Chapter 48 Grace Nash

Sometimes Good Girls Do Bad Things

Two and a Half Months After the Wedding

I'm feeling much better after last night's fiasco, though Spencer leaves this afternoon and I've been in bed all morning.

Lucky for me, he caters to my every need.

He makes me chicken noodle soup—mustard-free, guaranteed. He calls my doctor to let her know what happened, refills my EpiPen prescription, and runs into town to pick it up along with some groceries and goodies—including ice cream. He makes sure my dad sits with me when he has to leave, so I'm never home alone.

He's sweet and attentive, and he lays with me in bed while we watch comedies and laugh together.

But I feel the divide encroaching on us. I feel it coming.

Once he heads back tonight, I'm not sure when I'll see him again. Training camp will start, and since he's with a new team, that means an intense, rigorous month where he proves his place on the team. And once that ends, the regular season begins. He'll have Tuesdays off, but that's it—and he's not going to want to fly to Minnesota for twenty-four hours only to turn around and rinse, repeat another week of practice and another game.

I could go see him, and I definitely want to watch him play from his private suite, but weekends are our busiest time here. I'm going to try to get to as many games as I can, but it's hard to fight for my place at the vineyard when I'm not here to do it.

I'm scared of what the season will look like for us, but it's a large part of what I got into when I asked him to marry me.

I still can't believe he did.

"I don't want to leave," he admits.

"Then don't." I shrug.

He chuckles as he stops what he's doing to come over and press a soft kiss to my mouth. "I have to. I have an event tonight in San Diego with Clay."

I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him down for a few beats, and I kiss him again. "I'll miss you."

"I'll miss you, too."

I begrudgingly say my goodbyes, and I try not to be dramatic. I hold in my tears so he doesn't have to see them since he needs to leave.

But once his car pulls away, I let myself have a little breakdown.

And then I shower, pull myself together, and head toward my office to get some work done.

Two weeks later, I've done my best to avoid Amelia. Spencer and I text as much as we can, and we make sure to talk at least once a day. His first week of training camp for rookies and new players just ended, and it was intense as he had workouts and meetings and time to study the playbook.

The rest of the team will be joining the rookies on Monday, and he's looking forward to practicing with the other wide receivers. So far, he seems to like the coaching staff and his new place on the team, but I can hear the fatigue in his voice each night when we're able to touch base.

Next weekend is the Sips and Swirls event, and I've been trying to find the right time to execute my revenge plan. I think of something that would be an annoying nuisance but would only affect her .

She keeps complaining that it's time to get a new phone. What if I steal the SIM card out of her phone so she's without communication? Most phones are eSIM now, but her model still came with a physical SIM card—something I discovered when my own card was having issues, and I had to go to the store so they could activate eSIM for me. She probably doesn't even know her phone has one since I didn't.

I've been carefully watching Amelia's schedule, and she heads to the bathroom at almost ten in the morning every day. The problem is that she usually takes her phone, though every once in a while, she leaves it on her desk. She also heads to the restaurant at twelve fifteen each day to grab lunch—and again, she usually brings her phone. But she's usually gone at least thirty minutes when she gets lunch, probably because she stops by the tasting room to put in an appearance with Nana and fake her way through knowledge about this place when she doesn't really know a thing.

I check every day leading up to the event, and so far, she's been meticulous about bringing it with her.

I think about giving up, but then I see additional appointments moved around on my calendar. The reason I know is that I started keeping a backup on my phone, and that's the one I rely on now. I'm certain it's Amelia at work, but once again, she works in an underhanded enough way that she knows how not to get caught.

It happens the day before the Sips and Swirls event. She takes her phone with her to the bathroom, but when she leaves to go to lunch, I see the back pocket she usually slips her phone into is empty.

I log into the software with the cameras so I don't get caught, disable the ones in this building, and rush into her office with a paperclip. I pull off her case, push the paperclip into the tiny hole to eject the tiny SIM card, and voila. It pops open. I grab the card, push the tray back into place, put the case back on, and rush back to my office. I reactivate the cameras, drop the SIM card into my desk drawer, and get back to work.

Or…I try to get back to work. My heart is pounding, and guilt washes over me .

The whole thing took less than sixty seconds.

I remind myself that she poisoned me. She has this act of revenge coming.

I still feel guilty. I hate that my responsibility is pulsing at me. I hate that I can't execute a silly prank without feeling bad about it. This isn't putting someone's life in jeopardy, and she sure as hell didn't feel guilty about that.

The entire thirty-two minutes she's gone today, I wait anxiously for her to return. I think about putting it back. I think about what Spencer will say when I tell him what I did. I think about what my parents would think about me sneaking into her office to do this. I think about what Nana would think about it.

The thought strikes me that I shouldn't mess with karma. I should let it do its thing. She'll get hers in the end. I shouldn't stoop to her level.

I grab the card out of my desk drawer, and I push to a stand to return it. This whole thing is dumb. It's a stupid plan that isn't going to teach her a damn thing anyway.

And just as I take the first step to exit my office, I hear her footsteps approaching.

I back up and plop back into my chair. I drop the SIM card back into my desk drawer and wait for the fireworks.

They come three seconds after she sits at her desk. "What the fuck?" she mutters loudly enough for me to hear from my own office. And then a loud, frustrated, "Ugh!"

She taps loudly at her keyboard as she likely looks up why is my phone in SOS mode , and then she grunts out more frustrated noises as she whines, "Why today of all days?"

She won't dare ask for my help, but I know she'll need it. She can't leave the vineyard right now since she has the crew setting up for tomorrow's event, which is taking place in our west parking lot. And by the time they're done, she'll still have to make the hourlong trip to Minneapolis where the phone store is located, and they'll likely be closed by that point.

The guilt is still there, but this silly little act of revenge actually sort of feels good. It's giving me a bit of a high that I can be a bad girl, too .

She appears in my office doorway. "Something's wrong with my phone."

I choose the path of not arguing with her and get to the point. "What do you want from me?"

"Ugh! Never mind." She bolts from my office doorway.

I give it some time. I finish the email I'm sending before I head down to the tasting room, staying in line with my normal routine. Delilah is in there, but Nana is missing.

"Where's Nana?" I ask her when she has a break for a moment.

"She's out with the crew for Amelia's event tomorrow."

I hate for Nana to have extra work, of course—but I don't so much hate that it's to save Amelia's ass, and now I get the opportunity to swoop in and look like the hero.

Sort of like she did at my event.

I head outside and see Nana talking to Eli, one of our maintenance workers, and I walk up to the two of them. "What can I do to help?"

Nana looks gratefully over at me. "Do you have this covered? I need to go sit a while."

"Of course," I say with a nod. I squeeze her around her shoulders. "Go sit."

"You're a lifesaver," she says, and she heads back into the tasting room. She's a firecracker, but she's not a spring chicken anymore in her mid-eighties.

Guilt racks me as she ambles away. Maybe I'm more of a good girl than I ever realized because I'm not cut out for being a bad girl.