by Tif Marcelo
“Who isn’t nearby.”
“You didn’t let me finish. I’m in the process of transferring services. But fine, to make you happy—yes, okay, I’ll call Adam if I need him.”
“Mitchell David.”
“Levi Aaron. You’re really starting to sound like our mother.”
“Boys, don’t use our mother’s name in vain,” Cody says.
“All right, all right.” Finally, Levi sounds like he’s given up. “Please, just run things by me? Big things? Check in every few days. And don’t let your tenant do anything permanent to our home.”
“I promise to ask your permission whenever I wipe my ass. Sir.” I fake-salute with my left hand.
Cody laughs.
Levi flips us off with both hands. “I’m gonna go.” But after a pause, he adds, “Love you guys.”
After we all hang up, I plop a baseball cap on my head for my scheduled meeting with the Aquinos. Exiting through the back door, I’m greeted by the expanse of the vineyards. Rows of greenery and vines, of the deep purples of zinfandels and the translucent green of Chardonnay grapes.
Pride fills me. This is Dunford’s legacy. I’ll absolutely protect it—all of this. Levi might have his fears, and I may have my shortcomings, but my commitment is to Dunford. Even if I have my own opinion on how our business should be run, I understand my utmost priorities must align with those of the other two members of our family corporation: to restore the vineyard, which was closed and has been barely maintained since Cody left last year, and to reestablish our relationships with wineries and hope they still want our grapes.
But until that happens, our only option for raising capital is to lease Lavenderhill, even if it upsets Levi.
My feet are their own master as I trek down through the shortcut that runs behind Lavenderhill. Dew slaps across my jeans as I wade through the overgrown grass to the edge of the property line separated by a ditch. I leap across, the rush of air a shock, reminding me of the million times my brothers and I did the same thing when we were kids.
As I approach the side entrance of the home, I track the subtle movement of something through the trees in the apple orchard. Moving closer, I see someone on a wooden orchard ladder. It’s probably the same one we used decades ago, when my brothers and I tackled each rung together, at times tipping it to the side. And where the ladder is perched now, on a slight hill, with its third leg on the downslope means only one thing. A fall.
My body makes my decision before I register myself moving. What do folks say about soldiers?
You can take the soldier out of the field, but you can’t take the field out of the soldier.
My hands are on the ladder just as it starts to buckle, and I yell upward at a pair of feet. “Steady! Don’t move.” Mother of God, the person is on the highest rung. The ladder shakes, as if I startled it, and apples fall. One, two, three thunk around me. I look up just as a shadow emerges.
And an apple hits me in the eye.
“Fuck.” My eyeball burns and tears as I raise my good eye to see the figure in black climb down.
“Oh man, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?” It’s a woman’s voice.
“Better now. You know you were two seconds from biting it? Next time you’re out here, make sure you’re not alone.”
She gasps. “Oh my God, it’s you.”
“Me what?” Once I feel the woman’s weight ease from the ladder, I rub both my eyes of the leftover sting until my vision clears. Holy shit—it’s the woman from a few days ago, the one I doused with coffee, standing in front of me. My pulse quickens. I didn’t think I’d see her again. My first instinct is to jump into a greeting but I’m met with her scowl. I bite down on a smile. “It’s you.”
“That’s what I said.” She narrows her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here.” I size her up. She’s wearing an apron, hair tucked into a bandana. With her bright pink lipstick and glitter on her eyelids, I can’t look away. My body reacts the same way it did our first meeting, with a curiosity that kept me thinking of her for days afterward.
“I live here, too. Soon, anyway.” She points at me with an apple, nose scrunched.
Damn she’s cute.
“Wait. You’re a Dunford?” she asks.
“That I am. The middle. Mitchell.” I grin at this luck, and at the fact she doesn’t have a ring on her finger. “You’re an Aquino, I take it.” When she nods, it dawns on me. Just because she doesn’t have a ring on her finger doesn’t mean she isn’t hitched. Guys didn’t wear their rings in the field while they worked. I reel myself in and take my voice down to professional grade. “I’m ready for our meeting. Is everyone in your party here?”
An eyebrow shoots up, then she props her hand on her hip. A beat later, she takes a bite out of the apple. “My party.”
“Yeah, um . . . a spouse. Partner?”
She shakes her head. “I’m the tenant.”
I smile at this, while the logical part of me halts my train of thought. “You’re Mary B. Aquino?”
She nods stiffly. “Both your Realtor and my sister are inside, waiting. Because you’re late.”
Yep, she’s definitely not happy to see me, and hasn’t forgotten about my dumping a gallon of coffee on her. So I try to oil the skids a little, relax her with a joke. “Well, Mary, let me tell you about those ladders. They’re old. Do you have experience with orchards? Gardens?”
She levels her eyes at me. “Even if it’s none of your business. Yes, yes I do.”
I keep myself from smiling. “So I guess you know you really don’t need these ladders anymore, especially with these apple-picking drones that are all the rage now.”
She places her mouth on the apple, pink lips around the red, and bites down on the flesh. As she chews, I imagine those lips on mine, leaving them red after a wet kiss, and I tear my eyes away. “Oh yeah. The drones. I’m in the market for them.”
Gotcha. I shake my head, and a laugh makes it way up my throat. “There’s no such thing as an apple-picking drone, not one commercially that is anywhere near affordable. I’m totally messing with you.”
“Funny.” Her voice is monotone, clearly not finding it so. “Wait. How did you know to come into the orchard and not the front door?” She looks beyond me, and when I turn, the glare of Mountainridge’s window pierces my vision.
I pointed east. “I came through the shortcut.”
“Interesting. You can see me and you can pass behind the house.” She steps around me, then crosses the threshold through the side doors. “Mr. Dunford, let’s get this meeting started, shall we? I think we have a lot to discuss.”
4
BRYN
For the first time since meeting this Mitchell Dunford, I’m able to wipe that lackadaisical smile off his face, and boy, is it satisfying. It almost makes up for the apple-picking drone bullshit he tried to trick me with earlier.
Almost.
“So let me get this straight,” Mitchell says. “You want to pull all this equipment out and redo the floors? I was expecting some changes, but not a major renovation.” He has both palms on the table, as if bolstering himself.
I nod, avoiding his eyes. Now with his hat off and hair floppy and boyish, I can see how wicked he might have been in another life. He would have been the kind of guy I fell for in my more carefree days—a guy completely the opposite of me, fearless and spontaneous. But this meeting is about setting the foundation for my business, and ogling Mitchell is not part of the agenda. “Cooking classes are the focal point of this retreat, so the kitchen has to be able to accommodate multiple cooks. That means more burners, bigger countertops.”
“All right. And the floors?”
“The wood laminate will warm the space up.”
“Christ. And a pergola?”
“That sunset view is priceless. That, and the vie
w of the vineyard behind the house is amazing. Honestly, these are what make this place like paradise. I can guarantee our guests will spend a majority of their time outside from spring till fall.”
He runs his fingers through his hair. Blows a breath through seconds that feel like days. I get it—the guy’s worried. From the research I’ve done on Dunford Vineyard, no one but family has lived on this property.
Appealing to Mitchell’s attachment, I reach my hand toward the middle of the kitchen island and point to the renovation proposal in front of him. “I promise, Mr. Dunford, I’m going to take care of this place like it’s my own home. I will leave it in better shape than when I assumed it. The things written here may seem big, but we’re not doing anything irreversible or that will change the character of the house. And the second dwelling out back is going to be up to code once I’ve renovated it, increasing Dunford’s property value.”
He looks to Rocío, who has been busy taking notes throughout this entire exchange, as if she holds the final answer. My gaze slides to my left, to Victoria, who is doodling on an empty planner page. I asked her to attend this meeting so I wouldn’t have to face this alone. Despite the confidence I’m exuding on the outside, I’m nervous. Lavenderhill is my dream property.
“How many guests do you plan to host at one time?”
“Six, seven at most.” My words quicken. “But that doesn’t have anything to do with the renovations.”
“It has everything to do with them. It makes me wonder if you need to do them in the first place.”
I feel like I’m being dragged through a maze with no opening, so I sit up straighter. “I think that’s my decision to make. Whether I have one guest or twenty, what I’ll do down here is really, for lack of better words, none of your business. Frankly, your monthly lease is higher than any of the other places I’ve previewed, and I hoped you would be the most flexible. I would not have chosen Lavenderhill if I couldn’t do these renovations. My impression from Rocío was that the renovations would be approved. I thought this was a done deal. I mean, you can see that I already brought in a load of my things, that I have a moving truck outside. I won’t, however, have any hesitation about walking away from this lease and asking for my deposit back if I can’t do them.”
My words come out steady, my intent clear. I hate getting to this point in any negotiation, but he pushed me here.
“Fine.” Finally, he spits the word out as if it were poison. “As long as the changes are nothing permanent. With the pergola, I’d like to have some say in how large it will be.”
“I can work with that.” I fight the urge to smile.
Finally, Mitchell picks up the pen next to him and flips to the back page of the lease. As he scrawls his signature, he says, “This is not a carte blanche agreement. Future changes—”
“I promise we’ll discuss future large changes.” I accentuate the word large.
He passes the lease to me, and I sign on my dotted line.
The barstool squeaks as he stands, and I scramble up and meet him around the island. I extend my hand, an olive branch. “It’s great doing business with you. I’m glad we could come to a middle ground.”
My sister lets out a mouse’s squeak of triumph.
Mitchell finally grips my hand in return, then lets his fall to his side. “It wasn’t quite the middle.”
“Honestly? You’re right.” I laugh halfheartedly, unable to rub it in. When his expression turns incredulous, I rephrase my intention. “Try to see it my way, this home will shine after the renovations are complete.”
“We’ll see.” His voice is gruff and resigned, eyes on me.
They strike me as a dare. “You will.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.” Take that.
“Thank you for your time this morning. And welcome home.” Rocío glides between Mitchell and me, cutting the tension with a sincere smile.
The group walks to the door, and I open it. “Thank you. It feels like home already.”
Mitchell snorts. “Right.”
I refuse to be taken in by his poor sportsmanship. I won and want to be the gracious winner. So I grin. “I’ll keep in touch.”
He nods. “Nice to meet you, Victoria, Mary.”
Victoria snickers then slides her eyes to me.
“Right. I’m Bryn. Mary is my legal first name, but I’ve always gone by Bryn.”
“Interesting. Well, Bryn. I’m right up the road, should you need me.”
Don’t worry, I won’t is the first thing I think of, but I don’t answer and simply close the door behind them. Through the windows, I watch the pair as they walk up the hill to Mountainridge. The hunch in Mitchell’s shoulders is evident, and a small part of me feels sorry for the guy. He was ill-prepared for this meeting, and I pushed him to his limit.
Then again, he has my money. I’m paying him top dollar to live here, and it’s within my right to negotiate the best for this retreat.
Who is he anyway, this Mitchell Dunford? He’s just a guy with a silver—no, gold—spoon in his mouth. The recipient of a legacy and likely a trust fund I can only dream of. He already has what I’m barely clutching on to, this bit of an idea that if I put in hard work and sweat equity—and every dime I have—I’ll get the so-called American Dream. To call something truly my own. To create something out of nothing and make a living out of it.
“That was tense.” Vic heads into the kitchen and clears our glasses of water from the countertop. Humor tinges her tone. “If you ask me, it sounded like there was something fishy in your negotiation. Like you were getting back at him for spilling coffee on you or something.”
I follow her in, humiliation creeping up my spine from the embarrassment of being schooled that there was no such thing as apple-picking drones. “You’re wrong, Vic.”
“Uh-huh.”
Admittedly, it started with his drone comment. Mitchell tested me—teasingly, sure—but instead of the competent business owner I aspire to be, I felt like a fraud. I thought that my experience working full-time and getting my MBA part-time would’ve prepared me for the challenges of starting my own business. But the road thus far has been rough, starting with this expensive piece of land that was hard to find, and now its nosy landlord.
But at our meeting, I showed him. He’s not messing with an amateur. “I have a feeling Mitchell Dunford’s going to be up my ass for as long as we live here.”
“Quite honestly? I couldn’t focus on anything he said. Did you see how beautiful he was?”
“Pfft. All I saw was someone trying tell me what to do with my business.” My voice is accusatory, but my body hums in agreement with my sister. Mitchell is beautiful. He’s sexy in a mischievous way. Which bodes worse, because while he might be the kind of man I’m physically attracted to, I can’t hang with the jokester type for any length of time—as evidenced by today’s meeting. “And speaking of . . .”
My brain flips over as I grab the whiteboard from my things at the corner of the room and perch it on the kitchen counter. Since we still need to unpack the rest of the truck, hire crucial staff, renovate this gorgeous home, and fill it with retreat-worthy furnishings, all with a timeline of opening by mid-August, it’s going to take fourteen-hour days.
What my sister doesn’t know—and what I don’t want to say aloud—is that beyond what Mitchell Dunford said, he made me feel something. Anger and frustration the first day we met, and then today? An irritation that has left me restless. His presence, like a night watchman, doesn’t give me heartsease. He puts me on edge. I want to prove him wrong, just because.
Yes, it’s irrational. Yes, it’s stupid.
It sure didn’t help his cause that he initially treated our meeting with an easygoing attitude, a hands-in-his-jeans-pocket-aw-shucks vibe people like me abhor. People like me who scrubbed floors, washed dishes, waited tables, cooked food, and to
ok our jobs seriously.
Gauging my thoughts, Victoria brushes past me to get the coffee started. She grinds the Kape Barako, the coffee beans my dad brings back from the Philippines. “Fine. I’ll order pizza for lunch. I know that look. You want to work.”
The coffee starts brewing, and its nutty, ethereal scent unlocks my creativity. On one half of the whiteboard, I scrawl our hard dates with a black dry-erase marker: furniture delivery date, garden rehab for our fresh vegetables, pergola construction start date, small dwelling reno, opening. On the other half, I brainstorm people to hire. Because what I have in organization and project management, I lack in actual skill and time.
Chef
Housekeeping
Groundskeeping
“Food will be delivered in thirty minutes.” Vic sets down a mug next to me. It’s the perfect light brown color from the coconut milk she mixed in. Everything stops for this first taste; superstition tells me a great cup of coffee leads to an even better day.
“Mmmmm . . .” I groan, satisfied when I bring the cup to my lips. It’s abso-freaking-lutely perfect.
Vic curtsies, then opens her planner, filled with stickers and washi tape and doodles. It’s a stark contrast to my whiteboard planning, Excel spreadsheets, and email signature, which reads simply Best, BA.
When my father says Vic and I are yin and yang, he is never, ever kidding. My sister’s creative skills, her writing, are like my mother’s ability to turn clay into pottery, canvas into paintings, ingredients into food. On the other end of the spectrum, my father and I are all about lists, problem solving, planning, and deadlines. To them, no is something to maneuver around. For us, no isn’t a limit.
No is fuel.
Which totally explains why I can’t stop thinking about Mitchell Dunford. Because of his attachment to this house, he could potentially be my greatest obstacle, and I must handle him with kid gloves.
Although my sister would probably argue that my current preoccupation with the man is because he’s tall, dark haired, and undeniably handsome.