He bristled. “I don’t want someone else taking over the running of this vineyard.”

“Because you’d be outnumbered by women?”

He gave me a mock outraged look. “I can handle that. I’m very secure in my masculinity.”

I grinned. “Then it’s settled. I’d be willing to put my faith one hundred percent in what she says. I’ve seen her reports. She puts together a big, thick notebook that’s an exhaustive, comprehensive examination of every aspect of the grapes, vines, and soil. She uses drones to take aerial shots so she can show you exactly what’s going on in every single block of grapevines. Plus she does a row-by-row calculation of the canopy of each block to determine how much shade a particular row will cast on the next one, depending on the geography of the terrain.”

Quinn whistled softly. “Sounds like you’ve been thinking of contacting her for a while.”

“I think our wine is getting better and better. Why not make it great?”

“I’d like to meet her first,” he said, “before we decide.”

“Oh-ho,” I said. “You’ve got this the wrong way around, my darling. She would want to meet us first before she decides if she’s willing to take us on. And apparently just getting that first meeting is a huge step. Then we’d have to have a compelling, intriguing reason for her to say yes because, as you said, she already has a full plate with her current clients, her research, and her travel schedule.”

Quinn squinted at me. “Do you want to call her and sweet-talk her or should I?”

“I’ll do it,” I said. “Not that I don’t think you aren’t utterly charming, especially when you want to be, but—”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” he said. “And you call Ms. Plays-Hard-to-Get.”

IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG to clean up after dinner. He washed, I dried.

“I thought I might have a cigar tonight,” he said. “You mind?”

House rules: no smelly cigars indoors. He smoked on the veranda, or elsewhere depending on the weather.

“Of course not,” I said, “except it’s chilly out.”

“It’s also a really clear night. The wind this afternoon blew away the clouds so I thought I’d do a bit of stargazing. Want to come?”

Of all the things I’d learned about my fiancé over the years, the one that surprised me the most was his love of astronomy. The first summer Quinn came to Montgomery Estate Vineyard, he’d asked my father for permission to set up a telescope in our backyard next to our old summerhouse because it sat on the crest of a hill. There the unobstructed view of rolling hills, checkerboard fields, and horse farms below and the star-studded night sky above went on for miles, all the way to the distant Blue Ridge Mountains.