He can’t be in my life.”
“And you’re okay with that? No ifs, ands, or buts?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re a fool, Rafael Delacruz. That man is family, and you’re just going to turn your back and walk away.”
“Don’t you get it? My family isn’t like your family. My father didn’t take care of me. He used me, and he took advantage of anything I could do for him, but he never once went out of his way to do something to help me.”
“This isn’t about how you were raised. It’s about the man you are today. The fact that you have no room in your heart for forgiveness or even basic sympathy makes me question whether or not you and I are a good match as a couple.”
He raised his eyebrows. “And if you can’t understand why I don’t want that man in my life, then you don’t understand me at all, anyway.”
She straightened. “Well then, I guess we don
’t have anything left to say to each other.”
“I think that’s a fair assessment.”
“And I should find a different job.”
“At your earliest convenience.”
“Now is as good a time as any. I wouldn’t want to be in your way.”
“Do whatever you want to do. I need to get back to work.”
* * *
Annie called through the winery. “Rafael, there’s a phone call for you. They said it’s important.”
He went to Peter’s office and answered it. “Hello?”
“Rafael, it’s Derrick from the bank. I don’t know how to tell you this, but we’re not going to be able to give you the loan to buy Crescent Moon.”
“Why not? You said it was a done deal.”
“You should have told me about your past.”
The words were a sucker punch to the gut, a strong arm sweeping his knees out from under him when he didn’t see it coming. “I was a juvenile. The records are sealed.”
“Then why are they spread out on my desk? Breaking and entering. Burglary. I really wish you’d been honest with me, Rafael. We could have saved everyone a lot of time.”
“Where did you get those?”
“They arrived in the mail.”
“From whom?”
“The envelope wasn’t marked. Listen, I’m sorry, but we can’t back your loan now that we know about your past.”
“You can’t hold it against me.”
“Legally, you may be right. But this is at the board’s discretion, and frankly they’re not going to give you a dime at this point. I’m sorry.”
Rafael hung up, throwing the phone across the room, its batteries scattering on the floor, and Lobo growled.
* * *
Melanie recognized the number on her cell phone.
Crescent Moon.
She leaned back on the pillows. No way was she going to answer it.
It rang two more times, then she sat up and grabbed it. “Hello?”
“Melanie, it’s Doris. Are you coming in today?”
Melanie sighed. Clearly Rafael hadn’t felt the need to share with his tasting room manager that they were down an employee. Her. “No. I’m not working there anymore.”
“What happened?”
“Rafael and I had an argument.”
“Do you think you can get over it and get yourself to work today? I’m really shorthanded here, sweetheart. We have four tour buses scheduled.”
Melanie furrowed her brow. “Where’s Jimmy?”
“He’s up at the winery helping with something.”
“What about Annie?”
“I don’t know where she is.”
“Doris, I can’t come back there.”
“Of course you can.”
Melanie sighed. “I don’t want to, okay?”
“Rafael won’t even know you’re here.”
“Sure he will.”
“I won’t tell him.”
“I’m not coming in, Doris!”
There was a silence on the line. Finally Doris said, “We need to talk, you and me. Will you please come in, just for today?”
Melanie rolled her eyes. She’d had big plans to sit home in her pajamas, eat fudge pops and feel sorry for herself. She sighed again. “Okay, fine. I’ll be there soon.”
An hour later, Melanie was sitting across a table from a determined Doris, bent on making a point.
“Have you ever heard the expression, ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’?” Doris asked.
Melanie shrugged. “Sure.”
“Bonnie said that to Charlie one day shortly before he passed away. They were talking about what would happen to the winery when Charlie was gone, and Charlie wanted to put Rafael in charge. That’s what Bonnie said. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Doris raised her eyebrows. “Rafael was standing right outside the door, waiting his turn to visit with Charlie.”
“That’s awful.”
Doris nodded. “It was an act of God that brought Rafael here to Crescent Moon.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I mean literally.” Doris sat down on a barstool. “Every once in a long while, different types of grapes ripen and need to be picked at the same time. I think it’s an act of God when that happens, just like a twister is the perfect mixing of a cool breeze and a heat wave. Something so simple, yet it changes so many lives.”
Melanie got up and took a diet soda out of the refrigerator, sitting back down to listen to Doris.
“We couldn’t handle the workload, so Charlie hired a crew of fruit pickers. Rafael and his father were in that group. The police arrested his father on their second day in town. We are more than where we came from, Melanie. Each of us must find our own way, outside of what we are born into. The sins of the father are not the sins of the son.”
“Of course not. I’m surprised Bonnie didn’t realize that.”
“She was fearful, just as Rafael is fearful now. It’s a substantial risk to let someone who has failed so greatly into the world you’ve so carefully built. And you have to understand, Rafael ran away when the police came looking for his father. He hid in Moon Lake for weeks before they finally tracked him down. He stole money from the register here in the tasting room, as well as a few places down the west side of the lake. He stole food from the Henderson’s house and a blanket right out of their daughter Tori’s bedroom. It scared poor Bonnie half to death, and I don’t think she ever forgave him, not really.”
Melanie flashed back to the image of a teenage Rafael in the garbage bin of the bakery, hauling himself up and over the edge like a cat when she offered him food.
“But she’s forgiven him now, right?” Melanie asked.
“Yes, I think she has. But it was hard for Rafael, coming back here, where everyone knew about his past. He was ashamed, Melanie. I think part of him is still ashamed.”
Melanie pursed her lips. “And now his father’s out of jail, and he came here looking for him.”
Doris nodded. “The tree has found the apple. All the work Rafael has done and all the time that’s passed have given him some room between where he came from and the life he’s made for himself, but now Martin’s dredged all that up again.”
Sadness settled in Melanie’s chest. “I didn’t understand how he could turn his father away. I thought he was being heartless by not giving him a second chance. I wouldn’t even listen when he tried to explain.”
Doris touched Melanie’s hand. “You have a good heart. Some people just need a little more time to come around. You could help Rafael with that, if you wanted to.”
Instead of judging him for his feelings.
Melanie smiled sadly. “Thanks, Doris.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You don’t have any tour buses scheduled today, do you?”
Doris smiled. “Not a one. Isn’t that strange for this time of year?”
Chapter 10
Rafael was in the barrel room in the back of the winery, moving hundred and thirty-pound barrels by himself. And if that wouldn’t make him stop thinking about Melanie, he didn’t know what would.
But it didn’t.
Not really.
His mind jostled from his failure to find a way to buy Crescent Moon to his too-quick words that had chased Melanie away. As many times as he went over his argument with her in his head, he couldn’t envision any kind of better outcome—not when she what she was asking of him was so close to impossible.
Another chance for Martin Delacruz.
Rafael picked up the edge of a barrel and rocked it up onto a pallet. It struck him as ironic that if he didn’t care about Crescent Moon or Melanie, he had nothing to lose by giving Martin another chance—yet it was his father’s presence and release from prison that had caused him to lose both Crescent Moon and Melanie.
That’s not true. You lost her all by yourself.
He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
He looked up to find her standing in the doorway, all beauty and grace. “Melanie. What are you doing here?”
She walked into the room, Lobo following her all the way. “I wanted to apologize. I had no right to insist you make up with your father, or to imply you were doing the wrong thing by keeping him away.”
He looked down and kicked a barrel lightly with his foot. “I was just thinking you were right.”
“You were?”
“I’m not saying I can do it, but I think you’re right that maybe he’s changed, and I should find out for myself before I throw him out of my life for good.” He took two steps in her direction.
“I’d still like you, even if you didn’t.”
“You would?”
She nodded. “I’m starting to think I’d still like you no matter what.”
He smiled. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He licked his lips. “You want to come over to my place and get a pizza?”
“I like pizza.”
He closed the distance between them. “I’m glad you came back.”
“You smell terrible.” She smiled. “Don’t even think about kissing me.”
He opened his eyes wide and chased her, making her scream. He caught her up against a wall, pinned there by his sweaty arms.
“Stop it!” she yelled, laughing. “Let me go, you stinky beast!”
“Not until you give me a kiss.”
She was laughing hard now, and she looked so pretty he couldn’t stand it any longer. He kissed her hard, and she opened for him instantly, making him moan. “Come home with me,” he said against her mouth. “I’ll shower and we can have pizza, then I’ll take you to bed.”
“Deal.”
He backed off and took her by the hand.
“Rafael?”
“Hmm?”
“You had me at shower."
“Aren’t you funny.”
* * *
Melanie pulled the blanket up higher before she reached for another piece of pizza.
Rafael chuckled. “I’ve already seen you naked, you know.”
“Yes, but you haven’t seen me eat pizza naked. That’s fifth base.”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s concessions.”
