His and Emily’s relationship might never have been white-hot, but in the five years they were man and wife, they’d settled into a cooperative existence. Emily had taken on the lion’s share of raising the twins and managing their social life. Not that Jack wanted to avoid parenting and spending time with friends. But as Arabella Cellars’ estate manager, he was his mother’s second in command in charge of production, hiring and firing, infrastructure, and R&D. He spent long days on the phone, in the fields, and in his office.
“I’ve been doing a little research, and I already have a promising candidate in mind,” said Mother. “Judge Mitchell’s daughter, Prudence. Gustave has invested wisely over the years.”
“Prudence?” Jack pictured one of the stars of his girl’s high school soccer team. She was known for wearing a tracksuit, both on the field and off. “Pru never married?”
“No. And—she’s an only child.”
Emily had died before inheriting her family’s land. That left Jack back at square one, as far as Mother was concerned.
“What’s Pru been doing with her life?”
“After earning her master’s and her CPA, she started her own accounting firm. If she’s anything like our accountant, she’s organized, trustworthy, and has excellent time management skills. That, plus her obvious appreciation of athletics was what caught my eye.”
A distant view of snow-capped Mt. Hood appeared through Jack’s window, a sign that they were almost home. As much weight as Mother put on Judge Mitchell’s wealth, Jack had his own reasons for seeking a new partner. Sister Mary Margaret’s advice stuck in his head. Maybe she was right. Maybe a new mother was exactly what the twins needed to turn them back into the sweet little girls they’d been until puberty hit.
And while Pru was more likely to make the cover of Sports Illustrated than its swimsuit issue, that was precisely the point. He wasn’t looking for love. What he was looking for was a sensible, steady, and practical mother to help him keep a tight rein on two high-strung adolescents.
“You talked to the judge?”
“I took pains to maintain ties with all my influential friends in Oregon while we were overseas. I’ll text you Prudence’s cell phone number. She’s expecting to hear from you as soon as we get settled in.”
Chapter Seven
Ribbon Ridge
The next day
Harley skipped up the steps to the law offices of Ryan O’Hearn Associates, scarlet leaves crunching beneath the soles of her buttery leather boots. Her mood matched the spring in her step. A decade ago she’d left Newberry for the big city with nothing but her portfolio full of drawings and a broken heart. Now she was coming home, a strong, self-made woman.
Home . . . endless, rolling vineyards. Wildflower meadows to roam in place of crowded sidewalks. Goat yoga. Deep down, Harley’s heart had never left wine country.
But she wasn’t coming home to the little block house. She was about to purchase the home of her dreams. And what better time than harvest? The air hung with the heady scent of ripening grapes while the vineyards swarmed with pickers’ brightly colored jackets.
A glass door opened silently to a sleek reception area. Her eye skimmed over the quality chrome and glass furnishings, and she shrank a little. Then she squared her shoulders and smoothed down her new, watered silk kimono. Her outfit was as far as you could get from the days when she’d excused away her thrift shop wardrobe by claiming to have a thing for vintage.
“Harley Miller-Jones. I have a nine o’clock appointment,” she said, her breathlessness giving away the butterflies in her stomach.
“Have a seat,” said the receptionist, rising. “I’ll tell Ryan you’re here.”
Ryan, not Mr. O’Hearn. That casual attitude was what distinguished towns like Newberry from their more cosmopolitan neighbors. Harley noticed details like that. Little things, like the black silhouette of tree branches against an autumn sunset, the endless variation of green in a summer landscape, the textural contrast between pinecones, rough in her palm, and fat, purple grapes, threatening to burst with the slightest pressure.
Forget sitting. She snatched the latest issue of Wine Spectator from the coffee table and flipped through it as she paced impatiently before the masculine gray sofa.
Ryan O’Hearn materialized with a smooth smile and an outstretched hand. “Harley.”
One glimpse at his well-cut suit and crisp white shirt, combined with the cold, hard press of his gold signet ring against her skin, brought the past rushing back to her—the chasm that existed between the haves and the have-nots, back when she was growing up in this town. Harley’s mom was once a stripper. Her dad had ridden with an outlaw motorcycle gang. To this day, they had never seen fit to make their union legal. But after the check she’d just deposited into her bank account at the signing of her latest design contract, there was no longer a reason for Harley to feel inferior . . . less than.
“Hi.”
There was surprised approval in Ryan’s eyes as they flickered over her. “Last time I saw you—” He bit his tongue.
“The country club.” She’d waited regularly on Ryan and his extended family at the big table outside, under the pergola.
“Still ordering your steak medium rare?”
He was too well-bred to take the bait. He smiled thinly. “How’ve you been?”
“Fine,” she said automatically.
“I seem to recall you liked to draw, back in the day.”
At the implication that she couldn’t possibly be making a living from her art, she cringed. But there was a reason for the term starving artist. And expecting noncreatives to understand the innate drive to paint or write or sculpt was like some jock expecting Harley to one day work up to a seven-minute mile. Wasn’t going to happen.
She’d come a long way since then. She lifted her chin and looked Ryan in the eye. “More than fine.”
“Let’s head over to the conference room, shall we?” Ryan extended his arm toward a hallway.
The thick carpeting absorbed their footsteps. Pretty sure I’ll never be using words like shall, even if I get as big as Kate Spade, she thought. In that instant, it registered: The difference between old money and new.
Abe Grimsky had prepared Harley not to expect him or Louise to be present today. He’d hired Ryan to represent them. Abe had said he didn’t anticipate any glitches. It was a simple matter of signing the papers. One stroke of her pen and the Victorian would be hers.
Ryan opened the door and stood aside, revealing a long, polished wood table surrounded by leather swivel chairs. At the opposite end, a man with a head of wavy hair that touched his collar rose to his feet and adjusted a silver cuff link. His artfully rumpled shirt, jeans, and tweed jacket with the collar popped up exuded the certainty of a man who labored for pleasure rather than profit. The quintessential gentleman farmer.
Harley’s breath caught. A deliciously familiar masculine scent stirred a thousand memories. Her heart slammed against her ribs. It‘s him. It’s him it’s him it’s him. Her eyes flew to his, and a shared flash of recognition bound them together. Would the day ever come when she could run into Jack Friestatt without her pulse going haywire?
In a dither she whirled around to Ryan. “What’s he doing here?”
The three of them had gone to Newberry High—although Ryan had graduated before they’d started. Sat in the same classrooms, studied the same subjects. Ate lunch in the same cafeteria. But outside the chain-link fence surrounding the athletic fields, their lives couldn’t have been more different.
The O’Hearns and the Friestatts were as entangled as the vines covering Ribbon Ridge, planted generations before by descendants of the first Henry Friestatt. Jack’s winery, Arabella Cellars, was named for Henry’s wife.
And then there was regular, middle-class Harley.
Dazed and desperately outnumbered, she returned her gaze to Jack.
“Harley!” God almighty, thought Jack. “It’s been ten years . . .” Ten years, and
he still couldn’t look at her without seeing drops of wine spilling onto her tied-up T-shirt, the night of his bachelor party.
He remembered her like it was yesterday. Untamed waves of curly chestnut hair caressed the shoulders of her denim jacket. He used to tell her it would be a crime to get it cut. It was insane, but now he wanted desperately to believe the fact that she hadn’t was, in some small part, in deference to him. After all these years, she made him believe there might still be a tiny part of him that hadn’t been bridled, cinched, and buttoned-down.
The years had been kind to her. Her skin glowed with health and the way the fabric of her dress draped her curves was indicative of its quality. But her chestnut hair still billowed out around her head, as out of control as ever. He shifted his gaze above her neck, hoping that would slow the blood rushing through his veins like whitewater. Hard as he’d tried—and he’d tried plenty hard—he’d never been able to forget her. As the years had gone by, he’d conveniently put out of his mind the sour note on which they had ended. But judging from the fire in her eyes, she hadn’t.
“The question is, what are you doing here?”
Ryan stepped toward them, ready to intervene if need be. “I would have notified you sooner,” he said to Harley, “but I’m as surprised as you are.”
Jack’s eyes glittered, as if nothing were amiss. As if the transgression that had come between them could be brushed away as easily as the piece of lint on his shoulder.
“You left the day I got married.”
Of course. Jack couldn’t forget his anniversary, even if he wanted to, and why would he want to—even if he’d been a widower for half the time they’d been apart?
A slow burn crept up her neck. And she’d told herself she was over him.
He didn’t seem to notice. Why should she be surprised? That was the infuriating thing about Jack . . . the thing that had always driven her crazy. As close as they’d been, Jack had never made Harley any promises. They were nothing but live and let live. One minute they were making out in the bed of his truck and the next he was walking another woman down the aisle without a backward glance. They might have been casual, but she was human. Her feelings had been crushed.
Now, here she was again, like Pavlov’s dog, salivating when he deigned to pay her attention.
The room swirled. Harley’s hands grew clammy and her tongue felt thick. She grabbed the back of the nearest chair. When she could trust herself to walk, she aimed her body in his direction. Then she put every ounce of concentration on placing one foot in front of the other, hoping her knees wouldn’t fail her. She didn’t stop until she was frowning straight up at Jack, and his chin backed into his neck a centimeter. “What’s going on?”
Jack pulled out a chair for her and waited, aristocratically shaped hands, roughened by hard work, curved over its back. “You’re looking well.”
It struck Harley that Jack would be polite even if bombs were falling around them. But his forced smile gave away a rare inner hesitancy. He failed to meet her glare. For once in his charmed, storybook life, he looked out of place.
“Let’s sit down, shall we?”
“Again with the shalls,” she muttered under her breath, lowering herself into the chair.
“So, what’s up with the house?” Jack asked Harley. If anyone knew how much that house meant to her, Jack did. At what he was about to do, his stomach felt queasy. But if Mother thought they should have it . . .
Harley huffed with indignation. “I’m buying it. That’s what’s up. The question is, why are you here? You’re supposed to be in New Zealand.”
There was a bitter taste in Jack’s mouth as he slid a map out of a leather folder. With the Friestatt buying power, snatching it from Harley’s grasp was going to be a cinch. “The Grimsky property is adjacent to my vineyards.”
“So?”
“It’s the only parcel on that side of the ridge I don’t own. It only makes sense for me to acquire it.”
“What do you need another house for?”
What, indeed. The entire Friestatt estate would one day be his, including the rambling farmhouse to which he, his daughters, and his mother had just returned the night before.
Her eyes widened in realization. “You’re planning on tearing the Victorian down?”
He winced inside. “Now, Harley. Calm down. Everyone knows you had a special . . . attachment to the Victorian. But time moves on. This is business. You understand.”
“That stunning example of architecture—razed, for the sake of a few more vines? Are you insane? Have you been inside it?”
“There’s a real estate term—highest and best use. Ribbon Ridge is one of the most coveted viticultural areas in Yamhill County. The best use of that slope is for growing grapes. It’s a fact. Ask anyone.”
“Tsk. Well, that’s too bad. I beat you to it. The Grimsky place is mine.”
“Not until the paperwork’s signed.”
“That’s why I’m here.” She clicked her plastic pen advertising the Turning Point Tavern. “Ryan? The papers?”
“Not so fast,” said Jack.
She looked at Ryan incredulously. “Can he do this?”
Ryan’s hands fell open in helplessness. “We don’t have anything in writing yet.”
“But you said—”
“I wasn’t present during your impromptu chat with the Grimskys before they left. I haven’t made you any personal guarantees.”
“That’s not fair and you both know it.” Her cheeks felt hot, and her chest was rising and falling rapidly.
“No offense, Harley, but Abe Grimsky is my client, and I have to do what’s in his best interest. I owe it to him to hear Jack out . . . to obtain the best possible deal for him.”
“Does Mr. Grimsky know about this?”
“Don’t blame Ryan,” said Jack. “Like he said, I didn’t tell him I was coming. I just showed up five minutes before you. We only found out the property was for sale last night.”
“We?”
“My mother and I.”
“How did—”
“Her cousin Judith is a Realtor.”
Harley’s shoulders slumped. “Is there anyone in this town you’re not related to? Sure puts those few of us whose last name isn’t Friestatt or O’Hearn at a disadvantage.”
“Harley. I’m all my mother has. I have a responsibility to her and to the estate.”
Harley’s eyes pleaded first with Ryan, then Jack. “What do you expect me to do—just hand it over?”
“It’s not yours to hand over,” said Ryan with maddening calm.
“It will be, as soon as I sign those papers.”
The tension expanded to fill the room.
“I’m calling Mr. Grimsky,” she said finally.
Harley punched in Abe Grimsky’s number and put her phone on speaker so there would be no further misunderstandings.
You’ve reached Abe.
Ciao! Louise, here.
We can’t come to the phone right now. We’re probably chowing down on some good pappa al pomodoro as we make our way through Tuscany. If it can’t wait until Thanksgiving, you can call my lawyer, Ryan O’Hearn. We’ll try to leave some room for turkey.
Ciao!
As Harley’s phone clattered to the table, her elbows came down on the conference table and she sank her forehead into her hands. Seriously? Thanksgiving?
Jack was right—she was sentimental about the house. But her need for it was very real. She had a baby on the way. She pictured the curled-up fetus, snug inside the safety of the birth mother’s belly. Right now, he was only about the size of an orange, but he was growing bigger and stronger every day. Harley already loved him almost beyond endurance.
She’d gone to great lengths to describe to Kelly the spacious house on the hill where her child could run barefoot through the meadow and sleep with the windows open to the summer breezes that blew in from the Gorge. By Thanksgiving he would be fully viable, able to survive outside the womb should Kelly
happen to go into early labor. Everything had to be in place.
She couldn’t bear to think about what might transpire if the worst happened and he arrived early and she didn’t have her house in order. Her stomach roiled, and she tasted her breakfast for a second time, imagining the horror of it spread out in a half-digested heap on Ryan O’Hearn’s gleaming wood conference table.
“I have an idea.” Ryan ripped two sheets of paper off his yellow legal pad and slid one toward each of them. “Why don’t you each bid, and we’ll let the Grimskys decide?” At Harley’s look of skepticism, he added, “No tricks. You have my word.”
A bidding war seemed like a hole-in-one for Jack, with his unlimited resources. Both men assumed Harley only wanted the Victorian on a whim. Aside from her parents and the Grimskys, no one in Newberry knew about her arrangement with the china company, let alone her multiple other franchise deals in the works. Even for Harley, it wouldn’t fully sink in until the royalty checks started arriving.
It would be months before she would see any revenues. . . years until she started earning the kind of consistent income she needed to support herself and her child. She’d already resolved to take another day job until word got out about the B and B paying guests started showing up regularly.
Think fast. She pictured the hill where the Victorian now stood, flattened. Once the house was gone, it was gone.
Her heart pounded. She was already taking a huge gamble with the adoption. Kelly and her husband had the right to back out at any point throughout the pregnancy. Their consent wouldn’t become irrevocable until a few days following the birth. If the unthinkable happened, did she really want to be stuck running a B and B with a big mortgage?
As deeply as she still cared—would always care—for Jack, she was no longer that naïve, disadvantaged teenager whose heart he had toyed with. Biting her lip, she scribbled a number, folded the paper in half, and slid it across the table to Ryan, hoping neither he nor Jack noticed how her hand shook. Then she held her breath and waited.
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