Once Upon a Wine

by Beth Kendrick

  “Of course I love you.” Kat sounded thoroughly exasperated. “Just because I want to kill you doesn’t mean I don’t love you! You’re the one who doesn’t love me!”

  “I do love you! I’ve told you that a million times! Why are you so stubborn?”

  “I’m not! FYI, while you were busy hiding all my financial losses from me, I was buying pink lingerie to seduce you!”

  Another long pause ensued. “You were?” Josh asked.

  “Yes! Trying to prove what a great wife I am. Like an idiot!”

  Josh’s tone changed. “Can I see it?”

  Ginger turned to Cammie. “Let’s go. I’ll just wear my pajamas to lunch. It’s fine.”

  “Go outside. Save yourself,” Cammie instructed. “I’ll find something in your closet and meet you at the car in two minutes.”

  • • •

  After a leisurely lunch at the Jilted Café, Cammie and Ginger wandered over to the Whinery for a glass of iced tea. While they snacked on miniature candy bars, Cammie checked the vineyard’s brand-new social media accounts.

  “Jacques is going to be a superstar.” She showed the most recent posts to Ginger. “Look, Kat gave him his own Twitter and Instagram accounts, and he’s getting a ton of followers, thanks to the Ladies First posts. Our little snaggletooth is Internet famous.”

  “I don’t know about all this social media,” Ginger tutted. “It seems like it’s never enough.”

  “Well, it’s definitely not enough yet.” Cammie hesitated, then shared the idea she’d been mulling over for a few days. “How would you feel about giving away a weekend trip to the vineyard?”

  “To whom?” Ginger asked.

  “To some random person who follows Jacques on Twitter.”

  Ginger looked scandalized. “You’re suggesting we let a random stranger stay at our house?”

  “I’m suggesting we put a random stranger up in a swanky hotel,” Cammie corrected.

  “But how?”

  “What we need is a corporate sponsor,” Cammie said. “Like Kat used to have in skateboarding.”

  “Well, before we can put this random stranger up in a hotel, we’ll have to get them to Delaware. How are we going to do that?” Ginger challenged.

  “I’m still thinking through all the details.”

  “Maybe Kat could use some of her frequent-flier miles,” Ginger said. “Or, ooh, maybe we could find a sponsor with a private jet!”

  “Let’s try to keep this in the realm of reality,” Cammie said.

  “What do you need a private jet for?” Jenna placed a stack of pink napkins next to the candy dish.

  “Oh, we’re just daydreaming.” Cammie explained her sweepstakes idea. “We want the winner to have an experience we can showcase on social media.”

  Jenna gazed up at the crystal chandelier, thinking. “Well . . .”

  Cammie thought about the night she’d just spent at the inn by the sea. “I’ll talk to the owner of the Better Off Bed-and-Breakfast. Maybe she’d be willing to comp us a room for a night or two.”

  “We could give her some wine,” Ginger suggested.

  “Marla doesn’t drink.” Jenna shook her head. “But if you’re serious about wanting a private jet, I could make a few phone calls.”

  “You know someone who has a private jet?” Cammie unwrapped a tiny Twix and popped it into her mouth.

  “I sure do. And he’s really nice. Really nice and ridiculously good-looking.”

  Cammie and Ginger exchanged glances. “I take it you and this jet guy have a history?”

  “No.” Jenna’s eyes were wistful. “But he used to hang out here all the time. He doesn’t come here much anymore. Not since he got married.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “It’s fine.” Jenna started to slice up some lemons. “His wife still comes here all the time, and she’s even nicer than he is.” She picked up the phone. “I’ll give her a call right now.” A few seconds passed; then Jenna pressed the receiver to her ear. “Hey, Brighton, it’s Jenna. Remember how I was telling you that the vineyard just outside town has new owners? Well, they’re sitting at my bar, and we have a question for you.”

  chapter 26

  “Brighton!” Jenna rushed out from behind the bar as a cute, curvy brunette strolled in. “I haven’t seen you in forever! Have you guys been in Montana?”

  “We got back last week.” Brighton’s cheeks flushed. “We’ve just been, um, busy.”

  “I’ll bet. How’s Rory?”

  “Sweet and clueless, as always.” Brighton addressed Ginger and Cammie. “Hi, I’m Brighton Sorensen.” She offered a handshake to Cammie, who noticed her engagement ring was a bright orange gemstone instead of a traditional diamond. With her windblown hair, unmanicured nails, and casual cotton sundress, Brighton didn’t look the way Cammie imagined someone with a private jet would look. Her hazel eyes were warm and friendly.

  “I like your ring,” Cammie said.

  Brighton’s eyes got even warmer. “Thanks.”

  “Brighton is a genius with jewelry,” Jenna said. “She—”

  “Let’s not get sidetracked with all that,” Brighton said. “Jenna says you ladies need help, and if Jenna is willing to help you, I am, too.”

  “Like I said, she’s awesome,” Jenna told Cammie. “Brighton, what can I get you to drink?”

  “Just water, thanks.” Brighton turned to Cammie and confided, “I have a bad track record with booze here.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jenna cried. “You have a great track record! The first time you got drunk in here, you married the man of your dreams.”

  Brighton laughed. “It sounds so simple and romantic when you put it that way.”

  “You met your husband here?” Ginger beamed. “That’s lovely.”

  “Sort of. I was in a white-hot rage at the time and I married him for spite, but it all turned out great.” Brighton thanked Jenna as the bartender handed her a glass of water. “Anyway, enough about my sordid past. Jenna says you need a jet. You’re welcome to use ours.”

  “We haven’t worked out all the details yet,” Cammie said. “So we can’t give you dates or locations.”

  Brighton shrugged. “Just shoot me a text when you do.” She pulled out a business card and wrote down her cell number.

  Ginger frowned. “Don’t you have to ask your husband?”

  “He’ll say yes.” Brighton winked. “Trust me.”

  That was way easier than Cammie had imagined. “Thank you. That’s incredibly generous. We’d be delighted to give you some wine, even though you don’t drink.”

  “Ask for the strawberry wine,” Jenna advised.

  Brighton finally got around to asking what they needed the jet for.

  “We’re trying to get some publicity for our wine,” Cammie explained. “Right now, it’s a very small brand. To the point of being nonexistent. I thought we could launch a contest on social media. You know, win a weekend at a vineyard.”

  “Fun,” Brighton said.

  “The problem is, now that I’m thinking about all the details, I’m not sure we have the budget. Even if we get the jet taken care of, we’ll still need to provide lodging—”

  “We really should give the winner some kind of entertainment, too,” Ginger chimed in.

  “And meals. And maybe some shopping,” Cammie added.

  “It’s going to be a huge project,” Ginger concluded. “A huge expense.”

  “And a huge opportunity,” Cammie said. “We need to think bigger. Black Dog Bay has everything you need to survive a breakup, right?”

  “Right.” Jenna said. “It’s not just a town; it’s an experience.”

  “You’re right,” Cammie mused. “It’s an experience.” She turned to Ginger. “We should put together a whole Breakup Bonanza.�
�

  Ginger brightened. “Ooh, that’s better than a boring, luck-of-the-draw sweepstakes.”

  “People can send in their bad breakup stories,” Cammie continued. “Best—by which I mean worst—story wins.”

  Brighton sipped her water. “Well, it’s a good thing I won’t be entering, because you’d have to close the contest down. No one could beat my breakup story.”

  Jenna considered this. “That’s probably true.”

  Cammie lifted her chin. “I bet I could beat it.”

  “I doubt that.” Brighton looked cheerful about this.

  “Try me.”

  “Ooh, this is great.” Jenna rubbed her palms together. “Breakup showdown.”

  “We could make brackets, like they do for March Madness,” Ginger suggested.

  “My fiancé dumped me over a stupid fight about traffic, and married a stranger that same night,” Brighton said.

  Jenna smiled fondly. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  “My boyfriend was the chef in my restaurant and deserted me for another kitchen while I went bankrupt,” Cammie countered.

  Jenna sucked in her breath. “A worthy opponent.”

  Brighton and Cammie appealed to Jenna. “Well? Which is worse?”

  Jenna drummed her fingers on the bar top. “That’s a tough call.”

  “We will do brackets like March Madness.” Cammie started scribbling ideas down on a napkin. “We’ll choose semifinalists and let people vote online.”

  “I love it,” Ginger declared. “As long as a stranger isn’t staying in my house.”

  “Now we just have to hit up all the local businesses and plead our case. We’ll come back tomorrow and let you know how it goes.” Cammie hopped off her barstool and prepared to pound the pavement. “Shall we?”

  “We shall,” Ginger said. “Right after we run home and make sure the house is still standing.”

  • • •

  The house was still standing, but it was eerily silent, as though it were holding its breath.

  Cammie climbed the stairs and tiptoed down the hall. She hesitated for a moment in the low-ceilinged hallway, then knocked lightly on Kat’s door. “Kat?”

  On the other side of the door, she heard rustling and a low, masculine murmur.

  “Just a sec,” Kat called.

  Cammie took a step back. “Oh. Never mind, I’ll come back later.”

  But the door opened and Kat poked her head out. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair looked as messy as Cammie’s had last night. She was wearing Josh’s university T-shirt and no pants. “Hi.”

  “Oh, good, you’re alive.”

  Kat stretched her arms over her head, lazy and languorous. “I’m great. We’re great.”

  “So Josh is alive, too?”

  His voice drifted out. “Hi, Cammie.”

  “The pink negligee was a hit.” Kat combed her fingers through her hair.

  Cammie took another step back. “Great. Fantastic.”

  “Yeah, Josh and I have never gotten quite so—”

  “Keep the details to yourself.” Cammie hastened to change the subject. “So, no pressure, but later on, after you’ve, uh, collected yourself, I want to bounce a new marketing idea off you.”

  “Okay.” Kat adjusted the neckline of her T-shirt, inadvertently exposing a fresh hicky. Cammie looked away, stifling a smile. “It can wait?”

  “For a little while.”

  “Good. Right now, Josh and I are going down to the barn.”

  “Do I need to hide all the sharp implements?” Cammie was only half kidding.

  Kat laughed as if this were the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. “Of course not. We’re just going to work on the tractor.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes.” Kat’s afterglow dimmed for a moment. “Apparently, that tractor is all I have left to show for fifteen years of professional skateboarding.”

  Josh spoke up from inside the room: “I told you I was sorry about that.”

  “I know you are, honey.” Kat squared her shoulders. “Since the tractor’s what we have, that’s what we’ll focus on.”

  “We’re going to get it up and running,” Josh confirmed. “It’s going to be great.”

  Cammie tried to figure out what had changed. “Okay, but you were screaming like banshees about that tractor a little while ago. I couldn’t help overhearing.”

  “Mistakes were made,” Kat conceded. “By everyone. And we’ll be pursuing every legal option to try to get my money back. But in the meantime, we have dead vines to pull.”

  “The here and now,” Josh intoned.

  “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.” Cammie started back down the stairs to let Ginger know it was safe to return.

  “Yeah,” Kat called after her, “I think we do.”

  chapter 27

  The next morning, while she fended off a flock of starlings that were eating the unripe grapes, Cammie heard the distant rumble of an engine.

  It sounded like a tractor. A fully functional tractor.

  She shook her hat to scatter the birds and warned them, “You’re going to be sorry you were ever hatched!”

  Then she walked along the row of vines until she could see the barn. Josh and Kat were standing next to the rusty red tractor, which was shuddering as the engine roared.

  “You guys!” Cammie yelled. They couldn’t hear her. The two of them were so absorbed with their project that they didn’t notice her until she was practically on top of them.

  “Hey!” She waved her arms until Josh saw her and turned off the engine.

  “You did it.” Cammie tried to keep the shock and disbelief out of her voice.

  “Of course we did it!” Kat, drenched in sweat, looked ready to run a victory lap around the vineyard. “Well, Josh did it. The engine wouldn’t start, so I thought the battery was dead, and I was like, how the hell are we going to replace a tractor battery?”

  “Luckily, we don’t need to.” Josh puffed out his chest beneath his sweat- and oil-stained shirt.

  “Yeah. He said that before we spent money on a new battery, we should check all the . . .” Kat turned to consult her husband. “What are they called again?”

  “Terminals,” Josh supplied.

  “Yeah, you know, where the wires connect to the battery.”

  “Okay,” Cammie said.

  “So we did, and it turns out that there was a bunch of dirt and grease caked on one of the cables. Josh cleaned it off, and voila! We’re in business.”

  “Nice,” Cammie said.

  “He teaches philosophy and fixes tractors.” Kat gazed adoringly at Josh. “Such a Renaissance man.”

  Josh feigned modesty. “I had the idea, but you did all the dirty work.”

  “I live for dirty work.” Kat breathed in the exhaust fumes as if relishing the freshest mountain air.

  Cammie sneezed as a dust mote swirled up from the dirt beneath the tractor. “How did you know to check the terminals?”

  “I had a crappy old car in grad school that used to do this all the time,” Josh said.

  “We already had everything we needed. All we had to do was clear out the connection,” Kat marveled. “So simple.”

  “You guys are the best. I can’t wait to get rid of the dead vines.” Cammie hugged them both, giddy with relief. “Kat, if you’re interested, we’re having a marketing summit meeting at the Whinery in half an hour.”

  “I’ll make the next one,” Kat promised. “Right now, we’re bonding and figuring out how to work the clutch.”

  “At the same time?” Cammie asked.

  Kat and Josh looked at each other, both of them brimming with excitement. “We’re nothing if not multitaskers.”

  • • •

  “Here’s
what we’ve got so far.” Cammie slapped a yellow legal pad on the glossy black bar top. “Wine, spa treatments, the best room at the bed-and-breakfast, a gift certificate to the Naked Finger, and the private jet. Oh, and a skateboarding lesson, if they want it.”

  “People were surprisingly helpful,” Ginger reported. “Once we showed them Jacques’s Instagram account.”

  “Who doesn’t love an Internet-famous dog? This is brilliant.” Summer Benson inspected the notes Cammie had jotted. “I love everything about this.”

  “It was Cammie’s idea.” Ginger smiled at her niece. “My little marketing genius.”

  Jenna had mentioned that Summer was the head of the Black Dog Bay Historical Society, although the bright-eyed blonde with a platinum pixie cut and moxie to burn didn’t look like the type to hang out with dusty books and board members all day. But Cammie had started to accept that nothing in this town was as it first appeared.

  “It sounds like you’re doing just fine without my help, but I’ll make Hattie Huntington throw in some goodies, too,” Summer said.

  “Who’s Hattie Huntington?” Cammie asked.

  “She owns that hideous purple eyesore on the far end of the bay.” Summer pointed out the bar’s front window.

  “Ah. I was wondering about that.” The eyesore, as Summer put it, was a sprawling purple mansion complete with a private beach and a pool.

  “Hattie Huntington is the meanest, pettiest woman since . . .” Jenna trailed off. “Ever.”

  “That’s why we love her.” Summer snagged a clean wineglass and poured her own drink, to Jenna’s evident dismay. “I’ll make her cough up some of those fancy truffles she imports from France. Or, ooh, she can have her private chef prep a fancy picnic on the beach to go with the wine.”

  “That sounds amazing.” Cammie was writing madly.

  “I know.” Summer brushed back her hair. “Which is great, because I’m totally going to win the contest. I don’t mean to brag, but my breakup story can beat all y’all’s breakup stories.”

  “My fiancé married a stranger,” Brighton reminded them.

  “My boyfriend left my restaurant for a hotter kitchen,” Cammie said.