Unbreakable (Cloverleigh Farms, #4)(29)

But she wasn’t mine—that was as much a fantasy as Kris Kringle.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I tried to decide if I felt better or worse now that she’d been here. Better, I guessed. It was nice to hear that not only was she not angry, she’d actually enjoyed that kiss. I’d made her feel sexy and beautiful, which—unbelievably—no one had made her feel in a long time.

But I felt frustrated too. I wanted more, and I couldn’t have it.

My phone vibrated on the coffee table, and when I checked it, I saw it was my older brother, Anthony, calling from Indiana. He was probably just calling to say Merry Christmas and thank me for the gifts I’d sent—or at least his wife was. Alison had begged me to come celebrate Christmas with them and their four kids this year, but I’d told her I couldn’t leave work for that long. My two younger brothers, also both married with kids, had invited me to come visit them for the holidays as well, but I’d given them the same excuse. It wasn’t a total lie, but beneath the excuse was a disinclination to spend the holidays envying my brothers their happy families. Maybe it was shitty and selfish, but I just couldn’t handle it right now. Next year would be different.

I hoped.

Feeling guilty, I answered the call from Anthony and talked to both him and Alison, thanking them for the gifts they’d sent and listening to the kids holler with excitement over their new toys in the background. I reached out to my other brothers, Mark and Kevin, and repeated the conversation two more times—expressing gratitude for their gifts, wishing them and their families Merry Christmas, assuring them I was fine and had plans to hang out with friends later. Alison asked if I was seeing anyone, and I said no. When she started in about how young I was and how I needed to get back out there, I cut her off by saying I wasn’t ready, although now that Sylvia was in the picture, that wasn’t exactly true.

While I was on the phone with Kevin, Mack texted and reminded me I was invited to come to their house for Christmas dinner, but again, I responded that I had other plans. Sitting across the table from Sylvia would not be helpful today.

And anyway, it wasn’t a lie—a while back, I’d accepted an invitation from my friend Lucas Fournier, another winemaker in the area, to have Christmas dinner with his family. Lucas and his wife Mia ran Abelard Vineyards, a winery on Old Mission Peninsula, and he and I shared a lot of the same views on small-scale, responsible farming, and adapting old world techniques in new environments. His family owned a winery in southern France, and we’d met when I’d gone there one summer to work the harvest. In fact, he was the one who’d told me about the job opening at Cloverleigh Farms. Over the years, he and I had gotten to be pretty good friends, and Renee and I used to socialize quite a bit with them . . . until Renee could no longer handle being around their three kids.

Part of me wanted to cancel and spend the rest of Christmas Day drinking scotch, eating the chocolate-covered potato chips Mark’s kids had sent me from Fargo, and watching old Jimmy Stewart movies, but I liked Lucas and Mia. I hadn’t seen them in a while, and I’d always felt I owed him a debt of gratitude for recommending me to John Sawyer. Plus, lying around the house wasn’t going to put me in a better mood, and going into work was out of the question. What if Sylvia saw my truck and came looking for me?

She trusted me to behave, and I’d said I would.

But it wasn’t going to be easy.





“Hi, Henry! Merry Christmas!” Mia Fournier kissed both my cheeks before giving me a hug. She was short and slender, with shoulder-length brown hair and a bright, welcoming smile.

“Merry Christmas.” I handed her a bottle of wine and a box of chocolate-covered cherries.

“Mmmm, thank you,” she said, shutting the huge oak door of their impressive home behind me. Their winery was similar to Cloverleigh Farms in that they grew many of the same grapes we did, held weddings and other events on the premises, and had an excellent reputation, but it was a little smaller and much different in style. While Cloverleigh retained the feeling of an American farm, Abelard was built in the image of a French chateau, a nod to Lucas’s heritage and their history—they’d actually met in France. Their house, with its steeply pitched roofline, limestone facade, and corner turrets, would have fit perfectly in the French countryside.

Two kids—a boy and a girl—went racing by, shouting at the top of their lungs, followed by a boy several years younger, who clearly struggled to keep up with his big brother and sister. In fact, he tripped and fell flat on his face. But without missing a beat, the kid picked himself up and took off running again, making me laugh.

Mia sighed. “I’d make them all come back and greet you, but I don’t have the energy to yell. They got up so early to open presents this morning and have been going like that ever since.”

I squelched the pang of envy. “I bet.”

“Come on in.” She motioned for me to follow her. “Lucas is in the kitchen. We have some other people coming for dinner, but they’re not here quite yet. I think you’ll know them—my friends Coco and Nick Lupo and their kids; my assistant Skylar Pryce, her husband Sebastian and their kids.”

“Sure, I know them. Sebastian Pryce is my lawyer, actually.”

“Oh, is he?” Mia smiled at me over her shoulder. “Such a great guy.”

“He is.”