Autumn in the Vineyard (A St. Helena Vineyard Novel) (35 page)

She watched as one by one, the winemakers displayed their sales brochures and logo embossed labels, signaling a go and sending the brokers scrambling to get in the line of their first choice.

The Cork Crawl Wine Open was almost ready to begin and even though Frankie was the belle of the ball, she didn’t have a ticket or a date.

Her eyes scanned the massive glass-domed room, looking past the swelling crowd, past the mahogany bar in the center of the ballroom that functioned as Lexi’s pastry shack, and past the line that ran the length of the room, until they settled on her table. Her stomach went hot with emotion and everything seemed unreal as she took in the sight.

Jonah and Adam. Her brothers. Sat beneath the Red Steel Cellars sign, wearing company shirts and smiling and greeting interested parties. In a matter of moments, the queue for Red Steel was twenty deep with some of the most respected buyers and brokers in wine. It was as if the who’s who of wine collecting had come specifically for her.

This couldn’t be happening. She had reached the pinnacle most winemakers only dream about, and yet she was even farther from her dream than she had been a month ago. She had lost everything. And yet she couldn’t even feel the loss over the gaping hole Nate left behind.

It had taken a brisk walk around Luce’s lavender garden with Mittens, a long motorcycle ride, and polishing her ball-buster boots to get the courage to walk into that ballroom, because she
knew everyone would be expecting her to sit behind her booth and sell her wine as though it were still hers. As though her world hadn’t completely fallen apart.

“Thought you fell in,” Luce said.

“What?”

“You went to the bathroom, said you’d be right behind me, and that was a half-hour ago.”

“No,” she said and her voice sounded raw and empty. “Just needed a minute to get my game face on.”

“That a girl.” Luce smacked her rump like this was the Super Bowl and she was the defensive coach. “The negotiating starts in about fifteen minutes, so get over there and make me proud. And remember, Ches-ka, they fell in love with your wine. They might not like that you are sold out, but in three years that love for what you created will still be there.”

Frankie made her way through the crowd, but even before she could take her seat, Jonah pulled her into his arms and gave her one the best big brother hugs in history. Frankie didn’t hesitate, throwing her arms around his middle and holding on.

When he pulled back, he didn’t say anything about Charles. He didn’t have to. His face said it all.

“I can’t talk about it right now,” she whispered and took a small step back. Any more emotion from her normally stoic brother would be the end of the brave-Frankie she’d struggled to pull together.

“Sorry I missed everything this weekend,” Adam said and, after a quick glance over her shoulder and wiping his hands on his jeans, pulled her in for his hug. When had they become a family of huggers?

“I’m just glad you’re back and not hurt.”

“Me too, but I’m sorry we didn’t tell you about the fire.”

“I think we all have a lot of talking to do if we want to fix everything, so I figured that since Frankie loves wine coolers so much,” Jonah teased, “we could pick up a few cases when this is over and go back to my place. Maybe braid each other’s hair. And… talk.”

Frankie felt a hysterical laugh bubble up from her chest and break free. She couldn’t help it. So instead of trying to hide it, she let it out and pulled Jonah in for another hug. It took him a minute to catch up, but when he did he hugged her back.

“Now, if we’re done with all this touchy-feely shit, can we sell some wine?” Jonah said gruffly. “I think they are about to ring the bell, and I figure it’s going to take us at least three hours to get through that line of uptight trousers.”

“Oh. I uh…” Frankie looked up at him. God, the man was a tower. “I thought you guys knew. Charles and I—”

“Oh, we know all right,” Adam said fiercely. “And Charles is handled.”

“What?” Frankie asked, she looked at where the Baudoiun table sat, empty. “Where is Grandpa?”

“A better deal came along and he wisely took it,” Jonah explained through a clenched jaw.

“What?” No, this couldn’t be happening. “What about the house, Luce’s cottage, the vineyard?”

“All taken care of. It seems that last night some guy from Stanford Specialty Markets heard that grandpa was sitting on thirty thousand cases of six dollar wine.”

“Oh my God,” Frankie had to take a seat. Knowing what Charles had to do and actually knowing that it was going to happen made everything so much worse. This would save the
family vineyard, but ruin the family name. No longer would the Baudoiun name be connected with quality and flavor, it would be associated with double coupon days. “Our name is done.”

“Actually, it’s not,” Jonah sat down. They kept their voices low, and since the tables hadn’t officially opened, the line was back far enough that they couldn’t be overheard. “The way the deal was negotiated was that Stanford Markets would contract all of the Santa Ynez grapes for the next fifteen years to be bottled and sold exclusively at their stores.”

Adam held out a mock wine label attached to a memorandum of understanding, outlining all of the basic agreed upon points for the finalized contract. The bottle front label read, STANFORD SPECIALTY COSTAL. Not a Baudouin anywhere to be seen. She flipped the page to the back bottle label.

VINTED AND BOTTLED BY SANTA YNEZ VINEYARDS, SANTA YNEZ VALLEY EXCLUSIVELY FOR STANFORD SPECIALTY MARKETS.

“Santa Ynez Vineyards?” She flipped the page to the memorandum. “When did that become its own entity? And how did Charles negotiate that kind of deal?”

Her grandfather was a shrewd business man. But shrewd only worked when one didn’t reek of desperation. And this was way too out of the box for her grandfather to come up with.

Adam and Jonah exchanged loaded glances. After the glares and eyebrow raising and non-verbal argument, it was Jonah who finally spoke. “The new corporation will be finalized end of this week, Stanford Markets is in the bag, and all Grandpa had to do is sign.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think you do,” Jonah said, resting his hand on Frankie’s shoulder.

Frankie’s eyes scanned the room and immediately found Nate. Their eyes locked and so much sorrow and pain and something that Frankie wasn’t ready to admit passed between them it was hard to breathe. He gave her a small, hopeful smile but she was afraid to smile back. Unable to hope or even hold his gaze without dissolving into tears, she busied herself with straightening the already immaculate table. But as she stacked the brochures that Regan had made, her hands froze.

At the corner of her booth sat a plain vase overflowing with dozens of daffodils. She reached out and ran her finger along one of the petals when her phone chimed. She pulled it out of her pocket.

D
AFFODIL
: A
SINGLE DAFFODIL FORETELLS UNREQUITED LOVE WHILE A BOUQUET OF DAFFODILS INDICATES RETURN OF AFFECTION
.

Frank read and reread the text until the words began to blur. She wanted to go back to yesterday when everything felt right, when she felt as though she finally fit, when she didn’t know that she was one dirty sock on the coffee table away from losing Nate. Because that was what it came down to, wasn’t it? The fear that she was one annoying habit away from losing the only man she’d ever loved.

How could she move forward knowing that there were parts of herself so ingrained into the fiber of her being that could be the deciding factor between heartbreak and forever?

“Frankie.” Nate’s deep voice poured over her like a well-aged Bordeaux.

She looked from the phone in her hand to the pair of dirty boots standing in front of her table—and then higher.

Nate looked so handsome in his black slacks and dark blue button-up, but the look on his face nearly did her in. Dark
circles outlined his eyes, and his expression was nervous and unsure. She hadn’t seen him look this way since the day of his parents’ funeral.

“Nate.” She stood, then sat back down, only to pick up the Stanford memorandum and stand again. “You did this.”

“She’s as bad as you are at this,” Adam said shoving Jonah.

“Do you have a minute?” he began, clearing his voice twice before continuing. “I know everything is about to start and I don’t want to ruin your day… again. But I’d like to explain—”

“What’s that?”

He was holding a single yellow rose and matching legal pad.

“It’s for you,” he said, offering her the rose.

Frankie had never had a man bring her flowers before and she wasn’t sure what to do. If she accepted it was she saying that she forgave him? If she didn’t, would he walk away and it was over? And if he walked away would she regret not having the courage to take a flower for the rest of her life?

Jesus
, her entire future had come down to petals and thorns.

Nate must have understood her panic because he pulled it back and twirled it in his hand, gently probing a thorn with his index finger. “Lexi said roses are cliché, but I disagree. Did you know that the yellow rose is quite a complicated flower?”

She shook her head.

“I never understood how a single flower could possess so many contradicting meanings. Friendship, betrayal, heartbreak.” His eyes met hers. “Apology. It’s all in one beautiful package.”

“We looked for a flower that meant stupidest motherfucker to walk the earth, but there isn’t one, so he got you the rose,” Adam shot off.

Frankie shot off something back at Adam. The finger.

The most romantic thing anyone had ever said to her and it would forever be associated with the words “stupidest motherfucker.”

“I know that sorry doesn’t make up for how I hurt you, but know that I never meant to hurt you.”

“But you did,” she whispered.

“I know. God, I know, but I don’t know how to make it better.” He set the rose down and flipped through the legal pad. From what Frankie could see every page was triple-columned and completely filled. “Last night after you walked out, it hit me that I may have lost you for good. And it hurt. But what got me was the idea of you never hearing all of the things I love about you. All the things that if you walked away I’ll never get to tell you. So I started making a list and,” he swallowed. “I want you to know how I feel.”

Frankie just stared at the pad and her knees went wobbly. She had a mental barrel of what drove people crazy about her, but she’d never once considered what it would feel like to know what someone liked—no, wait, the list was titled
W
HY
I L
OVE
F
RANKIE
—loved about her.

He loved her. Frankie felt her throat start to burn. Luce was right: love was forever. It didn’t matter that he hated when she drank from the carton or used his electric razor to de-knot Mitten’s coat, because even though his need to wash the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher drove her crazy, she still loved him. Always would.

And he loved her.

Nate took her hesitation to mean something else because he quickly added, “I have another two at home. All filled, but I was told it would make me look desperate.” He glared at Trey who stood three booths away and waved. In fact, Nate’s entire
family was standing three booths away, listening and watching. “I should have brought the other two. I knew it.”

“I don’t need the other lists,” Frankie whispered and took the pad.

Glancing at the first page, she felt a small smile tug at her lips. Then she took Nate’s hand and pulled him past his smiling family and hers to a small utility room off of the ballroom floor. She didn’t even let him get the door closed before she asked, “Boobs, really? They are number two and number nineteen.”

Nate laughed. It was raw and thick with emotion. “You seem to do better with the heavy stuff if I start with sex as a warm up. And yes, number two refers to how they feel, and number nineteen has to do with taste and page three, number two-hundred and seventy-six, is how they look wet in the water.”

“Isn’t that redundant?”

He shook his head and ran a gentle hand down both of her arms. “I remembered the way they looked after we made love in the lake, and it’s different than in the bath with bubbles. That’s in journal number two. But it doesn’t matter what’s in there, Frankie. What matters is—”

“In here.” She placed her hand over his heart.

“I love you,” he whispered and Frankie stepped forward until their bodies were gently brushing.

He smelled like home and felt like forever, and the way his hands slid around her, pulling her close and trapping a dictionary of words on a legal pad between them, she realized that the only three that mattered crept inside her heart. “I love you, too.”

Nate kissed her lips. “I know.”

“And what you did for my grandpa, for my family.”

He cupped her face between his warm hands. “I did that for you, Frankie. Everything I did, I did it for you.”

She leaned up and when their mouths came together, everything that she’d been too scared to say, too scared to think rushed through her chest. Things that four months ago would have terrified her, now made her feel happy, hopeful, free.

“I’m
standing
in a utility room.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and a small smile tugged at Nate’s lips. “I want to cry because for the first time, in a really long time, I
feel
as though I fit.” She delivered a gentle kiss and whispered against his mouth, “With you I fit.”

“Which is why I need you,” Nate said roughly. “To understand that aside from all logic, I am ridiculously in love with you, Francesca.”

With a final brush of the lips Frankie pulled back and when she looked up into those warm-brown eyes she knew she was staring at her forever.

READ ON FOR A SNEAK PEEK OF MARINA ADAIR’S NEXT ST. HELENA VINEYARD ROMANCE!

Be Mine Forever

Available February 2014 on
Amazon.com

T
rey DeLuca hated hospitals. Almost as much as he hated himself right now.