With a spike in his throat, Julian rejoined his family behind the table, where they were preparing to leave. Logical or not, he needed to get that letter and destroy it. Tonight.
Chapter Fourteen
It was well after midnight when Hallie, Lavinia, and Jerome drove down Grapevine Way, having packed up their Wine Down display and carpooled back to town. Shops were shuttered, though a few wine bars remained open, probably nearing last call. Along the road, ornate rooftop cornices were silhouetted by silver moonlit sky. Through the open back seat window of Jerome and Lavinia’s catering van, she could hear the chirp of crickets carrying down the mountain and from nearby valleys and vineyards.
Jerome and Lavinia dropped Hallie off at her parked truck, and with an exchange of exhausted waves, they continued down the block to where they would unpack the catering equipment at Fudge Judy before heading home.
Hallie got into her truck and let her head loll back against the headrest. She should go home and climb into bed right now, surrounded by snoring dogs, but she made no move to start the engine. Julian had written back to his admirer, and try as she might, she couldn’t seem to let it go. There was no way around it—she had to collect that letter. Now. Tonight. Under the cover of darkness, like a certified weirdo.
Teeth gritted, she pushed open the driver’s-side door and hopped out, pulling her jacket tighter to her body to ward off the cool, misty air. She stole across the silent road, intending to cut through Fudge Judy’s to their back alley, then down the road to Julian’s jogging path. Having helped Lavinia and Jerome with catering events in the past, she knew they would be busy shelving items in the giant walk-in storage closet and would be none the wiser that she’d used the shortcut. Furthermore, any potential witnesses would assume she’d remained in the donut shop the whole time.
“Any witnesses? Listen to yourself,” she muttered.
This whole activity was pointless—
Hallie stopped short in front of Corked.
Was that . . . a new awning?
Gone was the old, faded red-and-white-striped one. It had been replaced by a bold green one with scripted lettering. Corked Wine Store. A St. Helena institution since 1957.
Where did it come from? Between the rainstorm yesterday and preparing for Wine Down today, two afternoons had passed since the last time she’d stopped into Corked to visit Lorna. Apparently she’d missed the store getting a face-lift? Who was responsible for this?
Intuition poked and prodded at Hallie, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it. Earlier as Wine Down . . . wound down . . . she’d gone on a mission to find the origin of the business cards, and lo and behold, everyone she spoke to claimed they’d been given out at the Vos Vineyard table. She’d already caught Julian buying pity cases of wine from Lorna. Then came the cards. And now this. A beautiful, crisp green awning that updated the struggling shop by several decades.
He’d done this, hadn’t he? Bought Lorna an awning. Driven business her way. Put money in the register. What did all of it mean, and why, oh, why, did it have to make her heart pound like steel drums on a cruise ship?
This was not for her.
There was a reason he hadn’t taken credit for any of this. He didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. He was merely helping out a local business owner, not making some kind of dramatic romantic gesture, so the swooning had to stop. She should be ashamed of the fact that her knees were wobbling like chocolate pudding. If Julian wanted her as more than a onetime accidental hookup, he would have said so by now. God knew he was blunter than a baseball bat about everything else.
And he’d written back to the secret admirer.
Hello. Those were not the actions of an interested man.
Those were the actions of a man who’d perused the grocery aisle and said, I think I’ll take this reliable cauliflower, instead of the mixed bag of root vegetables I can’t name. She needed to get his lack of interest through her thick skull, collect his letter, and read it out of pure curiosity, then be done with this whole confusing mess with the professor.
With a final yearning look up at the awning, Hallie jogged down Grapevine Way toward Fudge Judy. She peeked in through the window, making sure her friends were nowhere in sight before she slipped in through the front door and went into the kitchen. Lavinia appeared from behind the stainless steel workstation and threw up her hands at Hallie’s entrance, then slumped forward onto the waist-high table, clutching at her chest through a pink apron. “Fucking hell, I thought we were being robbed. What in the bloody hell are you at?”