Twice in a Blue Moon (3 page)

“Bullshit. I just did.” Where was the phone book? She dug around under the counter. At least the light was better up here. Her intestines gurgled a warning, but she didn't have time to worry about that now. “Get your stuff and get off this property. Aha.” She pulled out the thin Widow's Grove phone book. “On second thought, wait right there for a minute. I'm following you out. I want to be sure some of the product is left when you're gone.”

Once she'd looked up an air-conditioning company, called and extracted a promise that someone would be out right away, she walked to where Delaney stood, grumbling under his breath. “Let's go.” She led the way into the warehouse and to the back door.

Barney stood when they walked up.

“What kinda dog is that?” Delaney slurred.

Barney sniffed the man's pants leg then, lip curling, backed up.

“One with good taste.” She held the door and her breath when Delaney brushed by her.

“You won't get away with this, lady. I'm going to the EDD.”

“You do that. Please. And I'm only guessing here, but I'll bet when I contact the tasting room staff, they'll have plenty they'll want to say to the labor board themselves.” When Barney scooted out behind her, she let the door fall closed.

Delaney walked to the loading zone and turned to go up the hill.

“Hey, where are you going?” She and Barney jogged to catch up.

“To get my stuff. I moved into the cabin.” He huffed, trudging up the hill.

“Bob's place?” Outrage fisted her hands as she imagined the cozy little log cabin defiled by this drunken slob. “Oh, no, you didn't.”

“It was sitting empty.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “And the bed down there was lumpy.” The cabin came into view as they crested the hill. The grapevines marched right up to the edge of the dusty yard, and the setting sun washed the old log walls golden.

She half expected to see Bob and Harry sitting in the wooden chairs, feet up on the railing, sipping merlot.

But they weren't. Indigo's chest squeezed her heart in a painful spasm of nostalgia.

Delaney went on grumbling about the slights he'd borne in his life as they stepped inside.

“Oh, no.” The air went out of her in a whoosh. The bear-tapestry-upholstered couch was sagging and stained. The Navajo rug was pocked with cinder-blackened holes, some possibly as recent as the foot-high ashes that spilled out of the huge fireplace.

Bottles, cups and filthy dishes occupied the low coffee table and graced every flat surface. The air was close and stale, smelling of garbage. Barney snapped at a buzzing fly.

All the pain she'd held inside since Harry's death gathered, filling every space in her body, pushing, pushing. Every slight, every abuse, every loss started to boil. Her skin tightened in an attempt to contain it, but the pressure built in her soft parts—in her gut, behind her eyes.

She clapped her hands over her ears as the pressure exploded from her in a howl of pain. “Getout-getout-getout. Get out before I kill you!”

Delaney flinched, his mouth open.

Barnabas threw his head back and howled, raising the hair on her arms.

Delaney scrambled, snatching clothes from the furniture, stumbling between the bathroom and the bedroom.

She couldn't watch. Couldn't bear seeing the rest of the house just yet. Sinking to her knees, she gathered Barney in her arms, but the dog wouldn't be consoled. His howls echoed through the large two-story room as if he, too, were pouring out his grief. She rocked him in shaking arms, whispering to him in an attempt to calm them both.

Delaney shuffled back and forth, loaded down with boxes, clothes hanging out of them. She wasn't letting go of Barney to look through them. Knowing firsthand how demeaning that was, she couldn't do it to another human being, even someone as useless as this manager.

Besides, everything precious had already been taken.

CHAPTER TWO

F
ROM
THE
PORCH
, Indigo watched the ex-manager's rattletrap truck pull out onto the road below. “Well, it's up to you and me now, Barn.”

The dog lifted his mournful face.

“Cheer up, bud. We may suck at making decisions, but we can't do worse than
that
guy.”

A lead blanket of responsibility dropped onto her shoulders, making it hard to draw a full breath. No one to look to. No one to call. The success or failure of Harry's last lifeline was in her hands. Her incompetent hands.

Oh, come on. You're not totally clueless. After all, you've run your own yoga business.

A tattered remnant of a memory floated through her mind, of a carmine-red scrap of a dress that had cost her more than a good chunk of her bank account.

Yes, and that worked out so well.
She slammed her mind shut on it.

She should start shoveling out the cabin. Turning, she stepped to the open door, then hesitated. The sun dipped below the edge of the world. The breeze blew colder than it had a moment ago. The dark played in the straggling vines, and she thought she heard the scurrying of rat-like claws in the dirt.

Ghosts whispered from the open doorway.

Blue? She's a little chit, but I'm just glad to see Harry's still got the interest.

He'll tire of her. Smart men always do, once they start thinking with their bigger head.

You were less than nothing before you met my dad. You're now free to go back to that.

The ghosts chuckled, breathing the smell of boozy sweat-stained sheets and failure into her face. Turning her back on the past, she blindly reached for the knob and shut the door.

She'd deal with the cabin when she felt stronger. “Let's go, Barn.”

As they walked down the hill to the winery, a white panel van pulled into the parking lot, the name of the air-conditioning company she'd called on its side.

The dog woofed.

“It's okay, Barn. The cavalry drives panel trucks nowadays.” She unlocked the front doors for the repairman, but that was about all the help she could render, having no idea what a compressor looked like, much less where it was located. She told him where she'd be and left him to it, imagining dollars ticking by on a taxi's meter.

She and Barn walked through the tasting room and took the door on the left that led the way to the manager's quarters. She shot a glance to the ceiling. “Oh please, God, I can't take any more today.” Bracing herself for the worst, she opened the door.

Encouraged by a faint whiff of stale Lysol, she walked down the long hall, opening doors as she went. The first on the left revealed an abandoned office with windows that looked onto the parking lot. The next door was to a long room. Empty barrels and equipment littered the floor. Behind the door on the right stood the industrial washer and dryer, the deep working-man's sink between them.

The next room on the right was the manager's living quarters, and their home until the cabin was shoveled out.

She opened the door and sniffed. “It's safe, Barney. Come on in.” Set up like a room in one of those extended-stay hotels, the apartment had a small kitchen area on the right, a two-person dining table to the left, and a neatly made double bed before her. Crossing the room, she turned left to check out the bathroom. The shower/tub combo, sink and toilet all gleamed.

Thank God the cleaning crew didn't quit too.

Problems lay tangled in her mind like huge piles of string. She had no idea where to begin unknotting them.

First things first.

A short while later, on her last trip to the car unloading what she and Barney would need for the night, the repairman found her in the hall.

“I've cobbled together a temporary fix, ma'am, but frankly, your whole system is held together with bubble gum and cat hair.” He squatted to pat Barney. “It'll need to be replaced.”

“The whole thing?' The taxi meter in her head whirred.

“Well, some of the duct work could probably be salvaged.” Head down, he studiously petted an adoring Barney, whose tail whopped the metal doorjamb with a hollow bong.

She didn't want to know. “How much?”

He named a figure that stole her breath, and a considerable chunk of the business savings account. But you couldn't make wine without a consistent temperature. Even she knew that. Should she call another company for a second quote? She bit her lip. Businesses would be closed by now. Tomorrow might be too late.

Bong. Bong. Bong.

“Jeez, Barney.” She grabbed his collar and pulled the little traitor away from the door. He'd always liked men better.

What to do? Nothing had gone right since she'd stepped foot on the property. She'd known when she took this path that she'd have to trust in her intuition, but she hadn't known that the weight of responsibility would be so heavy. It smothered her last flicker of energy. She looked up at the repairman's young, guileless face. Surely she could trust a face like that. “How long will it take?”

“We don't have a unit that large in stock. I'll need to order one. Should take a week to ten days to get here.”

“Will the cat hair hold out?”

He smiled. “If it doesn't, you call me. I'll keep it running until then, no charge.”

He should. The price he quoted for labor alone would send his kid to college for a year. What would Harry do? A chill wind filled the place in her chest where Harry used to be, howling around the cracks in her cobbled-together life. She crossed her arms to cover the void and chose the easier option. “Yeah, okay, order the parts.”

She followed him out, locked up behind them, then returned to the manager's quarters. The bed beckoned. She longed to fall onto it, curl into a fetal ball and welcome sleep's respite. Instead, after a long, lingering look, she set up her laptop on the kitchen table and fired it up, then wandered into the kitchen area to find a bowl for Barney's food. Her stomach growled, but the shelves and drawers revealed only dime-store dishes, bent-tined silverware and a few pots and pans. The fridge was empty save a box of baking soda that sure hadn't been put there by the manager.

She poured Barney's food into a chipped cereal bowl with Mickey Mouse tap dancing around the rim. She knew she should eat something. The stress of the past month had her jeans gapping, hanging off her hip bones. A bevy of women in Hollywood would kill for a size zero, but they sure wouldn't want the grief and worry that had gotten her there.

You've got to start taking care of yourself.
There was no one else to do it.

Tomorrow.

Barney finished his dinner and slopped half the water out of the other dish. Ears dripping, he meandered to the side of the bed and collapsed on the worn braided rug.

They were both out of shape. She'd go to town and stock up on healthy food and restart her yoga routine tomorrow. Plopping into the chair, she jiggled the mouse to refresh her laptop. It would take a lot more than discipline to deal with the rest of the mess that was the winery.

She knew little more about wine than to order white with fish and red with beef. Her education would have to come first. She searched the internet for books on wine making but found most either were for home hobbyists or were way-over-her-head technical. Then she hit pay dirt.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting and Running a Winery.
“That sounds about right.” With a click, she downloaded it to her e-reader.

The next knot in the pile of tangled string would be trickier. She'd need to find a winery manager who could do it all: vintner, cellar manager and vine steward. Her experience with the “manager” today had been a lesson in what happened when you left precious things in the hands of others. So, he or she would also have to be willing to teach her.

She needed someone she could trust.

She signed on to her simple business accounting software program and subtracted the cost of the new air-conditioning from the checking balance. She swallowed the knot of dread-laced acid at the back of her throat and added one more to the list of job requirements.

The future manager must be willing to work for next to nothing.

“Yeah, that should be an easy ad to write.” She did a search for a central California winery job board, trying to conjure the words to put lipstick on that pig.

* * *

D
ANOVAN
SQUINTED
AT
his computer screen and read the post again, hoping to glean more information.

Wanted: Winery Manager

A great opportunity to get in on the
Grand Reopening of a boutique winery with a solid reputation for outstanding wines.

Great working environment!

Please apply in person to
The Tippling Widow Winery,

Widow's Grove, California

He'd never heard of The Tippling Widow, but that wasn't surprising. Mom-and-pop operations lay scattered in the hills all over the valley.

Reading between the lines of the sunny ad, it was clear that this would be a lot of work for little acclaim. He squared his shoulders. This job was far beneath him. He'd been a lead vintner at one of the largest winemakers in all of California.

Had
being the key point.

He flipped to the Bacchanal website. His own smile met him. A flashy photo of the favorite son raising a glass of Pan's Reserve Cab, his father-in-law's arm around his shoulder.

His breath whooshed out. The family hadn't changed the website yet. No surprise there. He was still stunned to blasted stillness inside...the family must be too. His daughter's cherubic smile drifted across his vision, softening the edges, blurring it. He pulled his mind from the darkness. He had to keep moving forward. There was nothing left behind.

Who was he kidding? If the owner of Tippling Widow hadn't heard of his epic ousting at Bacchanal two weeks ago, a simple phone call to check references would remedy that. Failure bubbled up, turning his skull into a witch's cauldron of funk. Should he even bother applying?

He glanced at the walls of the crappy apartment he wouldn't be able to afford next month. What choice did he have? Gathering the scattered chunks of his career, his ego and his regrets, he wrote down the address of The Tippling Widow. He had to try.

When he first pulled into the parking lot, he thought the place abandoned. But a basset hound lumbered around the corner of the covered porch to the front steps and sat down, staring at his car. He shut off the engine.

What are you going to say when they ask about your last job?

“Hell if I know.” His voice bounced off the windows and back at him. He'd just have to dance around the truth. A little. He checked his hair in the rearview mirror, then, résumé in hand, stepped out.

Unpruned vines in untidy rows straggled up and down the hills like drunken soldiers.

Well, at least here you'll be needed.
Retucking his custom-tailored dress shirt into his favorite slacks, he smothered the
last chance
whisper in his mind, slapped on a salesman's smile and strode toward the porch.

Taking the drooling dog's thumping tail as a gesture of goodwill, he stepped around it on the way to the door. At the sound of sweeping coming from the right, he turned. A broom appeared from around the corner, followed by a small, thin woman in a faded T-shirt and spandex pants that ended below the knee. Golden-highlighted brown hair escaped a red bandana to fall around her sweaty face.

He might have to give up the Land Rover, but if this was an example of the help around here, at least there'd be some perks to the job. “Excuse me.”

She squeaked and jumped, her Keds actually leaving the porch. She raised a French-manicured hand to her chest, her deep brown eyes huge.

“Could you tell me where I could find the owner?”

She tucked a hank of hair behind her ear and shot a look at the roof of the porch, her lips moving silently. The broom fell with a clatter, and she scrubbed her hands on her slim thighs and extended a hand. “I'm Indigo Blue, the owner. The working owner,” she said with a blush and an apologetic smile.

He knew that name. His mind sorted data, trying to remember from where. Her hand was soft, warm and fine-boned. She might be a working owner, but with hands like that, she hadn't been for long. “I'm Danovan DiCarlo. I've come to apply for the manager position.”

“I only posted that opening last night. I never dreamed anyone would be by so soon.” Her hand slipped from his. “I'm sorry to be a mess. Please, come in.”

She led him to the front door, stopping to pet the hound. “This is Barnabas. The Tippling Widow mascot.”

He followed her, wishing he could shake the hand of whoever invented spandex. He'd always been a leg man. The muscles in her calves were fluid in flexion. Her thighs were long and firm, and her ass...legendary. Suddenly, the name clicked. That body had graced the cover of the Hollywood rags Lissette consumed like trendy cocktails. This was Harry Stone's arm-candy wife. What the heck was she doing here?

She led the way through a high-ceilinged, timber-framed tasting room, through a door and into an office. At least, at some point in the past, this space must have been an office. Large arched windows looked out onto the front lawn, and the wood modesty panel told him there was likely a desk under the piles of paper.

She lifted a stack of wine trade magazines from the guest chair. “Have a seat.” She looked around for a place to put the magazines. Not finding room on the desk, she dropped them into a corner. They hit the dirty carpet with a muffled
whump
. She walked around the desk and lowered herself into a scarred high-backed leather chair as if it were a throne. “I'd apologize for the mess, but I'm afraid once I start, I'd never stop.”

“If everything was shipshape, you wouldn't need me.” He gave her a salesman's smile and handed his résumé to her over the paper piles. Given Harry Stone's money, Danovan figured that finances shouldn't be a problem
.
And once he took over, she could go back to Hollywood. This job was looking up.