Prosecco Heart
Julie Strauss
Copyright © 2018 by Julie Strauss
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or person, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.
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All rights reserved.
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No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Julie Strauss.
www.juliewroteabook.com
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Cover Design © by Alli Smith Designs
Editing by Arran McNichol
Formatting by Bitchy Book Doctor
This book is dedicated to Ara Grigorian and Janis Thomas of Novel Intensive who taught me how to make a fish fly. This Fool Triumphant is so grateful for your expertise.
Contents
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
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
Tabitha Lawson Hamilton never intended to greet her mailman in the nude.
She didn’t intend to greet him at all, for that matter. She didn’t intend to do a great deal of things she did that morning. She was wearing the satin robe she loathed, instead of cotton pajamas she loved. She was drinking a hot coffee with real cream, which she loved but knew wasn’t good for her, instead of a kale smoothie, which she loathed, but her husband wanted her to drink. She was scrolling through Facebook, which she both loved and loathed, just like any other day, and then all of a sudden, she was standing naked in front of the mailman. The steps that occurred in between those moments—the coffee, the robe, naked for the mailman—made logical sense to Tabitha at the time; one event led to the next with a kind of universe-endorsed order.
In retrospect, of course, the events between the scrolling of Facebook and the standing naked in front of the mailman were a blur, and it wasn’t until much later that she realized that what she had done was at best impulsive and at worst possibly criminal.
The mailman, being a decent human being, did not press charges. After all, he’d probably seen much worse on his travels delivering mail through her neighborhood. Tabitha had always had a sneaking suspicion that the hillbillies up the street were on drugs. Maybe they even had a meth lab. Who knew these days? They had a Rottweiler, so she wouldn’t put it past them. No doubt the mailman had to deliver sketchy, poorly wrapped boxes to them all the time, and they opened their door to filth and squalor inside. Probably they even waved guns around. Or machetes. Or—what? Syringes? How did people use meth? She wasn’t exactly sure, and thought she probably ought to look it up before she accused them of meth-related activity. But it hardly mattered. Whether it was from the Rottweiler family or not, the mailman undoubtedly saw crazy behavior every single day.
The poor bastard.
And after all, she rationalized later: a naked woman was not the worst thing in the world to see. Tabitha had done a fairly decent job keeping her thirty-five-year-old body up to standard, and she was certain that even if he did not enjoy looking at female bodies in general, at least her female body was not offensive in the abstract.
Her husband Royal, on the other hand? That man was outright offensive, both in his specifics and in his abstracts. She didn’t know it that morning when she put on the satin robe, but she knew it for sure by the time she was naked in front of the poor mailman. Sure, Royal Hamilton looked like every schoolgirl’s version of a handsome English rake, but he had the soul of a viper, the heart of a sewer rat, and the mind of a weasel. Those comparisons were undoubtedly unfair to vipers, rats, and weasels, who could be the kindest of animals, for all she knew. But she could not find anything vile enough to compare Royal to. At least nothing in the human world.
In any case, specifically or in general, vipers or snakes, it was Royal’s fault she was naked in front of the mailman in the first place.
2
There had been a point in their marriage when Tabitha went to the gym with her husband Royal Hamilton, but it had been a couple of years since she had mustered enthusiasm for the sweaty morning workouts. She glanced guiltily over to the kitchen counter. He’d left the house before dawn, but just like every morning, he’d filled two insulated mugs for her. Her breakfast, and her morning snack.
“Mental clarity!” She could practically hear his voice now, the edges of his words ringing out in crisp British precision. She had always loved his drive for self-improvement. “In our business, we need to be sharp and focused. One small change in your diet will make a massive change in your physical and mental stamina.”
She popped the lid off the coffee he’d left for her and took a sip. “Sweet mother of misery,” she muttered. Scrunching her face into a grimace, she forced herself to swallow another gulp and then dumped the rest down the drain. It was an abomination, all of it. She didn’t want to think about the cost of that coffee, or the free-range buffalo butter or the imported raw cacao nibs that he ground himself. Royal whizzed it all together and shot it down every morning like a college kid on a dare. She’d deal with a little less mental clarity for just one more day, and get on the health kick with him tomorrow. Tomorrow would be different. She’d drink his buffalo coffee tomorrow, and maybe even go to the gym with him.
She opened the second container and dumped the green smoothie down the drain without even tasting it. Another ungodly amount of money going to waste, this time in the form of organic, locally grown kale, beets, and spirulina, whatever the hell that was. Royal didn’t even add fruit to sweeten the mix. “It’s not supposed to taste good, Tabby,” he’d say. “It’s supposed to be good for you. Food is fuel, and this is optimum fuel. Premium brain and body improvement.”
She poured herself a cup of real coffee, just the way she liked it. Dark roast, a generous splash of heavy cream, a sprinkle of cinnamon on top. She popped a piece of sourdough bread in the toaster and pulled some butter out of the fridge. Not Royal’s disgusting buffalo butter, which he kept in preportioned chunks in the freezer, double wrapped so no flavors could cross-contaminate it. No, she just wanted plain old butter, dripping into the crevices of her toast and slicking her lips the way God intended breakfast.
Royal had left his phone right near the computer on their kitchen table that morning. Tabitha stared at it uncomprehending before she could figure out what it was. Leaving a phone behind was so unlike Royal that she wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking at. He was a model of mastery—over his possessions, his habits, everything. She held the phone in her hand for a minute, flipping it over like a rock she’d found at the beach. It seemed like a strange and mysterious object, one that she’d never had contact with before.
She roused herself from her fascination and set the phone down on the table. She could bring the phone to Royal when she went into the winery this morning. She went back to scrolling Facebook.
Over the last couple of years, she had convinced herself this was a pleasant way to spend the morning. But this particular morning, an itchy longing settled inside her. When was the last time they’d had sex before work? For that matter, when was the last time they’d had sex at all? She noticed how many of her friends had posted lovely photos of date nights with their significant others. They all had sex before work, Tabitha decided. She would start waking up earlier to have sex with her husband. It was feasible. If they woke up at four, they could have sex before they went to the gym together, and before they drank buffalo coffee together. Like happy people.
She reconsidered the thought. Four in the morning was awfully early, especially for married sex. This would all change. Someday, their business would be self-sustaining. The winery was on an upswing now; they could both feel it. These were the hard work years. They didn’t have children yet, but there was still time. They didn’t put a whole lot of effort into their house, but there was still time for that, too. Right now, it was all about the business.
When they met, her career was ascendant; his was nearly stratospheric. He liked what he saw in her; she still wasn’t entirely sure why. Men like Royal never dated women like Tabitha. But for whatever reason, he’d snapped her up as head somm at El Zopilote winery and almost as quickly snapped her up to be his wife. Now the winery was one of the best in the state, easily top ten in the country. So they didn’t have time for blissful Facebook pictures like all of her friends? None of their friends owned a business together. None of their friends had the intense work and travel schedule she and Royal kept. Everyone else filtered their pictures; Tabitha knew it was called Fakebook for a reason. She didn’t need to get defensive about their sex life—or lack of it—based on other people’s curated online personas.
Tomorrow, she vowed. She’d wake before dawn and have sex with her husband before he left for the gym. She would be a newer, better version of herself. She’d drink the coffee and the green smoothie after the sex. Willingly, with a smile on her face. Why not? Anything was possible. This new, idealized version of Tabitha that she imagined would not only adore waking up at dawn but also the oily buffalo coffee and kale smoothies.
Not today, though. One more day of a breakfast she liked.
She stopped when she saw that her husband had posted a picture on the winery’s page. It was taken after she left last night, as she was nowhere to be seen in the dimly lit tasting room. Royal must have invited the late guests to the barrel room to try a new bottle after she left work. He held a glass of something inky and red and smirked into the camera. Next to him was a lithe blonde woman Tabitha didn’t recognize, holding the camera at arm’s length and leaning into Royal.
Plum, berry, smoke, and earth. Our new Malbec is perfect for a date night, Royal had written.
Tabitha closed her eyes and thought about that Malbec. The first time she’d tasted it, she thought of the time she’d seen Branford Marsalis at an amphitheater near Seattle after college. She had stretched out a blanket over freshly mown grass, and the smooth saxophone notes washed over her, and she stared up at the inky blue sky. It had seemed like the stars twinkled in time with the jazz music. The wine tasted exactly like that moment.
If it were up to her, she would have named it Marsalis Under the Stars Malbec, and sold it by saying that every mouthful tasted like a saxophone in the night sky. But Royal didn’t like it when she came up with musical descriptions. Completely out of left field, he always said about her ideas. Nobody understands you when you talk like that. That is not remotely how to sell a serious wine.
She scrolled through the comments. He kept up a smart repartee with their clients—the personal touch was part of the appeal of their winery. Most people commented with emojis, thumbs-ups, high fives. Several people asked when it would be released, Tabitha made a mental note to post the release schedule later today.
Delicious, one woman commented, adding several heart emojis for emphasis.
Curious, Tabitha clicked over to her profile. That was, after all, an awful lot of hearts to apply to a glass of wine. The woman who made the multiple-heart comment was the same woman standing next to Royal in the picture. She was, if possible, even more blonde and more lithe in real life than she appeared in a darkened winery. Tabitha kept scrolling. She ran marathons, this delicious, heart-emoji-throwing blonde woman. She had recently gone to Bali with, evidently, nothing but a red bikini. At the top of her feed was the same picture of Royal from the winery, with a different caption: Perfection.
Tabitha clicked back to the winery page and stared at the image again. It wasn’t that unusual for Royal to post pictures of winery guests, or of himself with winery guests. He was attractive and personable, with his charming English accent and those eyes that narrowed when he talked to women. He always seemed to know a secret; that was part of his appeal. The first time she talked to him, Tabitha glanced down to make sure her blouse was buttoned. It had been, but something about his gaze made her feel like he could see right through her clothes.
Considering how much he privately claimed to loathe them, he had an awful lot of pictures of the bachelorettes on his feed. The goddamned bachelorettes were the bane of every winery’s existence. Once a winery was known as a cool destination for a hen party, they couldn’t erase that image. The bachelorettes sucked down all the wine, rarely bought a bottle, and got rowdy with the staff or other guests. Someone—usually the friend who was not chosen as maid of honor—would throw up, and without fail, at least one, but usually more, of the women wound up crying. “Get out the Bimbo Juice,” Royal would mutter when the women walked in, already tipsy from doing shots in the limousine. They weren’t educated enough wine drinkers for him, and he always tried to pass them off to another tasting room employee. But the bachelorettes always found him and took selfies with him. Well, Tabitha supposed, it was only natural. They owned El Zopilote together, but he had always been the face of the winery. And a very handsome face, at that.
But when did bachelorettes get so young?
She had to scroll a long time until she found a picture of herself on the winery’s page, and even then, she was in the background, pulling an empty bottle off the table behind him while he posed with a gaggle of Kim K lookalikes. Tabitha’s eyes lingered on her image. She looked pissed that day, definitely lacking mental clarity. Had someone already thrown up? Why did her thighs look so huge? Was it because she never drank the buffalo coffee?
She stopped drumming her fingers on the keyboard and moved her hand over his phone. Her fingers hesitated only for a moment; then she pushed the ‘on’ button. It isn’t snooping, she told herself. She didn’t know why her heart was fluttering. He knew she had access to all of his files on the computer, including email, and he had access to hers. It had never been a question; they had set it up that way intentionally. Full transparency, necessary for the sake of the business. If, God forbid, something happened to either one of them, the other would need access to all winery records. Not to mention inventory, payroll, scheduling, insurance, and all of the details mandatory to keep a business together. They had divided their duties pretty evenly. To date, she hadn’t had any reason to go into his computer and look anything up. They each stayed in their lane with the business. He did the wine things; she ran the administration. Funny that it had worked out that way, given that they were both master sommeliers and should both be focused full time on wine. Still, someone had to do the finances, and Royal always claimed he hated dealing with numbers.
Tabitha reasoned to herself that the same transparency they had on their computers applied to their phones. Just because she didn’t explicitly have his permission to check, that didn’t mean she couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t have anything to hide, so what was there to worry about?
He had his phone password protected. This is still not snooping, she repeated in her head, even though she couldn’t imagine why he wanted to protect it. Who kept anything valuable on a phone? Did he have business documents? She had every righ
t to look at his business documents. She tried various significant dates—both of their birthdays, their anniversary, their apartment number got her nowhere. She tried some obvious words. WINE. SOMM. He called her Tabby, and she tried all versions of that—TABI, TBBY, TABB. Nothing. She tried his mother’s name, his sister’s name, and multiple variations of the name of their winery: El Zopilote del Mar, the Thief of the Sea. Nothing. She set his phone down and stared at the picture of Royal leaning into the tiny blonde woman.
Tabitha stood again and walked to the kitchen to refill her coffee. Another cup was too much; she could already feel the caffeine coursing through her veins. But she couldn’t think what else to do with her hands. She yanked the belt of her robe more tightly around her middle and sat back down. This was ridiculous. She needed to stop obsessing about his phone and get ready for work.
Tabitha looked again at the picture of Royal. She often thought he looked like a member of the British aristocracy who robbed art museums in his spare time. Classic, fine-boned face, icy blue eyes, and that dark blond hair that he kept shorn close, a jaw line that could cut glass. The Bali-bikini woman leaned into him, a hungry and excited look in her eyes.
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