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Even in the dim light of the flickering flames Everleigh could see her father’s fingers curl around the stem of the wineglass. Tension tightened her neck. Was that old craving to guzzle the entire contents rearing its ugly head?
After her mom’s death he had spent countless hours locked in this library. First it had been wine, then port, and then whiskey. He’d spent weeks in an alcohol-induced haze, signing the papers his manager Bobby had brought him and sleeping in his chair.
He’d once told her he had no memory of seeing Everleigh during those weeks. Hardly anything had penetrated the hazy existence he’d created for himself, save for his own grief. He’d left his seventeen-year-old daughter to navigate the loss of her mother alone. Some days she’d felt abandoned. Other days had been fraught with anger and grief. But most of them had just been empty. The winery had filled the gap left by both her parents.
It had been two months after her mom’s funeral when he’d stumbled into his office, looking for a bottle of wine, and found Everleigh at his desk, having worked herself so hard that she’d fallen asleep. Then he’d changed.
As he’d told her the following morning—the first time he’d actually been sober since the funeral—the sight of his daughter, so thin and pale, sleeping with her head on a stack of marketing plans, had shocked him back into sobriety.
To this day, no matter what she’d said, he hadn’t been convinced that the winery had saved her. But the frenetic pace of staking trellises, trimming and mulching out in the vineyards, working until closing time in the tasting room—all of it had saved her from facing the reality of a dead mother and an alcoholic father.
Her dad’s fingers shook now, and he set the wineglass down. Everleigh stepped back into the hall and walked away. The past was the past. She and Dad had repaired their relationship over the years, had grown close again.
Although, she admitted to herself as her feet guided her to the oak door at the back of the kitchen, never as close as they’d been before her mom’s illness. She suspected part of that was guilt on his part. And she’d never fully opened up to him, or to any another person, again. The only constant in all the mess—the one thing that had been there for her—had been Fox Vineyards. It had become her identity...something few people seemed to understand.
The door opened noiselessly, revealing a set of stairs that curled under the house. She flipped a switch and lanterns came on above the steps. She descended into the wine cellar, trailing her fingers along the rough brick as she took a deep, cleansing breath that eased some of the pain of the past.
The cellar lay before her—racks upon racks of wine bottles, gleaming beneath the lights. Some of them were covered in dust and at least fifty years old, others brand-new and polished to a shine.
She ran her fingers down the length of a bottle of rosé, feeling the smooth glass soothe some of the raging emotions that pulsed in her chest. The cozy space had been comforting her ever since she was a child when, on one particularly stormy afternoon, when the lightning had frightened her, her mom had packed a picnic basket and they’d lunched between the racks on a checkered blanket.
And today she desperately needed comfort. Tomorrow she’d leave America for the first time in her life. Not on the trip to Paris she’d put off every year since her mom’s death, and not for a tour of German vineyards like she and Dad had talked about, but to fight for the one thing she had left in the world.
Going to Spain was the right move.
With Dad stepping down after the sale, Fox would need a leader. And, as much as she’d hate it, she’d use this time with Adrian Cabrera to demonstrate how she would be an ideal candidate to move up from marketing to being director of Fox.
The thought of having to work under Adrian at Cabrera Wine made her grind her teeth. But it would be better than losing the family’s winery completely...living next to the vineyard she’d been raised in and watching it shift from being a laid-back, country winery into a glitzy destination for Adrian’s wealthy friends. Perhaps, sometime down the road, she could even establish herself enough to buy the winery back...
A lump rose in her throat. She’d spent countless hours down here in the dark coolness—sometimes studying for her bachelor’s degree, other times reading, or thumbing through family photos. The history that pulsed through the brick walls, the comforting glow of the lanterns...all had been a balm for her broken heart.
Her dad hadn’t intended to abandon her after her mom’s death. She knew that now. But back then she’d been cast adrift, left to deal with her own grief as she buried one parent and watched the other turn into a wraith.
In her moments of crisis the juicy burst of a grape in her mouth had brought her a fleeting moment of joy. The dark warmth of the cellar had cradled her while she’d cried. The challenge of creating a campaign to drum up business for their new tasting room had sparked her love of marketing. Every day the winery had provided something new—something to keep her going forward instead of following in her father’s footsteps.
She’d lost her mom.
Now her dad was trying to sugarcoat his condition, but she knew he had less than a year left.
The winery was all she had that she could count on.
And it was slipping out of her hands, no matter how tightly she tried to hold on.
The door to the cellar stairs uttered a groan as it opened. She quelled her irritation at being disturbed.
“I’m down here, Dad.”
“Your father went to bed.”
Adrian’s voice slid down her spine, dark and sultry. Just the sound of his husky tones had her heart thumping against her chest so hard it made her lightheaded.
“Mr. Cabrera.” She stayed where was, eyes fixed on a rack of Merlot, shoulders thrown back in defiance of the erotic sensations the damn man ignited. “This is my family’sprivatecellar.”
“Your father invited me to take a look around.”
Of course he had.
“Have I intruded on a private moment?”
