Page 87 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

The field workers get the day off entirely, full pay, their choice whether to show up as guests or stay home, because the one thing Killian’s always been firm about is that the people who spend the rest of the year with dirt under their nails don’t spend this particular day working it. Some of them come anyway, not because they have to but because the food’s good and the wine’s better and their kids like running around the grounds. That’s fine. That’s the point.

What replaces them is leadership, all of it, top to bottom, hands actually dirty for once. Étienne, the directeur technique, has been out at the great hall every morning this week checking load capacity on the temporary flooring himself instead of sending an assistant. Margaux, who runs the vineyard as chef de culture and has opinions about everything involving soil that I’ve learned to nod along with respectfully, is personally overseeing the pathway lighting through the lower rows because she doesn’t trust anyone else to keep the cable runs far enough from the root systems. The maître de chai is somewhere in the cellar right now hand-labeling the reserve bottles going up for the evening’s private tasting, and both of the consulting oenologists Killian flies in twice a year are apparently expected to help carry tables tomorrow, which I only know because one of them emailed me directly asking which shoes he should wear for it.

Even the investors get pulled in. There’s a section in the run-of-show, one I wrote myself and am inordinately proud of, that has three of our biggest stakeholders helping string lights along the garden fencing at ten in the morning before they change into anything resembling cocktail attire.

No hierarchy. Not for one day. Everyone gets their hands dirty, everyone eats at the same long tables afterward, and by the time the sun sets the entire estate looks less like a business and more like what it actually is underneath the business, which is a family that happens to also make extraordinary wine.

It’s the reason this event matters more to me than almost anything I’ve ever worked on. It’s not just a launch for Sophia’s boutique, though it’s absolutely that too. It’s the one day a year Thorne Estates proves to itself and to everyone watching that it isn’t like its competitors, the ones with the velvet ropes and the staff who disappear the moment the cameras do. This is mine to run. My first solo project here, the one with my name actually on the planning documents instead of buried under Mallory’s, and I want every blade of grass on this property to know it was handled with care.

I haven’t seen Killian once today. He left before I was fully awake this morning, some early call with the regional distributors, and the few texts we traded all afternoon were short and logistical, nothing personal in them at all. I’ve been so deep in spreadsheets I haven’t had time to miss him properly, just a low background hum of it underneath everything else.

So when the elevator chimes, something in my chest lifts before I’ve even looked up.

He still has his suit on, jacket already shed and folded over one forearm, tie pulled loose and hanging undone around his neck, the top button of his shirt finally given up on. His hair’s slightly less perfect than it was this morning, like he’s run a hand through it more than once today without noticing. He looks like a man who’s been negotiating with difficult people since seven a.m. and hasn’t stopped to breathe since.

I smile before I can stop myself. I always do. It happens before I’ve even decided to, some automatic reflex that’s apparently permanent now, and it doesn’t seem to matter how tired he looks or how long the day’s clearly been. If anything the tired version gets me worse, the one fewer people see, the one that isn’t performing anything for anyone.

I love him.

I’ve known it for weeks now, the same way I know it about Maddox, the same way I know it about Asher, except I said it out loud once in a dark hallway off the maze and haven’t said it since, to anyone, like saying it more than once would make it something I have to actually account for instead of something I get to just feel quietly on my own.

I never thought this was something a person could do. Love three men at once, completely, without one of them being a smaller version of the feeling than the others. I assumed, the way you assume things you’ve never had reason to question, that love divided itself the more places you tried to put it, that there’d be some natural ceiling where the math stopped working. There isn’t one. I love Killian entirely. I love Asher entirely. I love Maddox entirely. None of it competes with the others for space. It just keeps being true, all three directions at once, and some days that fact alone is enough to take the breath out of me.

Today is one of those days, watching him cross the room toward me looking like the world ran him through a wringer.

He comes straight to me, bends down, and kisses me, quick and soft despite everything in his shoulders saying otherwise.

“Hey,” I say. “Rough day?”

“Long.” He straightens. “I’m going to shower.”

“Want company?”

“Not this time.”

He’s already heading for the bedroom before I can ask anything else, and I sit there for a second with my tablet on my lap feeling vaguely wrong-footed by it. Not alarmed. Just off. In the weeks since the four of us decided to actually try this, Killian’s never once walked past a shower without dragging me into it, usually over one shoulder, usually with some comment about efficiency. Tonight he just walked away.

I tell myself it’s the day. Long days make people want fifteen minutes alone, and Killian’s allowed those fifteen minutes same as anyone.

I get up and go to the kitchen, pour myself a glass of water from the fridge, cold enough that it makes the back of my throat ache pleasantly, and then cross to the bar to make him his usual scotch. Funny thing, a man who owns a vineyard reaching for scotch every time he’s wound too tight, but I’ve learned not to question it. Wine is for celebrating. Scotch is for surviving.

I set both drinks on the coasters on the coffee table and sink back into the sectional, pick my tablet back up, and go to open the guest list.

Locked.

I frown at the screen and try again. Same result. I pull up my messages and text Mallory.

Harper: Hey, the guest list doc is locked, can you send the password?

Three dots almost immediately.

Mallory: Oh don’t worry about that one! Killian asked me to take it off your plate

I stare at the message.

Harper: Wait what? Why?

Mallory: Not sure, just said he wanted to lighten your load before the event. it’s all good, I’ve got it handled