Page 6 of Let It Breathe
“Good guess.”
“It’s the best. A couple guys I ride with had to go last year. Started building model airplanes with their grandkids and got hooked on sniffing glue. You know how it is.”
Clay wasn’t sure he did, but he nodded anyway and took a sip of his coffee.
Albert leaned close and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial level. “If the rehab doesn’t take, I might have a business proposition for you. I’m not at liberty to say too much just yet, but it has to do with a special little harvesting operation and?—”
“Actually, sir,” Clay interrupted, “I’m pretty committed to sobriety. And I’m going to be working at the vineyard building your new event pavilion and tasting room.”
“Is that so?” Albert sat back and studied him. “Well, Eric’ll be glad to have you back.”
“Eric,” Clay repeated. “Not Reese.” He didn’t phrase it as a question but still left room for Albert to object.
There was no objection. Instead, Albert just studied him with a look so intense, Clay had to fight not to drop his gaze. “Reese always got screwed when it came to you,” Albert said at last. “And not in the good way.”
He gave Clay a pointed look, and Clay felt his neck grow hot. Albert was right, of course. Reese had bailed him out of jail more times than he could count. She’d not only endured his lame excuses but the ones Eric had made on his behalf. Then there was that awful night at Finnigan’s. The bar fight that had killed any chance he’d ever had of?—
“I know,” Clay said, interrupting his own dangerous train of thought. “I’m sorry about that. About all of it. I plan to apologize as soon as I head out there tomorrow. I’m a different person now.”
The old man looked at him. “You’d better prove it. Girl’s got ambition. She’s making something big out of that vineyard with a new pavilion and the wine club and media attention and shit. Doesn’t need you making a mess of things again.”
“Yes, sir.”
Albert slugged him in the shoulder. “What’s with the sir bullshit? You think you’re talking to an old man or something?”
“No, s—no, that’s not it at all.”
“The name’s Axl now, dammit.”
“Axl,” Clay repeated, trying it out. “Okay.”
Axl picked up Clay’s mug, downing the rest of his coffee without comment. “So you’re not a drunk anymore,” he said, thunking the mug down on the table.
Clay cleared his throat again. “I prefer the term ‘recovering alcoholic.’”
“And you’re going to be working at a winery.”
“Yes, s—yes. That’s right.”
“With your best buddy making wine.”
“Yep.”
“And my granddaughter giving you orders.”
“Right.”
Axl studied him for a moment, then shook his head. “Don’t fuck it up.”
Chapter 2
“I don’t see why I have to change my shirt,” Larissa argued.
Reese stared at her cousin for two beats, wondering which would emerge first—smoke from her own ears or Larissa’s boobs from the purple push-up bra thrusting said boobs to terrifying heights.
“Because I’ve seen prostitutes dressed more conservatively,” Reese said. “This is a wine tasting room, not a strip club.”
“This is a barn,” Larissa said.
