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Chapter One

“THEY’RE ready, Brenna. I’ll call Marco and tell him to have the crews here in the morning.”

“It’s too soon.” Brenna double-checked the number on the refractometer in shock. No one else in Sonoma had grapes ripe this early; that was for sure. “We should have a couple of more weeks, at least.”

“You doubt me?” Ted’s affront was only partially feigned, and, though they’d been friends and coworkers for years, Brenna rushed to smooth the ruffled feathers of her viticulturist.

“Not at all. No one knows these vines better than you. I’m surprised, that’s all.”

Placated, Ted popped a grape into his mouth and chewed, a small, blissful smile crossing his face. “Obviously these grapes like our sunny summers and this drought. You just don’t want to harvest in the heat.”

“True.” But that was only part of it. The new tanks had only arrived last week and were stacked haphazardly around the building. The main pump was still being temperamental, and there was so much paperwork left to do…and…and…she needed those couple of extra weeks just to finish getting her head together. She wasn’t ready to start the crush right now.

Brenna looked at the vines, all heavy with ripe fruit—fruit that wasn’t going to hold on while she adjusted to the new situation at a leisurely pace. Amante Verano Cellars was her responsibility now.

Well, mostly.

Ready or not, these grapes were coming in. She knew what to do; she’d been doing it her entire life. But she’d never done it alone. That responsibility weighed heavily on her shoulders.

“I just wish Max were here.” The sigh in Ted’s voice brought her back to reality with a jerk.

“I know. These vines were Max’s ticket to wineworld domination—or at the very least a gold medal.” She smiled weakly at Ted as her inspection of the grapes digressed to aimless fiddling. “He really should be here for this. It’s not fair.” She blinked back the tears threatening to escape again. She couldn’t fall apart in front of Ted—or anyone else. Max would expect her to solider on, and everyone at Amante Verano needed to believe she had this under control. “Call Marco. We’ll have the first grapes in the tank by tomorrow night.”

They walked up the hill together, stopping occasionally to test the sugars and make notes on the grapes on different acres. The other vines were being slightly more predictable in their timelines. Another two weeks—give or take—and they’d be ready. September would be high-gear time.

“Have you talked to Jack yet?” Ted asked the question too quietly, too casually.

Her heart thumped in her chest at the mention of his name. “Not since the funeral, and then only for a minute.” And that had been awkward and difficult, not to mention painful on more levels than she cared to admit. She’d exchanged condolences, shaken his hand and left. End of story.

“Does he know?”

“Oh, I’m sure he does. Max’s lawyer called me to explain the partnership and what it meant, and I have to assume Jack was the first to know.”

“And?” Ted was the first to brave asking the question she knew was on everyone’s mind.

“There is no ‘and.’ I’m sure Jack has his hands full with the hotels, and the lawsuit against the driver that hit Max’s car, and everything else, so we’ve got to be pretty low on the priority list.” Max’s death had left them all scrambling these last few weeks, just trying to sort out the wide range of Max’s businesses and projects. In a way it had helped her grieve as well; she hadn’t been able to lose herself in her grief as she’d wanted to, and the pain seemed a little easier to deal with when she could concentrate on keeping Max’s beloved winery running smoothly.

Ted didn’t look relieved.

“After the crush I’ll make an appointment with the lawyers and we’ll get it all sorted out.” She patted his shoulder fondly. “Go on home. We’ve got several very busy days ahead of us.”

“In other words, I should see my daughter while I can?”

“Yep.” The crush would give them all something to focus on. And when it was over she would have proved to everyone she was more than capable of shouldering the responsibility Max left her.

“Do you want to come to the house for dinner? You know you’re always welcome, and Dianne will happily feed you.”

It was tempting, very tempting, but she really needed to learn to cope on her own. Dianne had been mothering her way too much in the weeks since Max had died, and she needed to be strong now. She needed to be a grown-up. “Thanks, but no. Give my goddaughter a kiss for me, though, okay?”

“Will do.” With a wave, Ted was gone, leaving her standing in the shadow of the main house alone, while his long legs covered the distance to the little house quickly. She could see the lights on upstairs in the apartment over the wine shop, which he shared with Dianne and baby Chloe.

She’d left a light on in the house as well, because she hadn’t gotten used to coming home to a silent and dark house yet. She wondered if she ever would. Maybe after the craziness of the crush was over she’d get a puppy. It would keep her company, make the house feel less empty, and give her someone to talk to when she got home at night.

Her footsteps echoed in the hallway as habit directed her toward the office—just her office now, since Max was gone—where the winery’s paperwork waited for her. As always, the work gave her something to do, a way to fill the long evenings.

Pressing “play” on the stereo filled the room with music and chased the dreadful silence away. Max’s huge desk dominated the space, and she turned her chair away from his empty one as she tried to focus on the invoices and orders that kept her inbox overflowing no matter how much time she spent on them.

But her usual focus wouldn’t come. Ted’s earlier question had brought everything she was trying so hard to repress right back to the forefront of her mind.

Amante Verano would make it to the top of Jack’s to-do list eventually, and she had no idea how she’d handle that once it did. Avoidance—her time-honored and safe way of dealing with anything Jack-related—wasn’t going to work this time. She had to make this work, because she couldn’t run a business if she couldn’t talk to her business partner.

The thought of Jack brought up all kinds of feelings she didn’t want to deal with. Their history was just too complicated to pretend it didn’t exist. Max had been her mentor, her friend, her surrogate father, and she, Max, and her mom had been a happy—if slightly oddly configured—family. Jack, not solely by his choice, had never been a part of that. Add in their private history, and the whole mess would put any soap opera plot to shame.

But she’d have to meet with Jack eventually. The thought kicked her heartbeat up a notch, and all the cleansing breaths in the world couldn’t help calm it. She needed to be an adult about this. She needed to concentrate on the present and not let the past interfere.

Her glib response to Ted was starting to sound pretty good: a meeting on neutral ground, with lawyers doing most of the talking so she wouldn’t have to. This was business, not personal, and surely she could swallow all the competing emotions long enough to get through a business meeting.

Many years ago Jack had told her how important it was to keep her personal life from rolling over into her business dealings. “Don’t ever let one affect the other,” he’d said. It was a major point of pride with him, and it seemed to work well as he expanded Garrett Properties all down the west coast.

Jack would want to keep this strictly business. If she could do that, it would make things a lot easier. For everyone, but most especially for her and her sanity.

Brenna took a deep breath, feeling a little better after her self-therapy session. They could come to a workable situation. One that was business only and ignored all the messiness of the past.

The fact she’d been crazy enough to marry him once wouldn’t be a problem at all.

Jack sincerely hoped insanity didn’t run in the family. That Max’s will was merely an act of early-onset senility caused by too much wine over the years, or even some kind of weird joke on Max’s part. There had to be an explanation, and he’d love to have just five minutes with his father to find out what the punch line was supposed to be.

Otherwise, insanity was the only explanation he had for the fact he now owned half of a winery in Sonoma. Him personally—not the company.

And the other half belonged to Brenna Walsh.

Brenna should be a footnote in his dating history—a cautionary tale about youthful infatuation and reckless decision-making—not a recurring character in his life.

Bad decisions must go hand-in-hand with anything Brenna-related, because he spent most of the drive out to Sonoma questioning his decision to handle this in person. His attorney, Roger, had offered to take care of it, but for some unknown reason, he felt this was a discussion he and Brenna should have face-to-face. The closer he got to the vineyard and Brenna, though, the more he realized this probably wasn’t the best idea he’d ever had. God knew he had enough work on his desk waiting for him, and his trip to New York to negotiate the expansion of Garrett Properties should be his main focus right now, but he’d decided to get this off his plate first.

He rolled his eyes. He should have waited, gotten through more important, more pressing issues first, instead of letting his desire to cut ties with this place override his common sense.

The vines almost covering the sign welcoming him to Amante Verano had matured in the five years since he’d been out here for Brenna’s mother’s funeral, and grapes hung heavily from the canopy. As he turned on to the property the acres of vines laid out in perfectly aligned rows, the white stucco house at the top of the hill, and the weathered wooden winery building created a picturesque scene straight out of a movie’s stock footage file.

Change came slowly to Amante Verano—if it ever came at all—and it looked much the same as it had when Max had bought the winery twelve years ago.

That had been before Max’s hobby had turned into his obsession. Before he’d left San Francisco for good and moved out here full-time to play in his grapes. Before Jack had become the Garrett in charge of Garrett Properties and the responsibility had consumed his entire life.

He drove slowly past the little house—that was Brenna’s free and clear now, even if Max had converted it into the winery’s shop once Brenna and her mother had moved into the main house—and noted the gravel parking lot was empty. Well, it was still early in the day for the tourists on their trips to wine country.

Where to find Brenna? Her lab? The office? He just wanted this over and done with as quickly as possible, so he could get back to civilization and his life. This place hung like an albatross around his neck, and the sooner he could get Brenna’s signature on the documents, the better.

He didn’t even like wine, for God’s sake.

As he crested the next low hill he could see a tractor lumbering its way in the direction of the winery, the trailer overflowing with grapes.

He had never learned the intricacies of grapegrowing or wine-making, and what little he had picked up he’d tried hard to forget, but even he knew it was early for harvesting. A strange turn of events, but it answered his first question nicely.

Brenna would be somewhere in those damn vines.

He sighed. He could either trudge through the vineyard looking for her, or he could wait at the house until she was finished for the day.

“Let’s just get this over with,” he muttered to himself.

Cursing the entire ridiculous situation, Jack took his overnight case and laptop into the house, dropped them in what had used to be his room, and headed down the hill on foot to find his ex-wife.

“Brenna, they need you at the building. The pump’s acting up again,” Ted called from the end of the row she was working on. “Rick kicked it and nothing happened, so he asked me to get you.”

Brenna sighed. The new pump was on backorder, and wouldn’t be here until sometime in the next couple of weeks. Which would have been in plenty of time for the crush if Ted’s grapes had kept to their usual timetable. “Did he kick it in the right place?”

Ted nodded. “Twice.”

Straightening, she slid her clippers into her back pocket and pulled off her gloves, before wiping a hand across her sweaty forehead. “Great. Exactly what I didn’t want to do today. Do you have this under control?”

“Of course. I didn’t need you out here to begin with,” he teased.

They didn’t have time for this, and they would only get further behind if she had to take the whole pump apart again. Beads of sweat rolled down her spine, and she grimaced at the feeling. At least she’d be out of the heat sooner than planned. She’d call Dianne and get her to bring a clean shirt along with their lunches.

She pulled her cellphone out of her other pocket, replacing it with her gloves. Dialing Dianne as she walked, she didn’t see the man who stepped into her path until she ran face-first into him. The force knocked her hat off her head, and the cellphone hit the dust at her feet.

“Sorry,” she said, as strong hands closed around her arms to steady her. In the split second that followed her brain registered the fine cotton shirt—far too nice for any of her guys to be wearing while they worked—the strangely familiar feeling of the man’s grasp, and the subtle spicy scent tickling her nostrils.

And then her brain shut down altogether as one thought crystallized: Jack.

“It’s a bit early to be harvesting, isn’t it, Brenna?”

His deep voice rumbled through her, causing her brain to misfire in shock, but the bite of sarcasm brought her world back into focus. Shrugging off his hands in what she hoped was a casual way, she tried to match his tone. “The grapes are ready when the grapes are ready. You should know that.”

She made the mistake of meeting his eyes when she spoke, and the smoky blue stare caused her to take a step back. She bent to retrieve her hat, but as she stood, she saw the assessing roaming those eyes made down her body, taking in her sweat-darkened T-shirt, battered jeans, and dusty work boots before settling back on her face.

She just hoped the flush she felt on her cheeks looked like a response to the heat of the sun, not the heat of his stare.

One of his dark eyebrows arched up at her in surprise as she captured her ponytail under her hat and pulled the brim down to shade her eyes.

“You really need a new hat, Brenna. That one’s seen better days.”

Damn it, he’d recognized it. Jack had bought her this hat—a silly gift from the early days of their relationship—and if she’d had even the smallest clue he’d show up she’d have left it at the house today. It was her favorite hat—wide brimmed and very comfortable—and she’d absolutely only kept it because it worked so well for her, not because it was a gift from him.

She hoped he didn’t think otherwise.

Brazening it out regardless, she lifted her chin. “It’s perfectly serviceable.” Shifting her weight onto her heels, she put her hands in her back pockets and tried to act normally, although she felt anything but normal. Her heart pounded in her chest and her palms felt clammy. Be an adult. “What brings you to Amante Verano, Jack?”

Her words seemed to amuse him. “I know the lawyer explained Max’s will to you. You had to be expecting me.”

“Actually, no. I was expecting another phone call from your lawyer—not a personal visit from you.” This was the longest conversation they’d had in over five years, and she wasn’t handling it well. She knew she sounded defensive and prickly.

“We don’t need lawyers for this.” He pulled a folded manila envelope from the back pocket of his jeans. “If we could go somewhere quiet—”

Somewhere quiet. Brenna’s knees wobbled a little bit at the rush of memories those two words brought. That summer after graduation, when finding “somewhere quiet” had always led to…

She shook herself, forcing the memories and the tingle they caused back into the past, where they belonged. Concentrating on the envelope in his hand helped; she had a very sick feeling she wasn’t going to like what was in there, otherwise Jack wouldn’t have wanted to take the conversation elsewhere. Hoping for steadiness in her voice—if not her knees—she met his eyes. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a little busy at the moment. Surely you remember how this place works?”

“Brenna…” The muscle in Jack’s jaw tightened, showing his frustration with her.

That helped. Irritation flowed through her body, displacing the earlier, more disturbing emotions. Jack was not going to walk onto her property after all these years and act as if he owned the damn place. Okay, so he owned half of it, and the guilt that she was the reason he never came out here anymore nagged at her a bit, but still…She focused on her irritation.

He wasn’t the boss of Amante Verano. Or her. Whatever was so all-fire important enough to pull him away from the excitement of his life in the city could just wait. “I have grapes losing quality while I stand here talking to you, and I need to go fix a stupid pump if I want to get them into the tanks tonight. You’ll just have to wait your turn.”

Pleased with herself for getting the last word, she brushed past him, intent on getting to the winery and back to work. Jack grabbed her arm, halting her steps and pulling her too close for comfort. His face was only inches from hers—something her body reacted to instantly. And embarrassingly.

Heat, real heat, the kind she hadn’t felt in years, surged through her. He was so close she could see herself in the pupils of his eyes, smell the spicy scent of his soap. She swallowed hard. “Not now, Jack. I’m—”

“Busy, I know. So am I. Do you think I wanted to come out here?” His dark brows pulled together in a sharp vee as he gritted out the words.

He might as well have slapped her. The pain and shock were the same. In a way, she welcomed it. It would help her focus on the present.

Then the heat dropped out of his voice. “I’m selling my half of the winery.”

Outrage replaced her shock. What? “You can’t. Max set up the partnership—”

“Oh, I’m well aware of how this ridiculous partnership is set up. It’s barely legal and completely beyond reason. But I’ve found a buyer, and all you have do is sign off on it.”

She hadn’t planned on owning Amante Verano right now either—much less sharing it with him—but he didn’t have the right to go selling off his part of it. His attitude wasn’t exactly helping the situation any either. “There’s no way in hell I’m signing anything. I’m sorry if you find the arrangement distasteful. Trust me, it’s not exactly a picnic for me either. But we’re stuck with each other.”

“You won’t have to be stuck with me once you sign off on the sale.”

The grip on her arm was bordering on painful, and she smacked his hand away. He stepped back, the muscle in his jaw still working.

She bristled. “To whom? Let me guess: you found someone who fancied the odd break from city life and wanted to come stomp grapes on the weekends?” The look on Jack’s face told her all she needed to know. “That figures. My answer is no.”

“That’s not an option, Brenna. I don’t want a winery. Not even half of one.”

Bless Max for his forward-thinking and iron-clad partnership clauses. Otherwise she’d be royally screwed about now. “Tough. I’m certainly not turning half of everything Max and I worked for over to someone who doesn’t know squat about this business.”

“You’d rather deal with me? Isn’t that worse?”

How could she explain her reasoning to Jack? It barely made sense to her. And would it make any difference if she did? “I’ll take the devil I know any day.”

Jack opened his mouth to argue, but her phone rang. A quick glance at the number reminded her of all the things she needed to be doing instead of standing here fighting with Jack. “I’m going to go take a pump apart now, because I have wine to make. This conversation is over.”

This time Jack didn’t move to stop her—which was a good thing, because with her temper riding so high she would probably take a swing at him if he tried. But it didn’t stop him from flinging the last word at her back as she stalked off.

“This is not over, Brenna. Put that in your damn tank and ferment it.”

Jack let her stomp away, recognizing the signs of a fullon Brenna fit brewing even after ten years. She had her shoulders thrown back and her head high, but he could tell she was talking to herself by the agitated movements of her hands.

Maybe confronting Brenna like that had been a slight tactical error. He’d let his desire to get this over with override his business sense. Hell, his common sense seemed to have checked out—as it always did with Brenna.

It was the only explanation he had.

He’d had the whole conversation planned—he knew Brenna well enough to know how to approach her—but when she’d slammed into him his body had remembered each and every curve of her and promptly forgotten his earlier plan. Then his hands had curved around her biceps, and the muscles there had flexed in response…and he’d felt the tiny shudder move through her when she’d realized who he was.

He should have known Brenna would react like this to his news. It wasn’t as if their history didn’t complicate this situation even more than it should have been. When you added in Brenna’s temper…What was it Max had said shortly after Brenna and her equally copper-headed mother had moved in? “The only things I’ve learned to fear are red-headed women and downhill putts.” Since Jack didn’t play golf—he simply didn’t have the time or patience for the game—he’d dismissed both warnings at the time. He’d learned the hard way the truth of at least half of Max’s statement. Pity he’d forgotten it before he came out here.

He should have let his lawyer handle this instead of thinking he and Brenna could do it the easy way. Hell, hadn’t he learned long ago that nothing with Brenna was easy?

With a sigh of disgust, he folded the envelope again and put it back in his pocket. Tonight, after Brenna had the day’s harvest safely in the tanks, they’d talk again.

She couldn’t put him off forever, and the house, while large, wasn’t big enough for her to avoid him. Red hair aside, Brenna’s anger rarely had lasting power, so that would work in his favor as well.

He still had to go through some files in Max’s office, but even with the delay caused by Brenna he should have plenty of time to deal with her, take care of business, and get the hell out of Sonoma tomorrow.