Page 91 of Love You More

“Spill it.”

“I don’t want you to be my nanny.”

She laughs. It’s a full belly laugh that forces her away from me as she tosses her head back. “Jax, that’s no confession. You told me that the day we met.”

“Okay, well, let me say it differently. I don’t want you to be my nanny anymore.”

I don’t give her a chance to wriggle out of my arms, even though I feel her body stiffen. I get a side-eye and a frown.

“Nice. Way to fire a person when her defenses are down.”

My hand slides into her hair, and I caress the back of her neck. Her head tips back into my hand, even as she continues to scowl at me. So I continue massaging her neck and willing her body into submission. I feel her relent despite herself.

“What I mean is that I want you to be in my life—and my daughter’s life—because you belong there, not because I’m paying you. So yeah, I guess I’m firing you.”

My other hand comes to her jaw, and I angle her face so I can kiss her the way I’ve been dying to since she walked out of my house nearly a week ago. There’s no fight left in her. The woman I’ve been dreaming about for days is limp in my arms.

“Huh. This may be the first time in my life I don’t mind being fired.”

“Yeah?”

She smiles and leads me back to the box on the table. Reaching in, she takes out a stack of eight smaller plates, all made from raw clay, unglazed. “Here’s the rest of the set. Salad plates. Fiona needs to eat green things.”

“Ew,” Fiona says, back without the usual stomping that lets us know she’s here. “What kind of green things?”

Ruby flinches and starts to drop my hand, but I grab it more fiercely. “Not letting you go,” I whisper against her ear. It only takes Fiona about two seconds to notice. Her smile takes over her face, and she starts dancing in the kitchen, holding a wad of pages over her head. A few cut-out red hearts fall to the floor.

“It’s my pop-up book. It’s my story.” She opens the “book” to a page that shows carefully-drawn figures wearing crowns. One has long orange hair. Between them is a smaller figure with yellow hair. Also wearing a crown.

“No, lovebug,” I tell her. “It’sourstory.”

Epilogue

Ruby

THREE MONTHS LATER

My alarm rings at half past five, and I wake up with a smile on my face. It’s not because I read the weather report and know it’s going to be a pretty fall day with clear skies and warm temperatures. It’s not because I’ve been able to increase the scale of my viniculture and try new things. It’s not because I love Jackson Corbett a little more each day that I know him.

It’s all of those things. And so much more. For the first time, my goals feel within my reach.

Who cares that I stayed at Jackson’s house until midnight last night, enjoying the private time after Fiona went to sleep? Who cares that I’ll need an extra cup of coffee to get me through the day? The past three months have been the best of my life, and sleep is overrated anyway.

It helps, of course, that Ella is happy. She’s more than happy, actually. Her new roommate situation has turned out to be so much better than living in the dorms. Her campus job in the engineering library pays better than minimum wage, so she’s able to pay for her living expenses and have a little left over for the occasional splurge.

She has two sweet roommates, who’ve become real friends who stay up late and laugh with her and get up early to nudge her awake with the scent of coffee. She supplied them with a French press, and each of them has stashed four dollars into a jar each time they brew coffee at home instead of buying it. After only a month, they took themselves to a celebratory steak dinner with the savings.

She and Tim are still going strong, and he’s been a huge support to her through the move and daily life.

As a nagging older sister, I feel like my job is done. Well, not totally done. I’ll always find excuses to teach Ella those older sister lessons that she’s probably already learned on her own, and so far, she still humors me.

Knowing she’s doing well puts my mind at ease and makes it much easier to sink into the life I’ve been building in Napa.

I still come to Jackson’s house every day to hang with Fiona, but it’s become more of an unofficial agreement between Fiona and me than any kind of actual job. Even though Jax relieved me of my official duties, there was no turning down Fiona when she asked me to pick her up and spend afternoons with her.

Fortunately, the pay raise I received when Victor brought me on as assistant sommelier a month ago has bridged the gap, and…excuse me…assistant sommelier! I’m officially on my way to my dream job—not to mention that I have a bit more time in my day to work on making wine. And what better place to do it?

In my nearly six months working here, I’ve met a lot of the winemakers, so I’ve been learning so much more about aging my wine in the drier weather. With less humidity and using an oak barrel, there’s less evaporation, which produces wine with lower alcohol concentrations. I’m experimenting with sauvignon blanc grapes.

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