A Perfect Balance

If life were a television series, then Gabriel Benton’s life has suddenly become an episode in the classic Twilight Zone…where nothing is as he thought it was…

When Gabe returns home to his family’s Niagara Peninsula vineyard, after close to ten years in Europe, for the funeral of the father he’s only recently reconciled with, there is more than one shock waiting for him.  The first is that his father has not cut him out of his will as Gabe had always supposed; Gabe is now a co-owner of the Stone Crock and Oak Barrel Winery with his mother…and his ex-wife, Ayanna.  And second, Ayanna is thought of and treated as a daughter by his mother, and she and her sister have apparently been living with his parents for nearly a decade…something that no one had bothered to tell him.  Third, sometime between trying to poison him—figuratively, not literally—with her cooking during their brief marriage and Gabe’s return to Canada, his ex-wife has become the highly-regarded chef of the winery’s onsite restaurant.

And life has a few more surprises in store for Gabe, not the least of which is being blind-sided by the very unexpected sexual attraction he still feels every time he’s in the same room with Ayanna.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a relationship counselor to tell Gabe what he already knows…Ayanna would likely throw herself into the Niagara gorge or over the Falls before letting him anywhere near her body—or her heart—ever again.  She has every reason to hate the cheating, vice-addicted wild boy he’d once been…and he can’t really blame her.

So, exactly how, in the name of Dionysus, god of ritual madness and ecstasy, is he supposed to make this partnership work?