Once there, she lay down on her bed, the peacefulness Martha had destroyed back again as Edith had given Ella something more positive to think about.
Ella let herself replay Maverick’s dreams for their future, but this time, she looked at them not from the perspective of a young girl, terrified of turning into her mother, but as a woman who’d had the wonderful luck to fall in love with…
She sighed, then fully embraced the fantasy.
Her soul mate.
Chapter Eleven
Maverick stood behind the counter in the tasting room, answering Mrs. Carlson’s question about the red wine she and her husband were sampling. He usually didn’t do the actual wine tastings, as they hired, then trained other people to pour and describe the wine.
However, during Nora and Gretchen’s Summer Wine Festival event, he’d agreed to be present to talk to patrons. Ordinarily, he loved this part, proud of the wine he and Grayson made and excited to talk about it with others.
That hadn’t been the case this week though.
This week, it had been a slog.
Because he had somewhere else he wanted to be.
Well, not necessarily somewhere.
What he really wanted was to be with someone else.
It had been nine days since he and Ella shared that heated kiss in the wine cellar.
Nine. Fucking. Days.
She hadn’t come to dinner on Sunday, because Edith hadn’t. Not that Maverick blamed Edith for wanting to keep a close eye on Manny. Everyone was grateful he hadn’t truly had a heart attack, but Maverick knew Edith well enough to know that shewas going to mother hen her beloved nephew—not untilhefelt better but untilshedid.
Maverick was sorry Ella hadn’t come to dinner on her own. Mila and Gretchen both admitted they’d invited her to still attend.
Because of the wine festival, no one in his family had made their way down the mountain to ladies’ night at Whiskey Abbey, so he had no idea if she’d been there or not.
Now, here he was nine days later, unsure if Ella had been avoiding him or if it had just been life conspiring to keep them apart.
It didn’t matter, because it was over now.
She was here.
Maverick wrapped up his conversation with Mrs. Carlson, then snagged Grayson by the sleeve when he walked by. While Maverick loved talking wine with customers, Grayson viewed that task as the equivalent of getting a prostate exam, which was why Maverick tended to be the face of their business, while his younger brother chose to remain amongst the grapes and barrels, out of the public eye.
As such, Maverick was the one who traveled whenever they decided to set up a tent at nearby wine festivals, and why he was the one who spent a lot more time in the tasting room during special events.
Unfortunately for his brother, he was going to have to tuck his introvert side away today because Maverick was calling in a favor.
“Hey, bro,” he said, holding Grayson up. He’d taken on the role of runner, moving between here and the wine cellar, restocking the wine whenever certain bottles ran low. “Got a minute.”
Grayson nodded, though it was clear he was anxious to return to the relative quiet of their office. “Yeah, sure. What’s up?”
“I need you to hold down the fort for me.”
Grayson scowled. “What? Why?”
Maverick looked over his brother’s shoulder, nodding in Ella’s direction. “I’m done playing defense.”
Grayson twisted until he caught sight of Ella, his shoulders slumping with a sigh. Maverick figured his brother had been ready to say no.
Until then.
