Page 4 of Corkscrew You
But, being pragmatic, it would pay to make a small concession. It’s going to be hard enough work turning this business around without having Shelby Armstrong up in my face every minute. Besides, I do know what it’s like to feel you have something to prove. And if she works with me, not against me, we can both get what we want.
“How about this?” I say. “This first week is all about you showing me how the winery works. If there’s any evidence that I need to amend the business plan, I’ll take it on board.”
She doesn’t reply. She’s trying to work out whether I’m sincere. I am, but time is ticking on, and every second we delay, Flora Valley Wines haemorrhages more money.
I stand up and extract my wallet from my jacket pocket.
“JP’s treat,” I tell her.
Then I pull out my car keys and she jumps to her feet like she’s been electrified.
“Great, yes, great,” she says in a rush. “Great plan. Really. Great.”
I have no idea what’s got into her.
“So... see you 9am Monday?” I say.
“Great! OK! See you Monday!”
And she hightails it like a jackrabbit.
I decide to buy the cast iron spice grinder for Mom. She loves that kind of thing. And I can always borrow it and clock Shelby Armstrong over the head if she gives me trouble.
When I get back to the car, somecaca boudin ostréipyge, that’s “shit sausage buttock oyster”, has put a huge dent in the hood. How, I have no idea, and I’m too pissed off to try to imagine.
On the way back tochezDurant, I should be focusing on how to get Dad to see sense, and the most practical next steps for the winery, and any number of other useful, constructive thoughts. But the dumb part of my brain keeps chiming in with images of the freckles on Shelby Armstrong’s lower lip, and speculation about where else she might have freckles, and how goddamn cute it is that she says “fig”, and at one point, I genuinely consider pulling over and smacking myownhead with the spice grinder to reboot my sanity.
Fig almighty. Next week is going to belong.
ChapterThree
SHELBY
“So he’s a human-shaped sack of dick cheese, but hot?”
Jordan, one of my two best friends of all time forever and ever, is on her second beer.
“With terrible taste in cars,” I add.
“Which he might have to send to the wreckers now,” Jordan says with a grin.
“No! It was just a scratch!”
I can’t afford spirits and I don’t like beer, so I’m drinking the house white, which is one step up from polecat spray but fourteen percent alcohol. Brendan, owner and manager of the Silver Saddle, won’t stock Flora Valley wine because he says it’s too fancy. He won’t let me bring my own wine bottle either, even though I offered to pay a corkage fee. So in a way, it’s his fault that I have to sit on this one glass for the whole evening. Fortunately, I drink with people whose jobs pay them real money, so Brendan doesn’t gettooshirty.
“How hot?” says Chiara, my other best friend of all time forever and ever. “On the Skarsgård scale?”
Alexander, not Stellan, of course. We don’t have daddy issues. Not that sort, anyhow.
“Hard to gauge,” I say. “He was fully clothed.”
“And he starts Monday?” says Jordan.
“Yep. Team briefed and warned.”
“Youdoneed help though, don’t you.”
Chiara’s best friend of all time status is on shaky ground.
