Season of Change

by Melinda Curtis

  They didn’t move or quit staring, which was kind of creepy. Goth mini-mannequins.

  “Slade, good to see you again.” Christine closed the distance between them and shook her boss’s hand.

  His handshake was perfect—not bone-crushing hard, not limp. Just the right amount of grip and shake. But then again, Slade was perfectly put together. He could have modeled for a living. He was tall and lean, with a hard chin, sculpted cheekbones, and black hair that was always tamed, always controlled. Seriously, the guy was so perfect, he almost didn’t have a personality.

  She wouldn’t have fought for this job if she was only working for Slade. He was everything she was leaving behind—name-brand posturing and excess. It had been Flynn, one of Slade’s business partners, who convinced Christine to accept the job. He’d taken one look at her suit and high heels the day of the interview and said, “You look nice, but if we hire you, I don’t ever want to see you in a suit again. We’re beyond casual around here.”

  Such was the joy of working for two millionaires who’d made their fortunes in the tech world. Will and Flynn didn’t stand on ceremony like those in the wine industry. They shunned hosting black-tie, sequined events. And then there was her third boss—Slade.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t dress for the office.” She gestured in the region of his fabulous tie. “I was trying to move the last of my things to town.”

  “That’s all right.” His accepting tone contradicted his disapproving expression. “Did you feel the earthquake a few minutes ago?”

  “I’m assuming you’re not talking about my car’s unique way of shutting off.” She gave him her best smile-and-laugh-with-me one-two combo, scoring a point when he smiled back, even though the Goth girls blanked her. “I may have felt something coming down Main. I thought it was bad gas knocking.” Not hardly. She’d thought her old beater would suffice and had given up her lease on the Audi. She was in penny-pinching mode, living here with her grandmother, saving for a down payment on her own vineyard. She wouldn’t have given up the Audi if she’d known her college car was in desperate need of a tune-up or a new engine or a trip to the scrapyard.

  “It’s a toss-up whether it was your car or the tremor,” Slade deadpanned. He turned to the girls. “These are my daughters—”

  His? Get out of town!

  “Grace—” Slade gestured from one girl to the other “—and Faith.”

  “So that was your wife leaving?”

  “Ex,” he said curtly.

  Immediately, Christine wished she could take the question back. Slade probably thought she was digging for information to see if he was single. What she really wanted was reassurance that Slade was more interested in the substance of the wine she made than the image he presented to the outside world. The wine industry attracted almost as many grandstanders as Hollywood. She didn’t care if Slade wore a parka in this heat, as long as their vision for their wine meshed.

  Slade smoothed his tangerine-colored paisley tie. “After our tour, we’ll head over to El Rosal for a cool drink. Or some ice cream.” This latter part she assumed was an offer for the twins. Little did Slade know Christine liked ice cream almost as much as she liked wine.

  He led them into the tasting room, the girls trailing behind Christine like silent wraiths. How their quirkiness must upset the balance in Slade’s otherwise balanced life.

  Everything in the tasting room smelled of new construction, of sawed wood and fresh paint. The otherwise empty room had a large blue marble counter, behind which was a built-in oak buffet. And blessedly, they’d installed air-conditioning.

  “Is that original?” Christine ran a hand over the buffet’s polished wood. “It’s beautiful.”

  “It is. We were able to save much of the planked flooring, as well. This house was built over one hundred years ago by Jeremiah Henderson. The property remained in Henderson hands until we bought it earlier this year.” He spoke as if he was behind a lectern, coolly enunciating every syllable. No awkward pauses, lisps, or stutters.

  The poor man is so personality-free it’s sad.

  “It’s been remodeled,” he continued, “and had additions over the years, but this room is the original front parlor.”

  It wasn’t every day a man used the word parlor in front of Christine. It drew her gaze to his perfectly formed lips. She licked her own, her gaze falling to his feet.

  His loafers weren’t knock-offs. The workmanship and shine practically screamed Italian. “We also have a bathroom and a full kitchen here.” He led her to the rear of the house.

  She passed through a doorway, dragged her gaze from the feet she was following, and fell in love. “I want to live here.”

  Baby-blue marble countertops, soft white cabinets, and a double-wide porcelain farm sink. They may have built this place out in the boonies, but they’d spared no expense. Christine could hardly wait to start talking about the wine-making equipment they’d be purchasing.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?” His smile was unexpectedly humble. She would have bet on chest-thumping pride. “The office space is upstairs.” Slade led her up a narrow staircase. “We couldn’t see a way to widen these without losing valuable space below. The footprint of the house is only one thousand square feet.”

  The office was open, empty space with front-facing dormers and soft blue walls. The windows had no coverings, allowing the sun to beat in and suck the life out of the air.

  “We didn’t think about desks until after the remodel was almost finished, so we’re having furnishings custom-built. I hope you like them.”

  “Whatever you get will be fine.” She’d work on a plywood desk held up by sawhorses in exchange for the power over all wine-making decisions. “What about the—”

  Slade put a finger to his lips.

  That was when she noticed they were alone.

  Soft whispers drifted to them from downstairs.

  Slade smiled broadly, like a papa bear finding joy in his cubs.

  Whoa. Mr. Perfect loves his Goth girls.

  It surprised Christine so much she was sure she reflected his grin right back at him. The humanness—so unexpected—explained why his everyday-guy business partners put up with him.

  The whispers stopped.

  “You’ll get blinds or something up here, I assume.” Christine quickly filled the void.

  “Plantation shutters.” He was still smiling at her, as if they’d shared a private moment and he wasn’t ready to let the feeling go. “Let’s check out the main winery.”

  Maybe he wasn’t all staid ego and self-image. Maybe he’d had a business meeting earlier. Maybe he’d had a meeting before every time she’d met him previously. That would explain why she’d never seen him without a tie. But there was something about his rigid posture that negated that hypothesis.

  From the farmhouse, they crossed the circular drive toward a barnlike structure on the same property. They’d only just broken ground on it when Christine first interviewed. She hadn’t imagined it would look so welcoming and yet be so huge, nestled amid row after row of grapevines.

  Untended, overgrown grapevines.

  The road to harvest wouldn’t be easy.

  The heat pressed down on her once more, like heavy hands on her shoulders. Christine didn’t know how Slade could stand wearing a tie. The only concession he’d made to the heat was rolling up his shirtsleeves, revealing well-muscled, tan forearms.

  Christine stepped through the forty-foot high double doors into the cavernous, blessedly cooler would-be winery. The new-construction smell was less noticeable here with the doors thrown open. It was empty, just metal support beams, concrete, and wood. But to her, it was paradise. She could easily visualize how to fill it with equipment.

  “This was the site of the original barn, which we were unable to salvage.” Was that a wistful
note in his voice? “We built this to look like the original homestead, but big enough to accommodate processing up to eighty thousand cases of wine.”

  Eighty thousand cases?

  Each case contained twelve bottles. He was talking close to a million bottles.

  Red flag. Serious red flag.

  “Slade.” She carefully kept her voice even, her expression polite. “As I understand it, you only own forty acres of vineyard. That’s enough to produce about five thousand cases.” Seventy-five thousand less than his planned capacity.

  Christine tried to ignore the alarm buzzing in her head. She’d been hired to produce boutique wine in small quantities, hired to obtain top ratings and reviews, hired to help build Harmony Valley Vineyards into something prestigious and rare. Eighty thousand cases crossed the border from rare territory into the gray zone, flirting with a fall into the quirky, quaffable territory occupied by wine costing less than ten bucks a bottle. Wines with cartoony icons and names like My Boyfriend’s Favorite Red or Bow Tie Bordeaux.

  “What’s the use of starting a company if you don’t plan for growth? It’s where we need to be in five years.” He stepped from the light into the shadows, his gaze on her intense. “Does success scare you?”

  “No.” Failure did. As her dad so often reminded Christine, her reputation was only as good as her last score in the bible of wine-review magazines. In just a few months, she’d find out in print if she was a scapegoat at Ippolito Cellars or if she’d dodged a bullet by leaving when her wine-making principles were undermined. “Fine wine can’t be rushed.”

  Faith and Grace watched their exchange closely, holding hands as if they were in some kind of horror movie, ready to unleash deadly powers if Christine took this argument too far.

  Yes, Christine had no social life. Yes, she watched too many scary films. Yes, she might have leaped into this job too quickly, since Slade seemed more interested in volume than quality.

  “We should talk.” A classic brush-off line from a boss who’d already made up his mind.

  That alarm in her head buzzed louder.

  “But let’s get out of the heat before we discuss it further. You remember where El Rosal is? On the town square?” At her nod, he stepped out beneath the blazing sun, which painted silver-blue highlights in his black hair, as if he were a hunky rock star and she was just one of the little people in the audience dancing to the beat of his hypnotic drum.

  Wilting in the heat, Christine trailed behind his two Goth girls, reluctantly contemplating her next job search.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WHEN HE’D HIRED Christine, everything about her had looked top-shelf, from her designer shoes to her carefully coiffed blond hair. She’d presented herself as the kind of woman Slade admired—beautiful, confident, someone he could count on, and with a genuineness that Evangeline lacked. He’d voted to hire Christine because she’d represent their winery to the world the way he would—with take-charge, bulletproof class.

  Now he’d count her as...he’d count her as...

  He wasn’t sure how to classify Christine.

  “What part of my five-year plan don’t you like?” Slade waited to broach the subject until they were seated at an inside table at El Rosal and the girls had wordlessly withdrawn to the restroom. “Five thousand year one. Ten year two. Twenty. Forty. Eighty. In five years, we’ll be the biggest employer around. And that’s what this town needs, a big employer.”

  Christine’s cheeks were flushed from the heat, making her look like a porcelain doll, one with sapphire-blue eyes and dark blond hair, similar to the dolls he’d given to the twins one Christmas. Sure, her mouth was a little bit too wide, but she had a friendly smile, which he hadn’t seen since he’d talked about how much wine he wanted to make.

  “It all looks good on paper.” Christine slowly spun her water glass. “Like the way I thought giving up the lease on my Audi was a good idea, since I can walk to work here. Trust me when I say I miss my Audi.”

  Recalling how her current dented ride shook at shutoff, Slade nodded.

  “But, Slade, no one’s made high-quality wine with Harmony Valley grapes in decades. From what I gather, the few people who grow grapes here sell them to a bulk wine distributor, who sells them to a jug wine producer.” Her shoulders shook slightly, as if she was containing a shudder.

  “It doesn’t mean fine wines can’t be made here.”

  “It doesn’t mean it’ll be easy.” The tension at the corners of her mouth hadn’t been there ealier.

  “Nothing about this winery has been easy.” An understatement. Approvals, permits, and zoning had taken twice as long as planned. The barn conversion had turned into a demolition and full rebuild. Slade and his partners should have left Harmony Valley months ago. It was time to stop the budget hemorrhage on the winery, close the loop on this project, and get back to what they did best—designing game applications.

  “One thing I didn’t see today is your wine cave.”

  “Wine cave?” Slade echoed as if he was in a cavern.

  “Yeah, the wine cave. Where you store wine.” There was a tentative note in her voice, as if she was starting to doubt her decision to come work for them.

  “There aren’t any caves around here.” And as far as Slade knew, it wasn’t a prerequisite to having a winery.

  “It doesn’t have to be a cave. For energy efficiency, many wineries build their storage facilities belowground.”

  That sounded expensive. Slade’s palms dampened. “Won’t we be storing the wine in the winery?” Granted, he and his partners were beer guys, but they’d hired a consultant—a friend of a friend of Flynn’s who worked for a winery in Monterey—for input on winery requirements.

  The twins returned from the bathroom under scrutiny of Harmony Valley residents, who’d probably never seen preteens in wigs and Goth gear when it wasn’t Halloween. Their Gothness stood out amid the myriad of bright primary colors that had been used to paint every chair, table, and wall in the Mexican restaurant.

  Slade’s next-door neighbor, who was the town’s retired undertaker and former cemetery owner, sat two tables over. Hiro Takata had a perpetual hunch to his shoulders, a consistently rumpled wardrobe, and the kindly aging face of his Japanese ancestors. He’d been there the day of Slade’s horrendous mistake, although he’d never said anything to anyone, not even Slade. “These your girls?”

  “Yes.” Slade hoped his smile said what a proud dad he was. He pictured them in conservative jeans shorts, pink T-shirts, with dark hair and no makeup. His smile came a little easier.

  “What are they auditioning for?” Takata hiccup-belched.

  Slade held on to his proud-dad-no-matter-what smile. “They’re playing dress up.” He hoped.

  “In my day, you dressed up at home or in your backyard.” Takata’s scrutiny focused on Christine. “They look like those women on your T-shirt.”

  Christine held out her shirt at the waist, creating a rock-and-roll Useless Snobbery billboard of dark hair and black-on-white face paint. “The classics never go out of style.” She winked at the girls, who didn’t wink back.

  The waitress arrived to take their order and Old Man Takata, as he’d been known to the kids of Harmony Valley for twenty-plus years, pushed himself to his feet, wobbled, then shuffled out the door wielding his cane like a third appendage.

  The twins ordered ice cream by pointing to it on the menu, and sat without speaking, as if this was the most boring day of their lives but they’d power through it. Slade felt sorry for them, but he had a business to run. Amusement parks and sunny beaches would have to wait. Will had taken point on the permits and approvals. Flynn had taken point on structural construction. Slade was taking point on managing winery operations. Once it was up and running, he’d leave the day-to-day tasks to someone capable who shared his vision. He’d been
hoping that person was Christine.

  His winemaker scanned the wine on El Rosal’s list, frowned, and ordered ice cream. Slade went for the fully-loaded nachos and a beer—late lunch of champions and comfort food of bad decision-makers. He wasn’t sure where he was netting out today—champion or bad decision-maker. He hoped the jury was still out.

  “Back to our storage needs.” Her smile had a strained quality to it. “The winery you built will be used for initial grape crushing and fermentation. For the equipment we need, for the capacity you want long-term, I’ll use up every inch of that place.” She leaned closer and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze just once. “But we’ll also need a wine cave.”

  “Why?” Slade closed his eyes and tilted his head to the ceiling, ignoring the fact that people didn’t invade his personal space. Ever. All their plans. All that money. The tension in his chest unraveled into the familiar downward drag of failed expectations. “We paid someone to tell us what equipment we needed to start a winery. We based our budgets and our plans on his advice.”

  “A consultant?”

  “Not exactly.” Slade wasn’t used to squirming. He knew they should have paid a legitimate consultant and not a friend of a friend of Flynn’s. But at the time, it hadn’t looked as if the winery would be approved by the town council. Failure tugged at him again. He wiped his palms on his slacks.

  “Once fermentation is done, we’ll be transferring wine into smaller barrels. That’s where the magic happens. Our Cabernet Sauvignon may age in oak for three years, while the Chardonnay might only be a year.” Her smile was patient when he probably didn’t deserve patience. Overlooking proper storage was a stupid mistake. Slade hadn’t made such a stupid mistake in eight years. “Why don’t you show me your budget?”

  He opened his laptop bag, retrieved a printed copy of their equipment-purchasing plan and operating budget, and woodenly handed it over. The twins watched wordlessly, their patience matching his winemaker’s.

  Christine spent a good deal of time reviewing it, making notes in the margin, crossing things out and drawing arrows. Finally, she moved his purchase plan and budget into the space between them and leaned close, so close he could smell the vanilla scent of her hair.