And even that wouldn’t have been so much of a problem if his own bedroom wasn’t out of commission. He’d made the mistake of asking Marielle if she knew a good plumber, and a simple fix for a leaking shower had turned into a whole new bathroom because allegedly, the plumbing in that part of the house wasn’t fit for purpose. Then his bed disappeared. Apparently, he was supposed to replace the mattress every six years, so Marielle was just being helpful when she had the old one hauled off and recycled, and what better time to replace the bed frame as well? All of this meant Nolan had been forced to move into the guest wing, and he wasn’t sure his blood pressure would take being that close to Alexa, not if Chase was with her.
How good was the soundproofing in those rooms?
He didn’t want to find out.
Nolan’s feelings were all kinds of wrong, and he knew it, but much like his broken shower, he couldn’t turn them off.
And as well as Alexa’s impending arrival, he had to help Teo wrangle several dozen seasonal workers and make sure they picked the right grapes at the right time, and also take a trip to the feed store to buy more chicken feed. At least the harvest was going well. They had six fermenters full of what promised to be an excellent Zinfandel, with the promise of more to come. This part of the job was always nerve-racking. Not the harvest itself, because Dionysus paid above-average wages and Nolan had no problem attracting a skilled team of pickers, but the part where he turned grape juice into magic. The business relied on Nolan’s palate, on the tweaks he made throughout the process. The intensity of the pressing, the type of yeast to use, the fermentation temperature, the duration of the maceration, when and if to add sulphur dioxide, the filtration technique… Those all depended on him, and his growing reputation in the industry put additional weight on his shoulders.
“What problem?” he asked Teo, putting down his coffee cup.
Was that the sound of rotors? Nolan walked out of the house to the pool terrace with Teo following.
“The temperature on fermenter six is a hundred and thirteen degrees.” Nolan stopped short at his words. “And the others are set to eighty-four.”
The first word that flew through Nolan’s mind? Fuck.
The second? How?
But what came out was a shaky, “How long?”
Teo shrugged. “A while, I think? I went in to do the manual punch-down, and the cap didn’t look right.”
Nolan was already heading to the winery. The cap—the layer of grape skins that rose to the top of the must in the open-top tank—needed to be pushed back down into the liquid two or three times a day, and it was a job only Nolan or Teo performed. Nolan didn’t trust anyone else to do it properly. Hell, he hadn’t even trusted Teo for the first two years he worked at Dionysus. Cap management was such an important part of making a good red. Tannins, anthocyanins, and flavour compounds, those ethereal elements that gave a wine its character, were all found in the skins. And there were risks in the cap too—the combination of acetic bacteria, fermentation, and oxygen could turn a vat to vinegar if it wasn’t treated right. Nolan had learned his skills through a winemaking course, from his grandpa’s detailed notes, and with a lot of trial and error. It was only in the past four years that the vineyard had finally begun turning a profit.
Until then, he’d been dependent on the money Alexa had stolen. Guilt still ate away at him for spending it, but until she emptied their bank accounts, Levi’s parents had been using their wealth and influence to pin their son’s crime on anyone but him. Which meant turning either Nolan or one of his friends into the prime suspect. As the only housemate without an alibi, Justin had borne the brunt of their lies, with Nolan a close second thanks to his father’s proclivities.
Without money, Linus and Mary Sykes had fallen silent, and the blessed relief Nolan felt had been enough to make him keep the money temporarily. But when he needed to get the vineyard up and running, no bank would lend him the amount he needed, and the Sykeses’ cash had been sitting there…
Dammit, Teo was right. The cap was just…flat. The carbon dioxide bubbles produced by the fermentation were missing, which meant the yeast had died, and fifty thousand bucks’ worth of Zinfandel was only good for the drain. How the hell had this happened? Quickly, Nolan checked the temperature controls on the other fermenters. The process itself produced heat, and in order to keep the conditions optimal, each tank was jacketed by a digitally controlled glycol cooling system. Could the controller have malfunctioned? Or the temperature probe? Nolan had done the last punch-down himself at approaching midnight, and everything had been working just fine then. Hadn’t it? He’d made a handful of tweaks, set one tank a degree higher and another a degree lower, and he’d also been frustrated and tired and texting Alexa and… Could he have fucked this up? Punched in the wrong number? Leaned on the control panel? Misread the digits?
He didn’t think so.
But it wasn’t impossible.
And now three hundred gallons of wine were ruined. He leaned his forehead against the tank as stress and exhaustion washed over him. He’d put his all into this place, and a setback like this one… He felt it to his core.
“Why is there a car outside the guest cottage?”
Nolan turned slowly to see Alexa standing behind him with her hands on her hips, flanked by Chase and a statuesque blonde who looked as if she’d stepped out of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
“Because there are people staying in it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I ordered a desk.”
Give me strength. “Because you weren’t answering your fucking phone,” Nolan practically growled.
“So they booked yesterday evening?”
“They’ve been here since Sunday,” Teo not-so-helpfully interjected.
“So you had ample time to mention it,” Alexa said.
“Why? Why would I tell you that? People staying in the cottage had zero impact on your life.”
“Well, where am I supposed to stay?”
“In a hotel? In a tent? I have a cave available if you want to keep channelling your inner fucking dragon.”
