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few bottles of reserve wines normally not available for tasting, giving Edward and David an arch look as if to challenge them to be more gracious a host than he was being.

    Edward and David ribbed Barry all during the girls’ wine tasting, but Barry gave back as good as he got.

    “Hey Barry, your pinot grigio tastes less like lemonade today.”

    “Last time, I did give you lemonade.”

    “Barry, the zinfandel has finally learned not to bite.”

    “The zin learned its manners. I can’t say as much about Castillo’s cabernet sauvignon.”

    When they were tasting a rather nice pinot noir, Jenn nodded. “That would taste good with a nice, sharp cheese. Maybe a goat cheese.”

    “One of the Castillo pinot noirs pairs well with our farm’s goat cheese,” Edward interjected before Barry could say anything.

    “You make cheese?”

    “We have both cows and goats, and we make artisan cheeses for our wine and cheese pairing menu.”

    Jenn’s eyes lit up like amber jewels. “Wine and cheese pairing?”

    Trish turned to Edward. “Maybe we can do that when we come to Castillo Winery after this.”

    If he hadn’t been listening to Trish talking about her wedding plans, he’d have thought she was flirting with him. But the quick look she gave Jenn, then moving back to Edward, answered his questions.

    Bride-to-be was playing matchmaker with the caterer and the winemaker. Sounded like a nursery rhyme. Except he liked the sound of that—caterer and winemaker.

    Barry cut in with a “You’re better off drinking drain cleaner than Castillo’s wines,” but David replied with “They’re saving the best for last.”

    “Let’s go,” Edward said. “Unless you’d like to try more of Barry’s poison.”

    Barry responded with a hand clutching his heart. “You’re killing me, Edward.”

    Maybe at Castillo’s he’d be able to chat with Jenn …

    Suddenly two cell phones went off, both with song ringtones. He actually knew them both from listening to the Christian radio station—Trish’s phone played “Fool For You” by Nichole Nordeman and Jenn’s played “Not Gonna Let You Down” by Building 429.

    She was a Christian? They were both Christians?

    The heavens opened up with an angelic chorus singing something loud and magnificent and probably in Latin. Because Jenn was a Christian. Edward started to wonder if God Himself blew her tire just for him.

    “Oh no!” both cousins said in unison into their phones.

    It felt like a couple fertilizer bags fell on his shoulders.

    The two women looked at each other with identical expressions of dismay. In that moment, they looked like twins.

    Trish disconnected first. “Elyssa fell down my parents’ stairs!”

    “Is she okay?” Jenn asked, her eyes wide.

    “Mom took her to the hospital. We have to go meet them.”

    Jenn nodded, but her eyes were distracted even as she shoved her phone back in her pocket.

    “Who was that?” Trish asked her.

    “Mom.” Jenn had turned white, but her eyes burned with a strange fire. “My one goat … has turned into three .”

CHAPTER SIX

    The good thing about being a cousin was that Jenn had lots of blackmail options in her arsenal.

    She’d already called Larry twelve times and left messages on his cell phone, so she resorted to email. But not just ineffectual demands for him to call her about the goat. No, the fact he wasn’t taking her calls required more lethal shots. Luckily, Larry being still in college and living in the dorms presented extra fodder for her devious mind.

    She sat at her computer flipping through digital photos until she found a few particularly juicy ones, namely the ones involving the extended family’s trip to Hawaii, Larry showing off for some bikini-clad babes, unaware that the swim trunks he’d borrowed from a cousin had a huge rip in them. She attached them to an email and typed in the subject line:

    I will send these to your dorm-mates if you don’t call me

    After she