Autumn in the Vineyard (A St. Helena Vineyard Novel) (7 page)

Yeah, she knew.

Nate curled a finger under her chin and tilted her head up to meet his gaze. So she closed her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

When it became obvious he wasn’t going to leave until she answered him, she opened her eyes and—
whoa, big mistake
.
Nate was looking down at her like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to hug her or kiss her. And her heart was praying for the first and her lady parts were partying like it was the second.

She remembered what his lips felt like on hers, warm and strong and, in that moment, right. So incredibly and cosmically right. The man could kiss. But then her grandpa had gone ballistic and Nate blurted out his apology—for kissing her. Not for screwing up her life or being a permanent pain in her butt, but for the kiss. As though it would take him a lifetime to get over the hardship.

And he’d never even called. Not the next day or even the next week. A guy shouldn’t kiss a girl like that and then never call.

Then again, what did she expect? Nate’s disappearing act went all the way back to high school when he kissed her and then the next day asked Sasha “I’m perky and petite and everything you’ll never be” Dupree to prom.

“First off, I didn’t sit on the tribunal to help you. I did it for the town and because, whether my grandpa believes it or not, I earned my right to be there.” Which was only partly true. The other part, the seventeen-year-old girl who still had a crush on Nate, did it for him and his family. “And secondly, trusting you hasn’t worked out so well for me in the past.”

The minute she said the words, she wanted to take them back. She didn’t want to talk about the past. Dealing with the present was hard enough.

“Forget it.” She turned to leave but Nate’s strong hand caught her wrist.

“No, you’re right. I should’ve listened to you about the land and the tribunal, and I should never have kissed you.”

It was impossible to speak. It was as though he’d socked her in the gut.

“There,” he added on a long exhale. “Shit, I am totally screwing this up again. What I meant to say was that I’m sorry that I kissed you
there
where anyone could have walked in.”

She wanted to say that it didn’t matter anymore, that she didn’t care, but for some silly reason she did. “But you did. Why?”

Nate cleared his throat, but his voice came out ragged. “Hell, Frankie I don’t know. You were all pissy about the winner who
everyone else
felt deserved to win. Then you started yelling that it was unimaginative and predictable, with the poor guy standing twenty feet away, so I took you aside and kissing seemed like the only way to calm you down.”

“To calm me down?” she said, suddenly feeling anything but calm.

“Yeah,” he laughed. “And, trust me, I had every noble intention of leaving it as just a kiss, then you stuck your hand down my pants and I was a goner.”

Frankie felt her face flush with embarrassment. She remembered how something had just snapped. Maybe it was the stress of disobeying her grandpa, or the disappointment over knowing that if she hadn’t sat on the tasting tribunal, she could have entered her wine and won, or maybe it was just that she’d had a dry spell that had spanned two harvests. Whatever the reason, one touch of his lips and she’d been so aggressive, she’d practically knocked him over.

“You could have at least told me that my grandpa was in the room.”

“I didn’t see him,” Nate defended.

“He was looking right at you!”

“Again,” Nate said, pointing to his southern region. “Hands down my pants. Any guy getting a hand job would have had a hard time focusing.”

“Half a hand job,” she smiled. “I never finished.”

“Believe me, I remember.” So did Frankie. She remembered vividly how good he smelled, tasted, felt pressed against her body. “Anyway, what I am trying to say is that I’m sorry you lost your job over it.”

“Yeah, me too.” She’d lost so much more than just a job that night. Her grandfather walking away like he had, even after she explained she was just trying to help the town, had reaffirmed her greatest fears: For whatever reason, Frankie wasn’t the kind of person who inspired unconditional love. “Although I think the final straw was my lecturing him on buying that land in Santa Ynez Valley.”

Nate ran a hand through his hair. “If I had been thinking straight yesterday, I would have told the sheriff it was a misunderstanding.”

Frankie raised a brow, challenging.

“Okay, maybe not. I was pretty ticked when you said it was your land. But I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”

“Thanks,” she said, shoving on her helmet and adjusting the strap. “For the apology and that touching walk down memory lane, but I’m still not selling.”

“Yeah, didn’t think you would,” he shrugged. “Can’t blame a guy for making an offer, though.”

Frankie climbed on the bike. She felt him watching her.

“Did you ever explain things to Charles? How what you did saved the event?”

She almost missed the question over the rumbling of her engine as she started her bike.

“Yeah,” Frankie said, staring at the road and making sure not to betray herself. “He wasn’t interested.” Frankie flipped down the visor of her helmet and took off.

CHAPTER 4

M
ittens was driving her insane.

Okay, to be fair, it wasn’t the alpaca’s fault that he’d eaten the mesh on the screen door and the top two boards off the first step of the porch. Frankie should have come straight home after the hearing and fed him. Instead, fired up and frustrated by the day’s events, she burned up the pavement until she burned out the need to scream—or cry. The result: She was exhausted, Mittens had a stomachache, and now, instead of checking her vines to make sure none of the heavier clusters had broken from their ties, she was cutting down the boards to size.

“
Wark.
”

“Is that all you have to say for yourself?” Frankie asked, firing up the skill saw and making the last cut.

“
Wark. Wark. Wark.
”

Mittens, cured from his bellyache after eating every last flower in the flowerbed, pranced around proudly.

“Let’s see if you’re still strutting when I have to sell your manly coat to make next year’s sweater sets so I can afford to buy
new plants,” Frankie muttered, wiping the sweat off her brow and picking up her nail gun. “You do this to even one of my vines and I’ll be eating alpaca jerky for the next year. Got it?”

Mittens walked over to Frankie and headbutted her shoulder. Moving to her neck, he began to nuzzle and emanate a low, happy hum. She shoved him back and looked up as the alpaca batted his big, thick lashes her way.

“Flirting doesn’t work with me, dude. Hard to charm your way into to my panties of steel.”

“Well, then you should consider some lace,” a weathered voice came from behind. “Lace likes to be charmed. Perhaps silk.”

“We should take her to The Boulder Holder, Lucinda,” added a voice that sounded like the queen of England, only with an Italian accent. “They’re having a Harvest sale on all their autumn colored unmentionables.”

Frankie shot the last nail in the board and turned around. Standing at the bottom of the walkway, in overalls and holding shovels, was Aunt Lucinda, her two sidekicks, ChiChi Ryo and Pricilla Moreau, and her cat. Okay, so ChiChi was dressed in a tan pantsuit and wearing gem encrusted gardening gloves, Aunt Luce was holding a pickax, and Mr. Puffins was wearing a sunbonnet, but they were all ready to do some serious manual labor.

“Maybe my panties don’t want to be charmed,” Frankie said, dusting off her hands and hating that that uptight DeLuca flashed in her mind and she couldn’t help but wonder if he was more of a silk or lace kind of man.

Mittens followed closely behind her, sniffing Mr. Puffins before taking an experimental nibble of the silk flower on the cat’s hat. Mr. Puffins narrowed his eyes but allowed the welcome.

“Then you haven’t met the right charmer, dear,” Pricilla, world renowned baker and Napa County’s coupon poker champion—senior and otherwise—said with a grin that made Frankie want to cover her eyes.

“Yeah, I remember what happened last time you said that.” Frankie had spent the night sucking face with a biker named Wreck, before her three wide-eyed grannies had gotten them all permanently banned from Anaconda, a strip joint in Reno.

“Aren’t you going to invite us in?” Aunt Luce asked.

“I thought you were here to work.” Frankie looked at her freshly cut boards, the setting sun, and back to the grannies. It was too late to start on anything now. They all knew it, which was why they smiled expectantly up at her. Even Mittens seemed to be grinning. “You aren’t going to go away until you come in and see the place, huh?”

“Nope,” they said in unison.

Frankie crossed her arms and took in a deep breath. She loved her aunt and surrogate grannies, she really did. But she knew why they were here. And she did
not
want to talk about the judge’s ruling, Charles’s stubborn pride, or how she was sharing land with a freaking DeLuca.

“Not one word about idiotic men,” Frankie muttered and Mittens bared his teeth.

“I just brought over dinner.” Pricilla held up a to-go bag from Sweet and Savory Bistro, the new local’s hot spot eatery that Pricilla and her granddaughter opened last month. “Lexi’s special pork loin.”

It wasn’t an answer, she noticed. And she knew better than to believe the innocent blinking behind those bifocals. Frankie also knew better than anyone in town how much trouble these three could cause. She spent more time with them than people
her own age. But Lexi’s pork loin smelled amazing and Frankie was starved. She’d split her last Pop Tart with Mittens before she’d left for court.

Frankie gave them all a stern look for several long seconds before turning and walking into the house. “Watch your step.”

She walked through the front room, silently cringing as three sets of orthopedic shoes squeaked on the wooden floor behind her. She knew what they saw. Nothing about the house was impressive. The building itself was sound, but the furniture was outdated, the wallpaper covered in grapes, and everything was coated in a fine layer of dust.

Saul and Glow hadn’t lived in the house in years. When their kids went away to college they had moved closer to town. So, in addition to prepping for the upcoming harvest and planting her soon-to-be vineyard, Frankie had a decade of grime to deal with.

They walked into a large farm style kitchen, with more grapes, and Frankie grabbed a bottle of her Cab off the table and four wine glasses. Pricilla pulled a sanitizing wipe from somewhere inside her crocheted purse and went about wiping the table down.

ChiChi opened and closed every last cupboard and shook her head. “Child, how long have you been living here?”

“Since Monday,” Frankie admitted.

“How have you managed to eat when you don’t have a single plate, cup, or fork in the entire house?”

Frankie looked at Luce who was stroking Mr. Puffins and rolled her eyes at ChiChi’s outrage over Frankie’s lack of homemaking skills. Luce was the one person who completely understood Frankie. They were two peas in an extremely screwed up pod.

“I have cups.” Frankie held up her wine glasses and smiled.

“You’ve got a set of shot glasses too. The ones I brought you as a housewarming present,” Luce added with a grin.

“Yeah, but no water to wash them. I guess Saul had the same tank working both the house and the vineyard.”

“I already called Walt,” Luce said. “He’ll be over first thing Monday to check out the water tank and see if he can get the water running, at least to the property.”

“Shot glasses. No indoor plumbing,” ChiChi chided as though she didn’t, on occasion, sip homemade Angelica, aka fancy people’s moonshine, from teacups. “You two are as bad as my grandson, Trey. Boy doesn’t even have a place of his own and he’s coming on thirty.”

“Lexi sent paper plates and plasticware,” Pricilla said. “So stop harassing the poor girl and help me serve before it gets cold. And Trey would get himself a place if you all didn’t pamper him.”

ChiChi harrumphed but took her seat. In minutes, supper was being spooned up, plates were being passed, and a comforting hum of chatter filled the room. Frankie looked around the table at three incredible women whose friendship had outlasted wars, marriages, funerals, and feuds and found herself smiling. What would she give to belong to something as special as what they’d created?

Oh, she had friends. There were Jordan Schultz and Regan Martin—well, Regan DeLuca now—but for whatever reason, Frankie had never been able to fully open up. Not the way these women did. There was nothing hidden between them. Even when ChiChi had married Geno DeLuca, breaking Charles’s heart and starting a feud that would forever change the shape of St. Helena, never once had their friendship waivered.

The humbling part: They’d always made room for Frankie in their group, especially after the divorce. Going out of their way to include her in all of their plans, their crazy and sometimes illegal schemes, to make her feel a part of something. Which was why, when Frankie looked up from her nearly devoured dinner to find the grannies’ plates virtually untouched and all bifocals on her, she stopped, fork in midair. “What?”

They exchanged worried looks, then Luce spoke. “How are you doing? After today?”

“Great,” she lied, taking another forkful of green. Usually she hated anything green on her plate, but Lexi always managed to make it taste just like bacon. And Frankie loved bacon.

“Stubby seemed concerned with your money flow,” Luce said, referring to Judge Pricket. After a very brief and, according to Luce, unsatisfying affair during the Nixon administration, she’d resorted to calling him Stubby.

Frankie almost reminded them that there was to be no stupid men talk, then decided it was a waste of breath. If they wanted to talk about the land or Charles, they were going to talk. And talk. And talk. Until Frankie answered.

“Besides the small issue with the water tank and sharing soil with a DeLuca”—she looked at ChiChi—“no offense”.

ChiChi waved a dismissive hand. “None taken. I know how rigid my Nathaniel can be.”