The Divorce He Asked For, The Empire I Took Away novel · Chapter 5 of 32

Chapter 5: The Release Party

I went.

Winona said it was the stupidest thing I'd done since marrying him, and then she ironed my dress.

It was the green one, the one Dex said made me look like a farm wife.

I wore my good boots with it.

At seven o'clock the Arnott tasting room glowed on the hill.

Valet boys in black vests. String lights in the olive trees. A jazz trio by the fountain.

Two hundred people with glasses in their hands.

The wine club in their linen. Growers from up and down the valley in their one good jacket. A photographer from a wine magazine.

All of them turned when I came up the steps.

The jazz didn't stop.

Everything else did.

Somebody's glass clinked against a tooth.

I took a glass of the 2024 1904 off a waiter's tray.

The bottle on his tray said WINEMAKER: DEX ARNOTT in gold.

I'd pressed that wine on a Sunday two Octobers ago while Dex was in Napa playing golf.

I knew it before it touched my tongue.

It was good.

It was mine.

A grower's wife from Geyserville squeezed my elbow as I passed and didn't say anything.

Then I heard Coralee.

She was on the little stage by the barrel wall in a white dress, holding a microphone with both hands.

Dex stood beside her in a cream linen jacket, smiling at the photographer.

"Thank you all so much for coming," Coralee said. "This is my first release as Vice President of Sales, and I am just so honored."

The room clapped, politely.

"It's been a hard week for our Arnott family." She put her hand on her heart. "I want to say, there's no bad blood. None. Dex wanted me to thank everybody who helped make 1904 what it is."

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