Autumn in the Vineyard shv-3 Read online

  “Thanks,” Frankie whispered.

  “As long as you promise to come over for dinner soon. We only live five minutes from each other, Frankie, so you don’t have to wait for Phoebe to visit to see me. You know how much I love these talks,” he added, his chest extending with a laugh.

  Heading toward the exit, Frankie did a little extending of her own, with the middle finger fully engaged. “Maybe next time I’ll bring some wine coolers and we can get drunk and then take turns braiding each other’s hair.”

  She was nearly out the door when Jonah said, “Hey, Frankie?”

  Everything inside her stilled and her heart, which had been beating too fast all morning, stopped in her chest. Back to him, she closed her eyes and willed herself to breathe.

  Frankie knew that after three tours in Iraq, their brother Dax was coming home for only four days. Just like she knew that Jonah and Adam were headed to San Francisco on Friday to pick him up and welcome him home. She also knew she would never insist on tagging along, but if they invited her, she would drop everything to be a part of that. Even if it meant begging Judge Pricket to change the court date.

  “Did you know that Saul had split the land before you bought it?” he asked.

  Frankie hated herself for being stupid enough to hope.

  Ignoring the pain rippling through her chest, she turned to face her brother. When she did, the ripple became a full tsunami of hurt. One look at the deputy standing across from her was the reality check she needed.

  Jonah was a mountain of a man, sharing the same deep blue eyes, dirty blond hair, and trademark Baudouin intensity as her two other brothers. Aside from her unnatural height and inability to connect to others, Frankie was nothing like them.

  Something she’d spent her whole life trying to overcome, with no luck.

  “Yup.” She choked out a laugh, while forcing herself to suck it up before she did something totally undignified, like cry. “I did my homework before I signed anything. I didn’t know it was DeLuca who’d bought the other parcel, though. Mrs. Sorrento told me Saul had sold it to a developer.”

  Jonah nodded, a flash of pride flickering in his eyes. “You think he knows?”

  “Since when do you care what the DeLucas are doing?”

  “I don’t,” he said. Frankie knew that admitting he cared meant admitting he was affected by losing Grandpa’s good opinion. “I was just curious.”

  “By the look on Nate’s face when he saw me on the property, I’m betting, no.”

  Working side by side with Nate wasn’t ideal, but it wouldn’t affect her end goal. She wouldn’t let it. As for him, once he learned how the property was divided—Frankie smiled. “But I’d give anything to see the look on his face when he figures it all out.”

  * * *

  After a morning spent at the sheriff’s department, and an afternoon stranded in town without his car, Nate needed a cold drink and some time to come up with a plan. He was due in court Friday morning, and if he didn’t figure out a solution, he might lose everything.

  Nate opened the door to the Spigot, the only bar in town that served mostly locals instead of tourists and always straight-up. The chilly evening air was replaced with the smell of buffalo wings and greasy fries, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Football played on the old television perched above the bar and, despite the fact that the wine cave turned sports saloon was in desperate need of an overhaul, a decent happy hour crowd already filled the tables.

  Nate started for the bar to grab an empty stool and—son of a bitch.

  His two younger brothers sat at a booth in the back, huddled around a pitcher of beer, tossing back a few as though Nate hadn’t spent the past four hours in the planning commission’s basement alone. They hadn’t bothered to answer a single one of his ten phone calls.

  “Well, look who it is,” Trey, the youngest, and at the moment the most annoying sibling, said, raising a frosty mug in greeting.

  “About time,” Marco, the next oldest said, staring at his phone, thumbs flying over the keys.

  “You’d better be texting me that your phone was broken and that’s why you didn’t return any of my calls,” Nate said, dropping down onto the chair across from Marc.

  “Nope, telling Lexi that you made bail so she can stop trying to hide a fingernail file in one of her éclairs,” Marco said, a goofy grin on his face. The same grin that had taken up permanent residence ever since his high school crush Lexi moved back to town—and into his bed. Now that Lexi was wearing his brother’s ring, she was about to become family. And Nate couldn’t be happier for them. Although right now, he had a hard time feeling happy about anything.

  “He’s been texting her all evening,” Trey said, exasperated.

  “Yeah, well what the hell have you been doing?” Nate challenged, stealing his beer and draining it in a swallow.

  “Besides trying not to gag on the level of domestication sticking up the family?” Trey didn’t even balk at the empty glass Nate set back down; he just flagged the waitress for another mug.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Marc shot back.

  “I’m in town for two days,” Trey pointed out. “Two days, Marc. I haven’t seen Gabe since Sofia was born. Nate spent his day playing domestic dress-up with Frankie—”

  “I was in jail.”

  “And I wasted most of today trying to convince you to meet me for a drink,” Trey said to Marc.

  “It took you all day to convince me because Lexi was cooking up something sweet in the kitchen.” Not only was Lexi a great chef, she was great for Marc.

  “I thought the bistro was closed on Wednesdays,” Trey said.

  “It is.” Marc grinned, way too big. His phone pinged. There went the thumbs again.

  Trey shook his head. “Come on, I leave tomorrow and you haven’t stopped sexting since you got here.”

  “I’m not sexting,” Marc said eyes glued to his screen. He smiled. The phone pinged. Fingers back to work. “I was just telling her that I miss her.”

  “Aw, man don’t admit that,” Trey groaned, shaking his head. “At least sexting sounds manly.”

  “Nope. Being a man is having the balls to admit that I’d rather spend the day with Lexi in the kitchen than drinking beer and watching ball.”

  Trey froze, his eyes wide and accusing. “You drank the Kool Aid didn’t you? How many times have I told you sip, but never swallow?”

  “If you two are done acting like a bunch of little girls, we have a problem,” Nate snapped.

  “Wow, man.” Marc looked up from his phone for the first time since Nate sat down. “Jail made you hard.”

  “Yeah,” Trey agreed. “You don’t have to yell.”

  “I’m not yelling,” Nate said, using every ounce of control he had not to do just that.

  “Okay, so you’re not yelling, but your eyes are all mean and there’s a hard edge to your voice. It’s hurtful.” Trey shrugged and Nate wanted to punch him.

  “Kind of like how he was acting after the showdown when he kissed Frankie and she rammed his left testicle into his throat.”

  Yeah, that had been a bad call. Not the kissing part, but the forgetting to protect his package part.

  “This is serious. Can you focus for just one minute?” Nate ran a hand over his face and willed himself to focus. Problem was he’d been on edge since his encounter with Frankie. An afternoon arguing with the planning commissioner and an ill-equipped legal team hadn’t helped.

  “Right. Sorry.” Trey elbowed Marc and they both bit back a smile. “What’s on your mind?”

  “While you were here ignoring my calls, Charles snatched the land right out from under us,” Nate said, happy to see their stupid grins fade.

  “What? But we close escrow Friday,” Marc said. “Wait, start from the beginning.”

  Nate unrolled the assessor’s map and spread it across the table. His brothers huddled around. “Tanner delivered this earlier this morning.”

  Ja
ck Tanner, NFL legend and home-grown celebrity, was not just a booming land developer in the Napa Valley. He was also, luckily, not a DeLuca or a Baudouin, which was why after Saul’s wife filed for a divorce, Saul quietly approached Tanner and offered him Sorrento Ranch. Tanner had no interest in a twenty-acre vineyard. His interest lie in wine caves not vines, so he agreed to act as the front man with Saul, securing the land for Nate and his family, if Tanner Construction would be named the exclusive builder for all future DeLuca projects.

  It was a win-win.

  Except for the fact that Nate couldn’t do his usual background check on the land prior to escrow closing without risking their anonymity. And if Saul Sorrento discovered he was really selling to a DeLuca, he would have pulled his offer indefinitely.

  “What am I looking at?” Trey picked up the map.

  “It’s different from the one filed with the bank.”

  “Different, how?” Marc asked, leaning forward, phone forgotten, focused.

  “Different as in we are screwed.” Nate smoothed the assessor’s map across the booth top and pointed to a strange line on the map that cut diagonally through the property. “This wasn’t on the map Saul filed with the bank. That one didn’t have this easement dividing the property.”

  “Dividing?” Trey said. “It hacks it in half. Are you telling me we paid seven and a half million dollars for twenty acres of cow pasture that the city is planning to cut a road down the middle of?”

  If only they were so lucky. His brothers had been hesitant to pay Saul’s insane asking price to begin with. Thinking he was selling to a developer, Saul jacked up the price. And it wasn’t as though Nate could call the greedy twerp on it. This was the only chance Nate and his family would have to own this land and finish what Grandpa Geno had started. So he’d convinced his brothers of the long term potential and made the offer. Only he hadn’t done his homework and now they were screwed.

  “Actually, we paid seven point five million for ten acres,” Nate said, sitting back in the chair. “That isn’t a road, it’s a property line. From what I can find out, about fifteen years ago Saul had the land split into two separate parcels. We bought the south parcel.”

  “Holy shit,” Marc said, slumping back in his chair. Nate knew what he was seeing. Every plan they’d made was going up in a fucking cloud of smoke. “We need all twenty acres to make this work.”

  As though Nate didn’t fully understand. This was the proposed site of their premiere winery, Opus. A vineyard that yielded small quantities of high-end wine.

  Nate’s dad had spent every spare moment crossbreeding vines and experimenting with what he’d called his grand opus. As a teen, Nate had been right there with him, tinkering, as his dad called it, trying to find the perfect blend for an extraordinary wine. Nate never forgot those times with his dad, or their dream.

  “Ninety percent of the vines are on the north parcel,” Marc continued. “Without those, we won’t have producing vines for at least three or four years.”

  “I finalized those grapes yesterday,” Trey added, his face a little pale. “Susan Jance was so impressed with your pitch that she is positive her client will want every barrel.”

  Marc whistled. “Every barrel? That’s a lot of wine for one collector.”

  “Not when the collector is Pierce Remington,” Trey said.

  “Of Remington Hotels?”

  “The very same,” Trey said and everyone fell silent.

  “Shit,” Nate sighed. Today was just getting better and better.

  Susan Jance was a wine broker to the rich and entitled. Her clientele included some of the wealthiest wine collectors in the world, with Remington being at the top of her list. He was the new face to an old money hotel empire and as such liked to scout out the up-and-comers before their wines went to auction.

  “Remington isn’t just looking to grow his own collection. Susan says he’s looking for a wine that is fine enough to grace his personal cellar while also wooing his high rollers in his hotels. Kind of a ‘sample my life by sampling my collection’ kind of treatment for his VIPers. Ten acres won’t cut it and we can’t lose this deal.”

  “I know,” Nate said, pulling out his SAUL’S CLUSTERFUCK LIST and adding TAKE SUSAN JANCE TO DINNER in slot number seven.

  When life got crazy, Nate made lists. Had since his parents died. It was his way of finding logic in otherwise emotional situations. And right now, he was staring down a tornado of emotion.

  “How much is Saul asking for the other half?” Marc asked, after the waitress delivered a full pitcher and disappeared.

  “It’s already sold,” Nate admitted. How had this even happened?

  “Sold? To who?” Trey asked then started shaking his head. “No way. I thought the Baudouins were having money problems.”

  “Yeah, well Charles must have found the money somewhere,” Nate said, remembering how Frankie was all but preening this morning in her wet, translucent tank top. Okay, so the top had been black, but it was still wet and if he stared hard enough, he could see her chilled nipples poking through the fabric.

  “Seven million?” Trey challenged, emptying the pitcher into his mug and signaling the waitress for a refill. “Where does a guy who was willing to screw over the entire town to save his winery suddenly find seven and a half million?”

  That was what Nate was trying to figure out. Just a few months ago, Charles had tried to ruin the Summer Wine Showdown in hopes of discrediting the DeLucas. Fortunately for Nate, the only name discredited had been Baudouin. Unfortunately for Charles, he’d lost several local accounts because of it.

  “Saul didn’t sell it and Charles doesn’t own it,” Gabe, head of the DeLuca family, said from behind.

  Nate turned around and saw his older brother, looking like the daddy he was now, dressed in jeans, a faded—and very wrinkled—college t-shirt, and stubble from three days ago. He dropped his body onto the seat next to Nate, picked up Trey’s new beer and downed it in one long swallow.

  “I thought you weren’t allowed to drink,” Trey said, reaching for the empty glass.

  “I chose not to drink and that was when Regan was pregnant. In case you haven’t noticed, she isn’t any more,” Gabe said, eying Marc’s mug.

  Regan was Gabe’s wife and not only was she no longer pregnant, but the dark circles and bloodshot eyes said Gabe still wasn’t sleeping. At all. Whereas Nate’s oldest niece Holly was a talker, his new little niece Sofia, adorable as she was, was a screamer. Baby Sofie had come home from the hospital three weeks ago and Gabe hadn’t slept a wink since.

  “How is Regan?” Marc asked.

  “Amazing.” Gabe smiled. And man his brother looked happy. That was all it took, just the mention of his sweet wife and he perked right up. Marc was the same way lately. Nate was happy for them, he genuinely was.

  In fact, he wouldn’t mind having a woman in his life. A sweet woman with a bright smile and a big heart. A picture of Frankie popped into his head and he flinched. Sweet. He wanted sweet. And a home, not a rundown alpaca farm.

  “How are you handling things?” Nate asked.

  “How the hell do you think?” Gabe said, his smile fading, but there was no anger in his voice. He was too tired for anger. “I haven’t slept in what feels like a year, my daughter cries every time I hold her, Holly is already asking for another sister—she wants to return her for one who doesn’t cry all the time—and Regan’s OBGYN told her that after the C-section she needs to take it easy for at least another few weeks. Somehow my wife took ‘bed rest’ to mean ‘I’m throwing Sofie a one-month birthday party. By the way, you’re all invited.’ ”

  Gabe pulled three pink envelopes out of his pocket and slid them across the table. Inside was an even pinker card, shaped like two baby booties. But what had Nate smiling was the frilly embossed cursive, which looked more wedding invitation than baby’s birthday and read: COME CELEBRATE ST. HELENA’S OFFICIAL HARVEST BABY’S FIRST MONTH-DAY.

  “Official harvest bab
y?” Nate laughed.

  “Wait, this is on the same day as the Cork Crawl,” Trey pointed out and Gabe groaned. Apparently this had been a point of contention.

  In wine country, the harvest season brought out hundreds of thousands of visitors and their spending bucks to the valley. In St. Helena, harvest season brought the annual Cork Crawl. It was the Oscars of wine, where the biggest names in the valley went head to head in a tasting that declared the king of wines for the following year. Nate’s family had reigned supreme as the undefeated Cork King since 1982.

  “The Crawl is always over by late afternoon and this starts at six. Sharp,” Gabe said to the group but was staring at Trey. “You will all be there, and on time, and you will all smile the entire fucking night, got it?”

  They all nodded. Well, except for Trey who glared out the window.

  “Great, now since we have that settled, can someone pour me another beer because Regan told me that Glow sold the north parcel to Frankie for just under a mill,” Gabe said, and Marc immediately flagged down the waitress for another mug.

  “One million?” Nate choked. “That land was worth at least—”

  “You’d better say ten million, since you convinced us that ours was worth seven and we don’t even have enough grapes to make a jar of freaking jam,” Trey said.

  Until recently, the direction and decisions concerning the wineries had been made based on marketability and returns. Now, after closing the biggest distribution deal in their company’s history, DeLuca Wines had the money to “tinker.” But tinkering came at double the price for half the land.

  The waitress delivered the mug and Nate waited for Gabe to take a drink before he spoke. “She must have bought it for her grandpa.”

  Because why would she buy it for herself? Frankie’s life was her family’s vineyard. It was one of the few things that, outside of getting on each other’s nerves, they had in common.

  “Frankie no longer works for Baudouin Vineyards,” Gabe said, pinning Nate with a look that he couldn’t decipher.

  “What?” Nate felt everything slow to a nauseating stop. “There’s no way she’d quit.”