Chapter 36 Grace Nash

It Started as a Blackout

Six Days After the Wedding

Uncle Jimmy and my dad glance at each other, and Jimmy walks out next, presumably to follow after Nana.

Drew takes the reins as he practically drags Amelia out of the tasting room.

My dad sighs when it's just the three of us left in here. "You do realize how messed up this entire thing is, don't you?"

I glance up at the camera he installed in here, and I shrug. "It's not messed up."

"Come with me," he says. We both follow him out of the tasting room, past the firepits, and down the path toward the chapel. "I'll ask again now that there are no cameras recording our conversation. What is this?"

I'm not sure how detailed to be here.

On the one hand, Amelia is also his daughter. But on the other, this is my dad. I want to be honest with him.

"As I told you, it started as a blackout," I say. I'm not sure where to go next after that. I don't actually know what it is. It's not like either of us has defined it yet, at least not to each other, though knowing him and the way he categorizes everything in his life, surely he's put me into some sort of category in his own mind with feelings attached to it labeled wife …sort of like I have in my own mind with the husband label.

Spencer breaks the brief moment of silence. "Can I be honest with you, Steve?"

"I'd expect nothing less," my dad says.

"It started as a blackout, and we were both stunned when we woke up on Wednesday morning with rings on our fingers. But the more time I spend with your daughter, the more I can see this lasting longer than the year I initially agreed to."

My chest tightens at his words, and a soft gasp falls from my lips as I rush into his arms. "I feel the same way."

My dad nods. "Were there feelings between the two of you prior to this?"

"Not that we acted on," Spencer says carefully.

My dad stops and looks between the two of us. He sighs. "I'm glad it's more than just a drunken mistake, but there are things we need to discuss. I mentioned a prenup on the phone Saturday to you. Any chance you magically found one that you wrote when you were blacked out?"

We both shake our heads.

"My lawyer, Glen Farnsworth, drafted up a postnup. It's very simple but protects both your assets. It's in my office if you're both willing to sign it," he says.

"I'll do whatever it takes to ensure the vineyard is safe." Spencer grabs my hand and links his fingers through mine. "And for the record, that includes making sure Grace is the one standing at the end of whatever tests Maggie crafts for us."

My dad presses his lips together and shakes his head a little as if he doesn't really believe what he's hearing. "Okay, then."

We change our direction to walk over toward my dad's office to sign off on the postnup.

And as I sign my name with a flourish, I can't help but think there's a better chance than ever that we'll never have to execute it.

Amelia, however, has other plans .

Starting later in the afternoon, after I've caught up with Heidi via Zoom and I head into the tasting room and see Amelia talking to customers .

She's never in the tasting room, but she's clearly trying to throw her all into this new challenge as if history means nothing to any of us. Nana's there, too, and they're all laughing together. Drew is obviously back to work, and Spencer stayed with my dad to talk about some of the financials and best practices.

While Drew is essential to this vineyard as the head of the cellar workers, it's not like he's irreplaceable. Does he have a big role scheduling tasks and monitoring our product development? Of course he does. But could someone else be trained to take care of those tasks just as well as he does? Absolutely.

By the same token, I suppose that Spencer is also replaceable, especially considering he isn't actually employed here. Anyone can analyze the business to see what's working successfully and what can be changed, though it's hard to find trustworthy people invested in the winery who can take care of those tasks.

And me? I'd like to think I'm not replaceable, but I was just gone for nearly an entire week, and everybody seems to get by just fine without me.

As for my sister, well, I was essentially doing her job before she quit teaching to come work here. But since she's been here, I've been given other responsibilities, ones that I deem more important than the ones that she's taking care of.

I'm sure she'd have words to say about that.

So what it comes down to is that all of us are replaceable, but which one of us is most likely to give this place the sort of future it deserves?

I want it to be me because I love this place. It's my childhood, which Amelia could also say, but this place is my heart and soul. I can't help but constantly remember that she left. She went off to be a teacher, and when that didn't work out, she came back, begging for a position here. It's something that has always rubbed me the wrong way because one of us always knew our future was here while the other of us chose to walk away and only returned when it benefited her .

Nana has to see that I'm the right choice.

To Amelia, it's only about money and what she could get out of it.

To me…it's a love of the product and the land and pride in what we create literally from the ground up.

Maybe Nana sees something I'm not seeing. Maybe there's some promise she made to Pop Pop that I don't know about.

"I was hoping for something a little sweeter," the customer Amelia is talking to says. Amelia looks helplessly at Nana, and this is where I step in.

"Our pinot grigio is pretty dry," I say. "How about this one?" I pour a glass of our moscato, one of our most popular sweet wines.

She takes a sip, and her brows rise—the signal that I'm about to close a sale. "Oh my word, that's delicious."

I pour one for the man with her, too, and he also likes it.

"That's exactly what I was looking for," she says to him.

"For the party?" he asks.

She nods, and it feels like such a win to me since Amelia never would've known to give her that one next. She's in here trying to prove Nana should give this place to her, but it feels more and more like Amelia knows nothing about it at all.

"Are you looking for a few bottles or a case?" I ask.

"What's the price?" the man asks.

I glance at Amelia to allow her to field a question—maybe a slight manipulation since I know she has no idea—and when she looks lost, I answer the question. "Twenty-six for a bottle, two-eighty for a case of twelve."

The woman glances at the man. "Case?"

He nods.

I smile at them both. "I'll be right back." I head back to our inventory room behind our gift shop, and I grab an already packed case off the shelf. When I turn around, Amelia stands there scowling at me.

"You think you can just come in and steal the clients from me?"

I blow out of breath. "A, they're not clients, they're customers, and B, it's not stealing because we don't work on commission here. I closed the sale that you never would've been able to because you don't know our products the way I do."

She doesn't have a snappy retort for that because she knows it's the truth. She huffs out some sound of annoyance and stalks off. She's not in the tasting room when I return, and Nana is taking payment from the customers.

Once they leave, she turns to me. "Well done with the moscato, my dear."

I'm thrilled at the acknowledgement. And I hope it's a start for her to see that even if somehow Amelia manages to hold onto Drew for the next year, only one of us deserves this vineyard, and the other one is named Amelia.

I head back to my office to catch up on some of the things I missed while I was gone, and I realize maybe this place really didn't run so well without me since there's a lot of work to catch up on.

Spencer walks in just before the end of the day. He closes my office door and sits in the chair across from my desk.

"Where have you been all day?" I ask.

"With your dad. Trying to justify Drew's role here without making it seem like I'm trying to cut him out of the picture."

My brows dip together. "What do you mean?"

"He's getting paid a lot, and no matter what formula I tried, he kept coming up at the top of the list of which employees to cut. But if we get rid of him, Amelia will think we're doing it to purposely hurt her chances of inheriting this place. So it's a kind of lose-lose situation where it'll look like your dad's trying to give you an advantage."

I blow out a breath. "Seems like it just keeps getting more and more complicated, doesn't it?"

"It does, and I know it'll just cause more problems than it's worth, so it's not an option right now." He shrugs.

"Or maybe even after…" I trail off, but we both get the gist of what I'm trying to say.

After I'm the one who gets control of the vineyard at the end of all this, I can't exactly fire Drew as my first order of business.

"What did my dad say?" I ask .

"He agreed with me that it's more or less the wrong thing to do, no matter how much the bottom line tells us it's the right thing to do."

"Okay, then we take a harder look at things and try to figure out where else we can trim things down." I click a few buttons to wrap up what I'm working on then lock my screen so nobody can come in and touch anything while I'm away.

Spencer and I head down to the restaurant, where we put in an order, and we drink wine while we wait. Once the food is ready, we take it out back to the firepits. And as I take the first bite of my favorite flatbread, I feel a wonderful sense of the future.

And then another thought hits me.

What if Nana can't decide, so she chooses to split the responsibilities in half, sort of like she did with my dad and Uncle Jimmy?

I can't be stuck here running this place with Amelia. I can't work that closely with her.

But now that the very real threat has crossed my mind, I need to figure out the best way to show Nana that I'm the most deserving of this place.

The alternative is far too heartbreaking.