We’re actually living in a guest cottage on Renaud’s vineyard.
His house is on the other side of the thousands of rolling acres of merlot and cabernet sauvignon. And in between us, nestled near the Dumont Napa Winery and production facilities, is the foundation for the Dumont Hotel.
People work fast in the US. We broke ground a month ago, and in a few more months, just in time for summer, the hotel just might be up and running.
I’ve never been so excited about a project in all my life.
Especially now that I have two projects.
The first is the hotel, set to be not only my first real boutique hotel with only twenty rooms, but also my first one in America.
The second is that I plan on making Sadie my wife.
I know on the surface we’ve known each other for only seven months, but the truth is, I’ve discovered more about myself in those seven months than I have in my whole life. And more than that, I’ve learned what it is to know my heart. To know what it is to love.
To know what it is to be loved.
With Sadie, I’ve found all that. I’ve found myself in her—the true Olivier who isn’t bound by contracts and deadlines and guilt. A place where I can finally be free.
But, of course, it all comes at a price.
The company is still in the hands of Gautier, Pascal, and Blaise.
My sister is still working there . . . working for them.
It pains me to even think that, to know that what we worked so hard for, all my father’s morals and accomplishments, has been washed away. Sure, his legacy will always survive, but Gautier is running the company completely differently now. The online store is up and running. He’s collaborating with artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat in limited-edition runs, which is producing a flurry in stores. Even the branding has changed, becoming something flashy and cheap.
Sales are up. I guess I never assumed his plans and ambitions for the company wouldn’t work—rather, that they were never needed. Sales are up because this is a novelty, but I have doubts they will stay up in the long run.
And Seraphine is there, trying to deal with it all, knowing that my father is most likely rolling in his grave.
But she won’t give up. I talk with her at least once a week, trying to convince her to leave, or at least to come here and visit.
She won’t. She’s too loyal for that. Too determined and stubborn. She wants to do this for our father. She wants to stay on board to have her say, even if no one listens to her. She wants to be there just in case, to keep our enemies closer.
She says it’s the only thing she knows how to do, the only thing she wants to do.
I worry about her. Not just about her safety, I worry most about her sanity. What it’s like to work in that building alongside Blaise all day. She insists he drives her crazy, and I believe that. I also worry that she may start putting trust in him when she shouldn’t. She says that Blaise has been distancing himself from his brother and uncle and that his confessions to us are still holding true. But I don’t know. She can be too trusting about the wrong things, and I wish I were there to keep an eye on things myself.
But I don’t want to leave Sadie, even though she’s used to having my brother, Renaud, around, and I often fly her mother down to visit. I don’t want to leave construction either, not at this crucial time.
I know that going back to Paris will have to happen sooner or later. I’m able to conduct my business here without having to be in Europe, especially with a board of managers and directors underneath me doing the work, but even so, I need to check in on Seraphine.
I need to check in on my uncle.
I need, in some way, to let him know that I haven’t run away, I’m just biding my time. Neither he nor Pascal have contacted me. I guess there’s no need. I’m out of the picture. I lost. My father is dead. I have no control over the company. They set me up, and they won.
Still, I have a feeling my uncle isn’t going to let me forget what I did to him. He doesn’t take humiliation lightly. I can only hope that he’s too wrapped up in the company to come after us, even though I’ll be watching my back for the rest of my life.
But I don’t mind.
Because I have the love of my life by my side.
I have a new life here, one that transcends the one I had before, one that feels more truthful and real than I could have ever imagined.
That’s what love does to you.
It wakes you up. It makes you real.
Even so, I have a hard time believing that Sadie is lying here beside me, as she does every morning. That I could be so lucky to have found her, that I didn’t let her go, and that she didn’t let me go.
“What is going on in this brain of yours?” she asks, reaching over and running her finger between my brows. “You’re not normally so frowny first thing in the morning.”
I give her a wry look. “I think you have me confused with someone else.” Ever since moving here to our quaint little cottage in the vineyard, I’ve discovered the joys of sleeping in and taking things slowly.
“Okay, well, you don’t normally think so much when you get up,” she says. “What’s on your mind?”
“Only you,” I tell her. I lean over, brushing her messy hair off her forehead and kissing her gently. “You’re always on my mind.”
“Even when I’m right in front of you?”
“Even when you’re right in front of me.” I reach out and try to pull her closer to me, but she laughs and rolls out of bed, looking adorably sexy in her lacy underwear and tiny T-shirt with a unicorn on it.
“Oh no you don’t,” she says. “I’ve got places to go and people to see.”
“You know that we have to go to the same places and see the same people, right?” I tell her as she walks off to the kitchen.
“And I know what you’re like in the morning,” she calls out, and I can hear her filling the Nespresso machine with water. “You like to take your time, and we don’t have time this morning.”
She’s right. We’re driving down to San Francisco today, first to pick up her mother, who is coming to visit for a few days, from the airport, and then to check out the University of California, Berkeley, together. Sadie had been thinking about transferring her studies over to that school so she can continue her communications degree in the fall, but lately she’s been thinking about other options.
As much as I want her to get an education, I don’t like the idea of her moving to the Bay Area for so long, even though of course I’ll move with her. I just like the little life we’ve built for ourselves at the winery. Luckily, one of the options that Sadie wants to explore is becoming a sommelier. Being here and being around Renaud and seeing his passion for wine is rubbing off on her.
Frankly, I think she’d be great at whatever she sets out to do, as long as she’s happy. But in the end I feel like today’s visit to the university is just to appease her mother. Even though her mother loves me and approves of this new life we have, I think she still worries for her future.
Hopefully, when I propose and Sadie becomes my wife, she’ll worry a little less.
With that on my mind, I go into the kitchen and stand in the doorway, watching her push the buttons on the machine and getting discouraged when nothing happens. I don’t know what it is about it, but she’s always struggling with the damn thing.
“Why can’t we have a normal American coffee maker?” she whines, hitting the side of it and then opening it, peering in where you put the cartridges. “I could even deal with a French press. I mean, that’s French, you should approve.”
“Tell you what,” I say. “How about we ask for an old-fashioned coffee maker as a wedding gift? I’m sure someone will give us one.”
She stops her frantic fiddling with the machine, tensing up.
I really wasn’t planning on doing it this way, but I figure now is as good a time as any.
“Wedding gift?” she asks, her voice high and squeaky as she slowly turns arou
nd to look at me.
I grin, and I hope it looks steady, because I’m starting to shake inside.
Maybe I should have thought this through better.
I was going to do it in the vineyard under the stars.
I was going to do it on a sailboat under the Golden Gate Bridge.
I was going to do it in a million romantic moments.
I’m French, damn it. I shouldn’t be proposing in the kitchen first thing in the morning when the two of us are barely dressed.
But here I am.
Walking over to her, grabbing hold of her hand—the very hand that was grappling with the coffee machine—and I’m dropping to my knees.
Asking my love to be my wife.
“Sadie, mon lapin. Will you marry me?”
She’s speechless.
She didn’t see this coming. I didn’t see this coming.
But the best things in life are like that.
“Are you serious?” she asks, her other hand going to her chest in shock.
I nod, feeling the tears, the heat prickling in my nose, my throat. “Never been more serious before in my life. Even if I don’t look it right now.”
“Yes. Yes, mon Dieu,” she says, and I laugh. I laugh so hard because I’m so excited, and I’m so scared because she just agreed to marry me. “I’ll marry you, Olivier. Of course I’ll marry you.”
I grin at her. My heart is exploding from joy. I’m not sure I’ll survive it. “You’re not just saying this because of the coffee machine, are you?”
She’s laughing now, smiling from ear to ear, and I get to my feet, pulling her to me, kissing her hard. “I’m saying yes because I love you,” she says, and then she glances down at her hand in mine. “Don’t you need a ring?”
“Be right back,” I tell her and run into the bedroom, quickly fetching the ring that I’ve kept hidden in my sock drawer. It’s been there for a few months now, a sapphire-and-diamond ring that matches her eyes. The moment I stepped inside the antique store, I knew it was the one.
Just as I knew she was the one from the moment I first saw her. First saved her. From the moment I first realized that she was the one who saved me.
I go back in the kitchen, get down on my knees again, and then propose with the ring.
She accepts.
The ring fits.
She fits.
Into my heart, into this life, into the next life too.
“I love you, Sadie,” I whisper to her as I wrap my arms around her and hold her tight. I’ll hold her forever. “Thank you for getting off that train.”
I feel her smile against me as she realizes what I’m talking about. “Best decision I ever made,” she says.
“And deciding right now to become my wife?”
“Easiest decision I ever made,” she says. “I was yours from the start.”
“Now you’re mine forever.”
“Bien sûr,” she says and then pulls back to look at me, frowning through her happy tears. “I said that right, didn’t I?”
I laugh. “You’ll get there, mon lapin. You’ll get there.”
We’ll at least get there together.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’ve written close to fifty acknowledgments at this point in my life, and I imagined this would be one of the hardest, simply because this book was the hardest I’ve ever had to write.
But since the hard part is over, I’ve decided to make this as short and sweet as possible (though something tells me it’s wishful thinking).
First, a little about why this book was so damn hard.
I have to say, it really has nothing to do with the book itself. It’s not the characters or the plot or the subject matter. When the idea for the Dumonts first hit me, I sat down at my computer, and for the first time ever, I was able to crank out more than ten thousand words in one day. Now, that’s not unusual for me: I write fast, and when I’m on deadline, I’m often writing that much. What made it unusual was the fact that I wrote that within a day of getting the idea. Usually, I have to let an idea and characters and plot soak in for a few days to a few months before I can start writing.
But it just came to me, and I was so damn excited about it all. The intrigue, the sex, the money, the French—my God, I do love the French (especially my French readers—bonjour!). We travel so often to France that it feels like a second home, and I knew that this series had to be set there (I also knew that I had to incorporate my Chanel obsession in there, too, hehe). I was all about the Dumonts.
Then . . . I took a break from writing (I actually went to France to do a bit more research), and that’s when everything sort of fell apart.
November came along, and so did my usual bout of SAD (seasonal affective disorder). Usually we’re down south as soon as the days grow dark and gloomy, as this disorder actually interferes with my ability to work, but this time we weren’t going until December. And we live on an island that not only has no lights—you need a headlamp to cross the street to get the mail—but sits under a dark cloud for months with almost no sunlight and very short days.
Then I got sick with a nasty, never-ending flu, and that, combined with my SAD and the fact that I was also dealing with other big health problems for the first time, meant everything went downhill.
And I mean everything. I fell into a very deep depression from which there didn’t seem a way out. And though I’m no stranger to depression, especially that time of year, this time it was directly affecting my writing. I couldn’t conjure up the will to care about anything, let alone my characters or the book. The spark was gone. There was no joy to be found. And it wasn’t this book . . . it was everything. It didn’t matter if I wrote something else or nothing at all; I just couldn’t conjure up the mental energy or the will to do it. Every time I tried, a brick wall came down in my mind, and I had no strength to fight my way over it. I stopped caring, and I needed so deeply to care.
Yet, somehow, I kept going. Kept trying to climb over that wall or dig under it or pick my way through it. It must have worked, because, eventually, the book got finished. Deadlines got pushed back. The first ten days of vacation were spent writing from morning to night, fighting this story every step of the way, fighting for it to be told, fighting my depression. But somehow I got it done.
Looking back, I’m not even sure how. Mentally, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, and I know to many of you reading this, it won’t seem like that big of a deal, but, believe me, it was. Losing any hope and joy in something that once brought you those things is so devastating, and it’s scary when you start to believe you’ll never feel normal again.
All I knew is that if I could just get Olivier and Sadie’s story out there, then that meant depression wouldn’t have won. It meant that I hadn’t given up. It meant that I prevailed when it felt like I never would.
So while this book conjures up some painful memories for me, the number one thing I feel is triumph. This is the book in which I overcame. Depression did not fuel this book. Depression fuels nothing but darkness and despair. But this book became the fuel to beat my depression.
Of course, I could not have done this alone, and I really, really mean that. I needed help from all directions of my life, and I am so grateful and lucky that I got it.
I have to thank my most wonderful editor, Maria. Thank you so much for always believing in me and wanting this to happen. You’ve been so understanding, and it was a doozy of a first book with you, but—yay!—we did it, and I am so looking forward to more. Onward and upward!
Holly, you are a soldier and a champion (and, well, a genius). You put up with all my crap (and writing that I’m still not sure made any sense), and you turned it into something I can be proud of. I am in awe of you and your patience and skillz (with a z), and I can’t thank you enough.
Taylor, you are the bestest agent that ever agented. Thank you for never giving up on me and for always listening to my long rants and rambles and turning them into something to get excited about!
Sandra, Nina, Kathleen, Kelly, Ali, Chanpreet, you guys rallied around me when I felt like giving up, you listened when I just needed to talk, and you made me feel like I wasn’t alone when all I felt was lost. Thank you for believing in me and being there.
Also, big thanks to my Anti-Heroes. Another outstanding group of readers and friends who always show up and make me feel like I’m better than I really am. And my IG family, your messages of strength and support and solidarity (and, above all, compassion and understanding) meant the world to me.
Hmm, I guess the Kauai Beach Resort gets a shout-out, too, even though when we drive past you now, we just shake our fists and yell, “Discretion!” You didn’t have any room service, and the weather was borderline hurricane, but without you I wouldn’t have spent those last four days by myself writing up a storm while an actual one was going on outside, so, hey. Mahalo.
My biggest thanks, as it always is, is to my husband, Scott. I’m going to start crying as I type this if I say anything too mushy, but the fact is, I would be nothing and nowhere without you. You are such a good, good soul, and I’m so happy our souls are together. You’re so talented and kind and beautiful and lovely, and I love you more than anything in this world.
Honorable mention: Bruce. You weren’t here when I wrote this, but I could feel your four-legged support from across an ocean.
Extra honorable mention: My mother. For watching Bruce. Oh, and for that always-believing-in-me part. Let’s add my dad in there, too, for good measure.
I know I said I would make this short and sweet, but at least I got that sweet part done.
Merci!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Karina Halle, a former travel writer and music journalist, is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of The Pact, A Nordic King, and Sins & Needles, as well as fifty other wild and romantic reads. She, her husband, and their adopted pit bull live in a rain forest on an island off British Columbia, where they operate a B&B that’s perfect for writers’ retreats. In the winter, you can often find them in California or on their beloved island of Kauai, soaking up as much sun (and getting as much inspiration) as possible. For more information, visit www.authorkarinahalle.com/books.
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