by Jane Graves
“Honey, that’s what insurance is for.”
“I’ve been driving one of Marc’s cars.”
“One of his cars?”
“The Bomb.”
Daniel looked horrified. “He’s got you driving that piece of shit?”
“Beats walking. So where did you make your money?”
“Developed a little website creation app for small businesses. Google wants to rule the world, so they bought me out. They didn’t want to do anything with it. They just wanted to make sure I’d never end up being competition. To them, I was peanuts, but I’ll never have to work another day as long as I live. And now here I am, Mr. Cosmopolitan, coming back to Rainbow Valley, Texas, to run an estate vineyard. Now, tell me, Kari. Where along the way did I lose my mind?”
“I don’t know. I kind of like it here. It’s peaceful.”
“You don’t strike me as a peaceful kind of girl. You had Marc half-naked in the garage. I couldn’t imagine any woman on earth who would have been able to pull that off.”
“Maybe he’s crazier than you think.”
“Nope. Not my brother. The devil clearly made him do it.”
Kari smiled. “So I’m the devil?”
“God, I hope so. Somebody needs to get Marc to loosen up.”
“That’s his plan, isn’t it? Once he leaves the vineyard and you take over?”
“Yep. That was the deal we made when Angela was about fourteen. Three years. Then either he comes back to run the place again, or we sell it and split the profits. I’m paroled either way, so I don’t care.”
“Which do you figure it’s going to be?”
“Guess it all depends on whether he finds a better deal out there somewhere.”
Kari had a flash of that “better deal” being a woman, and she didn’t like it.
“So what’s your take on why he’s leaving?” Kari asked.
“Freedom, baby. The open road. No strings, no commitments. He wants to dump responsibility and head out.” Then Daniel shrugged. “Actually, I’d hoped it was just Angela’s teenage girl crap that made him want to leave, and he’d get over it once she grew up and became a human being again. No such luck. So here I am, holding up my end of the bargain.”
“So how do you feel about running the vineyard?”
Daniel picked up his phone again. “That was the deal we made.”
So he didn’t exactly feel great about it. Truth be told, Kari could see why. Daniel seemed about as suited to running a vineyard as Marc did to becoming a dot-com millionaire. She didn’t think she’d ever seen two brothers more different from each other in her life.
“Thanks for the yummy breakfast,” she said, tossing the Pop-Tart wrapper in the trash. “I think I’ll go watch Marc kiss a few grapes.”
Kari went outside and was met by a warm morning sun and a bright, cloudless sky. She saw Marc with Ramon and wandered over. Oddly, they weren’t looking at any of the vines. Instead they were examining a rosebush. Closer now, Kari could see there was one planted at the end of every row of vines.
“Good morning,” she said.
When Marc looked up, she was pleased to see his eyes flick to her breasts, her legs, and back up again. Then a tiny smile crossed his lips. “Good morning.”
Ramon nodded a greeting, then clipped a branch off the rosebush the two men were looking at. “I’ll check it out,” he said as he walked away.
“What’s with the rosebushes?” Kari asked.
“Have you heard about canaries in coal mines?”
“Sure. The canaries are way more sensitive than the miners, so if the canary faints, it means there’s less oxygen in the mine and the miners need to watch out.”
“Exactly. The rosebushes are more delicate than the vines. If they show mold or pest infestation or signs of drought, it means we’d better pay close attention to the vines, because sooner or later those things will be a problem for them, too. Ramon took a clipping that looked a little suspicious back to the lab.”
Marc pulled his phone from his pocket and poked at it for a moment. He looked up at the sky, then poked again.
“You can’t seem to keep your hands off your phone,” Kari said. “So what are you hooked on? Facebook? Cat videos? Porn?”
“Weather.”
“Weather?” She looked over at his phone and was stunned. “Good Lord. How many weather apps do you have?”
“I don’t know. Six?”
“That’s an obsession I’ve never heard of.”
“Our business depends on the weather. You know that rainstorm we had the night you ran off the road? We’re just lucky there’s time before harvest for the grapes to recover from that.”
“Recover? I thought rain was good for growing things.”
“Some rain. But not too much.”
“But you have all these sloping hills. Doesn’t the water just run off?”
“With grapes, water isn’t taken in just through the roots. It goes through the grape skins, too. Too much water, and the grapes split. If the skins have already been compromised by bugs or birds or mold, it makes it that much easier for the water to damage them. If they’re not ready to be harvested, they rot on the vine.”
“I didn’t know grapes were that delicate.”
“Believe me, grapes can be a real pain in the ass. If you don’t pick them at exactly the right time, the acidity can be off. They need a certain amount of sugar to ferment properly. We picked the grapes just in time last year, right before a huge rainstorm that went from late one afternoon until before dawn the next day. If those grapes had still been on the vine, the water would have bloated them and thrown their chemical composition off. A whole crop can be ruined that way. Fortunately, we had the crew booked and they got the job done in time.”
“I always figured you just pulled the grapes off the vines, squeezed out the juice, and that was that.”
“I wish it were that simple.”
“I didn’t realize you were at the mercy of the weather like that.” She shook her head. “Wine making is a tough business, isn’t it?”
“Why do you think I’m ready to leave it all to Daniel for a while?”
Kari could see why. What she couldn’t see was Daniel actually running the place.
“Daniel said you kiss all the grapes every morning to make them grow better.”
“Daniel’s a smart-ass.”
“So when’s he taking the helm?”
“I’m scheduling the crew, but I want him to call the shots during harvest this year.”
“So you can make sure he’s doing it right before you go?”
“Exactly.”
Kari could see why Marc would want out from under all that work and worry. But she’d also seen the way he stood on his back deck and looked out over the vineyard as the sun was setting. It was a look of pride unlike anything she’d seen before. How could he want to leave something he’d spent so much of his life perfecting?
Kari left Marc working in the vineyard and went back to the house, where she spent most of the day in the den with her Kindle. She read one of the fifty or so books she’d already downloaded at the same time she provided her lap as a place for Boo to take a nap.
Later she made dinner for Marc and Daniel because she figured she should do something to pull her own weight. She found the ingredients for spaghetti and salad in the kitchen, which wasn’t all that great a meal, but Marc said anything he didn’t have to cook himself tasted like five-star cuisine.
After dinner they all went into the den and watched some intensely masculine spy movie that Daniel and Marc seemed tremendously interested in but Kari couldn’t have cared less about. What she did care about was how Marc’s hand wandered over to her thigh, where it stayed for the majority of the movie. He moved his thumb back and forth in a slow, mesmerizing motion that made her think of sex with him all over again.
At one point, Daniel paused the movie and went to get beer for all of them. Kari asked Marc if he’d talked to the sherif
f about the prowler the other night. Marc said the sheriff had no idea who it might have been, and that had been the end of it. She let out a silent sigh of relief. Yeah, she wanted to know who was hanging around who shouldn’t have been, but she was also glad that Marc seemed to be in no real hurry to get to the bottom of things so he could send her back to the cottage.
When the movie was over, he led her to his bedroom, which was oozing with the same masculinity he was, complete with a huge, rough-hewn four-poster bed, a massive dresser, heavy linens, western prints on the walls, and a black iron chandelier in the center of the high ceiling. Just sweeping her gaze from one side of the room to the other made her heart beat faster. Then he introduced her to that king-sized bed, and her heart rate went through the roof.
Later, when they finally settled down to sleep, Marc pulled her into his arms with her head resting on his shoulder. As she listened to his rhythmic breathing and felt the warmth of his body radiating to hers, Kari could honestly say she’d never felt so content in her life.
The next morning when Kari parked the Bomb and went into the café, she greeted the other waitresses with a smile on her face and a song in her heart. She felt as if one of those Disney bluebirds had flown through the window and landed on her shoulder. Even Bobbie couldn’t screw up her good mood today. She remembered what Nina had said. Just have fun with it. And that was exactly what she intended to do.
During the breakfast rush, Kari made a concerted effort to keep that smile on her face, and by the time lunch rolled around, she was starting to feel as if she truly was getting into the swing of things. Marla seated a family of four in her section—Mom, Dad, and a pair of towheaded twins about six years old, and she decided to put Nina’s suggestion into action.
Mom ordered a fried chicken salad, and Dad went for the brisket sandwich. The boys ordered hamburgers. Kari wrote it down, then leaned in to talk to the kids.
“If I tell you something,” she said in a stage whisper, “will you promise not to tell your parents?”
Both the boys’ eyes grew wide.
“I’m new here, so I mess up a lot. If you order a hamburger, there’s no telling what I might bring you instead.” She leaned in closer. “What if I really messed up and brought you something awful?”
“Like what?” one of the boys said.
“Like…a zombie.”
Both boys’ eyebrows flew up. “A zombie?”
“If I brought you one of those, would you eat it?”
One of them grinned. “I’d eat it!”
“So would I!” the other one said.
“Even if it tried to eat you first?” Kari said.
The boys giggled. “We’d eat it before it could eat us!”
“I’m just warning you,” Kari said dramatically, looking over her shoulder with trepidation. “That kitchen is a scary place. No telling what might end up on your plate!”
One of the boys turned to his mother. “We get to eat zombies!”
The mother smiled at Kari. She winked furtively and headed to the kitchen to put in the order.
“Carlos?” she said. “Will you do me a favor?”
“Anything for you, señorita,” he said.
“I need a couple of naked burgers. Buns and meat only.”
Carlos complied, and she stepped to the grill side of the kitchen beside him. She grabbed pickles and put them on the open-faced burgers for eyeballs. Shredded lettuce became hair, and she created the rest of the face with a mustard squirter, adding ketchup blood to make it look as disgusting as possible.
Bobbie walked over and looked over her shoulder. “What the hell is that?”
Kari smiled. “Just flirting with the male customers.”
“You’re so weird,” Bobbie said and flounced off with a couple of orders of nachos.
“Anything else for burgers?” Carlos asked.
“Nope. This’ll do.” She smiled. “You know, you speak amazingly good English.”
“Sometimes good,” he said with a smile, then glanced at Bobbie leaving the kitchen and frowned. “Sometimes not so good.”
Kari returned to the table with lunch for Mom and Dad, and then she set the baskets down in front of the boys.
“Zombies!” they said.
“What?” Kari said, fluttering her hand against her chest and looking horrified. “Oh, no! I just knew I was going to mess up the order! I’m so sorry!”
One of the boys took the top bun and squashed it down on the rest of the burger. “There. I killed it!” The other boy did the same, and then they both picked up their burgers and gnawed into them, giggling the whole time. And Mom and Dad couldn’t stop smiling.
When Kari brought the check, she drew an oozing zombie on it with frightful hair. Dad showed the boys, who laughed all over again. The parents thanked her on their way out the door. She took the credit slip from Marla, looked at the tip, and just about fell over backward. She did some quick math in her head. Twenty-five percent?
For the rest of her shift, Kari felt as if she’d found the key to the mint. Bobbie hated kids, she loved them. This was perfect. She found out little boys liked zombies. Little girls liked puppies and kittens. It was amazing the creatures she could create with just about anything on the kids’ menu. And parents liked anything that kept their kids happy, smiling, and still in their seats. Nina had been right. Once she started having fun with it, everything seemed to change, and the day flew by.
“So how’d it go today, girls?” Bobbie said at the end of their shift.
Kari usually hated the sound of those words. But when she added up her tips, she almost gasped out loud.
She’d made a buck more than Bobbie.
It was only a single dollar, but it seemed like a million. When Kari reported the amount, Bobbie’s face went stark white.
“Well,” Bobbie said, suddenly sounding a little shaky. “It’s because you waited on a party of eight this morning.”
“You’re right,” Kari said. “It was probably just a fluke.”
“Of course it was a fluke.”
“I know,” Kari agreed. “It couldn’t possibly happen again.”
Bobbie got a calculating look on her face. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow, won’t we?”
Kari felt a rush of total exhilaration, and for the first time she was actually looking forward to her next shift.
As she was leaving the café a few minutes later, Rosie called out to her.
“Kari. I forgot to give this to you earlier. Nina dropped it by this morning.”
Rosie handed her a paper gift bag. Kari peeked inside, surprised to find a bottle of vanilla-scented lotion, a nail file and a couple of bottles of polish, facial moisturizer, shower gel, and several other personal-care items Kari hadn’t packed for her trip to Bali and was dying to have.
Then she saw a note card. “Thought you might need some girlie stuff,” it said. And it was signed “Nina.” A whole herd of warm fuzzies gathered in Kari’s stomach. She barely knew Nina, yet she’d done this for her?
Instead of heading back to the cottage, Kari made her way down the square to the Cordero wineshop. She opened the door, and bells clinked against the glass. It was a beautiful shop, with rough-sawn wooden racks full of wine from floor to ceiling. The walls were painted a dark, rich burgundy with hand-painted grapevines meandering along them. High on one wall was a sign encouraging people to adopt pets from the Rainbow Valley Animal Shelter. A pair of tabby cats lay on a corner bookshelf in a sleepy tangle of paws and heads and tails. A young couple with a little brown mutt on a leash were picking out a bottle of wine.
A woman came out of the back room with a name tag that read “Bonnie.” She was a short, stout, forty-something woman whose instantaneous smile made it impossible for Kari not to smile back.
“Hi,” Kari said. “I’m looking for Nina.”
“You just missed her. Business has been slow this afternoon, so she and Manfred took a walk down to the Overlook.” The woman stuck out her hand. “Hi
, I’m Bonnie. You must be Kari.”
Kari was surprised. “How did you know who I was?”
“You fit Nina’s description. Hard to miss that gorgeous red hair.”
“I’ve never been to the Overlook. Maybe I’ll just go down there and talk to her. It’s down the street on Rainbow Way, right?”
“Two blocks,” Bonnie said. “When you reach the sign, hang a left down the brick path.”
Kari left the shop, put the bag Nina had given her into the Bomb, then made her way across the square toward Rainbow Way. She walked past the Book Tree, where she stopped for a moment to look at a window display of Texas-themed coffee-table books. A few doors down, she walked past Tasha’s Hair Boutique. When Kari was in college, she’d had a very cool pink streak in her hair, which had replaced the purple, which had replaced the blue. When she’d graduated and gone to work for her father at his company, of course that kind of personal expression hadn’t been acceptable. She’d been keeping her hair under wraps ever since.
Well, now that she no longer worked for her father, maybe a little personal expression would be in order. She smiled at the very thought of it. A few of Rosie’s waitresses had obvious piercings and a few tattoos, so Kari doubted she’d object to a couple strands of hair in an unusual color. Later. When she could finally afford something other than necessities.
As she turned onto Rainbow Way, she passed a thirty-something man with a camera taking photos in the direction of the gazebo. A second later, she realized he was the guy who’d wanted her to pose for pictures at Rosie’s. After she walked by, she looked back over her shoulder to see him taking one more photo, this time of her. Then he gave her a friendly smile.
Normally she didn’t object to a man’s admiring gaze, but now she felt self-conscious. After all, what was there to appreciate when she was wearing a pair of turquoise capris, which were cute, and Angela’s beat-up sneakers, which weren’t? It was like wearing a cocktail dress with flip-flops. Most men had no fashion sense whatsoever, but she was sure this one was appalled at her lack of it.
Doesn’t matter. Beats blisters. Keep walking.