Novel Excerpt: The Woman In the Vineyard

Napa Valley, California

​Tess was acting as if Santa Claus was coming to town.

​She’d placed a bottle of Black Mask’s flagship wine on the coffee table. Beside it was the largest flower vase I’d ever seen outside a hotel lobby, filled with eighteen white roses.

“Why eighteen?” I asked.

“Because it’s extravagant,” she said. “So are twelve.”

“Everyone does twelve.”

“He won’t count them.”

“But he’ll know on a subconscious level there are more than twelve.”

“If you say so.”

“I want him to know he’s special,” she said.

“How do you know he’s special? You’ve never met him. You hardly know anything about him.”

“He’s yours.” She adjusted two of the roses. “Ow.” She stuck the tip of her left index finger into her mouth and sucked on it. “That hurt.”

“He’s not my possession.”

She laughed. “He’s your man.”

I wasn’t sure about that either.

She went into the kitchen and returned with three enormous wine goblets. I suppose when you own a 130-acre vineyard and a five thousand square foot Mediterranean home, everything—flower vases and bouquets of roses and wine glasses—is done on a grand scale.

“I’m so excited to meet him,” she said. “Finally.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“You don’t seem very excited to see him … how many weeks has it been?”

“I’m excited.”

She laughed. “You don’t show it.”

“You’re giddy enough for both of us.”

“Men like to know you’re thrilled by their presence, that you missed them, that you need them.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

“You’re impossible,” she said.

My phone buzzed with a text from Hunter.

Leaving the airport. Apple maps says eighty-seven minutes.

Thanks to the deadly accuracy of Apple, the doorbell rang eighty-seven minutes later. Tess rushed toward the door so fast, I thought she might skid all the way across the tiled entry, past Damien’s enormous enclosure, rattling his cage, so to speak, causing an outburst of commentary from him.

I wondered if he would remember Hunter.

She flung open the door. “Welcome to Black Mask, Hunter.” She stepped onto the patio. I thought she might hug him. Instead, she shoved her hand at him as if she’d changed her mind at the last minute, but couldn’t quite stop her forward momentum.

He shook it with more enthusiasm than I would have expected. He wouldn’t have enjoyed the hug. It was a vibe that drew me to him the moment I saw him. There was something a bit the same about the two of us. Not that he was like me in any serious way whatsoever, but he didn’t thrust himself at the world, or assume that every member of the human race was someone he wanted to absorb into his life without reservation.

​“I’m Tess.”

“I would have known you anywhere,” Hunter said.

She laughed as if it were the wittiest thing she’d ever heard, a pickup line worthy of the best bar in San Francisco.

He’d left his luggage in the rental car, but Tess wasn’t going to entrust someone on her staff with that precious responsibility. “Let me get your bags.” She started toward the car.

When Hunter didn’t immediately follow, she waved her hand at him.

“I don’t need anything right this minute,” he said.

“Let’s get you settled. We don’t want to interrupt our evening with housekeeping tasks.”

Maybe she was worried he would slip out of her grip if she allowed him to keep his belongings in the car.

Hunter put his arm around my waist, pulled me close, and gave me a very nice kiss while Tess watched like an approving mother bird. Then we went to the car to get his bags.

The duffel bag, large suitcase, and garment bag suggested he planned to stay for a while. Tess looked as if Christmas truly had come early.

​I wondered if I’d made a mistake, inviting him to stay in the same house with Tess. And me. It was a lot of togetherness.

The e-book and paperback are now available on Amazon. ​