Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Julian Vos forced his fingers to move across the keyboard, even though the plot was going off the rails. He’d set aside thirty minutes to write without stopping. Therefore, thirty minutes needed to be completed. His hero, Wexler, who had time traveled to the past, was now musing over how much he missed fast food and indoor plumbing of the future. All of this would be deleted, but he had to keep writing for another thirty seconds.

Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.

The front door of the guesthouse opened and closed. Julian kept his eyes glued to the cursor, though he frowned. On the screen of his desktop, Wexler now turned to his colleague and said, “No one is scheduled to be here this afternoon.”

His timer went off.

Julian slowly sat back in the leather executive chair and allowed his hands to drift away from the keyboard to rest on his thighs. “Hello?” he called without turning around.

Corinne Vos cracked a small smile, briefly unearthing the lines around her eyes and sides of her mouth. “Still sticking to your tight schedules, I see.”

Julian nodded once. “All I have in the fridge is sparkling water,” he said, gesturing for her to precede him out of the office. Deleting words was part of the writing process—he’d read extensively about drafting methods in Structuring Your Novel—but his mother didn’t need to see Wexler waxing poetic about cheeseburgers and toilets. The fact that Julian was taking a break from teaching history to write fiction was already providing her with more than enough amusement. He didn’t need to add fuel to the fire. “Have a glass with me?”

She inclined her head, her gaze ticking briefly over his shoulder to the computer screen. “Yes, please. Sparkling water sounds fine.”

They relocated to the kitchen in silence, Julian removing two slim glasses from the cabinet and filling them up, handing one to his mother, who hadn’t taken a seat. Not wanting to be impolite, Julian remained standing, too.

Mentally, he deducted fifteen minutes from his next writing sprint and added it to the final one of the day, bringing him up even. Right on schedule. “Yes, of course.”

Corinne turned her head and looked out at the acres sitting between the guesthouse and the main one. Land filled with row after row of Vos grapes. Lush green vines wrapped around wooden posts, pops of deep-purple fruit warmed and nurtured by the Napa sunlight. More than half of those support posts had been there since his great-grandfather founded the vineyard and the distribution side of Vos Vineyard in the late fifties.

The other half of those pillars had been replaced after the wildfire four years prior.

Also known as the last time he’d been home.

As if he’d recalled that hellish week out loud, Corinne’s attention snapped back to him. “It’s summer in Napa. You know what that means.”

Julian cleared his throat. “Enough wine tastings to turn St. Helena into drunk Disneyland?”

The request gave him pause. Namely, because it was a request from his mother, and Corinne didn’t make those. Not unless there was a very good reason—especially with favors pertaining to the vineyard. She took great pride in managing the operation solo. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling something was off. “Does the family business need some additional support?”

In Corinne terms, that was tantamount to admitting to trouble. What degree of trouble, though? Julian didn’t know, but the subject of the winery had been closed to him four years ago. Forcefully. By his father. Still, he couldn’t very well ignore the buried note of distress in his mother’s tone, could he? “What can I . . .” He cleared his throat hard. “Can I do anything to help?”

Given no choice but to back away from the subject for now, Julian dipped his chin. “Of course.”

If Corinne was relieved, she showed it only briefly by dropping her clasped hands and shaking them out. “Wonderful. I would tell you to mark it on your calendar, but I suspect it’s the first thing you’ll do when I leave.”

Julian smiled tightly. “You’re not wrong.”

Maybe the one thing the Vos family could be counted on to know about each other was their individual quirks. Their faults. Corinne hated relying on anyone but herself. Julian needed an airtight schedule. His father, though gone now, had been obsessed with cultivating the perfect grape to the point that everything else fell to the wayside. And his sister, Natalie, was never not scheming or planning a prank. Good thing she was off terrorizing the population of New York City, three thousand miles from Napa.

Leaving his glass on the counter, Julian followed his mother to the door.

Julian drew up short, a vision of his stopwatch app vanishing like mist. “What do you mean by a small commotion? There is no such thing.”

Julian couldn’t hide his perplexity. “Why?”

Brown eyes, very similar to his own, flashed. “Because I hired her to do so.”

His laugh was short. More like a scoffing exhale. “I couldn’t care less about flowers, and I’m the only one here to look at them.”

They both stopped and visibly straightened themselves. Arguing was beneath them. They were civilized. They had been taught to grin and bear their way through anger, to not give in to the urge to win. Victory meant everyone walked away half satisfied, relieved to get back to their own separate world.

Did the corner of Corinne’s mouth jump a little? “Three o’clock.” She smiled and stepped onto the porch, descending one step. Two. “Approximately.”

Julian’s eye twitched.

He loathed the word “approximately.” If he could remove one word from the dictionary, it would be “approximately,” followed by “nearly” and “somewhat.” If this gardener gave only ballpark arrival times, they were not going to get along. Best to stay inside and ignore her.

Should be easy enough.

* * *

The gardener arrived with five minutes left in his writing sprint.

What sounded like a truck crunched to a stop in the pebbled driveway, the rumbling engine falling silent. A squealing door slammed. Two dogs started to bark.

Sorry, make that three dogs.

Jesus. Christ.

Well, if they needed something from him, they would all have to damn well wait.

He wasn’t even going to break concentration to look at the time.

But considering he’d started this thirty-minute writing session at four o’clock, he assumed it was nearing four thirty—and that made this gardener a grand total of an hour and a half late. That was so late, it didn’t even constitute late. It was a full-blown absence.

He would be letting her know it. Just as soon as his timer went off.

Julian’s fingers almost stopped on the keyboard at being called Mr. Vos. At Stanford, he was Professor Vos. Or simply Professor.

Mr. Vos was his father.

For the breath of a second, the motions of his fingers grew stiff.

He typed faster to make up for the stutter. And he kept right on going when the front door of the house opened. “Hello? Is everyone decent?” Something about the voice of this gardener—and apparent trespasser—tugged at his memory, but he couldn’t quite land on the face that matched. Why the hell did she need to enter the home when his garden was outside? Had his mother hired this person as payback for not coming home for four years? If so, the torture was effective. His blood pressure rose with every creak of her footsteps down the hallway. “I’m here to plant your begonias . . . Boys! Heel!”

If Julian wasn’t mistaken, that was a pair of paws resting on his shoulders. The cold, wet muzzle of another canine snuffled at his thigh, then tried to dislodge his fingers from the keyboard.

Briefly, Julian’s gaze fell to his stopwatch. Three more minutes.

If he didn’t finish the session, he wouldn’t relax all night. But it was hard to concentrate when he could see the reflection of a yellow lab in the computer monitor. As if sensing Julian’s attention, the animal rolled over onto his back on the rug, tongue lolling out.

Wait.

What?

Oh, Jesus. Wexler was voicing the thoughts inside of Julian’s head again.

And the gardener was reading over his shoulder.

Finally, the timer went off, sending the dogs into a howling competition.

Julian pinned his phone’s red timer button with his index finger, took a deep breath, and turned slowly in the executive chair, preparing the rebuke of the century. In the history department at Stanford, he was known for being particular. Exacting. Rigorous. But when it came to censuring students, he let his grades do the talking. He didn’t have time for extra lectures after hours. When a student requested a meeting, he accommodated them, of course. As long as they scheduled in advance. God help the ones who showed up unannounced.

He finished turning.

Right there in front of Julian was the single most incredible pair of breasts he’d ever seen. Julian wasn’t the type to gawk at women. But these breasts were just below his eyeline, mere inches from his face. There was simply no looking away. God help him, they were spectacular. Big, to put it bluntly. They were big. And displayed rather prominently in a baby blue T-shirt, through which he could make out the polka dot pattern of the gardener’s bra.

Julian shook himself, searching desperately for the irritation he’d felt pre-breasts, but he couldn’t seem to locate it very easily. Especially when he looked up and finally met the gardener’s sparkling dove-gray eyes and something, very unexpectedly, jolted in his midsection.

God. That’s a smile.

And a whole lot of chaos.

Blond corkscrew curls rioted down to her shoulders, but a lot of them stood on end, pointing east or west, like broken couch springs. She had three necklaces on, and none of them matched. Gold, wooden, silver. The pockets stuck out of the bottom of her jean shorts and . . . yeah, he really needed to keep his attention above her neck, because her bold curves were demanding to be acknowledged and he had not been invited to do so. A lot like she hadn’t been invited into the guesthouse.

Still. She was full-figured and hiding none of said figure.

There was something about the enthusiastic enjoyment of her body that made his own start to harden. Julian’s realization that he was becoming aroused caused him to sit up straighter and cough into a fist, searching for a way to regain control of this insane situation. Three dogs were now licking themselves on the rug of his office and . . .

Something about this young woman was very familiar. Very.

Had they gone to school together? That was the likely explanation. Napa Valley might be large, but the inhabitants of St. Helena were a close-knit bunch. Around here, vintners and their employees tended to remain local forever. They passed on their practices to future generations. Just this afternoon, while on his daily run, he’d come across Manuel, the current vineyard manager whose father emigrated from Spain when Julian was in elementary school. Manuel’s son was only twelve, but already he was learning the trade so he could take over for his father one day. Once wine seeped into the lifeblood of a family, it tended to stay there. Similarly, wine ran in the veins of most locals. With the exception of newly minted tech millionaires purchasing vineyards for bragging rights, there wasn’t a lot of turnover in residents.

Certainly, however, if he’d gone to school with this now-gardener, he would remember.

She was nothing if not memorable.

Why was the sensation in his belly telling him he should know her well, though?

It would be better to proceed as if this was their first meeting, just in case his perception was off, right? Weren’t men always trying to pick up women by claiming to know them from somewhere? Or was that just his colleague Garth?

Julian stood and extended his hand. “I’m Julian Vos. Nice to meet you.”

The light in her eyes dimmed distinctively, and he suspected, in that moment, that he’d already fucked up their acquaintance. His stomach soured at the way she blinked rapidly and renewed her smile, as if putting on a brave face. Before he could claw his way back and ask why she struck him as so familiar, she spoke. “I’m Hallie. Here to plant your begonias.”

He watched her hand mimic the motion of twisting a knob, noting the abundance of rings. The dirt under her nails was from gardening, no doubt. “I have no idea.”

She flicked a curl out of her eye and beamed a smile up at him. “I’ll go have a look.”

A beat passed before she turned, as if expecting more from him. When he didn’t deliver, she whistled at the dogs, bringing the trio of them to their feet. “Come on, boys. Come on.” She coaxed them down the hallway with vigorous scratches behind their ears.

Without realizing right away what he was doing, Julian followed them.

Everything about her movements drew the eye. They were harried and controlled all at once. She was a walking whirlwind, knocking into her dogs, apologizing to them, and turning in circles, searching for the handle of this faucet. In and out of rooms she went, muttering to herself, surrounded by her pack of animals.

He couldn’t look away.

Before Julian knew it, he’d followed Hallie into the laundry room, finding her on hands and knees, trying to wrench a circular piece of metal to the left, her dogs barking as though delivering encouragement or possibly instructions.

Had this house really been dead silent five minutes ago?

One of the dogs turned and barked at him.

As if to say, Why are you just standing there, asshole? Help her.

His only excuse was being thoroughly distracted by the lightning jolt of energy she’d delivered to his space in a matter of moments. And yes, also by her attractiveness—an odd cross between radiant pinup girl and unkempt earth mother—and being distracted by her appearance wasn’t appropriate at all. “Please get off the floor,” Julian said briskly, unfastening the buttons on the wrists of his dress shirt and rolling up the sleeves. “I’ll turn it on.”

When she scooted back and stood, her hair was even more disarrayed than before and she had to tug down her ridden-up jean shorts. “Thanks,” she breathed.

Was she staring at his forearms?

In the reflection of the handle, he could have sworn she was smiling at his bent-over form, specifically his ass, but the image was probably just inverted.

Unless it wasn’t?

Shaking his head over the whole odd situation, Julian gripped the handle and wrenched it left, turning until it stopped. “Done. Do you want to check it out?”

Julian came to his feet just in time to watch Hallie tornado her way out of the house, her canine admirers following her with utter devotion in their eyes, their nails clicking over his hardwood floor until they disappeared outside. Silence descended hard.

Thank God.

Still, he followed Hallie.

No idea why. His work was waiting.

Maybe because he felt this oddly unsettled feeling, like he’d failed a test.

Or perhaps because he’d never answered her question.

Is it true? That you won’t let yourself have a drink at the end of the day unless you write for the full thirty minutes?

If this young woman was blunt enough to ask a stranger about his habits, there was a good chance she would have several uncomfortable follow-ups, which he didn’t have the time or inclination to answer. Yet he continued to the porch, anyway, watching as she lowered the gate on her white pickup truck and started to unload pallets of red flowers. The tiny woman who barely reached his chin staggered under the weight of the first load of flowers, and Julian lurched forward without thinking, the dogs yipping at his approach. “I’ll carry the flowers. Just tell me where you want them.”

Lifting a pallet of flowers, Julian frowned. “You’re not sure where they’re going?”

Hallie smiled over her shoulder. “Not yet.”

The gardener dropped to her knees, leaned forward, and smoothed her hands over the turned brown soil. “The flowers more or less decide for themselves. I’ll move them around in their individual containers until they look just right.”

Julian didn’t exactly love the sound of that. He stopped a few feet away, trying and failing not to notice the strands of frayed, white denim lying on the backs of her thighs. “They will be an equal distance apart, I assume.”

That did it. His mother was definitely punishing him. She’d sent him this curvaceous gardener to throw off his concentration and flaunt his need for organization. Detailed plans. A schedule. Relative sanity.

She laughed at his expression, stood, and chewed her lip a moment. Brushed her hands down the worn-in lap of her shorts. Was she blushing now? Back in the house, he could have sworn she was cataloguing his physique. Now, however, she ducked past him, almost as if too shy to look him in the eye. The mini blond hurricane returned to the truck for a canvas bag full of tools, then picked her way back across the yard in his direction. “So,” she started on her way past him. “You took a break from teaching to write a book. That’s so exciting. What made you decide to do that?”

Finally, he set down the tray of flowers. “How did you know?”

Trowel in hand, she paused. “Your mother told me.”

Hallie knelt straight down into the dirt, and his stomach turned sideways. “Can I not get you a towel or something?” She threw him an amused glance but didn’t answer. And, in a way, Julian supposed he was stalling. He didn’t know how to answer her question. Why was he back in Napa, writing the book sooner than expected? His answer was personal, and he’d spoken it out loud to no one. For some reason, though, the idea of telling Hallie didn’t make him feel uncomfortable. After all, she was casually digging away in the dirt, instead of waiting on his answer as if it would be some monumental revelation. “I changed the order of my ten-year plan slightly after . . . well, my colleague at Stanford, Garth, had something of a mental breakdown.”

She set down the trowel. Twisted her butt around in the dirt to face him, cross-legged.

But her undivided attention didn’t throw him off or make him wish he hadn’t started down this path. Her knees were caked in soil. This was as low pressure as it got.

Hallie’s gaze flickered past him to the sprawling vineyard, and he knew what she was thinking. He could come home to his family’s nationally renowned vineyard on a break. No. It wasn’t quite as easy as that. But that was a far different conversation.

Julian gave a brief nod. “He had some personal issues I wasn’t aware of. Instead of dealing with them head-on, he’d taken on a heavy course load and . . .”

One of the dogs approached Hallie, nuzzling her face. She received the lick, absently patting the animal on the head. “Is he doing better now?”

Julian thought of the relaxed phone conversation he’d had with his colleague three days prior. Garth had even laughed, which had relieved Julian, while at the same time filling him with a certain envy. If only he were as resilient and quick to get on the road to recovery as his friend. “He’s taking some much-needed time off.”

A rock formed in his throat. “We’ve been teaching the same length of time,” he said briskly, leaving out the fact that he wasn’t without his own—unacknowledged—personal issues. Many of which had to do with their current surroundings. Memories of the tendons in his throat constricting, a weight pressing down on his chest. The dizziness and inability to find roots in his current surroundings. Julian determinedly shuffled aside those thoughts, returning to the matter of Garth. “We had the same course load with very little leeway. Stepping back just seemed like the wise thing to do. Thankfully, I’d left some flexibility in my schedule.”

She rolled her lips inward and gave him a sheepish look from her position in the dirt. “Would you settle for a one-hour plan?” Her hands paused. “Actually, scratch that. I still haven’t decided if I’m picking up dinner from the diner or Francesco’s on the way home. I guess I have a ten-minute plan. Or I would if I knew where these flowers were going. Boys!”

The dogs descended on her, snuffing happily into her neck. Almost like she’d called them over with the express purpose of derailing her train of thought.

A lot like in their initial meeting in his office, he sensed her disappointment even though she kept right on smiling. “Oh.” She bobbed her blond curls. “Sure.”

The words were out of his mouth before he realized he’d spoken.

But she’d already put the flowers closer to their counterparts. Patted the dirt around them and turned on the hose to give them some water. And now she was gathering her things, sliding the trowel into a pocket it hadn’t been in earlier, if he recalled correctly. The dogs were circling her, sensing their imminent departure, dancing on their paws.

Yes, they were leaving.

Thank God. Right? Now he could get back to work.

What time was it, anyway?

Had he actually lost track of the minutes since Hallie’s arrival?

Julian was so startled by the rare possibility that Hallie was halfway to the truck with her fan club before he realized it. “Bye, Julian,” she called, tossing her tool bag into the open cab of the truck and prying open the creaking driver’s-side door, stepping back so her dogs could pile in. “Good luck with the book. It was really nice to see you again.”

She started the truck and drove right out of his driveway without answering.

They’d met before. He knew it. Where? How?

The stillness that fell in the wake of Hallie’s hectic presence eventually reminded Julian that he had a purpose for being in Napa. The cursor was blinking on his screen inside. Time marched forward. And he couldn’t spare any more thoughts on the pinup earth mother or the fact that she was extremely pretty. She’d caused a disruption to his routine, and now it was over.

He should be grateful.

No, he was.

Perhaps he’d been momentarily fascinated by someone so wildly different from him, but on a regular basis? That kind of disorder in another person would drive him up the wall.