It was a shame. In some ways, Harmony Valley was just what she was looking for.
* * *
“SORRY IT TOOK me so long.” Nate stood on Slade’s front porch with a bag of supplies for skunk-odor removal. “I texted the recipe to you. Once you’ve made the paste, apply, let sit, remove.”
“Thanks, man. The girls have been soaking in the bathtub since you left. I can smell them from the stairwell.” Slade took the shopping bag from the sheriff with one hand, keeping his other hand on the doorknob, ensuring the front door didn’t swing all the way open, which most people would take as an invitation to come inside. “How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing.” Nate glanced toward the stairs behind Slade. “Not after what you did at the jail.”
Slade glanced over his shoulder, too, feeling Nate’s questions pressing on him. No one was there, of course. The girls were still upstairs in the bathroom. The ghosts of the house were memories only he could see. “It’s not so bad,” Slade surprised himself by admitting.
Nate held up his hands. “I wasn’t asking.”
“No, but you were wondering. I saw people in town talking to you yesterday at the farmer’s market. They like to gossip, but...” Slade shifted the bag of supplies closer to his chest. The midday heat swirled in around him. “Whatever they told you is true.”
“You don’t know what they told me,” Nate said gruffly, in a protective tone that told Slade the new sheriff didn’t put much stock in hearsay.
“They told you two families that lived here experienced divorce. My family added death to the house’s legacy.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “They wonder how I can live here.” They didn’t understand why he had to live here. This house was a reminder of the consequences his financial missteps had on people. It was a reminder of the importance of responsibility and not letting people down.
Nate glanced up and down Harrison. “Do you have to live here? Seems like there’s more than a few vacancies in town.”
So logical. So impossible. “Where else would I go?”
“Anywhere. You can live in the apartment above the empty ice-cream parlor next door to me.”
Slade shook his head. “I can’t.”
Something changed in Nate’s gaze. His dark eyes went from mild curiosity to gentle comprehension.
That can’t be.
Whatever the sheriff took away from their conversation, Slade knew it wasn’t understanding. No one could understand.
“Dad?” A meek plea from above.
“I better let you get to it.” Instead of leaving, Nate hesitated. “If you ever need to talk about, you know...” He glanced at the staircase.
“I won’t,” Slade reassured him. He didn’t talk to anyone about what had happened.
Nate gave him a sad look before turning to leave. “That’s too bad.”
As Slade closed the door, he felt something a lot like relief press against the back of his throat. Only it wasn’t relief that he’d continued to keep the secret of his horrendous mistake. It was relief that someone was willing to listen.
* * *
AROUND NOON, CHRISTINE’S grandmother brought her a sandwich and some watermelon slices. “I thought you might need a break.”
“You are a gem among grandmothers, Nana.” Christine led her inside the air-conditioned tasting room. Lacking chairs, they sat in the window seats. Christine devoured the egg-salad sandwich and then moved on to the watermelon.
“You need a dog.” Nana scanned the vineyard, presumably for repeat offenders. “That’ll help with the skunks.”
“I’m adjusting to a new job. I can’t add a dog to the mix yet.” She stretched her legs and flexed her toes inside her boots. The balls of her feet were stiff and achy.
A blue older-model truck trundled down the driveway. Nate parked and lifted a power washer from the back.
Christine stepped out onto the porch to meet him. The heat reflected off the wooden porch steps with ovenlike intensity. “You can leave the equipment in the barn, Nate. I’ll spray tonight.” It was going to be a long day, and a longer, skunky night.
“You can’t do everything on your own.” Nate walked past, carrying everything into the barn. Soon the sounds of spray drifted out.
“Now, that man’s a keeper,” Nana said, holding the door for her. “Honestly, Christine. You’re thirty,” Nana said, as if Christine needed reminding. “Pretty soon you’ll be forty and I still won’t have any great-grandkids.”
“Not interested.” And she wasn’t. Nate was good-looking and had his quiet charm. But the only man she’d met in Harmony Valley who turned her crank was Slade. And perfectly handsome millionaires who signed her paycheck and never removed their tie were off-limits.
CHAPTER FIVE
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Slade showed up at the vineyard wearing black work pants, a tan work shirt buttoned to the neck, spanking-new black work boots, and a plain black baseball cap. He would have looked perfect, like a millionaire vineyard owner who knew how to work the vineyards, if the temperature had been below seventy.
It was odd how a few days ago she’d been convinced Slade had no personality. Now she couldn’t stop wondering what he was hiding behind all those buttons. An embarrassing tattoo? Burns?
“I owe you twenty bucks,” he said. “Didn’t protect the tie from eau de skunk when I gathered up the girls’ clothes.”
“When you get skunked, all bets are off.” The heat was at its peak, somewhere in the mid-nineties, beating down on her shoulders. The back of her T-shirt was drenched with sweat. She’d been applying sunscreen religiously and was almost out.
Slade reached for the pruning shears, which she gladly handed over. “Flynn said he’d be back after dinner. He had to make a special trip to the vet for something stronger than a home remedy.”
“That dog will smell like skunk for weeks.” She started tying vines. “Did you buy yourself a new tie in town?”
“Nope. Those I custom order from Italy. I bought the girls a couple new outfits, though.” He began clipping at a faster pace than he had in the morning.
“Are they that traumatized?” She hoped she managed to keep the sarcasm from her voice.
“I think it was more embarrassing than scary, although the more I think about skunks and rabies, the more scared I get.”
Christine reassured Slade a pest-control service was coming. “So, were the twins laughing about it? Retelling their version? How big did the skunk finally get?”
He sighed. “They don’t talk. Much. At least not to me.”
“Do you visit them a lot in New York?”
“No.” The word was as final as a door slam.
Christine took the hint and went about her work. Slade’s pace slowed. She bent to work on tying a vine at his knee, brushing her shoulder against him with a muttered apology. The accidental touch created a flush of awareness she didn’t need. How could that be? She’d touched his hand, his arm, his shoulder, and hadn’t felt the rush of attraction before.
“Since we divorced, Evy allowed me to visit, but the girls weren’t allowed to come here.” He sounded weary and in need of a nonjudgmental ear. “We divorced when they were two. And now I feel like a stranger to them.”
“I didn’t ask. You don’t have to tell me.” That didn’t mean Christine wasn’t curious. She carefully backed out from beneath him.
He moved along the row quicker, talked faster. “When Evy found out we’d sold the app for millions, she had her lawyer request additional child support. I bargained for time with the girls and won.”
Of course he’d won. She couldn’t see Slade losing at anything he set his mind to. His intelligence and ability to wrap his head around the conceptual challenges of a winery had earned her respect.
“So you have summers with
the girls.” She had to stop herself from brushing a stray leaf off his shoulder. A second glance revealed it wasn’t a stray leaf. She plucked a manufacturer’s sticker from his shirt.
He brushed a hand over the spot absently. “I won four weeks a year. In total. Evy chose to lump my time all at once. I’ve already spoken to my lawyer about revising the clause to something like a week every quarter.”
“Can you do that?”
The way he looked at her said he certainly could.
The way he looked at her said more about his other potential abilities.
Get a grip, girlfriend.
Christine needed a drink of water. Wouldn’t do to get heatstroke and make a pass at her boss. It didn’t help that he was turning out to have a very nice personality to complement his very nice looks. The buttoned-up shirt and tie mystery should have been a deal breaker. Instead, she was intrigued.
“I was hopeful that I could really connect with the girls this time, reestablish the father-daughter bond. Now I’m not so sure. Their silent treatment is killing me.”
“The best way to prove you love them is to be patient and keep trying.”
He stopped, pinning her with an intense stare. “What makes you say that?”
“I was a girl once.”
He laughed.
She felt the need to defend herself. “My dad was a vineyard manager. The only time we saw lots of him was during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons. In between he’d occasionally remember he had kids and shower us with guilt gifts.” It wasn’t until she was older that she realized the gifts didn’t make up for time with her dad.
“I spoiled the girls rotten at the mall, but they still didn’t interact with me any more than they have been. It’s hard to compete with Evy when she buys them everything.”
“Don’t compete.” She removed a twist tie from her pocket, but paused before using it. “They’d rather spend time with you. I know that was really all I wanted from my dad. When I was a preteen, I followed him as often as he’d let me.” By then she’d skipped another grade. In the vineyard, nobody cared how young she was or wanted to know how high her grades were. It was the only place she felt she fit in.
“You loved it.” Slade’s gaze connected with hers. “The same as you love what you do now.”
“Yes, but I don’t love the posturing and politics, or the decisions outside my control. Three times before this I’ve been hired to make great wine. Three times the rug has been pulled out from under me after my first few successes. In each case, someone—” she didn’t say who “—went behind my back and made changes to my wine. Do you know what it’s like to have someone you trust disappoint you like that?” She wiped at the sweat beneath the brim of her hat, juggling the feeling that she and Slade were kindred spirits against the feeling that she’d said too much. “I work long hours because I feel as if I can’t let up or let my guard down.”
“Work can be demanding and draining.” He paused, a faraway look in his eyes. “But if you’re lucky, it’ll fill the empty spaces until you don’t miss being in a relationship.”
Christine, who had only started yearning to fill empty spaces since she’d arrived in Harmony Valley—drat Nana and her need for great-grandchildren—was surprised by Slade’s comment. “It’s all right to give yourself over to your work to build a career, but give up on getting married and having a family? I can’t agree with you there. You want to get married again someday, don’t you?”
The wavelength they’d shared snapped, as certainly as Slade’s features hardened.
He never did answer her question.
* * *
BRAD ALEXANDER ROSE before dawn, chased sleep away with a double shot of espresso, and powered through his call list, regardless of the current hour.
Jolted awake by the ring of her cell phone, Christine answered with a muttered, “Somebody better be dead.”
“I’m quitting my job.”
“Dad.” She sat up in bed. “Why?” Harvest was fast approaching.
“These owners just don’t get it, honey. They’ve scheduled harvest early because a crew gave them a deep discount.” The outrage in his voice was palpable. “I don’t care how hot it is outside this week. What if the grapes aren’t ready six weeks from now?”
“Can’t you talk to them? Maybe if you and their winemaker combined forces they’d see reason.”
“I wouldn’t waste my breath.” There was a sound in the background. An unpleasantly familiar sound of muffled sobs.
Christine could hardly bring herself to ask, “What’s that noise?”
Her father lowered his voice. “Your mother. She isn’t happy with me.”
And just like that, Christine was a child again, sitting at the dinner table, chicken burning on the stove, her mother’s face pale as her father told them he’d quit another job. Christine and her brother frozen in place, afraid to speak, afraid to move, afraid Mom would start crying.
Now it was Christine who lowered her voice. “Dad, you should go back and try to work something out. It’s not too late.”
“I thought you, of all people, would understand.” He hung up.
Christine waited for her breath to calm, her ability to speak to return. She needed to be strong for her mother. But when she called the house, and then her mother’s cell phone, Mom didn’t answer. No one did.
* * *
SLADE WAS LEARNING that part of the joy of being Faith’s and Grace’s father was seeing what they chose to wear each day.
Today’s fashion choice? Country chic.
Matching overalls, the length of shorts. Matching pink-and-white checkered blouses. Matching pink sneakers. Their black hair in pigtails at the base of each ear.
The good news was that they hardly smelled of skunk when he greeted them by sniffing their hair. Score one for Dad.
The bad news was that they didn’t come down talking a mile a minute like morning deejays. Dad had a long way to go.
Despite their presence and their habit of scattering their possessions all over the house—dirty socks in the living room, ponytail holders on the floor of the hall, dirty dishes everywhere—the house still seemed morose and quiet.
As usual, the first call of the day came from Flynn. Slade put his cell on speaker while he flipped whole-wheat pancakes onto each girl’s plate. Yeah, he had kitchen skills. “What’s on the agenda today? You’re programming, right?”
Thankfully, they’d finished the vineyard work as the sun set around nine last night. Slade’s body was aching as if he’d been to one of those hard-core boot camps people paid good money for. And despite the gloves, he had blisters on his palm and thumb from wielding the pruning shears.
But that wasn’t the worst thing about working in the vineyard. The worst discovery was that he couldn’t stop thinking about Christine. They’d talked for hours while they worked. Oftentimes, she’d weave in and out of his space, trying to be efficient in tying up the vines. He’d wanted to grab on to the wire trellis on either side of her head and make her be still, with a touch, an embrace, a kiss.
Slade had spent a near-sleepless night rationalizing his fascination with her and came to a conclusion. Christine was a captivating, compassionate woman who’d appeared just as his friends were pairing up. He’d been feeling left out. He hadn’t had a serious relationship in the eight years since his divorce. It had nothing to do with Christine.
Realistically, he’d be interested in any attractive woman who came along. It was like being hungry while driving across the Nevada desert. The first sign of food and you stopped. Slade may have been hungry, but he didn’t plan on stopping.
“Yes, I’ll be working on the new app today,” Flynn was saying, “after we get through our list. Roxie Knight says her chicken coop sprung a leak and there are chickens all over her yard.”
Slade wasn’t fond of Roxie’s escape-artist chickens. “And...”
“And Mildred’s stove isn’t working. She wants to bake cookies for the kids.”
“Chocolate chip, I hope.” Mildred was a former race-car driver, now nearly legally blind and confined to a walker. Yet, she managed to make delicious chocolate-chip cookies. “And...”
“And Agnes says Christine needs some shelves in her bedroom.”
Agnes? As in Christine’s grandmother? Slade was about to say let Christine put up her own shelves, because he didn’t need to be working anywhere near her bed, when he noticed the twins were sitting on the edge of their seats. “And...”
“Mr. Mionetti’s antenna is out of whack again. Someone needs to climb up onto that roof. I did it last time.”
“You are a cruel, cruel man.” Slade smiled at his girls. They’d enjoy visiting Mr. Mionetti’s sheep ranch. He might have been imagining things, but he thought their lips started curling upward.
“Uncle Slade!” Truman shouted into the phone with the enthusiasm only a seven-year-old boy could bring at this hour of the morning. “I caught a fish last night.”
“You did? Did you eat it raw?” Boys liked things gross and Slade was happy to give it to the talkative boy.
The girls were definitely leaning forward now, their overall bibs almost sagging in pancake syrup.
Truman giggled. “No! Becca fried it for me. But Uncle Flynn had to pull its guts out first. It was awesome.” And then he was on to a new topic. “Do Grace and Faith still smell like skunk? Abby does.”
“I’m afraid they still have a slight aura of skunk about them.”
Truman giggled again. “I’m going to smell them to see who smells worse—Abby or the girls.”
The twins slumped back as one, grinning. Clearly, they didn’t have this kind of action in New York City. Faith leaned over and sniffed Grace, who pushed her away.
Season of Change Page 7
