“You’re whipped.”
“Happy,” Maverick corrected. “There’s a difference. And trust me, bro, you’ll survive the festival. It’ll be good for you to get off the mountain and see a bit of the world.”
“Norfolk counts as the world?” he grumbled. “Besides, still not sure why you’re in such a big damn hurry to walk down the aisle.”
Rather than take his time, Maverick had insisted on a November wedding, which, at the time of the proposal, would have left him and Ella less than three months to organize what was starting to sound like one hell of an event. Ella had put her foot down on the race to their nuptials, but only by a little. Now, they were tying the knot in early December, though Grayson wasn’t sure what the hell difference a few weeks made in terms of planning.
According to Ella and his cousins, however, it made all the difference in the world, allowing them to do God only knew what. He’d already heard the words Wedding Pinterest Board more times than he cared to, and he wasn’t even sure what the fuck that meant.
Grayson suspected there wasn’t a person in Gracemont not on the guest list, and he knew that was Maverick’s doing. At the beginning, Ella said she’d be just as happy flying to Vegas to elope, but Maverick soon changed her mind. Because it was his brother who’d lost his caveman mind, demanding the huge party.
As Maverick said, “There won’t be a man in town who doesn’t know by the end of that wedding reception that Ella is mine and only mine.”
“It’s two full days of noise and people asking questions they could answer themselves if they just read the damn signs, and drunk people who wouldn’t know good wine if it smacked them in the face. Hell, half the people who come to these events are just looking for cheerleader wine, that pink shit that’s so sweet, it makes your teeth hurt.”
Maverick laughed. “Yeah. You might want to work on your customer service skills, bro.”
“I make the wine. I don’t need to babysit people while they drink it.”
Maverick winced. “Maybe you shouldn’t do any of the talking at the festival. You just pour and leave the PR part to Lark.”
As soon as his brother said the woman’s name, Grayson growled. “If you’re trying to make me feel better…”
Maverick held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry. Forgot that Lark is a sore subject for you. Though I don’t know why.”
“She’s loud,” Grayson retorted.
“She’s engaging,” Maverick countered.
“She’s chaotic.”
Maverick lifted a shoulder casually. “Some people call that fun. Besides, customers love her.”
“That’s because she treats everything like a party.”
“And?” Maverick prompted. Because his brother also treated life like a party.
“This is business,” Grayson snapped, even though he was wasting his breath.
“She brings people to the farm with her personality and her singing.”
Grayson couldn’t argue with that. For all her faults—like her chronic lateness—Lark was an extremely talented singer. That was how she’d started working at Stormy Weather Farm. Nora had hired her to sing on weekends during their peak seasons, and the customers loved her. When Lark asked for more hours, Nora expanded her role to server in the wine-tasting room. Because she had personality for days, Lark excelled in that position.
Earlier this spring, they’d changed Lark from part time to full time, and she spent some of her mornings helping his cousin Remi clean the rental cabins and B&B.
That was when Lark’s restlessness and inability to start work on time began to make itself known.
“She’s late. Constantly,” Grayson listed.
“She does her job and she does it well.”
“When she’s here,” Grayson added, because he was feeling particularly grumpy about the festival and having to spend so much time with the obnoxiously vivacious woman. Just thinking about spending two days with her wore him out.
Maverick nodded. “Nora said she’s going to address that.”
While Maverick and Grayson ran the winery, making the wine, Nora ran the tasting room, dealt with distributors, and managed the employees, budget, and payroll. All those “stuck at a desk” tasks Grayson would hate.
He shrugged, letting the conversation end there. He and Maverick made their rounds, then consulted with Boone about the harvest schedule. The morning passed quickly and before Grayson knew it, it was lunchtime.
