One Perfect Year

by Melinda Curtis

  He’s coming up on her blind side

  How can Shelby Hawkley forgive Gage Jamero for bailing on her when she needed him most? He and her husband, Nick, were the best part of her life. Now her former best friend is back, shaking up the widowed wine harvester’s world. The safest bet is to protect herself. Except Gage is awakening feelings that are decidedly unfriend-like.

  Shelby is the woman Gage has secretly loved since high school. Starting over—together—could be the best dream he’s ever had. If only he can find the courage to say what he should have said all those years ago.

  “Gage?”

  Her fragile vulnerability was strong enough to slip past his guard.

  Shelby made a sound that was half disapproving huff, half sob and ran toward him, practically tripping over her own two feet. He couldn’t say later if he’d met her halfway, couldn’t remember much beyond her arms coming around him, pressing against the contusion near his spine. But the hug…the hug was worth every pang in his bruised and sore back. She held him as if he was a precious gift she didn’t want to lose.

  For a moment, Gage imagined what life would be like if she was his...

  Like there was a chance of that happening.

  The strength of his emotions made him realize coming home was a good thing. He’d needed to see Shelby again, if only to say goodbye to her once and for all.

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome to Harmony Valley!

  Things aren’t as harmonious here as they once were. Jobs have dried up and almost everyone under the age of sixty has moved away in the past ten years, leaving the population…well...rather gray-haired and peaceful.

  But things are changing since three hometown boys made good. They’ve started a winery and begun hiring. Young widow Shelby Hawkley, who spent one perfect year of her youth in Harmony Valley, has been hired as the cellar manager. She’s not looking for love. She’s happy making wine and taking care of her aging grandfather, the town vet.

  The moment Gage Jamero met Shelby in high school science class, he felt sucker punched, because a kid who relied on science had fallen in love at first sight. And since Shelby chose Nick, Gage’s friend, Gage has been trying to put a cease-and-desist order on his feelings. Will he be able to keep hiding those feelings from Shelby now?

  I hope you enjoy Gage and Shelby’s journey, as well as the other romances in this series. I love to hear from readers. Visit my website to learn more about upcoming books set in Harmony Valley, or you can connect with me on Facebook or Twitter (MelCurtisAuthor), and hear about my latest giveaways.

  Melinda Curtis

  One Perfect Year

  Melinda Curtis

  Melinda Curtis believes the most common topic in a bio is hobbies. Ask Melinda about her hobbies and you just might hear crickets chirp. She can tell you she likes driving fast cars (she grew up with two motorhead brothers), she enjoys long walks (with her puppy when Tally behaves), and likes the challenge of home improvement (she’s become quite good at tiling). However, she’s most likely to be found writing at her desk and dreaming about hobbies.

  Melinda lives in California’s arid central valley with her husband—her basketball-playing college sweetheart. With three kids, the couple has done the soccer thing, the karate thing, the dance thing, the Little League thing and, of course, the basketball thing. Now they’re enjoying the quiet life of empty nesters before the grandparent thing.

  Nothing in my life would be possible without the love and support of my immediate family, extended family, and close friends. A special thank-you to my husband of thirty years for putting up with me and all the voices in my head clamoring for a happy ending.

  As always, special thanks to A.J. Stewart, Cari Lynn Webb and Anna Adams for their support throughout the writing of this book. Every writer needs a sounding board. You guys rock!

  I spent sixteen years working at a winery. In writing the Harmony Valley books, I relied on my memory, as well as questions to friends and family who still work and own wineries. Think of Harmony Valley as you enjoy a glass of wine from the Iron Gate Winery in Cedar City or the Jordon Winery in Healdsburg, but know that all mistakes regarding wineries and winemaking are my own.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER ONE

  SHELBY HAWKLEY KNEW what it was like to go from fulfilled and happy to broken and sad, knew how fast it could happen, knew how it came at you from your blind side.

  It could happen in a blink. It could stop your breath. It could break your heart.

  It being disaster. It changing her life forever.

  Just moments ago, she’d been happy, secure in the knowledge that things were looking up. And then she’d blinked.

  “If there’s an earthquake now, there’ll be trouble.” Shelby stood in the middle of a narrow trail carved through her grandfather’s living room, willing herself not to blink.

  Thirty or so five-foot-tall stacks of books, journals, periodicals and magazines occupied the space. It looked like crowded Manhattan skyscrapers, minus the straight-gridded streets. Her grandfather had created twisted paths, one of which ended at the television, leaving just enough room for him to sit on the hearth and watch the news.

  “Don’t move and everything will be all right,” her grandfather replied, nonplussed. Warren Wentworth sat cross-legged, all sharp, bony angles, his hair a dry white mop. He looked like he’d been lost on this trail for too long, and had missed too many dinners.

  “Grandpa, we’ve got to move. Now.” Before she bumped something and their surroundings tumbled upon them. There’d been a time when she thought she and her loved ones were impervious to disaster. That period was long past.

  Her grandfather turned off the TV, unfurled his limbs and rose, wobbling slightly.

  Shelby reached for him, careful to keep her elbows within the confines of the path, hyperaware that she was prone to stumble if she didn’t keep her attention firmly on the floor. “How did this happen? This...this...book maze.”

  He harrumphed. “Don’t overreact, hotshot. This is my library. I’m exploring the stacks. Didn’t you once tell me I wasn’t very adventurous?”

  “Grandma said that.” Keeping her tone matter-of-fact, Shelby began backing toward safety, towing him gingerly along with her.

  “It’s called the adventure of life.” Grandpa’s breath smelled of coffee. He couldn’t have been sitting on the hearth for long. “What fun would life be if it was a wide, straight road and you knew the ending?”

  “What fun would it be if all this fell down on us?” His bones were old and fragile. “If this collapses...I’m just saying...I’m done with surprises and hospitals.” Morgues and funeral homes.

  “You’re still grieving, love. I understand.” He squeezed he
r hands. “I miss your grandmother terribly.”

  Grandma Ruby and Shelby’s husband, Nick, had died within a week of one another nearly two years ago. Shelby and her grandfather had leaned on each other through those difficult first few weeks. As only children from a long line of only children, the pair didn’t have a lot of family to rely on.

  Shelby wasn’t still grieving. She wasn’t still lost. But she was cautious. She couldn’t say the same about her grandfather. “Tell me the rest of the house isn’t like this.” She’d had lunch with him a few weeks ago, but hadn’t come inside the place.

  “Young lady, if it is, it’s none of your business.” He spoke in grandiose tones, as if he was a knighted explorer being led out of a newly discovered jungle instead of a retired veterinarian being led out of his living room in the small remote California town of Harmony Valley.

  “I take that for a yes.”

  “That is a no.”

  Their footsteps were muted by the worn avacado shag. One more turn. One more twist.

  “Where’s Mushu?” Her grandmother’s ancient cocker spaniel.

  “That dog’s been spending a lot of time in the backyard.”

  Shelby couldn’t blame her. One misplaced wag of the tubby dog’s tail and she’d be history. The house needed disaster-proofing.

  Shelby navigated the fork toward the kitchen, refusing to dwell on how bony her grandfather’s hands were. One disaster at a time. “And Gaipan? Did you chase her outside, too?” The old Siamese was probably upset that she couldn’t sit on the back of the couch and dream of pouncing on the birds in the front yard. The couch was littered with books, haphazardly stacked, ready to tumble.

  “Gaipan doesn’t like me. Never has,” Grandpa said. “She stays outside mostly, except when she’s hungry.”

  They reached the kitchen, which was blessedly stack-free and optimistically yellow, just as her grandmother had been. Goldenrod Formica. Daisy patterned linoleum. Canary-yellow walls. The September afternoon sun angled through the windows facing the backyard, making Shelby squint. Mushu lay on the grass in the shade of a peach tree, a black ball of curly fur. Beyond the fence, the Jameros’ empty pastures rolled up toward Parish Hill. The Jameros had left town, like the majority of residents after the grain mill exploded and jobs disappeared, until the once quaint and charismatic town was quiet and quirky. Not exactly the thriving, supportive community of her youth, but a community she longed for nonetheless. And one that was growing again in dribs and drabs.

  Shelby released her grandfather and sat on a walnut ladder-back chair. The room was clean and uncluttered—the collection of animal salt-and-pepper shakers lining the kitchen counter and grouped in the center of the kitchen table didn’t count. They’d been there as long as she could remember.

  “Do you ever hear from the Jameros?” She couldn’t keep herself from adding, “Or from Dead Gage?”

  “Don’t call him that.” Her grandfather gripped the chair next to hers. “He’s not dead.”

  “He’s dead to me.” Had been since the day of Nick’s funeral. He hadn’t answered any of her calls or pokes on social media. She picked up the bumblebee saltshaker, wiping dust off the curves of its black and yellow body.

  “If he was really dead to you, you wouldn’t ask about him.” Her grandfather traversed the kitchen as though he was aboard a ship deck, pitching and rolling with each step.

  When had his equilibrium worsened? “Where’s Grandma’s cane?” Shelby stretched a hand toward him.

  He tottered backward. “I don’t need a cane.”

  “You don’t need to fall.” She extended a hand again, but he swatted her away.

  “Give a man some room.”

  “I would, but look what you did with the living room,” she said drily, giving up for now. “My question is, why?”

  “I’m writing a paper on the non-invasive assessment of equine musculature recovery post-delivery.” Since he’d retired, he’d written many papers. As titles went, this one was almost decipherable. Almost. After a moment, he obliged her questioning look. “How a mare’s muscles regain their tone after delivering a foal.”

  “And you need all those books and magazines for that?” Shelby knew her expression was incredulous. It was the face Gage Jamero, her former best friend, used to take one look at and say, “Barnacles.” He claimed her features twisted up as firmly as her resolve, and were just as reluctant to let go. Not that he’d ever given in to her. On the other hand, Nick used to recognize that expression, raise his hands in surrender, and say, “Babe.”

  Her grandfather wasn’t looking at her. He’d turned in his chair to see through the archway back toward the living room. “No, no, no. The stacks by the piano were for the paper I did on canine word retention. The stacks by the fireplace were for the paper I did on bovine stimulus-response. The stacks—”

  “Hold up.” Shelby raised a hand. “There are stacks in there from papers you’ve already written?”

  He nodded.

  “Submitted for publication?”

  Another nod.

  “Been published?”

  He shrugged. “Mostly.”

  “So we can get rid of those.”

  “No, no, no. What if someone challenges my findings? I may need to write a rebuttal or be asked to write a companion piece.” He drew himself up in bony regalness. “I have a system. Don’t touch a thing.”

  “You do remember I’m here to stay with you through harvest?” She’d landed a job as the cellar master at the local winery. Grape harvest at Harmony Valley Vineyards started soon. She’d be working ten hours or more a day from now until the holidays, managing the various containers and equipment where the grapes would ferment, plus making clean transfers as the wine moved from crusher to tank to barrel to bottle. Once this was under way, as well as launching construction of a wine cellar, she’d have time to find a place of her own. And she’d know if Harmony Valley would live up to its name and her memories of it being a close-knit town. “You do remember I’m not that graceful.”

  “Of course I remember.” Grandpa tapped his temple with a thin, age-spotted finger. “I’m not senile.”

  “We need to find a place to put your inactive research, so I won’t—” and her grandfather wouldn’t “—come in late at night when my reflexes are shot, and knock everything down.” Given how he walked, it was a miracle the stacks hadn’t toppled already.

  “I like my library where it is. You can come in the kitchen door.” Her grandfather had a barnacle expression of his own, reminding her why his nickname was War.

  Shelby realized she’d have to raise the stakes. “You know, Grandma Ruby wouldn’t approve.”

  “Maybe not,” he allowed. “But she’d understand. You’ll come through the kitchen door.”

  * * *

  “ACCEPT MY APOLOGY, Sugar Lips?” Gage Jamero was up to his elbows in trouble with his latest lady love.

  Well, at least one elbow.

  Sugar Lips’s contraction built like a blood pressure cuff around Gage’s right biceps. His face heated, his fingers numbed, his body felt as if it was wrapped in a too-tight ace bandage.

  “Breathe easy, honey.” Gage tried to follow his own advice. During his internship and residency, he’d gained quite a reputation as a horse whisperer when it came to peevish, pregnant horses. Since then, he’d soothed countless mares and saved many foals trapped in utero by breach positions, like this one was. But this foal, sired by a Kentucky Derby winner, was the equivalent of a million dollar baby.

  On the floor of a hay-lined stall, sprawled on his back, his legs half across Sugar Lips’s chestnut flanks, Gage sweated through the mare’s next contraction. He hadn’t been this nervous about his performance since he choked while asking his lab partner out in the twelfth grade. Saving this foal would make or break his fledgling car
eer.

  He’d graduated. He’d passed his licensing exam, both in California and Kentucky. He had a job offer in Lexington. All he was waiting for was his predecessor’s retirement. Until then, he was working for lucrative per-delivery fees from the Thomason Equine Hospital, a facility in Davis which was also an open classroom to local university vet students. They received notification when a procedure or delivery was imminent at Thomason and were able to observe through specially installed viewing windows. Today they were witnessing Gage, one of their own a year ago, on the main stage. He’d never been requested to deliver such a valuable foal before. If he screwed this up—and there were many ways to fail here—it would be a blow to his young career. He might even lose the job in Kentucky.

  As if sensing what was at stake, the student onlookers and support staff in the hallway of the birthing center fell into a hushed silence, much like the gallery at a golf tournament before a pro-golfer shot for birdie and the win. And just like that pro-golfer, Gage knew he had supporters and detractors. No one wanted anything bad to happen to the mare and her foal, but everyone was hungry for the spotlight he’d recently claimed.

  The contraction faded and Gage regained use of his fingers, pressing them harder against the flat of the foal’s forehead, pushing it farther back into the mare’s uterus. He shifted more weight onto his shoulders and the mare’s haunches. Extending his arm, he found the foal’s front leg and eased it forward without snagging the umbilical cord until he had two delicate hooves in his grasp.

  “Here we go, Sugar Lips,” he crooned, much too aware that his back was at the mare’s mercy should she kick.

  The mare’s wet flanks heaved as if this breath would be her last. She was young and this was her first pregnancy. She’d spent much of her prelabor huffing, glaring and kicking at Gage, blaming him for her condition. So far he’d been extremely lucky in avoiding injury, but luck only lasted so long when idiots were present.

  “Dr. Jamero?” The question echoed through the birthing stall.