Bitter Truth (Hawthorne Vines #1)

Especially now that we’re … doing whatever this is.

I can’t sit on this bench next to her, at this late hour, if I think she’s wondering about it, too.

So the best thing I can do is shut it down. With a quickness.

“No, Murphy. I don’t.”

My voice is firm, and when I glance over, I see the blush in her cheeks has grown.

It cost her something to ask me that question, and my response only proved to her that it wasn’t worth the price.

“And you shouldn’t, either,” I add, hoping to drive the point home. “We’re going to be working together, so there’s no use in wondering.”

Murphy nods, but she doesn’t look at me again. And it isn’t much longer before she finishes off her glass of wine, sets it gently in my bag, and tells me to have a good night.

Something inside of me says it was a mistake to cut her down like that.

But I don’t allow that little voice any ground.

Instead, I shove it down inside with the memories of the last time I let things at work become something they shouldn’t have.

And then the little voice is silent.

Even though it’s late, I return to the kitchen after my conversation with Murphy. I pull out the half-drunk bottle of merlot and pour a small glass for myself. One sniff sends my mind back to the bench with Murphy. Then, slowly, as the tannins of the warm red slide across my tongue, another memory emerges of a holiday years ago.

Back in my early twenties, when I first started working for Chef Hines, he invited me to spend Thanksgiving with him and his family. My own experiences with holiday meals had been frozen dinners in front of the TV, or sometimes even plates of food from the homeless shelter if my mom was nowhere to be found.

That Thanksgiving spent at the Hines family table, with Bernard’s husband and children, along with grandparents and cousins, all gathered around a massive, beautifully decorated table enjoying some of the most delicious food I’d ever tasted … It was life changing for me.

I’m sure plenty of people wouldn’t understand how a single family meal—one that wasn’t even with my own family—could be life changing. But it was the first time I felt that kind of warmth that comes along with holidays.

I’d seen it on TV, on old sitcoms that felt unrealistic and completely out of touch. Families sitting around together, sharing a meal at a large table, the mom cooking the turkey and the dad sitting at the head of the table with the carving knife. But I never truly believed that people did things like that.

So that Thanksgiving changed my concept of what I wanted my future to look like. From that moment on, I knew I wanted that warmth and familiarity. The easy conversation. The kindness and togetherness.

Being here at the vineyard gives me hints of that feeling, when Sarah is laying out dinner for all of us, or those fleeting moments when Memphis and his dad let their guards down. But Murphy … Sitting with her on that bench, enjoying the ease and flow of our conversation, I felt a warmth in my soul that mirrored how I felt that day at the Hines family table.

On just the few occasions Murphy and I have spent time together, I’ve seen more of her layers peeled back—the softness she hides under her family’s dysfunction, and the fiery passion that seems to simmer below the surface, too. Which makes me want to know even more. And that quickly, the future I envisioned here at the vineyard has started to shift.

Because of her.

Thoughts of Murphy and Hines swirl around in my mind, along with an even more unexpected desire to bring her and her brothers around the table in a way that might start to heal some of the animosity between them.

I start to take notes about the dinners that made me feel that sense of home unlike I’d ever experienced before. The green beans, the turkey, the mashed potatoes. The cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie and dressing. Eventually, a dish begins to take shape. Turkey legs in a cranberry merlot sauce, maybe with butternut squash and garlic roasted green beans as a side. All of which would pair excellently with the vineyard’s merlot. The woodsy nose and plum fruit taste, the modest tannins, would be a perfect contrast to the savory dish.

I jot down several notes, carefully listing out all the ingredients before hopping on the computer in the office to shoot off an updated list for Memphis.

I’m relieved to have figured out another dish, but even more elated that it’s something truly inspired. I haven’t ever created food inspired by a person before, and I’m shocked at the way it feels. As if I’m taking the best things I know and infusing them into my work.

It’s an incredible feeling.

I work well past midnight, pulling out other bottles of wine that I’ve yet to pair, hoping that this sudden stroke of inspiration is something I can repeat over and over again.

Chapter Nine

MURPHY

My phone is next to me, face down on the carpet. It’s been buzzing for a while, a group text from my friends in LA trying to make a girls’ trip out of visiting the vineyard. Ever since I showed off the property to Vivian, she’s been incessant about it, but I can’t muster up the energy to respond.