What if running out of gas changed your life forever?
With Wine Comes Wisdom
A Novel by JE Johnson
They were supposed to meet in a boardroom.
Instead, they collided in a crowded Cincinnati bar—celebrating the same real estate deal, but chasing very different dreams.
Alex Kennedy wasn’t supposed to be there. Not on that street. Not out of gas. And certainly not on the porch of a stranger’s historic Victorian home, listening to stories that made her heart ache in ways she’d long shut down. The neighborhood was old, worn, full of soul—and suddenly, she couldn’t just walk away.
Later that night, exhausted and overwhelmed, she brushes past a stranger in a packed bar, thinking little of it as she opens a tab for “Team Alex.” But Roman King notices everything. The way she holds herself. The weariness in her eyes. Her name. And when he sees her sitting alone, he doesn’t send a drink. He sends a $200 bottle of wine—her usual.
What neither of them knows is that they’ve been working opposite ends of the same deal. She’s the realtor. He’s the contractor. She wants to save the neighborhood’s historic charm. He’s been hired to tear it down and rebuild. From the very beginning, their chemistry is tangled in conflict.
But just as Alex begins to let her guard down, to trust again, the story takes a darker turn.Alex slips further into a fractured reality where love and danger blur.
With Wine Comes Wisdom is a slow-burn, emotionally rich romance threaded with suspense, forgiveness, and the cost of confronting your deepest wounds. It’s about learning to trust what you feel, even when your mind says you can’t. And the kind of love that holds on—even when it’s breaking.
