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I noticed.

Do something.

Gabe looked at Mara. Her eyes were bright, and she was biting the inside of her cheek in a completely unsuccessful attempt to behave herself.

No, Gabe told his bear. She’s happy.

His bear considered that. She is happy. Even if it is at our expense.

Worth every embarrassment, Gabe said as Joel went on with the story.

“Well, in the end, Wes’s dad had to pull Gabe out of the barrel,” Joel said, shaking his head. “He looked like a drowned rat. And he was so mad he didn’t speak to anyone for an hour.”

“I blamed Wes,” Gabe said. “His folks owning the orchard and everything.”

“Nate finally owned up and gave Gabe his best cowboy hat to wear for a month,” Joel said.

“And that made everything all right?” Mara asked.

“It was a good cowboy hat,” Gabe said. “Had blue jay feathers in the brim.”

“Gabe is a man of simple pleasures,” Joel said.

Yes, we are, Gabe’s bear said. Like the simple pleasure of listening to our mate laugh.

No better sound, Gabe agreed.

CHAPTER 11

Mara

Mara lowered the window a little as the road climbed away from Bear Creek. The afternoon had warmed enough to take the edge off the fall air, and sunlight moved across the mountains ahead of her as the road curved between stands of pine and stretches of open land.

She had eaten lunch on her own before leaving town. That had been another thing she’d almost talked herself out of. Not because she couldn’t sit in a restaurant alone. She’d done it plenty of times for work. Airports, hotels, long days between meetings when dinner had been whatever she could find within walking distance.

This had felt different. This was vacation. There had been an empty chair opposite her because the person who was supposed to be sitting there wasn’t coming, and she’d expected to notice it all through the meal.

Instead, after the first few minutes, she’d forgotten about it. She’d ordered what she wanted, eaten slowly, and watched people come and go through the windows. Nobody had looked at her strangely. Nobody had cared that she was alone. Mostly, lunch had just been lunch.

Mara smiled as she turned onto the road leading toward Thornberg Vineyard. Maybe she’d made some of this harder in her head than it needed to be.

The vineyard appeared through the trees, neat rows of vines stretching over the hillside before the buildings came into view. Beyond them, the mountains rose against a clear blue sky, their lower slopes already touched with the deeper colors of fall.

“Oh, wow.” Mara slowed the car.

The photographs online had been beautiful, but they hadn’t quite captured the scale of it. The rows seemed to follow the shape of the land, dipping and rising with the hillside, and there was something unexpectedly peaceful about the place.

Mara followed the signs for visitor parking and pulled into an open space. For a moment, she stayed where she was. This had been one of the bookings she’d nearly canceled.

A vineyard tour and wine tasting for two had seemed like exactly the sort of thing that might feel painfully romantic when there was only one person left to do it. But sitting there now, looking out across the vines, Mara felt something much simpler. She wanted to see the place. Very much.

She picked up her bag, got out of the car, and headed through the vines toward the tasting room.

Inside, the tasting room was warmer than Mara expected, with wide windows looking out over the vines and enough wood and stone to make the space feel as though it belonged to the hillside rather than having been dropped onto it.

A man behind the counter looked up as she came in. “Mara Benton?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “The booking was for two, but it’s just me.”