I set the phone aside without answering and return to the barrels. Anything I type right now will give me away, and Tabitha can read between my lines better than anyone I know.
The phone buzzes twice more. I ignore it and focus on cleaning the transfer equipment, but the screen lights up like a small, persistent fly in my otherwise smooth ointment.
By the time I finish, the sun has crept above the hills and the room is starting to glow with early morning light.
The tasting room door opens at seven-fifteen. I hear Tabitha's boots click across the floor. I watch through the glass as she sets down her bag, starts the register, and flips on the display lights. Then she heads straight to me.
Tabitha doesn't knock. She never has in the five years I've worked here.
"You didn't answer my text." Tabitha leans in the doorway with her arms crossed and her eyebrows high on her forehead. "Which tells me everything I need to know. Spill."
"The food was excellent. Mrs. Hayden was lovely." I keep my eyes on the production log and my voice as neutral as I can manage.
"Uh-huh." Tabitha doesn't move. "And the hostess's grandson? The gorgeous one who's six-foot-something with that jaw and that smile?"
"I didn't notice his smile." The lie tastes sour the second it leaves my mouth.
"Girl, please. I’ve seen the way you look at him. You notice plenty." Tabitha pushes off the doorframe and perches on the worktable, her legs swinging. "So, who put that crack in your armor last night?"
My jaw clenches, and I turn back to the barrels and pretend to check a seal I already checked twice this morning.
Tabitha tilts her head. "Did he ask you out?"
"He said he'd like to see me again."
"And?"
"And I said I'd think about it."
Tabitha stares at me for a long moment. "This man stopped on a highway to change your tire. He came to the winery twice hoping to talk to you. And from the fact that you won't answer a simple text this morning, I'm guessing last night went better than you want to admit. That doesn’t even touch on the fact that he’s handsome, rich, and single in a town that doesn’t have a lot of men with any of those qualities." She crosses her arms. "So what's the problem?"
My grip tightens on my coffee mug until my knuckles ache. Tabitha's not wrong. That's the part that makes my hands shake.
"It's not that simple," I say.
"Yeah, it is." Tabitha hops off the worktable. "You like him. He likes you. The rest is just you getting in your own way." She pauses at the door, and her voice softens the way it does when she's being serious beneath the teasing. "I've watched you hide behind this winery since the day you walked in, Sunny. At some point, you have to let someone past the tasting room."
She disappears before I can respond, which is probably for the best because my throat has constricted and I don't trust myself.
I sit with my coffee and the production logs for another hour, and then the morning fills up with small tasks that keep my hands busy. I check fermentation temperatures, update the inventory spreadsheet, and answer two emails from regional buyers. By ten o'clock, I’ve nearly managed to go fifteen minutes without thinking about Charlie’s voice when he saidI'm not going anywhere.
Almost.
My phone chimes with a calendar reminder: ten o'clock meeting with Isabelle and Diego, one of our regular check-ins that usually amounts to harvest timelines and supply orders. I grab my coffee and head for the back office.
It sits toward the back of the winery, through a heavy wooden door and just before the barrel room. The room is small, with a desk buried under paperwork, a filing cabinet that hasn't closed properly in years, and framed photographs covering every inch of wall space. Four generations of Navarros standing in front of grapevines, all of them holding glasses of wine, all of them looking like they belong to this land.
Isabelle is already behind the desk when I walk in, and the look on her face stops me in the doorway.
She's pale, not in a dramatic way that comes from a shock, but the drained, hollow kind that comes from wrestling with a problem that has no good answer. Her dark hair is pulled backtight, and her fingers are wrapped around a coffee mug. Diego stands by the window with his arms crossed, staring out at the vineyard, and he doesn't turn around when I walk in.
Diego always turns around. He always smiles. He's the one who brings homemade tamales to morning meetings and insists the harvest will be fine even when the weather says otherwise.
"Close the door," Isabelle says.
I close it and sit in the chair across from her, and the leather creaks under me. My pulse picks up. The only time I've seen this expression on her face was when her father died, and the thought that flashes through my mind is sharp and cold: she's letting me go.
"We lost the Hill Country Distributing account." Isabelle’s tone is flat. "They called late last night. They’re consolidating vendors and cutting smaller wineries. We're out at the end of the month."
