Page 33 of Whisking It All

“Teej—”

“There’s no point in pretending that’s not who we are,” she said before taking a sip of her coffee. She hated decaf, but she needed something to do with her hands, something to make her stop talking.

“But that isn’t who we are,” Ethan insisted. He reached across the table, gripping her wrist and staring into her eyes like he could make her understand. “Most of the people in this town are good, kind-hearted people who don’t hold what you did when you were sixteen against you—or your kids. I run the best damn vineyard in the state, so who cares if some of the old ladies at St. Anthony’s have nothing better to do than rehash something that happened twenty-five years ago? That’s their issue, not ours. Together, we’re going to put on the biggest, most profitable food and wine festival this town has ever seen. We are going to put Aster Bay on the goddamn map. The only people’s opinions I care about are the family I was born to and the family I’ve made for myself. So, if a few people want to gossip about the fact that I was a teenager when the best thing to ever happen to me was born—”

The loud mechanical music of Ethan’s default ringtone rang out and he mumbled an apology as he dug the phone from his jeans pocket. His brow furrowed as he read the name on the caller ID.

“Hi, mom. Can I call you back?” Tessa watched as her father’s face morphed into confusion, his words tumbling over each other and his grip on his phone tightening. “Mom, slow down. I can’t understand you. What about dad?” Tessa’s stomach dropped. A few more cryptic exchanges, his face growing paler by the second and his eyes darting nervously to Tessa, then he hung up with a promise to “be there as soon as I can.”

He'd barely pulled the phone away from his ear when Tessa pounced, unable to hold back the question that had sunk into her gut like a lead weight. “Is Gramps okay?”

He looked at her like he was seeing a ghost. “I…I don’t know, kid.” He paused, cleared his throat and started again. “Gramps had a heart attack.”

Tessa’s throat was too tight. When was the last time she’d talked to Gramps? She hadn’t seen her grandparents for years. After she and her mom left Aster Bay, they hadn’t exactly kept in touch with the family they’d left behind, though she’d been getting better at calling her grandparents on the holidays at least. She’d always told herself that there would be time to get to know them again once she figured out the rest of her life, once she’d become someone they could be proud of. She’d never considered that time might be limited.

You should have known better. After mom died, you should have known how little time we get with people.

“Grama says he’s stable, but he needs surgery,” Ethan said robotically, still staring at the phone, as though he were repeating back the words he’d been told but hadn’t yet processed them.

“Stable is good.”

“They’re all alone,” Ethan whispered. Guilt twisted in her gut. “I think…I have to go to Florida.” His voice broke. “If I drive to Boston, I can probably get a flight out tonight or first thing in the morning. You just got here, but I—”

“Go,” Tessa said. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

Ethan stumbled to his feet, pulling Tessa into a hug. She hugged him as tightly as she could, giving herself over to the crush of his worried embrace. He pulled away, shifting into problem-solver mode, his to-do list almost visibly scrolling through his eyes.

“Park your rental car on the left side of the driveway so it doesn’t get stuck in the ruts from my truck, and make sure you leave the porch light on if you’re going to be out late. The top step can be dangerous in the dark. The landscaper can charge the card on file and the crew at Nuthatch know how to keep everything running. If you need petty cash, Margo knows the combination to the safe.”

“How long will you be gone?” Tessa asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if—” He broke off again, shook his head, and picked back up where he’d left off in his list. “I’ll call the guys from the road. If you need anything while I’m away, any one of them would help you, but Jamie knows the most about the operations at the vineyard. I’ll send you his number.”

“I already have it,” she said, feeling oddly detached from the whole thing. This was her grandfather who was in the hospital. She should be worried, right? But did she even have a right to be worried when she hadn’t called her grandparents in months? She shook off the uncomfortable mix of worry and shame and focused instead on her father. “Go. Give Grama and Gramps a hug from me. I’ll be fine.”

He dropped his gaze, shaking his head as though he could clear the emotion from his voice. After a long moment, he looked back up at her, and a lump formed in her throat as she took in the ferocity in his eyes.

“Don’t give anyone the power to make you feel like you aren’t magic, Tessa Jayne. This is your home. You belong here. And if anyone has a problem with that, fuck ‘em. Put your head down, work harder, and fuck ‘em.”

She nodded, “Yeah,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Fuck ‘em.”

∞∞∞

Tessa couldn’t sleep. She’d never spent the night alone in her father’s house before, and even though he’d called from the airport to say he’d gotten a seat on a flight to Florida that night, the pit in her stomach from earlier hadn’t dissipated.

It didn’t help that her father’s house was too big, too old and creaky, too empty. She knew, logically, that the weird whistling sound was probably something in the pipes, that the door slamming at the end of the hall was because she left the bathroom window cracked open and not because of some malevolent spirit come to haunt her for being a shitty daughter. For wasting the time she could have had with her grandparents. For betraying her mother’s memory by being in Aster Bay in the first place.

She knew, but she still jumped every time the house groaned.

The neon red numbers on the alarm clock on the bedside table said it was late. She should try to get some sleep before her alarm went off, but between the many mystery noises, the yawning sense of unease ever since Ethan received that phone call, and the restless tension in her muscles at the thought of seeing Jamie in a few hours, she knew she wasn’t getting to sleep any time soon. She shouldn’t be so excited to spend the morning with Jamie—he’d been hot and cold with her, a grumpy asshole one minute and then flirtatious and teasing the next.

Unless of course he wasn’t actually flirting with her and she was completely misreading things. After all, why would Jameson Chase, her father’s best friend, be flirting with her? Not that she wanted him to flirt with her anyway. Not like she’d spent the last few days wondering what it would have been like if they hadn’t been connected by her father, if they’d just been two people who had an amazing night together and then kept running into each other.

Shit.

Jamie might not have been flirting with her, but DDB definitely was. Over the last few days, they’d been sending each other increasingly ridiculous photos—his hand wrapped around an eggplant held at crotch level, her holding two pumpkins in front of her chest. Each photo kept any identifying details out of the picture—no faces, no tattoos, nothing to give away a location, though she noted that DDB wore the same kinds of close-fitting Henleys and dark jeans that Jamie favored. Each image sent a thrill down her spine. It was harmless fantasy, pure escapism, because nothing was ever going to happen with DDB.

Just like nothing is ever going to happen with Jamie.

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