“Alright, buddy,” Duncan said as he unlocked his truck. “Have a good night.”
“I plan on it,” I said.
“I bet you do,” he mumbled and shut the door behind him. Grinning, he waved and started his engine.
I got in my own truck and backed out into the parking lot, turning and heading onto the road to head back. I thought about texting Ally to let her know I was on the way, but I figured the drive was short enough, and it might be a nice surprise for me to just come in.
When I got there a few minutes later, I was surprised to see a new car in the driveway. I didn’t recognize it, but it was parked up close, so I figured someone was over. I made noise as I got out of the truck, attempting to alert Ally that I was home rather than surprising her, in case the person in question was someone she wanted me to meet.
I knocked on the door, and it flung open, making me take a step back. A woman’s face popped up, a serious expression across it. She looked me up and down.
“You must be the baby daddy,” she said. “You’re lucky you made up, otherwise I might have to punch you.”
“What?” I asked, taken a bit aback.
She curled her fist menacingly, or as menacingly as she could muster, and shook it at me. “I have a hell of a right cross.”
“Holly, be nice,” came Ally’s voice from inside. She had a joking lilt to it, and I smiled.
“Ahh,” I said. “You’re the best friend.” She nodded. “I deserved that.”
“Damn right, mister,” she said and shut the door behind me as I walked inside. “Seriously though, it’s nice to meet you. I have to go heat up some pizza for Ally. She gets mean when she’s hungry.”
“I heard that!” Ally yelled.
I laughed. This was going to be a much better evening.
Epilogue
Ally - Eight Months Later
It took way longer to open the restaurant than we had expected. I knew it was driving all the boys mad, but it felt like there was always something else keeping it from opening. Every step of the way, there was something else holding us all back, enough that we joked that the universe wanted us to just concentrate on the wine and leave the food to someone else.
The delay had all started with me being hurt in the car accident. I had needed to recover. Me hobbling around was funny at first, but it was damned annoying after a while. It took three times as long to do anything in the kitchen, and it hurt to do it too. It was frustrating as hell, and I wondered if it was ever going to get better.
It wasn’t just the ankle that slowed me down, but the wrist too. For a few weeks I had to hobble a bit, but even after that, and for a little bit of time afterward, my wrist refused to heal. The doctor kept telling me I needed to rest it, but that would mean getting even less done, so that wasn’t much of an option.
That meant that it was extremely difficult and painful to cut through anything harder than a peach, and the motion of chopping was an exercise in pain. Derek did what he could to accommodate me, but it just meant that everything slowed down from the planning of the menu through the execution of a soft opening. As his sous chef, I was supposed to do all the things that he ended up doing, and we kind of switched places for a little while. Derek would do the prepping and cutting, and I would be more of an executive, doing as much cooking as I could while not lifting anything that required both hands.
Which meant pots and cast iron were out, and that was half of our cooking materials.
Then a storm ripped through the area and did a ton of damage to the buildings. They had called it the worst storm to hit our area of the state in decades, and it brought not only torrential rain, but heavy winds and was unpredictable to boot. No matter what the weather people said, the storm just seemed to get worse and different than they called for, meaning there was no way to plan for how to keep things going or protected if they stopped.
Once the storm was gone and the level of damage was apparent, Noah and his crew worked overtime trying to repair everything, some of which were new buildings they had just put up and weren’t finished yet. The storm destroyed them, and they needed to tear it all down and start over again. Noah was devastated at all the work they had put into some of the areas of the vineyard only to see it utterly broken. Even with the discount Noah was able to give them, essentially working for free to pay his crew, Cam began to get extremely worried about the financials.