The Rival's Enemy

At the Harvest Moon Festival, Leo Carver is arguing with his brother about what a bottle is worth while, across the square, the competition pours samples for a crowd three deep. Declan O'Shea has been in Dry Creek Valley four years and already has a following. Leo calls it a cheat code: his father's distribution network, his grandmother's land, and a consultant who used to work for Harlan Estate. Nate calls it better wine, and reminds Leo he admitted as much himself at two in the morning after tasting Declan's Syrah at the county fair. Carver Vineyard has been bailing with a thimble for three years. The trellises are rotting. The bank is calling. If they lose the distribution contract, the loan payment in November does not happen. Then Leo's mother sways in the yard and her knees buckle, and a messenger hands him a certified letter from the Sonoma County Water Agency. Carver's water rights are being challenged over a historical boundary dispute with the adjacent property owner. The adjacent property owner is O'Shea Vineyards. There are two ways out: legal proceedings, or a merger of the affected properties. He has twenty-four hours to decide. What Leo cannot see is Declan on the other side of the valley, palm flat against a mirror, rehearsing a speech for a grandmother of eighty-three who reads his mood in the tempo of her walking stick, because he has spent his whole life being the salesman and wants, once, to be the winemaker. The merger closes in sixty days. There is an organic conversion clause his mother signed without telling him. A five-thousand-dollar bet against the merger turns up, placed from an account with Leo's name on it. An irrigation line turns up cut. And somewhere between the audits and the accusations, on a porch in the fog, Leo kisses him back and then asks for seven days of pretending it never happened. This is a slow-burn contemporary romance between two men who want the same valley and the same water, with the vineyard business rendered in real detail and a family that is not being straight with either of them. The romance is closed-door.