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“Um, well, I’m going to get to do something different next week. I’m helping set up a wine tasting for three hundred people in the restaurant.” I expect my excitement to become her excitement, so I wait for her to ask more about the wine, the restaurant, the guests.
Instead, she groans. “Ugh, I don’t care about that.”
“Thanks, El.”
She leans back and drapes an arm over her forehead dramatically. “I don’t mean that. I care. Obviously, I care. I just can’t relate. That’s your world. It would be like you getting all excited about the preservation of an eighteenth-century kitchen with a wood-burning oven.” Historical preservation is her major, and no one gets more excited about arcane architecture than her.
“I would have found it interesting.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” Her voice drips with sarcasm as she shoots me a disbelieving look.
“I’d at least pretend,” I admit.
“Exactly. Let’s agree to disagree about each other’s weird obsessions and talk about something we both find interesting—your boss.”
She knows nearly nothing about Jackson, except that I have a boss. I’ve kept it that way intentionally. My sister has a tendency to make a bigger deal out of men in my life than they warrant. Mainly because these days, the only men in my life are online instructors, our mail carrier, and the guy who does my oil change.
“What about him?”
“I know he’s hot. I looked him up.”
Leave it to my sister to choose a major that allows her to be offline and on the ground, restoring buildings and visiting historic sites, only to become an internet Sherlock Holmes when I drop the name of the vineyard where I work. I’m curious about her methods.
“How do you even know which Corbett is my boss?”
“I know your type.”
“I don’t have a type.” I totally have a type, and she’s right that Jackson fits the bill one hundred percent. “Besides, even if I did have a type, there’s no guarantee I’d be working for that particular individual.”
I spin around on the small stool in the room because I don’t want to meet her eye. Which tells her everything she needs to know. “Jackson Corbett. And now I know you have a thing for him because you called him an individual. You only do that when you’re trying to deflect.”
“I do not do that.”
Do I do that?I’m going to have to think about it later.
It’s the first time she looks slightly less miserable since we got here, so I reluctantly indulge the conversation. “Yes, he’s my boss. Good guess.”
“So tell me about him. I love that he asked you to move in. That’s a good sign.”
“He did not ask me to move in. He offered me an empty guest place, so I don’t have to commute. Big difference.”
“Zero difference.”
I’m about to come up with a list of all the ways Jackson Corbett and I have no future together when there’s a sharp knock, and the door swings open.
A serious woman with thick glasses and jowls for cheeks strides into the room; eyes focused on an iPad held in her palm. “Ella, nice to see you. I understand we may have had an ‘oops?’”
I cringe at her reference to a potential pregnancy and the big deal it is for my sister, but Doctor Sanchez isn’t my doctor, and Ella says she likes her.
“I tested positive,” Ella says.
Doctor Sanchez rubs gel on an ultrasound wand and indicates that Ella should lie back with her feet in the stirrups. She scoots down, and I roll my stool closer to the ultrasound screen. “Yes. The blood test confirmed the same. Let’s have a look.”
Ella reaches for my hand and squeezes it harder than I expect. I put my other hand on top of our clenched palms and give her a reassuring smile, even though I’m freaking out too.
“Any nausea? Vomiting? Bleeding?” Doctor Sanchez asks. Her methodical, detached bedside manner makes it feel like Ella is a lab experiment, not a person.
Ella shakes her head. “No. I feel fine, but I missed a period and took a test.” She presses her lips together. “Actually, I took three.” She hasn’t told me that, and she doesn’t look at me when she admits it. I know Tim has been spending every night with her, but I still feel guilty about how much time I’ve been at the winery, especially now that I’m spending nights in the staff cottage.
