Marina Adair - Autumn in the Vineyard

Susan Jance was a wine broker to the rich and entitled. Her clientele included some of the wealthiest wine collectors in the world, with Remington being at the top of her list. He was the new face to an old money hotel empire and as such liked to scout out the up-and-comers before their wines went to auction.

“Remington isn’t just looking to grow his own collection. Susan says he’s looking for a wine that is fine enough to grace his personal cellar while also wooing his high rollers in his hotels. Kind of a ‘sample my life by sampling my collection’ kind of treatment for his VIPers. Ten acres won’t cut it and we can’t lose this deal.”

“I know,” Nate said, pulling out his SAUL’S CLUSTERFUCK LIST and adding TAKE SUSAN JANCE TO DINNER in slot number seven.

When life got crazy, Nate made lists. Had since his parents died. It was his way of finding logic in otherwise emotional situations. And right now, he was staring down a tornado of emotion.

“How much is Saul asking for the other half?” Marc asked, after the waitress delivered a full pitcher and disappeared.

“It’s already sold,” Nate admitted. How had this even happened?

“Sold? To who?” Trey asked then started shaking his head. “No way. I thought the Baudouins were having money problems.”

“Yeah, well Charles must have found the money somewhere,” Nate said, remembering how Frankie was all but preening this morning in her wet, translucent tank top. Okay, so the top had been black, but it was still wet and if he stared hard enough, he could see her chilled nipples poking through the fabric.

“Seven million?” Trey challenged, emptying the pitcher into his mug and signaling the waitress for a refill. “Where does a guy who was willing to screw over the entire town to save his winery suddenly find seven and a half million?”

That was what Nate was trying to figure out. Just a few months ago, Charles had tried to ruin the Summer Wine Showdown in hopes of discrediting the DeLucas. Fortunately for Nate, the only name discredited had been Baudouin. Unfortunately for Charles, he’d lost several local accounts because of it.

“Saul didn’t sell it and Charles doesn’t own it,” Gabe, head of the DeLuca family, said from behind.

Nate turned around and saw his older brother, looking like the daddy he was now, dressed in jeans, a faded—and very wrinkled—college t-shirt, and stubble from three days ago. He dropped his body onto the seat next to Nate, picked up Trey’s new beer and downed it in one long swallow.

“I thought you weren’t allowed to drink,” Trey said, reaching for the empty glass.

“I chose not to drink and that was when Regan was pregnant. In case you haven’t noticed, she isn’t any more,” Gabe said, eying Marc’s mug.

Regan was Gabe’s wife and not only was she no longer pregnant, but the dark circles and bloodshot eyes said Gabe still wasn’t sleeping. At all. Whereas Nate’s oldest niece Holly was a talker, his new little niece Sofia, adorable as she was, was a screamer. Baby Sofie had come home from the hospital three weeks ago and Gabe hadn’t slept a wink since.

“How is Regan?” Marc asked.

“Amazing.” Gabe smiled. And man his brother looked happy. That was all it took, just the mention of his sweet wife and he perked right up. Marc was the same way lately. Nate was happy for them, he genuinely was.

In fact, he wouldn’t mind having a woman in his life. A sweet woman with a bright smile and a big heart. A picture of Frankie popped into his head and he flinched. Sweet. He wanted sweet. And a home, not a rundown alpaca farm.

“How are you handling things?” Nate asked.

“How the hell do you think?” Gabe said, his smile fading, but there was no anger in his voice. He was too tired for anger. “I haven’t slept in what feels like a year, my daughter cries every time I hold her, Holly is already asking for another sister—she wants to return her for one who doesn’t cry all the time—and Regan’s OBGYN told her that after the C-section she needs to take it easy for at least another few weeks. Somehow my wife took ‘bed rest’ to mean ‘I’m throwing Sofie a one-month birthday party. By the way, you’re all invited.’ ”

Gabe pulled three pink envelopes out of his pocket and slid them across the table. Inside was an even pinker card, shaped like two baby booties. But what had Nate smiling was the frilly embossed cursive, which looked more wedding invitation than baby’s birthday and read: COME CELEBRATE ST. HELENA’S OFFICIAL HARVEST BABY’S FIRST MONTH-DAY.

“Official harvest baby?” Nate laughed.

“Wait, this is on the same day as the Cork Crawl,” Trey pointed out and Gabe groaned. Apparently this had been a point of contention.

In wine country, the harvest season brought out hundreds of thousands of visitors and their spending bucks to the valley. In St. Helena, harvest season brought the annual Cork Crawl. It was the Oscars of wine, where the biggest names in the valley went head to head in a tasting that declared the king of wines for the following year. Nate’s family had reigned supreme as the undefeated Cork King since 1982.

“The Crawl is always over by late afternoon and this starts at six. Sharp,” Gabe said to the group but was staring at Trey. “You will all be there, and on time, and you will all smile the entire fucking night, got it?”

They all nodded. Well, except for Trey who glared out the window.

“Great, now since we have that settled, can someone pour me another beer because Regan told me that Glow sold the north parcel to Frankie for just under a mill,” Gabe said, and Marc immediately flagged down the waitress for another mug.

“One million?” Nate choked. “That land was worth at least—”

“You’d better say ten million, since you convinced us that ours was worth seven and we don’t even have enough grapes to make a jar of freaking jam,” Trey said.

Until recently, the direction and decisions concerning the wineries had been made based on marketability and returns. Now, after closing the biggest distribution deal in their company’s history, DeLuca Wines had the money to “tinker.” But tinkering came at double the price for half the land.

The waitress delivered the mug and Nate waited for Gabe to take a drink before he spoke. “She must have bought it for her grandpa.”

Because why would she buy it for herself? Frankie’s life was her family’s vineyard. It was one of the few things that, outside of getting on each other’s nerves, they had in common.

“Frankie no longer works for Baudouin Vineyards,” Gabe said, pinning Nate with a look that he couldn’t decipher.

“What?” Nate felt everything slow to a nauseating stop. “There’s no way she’d quit.”

“She didn’t quit. She was fired. I overheard Regan on the phone with Frankie earlier, which is why I came here,” Gabe said. “I guess Charles was so mad about Frankie helping with the Showdown that he fired her and kicked her out of the family business. According to Regan, Frankie is really upset. The old goat refuses to see or even speak to her.”

Nate felt sick. For a girl who’d spent her life on the edge of the family unit looking in, kicking her out of the family business would have felt more like being kicked out of the family entirely.

“How did we not know this?” Nate asked, then answered his own question. She didn’t want anyone to know.

His stomach knotted at the memory of how she’d looked at him all big eyes and—Christ, now that he thought about it, she was begging him for an out. A way to salvage the relationship she’d worked so hard to create with her grandfather and still not let the town down.

Instead of helping her, he stuck her square in the middle of the fight, a place that her family had resigned her to years ago. She knew that to make it an official vote, there had to be a member from each of the town’s founding families.