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ChapterSeven
Ethan
Irolled out of bed, knowing that I'd be a grouch all day if I didn’t have coffee in the next fifteen minutes.
You’re a grouch every day,Cole’s voice rang through my mind.
“Shut it,” I grumbled to thin air.
I got the coffee maker on and then hopped into the shower. Four days had passed since the men from Texas had come to the Meadery, and while Mr. Dalston had sent me an email saying they were discussing with his boss, nothing else had come yet. The radio silence was grating at me like nails on a chalkboard, and even more, I suspected they had spoken with Mia.
If they had extended the same offer to her, they would have had a hard hill to climb in deciding who to go with. Despite all their snooty condescension about their wine being top-notch… they were right. It was an excellent product, and in all fairness, if the guys from Portman Estate went with them, they wouldn’t be disappointed.
What rankled me, though, was that it would be setting the bar just another notch higher for other providers to reach, and it would extend the bias that wine was the premium product. I knew my mead was good, better than good, but until people were deprogrammed, they’d keep seeing it as inferior.
As I stepped out of the shower, my phone rang, and, checking it, I realized I had four missed calls: two from Indie, one from Jenna, and the other from Cole. What could be so serious that they had called in seconds of each other?
While toweling my hair dry, I called Indie. “What’s going on?”
“We’ve got a problem, boss,” Indie sounded harried. “The guys in the fields are saying we’ve got a massive mealybug infestation on the orange blossoms. They say the windstorms and the torrential rain a few weeks ago are how they got here. If we don’t get on top of it, the damage will start to get severe.”
Goddamnit. Not now—whynow?
Not when we had the best contract of the century dangling right in front of us.
Upset, and reasonably so, I was too distracted to measure the oat milk I took with my coffee and ended up with a syrupy mess that was bound to give me diabetes. “How bad is it already?”
“We’ve covered about half of the fifteen hundred acres,” Indie replied. “We’re hoping to get through half by this evening, but it doesn’t matter, even if it’s one acre of damage, we need to get the exterminators in here.”
I hunched over and pressed the heel of my hand to my eyes. God, this was not the news I had hoped to hear this morning. Even so, we were prepared. We had money set aside for seasonal pest control, but I was not sure how much this would cost me.
“Get them in and provide me with the estimate,” I said. “If it goes over the budget, we’ll have to figure something out.”
“Gotcha,” Indie replied, and I hung up, went to my sink, dumped the coffee out, and then made a new cup. What else was going to go sour today?
I finished dressing and then headed to work, but the moment I stepped into my office, I froze.
If my crops have mealybugs….is it that Sullivan’s has them too?
Grimacing, I reached for my landline but had to stop and Google the contact number for the Sullivan Winery. When I called—I actually got the barrel room instead of the office, and a man answered.
“Sullivan Winery, Ryan Sullivan speaking,” he greeted me.
Wait—didn’t Mia have a brother named Ryan? Wasn’t he at college now doing some thermonuclear science… something, or inventing time machines? “This is Ethan Vega. I have an important message for your sister. There are—”
“What?” I heard a dull yell in the background—Mia’s voice.
“Hell in a handbasket,” I heard Ryan mutter.
First—what did he mean by that?
Second—where did that kid get that old ass phrase from?
“Ryan, I need that phone,” Mia said. “I need to call Veganow.”
“Well, you’re in luck,” Ryan replied. “He’s on the phone right now.”
The phone was snatched, and Mia’s tight voice came through the line, “Vega, would you care to tell me whyyourpests are now damagingmyvines?”
