Chapter 5

Wine. It’s Really The Most Important Thing.

Pepper

Pepper stood in her kitchen, eyes locked on the gorgeous view outside the window above her sink. She was trying very hard to find her inner Zen—or at least appear as though she had—because in actuality, she was locked in a crocodile-death-match of a struggle with a bottle of wine and her corkscrew.

Or more aptly, she was trying to open the bottle without impaling herself.

Not the easiest feat for a woman of her abilities, and the danger factor shot up by about a thousand degrees when her phone rang.

The strains of the Imperial March filled the room with the ominous duh-duh-duh-duhduhduh-duhduhduh and she half-expected Darth Vadar to turn the corner and stride into her kitchen.

Or maybe her imagination was running wild because the person she least wanted to talk to was calling. He was also the person she had no chance of ignoring. Because if she didn’t answer the damned phone when her father called, he’d send someone to check on her.

And that didn’t exactly gel with her plan to be left the hell alone.

“Hi, Dad,” she said, after sliding her finger across the screen to answer the call. She tapped the speakerphone button just in time to hear her father’s booming condemnation.

“Pepper O’Brien,” he said. “What have you done now?”

Done? She picked up the corkscrew from where she’d placed it on the counter to answer his highness’s call and jabbed it at the cork.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s not what I hear. Bert called and told me you’d almost been run over. What were you doing, trying to get a job like a common person, anyway? We didn’t send you to school to—”

“I was just standing on a street corner for Christ’s sake!”

The corkscrew slipped, and she bit back a curse as it stabbed her thumb. After setting the bottle and opener down, she grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her finger.

Ouch. That really hurt.

Her father sighed. The same disappointed flow of air she’d heard time and again over the last twenty-four years. It shouldn’t affect her. Not after hearing it so often.

Except . . . it did.

“Tone, darling,” he admonished. “You know your mother and I raised you better than that, despite the mockery you’ve made of our family name.”

“Your opinion is noted,” she muttered, unable to apologize. Not again. Not any longer.

There was a beat of quiet, as though she’d surprised her father with her answer. And since silence wasn’t common when Peter O’Brien was around, at least not when he’d gotten started on listing all of her shortcomings, Pepper pressed her advantage. “Did you need something?”

“I—”

“—was checking on me,” she interrupted with an innocent voice. “That’s very sweet of you. I’m fine but really tired, so I’m going to go to bed. Bye, Dad.”

Her father sputtered out a goodbye that she hardly heard because she was already hanging up the phone.

That went surprisingly well, she thought with a grin. One that quickly fell away when she noticed the blood seeping through the corner of the towel that was wrapped around her thumb.

“Shit,” she muttered, averting her eyes and breathing through her mouth when the dizziness hit her hard.

Propping herself against the countertop, she used it to keep her upright as she half-shuffled, half-walked to the bathroom and pulled out her first aid kit. Considering the amount of mishaps she’d had in her life, she really should be used to blood.

But since that wasn’t the case, Pepper stood over the sink and peeled back the towel.

Her mind blurred, screaming a mental, Gaaaaah! But she forced her voice to be steady as she talked herself through.

“It’s not so bad,” she said, staring at her reflection in the mirror until it became clear and focused again. “Just a little cut.” Still not looking, she turned on the water and ran her thumb under it, wincing at the feel of the cold water against her injured skin.

It took more than a few minutes of fumbling, made all the harder because she couldn’t look at the small wound without her stomach turning, to get it clean, dry, and wrapped in a bandage. But she did it and managed to walk back into the kitchen with a little pep in her step as she approached the wine bottle.

Corkscrew. Check. Laptop open. Check. YouTube video for Easiest Way to Open a Bottle of Wine cued up. Check. Said bottle of wine. Check.

She could do this.

Place sharp point on cork. Turn. Turn. Turn—

And sigh.

She’d split the cork.

“Dammit,” she muttered. Next time, she was buying a box of wine. She didn’t even care. At least that had a spout. Or hell, maybe she’d get a Camelbak and fill it with Chardonnay, or one of those wine purse things with the nozzle on one end. She glanced down at the cork, now seemingly out of reach of the corkscrew, and sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. Then she snatched a steak knife from the drawer, ready to do that cutting-off-the-top-of-the-bottle thing she’d seen fancy chefs do.

Wine. It needed to be happening now.

Except. She stopped. Because knives? Really? Who was she kidding?

After putting the instrument of death—at least in her hands—back into the drawer, Pepper glanced around the kitchen and chose the object least likely to harm her.

A wooden spoon.

Turning it over, she stuck the handle in the opening and shoved the cork down into the bottle.

Victory was hers!

Then she reached into the drawer and pulled out her longest twisty-twirly straw. Because know what? She wasn’t really living life if she couldn’t drink wine through a twisty-twirly straw every once in a while.

“See?” she said to herself, grabbing her wine and heading out onto her deck. “You might not get things done the way everyone expects but you can still do things your own way.”

She sank into a chair and stared out at the waves, the evening’s darkness seeping into the horizon like ink into paper.

Peace. This was a place she could find peace.

Lips to the straw, she sucked up a large sip of Chardonnay.

And promptly choked on a fragment of cork.

Oh, yeah. This was her life.

Peace was fleeting, and it really sucked sometimes.