The champagne cork hit me square in the shoulder while I was kneeling in mud, trying to save a million dollars’ worth of grapes from an early frost.
I looked up to see my sister standing on my terrace in a white designer gown, laughing with people I’d never met. She pointed at me and said, loud enough to carry across the garden, “Don’t worry about the gardener. She’s just hired help we keep around out of pity.”
The gardener.
The hired help.
I was Catherine Aldridge, sole owner of Aldridge Estate and Winery, one of Napa Valley’s most respected boutique vineyards. The woman in the muddy coveralls owned every square inch of the property my sister was currently using to throw what appeared to be a very expensive party.
And Bella had no idea I was supposed to be in Paris right now.
My name is Catherine Aldridge, and I’m thirty-four years old. Behind my back, the staff calls me the Ice Queen, which I’ve earned through seven years of twelve-hour days, personally inspecting every vine, tasting every barrel, and running one of the tightest operations in the valley.
I don’t smile much. I don’t do small talk. I show up before dawn and leave after dark, because that’s what it takes to keep a small winery competitive against corporate operations with unlimited marketing budgets.
Two weeks ago, I’d scheduled a critical business trip to Paris—meetings with French distributors, tours of Bordeaux vineyards, the kind of networking that could open doors for a boutique operation like mine.
Everything was arranged, briefed, packed.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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