“That was the first thing I tried.”
“Then I’m out of ideas. Sorry.” There was something different about Marielle this afternoon, and he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it. Suddenly, he realised what it was. “Did you lose a button?”
“Huh?”
He tapped his chest. “From your shirt.”
Her cheeks reddened. “Oh, it’s just a little hot in here.”
“I’ll turn the AC down a notch.”
“Why don’t we both finish for the day? We can forget the website and have dinner instead.”
“I thought Tuesdays were knitting club night?”
“You mean the quilting circle? Well, it turns out everyone except Joanne and Ada is on vacation, and Joanne’s husband ate a bowl of chowder that disagreed with him, so she had to stay home and take care of his needs. Ada and I decided it would be best to cancel.”
Couldn’t the man use the bathroom alone?
“Sounds sensible,” Nolan managed.
“Don’t you wish you had someone to look after you when you get sick?”
“I do. Teo’s wife sends food and checks up on me.”
Teodoro was Nolan’s foreman, a hardworking Guatemalan who’d moved to Amador County four years ago after working on the coffee plantations back home. Nolan would be lost without him, although Teo working at Dionysus had caused some bad blood between Nolan and Roy Leland, co-owner of the Silver Hollow Vineyard and Teo’s former boss. Roy swore Nolan had stolen his best employee, when in reality, Teo had quit because Roy tended to sample too much of his own product and start ranting about “those damn immigrants” while Teo’s wife and kids were in earshot.
Anyhow, not only had Teo quickly learned more about grapevines than any of his predecessors, but he also had an uncanny knack for predicting the weather. This morning, he’d told Nolan there was a storm coming, and although NOAA said the chances were slim, Nolan had enough faith in Teo’s gut to adjust the irrigation plan they’d put in place during drought. Grapevines weren’t thirsty plants, and too much water made the grapes swell, sacrificing quality for quantity. And Dionysus was all about quality.
They’d look at harvesting the Zinfandel toward the end of August if the conditions were right. Picking the right moment was key to locking in all those rich flavours. The Syrah would follow, and then finally the Viognier. The Zinfandel was good, and the Syrah won awards, but the Viognier would mark the start of a new chapter for Dionysius. They’d planted the vines four years ago, right after Teo joined the team, and this would be the first attempt at making wine from them. Nolan wasn’t expecting much, not yet, as grapes from a young vine didn’t have the same depth of flavour as those from the more mature specimens. But he had to plan for the future. The Syrah and Zinfandel vines were twenty-five to thirty years old, and for the past few years, Nolan had been cloning the Syrah using cuttings, growing them on ready to take over when the older vines stopped producing.
No rest for the wicked, his grandfather used to tell a young Nolan when he visited with his parents. Ironic, seeing as his father got plenty of rest now—there wasn’t much for a man to do in a six-by-ten cell. At least the harvest would give Nolan a valid excuse to skip breakfast, lunch, and dinner with Marielle for a couple of months.
“I meant a good woman,” Marielle said.
“Fernanda is a good woman.”
Teo said she was his sun, his moon, and his stars, and no matter how busy work got, he always made time to take her on a proper date night every week. Dionysus might be important, he said, but Fernanda was everything. And yes, Nolan had wondered whether he’d ever find a woman who made him feel that way, but one thing was for certain—it wasn’t Marielle or even Lisanne. Once, he’d planned to marry Lis, but now he could look back and see he’d been chasing a dream, not following his heart.
“I tried that, and it didn’t work out.”
Marielle bumped him with a hip. “You shouldn’t give up so easily.”
“I prefer to think of it as a strategic retreat.” He glanced at his watch. “And speaking of strategic retreats, I have a bunch of emails to deal with tonight.”
It wasn’t a lie. Now that Nolan had a working laptop again, he didn’t want his inbox to fill up. Dealing with the backlog last time had been no joke.
“If you ever need help with the admin, just you let me know.”
“I’m sure you have enough to do with fixing your website. So, uh, good luck with that.”
He backed out of the room, and honestly, the refurb couldn’t be finished soon enough. Marielle was exhausting. The only girl in Nolan’s life at the moment was Juno, and that was the way he wanted it to stay.
But before he went to sleep that night, he finally typed out a message to Alexa.
Nolan
I just want to say I’m sorry for leaving the way I did all those years ago. My head was messed up after we found Ruby, and when the cops told me you were younger than you said you were, I directed my hurt at you, and I shouldn’t have done that.
