Window Shopping, page 23
“No,” Hallie whispered in horror, gripping the strap of her bag.
“Leave her be, Jerome,” Lavinia scolded, swatting her husband on the arm. “You know what our Hallie has been through lately. And it is distressing to watch everyone migrate over to UNCORKED like a big lot of lemmings. Too much change, all at once, innit, babe?”
Lavinia’s sympathy caused a pang in Hallie’s chest. God, she loved her friends. Even Jerome and his brutal honesty. But their kindness also made Hallie feel like the sole upside-down crayon in a box of Crayolas. She was a twenty-nine-year-old woman hiding behind a standing mixer after committing disco ball sabotage and interrupting the workday of two normally functioning people. Her phone buzzed incessantly in her purse, her three thirty appointment, no doubt, wanting an explanation for her tardiness.
It took her a full minute to fish the buzzing device out of her packed purse. “Hello?”
“Hallie! This is Veronica over on Hollis Lane. Are you still planning on landscaping my walkway this afternoon? It’s past four o’clock now and I have early dinner plans.”
Four o’clock? How long had she been brooding across the street from UNCORKED, pretending to read the same Nancy and Sluggo comic strip over and over? “That’s fine. Go ahead and take off. I’ll be over to get started soon.”
“But I won’t be home to let you in,” explained Veronica.
Hallie opened her mouth and closed it. “Your garden is outside, right?”
“Yes, but . . . well, I should be here to greet you, at least. The neighbors should witness me acknowledging your arrival, so they don’t think you’re trespassing. And—oh fine, maybe I wouldn’t mind supervising a little. I’m very particular.”
There it was. Hallie’s personal kiss of death.
A client wanting to control the flower narrative.
Her grandmother had been patient with that sort of thing, listening carefully to a customer’s demands and gently guiding them over to her camp. Hallie didn’t own a pair of kid gloves. She could produce beautiful gardens bursting with color and life—and she did. All over St. Helena. Keeping the name Becca’s Blooms alive in the spirit of the grandmother who had raised her from age fourteen. But she didn’t have a method to her madness. It was all gut feelings and mood planting.
Chaotic, like the rest of her life.
That’s what worked for her. The madness kept her busy and distracted. When she sat down and tried to get organized, that’s when the future seemed too overwhelming.
“Hallie?” chirped Veronica into her ear. “Are you coming?”
“Veronica, I’m so sorry for the inconvenience,” she said, swallowing, hoping her grandmother couldn’t hear her from heaven. “With it being late June and all, I’m afraid my schedule is bursting at the seams a little. But I have a colleague in town who I know could do a fabulous job on your garden—and he’s much better at interpreting a specific vision than I am. I’m sure you’ve heard of Owen Stark, seen his name around town. I’m going to call him as soon as I hang up and have him give you a ring.”
Hallie ended the call a moment later. “Well, my evening is free now. Maybe I’ll go knock over a convenience store.”
“Do steal me a pack of smokes while you’re at it, babe,” Lavinia requested without missing a beat. “And some antacids for our Jerome.”
“Anything for my accomplices.”
Jerome snorted. “I’d turn you in to the police in a heartbeat,” he said, turning back to his bear claws, dusting them with powdered sugar.
He doesn’t mean that, Lavinia mouthed at Hallie.
Hallie gave her friend a wry look. Truthfully, she didn’t blame Jerome for being annoyed with her. This wasn’t the first time she’d hidden behind the standing mixer. Come to think of it . . . had it even been a full month since the last time? On opening day at UNCORKED, she might have pilfered a few of the flyers being circulated around town. And by a few, she meant she’d canceled all of her appointments and snuck around, taking them out of store windows. On the final leg of her quest, she’d been caught by an overdressed manager in a tweed suit and little round glasses. He’d chased her half a block.
She should stop worrying so much about things she couldn’t change. If she’d learned anything growing up with a vagabond for a mother, it’s that change was inevitable. Things and people and even traditions were often there one minute and replaced the next. But her grandmother wasn’t going to be one of them. Rebecca was the ship’s rudder of her life. In which direction would Hallie go without her?
Hallie forced a smile onto her face. “All right, I’ll leave you to it. Thanks for harboring me.” Because she knew herself too well, she crossed her fingers behind her back. “I promise it’s the last time.”
Lavinia doubled over laughing. “My God, Hallie. I can see your crossed fingers in the stainless steel fridge.”
“Oh.” Face heating, she sidestepped toward the rear exit. “I’ll just see myself out—”
“Wait! I forgot. I have news,” Lavinia said abruptly, speed walking in Hallie’s direction. She slung their arms together and pulled her into the small parking lot that ran behind the donut shop, as well as the rest of the stores on Grapevine Way. As soon as the screen door of Fudge Judy slapped shut behind them, Lavinia lit another cigarette and hit Hallie with the kind of eye contact that screamed this is big news. Exactly the kind of distraction Hallie needed to stall her self-reflective mood. “Remember that tasting you dragged me to a few months back at Vos Vineyard?”
Hallie’s breath hitched at the name Vos. “Yes.”
“And remember you got sloshed and told me you’ve been in love with Julian Vos, the son, since you were a freshman in high school?”
“Shhhh.” Hallie’s face had to be the color of beet juice now. “Keep your voice down. Everyone knows who they are in this town, Lavinia!”
“Would you stop? It’s just you and me here.” Squinting one eye, she took a long pull of her cigarette and blew the smoke sideways. “He’s back in town. Heard it straight from his mum.”
The parking lot seemed to shrink in around Hallie, the ground rising up like a wave of asphalt. “What? I . . . Julian?” The amount of reverence she packed into the whisper of his name would have been embarrassing if she hadn’t hidden behind this woman’s standing mixer twice in one month. “Are you sure? He lives near Stanford.”
“Yes, yes, he’s a brilliant professor. A scholar with a case of the tall, dark, and broodies. Nearly your first snog. I remember everything—and yes, I’m sure. According to his mum, the hot prodigal son is living in the guesthouse at the vineyard for the next several months to write a historical fiction novel.”
A zap of electricity went through Hallie, straight down to her feet.
An image of Julian Vos was always, always on standby, and it shot to the forefront of her mind now, vivid and glorious. His black hair whipping right and left in the wind, his family vineyard like an endless maze on all sides of him, the sky burning with bright purples and oranges, his mouth descending toward hers and stopping right at the last second. He’d been so close she could taste the alcohol on his breath. So close she could have counted the black flecks in his bourbon-brown eyes if only the sun hadn’t set.
She could also feel the way he’d snagged her wrist and dragged her back to the party, muttering about her being a freshman. The greatest tragedy of her life, right up until she’d lost her grandmother, was not landing that kiss from Julian Vos. For the last fifteen years, she’d been spinning alternate endings in her mind, occasionally even going so far as watching his history lectures on YouTube—and responding to his rhetorical questions out loud, like some kind of psychotic, one-sided conversationalist. Though she would take that humiliating practice to the grave.
Not to mention the wedding scrapbook she’d made for them in ninth grade.
“Well?” prompted Lavinia.
Hallie shook herself. “Well what?”
Lavinia waved her smoking hand around. “You might bump into the old crush around St. Helena soon enough. Isn’t that exciting?”
“Yes,” Hallie said slowly, begging the wheels in her head to stop spinning. “It is.”
“Do you know if he’s single?”
“I think so,” Hallie murmured. “He doesn’t update his Facebook very often. When he does, it’s usually with a news article about space exploration or an archaeological discovery—”
“You are literally leaching my vagina of moisture.”
“But his status is still single,” Hallie laughed. “Last time I checked.”
“And when was that, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“A year, perhaps?”
More like a month, but no one was counting.
“Wouldn’t it be something to get a second chance at that kiss?” Lavinia poked her in the ribs. “Though it’ll be far from your first at this stage of your life, hey?”
“Oh yeah, it’ll be at least my . . .”
Her friend squinted an eye, prodding the air with a finger. “Eleventh? Fifteenth?”
“Fifteenth. You got it.” Hallie coughed. “Minus thirteen.”
Lavinia stared at her for an extended moment, letting out a low whistle. “Well, Jesus. No wonder you have so much unspent energy.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “Okay, forget what I said about bumping into him, you two-kiss pony. Happenstance isn’t going to work. We must arrange some kind of sly meeting.” She thought for a second, then landed on something. “Ooh! Maybe check the Web and see if Vos Vineyard is having another event soon. He’s bound to be there.”
“Yes. Yes, I could do that.” Hallie continued to nod. “Or I could just check in with Mrs. Vos and see if her guesthouse needs some new landscaping. My waxed begonias would add a nice pop of red to any front yard. And who could turn down lantanas? They stay green all year.”
“. . . Hallie.”
“And of course, there’s that late-June discount I’m offering.”
“You can never do anything the easy way, can you?” Lavinia sighed.
“I’m much better at speaking to men when I’m busy doing something with my hands.”
Her friend raised an eyebrow. “You heard yourself, right?”
“Yes, pervert, I heard,” she muttered, already lifting the phone to her ear, excitement beginning to skip around in her belly when the line started to ring. “Rebecca always said to look for signs. I just canceled that biweekly job with Veronica on Hollis Lane for a reason. So I’d be open for this one. Potentially. I might have Napa running in my blood, but wine tastings aren’t my element. This is better. I’ll have my flowers as a buffer.”
“I suppose that’s fair enough. You’re just having a little look at him.”
“Yes! A tiny baby of a look. For nostalgia’s sake.”
Lavinia was beginning to nod along with her. “Fuck me, I’m actually getting a little excited about this, Hal. It’s not every day a girl gets a second shot at kissing her lifelong crush.”
Exactly. That’s why she wasn’t going to overthink this. Act first, reflect later. Her credo worked out at least half the time. A lot of things had far worse odds. Like . . . the lottery. Or cracking open a double-yolked egg. No matter what happened, though, she’d be laying her eyes on Julian Vos again. In the flesh. And soon.
Obviously, this course of action could backfire. Righteously.
What if he didn’t even remember her or that night in the vineyard?
After all, fifteen years had passed and her feelings for Julian in high school were woefully one-sided. Before the night of the almost-kiss, he’d been blissfully unaware of her existence. And immediately afterward, she’d been pulled from school by her mother for an extended road trip to Tacoma. He’d graduated soon after, and she’d never seen him again in real life.
A blank look from the man who starred in her fantasies could be a crushing disappointment. But her impulsivity had gotten worse since the loss of Rebecca in January, and it was too tempting to throw herself into one of her unknowns now. To let the chips fall where they may without reasoning through her actions first. A little niggle beneath her collar warned her to stop and slow down, take some time to think, but she ignored it, her spine snapping straight when Corinne Vos’s crisp, almost amused-sounding voice curled in her ear. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Vos, hello. It’s Hallie Welch from Becca’s Blooms. I do the landscaping around your pool and refresh your porch every season.”
The slightest pause. “Yes. Hello, Miss Welch. What can I do for you?”
Hallie held the phone away so she could gulp down a breath for courage, then settled the screen once more against the side of her face. “Actually, I was hoping I could do something for you. My waxed begonias are just stunning this year, and I thought some of them might look beautiful around your property . . .”
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.
“It’s your mother.” Her crisp footsteps moved from the entryway to the hall beneath the stairs, which led to the back office overlooking the yard. “I knocked several times, Julian,” she said, coming to a stop in the doorway behind him. “Whatever you’re writing must be quite engrossing.”
“Yes.” Since she didn’t specifically ask what he was writing, he assumed she wasn’t interested and didn’t bother elaborating. He turned the chair around and stood. “Sorry for the wait. I was completing a thirty-minute cycle.”
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.
“How is this place?” Corinne asked, tapping her row of Sacramento-green nails on the glass. They were always painted the same shade, to match the Vos Vineyard logo. “Comfortable?”
“Very.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay up in the main house?” With a bemused smile, she swept the kitchen with a look. “We have food there. A staff to prepare it. Without those things to worry about, you could focus more on writing.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I’d rather have the quiet.” They sipped in silence. The watch on his wrist ticked. Not audibly, but he could feel the gentle drift of the second hand as it rounded the midnight-blue face. “Operations are running smoothly at Vos?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t they be?” Corinne set her glass on the counter with a touch too much force and folded her hands at her waist, pinning him with a look that made him oddly sentimental. It called to mind the times his sister, Natalie, got them into trouble around the vineyard as kids. They would return home to find Corinne waiting at the back door with a pinched forehead and instructions to clean themselves up for dinner immediately. By no means could his family be termed close. They were simply related. They carried the weight of the same last name. But there were instances in the past, like showing up at the back door just before dark covered in mud and sticks, when he could pretend they were like every other family. “There is something I want to speak with you about, Julian, if you have a moment.”
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?”
“Yes. And I know you’re busy here and I’m not trying to interrupt. But there is a festival coming up in just under two weeks. Wine Down Napa. It’s a ridiculous name, but it draws a lot of attention from the media, not to mention a crowd. Naturally, Vos will have a significant presence there, and it would look good, in the eyes of the press—and the Valley as a whole—if you were there. Supporting the family business.” She seemed fascinated by the crown molding. “If you could be there from seven to nine in the evening, that should suffice.”
