by Jill Shalvis
Dedication
To the cities of San Luis Obispo, Avila Beach, and Paso Robles,
all of which I used heavily as my inspiration for Wildstone.
Years ago they started out as the places where my dad lived and
an annoying six-hour drive to visit him, but quickly became my
favorite area of California. I lost my dad this year, which negates
me having to make the trip . . . and yet I still do. Old habits
die hard, and because of that, I can still sometimes be found on
the beach at Avila, walking downtown at San Luis Obispo, or
hitting the wineries in the hills of Paso Robles. Thank you to
the entire region and to my dad, who is no doubt sitting on a
cloud somewhere in a comfy recliner, yelling at the newscast.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Author
About the Book
Read On
Praise
Also by Jill Shalvis
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Anxiety Girl, able to jump to the worst conclusion in a single bound!
Most of the time karma was a bitch, but every once in a while she could be surprisingly nice, even kind. Lanie Jacobs, way past overdue for both of those things, told herself this was her time. Seize the day and all that. She drew a deep breath as she exited the highway at Wildstone.
The old Wild West California town was nestled in the rolling hills between the Pacific Coast and wine and ranching country. She’d actually grown up not too far from here, though it felt like a lifetime ago. The road was narrow and curvy, and since it’d rained earlier, she added tricky and slick to her growing list of its issues. She was already white-knuckling a sharp turn when a kamikaze squirrel darted into her lane, causing her to nearly swerve into oncoming traffic before remembering the rules of country driving.
Never leave your lane; not for weather, animals, or even God himself.
Luckily the squirrel reversed its direction, but before Lanie could relax a trio of deer bounded out right in front of her. “Run, Bambi, run,” she cried, hitting the brakes, and by the skin of all of their collective teeth, they missed one another.
Sweating, nerves sizzling like live wires, she finally turned onto Capriotti Lane and parked as she’d been instructed.
And went completely still as her world darkened. Not physically, but internally, as her entire body braced for all hell to break loose. Recognizing sign número uno of an impending anxiety attack barreling down on her like a freight train, she gripped the steering wheel. “You’re okay,” she told herself firmly.
This, of course, didn’t stop said freight train. But though she’d been plagued with overactive fight-or-flight preceptors, all of which were yelling at her to run, she couldn’t.
Wouldn’t.
Not this time. Which didn’t stop the dizziness or sudden nausea, or make her lungs work properly. And that was the hardest thing about these attacks that were new to her this year, because it was always the same fears. What if it never stopped? What if someone saw her losing it and realized she was broken? And the worst part . . . what if it wasn’t an anxiety attack? Maybe this time it was a seizure or a brain aneurism.
Or a stroke. Hadn’t her great-aunt Agnes died of a stroke?
Okay, stop, she ordered herself, damp with sweat now and doing that annoying trembling thing where she shook like a leaf. Breathe in for four, breathe out for four, and hold for four.
Repeat.
Repeat again, all while listing the meals she’d had yesterday in her head. Peanut butter toast for breakfast. Tuna salad for lunch. She’d skipped dinner and had wine and popcorn instead.
Slowly but surely, her pulse slowed. It’s all good, she told herself, but because she wasn’t buying what she was selling, she had to force herself out of the car like she was a five-year-old starting kindergarten instead of being thirty and simply facing a brand-new job. Given all she’d been through, this should be easy, even fun. But sometimes adulthood felt like the vet’s office and she was the dog excited for the car ride—only to find out the destination.
Shaking her head, she strode across the parking lot. It was April, which meant the rolling hills to the east were green and lush and the Pacific Ocean to the west looked like a surfer’s dream, all of it so gorgeous it could’ve been a postcard. A beautiful smoke screen over her not-so-beautiful past. The air was scented like a really expensive sea-and-earth candle, though all Lanie could smell was her forgotten hopes and dreams. With wood chips crunching under her shoes, she headed through the entrance, above which was a huge wooden sign that read:
CAPRIOTTI WINERY, FROM OUR FIELDS TO YOUR TABLE . . .
Her heart sped up. Nerves, of course, the bane of her existence. But after a very crappy few years, she was changing her path. For once in her godforsaken life, something was going to work out for her. This was going to work out for her.
She was grimly determined.
The land was lined with split-rail wooden fencing, protecting grapevines as far as the eye could see. The large open area in front of her was home to several barns and other structures, all meticulously maintained and landscaped with stacks of barrels, colorful flower beds, and clever glass bottle displays.
Lanie walked into the first “barn,” which housed the reception area and offices for the winery. She was greeted by an empty reception counter, beyond which was a huge, open-beamed room containing a bar on the far side, comfy couches and low tables scattered through the main area, and walls of windows that showed off the gorgeous countryside.
It was warm and inviting and . . . empty. Well, except for the huge mountain of white and gray fur sleeping on a dog bed in a corner. It was either a Wookie or a massive English sheepdog, complete with scraggly fur hanging in its eyes. If it was a dog, it was the hugest one she’d ever seen, and she stilled as the thing snorted, lifted its head, and opened a bleary eye.
At the sight of her, it leapt to its four paws and gave a happy wuff. At least she was hoping it was a happy wuff because it came running at her. Never having owned a dog in her life, she froze. “Uh, hi,” she said, and did her best to hold her ground. But the closer the thing got, the more she lost her nerve. She whirled to run.
And then she heard a crash.
She turned back in time to see that the dog’s forward momentum had been too much. Its hind end had come out from beneath it and it’d flipped onto its back, skidding to a stop in front of her.
She—because she was definitely a she, Lanie could now see—flopped around like a fish for a few seconds as she tried to right herself, to no success. With a loud woof, the dog gave up and stayed on her back, tail wagging like crazy, t
ongue lolling out of the side of her mouth.
“You’re vicious, I see,” Lanie said, and unable to resist, she squatted down to rub the dog’s belly.
The dog snorted her pleasure, licked her hand, and then lumbered up and back over to her bed.
Lanie looked around. Still alone. Eleven forty-five. She was fifteen minutes early, which was a statement on her entire life.
You’ll be the only human to ever be early for her own funeral, her mom liked to say, along with her favorite—you expect way too much out of people.
This from the woman who’d been a physicist and who’d regularly forgotten to pick up her own daughter after school.
Lanie eyed the sign on the reception desk and realized the problem. The winery was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, and today was Monday. “Hello?” she called out, feeling a little panicky. Had she somehow screwed up the dates? She’d interviewed for a two-month graphic artist job here twice, both times via Skype from her Santa Barbara apartment. Her new boss, Cora Capriotti, the winery office manager, wanted her to create new labels, menus, a website, everything, and she wanted her to do so on-site. Cora had explained that they prided themselves on being old-fashioned. It was part of their charm, she’d said.
Lanie didn’t mind the temporary relocation from Santa Barbara, two hours south of here. She’d actually quit her permanent graphic design job after her husband’s death. Needing a big change and a kick in her own ass to get over herself and all the self-pity, she’d been freelancing ever since. It’d been good for her. She’d accepted this job specifically because it was in Wildstone. Far enough away from Santa Barbara to give her a sense of a new start . . . and an excuse to go back to her roots. She’d grown up only fifteen minutes from here and she’d secretly hoped that maybe she and her mom might spend some time together in the same room. In any case, two months away from her life was exactly what the doctor had ordered.
Literally.
She pulled out her cell phone, scrolled for her new boss’s number, and called.
“We’re out back!” Cora answered. “Let yourself in and join us for lunch!”
“Oh, but I don’t want to interrupt—” Lanie blinked and stared at her phone.
Cora had disconnected.
With another deep breath that was long on nerves and short on actual air, she walked through the open great room and out the back French double doors. She stepped onto a patio beautifully decorated with strings of white lights and green foliage lining the picnic-style tables. But that wasn’t what had her frozen like a deer facing down the headlights of a speeding Mack Truck.
No, that honor went to the people crowded around two of the large tables, which had been pushed close together. Everyone turned to look at her in unison, all ages and sizes, and then started talking at once.
Lanie recognized that they were smiling and waving, which meant they were probably a friendly crowd, but parties weren’t her friends. Her favorite party trick was not going to parties.
A woman in her early fifties broke away. She had dark brunette hair liberally streaked with gray, striking dark brown eyes, and a kind smile. She was holding a glass of red wine in one hand and a delicious-looking hunk of bread in the other, and she waved both in Lanie’s direction.
“Lanie, right? I’m Cora, come on in.”
Lanie didn’t move. “I’ve caught you in the middle of something. A wedding or a party. I can come back—”
“Oh, no, it’s nothing like that.” Cora looked back at the wild pack of people still watching. “It’s just lunch. We do this every day.” She gestured at all of them. “Meet your fellow employees. I’m related to everyone one way or another, so they’ll behave. Or else.” She smiled, taking away the heat of the threat. “In any case, welcome. Come join us. Let me get you a plate—”
“Oh, that’s okay, I brought a salad.” Lanie patted her bag. “I can just go sit in my car until you’re finished—”
“No need for that, honey. I have lunch catered every day.”
“Every day?” She didn’t realize she’d spoken out loud until Cora laughed.
“It’s our social time,” Cora said.
At Lanie’s last job, people had raced out of the building at lunch to escape one another. “That’s . . . very generous of you.”
“Nothing generous about it,” Cora said with a laugh. “It keeps everyone on-site, ensures no one’s late getting back to the job, and I get to keep my nosy nose in everyone’s business.” She set aside her bread, freeing up a hand to grab Lanie’s, clearly recognizing a flight risk when she saw one. “Everyone,” she called out. “This is Lanie Jacobs, our new graphic artist.” She smiled reassuringly at Lanie and gestured to the group of people. “Lanie, this is everyone; from the winemaker to the front-desk receptionist, we’re all here. We’re a rather informal bunch.”
They all burst into applause, and Lanie wished for a big black hole to sink into and vanish. “Hi,” she managed, and gave a little wave. She must have pulled off the correct level of civility because they all went back to eating and drinking wine, talking among themselves.
“Are you really related to all of them?” she asked Cora, watching two little girls, possibly twins, given their matching toothless smiles, happily eating chocolate cupcakes, half of which were all over their faces.
Cora laughed. “Just about. I’ve got a big family. You?”
“No.”
“Single?”
“Yes.” Lanie’s current relationship status: sleeping diagonally across her bed.
Cora smiled. “Well, I’ll be happy to share my people—there’s certainly enough of us to go around. Hey,” she yelled, cupping a hand around her mouth. “Someone take the girls in to wash up, and no more cupcakes or they’ll be bouncing off the walls.”
So the cupcakes were a problem, but wine at lunch wasn’t. Good to know.
Cora smiled at Lanie’s expression, clearly reading her thoughts. “We’re Californians,” she said. “We’re serious about our wine, but laid-back about everything else. In fact, maybe that should be our tagline. Now come, have a seat.” She drew Lanie over to the tables. “We’ll get to work soon enough.”
There was an impressive amount of food, all of it Italian, all of it fragrant and delicious-looking. Lanie’s heart said definitely to both the wine and the lasagna, but her pants said holy shit, woman, find a salad instead.
Cora gave a nudge to the woman at the end of the table, who looked to be around Lanie’s age and had silky dark hair and matching eyes. “Scoot,” Cora said.
The woman scooted. So did everyone else, allowing a space on the end for Lanie.
“Sit,” Cora told Lanie. “Eat. Make merry.”
“But—”
“Oh, and be careful of that one,” Cora said, pointing to the woman directly across from Lanie, this one in her early twenties with the same gorgeous dark hair and eyes as the other. “Her bad attitude can be contagious.”
“Gee, thanks, Mom,” she said with an impressive eye-roll.
Cora blew her daughter a kiss and fluttered away, grabbing a bottle of wine from the middle of one of the tables and refilling glasses as she went.
“One of these days I’m gonna roll my eyes so hard I’m going to go blind,” her daughter muttered.
The twins ran through, still giggling, and still looking like they’d bathed in chocolate, which caused a bit of commotion. Trying to remain inconspicuous, Lanie pulled her lunch out of her bag—a homemade salad in a container, sans dressing.
“Are you kidding me?” Cora’s daughter asked. “Do you want her to come back here and yell at us for not feeding you properly? Put that away.” She stood up, reached for a stack of plates in the middle of the table, and handed Lanie one. “Here. Now fill it up and eat, and for God’s sake, look happy while you’re at it or she’ll have my ass.”
Lanie eyeballed the casserole dishes lining the center of the tables. Spaghetti, lasagna . . .
“Don’t worry, it all tastes as good as it lo
oks,” an old man said from the middle of the table. There was no hair on his head, but he did have a large patch of gray steel fuzz on his chest, which was sticking out from the top of his polo shirt. His olive complexion had seen at least seven decades of sun, but his smile was pure little-boy mischief. “And don’t worry about your cholesterol either,” he added. “I’m seventy-five and I’ve eaten like this every single day of my life.” He leaned across the table and shook her hand. “Leonardo Antony Capriotti. And this is my sweetheart of fifty-four years, Adelina Capriotti. I’d use her middle name, but she refuses to sleep with me when I do that.”
The older woman next to him was teeny-tiny, her white hair in a tight bun on her head, her spectacles low on her nose, her smile mischievous. “Gotta keep him in line, you know. Nice to meet you.”
Lanie knew from her research on the company that it’d been Leonardo and Adelina who had started this winery back in the seventies, though they’d since handed over the day-to-day reins to their daughter, who Lanie now realized was her boss, Cora. “Nice to meet you both,” she said.
“Likewise. You’re going to give us a new updated look and make me look good,” he said. “Right?”
“Right,” she said and hoped that was actually true. No pressure or anything . . .
He smiled. “I like you. Now eat.”
If she ate any of this stuff, she’d need a nap by midafternoon. But not wanting to insult anyone, she scooped as little as she felt she could get away with onto her plate and pushed it around with her fork, trying to resist temptation.
“Uh-oh,” Cora’s daughter said. “We have a dieter.”
“Stop it,” the woman next to Lanie said. “You’ll scare her away and end up right back on Mom’s shit list.”
The other one, whose shirt read: LIVE, LAUGH, AND LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE, snorted. “We both know that I never get off the shit list. I just move up and down on it. Mom’s impossible to please.”
“Don’t listen to her,” the other woman said to Lanie. “I’m Alyssa, by the way. And Grumpy-Ass over there is my baby sister, Mia.”
Mia waved and reached for the breadbasket. “I’m giving up on getting a bikini body, so pass the butter, please. Grandma says the good Lord put alcohol and carbs on this planet for a reason and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Him down.”