Free Run

About the book

To save her Finnish grandmother's Oregon vineyard from a treacherous cousin, an auditor must stage a believable romance to maintain her legal claim over forty acres of heritage Pinot Noir.Odile Nyyrikki took an unpaid leave from her financial auditing career to clear up her late grandmother’s estate, only to discover three years of unfiled tax deferrals and two defaulted equipment leases. Single-handedly managing forty acres of Pommard vines in the cold Willamette Valley fog, Odile is fighting to keep the Satakunta agricultural credit union from foreclosing before harvest. Her selfish cousin Bastien is actively trying to sell off the low-yield heritage blocks to a private equity firm for a cash buyout, leaving Odile scrambling to process tons of ripe fruit with a broken hydraulic destemmer and no labor crew. Enter Julian, a drifting hand arriving in a battered 1994 Ford F-250 with a canvas bedroll, a steel tool box, and a chipped enamel mug. Holding a dark past behind his sea-ice eyes and granite jaw, he possesses the muscle and mechanical skill Odile desperately needs to repair the leaky glycol lines in the 1974 fermentation cellar. When local land registries and predatory probate courts threaten her operational control, presenting Julian as her dedicated partner becomes her only leverage to protect the estate. The October pick starts in three weeks. The red clay holds every mistake. Staying means exposing their true identities to a ruthless cousin. Leaving means letting heavy machinery crush sixty-year-old self-rooted vines into dead dirt. Can Odile and Julian execute a convincing fake relationship long enough to crush the grapes, or will the heat growing between them ruin the single chance they have to settle the estate debt? Perfect for readers who love:

• ✔ Fake dating an enigmatic handyman
• ✔ High-stakes Oregon winery and harvest settings
• ✔ Grumpy/Sunshine working-class dynamics
• ✔ Small-town family probate drama
• ✔ Guaranteed HEA