“Sniff like a dog?” I’d laughed, feeling silly, but did as he asked. “Cherries, maybe? Tobacco?”
“Yes, now swirl again and taste,” Jean-Pierre said.
I tasted, rolling it around my mouth. “Caramel. Tobacco. More cherries.”
“Very good,” Jean-Pierre said.
He started teaching me—informally at first, pouring wines for me to taste and describe what I noticed. Then more seriously. The restaurant agreed I could apprentice under him several nights a week. He lent me books, encouraged me to study regions, grapes, techniques. He said I had what it took to become a sommelier. “Your palate’s very wise, young Vance.” He convinced me to get my WSET certifications.
Once I had them, I went to work for another restaurant in San Francisco. Three years passed. Jean-Pierre wanted to retire and return home to Bordeaux and his roots. Would I like to come with him? I’d been twenty-five, single, anxious to explore the country where so many of the finest wines in the world came from.
Through Jean-Pierre, I got a job as the assistant sommelier at a restaurant in Bordeaux. I quickly fell in love with France—with its wine, its people, its family traditions that went back centuries.
Within two years, I’d worked my way up to a Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris. By thirty, I was head sommelier, making good money, building a reputation. That’s when I met Nicole.
Ugh. Nicole.
I closed my eyes, not wanting to go down that road. Not tonight. But some things you can’t avoid. Not when your daughter is asleep upstairs. Not when all the memories have been unwrapped the moment you hear your ex-wife’s voice.
She’d been beautiful, charming, exciting. We’d bonded over our California childhoods—grown up forty minutes from each other, yet met in Paris. It had seemed like fate. I took it slow at first, unsure of her intentions. Did she plan to stay in France or move home? Then we got pregnant, and I asked her to marry me. She seemed to love Paris and the life we were building. When Margot was born, my heart grew so large I thought it might burst. I thought we had everything.
Little did I know, during my late nights at the restaurant, Nicole was lonely—home alone with a baby. She grew more and more bitter, said she missed her mother and California. When she told me she wanted to go home for a few months so her mother could get to know Margot, I actually encouraged her. I wanted her to be happy. Naively, I figured they’d come back at the end of summer. I even imagined Nicole would miss Paris. And me.
Turns out, she missed neither.
I understood now that Nicole had never really wanted that life. She’d wanted the idea of it—the romance of Paris, the prestige of being married to a sommelier at a top restaurant—but not the reality. Not the late nights, the demanding schedule, the modest apartment.
And then the nightmare began. Jean-Pierre died the summer they were in California—heart attack, sudden. He left me his personal wine collection in his will. Bottles he’d been saving for decades. I sold most of them to fund the custody lawyers. In my free time, to distract myself from the heartbreak of missing my baby girl, I started playing around—designing a wine app with a friend who made his living as a programmer. We had no idea winemakers, distributors, restaurants, and collectors would love it so much. When a large company that owned several other food and wine apps offered to buy it, we didn’t hesitate. All of a sudden, I was rich.
But that didn’t bring my family back to me.
One night, I called my mom, crying.
“Come home, Vance. Come home, and we’ll figure out what to do.”
So that’s what I did. And now here I was, back in Willet Cove, my daughter sleeping safely upstairs. Mia’s big heart had welcomed me into her life like I’d always belonged there. And the most beautiful, generous woman I’d ever known was moving about her room, perhaps even thinking about me the way I was thinking about her.
Everything falling into place? I couldn’t let myself believe it—but the evidence seemed clear. Lila Morgan had turned my whole life upside down, and I loved it. I loved her. Even though I could hardly believe it myself. How was it possible she’d come to mean so much to me in such a short time?
I rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling. I could almost hear Jean-Pierre’s voice: “Don’t question love, young Vance. When it comes your way, you must seize it.”
A sound came from the stairs—the padding of soft footsteps. I sat up, squinting in the darkness.
Lila appeared at the bottom of the stairs, wearing a pair of cotton pajamas, her hair loose around her shoulders. She stopped when she saw me sitting up.
“Did I wake you?” Lila whispered.
“I couldn’t fall asleep.”
“Me neither.” She came closer, sitting on the edge of the coffee table. “I tried, but I couldn’t turn off my brain.”
“I know the feeling.”
She looked so pretty in the dim light from the kitchen—her shapely legs crossed, so close I could reach out and touch her soft skin.
“You should sleep upstairs with me,” Lila said. “It’s more comfortable than the couch, and you have a lot going on tomorrow.”
My heart kicked against my ribs.
