At Wits' End: An Enemies To Lovers Romantic Comedy

by Kenzie Reed

  “You’d better. Those coyotes would eat him for dinner.” She shudders.

  “I know. That won’t happen, I promise. His appetite is great, he’s up to date on his shots, and he’s got plenty of energy.”

  “Remember to make sure he gets enough roughage,” she says. “Make sure he cleans his dentures properly. And don’t let him watch those damn horror movies he likes so much. Gives him nightmares. And don’t put any garlic in his pasta puttanesca. I don’t care what he says. Gives him terrible gas.” She waves her hand in front of her nose in reminiscence.

  “I promise I won’t.”

  She breaks into a smile and pats my knee. “I know you won’t. You’re a good girl.” Then she glances down at my shoes. “Why are you wearing those ugly sneakers?”

  Oops. My feet are still recovering from yesterday’s pinching, painful wedding shoes, so I’ve been wearing my sneakers all day. “I went running this morning.”

  She looks at me suspiciously. “You hate running.”

  “Oh, it’s a new thing I’m trying,” I say brightly.

  She leans back in her chair, her eyes narrowing. “You really, really hate running.”

  “Well, Pamela’s doing it. It’s a fun way to spend time with her.”

  She narrows her eyes at me. “Running like a fool? Running from nothing?”

  I shift in my chair, hugging my purse to me. “I wanted to talk to you about the vineyard. We’ve got to get some cashflow coming in until the property sale. There’s a lot more competition these days, and sales have slowed down to the point where we’re spending more than we’re earning. I’d like to update the website and start doing some social media, and search for new outlets for our sales.”

  “Well…” She scrunched up her face. “You know how I feel about technology.”

  “I understand. But this is just reality, Aunt Fernanda. Ninety percent of people in the U.S. use the internet to some extent these days. This is how people find out about new things. We’ve got to take advantage of what it has to offer.”

  She scowls and purses her lips. “I don’t like it.”

  “I’ll be taking care of it. You’ll never have to deal with it.”

  “But what happens when you go back to Seattle?” she frets.

  That’s been the plan all along, but when she says it, my stomach clenches. I do want to go back to Seattle, don’t I? I have friends there, sort of. Work friends. I haven’t heard from any of them since I came back to Greenvale, but whatever.

  “Let’s worry about that when the time comes, shall we? I mean, I can run the website and do the social media from Seattle, if necessary, but Sara could also help out. She’s good at social media. Once we’ve got more money coming in, we could pay her for it.”

  “I’ll consider it,” she grumps.

  Then she proceeds to spend twenty minutes interrogating me about the vineyard. She’s trying to be nice about it, but she looks more and more worried, and nothing I say can reassure her. Finally, she pauses to take a breath.

  “I forgot!” I say quickly. “I have another present for you. Would you like me to read to you?” I pull the Bibbia Riveduta, an Italian translated version of the bible, from my purse.

  We spend a pleasant hour with me reading aloud and her correcting my terrible pronunciation.

  When I get up to go, she puts her hand on my arm. “Would you mind leaving that dirt with me?” she says shyly.

  “Of course, Aunt Fernanda.” I pull out the packet and set it gently down on her nightstand.

  Chapter Twelve

  DONOVAN

  I get another lousy night’s sleep on Saturday. I’m going to have start using that roll-up mattress in the loft. I can’t lie next to Sienna, aching with desire for her, and get any rest at all. I fall asleep around three a.m. and wake up a few hours later to the smell of coffee.

  I take a quick shower and try to enjoy a session with my right hand. Sienna’s face swims in front of me and I remain unsatisfied.

  I pull on boxer shorts and pad into the kitchen. Sienna’s made coffee using a mini propane double stove burner. On the other burner, she’s frying bacon and eggs. Aceto crouches on the counter, watching me with a slit-eyed glower of suspicion.

  “Cesare brought over breakfast for us,” she says. “My aunt made home-made muffins.” She gestures at a bag sitting on the butcher block counter.

  “Ribaldi muffins? No thank you.” I grab one of the apples that I bought at the grocery store yesterday. A lot of the other stuff I bought was powdered-protein-type materials, which need a blender to prepare, because I’m a dumbass and I forgot we have neither blender nor working outlets. Tomorrow I’m going to go on a shopping spree. I’ve already contacted an appliance store to deliver a refrigerator, stove and microwave mid-week.

  Sienna hands me a cup of coffee.

  “Dark and bitter, like a Witlocke’s heart,” she says cheerfully. I don’t dignify that with an answer, but after a few sips, I start to feel a little less savage.

  “Whatever. Electricity’s coming tomorrow, right? And then we can get internet,” I say. “Beautiful, beautiful internet.” Aceto, padding across the kitchen counter, gives me a look of scorn. “What?” I say to him. “I’ll let you watch cat videos when I’m not working.”

  His only reply is a scornful tail-flick, then he pads off silently, tail held high, showing me his butt-hole. And I don’t think that’s an accident. I think it’s a statement.

  I sit warily on one of the folding chairs, which creaks under my weight. The sound of a car driving up pulls me up straight.

  “Carrie and Tonya? Again?” I bark. “On a freaking Sunday, after I told them to call first. They fucking did not.”

  “No, they did not, so cool your jets. It’s everybody’s favorite wedding-wrecker, Jonathon.”

  The door opens slowly, and he slinks in like a choirboy caught with nudie mags tucked in among his music sheets. He’s wearing board shorts and a tropical print shirt, and a hangdog expression.

  “What are you doing here?” I demand with annoyance.

  “I came to, like, apologize, for, you know, screwing everything up.” He shoves his hands in his pockets, looking unhappy. “Mia wanted to say sorry too. She was going to tell you in person but she thinks everyone’s mad at her.”

  “You think?” I scoff.

  Sienna waves at one of the folding tables. “Sit,” she says. “I’ll pour you some coffee.” She’s so open with her hospitality, welcoming everyone, always feeding people.

  She pours him coffee and stirs in milk and sugar for him. She somehow knows how he likes his coffee, just like she knew how I like mine, which makes me sulk a little.

  “You could take it to go,” I say snarkily.

  “Oh, let him sit and relax a minute.” She smiles at Jonathon. “Tell Mia we’re not that mad at her. I mean, it was a really stupid move on her part, but everything ended up okay.”

  Just okay? Wow.

  She hands him a muffin, then serves herself up some eggs and bacon. She looks at me, and I shake my head. I’m hungry, but I’m also sulky. And I’m still punishing myself for enjoying that decadent steak dinner a couple of days ago.

  “You’re still talking to her?” she says to Jonathon.

  He ducks his head shyly. “Well, she called to apologize.”

  “You like her?”

  “I do.” He looks surprised as he says it. “She’s fun and kind of wild and she doesn’t make me feel dumb when she talks to me. Also she’s totally into surfing. I mean, not like I could date her now or anything.”

  “Why not?”

  He takes a bite of muffin. “You wouldn’t be mad?”

  “Jonathon!” she laughs. “You and I weren’t exactly a love match.”

  He purses his lips, frowning in thought. “My mom’s furious at her. She’d lose her shit if I dated Mia.”

  Sienna shrugs. “You’re leaving for California, right?

  Now that his plans are upended, Jonathon’s going to
go back to his job as a salesman for the Witlocke winery, travelling around the California region, where his surfer-dude personality fits in perfectly.

  “Yeah…”

  “Maybe Mia would like to travel with you for a little while. Her dad would hold her job for her. She wouldn’t have to tell anyone she’s going with you. That way, she’d be out of town, there’d be time for gossip to die down a little, and if things work out with you guys, frankly, the heck with what your mom thinks. You’re the one who gets to choose who you date. It’s your future happiness we’re talking about.”

  His face lights up. “Dude!” Sienna twitches at the word. “You’re right. Thanks, Sienna! You’re kind of smart, you know that?” He stands up and hugs her, which makes me feel mildly homicidal, drains the rest of his coffee in one long gulp, and grabs the muffin. “I’m going to go call her right now.”

  When he leaves, I turn to Sienna, puzzled. “Why were you nice to him?” I ask. “He royally screwed up your plans, and furthermore, when we were in grade school, he pranked you just as often as I did.”

  She puts the dishes in the sink as she’s talking to me. “Honestly, Donovan, this is Jonathon we’re talking about. He’s a flirt, a party boy, and a good-natured idiot. We were expecting too much of him at the wedding. And as for the pranks, he was never that good at them, and I didn’t care enough about him for any of them to hurt.”

  She stalks off to the bedroom, leaving me staring after her with my jaw hanging open. She just admitted two things that make my knees go weak.

  She did care about me, she always cared.

  And I hurt her.

  I’m sitting there trying to formulate a response, something that will smooth over decades of stupid feuds and instantly make everything better, when another car pulls in. Grand Central Station, that’s us. I look through the window to see her mother climbing out of her car. Linda pauses to check her reflection in the car’s side-view mirror, fussing with her hair.

  “Your maternal unit is here!” I yell at the bedroom door.

  Aceto hisses from the top of his cat tower, just to remind me that he’s there, he hates me, and the mere act of my breathing makes him homicidal. Or maybe he hates Linda.

  “Is it Linda?” I ask him in a low voice. “It is, isn’t it? She’s the worst, right?”

  He regards me through slitted eyes and lets out a low rumble that might possibly be a growl of agreement.

  Sienna hurries out just as her mother comes in the front door. “Hey, Linda.” I think it’s beyond weird that she calls her mother by her name instead of “Mom”. “What’s up? Did you need something?”

  “No, I just came to say hi. What are you doing today? I thought we could spend some time together.”

  Sienna manages a tentative smile, and I want to grab her and haul her aside and tell her not to trust Linda. She’ll just get hurt. It’s not my business, though.

  “Today I’m going to help bottle the pinot,” she says. In May, they bottle the wine that’s been maturing in oak barrels, to get ready for the next vintage.

  “Don’t you have people to do that for you?”

  Sienna shrugs. “We’re a bit understaffed right now.”

  “I’ll help you, then.” Linda has worked at the vineyard over the years, between husbands. Sometimes she’s even worked side by side with Sienna. Never for more than a couple of weeks at a time, though.

  I hear the hesitation in Sienna’s voice. “You really don’t have to.”

  “But I want to. It’ll be fun. Then we can grab some lunch in town.”

  “Pamela’s coming here this afternoon, but we could do it tomorrow.”

  Her mother smiles and winks at her. “I’ll take whatever time with my girl I can get.”

  Since when?

  But Sienna’s tentative smile grows a little stronger.

  “I’m going over to my parents’ house,” I say. I get dressed and leave before I say something I’ll regret.

  I park in front of the vineyard. Our operation looks completely different from her aunt’s. We use irrigation, commercial fertilizer, and mechanized harvesters. We’re twenty times the size of the Ribaldi vineyard, and each block is planted twice as densely, but then, Fernanda Ribaldi never wanted to be what we are – a large commercial operation with a goal of producing affordable, consistent wines.

  My family always felt that she looked down her nose at them, like her hand-harvested, high-priced organic wine was better than theirs. I’m sure she did. And they looked down on her little rinky-dink operation and tried to tell themselves that she was just a hobbyist – even though, year after year, her tiny vineyard won the first place awards at wine festivals, and ranked in the high 90s, whereas theirs ranked in the low 90s.

  My parents are both in the production room, waiting for me. Workers bustle around the space-age 2,150-liter silver tanks, which are used to age the white wines. The red wines are aged in a separate room, in enormous oak barrels.

  My company has replaced their crusher-destemmer and their bottling machines. Later this summer, we’ll be providing them with new harvesters. The installation crew is going to be here for the next few days, training them to use the new equipment.

  I join them at a table at the far end of the room, away from the hustle and bustle. My mother, clad in khaki slacks and a lime-green sweater, comes over and kisses me on the cheek, and my father gives me an abrupt nod. I set my file folders, full of brochures and instructions, down on the table.

  This is equipment that I designed as a side project, with their vineyard in mind, years ago. My father had turned me down up until recently. When he finally, reluctantly came to me for help, I quickly had our company put it into production. These are all prototypes, and it’s not our usual line of work, so I paid for it out of my own pocket. After the deal with Constantine goes through, I might approach Graham about looking to expand into the vineyard and beverage equipment market.

  “How are you?” my mother asks anxiously. “Is it an absolute nightmare over there? You can always sneak over here at night to sleep.”

  “No, he can’t. If Carrie catches wind of it, she’ll broadcast it all over town,” my father says heatedly.

  “Mom, it’s fine.” I shake my head in wry amusement. “You think she has a torture chamber over there or something?”

  “I’d put nothing past them. I still can’t believe that you had to be the one to marry her,” my mother says sourly.

  “Well, in fairness, her family probably can’t believe that she had to be the one to marry me.”

  “Oh, come on,” she scoffs. “She married up. You married down.”

  I give her a warning look. “You might want to show a little appreciation. Sienna quit her job, gave up her apartment, completely upended her life, and agreed to a fake marriage that is going to save your vineyard. And I do not consider that I married down.”

  “Our vineyard is fine,” my father says defensively. “We don’t need any help.”

  “Then what do you need me for?” It’s a reflex. This always happens when we’re in the same room together.

  “We don’t.” My father glares at me.

  I grab my files and stand up.

  “You never have, have you?”

  “Oh, now what’s that supposed to mean?” My father stares at me in astonishment.

  Seriously? He has to ask?

  “Donovan! Wait!” my mother pleads as I stalk across the epoxy-sealed cement floor. She runs after me and grabs my arm. “You know that your father’s a proud man,” she says in a low voice. “We’re getting letters from creditors, we’re in danger of foreclosure if we can’t turn things around, and you can’t tell him I said that, either.”

  With a heavy sigh, I spin on my heel and return to the table. We sit down, and I open up the brochures, and we page through them as I explain the operation.

  “Of course, we will repay you immediately as soon as the land sale goes through,” my father says stiffly.

  “I’m not r
eally worried. I know where you live.”

  “Obviously.” My father stares at me like I’ve just sprouted a third nostril. “You used to live here.”

  I’m not going to sit here all day long and deal with his pissy attitude. “Oh, for God’s sake, that was a joke.” I stand up, pointing at the files. “I’ll leave this for you to read over.”

  My father’s face wrinkles in an apologetic grimace. “I’m sorry. And thank you. I’m just under a lot of stress these days.”

  That, for my father, is like a hug, a kiss on the forehead, and a pat on the back all at the same time.

  “I’m happy to help, and it’s nice to be working together.” I’m a little choked up as I say it.

  My father nods. “This is extremely helpful for us, and I am glad to be working with you.” His words march from his mouth, stiff and formal like little soldiers. “You should come home more often. Your mother misses you.”

  Some people might think that was kind of an asshole thing to say, as if he were implying that he doesn’t miss me himself. That’s just how he does things, though.

  “Hey!” A loud, angry voice rings across the room. Jamie hurries towards us. She’s wearing a white peasant blouse, a flowery skirt, and a look of murderous rage. “What the hell? You started the meeting without me?”

  “We didn’t think you’d be interested,” my father says, his brows pinching together with annoyance. Jamie is the hospitality manager for Witlocke Winery. Toni works wherever she’s needed – in the office answering phones, giving tours, holding wine tastings – and she never talks back to our parents.

  “Why wouldn’t I be interested in the equipment that my family’s winery uses? The equipment that I’ll be demonstrating on tours?” Jamie glares at him. Then she waves at the files that lie open on the table. “I didn’t even get a say in what type of machinery you chose.”

  “It’s my vineyard and my choice.” My father’s face is flushing red.

  “Dear, your blood pressure,” my mother says worriedly.

  Jamie draws in a furious breath.

  “Jamie, I’m sorry, we should have invited you,” I say quickly.