Season of Change(36)
“I’m afraid they still have a slight aura of skunk about them.”
Truman giggled again. “I’m going to smell them to see who smells worse—Abby or the girls.”
The twins slumped back as one, grinning. Clearly, they didn’t have this kind of action in New York City. Faith leaned over and sniffed Grace, who pushed her away.
“We’ll meet you at Roxie’s in fifteen minutes.” Slade disconnected and dug into his pancakes.
* * *
HARMONY VALLEY WAS practically deserted in the early mornings.
Christine power walked up one street and down another, getting rid of the kinks from fifteen hours spent in the vineyard yesterday, and trying to shake her worry over her father’s latest career move. He was running out of places to work in Napa. And her mother didn’t seem to be taking his moves any better this time than the last.
Other than the occasional morning show being blasted out an open screen door as she passed, she didn’t meet anyone. In Napa, she would have seen a dozen or more people she knew by now, exercising, gardening, or taking advantage of the cool breeze before it turned hot again.
She walked past the boarded-up elementary school and the vacant high school. She walked down a mostly vacant Main Street. In the distance, she saw Will jogging next to his fiancée on a bike. The only businesses she saw were El Rosal, a barbershop that may or may not be open, a two-pump gas station, and a pawnshop. It was a thirty-minute drive to good coffee, bad fast food, and any sort of a hair salon. The nearest shopping mall was an hour’s drive.
There’d be no charity events requiring new sequined dresses and coiffed hair. No restaurant dinners with seven-course meals and decades-old wine, the bills for which siphoned money away from her savings. Christine wanted her own winery someday. Harmony Valley’s low-key lifestyle—living with Nana, driving her clunker—would help her achieve that goal. She’d love to get her own place and offer her dad a job, and her mother peace of mind.
The only wild card was Slade and his aggressive business plans for the winery. But if she played her cards in just the right order over the next year, she hoped to bring Slade from the volume-producing, large-employee-roster dark side to the small-quantity, high-quality light side.
Christine turned down a side street that she vaguely remembered led to a small park along the river. She was walking at a good clip, breathing hard and enjoying the view as she took the path across the park.
She passed an ancient swing set, an old metal pushable merry-go-round, a few picnic tables, and lots of trees—poplar, oak, eucalyptus. There was so much shade the grass was sparse. Birds swooped from trees by the river, barnstorming the blackberry bushes that clung to the edge of the bluff. She reached the bluff overlooking the river and nearly tripped.
Immediately below her, on a narrow strip of dirt beach, a naked guy was doing yoga. She appreciated the male form as much as the next gal, but this man looked like someone’s grandfather. Someone’s shipshape, ponytailed grandfather.
“Good morning.” He transitioned from a tree pose to a warrior’s pose so smoothly he didn’t startle the two ducks rooting in the shallows nearby.
“Good...uh...morning.” Christine averted her eyes. She turned and started retracing her steps, hoping he hadn’t gotten a good look at her.
“You must be the winemaker. Agnes’ granddaughter.”
So much for hoping for anonymity. Ettiquette dictated she not walk away. That didn’t mean she had to face him, though. “That’s me.”