Southern Hotshot (North Carolina Highlands 2)

“You don’t sound impressed,” Beau says.

“To be honest?” I glance up from the binder. “I’m not.”

“That’s the biggest and best collection in the state, if not the South. If you don’t get that it’s special, then you don’t get wine.” Samuel’s reply is cold. But his eyes are suddenly hot.

“Bigger doesn’t always equal better,” I say.

I shouldn’t take pleasure in pissing off the guy who has the power to make or break my future. Samuel is not only Blue Mountain’s food director but he’s also got a large ownership stake in the resort itself.

All six members of the Beauregard family own and operate Blue Mountain Farm, a five-star resort in the Great Smoky Mountains. The brainchild of Beau, the oldest Beauregard brother who retired several years ago from a successful pro football career, the resort has been developed over the past five or so years to encompass luxurious guest accommodations, a spa, stables, a smokehouse, gardens, outdoor entertaining spaces, and the South’s most awarded new restaurant, The Barn Door.

Unsurprisingly, Beau’s got plans to expand the resort even further. He hopes to build additional rooms, a sports complex, and another restaurant on the twenty acres of untouched land to the resort’s east. Meaning I could one day be wine director of not one top-notch, James Beard Award-winning restaurant, but two.

Still, I can’t help engaging in a little sharp banter with Samuel. Could be the fact that I’m still a little keyed up from the exceptional cybersex I had with Blue last night. I thought he might just be another internet creeper with zero personality and even less imagination. But he was a pleasant surprise. Considering how lame my non-internet love and sex lives have been, the timing of our meeting couldn’t be more perfect. Blue gave me a much-needed dash of hope—hope that not every guy I meet, virtually or otherwise, will make me feel ridiculous for being who I am and liking what I like.

I want more. I can’t wait for tomorrow night.

A flicker of a smile moves over Samuel’s lips. They’re full and very pink against his dark reddish-brown scruff. “Course not. But when it’s big, and you know what you’re doing with it, it can be fucking magical.”

If only he knew how far from the truth that misnomer is.

I want to take his dirty pun and run with it. Show him I can be just as dirty, if not more so. Quicker and wittier too.

But considering this is my first day on the job, I decide to rein in that impulse. I often think about what my hugely successful older sister, Lindsey, would do. Right now, she’d definitely continue being the consummate professional she is.

“You know what’s magical? When you can blow a guest’s mind with a wine they’ve never heard of at a price point that doesn’t bankrupt them. When you tell them about the woman who grew the grapes and the four-year-old daughter who’s following in her footsteps, and the footsteps of her grandmother, and her great-grandfather. When you serve just the right bottle to just the right table and make it a night they’ll remember forever. Not because the wine cost so much, or because they get to brag about the label to their friends the next day at brunch, but because it made them think. It made them remember. Hope. Appreciate. It made them feel something.”

Beau smiles. “She’s good.”

Samuel just stares at me. I can’t read his eyes now. The weight of his undivided attention is intense and uncomfortable, but I stand my ground. If I’ve mastered one thing besides wine over the past decade, it’s resilience.

I hold up the binder. “I think this list needs to say something other than ‘rich people eat here.’ Let’s tell a story. Let’s honor small producers, the winemakers who are taking risks and doing the hard work of making interesting wines. Let’s make wine approachable for everyone by taking the snobbery out of it. Let’s make people think, talk, and linger the way Chef Katie’s food does. Let’s do the hard work, Samuel.”

Samuel is still staring. A muscle in his jaw tics.

His intensity finally gets to be too much, and I look away. Glancing at Beau, I find the vote of confidence I need in his big, genuinely gleeful smile.

“I love it,” he says.

“I don’t,” Samuel growls.

“I’m not saying you don’t have something special here,” I reply. “Or the beginnings of it, anyway. I’m just saying you’ve got a binder full of boring, unapproachable BSD wines.”

He arches a brow. “BSD?”

“Big swinging dick. Trophy wines.”

Beau lets out a bark of laughter. “If that doesn’t describe you to a T, brother…”

Samuel, however, doesn’t think it’s very funny. In fact, he looks downright murderous.

“I’m outta here,” Samuel says.

Beau slams the flat of his clipboard into his brother’s chest. “No, you’re not. You’re going to show Emma to her cottage, remember? Maybe give her a tour of the grounds on your way there. Emma, follow Samuel to the main house in your car. A valet will park it there for the remainder of your stay. Every residence has a golf cart, as they’re a more convenient way of getting around the resort.”