Page 44 of Lighting Up Christmas

Zhang faced the sloping hill where three large blocks of vineyards marched down toward the south, but Riley looked up, to the higher elevation blocks, already with a light snowpack, and then up above those where a more forested area started.

Zhang could practically have a tree farm here.

What are you trying to do, chain him to the property?

“I bought the property,” Zhang began, and Riley pulled out her phone and pushed record, “because I wanted something for myself that was just mine. A place to be. A place of peace and quiet where I could think and be physical, attached to something that was real and bigger than myself and would outlast me.”

Riley nodded as a sharp wind whistled down from Mount Ashland.

“Did you grow up on a farm?” she asked, remembering that he had mentioned his grandfather.

Still, she couldn’t imagine it.

“Briefly,” he said.

He began walking again up toward one of the blocks. Riley followed, phone held out and hoping the wind wasn’t too loud to muffle the recording. “The Riesling grapes I use for ice wine are up here. I’m experimenting with different grapes and clones. More of a scientific experiment and challenge than commercially viable, but this year I do have an ice wine again and two late harvest wines,” he said. “After a few years of epic fails.”

She had a hard time believing that.

“Did your family make wine?”

His mouth twisted, and he shook his head as if trying to dislodge something unpleasant.

“No. Not even close. My grandfather raised me for some time,” he said. “He lived and worked in a city but had a plot of land he would go to every weekend and devote himself to it. He was more into creating a garden, a place of peace is how it would translate from Mandarin. He would lose himself in the land andplants. He was never finished. It was the process that brought him the purpose.”

“It’s the journey that brings the joy,” Riley said, not really meaning him to hear.

But of course he did. He turned and looked at her sharply and stopped walking.

“Do you believe that?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “I have goals and dreams, but I don’t feel like I’ll be done if I achieve them. I’ll be happy, but I will just start something else. I like to strive and learn new things. Try new things. And if I fail,” she shrugged, her eyes never leaving his face because his stare was that magnetic, and there was no view in the valley, even here on her favorite piece of land offering up her sweeping favorite view, that was more compelling or beautiful than him, “then I’ve learned something and can try again from a different approach. Hopefully, I don’t do it the same way and choke all over again.”

She laughed.

“I am not amused by failure,” he said, but it didn’t sound like a criticism, more a statement.

“But failure, too, is part of the process.”

“I don’t want to fail with this.” He swept his arm out, his melodic, low voice harsh for a moment, and then he started walking again with determination. “Although I’ve had failures. That’s where the learning is. But I cannot be so sanguine about the possibility. Failure can destroy lives, crush livelihoods. The land deserves better.”

And that right there was probably why Leah had sold to Zhang instead of the Bane Land Holdings.

“Zhang, that’s being a little melodramatic and putting way too much pressure on yourself.”

Were they going to walk to the top of his land? She thought her job kept her fit. Maybe she should have studied viticulture.

“When I started, I was just thinking of the challenge as an academic exercise. What would be required to reshape part of the land into a vineyard? Which trellis system is more effective in this climate and soil? What grape grafts would flourish? How do I best protect the soil? And if someone said I couldn’t grow a certain varietal, then why not? Could I intervene with science to prove nature or the experts wrong?”

Zhang continued to chew up the ground between row after row of vines, with Riley at his heels.

“I always have to push and push.”

He didn’t even seem to be talking to her. “What changed?” she asked, trying to understand what was bothering him.

“You.”

Riley’s heart was pounding from the steep altitude climb, and her blood surged. “Me?” She’d been trying so hard to watch her runaway tongue, yet she’d still upset him.

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