“Boys always punch girls in the arm when they like them.”
“You’ve been watching Brady Bunch repeats again, haven’t you?” Abby accused, and both of them collapsed in laughter for a moment, before Abby sighed, sobering again.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to come up with some other plan.”
“Maybe it’s for the best,” Hannah suggested. “I know the developments suck, but you haven’t had a vacation in almost two years, and have you even been out on a date in that time?”
“One,” Abby challenged.
Though that hadn’t been so much of a date as a disaster.
“All you do is work. Your parents never meant for you to have no life when they turned the place over. Maybe if you sold it, you could—”
Abby looked at her in horror. “How can you even say that? My parents risked everything, worked their entire lives to make this business a success, and at a time when organic farming had hardly been heard of, let alone been popular. How can I just sell out on them?”
Hannah shrugged. “It’s worth thinking about, from a practical perspective, hon. Things change. Sometimes you have to change with them.”
Abby knew she had been working too hard, almost constantly since Sarah retired, and Hannah was right on one score—as her parents’ only child, they were delighted to give her the business, but they were also huge believers in balance. They would be the first ones to tell her to ease up—yet they would also never sell to somebody like Keller, Abby knew that in her heart of hearts.
There had to be some way she could talk to Reece, find an alternative or get him to change his mind. Short of sleeping with him, not that the idea didn’t have some appeal. He was gorgeous, undeniably.
“I guess I could at least talk to him,” she said lamely, watching Reece deep in conversation with his business associate over big sandwiches. Thinking about those strong hands on her rib cage and the hot kisses they had shared, she wondered if Hannah wasn’t on to something.
Maybe her friend was right. Why not? They were old friends—sort of—but they were both grown up now. She hadn’t had so much as a kiss good-night in months. She knew for a fact that kissing Reece wouldn’t be any sacrifice at all, and if it would get him to listen to her.
All of her appetites kicked back in, and with a dash of hope she dug back into her salad.
Hannah’s lips twitched and she had a self-satisfied look. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”
Abby couldn’t resist a smile. “Hey, you’re the one who wants me to go out on a date. Besides, it’s not like I would let it go too far,” she said, echoing Reece’s words from so long ago. “I wouldn’t trade sex for him selling the place to me or anything tawdry like that, but as you said, maybe just some flirting, spending time together, might help him see my side of things a little better.”
“Exactly. Just be careful. Remember from eleventh-grade chemistry what happens when you put two volatile substances together,” Hannah warned, but her eyes were twinkling with mischief.
“Maybe,” Abby said, but her mind was racing ahead, intrigued by the idea of flirting with Reece. “But what a way to go.”
REECE WAS HAVING a hard time focusing, and it had nothing to do with the injuries he’d sustained nine months before and everything to do with the unbelievably sexy woman sitting across the room. He could hardly believe that was Abby Harper.
Seeing her had been the first pleasant surprise he’d had since coming back to help with his family’s affairs. Life had been one long string of disasters for the past year. First, two members of his racing team had to be replaced at the start of the season, after which they’d lost a major sponsor, and then he’d had his accident at the end of March, right when he’d been about to turn a major corner in his career.
Everyone told him he was lucky to be alive and in one piece, walking and talking again, and he supposed that was true. He’d been in a coma for three days, followed by six months of language and physical therapy after he had emerged from the coma, his head injury leaving him with a broken memory and speech problems. He’d overcome it all. Mostly.
Some of the guys he’d known hadn’t made it through crashes that left them with lesser injuries, but there were a lot of days when Reece didn’t feel all that lucky, especially since they told him there would be no more racing, not until a neurologist cleared him. Then his dad had a major heart attack. It had been one thing after another, and Reece found his time split between his recovery and wanting to get back to racing and having to help out his family. They’d been there for him, and there was no way he’d leave them in the lurch now, but it sure didn’t make things easier. His life was an ocean away.
For months his mom and dad had been traveling back and forth to Europe, where Reece lived just outside of Paris. It was too much strain for them to try to run the winery and travel so often, and his father’s illness was proof of that. He felt responsible, and although they’d bent over backward to tell him it wasn’t his fault, guilt demanded he stay here and help in any way he could.
He’d been here, in central New York State, for a few weeks, though he had spent most of the time at the hospital, in hotels and then getting his parents to his brother’s home down South. He couldn’t help the feeling that his real life was passing him by. He could only be absent from racing for so long. There were always new guys coming up, ready to take his place, and sponsors had short memories. Few drivers came back after a crash like his; hell, few survived.
But Reece wasn’t ready to retire yet. He just had to sell the winery, to do the best he could by his parents and get back to France ASAP. At thirty-one, he didn’t have too many years left to get back into the game.
Though some guys raced into their forties, it was getting to be less and less the case, so he needed to still show he could do the job. The doctors were apprehensive, but he planned to prove them wrong. He’d come this far, he was going the rest of the way.
He thought again of Abby’s shocked face when he’d said he was going to sell the winery. His parents weren’t thrilled, either, but they’d long ago accepted that both of their boys had other lives now. Still, Reece was bothered by the clear disapproval in Abby’s gorgeous brown eyes when he’d made the announcement.
“So, I can bring the Keller representative by tomorrow, if you like,” Charles said.
Charles Tyler was one of the premiere real estate agents in the area, and he was also a shark—if anyone could sell the place for the best price, it would be him.
“They’d be a last resort. I thought I made that clear.”
Charles sighed, smiling slightly at the pretty server who delivered their lunch. “Well, if you want it sold for the asking price and fast, they are the best bet. They’ll jump at a property as large as yours.”
Reece frowned. They’d also tear down the renovated farmhouse he grew up in, and they’d flatten the vineyards, rows of Riesling, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes, paving them over with cul-de-sacs and driveways. He’d been away, but he kept in touch, and he’d seen the changes along the lake since he’d come back, few of them good.
“Some of those vines have been around longer
