Midnight in the Crush Pad
A Harvest Romance

About this book:

The thermometer reads thirty-four degrees and dropping. An early frost is barreling down Seneca Lake, threatening to turn Blackwood Ridge's flagship Riesling into very expensive bird food—and the winery's last shot at solvency into bankruptcy. Clara Vance has her Cornell master's, her laminated charts, and a refractometer she trusts more than people. Julian Mercer has twenty harvests, knees that predict weather better than radar, and a reflexive distrust of anyone with clean fingernails. They have until dawn to get the fruit off the vine and into the press, and they can't stand each other.

Forced onto the night shift together, Clara and Julian wage a war of protocol versus instinct: fifty parts sulfur or thirty? Wild yeast or inoculated? Data logs or gut feelings? Every frozen hose, stuck fermentation, and blown gasket cranks the tension higher, until the line between "you're doing it wrong" and "don't get hurt" dissolves in the steam rising from the crush pad. Somewhere between the first frost and the final press, the woman who lives in spreadsheets and the man who runs on coffee and calluses discover that the most volatile chemistry in the cellar isn't in the tanks.

Atmospheric, technically rich, and charged with the electric friction of competence porn, *Midnight in the Crush Pad* is a harvest romance where the vintage is on the line, the nights are endless, and the only thing more dangerous than a stuck fermentation is falling for the one person who sees through your armor.