Season of Change. Melinda Curtis

room, the girls trailing behind Christine like silent wraiths. How their quirkiness must upset the balance in Slade’s otherwise balanced life.

      Everything in the tasting room smelled of new construction, of sawed wood and fresh paint. The otherwise empty room had a large blue marble counter, behind which was a built-in oak buffet. And blessedly, they’d installed air-conditioning.

      “Is that original?” Christine ran a hand over the buffet’s polished wood. “It’s beautiful.”

      “It is. We were able to save much of the planked flooring, as well. This house was built over one hundred years ago by Jeremiah Henderson. The property remained in Henderson hands until we bought it earlier this year.” He spoke as if he was behind a lectern, coolly enunciating every syllable. No awkward pauses, lisps, or stutters.

      The poor man is so personality-free it’s sad.

      “It’s been remodeled,” he continued, “and had additions over the years, but this room is the original front parlor.”

      It wasn’t every day a man used the word parlor in front of Christine. It drew her gaze to his perfectly formed lips. She licked her own, her gaze falling to his feet.

      His loafers weren’t knock-offs. The workmanship and shine practically screamed Italian. “We also have a bathroom and a full kitchen here.” He led her to the rear of the house.

      She passed through a doorway, dragged her gaze from the feet she was following, and fell in love. “I want to live here.”

      Baby-blue marble countertops, soft white cabinets, and a double-wide porcelain farm sink. They may have built this place out in the boonies, but they’d spared no expense. Christine could hardly wait to start talking about the wine-making equipment they’d be purchasing.

      “It’s nice, isn’t it?” His smile was unexpectedly humble. She would have bet on chest-thumping pride. “The office space is upstairs.” Slade led her up a narrow staircase. “We couldn’t see a way to widen these without losing valuable space below. The footprint of the house is only one thousand square feet.”

      The office was open, empty space with front-facing dormers and soft blue walls. The windows had no coverings, allowing the sun to beat in and suck the life out of the air.

      “We didn’t think about desks until after the remodel was almost finished, so we’re having furnishings custom-built. I hope you like them.”

      “Whatever you get will be fine.” She’d work on a plywood desk held up by sawhorses in exchange for the power over all wine-making decisions. “What about the—”

      Slade put a finger to his lips.

      That was when she noticed they were alone.

      Soft whispers drifted to them from downstairs.

      Slade smiled broadly, like a papa bear finding joy in his cubs.

      Whoa. Mr. Perfect loves his Goth girls.

      It surprised Christine so much she was sure she reflected his grin right back at him. The humanness—so unexpected—explained why his everyday-guy business partners put up with him.

      The whispers stopped.

      “You’ll get blinds or something up here, I assume.” Christine quickly filled the void.

      “Plantation shutters.” He was still smiling at her, as if they’d shared a private moment and he wasn’t ready to let the feeling go. “Let’s check out the main winery.”

      Maybe he wasn’t all staid ego and self-image. Maybe he’d had a business meeting earlier. Maybe he’d had a meeting before every time she’d met him previously. That would explain why she’d never seen him without a tie. But there was something about his rigid posture that negated that hypothesis.

      From the farmhouse, they crossed the circular drive toward a barnlike structure on the same property. They’d only just broken ground on it when Christine first interviewed. She hadn’t imagined it would look so welcoming and yet be so huge, nestled amid row after row of grapevines.

      Untended, overgrown grapevines.

      The road to harvest wouldn’t be easy.

      The heat pressed down on her once more, like heavy hands on her shoulders. Christine didn’t know how Slade could stand wearing a tie. The only concession he’d made to the heat was rolling up his shirtsleeves, revealing well-muscled, tan forearms.

      Christine stepped through the forty-foot high double doors into the cavernous, blessedly cooler would-be winery. The new-construction smell was less noticeable here with the doors thrown open. It was empty, just metal support beams, concrete, and wood. But to her, it was paradise. She could easily visualize how to fill it with equipment.

      “This was the site of the original barn, which we were unable to salvage.” Was that a wistful note in his voice? “We built this to look like the original homestead, but big enough to accommodate processing up to eighty thousand cases of wine.”

      Eighty thousand cases?

      Each case contained twelve bottles. He was talking close to a million bottles.

      Red flag. Serious red flag.

      “Slade.” She carefully kept her voice even, her expression polite. “As I understand it, you only own forty acres of vineyard. That’s enough to produce about five thousand cases.” Seventy-five thousand less than his planned capacity.

      Christine tried to ignore the alarm buzzing in her head. She’d been hired to produce boutique wine in small quantities, hired to obtain top ratings and reviews, hired to help build Harmony Valley Vineyards into something prestigious and rare. Eighty thousand cases crossed the border from rare territory into the gray zone, flirting with a fall into the quirky, quaffable territory occupied by wine costing less than ten bucks a bottle. Wines with cartoony icons and names like My Boyfriend’s Favorite Red or Bow Tie Bordeaux.

      “What’s the use of starting a company if you don’t plan for growth? It’s where we need to be in five years.” He stepped from the light into the shadows, his gaze on her intense. “Does success scare you?”

      “No.” Failure did. As her dad so often reminded Christine, her reputation was only as good as her last score in the bible of wine-review magazines. In just a few months, she’d find out in print if she was a scapegoat at Ippolito Cellars or if she’d dodged a bullet by leaving when her wine-making principles were undermined. “Fine wine can’t be rushed.”

      Faith and Grace watched their exchange closely, holding hands as if they were in some kind of horror movie, ready to unleash deadly powers if Christine took this argument too far.

      Yes, Christine had no social life. Yes, she watched too many scary films. Yes, she might have leaped into this job too quickly, since Slade seemed more interested in volume than quality.

      “We should talk.” A classic brush-off line from a boss who’d already made up his mind.

      That alarm in her head buzzed louder.

      “But let’s get out of the heat before we discuss it further. You remember where El Rosal is? On the town square?” At her nod, he stepped out beneath the blazing sun, which painted silver-blue highlights in his black hair, as if he were a hunky rock star and she was just one of the little people in the audience dancing to the beat of his hypnotic drum.

      Wilting in the heat, Christine trailed behind his two Goth girls, reluctantly contemplating her next job search.

      CHAPTER TWO

      WHEN HE’D HIRED Christine, everything about her had looked top-shelf, from her designer shoes to her carefully coiffed blond hair. She’d presented herself as the kind of woman Slade admired—beautiful, confident, someone he could count on, and with a genuineness that Evangeline lacked. He’d voted to hire Christine because she’d represent their winery to the world the way he would—with take-charge, bulletproof