Three Dog Night (The Dogmothers Book 2)

by Roxanne St Claire

  “I don’t care about all that, just the family.”

  “But all that is the family. Your family.”

  She glanced around at the grapevines, then looked up at the stone building that was her home. Now…and long ago. “This is my family, too. My maternal grandmother wanted me to have this. My stepgrandfather wanted me to be miserable.”

  “You have to take all of that into consideration,” he said. “And talk to them. Get to know them. You have siblings, Gracie. And they genuinely want a relationship with you.”

  “I do, too,” she said, giving in to a burst of joy at the thought of it. “I have siblings. Bitsy and Jack.”

  He gave her another hug. “Just make me one promise, okay?”

  What did he want? A guarantee that she’d stay or—

  “Let those brick walls remain on the ground and out of your way, Gracie.” He brushed some hair back from her face, running his knuckles over her jaw. “This is your first real chance to let someone new in.”

  “You were my first chance for that.”

  With a tight smile, he planted a kiss on her forehead. “Just promise me. No walls for your siblings.”

  “I promise.”

  “Good girl.” With one more quick kiss, he stepped back. “I’m going to give you some time and space. You need it. Then we’ll talk.”

  Without letting her argue, he hugged her and left.

  Grace took a few more minutes in the vineyard, closing her eyes and visualizing a big pile of bricks smashed on the ground. Then she metaphorically climbed over them and walked back up to the terrace to spend the first day of the rest of her life with her brother and sister.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  The group text came into Alex’s phone just as he reached the outskirts of Bitter Bark. At the stoplight, he read the message, which was a callout to anyone near Yiayia and Grandma Finnie’s house. They’d had a power outage, lost their Wi-Fi, and had no idea how to get their internet connection back up.

  At that moment, he needed a distraction more than anything.

  I’m two minutes away, he texted back, turning onto Dogwood Lane, where they’d lived in a two-story Victorian for the past several months. The house was charming enough, but had turned into a minor money pit that needed a lot of work.

  Fortunately, a Mahoney firefighter or Kilcannon dog whisperer was never too busy to fix a broken appliance, rebuild a set of stairs, or lend a hand on some other repair. And the Santorinis were no different, pitching in with the same frequency.

  Family.

  He took his—and the extended clan it had organically become—for granted. But what must this discovery be like for Grace? Especially after searching for years and then learning that she really did have a family, and no ordinary one at that, after thinking she was alone and orphaned? He couldn’t begin to climb into Grace’s head and empathize, but he could give her the breathing room she needed to deal with the mind-boggling changes.

  Enough room to decide if she would take the job and life and family they were offering.

  That punched him in the gut, making him slam the driver’s side door as he climbed out. Just as he got close to what he wanted, his opportunity got yanked from him.

  The same thing happened in France, when he was on the precipice of a dream career…only to learn Dad had cancer, and his family needed him. Family first, always. There wasn’t any question about that.

  And surely Grace would come to that conclusion and leave to go live her life as an heiress and world-class vintner at an internationally acclaimed company owned by the blood family she’d longed her entire life to find.

  Alex didn’t stand a chance.

  “There’s my Alexander.” Yiayia stepped out of the front door, a smile he still didn’t quite understand putting very few creases in her face. “Come to save the day for Gramma Finnie.”

  Taking the two front steps in one bound, he gave her a cursory hug and kiss on the head. “I’m helping both of you, as I understand it.”

  “Pffft.” She flicked some white-tipped nails at him. “I don’t need internet to make kalitsounia. And now that you’re here, I don’t need anything but a hand in the kitchen.”

  “Why are you making cheese pies?”

  “To take to the restaurant for a lunch special. That part-time cook John brought in from Chestnut Creek isn’t Greek.” She whispered the last two words as if Charlie Hopkins had committed a felony.

  “He’s a good cook and knows the Santorini’s menu inside out.” He frowned at her. “Which doesn’t include kalitsounia.”

  “It’s a special, and we seem to be getting in each other’s way.”

  He slowed his step. “You keep getting…how often are you there, Yiayia?”

  “Every day since you’ve been gone.”

  “Really don’t trust Charlie, do you?”

  She just shrugged and ushered him into the little office off the front room. “Finnie took the dogs for a walk, but she’s tearing her short white hair out because she’s trying to post her blog.”

  Smiling, he sat down at the desk and eyed the router. “Gramma and her blog.” Shaking his head, he added, “She’s a hoot.”

  “She’s a woman on a mission to get five thousand followers.”

  He jerked back and angled his head. “That many people care about Gramma Finnie’s Irish sayings?”

  “That’s not what she writes about anymore.” She pointed at the computer. “Ever since we moved here, she’s really spread her wings. The blog isn’t about being a granny at Waterford Farm. It’s called ‘The Dogmothers,’ and it’s hilarious. I’m so proud of that little lady.”

  He tapped a few keys and checked the status of the lights on the router, easily figuring out how to bring the Wi-Fi back. “What does she blog about?”

  “Our lives, my recipes, the dogs, the family. This week, she’s writing about the surprise wedding that wouldn’t have happened if not for us.”

  “For you?” He choked softly. “Grace and I made it happen. And Cassie and Braden.”

  “And who do you think made Cassie and Braden happen?” She leaned a hip on the desk and gave him a sly look. “Once you and Grace make it official, we’ll be two for two.”

  His heart dropped. “Don’t check off another win just yet, Yiayia.” The router lights flickered, then burned steadily while he checked the monitor. “But you do have internet.”

  “Finola will be delighted,” she said. “Now come into the kitchen and cook with me.”

  He started to dig for excuses, but she put a hand on his shoulder and pressed. “Who knows how much time you have left to roll a kalitsounia with your old Yiayia?”

  That made him laugh. “There’s the master manipulator who’s run this family with an iron fist.”

  “No, no.” She held up that fist, then loosened her fingers. “Not anymore. I’m trying so hard. I haven’t forced my will on anyone in…days. I haven’t been nasty in weeks. I haven’t said an unkind thing about anyone, and can I remind you that I not only approved of Cassie’s marriage to a non-Greek, I orchestrated it?”

  Small exaggeration, but he let it go. “You are a changed woman,” he agreed. “Why is that?”

  “In the kitchen.” She jabbed him in the arm playfully. “And I might tell you.”

  He pushed up, not bothering to find that excuse. Few things centered him like a good pastry, and he actually enjoyed cooking with his grandmother. She wasn’t as good as his father or grandfather had been, but she could hold her own and then some.

  After he got some coffee, Gramma Finnie came in with the doxies and showered him with love and gratitude for the internet fix.

  “My ladies are gettin’ anxious,” she said after they made some small talk, blowing him a kiss on her way out. “My blog is usually up by this time on a Monday.”

  When she was gone, Yiayia let out a noisy sigh, loud enough that he knew he should ask what was the matter. “You have an issue with her blogging?”

  “My issu
e is just another thing I’m trying to change,” she said, handing him a rolling pin and inching him toward the counter. “I’m jealous. It’s a sin, I think. Isn’t it?”

  “Haven’t checked lately, but since when have you been worried about what’s a sin?”

  “Since…I have.” At her own workstation, she broke some eggs over a glass bowl, suddenly more interested in the ricotta-and-feta filling than him.

  “Come on, Yiayia. I know you don’t like to acknowledge it, but you are a different woman than the one I grew up fearing.”

  Her wooden spoon slowed. “Oh, you all know I had a little work done.” She tapped what used to be a deep crease between her eyes. “That’s why I don’t frown anymore.”

  “You don’t frown anymore because you aren’t mad at everyone,” he said. “What changed?”

  She sighed and stirred some more. “I knocked on heaven’s door, and it was locked.”

  “You mean…” He looked up from the dough, thinking back to when she’d gone to the hospital last spring after fainting in the basement. Cassie had gone, too, having broken her foot falling down the old basement steps while going to help her.

  “Before that,” she said, following his thoughts.

  “That’s right. You had a heart attack in Florida that you conveniently forgot to tell your family about.”

  She shrugged. “It was enough to change me into the nice lady you see in front of you.” She pointed the spoon at his board. “And if you don’t roll those to perfection, I won’t be nice anymore.”

  He laughed and concentrated on his pastries.

  “Now tell me everything, grandson,” she said.

  “Everything?”

  “Why Finola and I won’t be two for two as matchmakers, and don’t even try to make me think that’s not why you have that sad look around your eyes. I know your face, Alexander. I know when your passionate soul is hurting.”

  He glanced up, only a little surprised at her keen insight. That certainly hadn’t changed. “It’s a long story.”

  “Pastries take time. Talk.”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s really a long story, and frankly, not mine to tell. Suffice it to say that Grace might have a better offer.”

  She snorted softly, as if there was no one better. An hour ago, he would have agreed. But then Bitsy and Jack Carlson showed up.

  “What exactly were you offering her?” Yiayia asked.

  He gently kneaded the dough, liking the feel of it under his fingers, the sense of exactly how thin it should be to flake around the filling she made. While he did, his mind went back to earlier this morning…in the cottage.

  All he’d really had time to offer her was a restaurant in the winery. But that was just the beginning, the tip of the iceberg. He wanted everything and had been about to tell her that when…

  “Not enough,” he admitted in answer to Yiayia’s question. “And what I did offer wasn’t really…feasible.”

  “What was it?”

  He gave her a steady look, wondering how she’d react. No time like the present to find out. “I was thinking about starting a restaurant in the winery.”

  “Another Santorini’s?” Her brows lifted with interest that he knew he was about to dash.

  “No,” he said simply. “A place where I could make and serve the French food and experimental recipes that I love.”

  Something flickered in her eyes. Disapproval? Disappointment? No, she didn’t look anything but…interested. “How would you cook at both places?”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But I know I’d figure it out. Chefs can own two places, and I don’t have to be at Santorini’s constantly.”

  Then she frowned, her mind, still sharp in her eighties, whirring. “That’s what you offered this beautiful lady who has made you so happy? A restaurant?”

  He grinned at her. “Worked for my grandfather when he wanted you.”

  “Is that all you want from her? That kitchen in her winery?”

  “No, Yiayia. I want…whatever she’s willing to give,” he admitted as he looked around for the right knife to cut the dough.

  Without a word, Yiayia opened a drawer and handed him a pizza wheel, a versatile tool if there ever was one. “Does she know that?”

  “I think she knows that’s where I want to go, but…” He made one perfect square and started on the next. “She might want to go…somewhere else.”

  “I see.” She poked her baby finger into the filling and tasted it. “My sweet Nikodemus would tell me this needs more salt, but he’d be wrong.”

  He smiled at the irony of her calling her late husband sweet, but no doubt she’d romanticized his memory, and he wasn’t about to change that. “I can still hear his booming voice in the kitchen,” he said, conjuring up an image of his loud, somewhat scary Greek grandfather. “‘Three ingredients, Alexander. Three. Olive oil, lemon, and rigani. You can feed the world with three ingredients.’”

  She laughed and pushed the bowl of filling toward him. “He loved you very much, you know. And always knew you’d be the one to follow in Nico’s footsteps, not any of the others. Not in the kitchen.”

  “What if I didn’t?” he asked softly. “What if I didn’t follow in my father and grandfather’s footsteps?”

  She wiped some fallen ricotta from the counter, silent.

  “That would break your heart, wouldn’t it?”

  “My heart? Is that the heart you’re worried about, Alexander?”

  “And Dad’s,” he admitted. “I feel like I made a promise to him that I’d stay with Santorini’s, like a good Greek son. Family is first, Yiayia. Family business, too. And I…”

  Still holding her wooden spoon, she came around the counter and pointed it at his face, suddenly looking very much like the Yiayia he’d feared as a child.

  “You don’t want to leave Santorini’s, Alexander. You can blame some imaginary deathbed promise, you can throw some guilt at me, or heck, you can pretend you need to be there for John. But the truth is, you choose to stay because you’re terrified of leaving the comfort of that restaurant. Of the family. Of the world you’ve built behind that grill.”

  He stared at her, every imaginable argument rising up. How could she say that? All he’d ever wanted was more than Santorini’s, but…but…

  He stayed there, paralyzed.

  “And you try to be him.” She reached up and touched his beard. “But you are not Nico, no matter how hard you try, and you are not John or Nick or anyone else. You are Alexander the Great, and that’s exactly who your father wanted you to be. Has it ever occurred to you that he’d be more honored by you leaving and doing your French thing than by staying and feeling resentful?”

  “But what if I fail?” he whispered.

  She gave a slow smile. “What if you don’t?”

  If only he could do it with Grace, instead of alone. If only…

  “Anyway, I wish you would open that restaurant,” she said, coming closer to whisper, “Then I could work at Santorini’s, and Gramma Finnie wouldn’t be the only old lady with something important and meaningful to do.”

  “That’s what you want?” he asked with an astonished laugh.

  “Yes, it is. I believe I’m on this earth for a few reasons, and cooking Greek food is one of them. So please stop talking and start rolling so I can finish this kalitsounia.”

  He did, smiling, thinking, and wondering if he’d spent these years making excuses because he was too afraid to try.

  * * *

  It still felt like a dream when Grace woke the next morning. She had stayed up until the very late hours, talking with Jack and Bitsy, though they’d ultimately declined her invitation to spend the night at the winery. They’d sensed her need to be alone, to unpack all she’d learned, and to make a decision about her future.

  Could that future be a job as the head of oenology at Carlson Woods Winery—essentially one of the top vintner positions in the world—and a home in Napa Valley, living and working
side by side with a brother and sister who wanted her desperately? Yes, it very well could be. She could keep Overlook Glen, of course, even rebranding it as a Carlson Woods property if she wanted.

  A month ago, there would have been no decision to make. She’d have flown “home” on their private jet as soon as she squared things away here. She’d have embraced the new life and gone on to forgive, if not forget, what JJ Carlson did to her.

  That was before Alex.

  Instead, she sat at her desk, with puppies at her feet, reading the exchange of letters between her grandmother and her stepgrandmother as they’d decided her fate without consulting her. The women became real and so did the heartache.

  Aching to talk to Alex and share it all, she reached for her cell phone just as someone rang the formal bell at the front of the winery, giving her a familiar thrill.

  “He came to us, of course,” she whispered to the dogs, grabbing Gertie for a kiss. “Come on, kids. Let’s go see the man we…”

  Did she love Alex Santorini? Maybe. If she didn’t already, she knew she would soon.

  Holding Gertie, with Jack and Bitsy at her feet, she headed into the main reception hall and opened the front door, already smiling.

  But that smile disappeared at the sight of a middle-aged man with hair pulled up into a sloppy man bun and an equally silver-haired woman next to him.

  Before she could greet them, the woman reached out and nearly grabbed Gertie out of her hands.

  “Reesie!”

  Instinctively, Grace jerked back. At her feet, Jack and Bitsy started barking like crazy.

  “Dottie! Tucker!” The man dropped to his knees to reach for the dogs. “Look how big you got.”

  Grace stared at them, knowing exactly who these strangers had to be, but already welling up with resentment and bracing for a fight.

  “I simply can’t thank you enough,” the woman said, beaming at Gertie. “You’ve taken such good care of them.”