squeeze when I was done.
"You could have been hurt! Maimed! Killed!" he cried into my hair.
"I'm fine," I protested again, wiggling free of his grasp. "But go easy on the maimed thing when you tell Conchita, okay?" Which I had no doubt he would. As soon as humanly possible. Not that I totally minded in that moment—the fewer people I had to retell the story to, the better. I was feeling that same vulnerability creep up on me again each time I had to relive it.
"Well, eet eez lucky you scared him away," Jean Luc said, nodding in my direction.
"Yeah. Lucky," I mumbled. I glanced at Eddie's phone. "What were you looking at when I walked in?" I asked, hoping to change the subject.
Eddie's pudgy features immediately morphed into a wide smile. "None other than Aurora Dawn's posty list."
"He means her feed." Jean Luc rolled his eyes. "You cannot be on zee internets if you cannot get zee words right!"
"List, feed, page—they're all the same." Eddie waved him off, unfazed. "Anyway, look what she posted this morning." He pushed the phone my way, pointing to the screen.
I did, seeing a picture of a woman with platinum hair and lots of eye makeup holding a glass of red wine up to the camera as she took a selfie. She'd added a hashtag to it that read: #undertheinfluenceofoakvalleyvineyards. While it was a tad long, I had to admit the phrase was kind of catchy. "That's cute." I made a mental note of the slogan, thinking it could be fun to have printed up on wine totes for the holiday buyers.
"Isn't she fab!" Eddie squealed. "Look, the post already has ten thousand likes. And she just put it up an hour ago!"
Glossing over the influencer's day drinking, I had to admit, that was a lot more eyes on our brand than I'd be able to get in one morning. "Wow. I'm impressed," I told him.
Eddie beamed. Jean Luc snorted.
I couldn't help but grin. "Maybe you should see what other influencers you can reach out to," I suggested to Eddie. "You might be on to something here."
"You got it, boss lady!" Eddie said, giving me an exaggerated salute.
Jean Luc's eyes rolled so far back in his head I feared he could see his brain. "When we start to see zee followers come to buy our wine—then we will know if zee influence is real."
"Oh, they'll come," Eddie said, nodding sagely. "If Aurora does it, they'll do it too."
I decided to step out of that particular debate and left them both to hash it out before the afternoon tasting crowd arrived. Instead, I pushed outside and took a couple of deep, fortifying breaths before navigating around the back of the winery to my cottage.
Like the rest of the winery buildings, the small cottage was done in a beige stucco and terra cotta roof in the Spanish revival style that was so common in the Valley. Ivy grew up one side, and morning glories clung to the chimney on the other, making it feel almost as if the building had organically sprung from the earth, having sprouted there alongside the oaks and vines. No crime scene tape covered the door. No fingerprint dust. No proverbial or literal black cloud hovering above. In fact, it looked just as charming and inviting as it always had.
At least, that's what I tried to tell my pounding heart as I reached the front door and inserted my key.
Luckily, as I stepped inside and surveyed the room, some of the pounding subsided. While I was sure Grant's CSI crew had done a thorough job of cataloging just where the thief had tossed all my belongings, someone had then put everything right back where it was supposed to be. Minus the shattered lamp, which was just a memory now.
As I walked through the room and set my tote bag down, I knew that someone had to have been Grant. Who else would have known which shelf that photo of my mom and me at Christmas had originally sat on or that the afghan my grandmother had crocheted belonged over the arm of my easy chair? I felt tears of gratitude prick the back of my eyelids.
Feeling relatively safe that the boogey man wasn't going to jump out at me from any closets, I sat on the sofa and texted Grant.
Thanks
A beat later, his response came in.
For?
Putting my house back together again.
You're welcome :)
I never would have pegged Grant for a smiley face