Wright Rival (Wright)

“Listen, mija, we were in trouble.”

“Trouble?” I asked. “What sort of trouble?”

He shook his head and paced away from me. “The IRS performed an audit on the company. Remember that last year?”

“Yes. Of course. We handed over all of our documents, and then all was well.”

My dad shook his head. “No. We handed the documents over, and it turned out, the accountant we’d worked with for the last decade had been pocketing our tax payments and forging our paperwork.”

“What?” I cried. “How could this have happened?”

“I had no idea. I trusted him with my life. But we weren’t the only company that he did this to. We would have lost everything. We owed over a million in back payments. Plus fines and fees. There was no way I could afford that. There were only two options: bankruptcy or selling.”

I shook my head. Desperation was taking over. This was too much. Far too much. “So, you sold.”

“Bankruptcy would have been on our records for seven years. We never could have gotten anywhere. The winery would have been all but defunct. I took the only viable option.”

“You reached out to Mr. Sinclair.”

He nodded. “Arnold had been contacting me periodically over the last decade, as he’d resumed interest in the winery. I never took him seriously. I never had any intention of selling. But we needed the money.”

“And you never told me,” I hissed. “We could have done this together, Dad. You took it all on yourself.”

“I did what needed to be done.”

“That’s why Chase has been coming around the winery. Why he was there when the barn burned down.”

“Yes,” my dad said. “I got Arnold to agree that we would continue to manage day-to-day operations. It’s no different than before.”

“No different?” I gasped. “Are you crazy? Everything has changed.”

“Nothing has changed.”

I stepped away from him. He had no idea of the absurdity of what he was saying, the enormity of how this affected us all. He might have gotten Mr. Sinclair to agree to treat it like normal, but for how long? Was it written into the contract? How did we know that we wouldn’t all be fired tomorrow and put out on the street?

The bottom line was that the winery was no longer mine. I’d grown up there. It was the one constant in my life. The one thing I’d always loved and turned to. And now, it didn’t even belong to me.

“You’re wrong. This changes everything.”

“Piper,” my dad said earnestly.

I kicked off my uncomfortable heels and carried them in my hand as I walked away from my dad. I didn’t want to cry in front of him. Didn’t want to have to process all of this information in front of the person who had created this catastrophe.

And it was already done. Finalized and signed away. There was nothing I could do to fix it. I was fucked.

I couldn’t go back to the party either. As much as I wanted to be in there, celebrating with my sister on her big day, there was no way I was going to be able to keep it together. Not now.

All I needed was my boyfriend. I needed Hollin to hold me and tell me that it was going to be all right. He’d gone through West Texas Winery falling apart and gotten Wright Vineyard out of it. There was hope, and only he could give it to me.

Tears streaked down my cheeks as I hurried down the walkway toward the cellar. I sure hoped that he was still down here and hadn’t come back to the barn when I went outside to talk to my dad. I didn’t even have my phone on me to text him and ask where he was. So, I kept walking far, far away from Peyton’s happily ever after.

I opened the door to the cellar, dropped my heels at the entrance, and headed down the worn wooden hallway toward Hollin’s office. I choked back a sob and opened the cracked door.

“Hollin, I need to talk to you.”

I froze.

Because Hollin wasn’t alone.

He was standing in his office with his hands gripping Tori’s shoulders.

35

Piper

A vacuum opened in my mind, and all the air rushed out. There was nothing inside but a sense of depthless unknown. Because what I was seeing made no sense. I couldn’t even process what they were doing together. Not after the last couple months. Not after finding August and Tamara together. Not after the way Hollin had reacted to seeing me just talking with Bradley.

I wanted to be the bold, stubborn, tough-as-nails Piper. I wanted to rip into him right then and there. To tear him apart for having the audacity to make me think he had changed and throwing it all back in my face.

But I’d been hurt too much today. I could barely stand after finding out about the winery. I’d yanked all of my walls down, hand over fist, to let Hollin into my heart. And then this? This was too much.