he preferred to work there.
The tasting room had elevated the Crenshaw Vineyard into the upper echelon of vineyards in Michigan and northern Indiana. Many of the surrounding vineyards outsourced the retail side of their business, selling bottles and cases to tasting rooms in Saugatuck, Douglas, Buchanan, St. Joseph and other coastal resort towns. The problem, Liz knew, was each vintner could never be sure what the “sommelier” behind the counter was trying to sell that day. The person pouring the wine was just as likely to be a college student who would be happy at any summer job. Liz wanted each of her employees to be at least as much of a wine snob as she was.
Liz was the first to admit she was the ultimate control freak. It was a real handicap in life, but she had long ago accepted this fact about herself. She toiled workaholic hours because she believed she knew best how each and every task should be completed. In her mind, only she could do the accounting properly. Only she knew when her pinot noir and burgundy wines had reached their peak age. Only she knew which French chardonnay grapes from which terroir should be used for their champagne. Most important for Liz, only she knew how to talk to the vines and encourage them into abundance.
Last year, when Liz hired her best friend, Sarah Jensen, and Sarah’s boss, Charmaine Chalmers, to design the tasting room and sales office and oversee the construction, she’d nearly driven them both to nervous breakdowns over her many last-minute changes. It was a miracle the building was ever finished. To make up for her idiosyncrasies, Liz had given both women two cases of her best wines.
Liz stopped her ATV close to the top of the rise when she noticed several yellowing leaves. She pulled on a pair of lime-green gardening gloves and whisked a spade out of the back of her trailer. She spread her compost around the base of the vines and tilled it in with a hoe.
She took a long slug from her water bottle and glanced at the sky. The sun had moved its apex, and Liz knew she had missed lunch with her grandfather at the farmhouse—again. He hadn’t called to remind her or to scold her. Grandpa understood her.
Liz stuck her gloves in a satchel next to the gun boot on the side of the ATV. When she was out in the fields, she toted a loaded shotgun to scare away the coyotes, deer and wild hogs that destroyed the vines. Through the winter she’d frightened off most of the harmful animals, and this spring she’d only seen one coyote. Still, she had to be prepared.
Shielding her eyes against the sun, Liz surveyed her glorious domain. From the rise, she could see across their twenty acres of planted vines and one hundred acres of unplanted, rugged terrain. Looking back to the south, Liz kept her eyes peeled for marauding animals and any sections of vine that might need fertilizer.
“What the...” Liz gasped as her gaze landed on the next rise, where her prized French chardonnay grapes were growing. “I don’t believe this.”
She hopped onto her ATV and switched on the ignition.
When she was still fifty or so yards from the top of the next rise, she cut the motor and let the vehicle roll silently across the valley. The ATV came to a stop and Liz dismounted it. She grabbed her shotgun from the boot and moved forward stealthily.
The movement Liz had seen from a distance was not, as she’d initially assumed, that of a deer or coyote. It was that of a man. He was too tall to be Aurelio, their hired hand.
There was the odd chance that it was Giovanni Fiorinni, an agronomist who split his time between Crenshaw Vineyards and several other wineries up in Michigan—but Giovanni had visited five or six days before. She didn’t expect him back for weeks. Perhaps the man was a weekend tourist who had wandered over here by accident.
Liz quickly dismissed that idea. This area was fenced, gated and locked.
She had brought the chardonnay vines from France herself. It was in this precious section of the vineyard that she had placed her dreams of producing champagne—real champagne. The first in the Midwest.
No, there would be no cause for anyone other than her and her grandfather to be on this part of the property.
This man was trespassing.
He was well over six feet tall. His nearly black hair had been precision cut and styled, which told her he probably didn’t employ a local barber at six bucks a pop. He wore clean and fitted jeans, expensive-looking black leather cowboy boots and a blue-and-white-striped Oxford shirt.
Was this guy a farmer?
The man dropped into a crouch. It was clear he hadn’t heard her approach. Liz couldn’t tell what he was doing, but he seemed intent on his work as he scooped up a handful of earth. Still moving forward, Liz noticed he was wearing plastic gloves. Next to his foot was a box filled with some sort of equipment.
This man had a purpose.
He had his back to her as he held a wide-mouthed glass tube of dirt—her dirt—up to the sun.
Liz lifted her gun, aimed it at him and stood her distance in case he made any quick moves.
“Put it down and turn around,” she ordered harshly.
The man raised his arms and slowly turned to face her.
Liz gasped. “Gabe Barzonni! What are you doing here? You’re trespassing.”
Gabe guiltily looked at the soil in the test tube, then flashed Liz a charming smile.
She frowned and continued to glare at him down the barrel of her shotgun.
Gabe chuckled. “Hi, Liz.”
She remained silent as she slowly lowered her gun. “Spill. What are you doing?”
“Actually, I came here to check out your tasting room. Very nice. I like the maple wood floors, by the way. Then your sommelier there—”
“Louisa,” Liz interjected.
“She’s very helpful. Said she’s from the Champagne region...” Gabe smiled winningly.
“I know where she’s from,” Liz growled. “And you’re beating around the bush. Why are you stealing my soil?”
“I wasn’t stealing, exactly.” He started to smile again, but catching Liz’s suspicious glare, he obviously thought better of it. “I was very impressed with the wines I tasted. Very impressed. I followed some other tourists out to the vineyard. Louisa told us we were free to walk around.”
“Sure you are. Among the cabernet grapes. Not over here.”
“I didn’t know,” he said. “Liz, can you please put the shotgun away? It makes me nervous.”
“Good,” she said, though she put the butt end on the ground and held the gun, by the barrel, at her side. “I like you being nervous. Maybe you’ll start telling me the truth.”
“I am telling you the truth.”
“Fine. Then dump the dirt.”
Gabe lowered his hands slowly and looked at the tube as if it held gold dust. “I wanted to test it is all. It’s a hobby of mine.”
“Yeah? Since when?”
“Liz, you know me. We went to high school together.”
