Page 11 of Rainshadow Road

Alex was dressed in frayed jeans and an ancient sweatshirt, completely unlike his usual businesslike attire. His unshaven face was cast with the sullen shadow of a man who’d been drinking steadily for most of the afternoon.

An unpleasant chill chased down the back of Sam’s neck as he remembered how often their parents had worn that glazed look. It had seemed as if they’d been drinking a different kind of alcohol than everyone else. The liquor that made other people cheerful, relaxed, sexy, had turned Alan and Jessica Nolan into monsters.

Although Alex had never sunk to that level, he was not his best self while drinking. He became the kind of person Sam wouldn’t have had anything to do with if they weren’t related.

“Took the afternoon off,” Alex said, raising the bottle to his lips, draining the rest of the beer.

He was going through a divorce after four years of marriage to a woman he should have known better than to get entangled with in the first place. His wife, Darcy, had managed to chew through a prenup like a beaver through balsa wood, and was now in the process of dismantling the carefully ordered life Alex had worked so hard to build.

“You met with your lawyer?” Sam asked.

“Yesterday.”

“How’d it go?”

“Darcy’s keeping the house and most of the money. Now the lawyers are negotiating for my kidneys.”

“Sorry. I’d hoped it would work out for you.” Which wasn’t exactly the truth. Sam had never been able to stand Darcy, whose sole ambition in life was to be a trophy wife. Sam would have bet the vineyard that his brother was being traded in for a more affluent husband.

“I knew when I married her that it wasn’t going to last,” Alex said.

“Then why’d you do it?”

“Tax benefits.” Alex glanced quizzically at Renfield, who was butting his head against his leg, and he reached down to scratch the dog’s back. “The thing is,” he said, turning his attention back to Sam, “we’re Nolans. None of us will ever have a marriage that lasts longer than the average house plant.”

“I’m never getting married,” Sam said.

“Smart,” Alex said.

“It has nothing to do with being smart. It’s just that I always feel closer to a woman knowing I can walk away from her at any moment.”

At the same time, they both detected the smell of something burning, drifting from the open windows. “What the hell is that?” Sam asked.

“Mark is cooking,” Alex said.

The front door opened, and Holly rushed outside, giving a little squeal as she saw Sam. He laughed and caught her as she hurled herself at him. When they saw each other at the end of the day, Holly always acted like they had been apart for weeks.

“Uncle Sam!”

“Hey, gingersnap.” He gave her a noisy kiss. “How was school?”

“Miss Duncan taught us some French words today. And I told her I already knew some.”

“Which ones?”

“Rouge, blanc, sec,anddoux. Miss Duncan asked where I learned those words, so I told her from my uncle, and he’s a winemaker. And then she said she didn’t know the French word for ‘winemaker,’ so we looked it up in the dictionary and we couldn’t find it.”

“That’s because there isn’t one.”

The child looked aghast. “Why not?”

“The closest word they have is‘vigneron,’which means vine grower. But the French believe that nature is the winemaker, not the guy who tends the vineyard.”

Holly touched her nose to his. “When you start making wine from your own grapes, are you going to name one after me?”

“Of course I am. Should it be a red or a white?”

“Pink,” Holly said decisively.

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