Page 104 of Que Será, Syrah

“Exactly.” Bee nods in agreement. “We’d never! I mean, if we were gonna do that, we could have picked any name.”

“I understand Bottle Jock is still available,” Jansen says, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his chin on her head, earning himself an elbow to the gut.

“See? I told you it would be okay,” Clay says. “You never listen.”

And I nod, and swipe at my tears, because he had. And… “Wait a minute.” I twist around to face him. “How long have you known about this?”

Clay’s mouth compresses into a tight line. “You’re not gonna be weird about this are you?” he asks. “Please don’t be weird about this.”

“How. Long?”

He glances at Rosa and asks, “What’s it been, four or five weeks?”

“Yeah.” She nods, dabbing at her tears. “I think. Something like that.”

“Well, of course, we had to read him in on this,” Bianca explains. “We wanted to surprise you.”

I’m still glaring at Clay. He’s still meeting my gaze, steady and unashamed; the fucking nerve of the man. “So, you’ve just been lying to me for weeks? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yep. I sure have. And you know what that means, right?”

“That you’re a liar?”

“Well, okay. That too,” he concedes. “But also, it means I can never again hold it against you that you lied to me first.”

“Oh.” I think about that for a beat. “I guess that’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yep.”

Then I start to laugh. “Omigod. We are so fucked, aren’t we?”

“And this is a surprise?” Clay asks. “No. Look at how we met.”

I think about that. Larceny. Underage drinking. Really hot sex. And a mad dash to freedom, through a midnight vineyard. “I guess you’re right. But it works for us.”

“It appears to.”

“So, what happens next?”

“Well, next you sign the paperwork that your sisters went to all this trouble for. And I spend the rest of my life trying to deal with the fact that you’re once again a filthy rich winery owner.”

Everyone around us snorts in disbelief. “Well, at least we can guarantee the filthy part,” Jake remarks.

“For real,” Bee sighs, looking sadly at her nails.

“But wait a minute,” I turn to Jimmy and say, “I can’t do this can I? What if…”

“I think you’ll find that you can,” he says. “We’ve received all the necessary documents from the EU and now have everything we need to prove that your attempted marriage to Nico Carvalho was never legally valid. Which means that Mr. Carvalho has no legal standing whatsoever.”

“That’s why we couldn’t tell you before,” Rosa says. “We had to be sure. We were waiting until we were absolutely certain that the winery couldn’t be taken away from you again.”

“We didn’t want to raise your hopes, only to disappoint you,” Bee adds.

“And like I told you,” Clay points out. “He’s never gonna be allowed back in the States, anyway. So, all in all, I think you can safely write him out of the picture. For good, this time.”

I spare a thought for Nico. I never thought that he was going to turn out to be the villain of the story. We were friends once, after all. And he probably didn’t deserve everything he got. But I can’t be too sorry for him, either. Because this is what happens when you try to come between me and my sisters.

“So, you’re sure?” I ask Jimmy.

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