The Crush (Oregon Wine Country #1)(36)

Tom Alexander manager of Brendan Hart Vineyards?

In a flash, Junie recalled in graphic detail an April dawn, five years past.

Dad’s bloodless face looked up at her from the ground where he lay. “Don’t give up, Junebug.” He panted with the effort of those four little words—a father’s last behest to the child who was most like him.

She’d called 911 the moment she’d seen him lying there. “Dad!” Junie pleaded against the faraway refrain of sirens. “No! Stay awake! Open your eyes!” She knelt close, cradling his head in her hands. “Daddy.” It came out as a choked sob. A teardrop splashed onto his cheek and rolled off.

Two EMTs jogged up with medical bags and a backboard in tow. “How long’s he been unresponsive?”

She recounted the past twelve hours, her shaky words tumbling out in a rush. “My mom stayed in Portland all night on a difficult case.... She’s a doctor. The rest of us—my brother, visiting from Colorado, Dad, and I—had a late supper, then Dad went back out to do grafting and Storm and I went up to our rooms and didn’t come back down.” Nobody had known Dad had been lying outside all night, fighting for his life, until that morning when he hadn’t come downstairs for coffee.

Storm came running barefoot down the row of winter-bare vines, clad only in his pajama bottoms. “What’s going on? Why is there an ambulance—?”

The medic poised for action. Without looking up, he asked Storm in a monotone, “Can you get her out of here?”

Storm looped both arms through Junie’s and yanked. Dad’s head lolled off her lap onto the frost-hard ground with a sickening jolt. She found herself being dragged backward several feet before she jerked free of Storm’s grasp. From there, brother and sister stared, transfixed, at the surreal scene.

“Clear!” snapped the medic, and Dad’s already lifeless body convulsed in a way that would haunt Junie for the rest of her days.

“Junie.”

She blinked at the sound of her name on her mother’s lips.

“What are you thinking?”

She turned to her mother in a daze. She couldn’t give up on the winery. Not yet. Five years might seem like a long time to Mom, but she’d learned in college that five years in the red was not unusual for a fledgling winemaking business. That wasn’t opinion. That was fact.

But Junie believed deep down in her soul that this could finally be her year. Sam believed it, too. The property already looked a far sight better because of the work Manolo was doing.

Junie met Alexander’s green gaze. Greed emanated from every pore of his body. How could Mom not see it?

“At what rate?” she heard herself ask.

“Twenty-five.”

Junie twitched as if slapped. Twenty-five percent interest was highway robbery. But if the bank wouldn’t take a chance on her, where else could she go to preserve her father’s legacy . . . to see to it that her mom danced again?

Her heart raced at the risk she was about to take.

Then she remembered: Do what you love, the money will follow.

“Twenty.”

“Twenty-two point five. Take it or leave it.”

She gritted her teeth. “I’ll take it.”

God help her, she would pay back every cent if it killed her—plus settle up with Manolo for his time and materials. She was no man’s charity case.

A smug smile spread across Tom Alexander’s face. “I’ll have the papers drawn up.” He picked up the wine list. “Now. A little sparkling wine, to celebrate?”





Chapter Twenty


Manolo stood with his arms folded, watching the little orange Kubota putter up one row of vines and down the next. The tractor’s operator was disguised from head to toe in wrinkled white coveralls, an Oregon Ducks baseball cap perched comically atop her hooded head. One hand rested on the steering wheel, the other sprayed something onto the new, pale leaves.

He had been working on Junie’s tasting room for two weeks. The new bar was in, the drop ceiling installed, and the cork floor tiles on order. While he came and went, Manolo had gotten a front-row seat on how a vineyard operated. Junie worked hard, every bit as hard as his mother and his sisters worked at his family restaurant. He hated to interrupt her just now. But he needed some answers.

When Junie realized she was being watched, she stopped, shut off the engine, and held up a gloved hand.

He cupped his mouth and shouted, “What about a display area?”

She pulled down her face mask. “What?”

“Shelves.”

Yelling across the vineyard was ridiculous. He headed out to meet her, despite not knowing what toxic contents that spray bottle held.

“That stuff looks like antifreeze.”

“Copper fungicide.”

He sneezed loudly. “Smells rank—like vinegar.”

“Once the leaves are out, you can’t get by without spraying once a week for mildew. Especially with these cool nights and warm days we’ve been having.”

“I had you pegged as one-hundred-fifty-percent organic.”

“It’s called biodynamic. I use organic plus holistic farming methods to conserve the health of the land and the ecosystem.”

With gloved fingers, she picked what looked to him like a common weed. “This hyssop wards off pests. And those roses at the end of each row aren’t just for decoration. They’re my canary in the coal mine. Mildew shows up first on them.” Junie scraped up a handful of rich, dark soil and crumbled it. “See this? Chemically treated soil looks pale and hard. But treat it right and the system self-regulates.”