She grabbed two big boxes from the back of the closet and brought them into her office to look through. She kept getting sidetracked from her search as she flipped through all of these papers—handwritten notes from Uncle Stan from the early years of the winery, ancient bills for a fraction of what everything cost now, old newspaper clippings about Noble Family Vineyards. She should pull all of this stuff out, get some of it framed to hang on their walls.
Finally, right along the bottom of the second box, she found it. There was his sketch of the winery building, the barn, the vineyards in the distance. Oh wow, he’d wanted paths around the lawn and to and from the winery building just like she did, and he even had a little garden there, next to the winery building, with chairs and tables, like she’d told Elliot she wanted. They’d had a makeshift outdoor seating area in that space for the past year, but she wanted to improve the seating, make it feel like a real part of the winery. Maybe Uncle Stan had wanted it to look like she did.
She could picture the winery like this, see it in her head, just from seeing these plans. The back lawn, green and well taken care of, brand-new paths around it leading to the barn, to the winery building, to the parking lot, to the garden. Flowers everywhere, chairs and benches around, with the vineyard in the distance.
“Why are you all covered in dust?”
She blinked away her daydream and looked up to see Elliot in her doorway.
“I found them!” She beckoned to him. “Those old landscaping plans of Uncle Stan’s.”
She wasn’t sure if Elliot would care about this, but he came right over to her desk.
“Oh wow, you actually found them. I was sure they were lost.”
They stood there and looked down at them together for a few moments.
“He wanted a garden back there, just like you do,” Elliot said finally.
She’d thought he hadn’t been paying attention when she’d told him.
“Yeah,” she said. “He did.”
They smiled at each other for a second. Her eyes were suddenly full of tears. She blinked them back so they wouldn’t drop down onto the plans.
Elliot turned away and walked to the door.
“Granted, we can’t get the garden done by your party, of course. And we can only get the other stuff done if we can find a good landscaper in time.”
Of course he had to say “your party” like that.
“I know,” she said. There was no point in saying more. She didn’t want to fight about it now. “We should get over to the barn, it’s almost time for the staff dinner.”
A staff dinner every six months, where the staff could learn about and taste all of the wines, had been Margot’s brainchild the year before, and it had been one of the few of her new ideas for the winery that Elliot had embraced. But then, if there was one thing Elliot cared about, it was their wine, and he wanted anyone who spoke for the winery to know the wines well.
Elliot sighed. “Oh, is that tonight?”
At least, she’d thought Elliot had embraced it. Apparently not. Why did it still hurt so much, when he did things like this?
“Yeah, it’s tonight,” she said. “The food got here a few minutes ago, Taylor brought it over to the barn.”
Elliot just nodded. “Okay. Meet you over there.”
Margot watched as Elliot walked out of her office. Sometimes, when she let herself, she missed how it used to be with Elliot. Before Uncle Stan died, before they were business partners, when they were just brother and sister. When they’d been able to kid each other and laugh at each other and relax with each other without his resentment and her hurt and their reluctant partnership that overshadowed everything. She sighed, and went to the bathroom to dust herself off.
By the time she got over to the barn, Elliot was all smiles with the staff. Well, as “all smiles” as he ever got, anyway. When she’d come up with this idea, sure, partly it had been because she wanted to make sure that the new employees really knew their wine, but it was more than that. She wanted them to feel like they were part of this place, that she and Elliot valued them, and for them to understand what Noble Family Vineyards was all about. And now that they’d added Luke and Marisol, she wanted them to care about this place the way the rest of their staff did.
Well. Luke might feel slightly different than the rest of the staff.
Margot shook her head at herself, pulled out her phone, and snapped a few photos for their social media.
“Hey, boss,” Taylor said. “Have you decided when the anniversary party is going to be?”
Taylor, at least, was excited about the party.
“I was going to make an announcement about this later: it’s the last weekend of June, so save the date. I know that’s soon, and I have a ton of planning to do for it, but I think it’ll be great.” Could she really pull this off in two months? God, she hoped so. “I’ve reached out to some people I know who’ve done a lot of these, and I have some breakfast and coffee meetings this week to ask them a bunch of questions.” Luke and Finn walked over just then and joined them. “I’m hoping we can get some work done on the lawn and the rest of the property before the party. If you know any good landscapers, let me know.”
“Actually,” Luke said. “I might know someone.”
Margot glanced at him. For the past few days, she’d tried to avoid doing that for longer than a few seconds. It had been less awkward between them, yes, but still, if she looked at Luke for too long, her mind went to places it shouldn’t go when she was at work. And looking at her employee.
Places like the way his fingers had felt on her skin; the way he’d looked at her after he’d kissed her in his apartment for the first time, so full of heat; the way he’d laughed with her and then rolled on top of her; the way he’d . . . She snapped herself back to the present.
“Really?” she asked. “You know a landscaper? Here?”
He nodded.
“My mom’s partner. Pete Smythe. Give him a call—tell him I sent you.”
“Will do,” she said. “Thanks, Luke.”
Taylor took a sip of wine and turned to Luke.
“So you’ve never said what made you leave one of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley—if not the world—and move to Napa to work in a tasting room,” she said to him.
Margot wanted to know the answer to this question, too. She knew that he used to work in tech, obviously, from the hoodie he’d been wearing that night at the bar, but because she’d so stupidly closed off all conversation about work, she had no idea why he’d left. She knew he’d grown up here in Napa, but that was about all. At the bar he hadn’t talked in much detail about why he’d come back here—he hadn’t seemed to want to, and it wasn’t like she was going to press a stranger at a bar to talk about something they didn’t want to talk about. But now, she was so curious about him. She wondered if he would blow off Taylor’s question; she wouldn’t blame him if he did.
But he took a sip of wine and considered it.
“Mostly I was tired of being one of the only Black people in the whole place. And I was really tired of all the bullshit,” he said.
Margot and Taylor both burst out laughing. Luke looked on with a surprised grin on his face.
Margot lifted her glass to him.
“Well, congratulations,” she said. “I think—I hope—we have a lot less bullshit here. And I’m sure we have a much higher percentage of Black people here.”
Their eyes met again as he touched his glass to hers, and a shiver went down her spine. The way he looked at her, all warm and intent like that . . . she could really fucking get used to that. Damn it.
“Thank you.” His voice was low. He could have said that in a joking way, to make this whole conversation feel less serious, less real, but he didn’t. He seemed pleased that she’d congratulated him. “And I know you do. You might even come out on top on sheer numbers.”
They both laughed.
Why were they standing so close? When he’d come over here, Luke had been on the far side of Taylor, she was sure of it. But now he was right next to her, so close they were almost touching. She hadn’t even noticed him move. Or had she?
She made herself walk away to get some food. For the rest of the night, as she circulated and sipped wine and chatted and took photos, she forced herself not to turn in Luke’s direction. She’d already looked at him too much while she was talking to him and Taylor—she’d probably spent too long with them as it was. She had to keep it strictly professional between the two of them. Especially around Elliot.
At the end of the night, she made a little speech to the whole group about how much she and Elliot appreciated all of them, after which everyone applauded, and then Elliot said, “Yeah, what Margot said,” which made everyone laugh as the party broke up.
The prearranged cars showed up to shuttle everyone home, grouped by the city they lived in. Taylor and Finn were both in St. Helena, Daisy and Marisol were down in Vallejo, and . . . oh no. She should have thought of this.