Page 3 of Love You Truly

The irony of that isn’t lost on me, but sometimes reputations are correct.

Her face is a confluence of expressions and shades of pink. Lips colored with a rosy lipstick, cheeks drowning in scarlet, brow furrowed, eyes squinting. Then wide. Then squinting again.

She opens her mouth and closes it again as her cheeks notch a brighter pink hue.

“Are-are you okay?” she asks.

Her concern for my well-being strikes me as almost antithetical to everything I know about Mallory Rutherford—out for herself, only interested in a man if she can flirt her way into a business advantage, and ultimately, a woman with expensive taste who cares only about herself.

Again, the irony is real.

She looks me over from head to feet, and I feel the warmth of her gaze like the morning sun. Immediately, I shake myself back to reality because this is Mallory Rutherford, and I don’t know whether she’s sizing me up out of concern or because I might make a nice next meal.

My hand goes to my lower back, which took the brunt of my fall, but near as I can tell, I haven’t broken anything.

“I’m fine. You?”

The embarrassment on her face is taken over by an icy stare. “Fine. Again, sorry.”

She looks at her shopping cart, which has a few jars of pickles sitting on top of the cases of drinks, and begins removing them one by one. Her eyes dart around the floor for any jars that haven’t broken—and there are a few—and she picks those up as well.

I stand there agog, watching Mallory totter around in her heels amid a green layer of pickle juice on the floor. She could easily walk off and flag down a supermarket employee to clean up the mess and be out of the store before the cleanup is finished. Yet she’s trying to put the display back into its pyramid shape herself.

It makes me want to help her, so I chase the few jars that have rolled the furthest away and stack them back on the display.

“Thanks.” Her voice is barely audible, and I can’t decide whether it’s because she doesn’t like to ask for help or she doesn’t like me, which is ridiculous because she doesn’t know me.

But people have their opinions. I guess she’s just another one who doesn’t mind getting it wrong, and I don’t care enough about her to bother correcting the misperception.

CHAPTER 2

Mallory

Present Day

You know those days when it seems like you might actually escape without your whole life falling apart? Those days when it seems like everything will work out, and you actually take the first optimistic breath and start to believe?

I’m having one of those days.

The sun is high in the sky on one of those late summer afternoons that feels like it might go on and on without ever getting dark. Of course, I know better because day always melts into night eventually, but for the moment, I feel the optimism of an endless summer day.

Sitting at the small desk in my office that overlooks the acres of farmland my family calls home in Napa Valley, I stare out at acres of green. It’s mostly wild plants and grasses where a handful of horses and sheep graze, but I see potential.

Even as a kid with long pigtails my mom curled into ringlets, I saw something more than what met the eye when I studied our land from this very window. Back then, it was a spare bedroom where the occasional visiting aunt or family friend would stay. The twin daybed is all that remains of that bygone era. I keep it because I occasionally take a power nap during the workday, and it’s more comfortable than sleeping on a couch.

Otherwise, the room is all business with streamlined office furniture, file cabinets, an ergonomic desk chair, and bookshelves, all stained the pale natural color of light wood. The shelves are crammed with accounting books, financial planners, and corporate finance textbooks I’ve accumulated over the past four years of taking classes to earn my business degree.

The only people who know I’ve been learning about entrepreneurship are my professors and my fellow students, and that’s the way I want it.

I inhale the fragrant air that slips through the open window and think about how I’d like to spend the rest of my day. Maybe a walk around the perimeter of the property, which sits at the foot of a sweeping hill covered in grapevines. Almost everyone around here is serious about farming grapes and producing wine—everyone except my parents.

Ironic that they own one of the largest pieces of land and have little interest in making wine.

Or just dumb.

But I’m about to turn thirty-three in a few months, and according to the trust they set up ages ago, I’ll be the sole owner of Autumn Lake Cellars, which is currently two hundred acres of land and a barely-there winery they started a few decades ago. I don’t intend to waste a moment of time when that happens.

Hence my business education and the whiteboard in my office with columns, arrows, and lists of big plans. Seeing my dreams for our property delineated on the board always calms me even though I’ve been chomping at the bit like a racehorse for ten years and the dreams have been nothing more than…dreams.

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