The Crush (Oregon Wine Country #1)(40)

“You’re killing me!” moaned Junie.

“Why not, Junie? Sounds amazing,” said Rory.

“If I could afford it. But . . .” Junie hesitated.

“But what?” Poppy pressed.

“But I already have a loan with Tom Alexander, and if I can’t pay it back by the end of the year, I’ll have to hand over a portion of my vineyards.”

“Why didn’t you go to Jed, over at the bank?” asked Rory.

“I did,” said Junie. “Jed wouldn’t play ball.”

Rory worked the kinks out of his neck, and Poppy and Heath exchanged glances.

“My back was against the wall. My mom wanted to make a clean break. She was sick of waiting for me to give up on what she sees as a hopeless cause. The farm kept reminding her of Dad, and she wanted a fresh beginning. She hinted that she even has a new man. I agreed to buy her out so she could start a new life.”

The only sound was the mournful call of an owl.

Poppy leapt up from her camp stool. “Well! Like Red always says, no sense dwelling on the past. You’ve got to focus on the future, getting that loan paid off. What can I do to help? I know! I’ll work the bar for you on the first day of the crush.”

Rory nodded. “I’ll pour for you too, as soon as my shift at the Cider Garden is done.”

“The brewery has a stand downtown, but I’ll be happy to send all the wineaux your way,” said Heath.

“And I know Sam will keep working on finding a distributor,” said Keval.

“Thanks, you guys.”

A short time later, Manolo walked Junie to her car. He slung an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’ll all work out.”





Chapter Twenty-two


Manolo fell into a pattern in the following weeks. He went to Junie’s place extra early to work on the tasting room before she woke up, spent the main part of the workday at the consortium, and returned to Junie’s again in the late afternoons, after she’d gone to work at the diner.

The hours he spent designing, measuring, sawing, and nailing were what he enjoyed most. And then, one day, without him noticing when it happened, he realized that the prospect of Junie’s pleased expression when he showed her the end result had started to eclipse even the satisfaction of working with his hands.

On June twenty-first, the new room was finished. He stood back and let his eye travel critically over the welcoming, sun-filled space. He’d never been prouder of anything than he was of the tasting room he’d built for Junie.

Through the picture window he saw her slight figure in the very center of the vineyard, bent over a spade. He watched her for a moment, trying to puzzle out what she was doing, then swiped away streak on the glass with his shirtsleeve and adjusted a bar stool half an inch.

The time was two-fifteen. He was meeting Sam at three to go over the rough carpentry at his place, and Junie had to get ready soon for Casey’s, but he couldn’t wait another day to show her his handiwork.

He jogged down through the herb garden surrounded with chicken wire to keep out the rabbits, past the built-up beds lined with lengths of fallen logs and the half barrels planted with nasturtiums and blueberries, into the vineyard.

He reached her as she crouched next to a newly dug hole in the ground.

“Hey, Junie,” he said, breathlessly.

She peered up at him from under her ball cap and blew a stray lock of hair off her cheek.

Since the picnic, the connection between them was electric.

He reached out to fondle a nearby cluster of fruit. It felt heavy for its size. “You were right about the ‘peas.’” The grapes had now doubled in size. While half were still lime green, the other half were turning purple.

Only then did he notice the cattle horns filled with sparkly stones and a bottle of Junie’s best wine lying on the ground beside the freshly dug hole.

She inserted a horn into the hole, point up.

He squatted down beside her. “What are you doing?”

“Today’s the summer solstice,” she replied nonchalantly. “Time to bury the horns.”

Manolo picked up a horn filled with sparkly gravel and examined it skeptically. “That some kind of voodoo?”

“Biodynamic principle. At the winter solstice, I’ll unearth these, take out the quartz, grind it into powder, and put it in a glass jar in a sunny window until spring.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’ll mix it with rainwater and spray it on the grapevines.”

“Excuse a city boy’s ignorance, but what exactly is that supposed to do?”

“Improves the ripening action of the sun, of course,” she said, placing another horn carefully into the ground.

“Of course. And you’re going to get enough quartz powder out of these horns to spray the entire vineyard?”

She smiled patiently. “It’s like homeopathic medicine. It only takes a minuscule amount.”

“Can I help? Or do I have to be initiated in some weird rite first?”

“Don’t be silly.” She giggled.

He picked up the wine with one hand and tossed it into the other. “What’s this for? Wait—let me guess: an offering to the fertility gods?”

“In the old days, people used to bury wine so it could ferment at a constant temperature, away from light and where it might get jolted around. Now, in the age of climate-controlled cellars, it’s just symbolic. When we dig up the horns in December, we’ll drink the wine in appreciation of the earth’s bounty.” Her eyes flew to his. “Oh, that’s right. You won’t be here in December.”