Secretly Yours
Hallie Welch runs a landscaping business in a small Napa Valley town. She has carried a crush on Julian Vos since she was fourteen, when they nearly kissed among the dark rows of his family's vineyard. The Vos estate hires her to redesign its gardens, and she finally gets close to him again.
Adulthood has made him guarded and scheduled down to the hour, nothing like the boy she remembers. She shows up whenever she pleases and talks to everyone in earshot. He plans his days ahead of time and keeps to himself.
After one wine soaked night out with friends, Hallie leaves an anonymous letter confessing her feelings in Julian's mailbox. She spends the following weeks dreading that he will work out who sent it. Instead he becomes fixated on finding the writer, never noticing she is standing in his garden every day.
The banter runs fast and the scenes turn explicit as the two edge toward admitting what neither wants to say out loud. It is a loud, funny book set at a small-town winery, with Hallie's chaos needling at Julian's careful order. Secretly Yours opens the Vine Mess series, continuing with Unfortunately Yours.
This is the first installment in the A Vine Mess series, which continues with the subsequent novel Unfortunately Yours. While the stories function as standalones, reading them in sequence allows you to follow the overarching connections between the characters within the Napa Valley setting.