Title: Crushed
Author: Deborah Coonts
About the book:
In Napa
Valley, he who has the best grapes wins. And in the pursuit of perfection,
dreams and hearts can be crushed.
Sophia Stone is a widow on the brink of an empty nest, stuck in an unsatisfying job managing the vineyard for a mediocre Napa vintner. Faced with an uncertain future she wonders how do you choose between making a living and making a life? Between protecting your heart and sharing it? Five years ago, after her husband was killed in an accident, Sophia put her heart and dreams on ice to care for those around her. Now her home, her dreams, and her family’s legacy grapes are threatened by the greed of the new money moving into the Valley. Sophia has a choice—give up and let them take what is hers, or risk everything fighting a battle everyone says she can’t win.
Nico Treviani has one goal in life: make brilliant wine. A woman would be an unwanted distraction. So, while recognized as one of Napa’s premier vintners, Nico finds himself alone… until his brother’s death drops not one, but two women into his life—his thirteen-year-old twin nieces. In an instant, Nico gains a family and loses his best friend and partner in the winemaking business. Struggling to care for his nieces, Nico accepts a job as head winemaker for Avery Specter, one of the new-money crowd. And he learns the hard way that new money doesn’t stick to the old rules.
When Sophia Stone gets caught in the middle of Nico’s struggle to remain true to himself or sacrifice his convictions to make stellar wine, both Sophia and Nico are faced with a choice they never imagined. A choice that might extinguish the hope of a future neither expected.
Sophia Stone is a widow on the brink of an empty nest, stuck in an unsatisfying job managing the vineyard for a mediocre Napa vintner. Faced with an uncertain future she wonders how do you choose between making a living and making a life? Between protecting your heart and sharing it? Five years ago, after her husband was killed in an accident, Sophia put her heart and dreams on ice to care for those around her. Now her home, her dreams, and her family’s legacy grapes are threatened by the greed of the new money moving into the Valley. Sophia has a choice—give up and let them take what is hers, or risk everything fighting a battle everyone says she can’t win.
Nico Treviani has one goal in life: make brilliant wine. A woman would be an unwanted distraction. So, while recognized as one of Napa’s premier vintners, Nico finds himself alone… until his brother’s death drops not one, but two women into his life—his thirteen-year-old twin nieces. In an instant, Nico gains a family and loses his best friend and partner in the winemaking business. Struggling to care for his nieces, Nico accepts a job as head winemaker for Avery Specter, one of the new-money crowd. And he learns the hard way that new money doesn’t stick to the old rules.
When Sophia Stone gets caught in the middle of Nico’s struggle to remain true to himself or sacrifice his convictions to make stellar wine, both Sophia and Nico are faced with a choice they never imagined. A choice that might extinguish the hope of a future neither expected.
Excerpt:
Chapter One
Sophia Stone knew life held few
absolutes: good wine is art, good
Italian cooking is passion, a good child is a gift, and good news never comes
in a certified letter.
“You sure this is for me, Tito?” she
asked the postman who thrust an envelope toward her. When she tilted her head she could read the
word “Certified,” stamped in red like a guilty verdict across the front.
A heavy-set man, Tito had a ready
smile and an easy, engaging manner. Each day while delivering mail, he also
traversed the valley searching for tidbits of gossip with the zeal of an Army
battalion scouring the countryside for insurgents. St. Helena was a small community where the
denizens believed mining each other’s business was an inalienable right granted
on the theory that without the titillation everyone would fall over dead from
boredom. “Yeah, looks like it’s from Charlie.
Certified, too.” Tito didn’t have
the decency to hide his interest as he mopped his face with a dirty handkerchief
then stuffed it back into his rear pocket.
The wiping didn’t help—a sheen of sweat still covered his ruddy
cheeks. August had been hot with no
break in sight.
Sophia eyed him. She wouldn’t put it past him to have already
steamed open the letter, a thought that made her a bit nauseous. Why had she thought a small town in Napa
Valley would be a good place to hide?
“From Charlie, you say?” Keeping her hands in her pockets, Sophia
tilted her head further and tried to double-check the sender’s address. Then she looked him in the eye. “Any idea what it’s about?”
Tito looked like a bully when his
bluff was called. He shrugged—an
exaggerated movement that seemed like the shifting of a mountain—but a
noncommittal answer, leaving Sophia certain whatever was in that letter would
be spread around the valley and germinating in imaginations as rapidly as seeds
on a spring wind.
At an impasse, Sophia and Tito stood
there, the letter between them, Sophia delaying the inevitable. Unfortunately, with a dinner to cook and a
cake in the oven, Sophia didn’t have time to see if she could outlast him. So, with a sour downturn to her mouth and a
knot in her stomach, Sophia took the letter.
Tito motioned for her to flip the
envelope over. “There on the back, that
green card? You need to sign that.” Handing her a pen, he waited for her to sign,
then tore off the return receipt, pocketing it.
Confirming the return address,
Sophia gave him a distracted wave as he climbed back into his truck. “Thanks, Tito.” A perfunctory nicety.
“Sure thing, Ms. Stone.” In a shower of gravel, he gunned the mail
truck back through the vineyard down the winding driveway leading to the valley
floor. Sophia glanced up as the trees
enveloped him and her normal quiet smothered the sound, wiping away all
vestiges of his presence.
Except for the letter.
From her landlord.
At least the return address was
his—and Sophia was certain he hadn’t moved from the corner lot at the bottom of
her hill. She could probably throw a
bottle and hit his roof, with a little help from the wind
Charlie had owned this patch of five
acres on the top of Howell Mountain since his parents had died in a small plane
heading up from L.A. over thirty years ago.
Sophia had lived here for fifteen of those years and, through feast and
famine, the ups and downs of the wine industry, she’d never received a
certified letter from Charlie. In fact,
she couldn’t remember having received any letter from Charlie. Their business dealings were usually hammered
out at the kitchen table over a bottle of wine and sealed with a
handshake. Napa Valley was a handshake
kind of place.
Sophia reached up and rubbed the
worn piece of iron Daniel had nailed to one of the porch supports. Tocco Ferro.
Her family had been steeped in the ways of the Old Country; her husband
had become a believer. Touch iron to
ward off bad luck. Being a bit too
pragmatic, Sophia didn’t necessarily believe, but it couldn’t hurt. God knew she’d had enough rough patches. With a finger, she traced the initials the
four of them had carved in the porch support.
Time had whittled their number to one … almost.
Tapping the white legal-sized
envelope on her open palm, she squinted against the sun as she looked out over
her small patch of heaven. A rolling
hillside with a couple of acres under vine, grapes from the Old Country, grafts
of her grandfather’s original vines. A
small garden flanked the house. Her own
private retreat sheltered from prying eyes by a ring of trees.
The farmhouse had been billed as a
“fixer-upper.” She and Daniel had packed
up the kids, moving up valley from the Bay Area, and spent the next several
years making the remnants of a house into a home. They’d bribed the kids into helping by
letting them paint their own rooms. Dani
had picked pink, hot pink. As if the
view from his window wasn’t enough, Trey had chosen wood paneling and a bucolic
scene of vineyards on one wall. When
he’d moved away for college, Sophia hadn’t had the heart to change it. Perhaps she’d harbored the hope that he would
come home someday. He hadn’t. Now Dani was poised to fly.
Soon Sophia would be alone, the
house emptied of youthful buoyancy. The
prospect filled her with dread. Stripped
of purpose, she half-feared she would grow brittle like the old vines until the
weight of loneliness shattered her into bits and pieces of who she used to
be. When Daniel had been killed, she’d
had the kids. Now the false friend of
sadness stayed ever near, her house echoing with memories. But memories didn’t make a life any more than
the past made a future. However, the
past was her tether. Without it, Sophia
felt she would float away like a balloon loosed to the sky, growing ever
smaller until vanishing from sight.
While the house cradled her past,
the rows of vines just reaching their peak marching down the hill across her
two acres held her dreams. Her grapes,
started from grafts from her grandfather’s stock back in Italy, each
juice-filled orb bursting with hope, with promise. Her life’s work hanging on the verge of a
promise.
Through the screen door, the aroma
of a cake on the verge of disaster wafted into Sophia’s consciousness, and she
turned and bolted for the kitchen, the screen clattering shut behind her. With a dishrag to protect her hand, she
opened the oven. The smell of chocolate
carried on billows of steam engulfed her.
She waved it away, squinting through the heat. She deposited the cake pan on the stainless
steel countertop. Pressing her thumb
lightly on the cake, she let out her breath in a long rush. Just in time.
Her mother loved chocolate
cake. Sophia planned to visit her this
afternoon. Perhaps a peace offering
would soften her harsh moods of late.
Sophia spied the letter, pristine
white and accusing, laying casually on the sideboard where she had tossed it in
her haste. Without further thought, she
stuffed it in the old cookie jar on the countertop and crammed on the lid. That cookie jar held a lifetime of happiness
and heartache—her marriage license, the kids’ birth certificates, Daniel’s
death certificate and obituary—it could handle the letter as well. Whatever problem lurked inside that envelope,
it could wait.
Leaving the cake to cool, Sophia
strode through the door to the porch, pushing through the screen and down the
steps. The grapes, fragrant in the
midday sun, neared perfection—harvest a few days away, at best. Sophia had plans for those grapes, unique
varietals that would make unusual yet palatable wine … if she could just figure
out the last piece. She was close,
though, closer than ever before.
Grapes—creating them, growing them, cajoling them to trust her—they were
her true passion. Unfortunately dreams
didn’t pay the bills, as her mother never missed a chance to bludgeon her with
that little bit or ironic reality. So
Sophia had to sell her skills to pay the bills and now found her days consumed
with tending to grapes owned by Pinkman Vineyards, one of the vast commercial
operations in the valley, that turned her carefully nurtured grapes into
mediocre table wine.
She walked the rows testing the
scent once more—the perfume of near perfection as her grandfather called the
sweetness of grapes. Memories filtered
through the shadows of time like wraiths, translucent, elusive … fleeting. When she quieted, stilled her mind and opened
her heart, Sophia could hear his voice, rich and deep, his laugh, and smell the
scent of earth and sun that clung to him, the wine on his breath. But, she couldn’t see him anymore. Like sun on paper, time had weathered and
faded her mental pictures until only shadows remained, as if the present was
slowly erasing the past.
Worry dogged her, the letter and its
unknown message on her mind as she tended to each vine, brushing back the
canopy, weighing the clusters. This far
along in the season not much remained to do; nature would run her course. This year Sophia had planted wildflowers and
grasses under the vines to entice the bugs and keep them off the fruit. The plan had worked well, as had her choice
to prune more aggressively than normal this past winter. Under her care, her
grandfather’s grapes flourished, and just now they were beginning to trust her,
to give her their best.
This year’s wine had the potential
to be the stuff of dreams.
At the far end of her property
movement across the fence caught Sophia’s attention. Shading her eyes with one
hand, she still had to squint against the assault of the sun. Her next-door neighbors had sold their
property recently to Specter Wines, a new player with new money. Scuttlebutt had it the owner had made a mint
somewhere back east. Sophia shook her
head as she watched heavy equipment struggle to tame the hillside, prepare it
for planting. These days it seemed just
about every rich guy wanted a piece of Napa to cultivate his own grapes, make a
signature vintage that would rock the world.
As if it was that easy.
About the author:
My
mother tells me I was born in Texas a very long time ago, but I’m not so
sure—my mother can’t be trusted. She’ll
also tell you I was a born storyteller.
That I believe—I have the detention notices and bad-conduct reports to
prove it. However, the path from minor
hyperbolist, or as I prefer to think of my former self, Grand Master of the Art
of Self-Prevarication, to the author of the New York Times Notable Crime Novel
and double Rita ™ finalist, Wanna Get Lucky?, the book that launched the
bestselling series, was a bit tortured.
Someone
once told me I lived a peripatetic life—yes, I had to look it up. And he was right. I’ve been everything from a mom, business
owner, accountant, wife, pilot, flight instructor, lawyer …worse, a tax lawyer…
to a writer. The three personas I’ve kept suit me the best: mom, flight
instructor, and writer. And the other personas I’ve tried on then shrugged out of
and discarded like an itchy coat were great grist for the story mill.
Chasing
stories keeps me busy and out of jail…for the most part. Researching in Vegas
can be a bit… sketchy.
Prodded
by the next adventure and the police, I keep moving. Right now I have a house
in Texas, but that will change soon. I lived in Vegas for 15 years—the longest
I’d stayed anywhere. And I get back there often. But other places, too, are
calling.
Someone
asked me the other day where I lived. The question stopped me cold. Finally I said, “On Southwest Airlines, third
row, window seat, either side.” Always in search of a story. And the adventure would be perfect if they
could just stock a split of nice Champagne.
Author Links:
- The Author will be awarding a $50 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner.
*Tour Organized by:
Goddess Fish Promotions
http://www.goddessfish.com
http://www.
4 comments:
Thanks for hosting!
Thanks so much for the terrific shout-out for CRUSHED!
I loved the excerpt. Thank you so much for sharing.
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