Wild Abandon (5 page)

“Naomi? That curly-haired gal who does the fancy designs?”

I simply nod.

“Ah, that girl doesn’t know how to mind her business.” He limps over to the bar and walks through the opening flap that is up, allowing him to get behind the bar.

Resting his cane against the wall, he leans over the dishwasher and pulls out two glasses. They’re not wine glasses. Instead, he’s taken out two small juice glasses, and he places them on the bar.

He grabs a bottle of wine and starts to open it when he looks over at me. “Well, don’t just stand there like a tepid goat.” He pours the wine into the glasses.

I put my shoulders back and walk up to the bar. I rest my hands on the matted black vinyl that lines the edges like a cushion. The bar is only about seven feet long, so there isn’t anywhere to stand that isn’t rather close to him.

“Drink this.”

I take the offered glass, take a sip, and place it on the bar.

The old man is looking at me with a grimace.

“Jesus Christ, how do you expect to work at a winery if that’s how you drink your wine?” He takes the glass from the bar and throws it into the sink behind him.

He walks back over to the dishwasher and takes out two wine glasses, one smaller than the other. Holding them up, he says, “This is for red,” motioning to the larger one in his right hand. “And this is for white. Never let anyone serve you wine in anything other than one of these.”

I nod and watch as he pours red wine into the larger glass. I don’t have the heart to tell him that, while in college, I used to drink box wine out of a mug. I don’t think he’d appreciate that anecdote.

Taking another sip, I am mildly uncomfortable since his beady eyes are condescendingly looking at me. I am definitely doing something wrong again.

“What is it this time?” My hand places the glass on the bar a little too dramatically.

He pours more wine into my glass and then pours some into another red wine glass for himself. With his fingers pinching the bottom of the stem, he holds the glass up, tilting it away from himself on an angle, and he starts swirling the wine in the glass. “Before you take a sip, you have to look at it first.”

I tip my head to the side. “I would, if you turned on a light.” My voice is a little snarkier than it should be.

He narrows his eyes at me before walking over to an adjacent wall and flipping a switch. The lights above the bar area illuminate, and I see just how unkempt the space is. The bar is full of scratches, and the vinyl liner is peeling back. The linoleum floor is mismatched, and quite a few of the tiles are missing. The entire area behind the bar is a mess of empty bottles, knocked over knickknacks, and a clock that’s blinking from never being reset.

Also, in this light, I can see Ed’s face properly. He is about sixty years old, and the lines of his face are hidden behind coarse facial hair. His skin is dark, like someone who works outdoors all day would be, and his hands are callous. While he might have been letting this building go to waste, he certainly has been keeping himself busy outside.

Ed rests his glass on the bar, and with his palm flat on the base, he places his middle and ring finger on each side of the stem and swirls the bottom in circles. The wine swoops and twirls inside the glass. I try to mimic the movement. At first, I do it too fast, and the wine looks like it’s trying to escape, so I slow down.

He holds his glass up again toward the light and then gives it another tilt, allowing the wine to roll around. I pick up my glass and do the same.

“See how the wine is dark in the center and light on the outside? If the color is watery at the edge, then it’s insipid. If it’s dark and red, then it’s been oxidized and past its prime.”

I look at my wine glass and the pink that lines my wine. It looks pale to me. “Well, if that’s the case, this wine will lack flavor,” I state.

Ed lifts his chin in a way to suggest I try the wine.

I do and shrug my shoulder. It’s not terrible wine. It’s just as okay as my box wine.

I place the glass on the bar and ask, “How much is a bottle of this?”

He lowers his chin and looks at me with a furrowed brow. “Sixty-five dollars.”

Sixty-five?
“I wouldn’t pay more than eight bucks for that at the liquor store.” My hand immediately flies to my mouth.

Ed stares at me for what feels like ten years. My outburst clearly cost me the job, and now, he’s deciding how to kick my ass out on the dirt road it came in on. I suck on my bottom lip and wait for him to say something.

Like the crack of a whip, Ed leans his head back and laughs. It’s a heavy, deep laugh that’s so loud that I startle when I first hear it.

He takes the bottle he poured from and throws it in the trash. The act makes me flinch.

Taking his cane, he starts to walk back around the bar. As he passes me, he points a finger. “You’re hired. Follow me.”

I stand with my feet firmly planted on the ground and watch as he walks out a back door.

Before it closes, he says, “I haven’t got all day.”

Okay then.

I follow him out, and just as I’m about to ask him one of a hundred questions I have going through my brain, I stop and let out a small gasp at the view.

Napa is known for it’s striking landscapes, but here, in the backyard of a decrepit barn in the middle of the valley, is a sight so incredible that I can’t believe some developer hasn’t come here to snatch this little piece of heaven away.

Through the back door, I am now standing on a stone veranda as wide as the barn and big enough to host fifty people. Above me is a weathered pergola with wood splintering at the ends. Stone benches line the end, also acting as a fence of sorts. Just behind it is a cascading hill of vineyards that make a straight shot through two mountains where it looks like the ends of the earth are just beyond it.

As serene as that is, perhaps the most enchanting part of the view is the foreground. A sea of gorgeous burgundy roses lying across a field, like a blanket of love. There has to be hundreds of rose bushes back here, all on ample property where grapes could grow. Instead of making a cash crop, someone chose to nurture petals of beauty instead.

A harrumph sound coming from the back of Ed’s throat stirs me from my bewilderment, and I am brought back to reality. I turn and look back at the overweight man with the incredibly long beard, who just hired me for a job I’m not entirely sure I want.

“Naomi mentioned you needed someone to play music during wine tastings.”

Ed waves off my comment and takes a seat on one of the stone benches. “That girl is insistent. What do you play?”

“The cello.”

“You any good?”

“Good enough,” I counter. Then, I look back out at the gorgeous red roses. “How long have you owned this place?” I ask. Then, I realize I never actually asked him who he is. “You are Ed Martin, right?”

This causes Ed to laugh just a touch, and then he goes back to his grimace. “Yes. Everyone calls me Big Ed.” He puts a hand on his round stomach and gives it a pat. “And that was before I had this.”

The comment is self-deprecating yet endearing in a way that makes me smile.

Big Ed looks around the place and continues, “I’ve owned Russet Ranch for seventeen years, worked here for eighteen before that. You think it looks bad now? You should have seen it when I first came here. Old Man Russet nearly had this place collapsing before I came along. Used to have alpacas roaming free. Those bastards ate through everything.” He looks at the back of the building with a fondness in his eyes. “Together, we brought this place to life. Made some great wines, and swung a decent profit.”

I sway from one foot to the other, wondering how a place that was once brought to life is now in shambles and in need of a change. I feel awkward about asking such questions, so I settle on what I do need to know. “What is your plan? Do you want to revitalize the place again?”

Big Ed places his free hand on top of his other, which is resting on his cane. With his two hands perched in front of him, he looks out at the roses. “What do you know about wine?”

“Not much.”

“You’re not from here?”

“No, sir.”

He looks back at me. “You got red hair.”

I look down at my braid and raise a shoulder in acknowledgment. My hair is a deep auburn. For a long time, I used to say my hair was brown, but when in the light, shades of red would show through.

“You say what’s on your mind,” he says, referring to my comment earlier about the bad wine.

Again, I just shrug my shoulder. “You haven’t answered my questions.”

Big Ed rises from his spot. “And you ask too many. Be here on Monday morning at nine.”

He starts to walk away, toward a garage that I didn’t see when I pulled up but can now see is far off from the property.

“But you haven’t even told me what I’ll be doing,” I call out to him.

With his back to me as he walks away, he raises a hand and yells back, “Don’t be late!”

My mouth opens, then closes, and then opens again.

Look like I have a job.

“You have a job!” Naomi is throwing her hands in the air and doing fist-pumps at the dining room table.

“Did you not listen to a word I just said?” I start ticking off the many reasons I should not be working at Russet Ranch. “The place is falling apart, the wine tastes like crap, and the man wants me to play the cello, yet there isn’t a person in hell who would pay to go there for a tasting. And,” I exclaim, “we didn’t even talk about pay or hours or anything!”

Naomi closes her laptop and looks up at me with a beaming smile. “I think it all sounds wonderful!”

I turn to the only other rational adult in the room. “Scarlet?”

Scarlet closes the book she’s been reading, leaving it on the sofa. Her long brown ringlets bounce as she walks toward me. She puts her hand around my wrist in a move that I think is supposed to be comforting. She looks up at me and says, “
What screws us up the most in life is the picture in our head of what it’s supposed to be
.”

I fall to the seat beside me and place my head in my free hand, wondering how I can be schooled by an eight-year-old quoting—

“Socrates,” she says. Then, she walks back to the couch, plops down, and reopens her book.

My fingers follow the silky path of my braid, feeling the bumps in the pattern and coming to the end below the tiny elastic holding it together. I pinch the tip of my hair and hold it the same way I did with the wine glass during my lesson.

So far, my two days in Napa are not at all what I pictured them to be.

And, yes, it is screwing me up.

Naomi folds her hands over the top of her laptop and leans forward. “Come on, what are you so worried about? Jeremy and I aren’t expecting you to pay rent, and this whole experience is supposed to be about trying something new. It can’t all be perfect.”

My head shoots up. “I never said it had to be perfect.”

Naomi lowers her shoulders and cocks her head to the side. “Crystal, you want
everything
to be perfect. That’s the way you are. It’s not an insult. It’s one of your best traits. All I’m saying is, try amending a little. You might surprise yourself.”

I suck on my bottom lip and think about what she’s saying. I don’t need everything to be perfect per se. I just want my life to go a certain way, is all. That’s not so bad. Is it?

The telltale sound of a phone vibrating causes Naomi to do the hand scramble people do when they think they’re getting a call. From the face she makes, I know it’s not for her. I do a scurry down the hall to my room and see my phone on the wood of Naomi’s desk. The face of a brown-eyed blonde who became a fixture in my life last year flashes on the screen.

“Emma!” My surprise at her call is apparent.

I haven’t heard from her since she went on her honeymoon, gallivanting around Europe for a month. Emma, a girl who hadn’t been looking for love, had had it practically fall in her lap. She’d met a man on vacation, and within months, he had a ring on her finger.

I go on at least one bad date a week and still can’t meet Mr. Worthy of a Second Cup of Coffee.

“Will you please explain to me why I went to your apartment, bearing lattes and souvenirs, and was greeted by a large Russian man wearing nothing but boxers and a garter?”

My knees bend, and my hand flies to my mouth as I gasp at the story. “You’re kidding me. Wait, how did the apartment look? He wasn’t doing anything
weird
in there, was he?”

I subleased my apartment with all my furniture to an actor in town for an Off-Broadway play. I’d hate to think I’d have to burn my mattress when I returned.

“Um, I don’t know. I was surprised when he said you’d moved, and he was renting your apartment for the next six months. Crystal! You have some explaining to do!”

I move the phone away from my ear as her voice pierces my eardrum. She sounds more like her crazy sister, Leah, than the mild-mannered girl I’ve befriended.

“I moved to Napa. Surprise,” I joke.

You see, here’s the thing about Emma. When I met her, she had moved to New York for a change of scenery. After suffering the loss of her brother and an injury that had taken away her dreams, she couldn’t stay in her hometown in Ohio anymore. She was also running away from a devastating heartache caused by a man.