Let It Breathe (21 page)

Clay looked at Wally, trying not to notice the guy’s hand on Reese’s shoulder or think about how pleasant it would be to rip it off at the wrist, throw it in the gravel, and back over it with his truck. “What are they saying about the fire?”

“They made it sound pretty bad,” Wally said, giving Reese’s shoulder a squeeze. “They mentioned someone was injured, and I wanted to come out and be sure Reese was okay.”

Clay caught sight of a vase of daisies on the coffee table behind them and felt something twist in his chest.

Wally brought her flowers. You brought her another woman’s shoe.

He cleared his throat to speak but couldn’t think of anything to say. Reese bit her lip again and glanced at Dr. Wally.

“It was actually Clay who got hurt,” she said. “He helped put out the fire before the fire crews got here.”

“That so?” Dr. Wally asked. “Lucky he happened to be here, then.”

Clay looked at him, trying to assess his tone. It seemed bland enough, but something in his eyes suggested suspicion.

“Right,” Clay said. “Well, I should be going.”

“I’ll walk you to your truck,” Reese said.

Clay looked at her. “You’re barefoot. And I’m pretty sure I can find my way ten feet back to the truck.”

She glared at him, stuffed her feet into a pair of rubber boots beside the door, and turned to Dr. Wally. “Will you excuse me for just a moment? Family business.”

Without waiting for a response, she shut the door behind her and stepped out into the drizzle. Clay looked at her bare arms. “You need a coat.”

He didn’t wait for her to argue. He pulled off his coat and settled it around her shoulders.

She rolled her eyes. “Now
you
need a coat.”

“I have long sleeves. You don’t.”

She pressed her lips together, ready to disagree. Then stopped. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I suppose you already heard how things went with the bank.”

Clay shook his head. “I left before you got back. We’ve run out of prep work we can do without knowing how you want to proceed with construction.”

Reese gave a thin little laugh and hugged her arms around herself. “How I
want
to proceed is not the same thing as how we’re going to be able to proceed. The bank turned us down.”

The words stung like salt in a paper cut. “Reese—I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too. Not what I needed to hear today, on top of everything else.”

“Everything else,” Clay repeated. “I’m sorry about that, too.”

“You’ve been saying that a lot lately.”

“I mean it.”

She shook her head. “I know. It’s just—I just can’t do this, Clay. Not again. Not after so many years of disappointment and hurt and complications with you and—”

She looked down at her rubber boots, not meeting his eyes. Her hair was getting wet and Clay wanted to reach up and brush the damp strands from her eyes. He wanted to crush her against his chest and just hold her. He wanted to throw her in his truck and drive away someplace he could make love to her over and over until they both dropped from fatigue. He wanted to storm inside and tell the goddamn veterinarian to stay away from her—that she was
his
.

But she wasn’t.

And he didn’t do any of those things.

He lifted a hand to touch her, then stopped. “Reese, about last night. About what happened today—”

“Don’t,” she said, looking up at him. “Just don’t.”

“But—”

“I have to get back inside.”

Her eyelashes glittered with tears as she blinked them away, and he didn’t know what to do. He took a step toward her. She took a step back.

Clay stopped moving and nodded. “Okay.”

“Goodbye, Clay.” Reese grasped the doorknob.

The words twisted in his chest like a corkscrew.

“Goodbye,” he said, and turned away from her.

Reese walked back inside her house, not bothering to take off the rain-slick boots.

“Everything okay?”

Reese looked up to see Dr. Wally standing in her living room. She’d forgotten he was there.

“Fine,” she said, licking her lips. “Everything’s fine.”

“I see you’ve turned to thievery.”

“What?”

“You stole Clay’s jacket.”

Reese looked down. “Oh.”

She started to turn, thinking maybe she could chase him down the driveway and give back the coat, but his taillights had already faded down the gravel drive.

And she knew the jacket wasn’t the reason she wanted to chase him down. She dropped onto the edge of the couch, glum with that thought.

Wally sat down beside her, his knee brushing hers. “Sorry about stopping by so unexpectedly. I just wanted to see you and make sure you’re okay. I got worried when you didn’t answer your phone, and then I heard about the fire.”

She gave him a halfhearted smile. “Thank you for the flowers. They’re lovely.”

He reached out to adjust a stem in the vase, then dropped his hand to one of the picture frames adorning the coffee table.

“Who’s this?”

“My grandfather, Axl. This was thirty years ago.”

“No kidding? Is that his Harley?”

“Yeah. And that’s a barrel of our Reserve Pinot in the sidecar.”

He set the photo back down and picked up another. “This must be your parents?”

Reese took the photo from him and polished a spot off the corner with the hem of her shirt. “That’s their tenth anniversary party. I was nine.”

“They look so young.”

“They were.” Reese stared at the picture, annoyed by the stupid stab of jealousy poking her right below the breastbone. She should be proud of her parents. She
was
proud of her parents. Just because she wasn’t capable of having that kind of relationship with someone didn’t mean other people shouldn’t get to enjoy it.

She cleared her throat. “They met in first grade, started going steady in middle school. They got married right after high school, put each other through college, have been living happily ever after since.”

Wally gave her a funny look. “That’s a bad thing?”

“No, why?”

Wally shrugged. “You sounded a little tense. Thought maybe I’d struck a nerve.”

Reese set the photo back down on the coffee table. Her eyes settled on another photo of her parents, this one taken at the edge of the vineyard just a couple years ago. They were smiling into each other’s faces, oblivious to the camera, the vineyard fanning out behind them like a postcard view.

Leon hovered ominously beside her father.

“I love my parents,” Reese said finally. “My mom is my best friend in the whole world, and my dad is the ultimate great guy. They’re both amazing people.”

Wally nodded. “I’m waiting for the
but
.”

She tucked her bare feet up under her and looked at Wally. “My parents are great. Their marriage is pretty much perfect.”

“Then that’s a good sign.”

“For them or for me?”

“Both. For you, it means you’ve seen firsthand what makes a relationship work.”

Reese snorted. “I’ll be honest, Wally,” she said. “I couldn’t be more clueless about what it takes to make a relationship work than if I’d been raised by a pack of badgers.”

“I don’t know about that. You seem very loving. I’ve seen you take care of all the animals around here. Especially Leon.”

“Leon’s different. He’s sweet and devoted and uncomplicated and appreciative and doesn’t accidentally sleep with my cousin.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Reese bit her lip. “Thanks again for taking care of him the other day.”

There was a long silence. Reese wondered if he was working up the courage to kiss her. She tried to decide how she felt about that.

At last, Wally cleared his throat. “How long have you been in love with him?”

She looked up. “Leon?”

He smiled. “You know who I mean.”

“I don’t think—”

“It’s not about thinking, Reese. Love never is.”

“Why is everyone I know talking like a goddamn Hallmark card lately?”

He touched her knee. “Look, I’d love to have a shot with you, Reese. I think I’ve made that clear. But it’s also clear you’re spoken for. Whether you know it or he knows it, it’s obvious.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s too much baggage there.”

“For you or for him?”

“I don’t know. Both.”

He smiled. “Sometimes, the baggage is the best part.”

He leaned down and gave her a soft, platonic kiss on the cheek. Then he stood up and walked toward the door.

“Goodnight, Reese. Good luck with everything.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Reese blinked at the bottle in her hands, certain she was seeing things. It was early in the morning, so fuzzy vision wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

But one look at the matched expressions of bafflement around her, and Reese knew this wasn’t her imagination.

“The bottle says
pork
,” she said. “We’re proposing our customers drink
pork
with their dessert.”

Eric shook his head and snatched the bottle from her hands. He glared at it so viciously, Reese feared he might hurl it through the wall.

Apparently reading his thoughts, Sheila took it from him. “Calm down, Eric. This isn’t the end of the world.”

“
Calm down?
This port is supposed to ship to the White House tomorrow. It’s being served with cheese that costs more than my car stereo. The goddamn President of the United States is going to be drinking
my
port, only he’ll take one look at this bottle and wonder why the fuck his culinary team decided to offer him liquefied pig.”

“God, how did no one see a typo like that?” Larissa asked, reaching into the case to pull out another bottle. “I swear we proofed it a dozen times.”

Sheila shook her head. “Maybe the printer did something screwy with the file or had a problem with the font.”

Reese shook her head and bent to pick up a bottle. “Pork,” she repeated, still too dazed to come up with anything more than that.

“We’re fucked,” Eric muttered. “This was such a big deal. Our big break—one of our wines served at a state dinner. Jesus.”

Reese bit her lip. “They’ll probably serve it in decanters so the bottle won’t matter anyway—”

“The whole fucking point is that we wanted them to see the label,” Eric snapped. “We wanted them to know where it came from. Willamette Valley
port
, not
pork
. Goddammit!”

He drew his foot back and Reese closed her eyes, waiting for the crash of shattering glass.

Instead, Eric snarled another string of obscenities. “This place is fucking cursed!”

With that, he turned and stormed out the door.

Sheila bit her lip and looked at Reese and Larissa. “I’d better go after him.”

“He’s coming unglued,” Larissa said.

“I think everything’s just getting to him,” Sheila said. “The Wine Club Pinot, the stuff that got smoke damaged, now this.” She shook her head. “He takes his craft so seriously.”

“We all do,” Reese said. “That’s why we’re here.”

“Go get him,” Larissa said. “Before he drives the tractor into the pond or something.”

Sheila gave Reese’s hand a squeeze before turning to follow her husband. Reese shook her head. “What the hell are we going to do? These are supposed to get shipped out today.”

Larissa held up her phone. “Let me make some calls, okay? Maybe they can do a rush order on a reprint, and if we get everyone in here to help steam the labels off—”

The phone rang, and Larissa stopped talking. “Maybe that’s them now.”

Reese peered at the caller ID. “Not unless they’re phoning from Larchwood Vineyards.”

Larissa rolled her eyes and snatched the receiver. “Dick,” she snapped.

Reese couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was unmistakably furious.

Larissa rolled her eyes. “No, Dick, we’re not paying for smoke damage to your grapes. We’ve already been over this.”

Reese held out her hand for the phone, but Larissa shook her head and covered the mouthpiece. “I’ll handle this dick,” she whispered, nodding at the door. “You handle that one.”

Reese looked up to see Clay standing in the doorway. Larissa turned and headed for the back room, her tone rising as she told Dick exactly where he could stick his bill.

Reese looked at Clay, her heart hammering hard against her rib cage. He wore a dark-gray T-shirt and a look that suggested he feared she might be armed.

“You’re here,” she said, then kicked herself for making such an inane observation.

“We need to talk.”

The words made her gut clench and her heart lodge itself somewhere in her throat. She closed her fist around the pen she’d tucked in her back pocket and brought it up. She began to roll it in her palms, trying to keep cool.

“We need to talk
now
?
Now?
Don’t you think the talk should have happened fifteen years ago?”

She saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “About the construction project. We need to talk about that.”

“Right,” Reese said, feeling her face grow hot. “That.”

“And other things.”

Reese shook her head and looked down at the bottles of “pork” at her feet. “I don’t have the energy to deal with other things right now, Clay. There’s a lot going on here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I noticed. I heard Eric shouting about the misprinted labels. I’m sorry.”

Reese squeezed her eyes shut and rolled her pen between her palms. “I don’t know what to do about any of this. I’m at a total loss here.”

“Look, I can draw up some work-arounds,” Clay offered. “Modifications in the plan, alternate ways to approach the project, corners we can cut in the LEED certification process.”

Reese blinked at him. “Is there really anything to cut? Everything was already so lean in our budget. We’ve already made such a big public deal about this whole project. What does it say about Sunridge Vineyards if we can’t stick to our plan?”

“That you’re human?”

Reese snorted. “That’s no excuse.”

“Sounds like a good one to me.”

“Are we still talking about construction?” she asked. “Or does the ‘only human’ apply to everything around here?”

“I thought we weren’t going to talk about the ‘other things.’”

“I changed my mind.”

Clay nodded. “Fair enough. Look, Reese—I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I made a lot of dumb decisions when I was drinking, and I don’t even remember half of them.”

“Convenient,” she said. “You get to make dumb decisions and forget all about them, and everyone else gets stuck cleaning up messes and getting punched in the nose.”

She saw him wince, and felt bad for hurting him. But hell, she was hurting, too. Why should she be the only one?

She knew there was a flaw in that logic but didn’t want to dwell on it.

“I deserve that,” he said, and looked down at his lap. “I’m sorry. I’m really so sorry—”

“Don’t you get tired of apologizing all the time?”

Clay blinked. “Well, it seems like there’s no shortage of things for me to apologize for.”

Reese took a deep breath. “Look, Clay—it was a dumb mistake. A fling, okay? A momentary lapse in judgment.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “Which time?”

“Both. Either one. Especially the other night, though. Really, can you imagine anything so stupid? A vineyard manager and a recovering alcoholic? It’s like an animal rights activist and a fur coat designer or a—a—” She struggled to find another analogy but couldn’t come up with anything, so she settled for rolling her pen faster between her palms.

Clay shook his head. “People change, Reese.”

“I haven’t. Not one bit in the fifteen years you’ve known me. I mean, look at me, I’ve still got the same damn nervous habits, the same books, the same flannel shirts, the same hairstyle. I haven’t changed at all. Why the hell would I believe
you
have?”

“Give me a chance to prove it. I know you can get over your hang-up about us if you just—”

“
My
hang-up? So it’s all about
my
issues, is it? What about you?”

Clay frowned. “What about me?”

“You’re so terrified Eric might find out about us that you won’t even look at me when he’s in the room. This whole stupid guy code thing you two have—like he already peed on my fire hydrant, so you won’t even sniff me when he’s around?” She stopped. “That sounded weirder than I meant it to.”

Clay shook his head. “I’m happy to sniff your fire hydrant, Reese. The guy code thing isn’t that big a deal.”

“No? Then why don’t we go out and find Eric right now?” She took a step toward the door and watched him flinch. “Why don’t we go let Eric know you fucked me so hard the other night I still have bruises on my thighs?”

Clay looked away. He didn’t say anything.

“That’s what I thought,” Reese said. “Look, Clay—this isn’t going to work.”

He looked back at her. “Is that why you had the vet over last night?”

“What?”

He shrugged. “You looked awfully cozy. Moving on pretty fast.”

She rolled her eyes, feeling her blood start to boil. “Not that it’s any of your business, but nothing happened. Unlike you, I don’t hop from one bed to another in a span of twenty-four hours.”

“It wasn’t like that,” he said. “That’s not how it happened. With you and me and then Larissa—”

“How the hell do you know? You don’t even remember being with me, so how can you be sure you didn’t nail us both the same night?”

“Because I know. Because I—”

Before he could finish his sentence, the door burst open. Reese’s father marched into the room, his expression grim.

“Reese, there you are.”

From the look on his face, she knew he wasn’t coming to challenge her to a game of Boggle. “Dad? What’s wrong?”

He glanced at Clay, then back at Reese.

Clay moved toward the door. “I can leave. Give you guys some privacy.”

Jed looked back at Reese. “I guess it doesn’t matter. It’ll be all over the news before we know it. I just got off the phone with the fire marshal. They’re calling it arson.”

“What?” Reese sat down hard on the edge of a wine barrel. “Why? How on earth—”

“They found some things at the scene that suggest it wasn’t just a faulty wire or something like that. Accelerant of some sort, he wasn’t specific on the phone. He’s going to come out here in an hour to go over it with us, but he wanted to give me a heads-up beforehand.”

“Accelerant? Like alcohol? It’s a fucking winery, there are a few flammable things here.”

Jed shook his head. “I don’t think it’s that simple, honey. He sounded pretty sure. I’m trying to get everyone rounded up so we can all be there when he explains it. Have you seen Larissa?”

“She’s on the phone,” Reese said. “I’ll go find her.”

“I already caught Eric outside, so he’ll be here. Your mom is down at the house getting Axl.”

Reese sighed. “Okay, then, right here in an hour?”

Jed nodded. “I have to hustle to get today’s tour canceled.”

Reese shook her head, trying not to think of the lost revenue, of the angry customers who wouldn’t understand the need to cancel their much-anticipated wine country bike trip with only a few hours’ notice. Even though her dad’s cycling tours hit plenty of other vineyards, everyone knew they were based out of Sunridge. Their logo was all over the website and brochures.

“How many people did you have signed up?” she asked.

“Thirty-three,” he said. “There’s still time to let most of them know, to issue refunds or let ’em pick a different date, but—”

“The tourists. The people from out of state.”

“Right.” Jed sighed. “We’ll figure this out. I’ll see you back here in an hour, okay?”

Reese shook her head and watched her father amble out the door in his bike shorts. As soon as he was gone, she looked back at Clay. “So I’m thinking now might not be the best time for us to discuss our relationship.”

Clay nodded. “I understand. But this conversation isn’t over, Reese.”

She shook her head, her chest feeling like someone was standing on it. “It’s over. It’s definitely over.”