3

One thousand and fifty dollars. That was how much the dog had cost him. Which meant he’d have to repair the ancient tractor himself after all, since he wouldn’t be able to afford the new one.

There’d been a moment as Luc had bathed the dog the night before—a connection from its brown eyes to his—when he’d felt the animal’s thank-you like a caress, heard it like words. “Don’t get attached,” he’d said. “I’m taking you into town tomorrow.” That had been when Luc realized he was talking out loud.

After the bath, it had eaten half of Luc’s ham and, more notably, drunk about a liter of water. How could anyone withhold clean water from a dog? After vomiting up the ham, it had settled onto a bed of blankets Luc made in front of the fire and gone to sleep with a satisfied huff.

Hours later, after listening to its noises, he’d gone down to tend to it and… My God. Every time he saw it, he was shocked anew. Even after the bath, its fur was patchy and thin, its skin flaked and mangy. One of its paws was a mess, no doubt infected—thus the limp.

A torn-up paw, heartworm, fleas, malnutrition, dehydration. What wasn’t wrong with the creature? And when Luc had suggested taking it—no, him, not it, because the dog was a boy—to the SPCA, the vet had given him that look, the one that said that would be imminent death for a creature with so many issues.

Vaccinations, parasite treatment, antibiotics… The words had swirled into a great big invoice and a couple of overnight stays for the animal, who needed IV fluids, among other things.

Now, Luc was headed home alone after making the biggest mistake of all—naming the damned thing.

The memory made him smile. Dog, he’d called it, which the vet tech hadn’t found funny at all.

“Just Dog?” she’d asked.

“Yes.”

“That’s it?”

“I could call it Le Dog?”

“Alrighty. Le Dog Stanek,” she’d said, shaking her head as she typed the name into the computer. She handed him the bill with one of those big, fake American smiles on her face.

Back home, he made his way up to the barn to top off his barrels, irritated at the late start.

That nurse could smile, though, couldn’t she, considering Le Goddamned Dog had cost him more than a month’s bills, groceries, and gas combined?

Things were simpler alone.

* * *

Abby woke up, fed Sammy the last of her toast with butter and honey, and sent him over to the Cruddups’ place with the excuse that she needed to check the fence line.

She mustered what little courage she had, along with a fresh bout of resolve, and trudged for half an hour through the dead grass back to the fence. Back to the hole. Back to big, stupid Grape Man. As she climbed through, she ignored the frigid rock face above and the few snowflakes floating from the sky, which looked thick, soupy, and ready to open up.

She approached the man where he clipped away at a different section of vines. His face was tight in concentration, every move sharp and precise—until he looked up and saw her. When he did that, his features dropped into an irritated scowl.

Goodness, how on earth had she thought he might be handsome? Nobody that stern could possibly be appealing. Not with those harsh features, that too-big nose, and that unfriendly gaze. She lifted her head.

“Morning, sir.”

His eyes narrowed, the only part of him to move as they followed her progress. Indifferent, she’d say, if it weren’t for that grim look of annoyance.

“Sorry to bother you again.”

One sharp, dark brow angled up before he turned back to his work, ignoring her. Or trying to.

She forced a smile through the bubble in her throat and grasped one of the thin branches he’d just cut before yanking it up and out. “It occurred to me that I didn’t let you in on the full array of skills I have to offer. You are one lucky man, because I just happen to be a crack cleaner. I can cook and sew, darn socks or—”

“No, thank you.” He froze her with those iceberg eyes.

Don’t cry. Breathe. Smile.

Doing her best to ignore him, she took another branch and yanked, throwing it to the ground as she’d seen him do. “You haven’t tasted my—”

“I don’t wish to taste anything.”

Bless me, what kind of man is this, who—

“How about…?” In an act of desperation, she searched for something he might want. “You wanna taste me?” The words popped out, incomprehensible to her ears and so far from anything she’d ever said—much less thought—that she almost looked behind her to see who had uttered them.

No one budged. Five full seconds of silence passed before he turned to give her his attention. She wanted to take it all back.

“Pardon?”

Abby opened her mouth, but apparently the devil who’d prompted those words had decided to leave her high and dry. Nothing emerged.

Above them, the sky darkened. Or maybe that was just her vision. Why on earth had she said that? To get him to notice her, she figured. She saw Church kids do it all the time—acting up for attention. Short-lived, since the surest response was a beating—no matter how young the child.

His eyes raked up and down her body, way hotter than ice should be.

“Is this a proposition?” he asked. His voice was cracked and rough, like leather that’d sat too long and needed dusting off. But the accent, layered over the top? That was smooth. Mellifluous sounded like the right word. She’d have to look it up in the dog-eared dictionary she kept hidden under the bed—the only thing she’d ever stolen in her life. She kept expecting to burn in hell for that, but it had yet to happen.

Maybe this was it.

The second brow rose to meet the first. “You need money,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“I need a job,” she corrected.

“Find one in town.”

“It’d take me hours to walk there.” Besides, Church members drove the road into town all the time. They’d see her and pick her up and there’d be hell to pay. She’d be more hidden here, right next door. Nobody came over to this side of the mountain.

With a sigh, he hung his shears on one of the wires that held the vine branches up and ran one gloved hand through his too-long hair. “I will take you.”

“Where?” she bleated, panicked that he meant he’d drop her back at the Church.

“Into town.”

Her next words sailed out on a sigh of relief. “Any chance you could just give me a job instead?”

“I don’t need your—”

The sky chose that moment to open up, spitting shards of icy rain down on them and drowning out anything else he might have said. Abby raised her eyes to where she could have sworn the rocky mountain face had curled up into a triumphant smile.

“You’ll have to hurry if you wanna get this finished before we get iced in,” she yelled through the loud, stinging patter. “If this goes on too long, you’ll slip and slide right off the hill.” She could see the words sinking in, could feel his change of heart…or maybe that was her Lord and Savior taking pity on her. Whatever it was, her words or divine providence, the man appeared to come to a decision.

“You will need gloves if you are going to do this. And a jacket.” Abby thought of her coat, in a ball beside her hole in the fence. The thin wool would soak up this rain as fast as could be. The man walked a few steps in the direction of his cabin before turning back. “You are coming?” he said before continuing on toward the log cabin.

“Sir?” she called out.

He stopped again, huffing with annoyance. “Yes?”

“I’d like to…” She marched to him and reached out a hand, waiting through his perusal before lifting it higher, insistent. “I want to shake your hand, sir. To thank you for giving me a chance.”

“Don’t thank me. You’ll just—”

“Please.”

His lips tightened into a flat line, and Abby could see him wanting to back out, eyeing her hand like it was poison. But handshakes sealed deals. Shake on it, people said, and she liked the official quality of it. Liked that it put her on a level with the men out here. Men and women, doing the same thing. Equals.

No way would she admit how much she’d thought about the feel of those hands on hers the day before.

You’re doing it again, warned the gleeful voice in her head. Pushing too far.

But the voice was wrong, which just went to show…something. Grape Man grabbed her hand, pumped it twice. He still looked mean and harsh—only this time, something had changed. The touch itself was just as shocking as the day before. On a purely visceral level, being touched by a man who wasn’t her husband? It was… She didn’t have the words for how wrong it felt. And how could the man’s skin be so hot out here in the frigid January air? She stumbled at the warm connection.

Good Lord, she couldn’t remember touching anyone besides Sammy or Hamish or Mama since…since she’d been branded a Chosen One and received her first mark. Isaiah had done that. And Hamish’s touches, well, they’d been purely utilitarian.

The shiver slid through her again, from her toes out to the fingertips he’d just clasped. Definitely the wind.

He must have felt it, too. She saw it in the softening of his mouth, the way his eyes met hers. There was humanity there. And Lord, she’d been lying when she’d told herself he wasn’t nice to look at.

That strong nose, freckled by too many hours in the sun. Wide, sharp cheekbones, kissed crimson by the wind. That dimple—or was it a scar?—on his cheek that looked more like punctuation than anything else. Most of all, the eyes: slate blue, clearer than a cloudless winter sky, and fringed with heavy lashes. When he met her gaze, it was almost painfully direct under thick brows and tempestuous, dark hair—which was too long by Church standards, but a perfectly poetic counterpoint to the blunt features beneath.

“I’m really—” Grateful, she was going to say, but he didn’t let her.

Instead he interrupted, that gruff, accented voice sending shivers up her spine. “Enough. You’ll be of no use to me if you freeze to death.” He loosened his fingers and waited for her to do the same before turning away.

Her hand, pressed into a fist at her side as she walked, still held the hot imprint of his—a callused palm, fingers both coarse and gentle, and the space where that missing finger should have been.

After a brief hesitation, Abby followed the man, eyes glued to the tall, straight form that she’d watched as a small figure in the distance. She’d been so sure she knew who he was.

An image came to her—one laced with shame. She’d walked to the fence late last summer, when it had first become her official duty. The vines—these poor, wizened creatures—had burst out, big and green and so alive across the mountainside, their bunches of grapes dangling like jewelry much too heavy for their thin stalks. Amidst that fertile explosion, surrounded by a few men she couldn’t picture if she tried, had stood this man. Smaller than the mountain, of course, tiny compared to the boulders and the vista beyond, but huge compared to the others. Alive. Elemental. More a part of this mountain than anything she could imagine.

There’d been other things that morning—her body, for one, had ached in a way she associated with physical need. She’d had it with Benji and experienced shadows of it at the idea of a man, but never, ever at the real thing. That nameless need she’d felt had been echoed by the creatures around her—the fecundity of nature, ripe and lush and begging to be plucked. Like those grapes. Like her.

He’d been bare-chested. He was the only man she’d seen so naked in her life, and though it had been too far to catch details, the things she’d seen had made her body prick up uncomfortably. Closer, she’d known, there’d be skin and hair. Sweat beading in places she could only imagine.

Wide shoulders; long, thick arms; slender waist; everything sheathed in muscle. The muscles a man would need to work several acres of vineyards on his own.

Trudging ahead of her through the mud, he looked efficient. No wasted movement. Like his words—just enough to get by. His body would have been tall and lanky without the muscles—bare bones. His was a strength born of necessity.

And despite how unpleasant he’d been, something about that appealed to her.

You wanna taste me?

Her words came back to her on a wash of heat. Oh Lord, had she said that? Where on earth had those words come from? If she didn’t know better, she’d think someone else had controlled her tongue.

It occurred to her in that moment that he might very well choose to take her up on the offer. And she could choose to let him.

Sinner, hissed a familiar voice, knowing what she didn’t care to admit: the idea didn’t bother her nearly as much as it should.

He opened the thick wood door of the cabin—elevated and much bigger than the ones next door—and removed mud-crusted boots just inside, leaving his feet clothed in socks that had seen better days. I could darn those, Abby thought.

It wasn’t until she’d toed off her shoes that it occurred to her: I’m alone here, with a stranger.

He had felt familiar, after watching him from afar for so long. But close up…she didn’t know a thing about him. And he hadn’t been particularly kind.

Halfway across the cabin’s main room, he turned to look at her, heavy brows raised.

“I…” She hesitated, taking in the sparsely furnished room in search of some way to make sure this wasn’t a mistake. “It just occurred to me that you could be a bad person.”

That seemed to shock him. His features flattened, pulling those thick brows back down into their natural, taciturn configuration.

“You mean… Oh.” His face cleared with understanding. He nodded and headed to a nook under a steep staircase abutting the front door, close to where Abby still stood rooted to the spot. He came out with a gun—long and shiny and nasty-looking—and for just a second, her breath caught in her throat, telling her she’d made the stupidest of mistakes. She could picture the sneering I told you sos from the people next door. She could hear Sammy’s cries. Isaiah’s sad, knowing sermon: Abigail Merkley died for her sins, he’d preach, and everyone would nod.

“Take this,” the man said and shoved the gun into her arms. “If I do anything you don’t like, shoot me.”

The laugh that bubbled out of her throat was unexpected. It was fresh and new, rejuvenating. My first laugh outside. My first taste of freedom. She bit her lip automatically, holding it in. It never served to appear too happy.

But the man didn’t seem to mind. For the first time since she’d arrived, something besides irritation washed over his features. He eyed her strangely, head cocked, his gaze on the place where her lip remained caught between her teeth.

“I am funny to you?” he asked, and for a second, she considered shaking her head, forcing a more placid expression and casting her eyes down and away. Always down and away.

But this wasn’t a Church member. This was outside. If she couldn’t be herself here, then what was the point?

“This.” She motioned with the gun, which was heavier than it appeared. “This is funny.”

One thick eyebrow rose, and a comma flashed next to his mouth, which threatened to smile, although it never quite committed.

“The gun is funny?”

“Oh, course not. I didn’t mean—”

“Never mind. French humor.”

“Is that what you are? French?”

He blinked. “How did you guess?”

“You talk with this accent. Kinda—Oh. You’re joking. Again.” Her cheeks ached from the smiling, and his expression had changed from the hard implacability he’d worn outside. Melted a bit, perhaps. At this moment, he looked…young, maybe? Flushed and almost sweet. Almost.

Abby watched as he strode to a woodstove, opened it, and stirred the embers. He added a few logs and motioned her to follow him through a doorway. In the kitchen, he filled an electric kettle at the sink and set it to boil.

“You got electricity here.”

“Yes. You don’t?”

Embarrassed, she shook her head. “Not in our homes. Just in the main building. The Center.”

He lifted his brows in an expression that struck her as being supremely French. As if she knew what that would be.

“Here.” He pulled out a straight-backed wooden chair before heading out again, leaving her alone to set the gun down and sit at the small table.

When he reappeared, he held a thick wool sweater and gloves. “Put these on.”

“Why don’t you wear gloves when you work?”

“I like to feel the plants. Know what I’m doing.”

“I couldn’t take these from you. I’m fi—”

“You want work, you dress appropriately.” Prickly Grape Man was back.

“Yes, sir.”

“And please don’t call me that.”

“Sir?” Abby swallowed. “What should I call you?”

“Luc.”

“Look?” she asked, confused.

“No. No, Luc. Uh, Skywalker. You know?”

She didn’t.

“Um, Luuuuuc,” he exaggerated, moving the vowel up from where he’d hidden it under his tongue.

“Luke,” she said. Bringer of Light.

“What about you? You told me, but…”

“Abigail.”

“Abi—”

“No,” she interrupted, remembering her resolve. Her name, her life, her fresh start. “Not Abigail. Abby. Just Abby.”

“Okay, Just Abby,” he said, his lips quirking up enough to tweak the scar—the one that made him look like he was smiling, even though smiling clearly wasn’t his thing. “I’m called Luc Stanek.”

“I’m Abby Merkley. Although Merkley’s my…” Husband’s name, she almost said, but suddenly she didn’t want him to know about Hamish—her old-man husband. Suddenly, being given away to a man three times her age seemed wrong. A point of shame rather than a fact of life. And, for some strange reason, she didn’t want this man to see her shame.

* * *

You wanna taste me?

No matter how hard he tried, Luc could not push those words from his brain.

Ignoring the hot flush of his skin, he reached for two canisters and asked, “Tea or coffee?”

“Oh, no, I don’t need anything.”

Annoyed, he looked right at her. “It will keep you warm.”

“All right. Either.”

He huffed out a sigh. “Do you like coffee?”

“Never had it.”

He blinked but let it go, spooning granules into a thermos before filling it with water and a splash of milk.

“This stuff is disgusting, but it’s all I have. The tea’s no better.”

Armed with the thermos, an extra cup, and warm clothes, they trudged back out into the cold.

She was slow. With the shit already starting to fall, there was no time to waste. Already he regretted giving in to her request.

You wanna taste me?

No, those words weren’t what had made him agree. It was her calm insistence that had finally worn him down, along with the ice. He hadn’t believed that offer for a moment—although the image it had conjured…

“Do you know anything about grapes?” he barked, stomping toward the farthest, steepest field. The one he had to finish before bad weather made it too slippery and dangerous.

“I’ve…I’ve watched you.”

He stumbled. God, was she going to continue with the explicit remarks, because he didn’t think he could—

“I mean, I’ve seen you working,” she corrected, a flush climbing up her face. At least he wasn’t the only one who needed help with communication skills. “I can learn.”

“Today, we work fast. That field is too steep to prune with ice on the ground.”

“Thank you, sir. Thank—”

“Stop,” he interrupted. “No talking. Just work. This is a pruner, or secateurs,” Luc said, holding them up. “I will use this. And you will pull away the vines, yes?”

“Okay.”

“This way, we go faster. I cut, you unclip and pull.”

“Where do I put them?”

“Throw them down,” he said. “Today, we don’t worry.”

She nodded, watching him closely with intelligent eyes. Trying his best to forget about her presence, he set to work. This was always easiest alone.

They made their way down the row quickly, the woman so quiet he could almost forget she was there. Except for those brief glimpses, of course, and the occasional brush of his arm against hers. One row to the next, picking up speed. More brushing of bodies: the side of her breast, the faint but nonetheless spectacular perfume of a woman, which he fought hard to ignore.

While they worked, his brain filled the silence with questions. How long had she lived in that place? How old was she? Not a child, but not old, either. Those freckles made her look young. He shot her a quick glance, found her eyes on him, and turned back to squint hard at the vine in front of him.

“It’s so exact,” she said.

He paused, blinking. “Hein?”

“The way you cut the branches. One but not the other. Looks like you’ve got a real specific way of doing it. Scientific,” she finished, overenunciating the word.

Was it? It seemed so instinctive most of the time, but perhaps she was right. Perhaps it was more of a science than an art. It was just that some people were born to it and others were not.

A purple thumb, Grandpère had called it. Not everyone in the family had it. Certainly not Olivier. No, his half brother had been gifted with his father’s money-making prowess. Funny how it always seemed to be one or the other. Wine or money. Money or wine. You couldn’t have both. How disappointed everyone had been when it turned out that Luc was the gifted grower in the family. L’Américain. Le Paysan. The half-Polish American peasant. What a perfect cosmic joke, giving the gift to the only person in the family without the DeLaurier name, the one who was only half-French and all mutt. Well, they’d kept him in his place, hadn’t they? Always the grower, never the winemaker. Only grudgingly permitted in the cellars. Blood, after all, is thicker than wine.

He glanced subconsciously up the mountain toward the barn with its winery and shook his head, clearing away thoughts that served no purpose at all. He wasn’t a winemaker. Just a farmer—that was it. And if he’d tried his hand at making wine last year, well, that was just for fun. An experience. No. No, in English, the word was experiment.

“Why’d you pick that one to cut?” the woman asked, giving him a break from his thoughts.

“This grew two years ago. Thick and gnarled, yes? I cut here and cut this one down to two buds.”

“That’s a bud?”

“Yes, and these other knobs coming up. Also buds. They will grow into these…shoots or canes, and the bunches of grapes grow from there.”

“Oh, I see!” She smiled with understanding, and he looked back at the vine, ignoring the tightness in his belly, the nerves building there. Why? Human contact? Had it been so long that he didn’t actually know anymore how to talk to a woman without getting wound up?

Not that he’d ever been able to talk to a woman.

In search of distraction, he held out the pruners and indicated the next spur. “Try it.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Careful not to cut off your finger. I don’t have time to take you to the hospital.”

She struggled for a bit. “On a diagonal,” he prompted before she figured out the angle and cut.

For a strange moment, the snipping sound reminded him of being young, the whole family out pruning together. Neatening acres and acres of vines, preparing them for the upcoming year. He remembered the cold—not so bitter as this—and the camaraderie. Burning canes in the brouette, and flasks of hot wine that Grandpère let them drink, against Maman’s wishes.

He missed that—throwing branches into the brouette de taille with its trail of smoke, the warmth it offered.

“Good.”

Abby stepped back and handed him the pruners, her brow creased as he cut into a more crowded area. “Why’d you cut that one and not the others?”

“If there is a doubt, I keep the healthiest spur.”

“How can you tell which is healthier?”

“Bigger, stronger-looking. Larger diameter. And this one, the puny one? I snip. The healthy one is also closest to the trunk and the cordon, see?”

“What was that word?”

“Cordon?”

“Yes. I like that.”

“In English, you call it an arm. This is the trunk, and these are the two arms. Spurs.” He pointed to the knobs that grew along the cordons, to last year’s growth, dead and messy and held up with wires. “Canes.”

“So, the weak and the old get cut out? That seems so…unfeeling.” The idea didn’t appear to please her, and he didn’t bother responding. Of course the runts had to go. When he’d arrived here, the vines had been a mess. Left to grow wild for years, the weeds rampant. He’d almost turned around without making an offer at all. Luc’s gaze lifted again to the barn, nestled just beneath the precariously perched boulders at the top of the mountain.

You didn’t buy a vineyard for a barn, much less a rock. He knew that. Everyone knew it. You bought for the location: the soil, the health of the vines. But while the real estate agent had gone on and on about the barn and its potential as a tasting room, Luc’s attention had slid right over it, over the top-of-the-line equipment. The temperatures were ideal inside the odd structure, which was built into the actual mountain, its backside carved straight from the granite boulders. It reminded him of the troglodyte caves in France. And Grandpère had always told him to look for rocks like these.

After months searching this country where his father grew up for just the right place to make his own, it was that barn and its boulders that had decided him. Stupid, likely. Just more of his grandfather’s superstitions, but…

“What about that little stump here?” Abby broke into his thoughts.

He looked at the spur she indicated. Older growth, without any visible one-year wood. “That goes.”

He caught a glimpse of her face—the concentration as she watched, doing her own work but more interested in his. Learning. She looked good in his oversize Aran sweater. Although he wouldn’t have had time to notice that if he were working as hard as he should.

A glance at the sky told him it was nearing the end of the afternoon. They’d worked straight through, both of them soaking wet. His boots squelched in the mud that was no doubt sucking at her pathetic shoes, and just as he wondered what awaited her back home, her hands dropped to her knees. She inhaled deeply.

“What is it?”

“I…I guess I should have had breakfast.”

“You’ve eaten nothing?”

She shrugged.

“That’s…stupid.” The words were too harsh, he realized as soon as they were out. More proof that he wasn’t fit to spend time with people, especially in America, where everyone was so nice. He avoided her shocked expression and set his pruners down. “Come. I’ll give you something to eat.”

“No. Thank you, sir. I…I should leave.” She threw a look over her shoulder, toward the top of the mountain where she’d first appeared.

“You have far to go?”

She shook her head again—more to clear it, he thought, than any sort of denial. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

He made an effort to soften his voice. “Why didn’t you eat?”

“I…I was in a rush.” It sounded like the truth, but he didn’t quite believe her. “Is it all right if I… I mean, I need to be getting back.”

“Of course. Come in, and I’ll pay you.”

“Could you hold on to it for me?”

“Hold on to your mon—”

She reached for the bottom of the sweater she wore, and Luc, who’d opened his mouth to ask…something…lost his train of thought. It came off—up and over her head, leaving her underdressed and cold in that odd-looking gown. A bit frantic, he averted his gaze from the sight of her nipples, perfectly outlined by the clinging material of her dress.

He concentrated instead on her hands as she pulled the gloves off—worn and full of holes, probably gritty on the inside from this summer’s work—and handed his things over. They were still warm from her body.

“Thank you, Mr. Stanek,” she said with a smile, putting her small, frigid hand out for another awkward handshake before turning away. From behind, her thin form was made shapely by the cut of fabric, tight at her waist and flaring at the hips. It should have expanded from there, leaving her bottom half mysterious and sexless, as he assumed was the intended purpose of that type of garb. Instead, the wet dress hugged her in a way that was decidedly appealing.

Rather than continue to watch the sway of her backside, Luc’s eyes snagged on the straight, proud angle of her shoulders—which, though painfully thin, appeared strong. And if he wasn’t mistaken, stubborn.

A few steps away, she turned back to catch him staring. “Can I come back tomorrow?” she asked, her eyes full of hope.

“Not if everything is covered in ice.”

“Oh.” She lost her smile. “Right. So…”

“Come if it isn’t,” he said in an effort to put the light back in her face.

She nodded before heading off again, leaving him to finish his vines cold and alone and hoping, despite himself, that she’d return the next day.