Page 119 of Fake it ’Til Fall

Moving.

“Lorna, wait. Those go in the tasting room, not the barrel room. We need the barrel room clear for linen delivery, and if Marlene sees fabric before caffeine, she’ll become religious about texture.”

Lorna freezes mid-step. “Got it.”

Daisy takes half the cards, checks the top one, frowns, digs a pen from her hair, and corrects something before anyone else would have noticed the mistake.

I watch her do it.

I shouldn’t.

I’m here to carry things, pretend to be her boyfriend, survive Winterberry, and avoid saying anything that makes the school board decide I shouldn’t be allowed within fifty feet of a whistle.

But watching Daisy at the vineyard is like watching someone slip back into a language she thought she’d forgotten. She doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t wait to be asked. The place recognizes her, and that pisses me off.

Not because she belongs here.

Because everyone knows she does and still lets her carry too much.

“Darling, would you mind checking the reserve case labels?” Eleanor calls from the tasting room.

“Daisy,” Marlene adds from the porch, “could you look at this arch angle?”

“Daisy, quick question,” Lorna says.

“Daisy,” Helena mutters, “tell your mother I’m not changing the dahlias again unless someone pays me in cash and silence.”

Daisy answers every one of them.

Every time.

Same bright competence. Same quick jokes. Same speed that makes people forget to ask if she has eaten, slept, breathed, or considered not being the emergency exit for every room she enters.

I understand that too well.

People loved my temper when it won games. Loved the hits, the edge, the clips. They used the thing in me that made money until it became inconvenient. Then everyone acted shocked that feeding the fire and calling it passion had consequences.

Daisy’s competence is prettier than anger.

That doesn’t make people using it any less ugly.

“Don’t brood near my flowers,” Helena says.

I look at her.

She trims a stem without glancing up. “They’re sensitive.”

“I’m not brooding.”

“You’re doing something with your face.”

“That’s just my face.”

“Unfortunate.”

Daisy comes back with the menu cards hugged to her chest and a new problem in her eyes. “Principal Whitcomb is coming at ten.”

I look at her. “Today?”