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“Me too,” my younger sister Delia said, flipping her long hair over her shoulder. Delia was the middle child, and Ella and Brie arrived quickly after her. With barely four and a half years separating the five of us, I knew Mom and Dad had been busy in the second half of the nineties, something I didn’t want to think about too hard.
“Do I even need to be here?” Brie protested, focusing on the end of her signature braid instead of meeting my eyes. “Literally none of this concerns me.”
I snorted, and the four of us rolled our eyes at our littlest sister. Brie was an incredibly talented pastry chef and in charge of preparing all desserts and snacks for the winery’s tasting room on top of owning the bakery in town. She also worked closely with our chef, Ezra, and rarely left the kitchen if she could avoid it. She actually lived in the small flat above her bakery, saying she didn’t need anything bigger and wanted to be close to her kitchen.
“Yes, you need to be here,” Mom said as Brie sat on her left, Ella in the spot next to her. Chloe and Delia sat across from them, leaving the spot to my immediate right open for Calvin.
Briehmphed and sank down into her chair, pulling out her phone to distract herself with endless inspiration Pinterest scrolling until the meeting started.
“I, for one, am excited to be here,” Delia piped up.
Next to me, Delia was the one Delatou sister most interested in the inner workings of our company, and in the months since I’d taken over, she’d approached me a few times about possibly heading her own project. As her sister, I loved the idea. This was afamilybusiness, and the more family involved, the better. But as the CEO, I needed to get my bearings and focus on modernizing our marketing strategies and rolling out our new product line before I could start allocating money for my little sister’s whims and dreams. For now, I was grateful to have her as the company’s social media manager, and her help implementing those new marketing strategies would be invaluable.
“Thank you, Lia,” I said, shooting her a wink. “I have a lot of ideas that I’m excited to run by you guys.”
“Lovely,” Ella said, and I rolled my eyes.
My second youngest sister was the lone sibling who wanted absolutely nothing to do with our family business—even Chloe was an active participant in these meetings—content to work at Blossom’s and live in the apartment above the shop, and it left all of us at a bit of a loss as to how to connect with her.
The fact that we couldn’t stand her boyfriend also didn’t help matters.
“And exactly how much will these ideas cost us?”
The joy in the room evaporated like a popped soap bubble the moment Calvin’s words rang out. His voice was like a piece of gravel stuck in my shoe that I couldn’t shake no matter how many times I dumped it out; it grated on every one of my nerve endings. I rolled my eyes and ignored him, turning my attention instead to getting my laptop connected to the digital screen for my presentation.
Still, I couldn’t help tracking his movements out of the corner of my eye.
Calvin strolled to my father’s side and shook his hand before taking the seat across the table from him, completely ignoring my mom and sisters. We all watched in stunned silence as he withdrew a notepad—the kind of yellow legal pad I had only ever seen Chloe’s husband, who was an attorney, use—and set up his pens and water bottle next to them.
At last, he looked up at me expectantly, and I was struck momentarily breathless by just how green his eyes were when they caught the sunlight slanting in through the floor to ceiling windows, like fresh maple leaves glinting in the spring sun.
“I asked you a question, Amara,” he said.
“What?”Fuck.It was too early in the meeting for him to be messing with my head this badly. He’d just walked in the door, for crying out loud.
My question made him smirk, and he repeated, “How much will these ideas cost us?”
“How about you let me pitch them before we discuss the budget?” I sniped back, and his grin only grew.
“Amara…” my father warned, his tone rumbling through the room, through my very bones, despite the lowness of it. His voice hadalwayssettled me, and did so now.
“Sorry, Daddy,” I muttered, then turned to the sideboard behind me and picked up the stack of bound and laminated marketing proposals I had prepared for this meeting. I walked around the table, passing them out to my sisters, unceremoniously tossing Calvin’s down in front of him so hard it would’ve slid to the floor had he not slapped his palm down on it at the last second. With a satisfied, victorious swish of my hips, I returned to my place at the head of the table and picked up the remote for the screen, clicking it on and simultaneously cuing up the first slide of my presentation.
Despite Calvin’s gaze like a brand on the side of my face as I spoke, I easily settled into my speech. It was easy to be here, to present these things to my family, the people in the world who mattered most to me and would never outright shoot me down or belittle me or my ideas.
Unlike the one person in this room who thought I was a vapid party girl,theyactually believed in me.
“If you turn to page one, you’ll see I’ve outlined a three phase marketing approach to start increasing the winery’s visibility overall as well as reaching some new target audiences that I think will be a big help in taking the CD brand to new heights.”
Step by step, I walked them through my plans for marketing on TikTok, canned cocktails, and the Labor Day Weekend party I intended to throw, inviting sales reps from our wholesaler to stay at the Villa and experience all we have to offer.
When I finished, my sisters and parents chimed in with questions, and I answered them easily and honestly. I had come well prepared. Not even Calvin’s stormy gaze could break my stride. Still he stared, leaning back in his seat with his thick arms crossed over that broad chest, brow furrowed. I tried my best to ignore it, to shut him out.
And I succeeded…until he spoke.
“You’re just going to…give up an entire weekend at the Villa, one of our busiest of the year, forfree?”
I ground my teeth together, fighting the urge to snap back at him. He didn’t have a say in what we did with the Villa. While it may seem like a company asset because it was located on the vineyard and operated in tandem with the winery, it wasn’t. The title was held jointly by me, my parents, and my sisters, making it, technically, a personal one.
