7

Luc had no more work for Abby. The day she’d spent away, working at the market, he’d gotten through the last vines, and there was nothing left for her to help with. Luc didn’t look forward to seeing her face when he told her.

But, jerk that he was, he didn’t want her to stop coming. He wanted her here, the antidote to his anxiety instead of the cause. What was it about the woman that made him miss her when he usually couldn’t get away from other people fast enough?

She didn’t arrive first thing that morning, so he took off up the mountain to work on the stupid tractor. Le Dog, trotting beside him, had changed—his gait light and springy, limp nearly gone. They had a checkup with the vet next week, but Luc hardly needed the doctor to tell him the mutt was worlds better. That was what happened when you fed and took care of a creature instead of treating it like dirt.

His thoughts skipped back to Abby. The new curve of her hips, the slight roundness at her cheek, where before it’d been hollow. Like the dog, she’d developed a glow. He couldn’t help but feel responsible. Not exactly ownership, but…a sort of pride. As if he had a stake in her survival.

He passed through the barn to get to the back. In the room on the right, dozens of bottles lay on their sides, awaiting a verdict. Beside them sat big, round barrels, full to bursting with juice that should have gone elsewhere—missed income.

He ignored them, moving instead to the back of the barn and out through the rear door, to what he called the graveyard. Le cimetière. Where the previous owners had left their machinery to die. An old tractor sat in the grass, with a rusted-out array of parts he had yet to go through. He had to get this tractor up and running now, especially if his newest idea took root.

Which it would. Luc knew. He’d have to buy plants—another expense he couldn’t afford. But…if, against every expectation, his wine was drinkable and he sold it, he’d earn more than what he’d get from just selling the grapes. Grapes were practically worthless compared to a decent vintage. He’d seen what they sold bottles for around here, and although he’d never open up his place to visitors, he could sell at the local grocery stores. Maybe work out a deal with restaurants.

Idiot, he thought, climbing up into the tractor. Nobody’s going to want this wine.

He clambered into the front seat and found a key in the ignition. He couldn’t believe it. For a moment, he stared, dumbfounded. There was a goddamned key. He turned it, but nothing happened.

No surprise there, which pleased him in an odd sort of way. This was a challenge Luc enjoyed—taking a mess of metal and making it work again. He went back in for his tool belt and returned to the cimetière to revive some old souls.

Time passed as he worked. A lot or a little, he had no clue. But at some point, as the afternoon light began to fade, Le Dog barked—not something he did often.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est? Hein?” He asked what it was. The dog, as proficient in French as in English, barked a happy response.

After a bit, he heard it, too. A voice. Abby. Finally. With a nervous leap of his pulse, he set off to find her.

* * *

“I didn’t think I’d see you today.” Luc’s voice came from the shadowy barn interior.

“Sorry I’m late.” She paused, nervous. “I brought you something.”

Now that she was here, thrusting her quilt into his unsuspecting hands, it was awkward and strange. The look on his face, which had flushed red, brought home the fact that Abby had just about no idea what was acceptable behavior in society and what wasn’t. Maybe, she thought, this had been the wrong thing to do. Maybe…

“You should not have done this, Abby.”

“I shouldn’t?” she whispered, avoiding his eye.

“Did you make it?”

That brought up a laugh, straight from her belly and up through her chest and throat. “Why? Is it that bad?”

He blinked. “No. Not at all. It’s…it’s lovely.”

“Oh. Well, I’m not much good with my hands. My work is nowhere near as good as the others’.”

“No?” He considered her for a moment longer than was comfortable. “Well, you’ve done good work for me.” He paused. “With your hands.”

He held the quilt, probably catching fibers on his rough skin and hating it. This had been the wrong thing to do. She wanted to continue working for him without more tension between them, but she’d gone and done this, which would only make things worse.

“Where would you recommend I put it?” he asked, looking…pleased, perhaps?

“I thought in your cabin. Wherever you spend the most time. You could use it if you ever got cold. Or not. If you don’t like it, you can give—”

“I like it.”

“You do?”

“Thank you, Abby. It’s…” He swallowed and looked away, his scar tight. “I’ll take it inside. In a bit.”

After a pause, Abby said, “I saw the vines. You’re done.”

He nodded.

“Must feel good.” The thought made her frantic, not just because she’d have no more work, but because this would be taken from her. This place, this man. What on earth would she do now?

She waited for a few seconds, breathing hard until he turned and flipped a switch, illuminating the large space they stood in. Tools hung on one wall—pruners like the ones he’d used for the past week, gloves, and other things that she couldn’t even begin to understand.

Behind him, at the far end of the barn, was a door—open and showing what looked like a scrap heap outside. Here, they stood in a room with big, metal tanks. It was massive and dark, even lit as it was. The tanks lined up like sentinels along one wall.

“Come,” he said, leading her through a door, which opened up to…

“Oh my…” She wished she had more words—better words—to describe this place.

The room was immense. One entire wall was made of glass—the long one, facing down the side of the mountain, almost overhanging the valley. She’d seen it from the outside and had wondered what this much glass would be like.

Inside, it was extraordinary. She’d never seen anything so expansive. Never. And the windows didn’t end at the wall. They continued up and bent to become the ceiling. It was the biggest, most open place she’d ever seen indoors. At the opposite end—yards and yards away—was an enormous fireplace made of stone. You could fit a person in there. You could fit a bear. The other wall held a long, empty bar. Beyond it was a room filled with wooden barrels. Everything was warm with wood and stone and so bright you could almost taste the light.

Her breath was audible in her ears, like someone else’s. Like putting her head underwater. Like looking so far out that you actually saw inside yourself. She didn’t wait for him to lead the way but walked ahead. Everything was muffled by the drowning of her mind, tamped down by the light and the view and the thin, thin air.

“What…what is this?” she asked.

“It was supposed to be the tasting room.”

“Was?”

“The previous owners. The couple who started the winery and planted the vineyard. They had plans.”

She shook her head. “Why did they leave? How could they leave this?”

“I don’t know. A death in the family is what the real estate agent said—an inheritance or someone to take care of? Although…” He trailed off, leaving a heavy weight hanging between them, drawing Abby’s attention back to him. Oh, his eyes. So blue in the setting sun, so pretty in that finely etched face. Something about the glass made the light in here brighter than outside. Sharper.

“Although?”

“I think it was you.”

“Me?” Abby said, instantly horrified.

His mouth didn’t smile, but his eyes softened, filling her middle with something squishy and good. “I wonder if perhaps they weren’t comfortable with their neighbors.”

“Ah.” She turned toward the view and took a dozen more steps into the room, her undivided attention on the glass that overlooked…everything. “This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”

“Is it?” he asked, looking puzzled.

“It’s not?”

“Honestly, I hardly notice. It’s the…” He paused. “The other side that interests me.”

Looking at him, Abby had the distinct feeling he wasn’t telling the truth.

“The other side?”

“Outside. Where I grow my grapes.”

“But in here… This room. This is where people would come to taste wine? Buy it, too?”

“Yes. And back there, for making wine.”

Abby took a turn around the big, empty room. “Through there?” she asked.

“Yes. That’s the barrel room. In those barrels, the wine ages before bottling. Beyond that, where we first came in, are the tanks where the wine becomes…well, wine. And through that door, outside—not toward the tractor, but straight through—is the porch. Under the overhang is where the grapes are crushed and destemmed. That is where the real work happens. In a winery anyway. Harvest and crush. No sleep.”

“Luc, this is…” Abby shook her head. She felt the huge hole in her vocabulary.

“I didn’t make this,” he said with a shrug, although there was something like pride on his face. “Come,” he said, opening the door into the barrel-filled room and letting out a waft of pungent, earthy air. It smelled like blood and dirt, like this man’s soul: wood and minerals and the mountain and something too human to describe.

She followed Luc between the rows of barrels to the other end of the room, where he gathered two stemmed glasses and a long instrument also made of glass.

“I thought you weren’t a winemaker. Just a farmer, you said. That’s it.”

“I’m not a winemaker.”

“Then what’s this?”

Shrugging, he said, “An experiment. Here, I show you.”

He handed the glasses to Abby and led the way to the barrel closest to the door. It had what looked like a small, round, plastic cork in the center. Slowly, carefully, Luc worked it out of the hole, which was ringed in purple. Once it was open, he slid the long glass implement inside, finger raised. She watched as he expertly pressed his finger to the dropper, lifted the entire mechanism from the hole, and put it over a glass, emptying the contents by lifting his finger again. He stuck the top back in, screwed it down, pounded it a few times, and moved to a barrel on the other side of the room to do the whole thing over again, into the second glass.

“What is that?”

“It’s called a wine thief.”

“Because it steals from the barrels?”

“Precisely.”

“This must all be so…scientific.”

“Yes?” He smiled. “There is some chemistry. Making wine is temperature dependent. Fermentation and aging and so on. But there is some alchemy involved, too, I think.”

“Alchemy?”

“That mysterious blend of things. You know, like”—he sniffed—“the air. Mountain air versus flatlands. Instinct, earth. Not particularly precise.” He waved his hand in the air. “Maybe Mother Nature or Bacchus or—”

“Bacchus?”

“The Roman god of grapes. Wine and eu—how do you say—débauche?”

“What’s… Oh. Debauchery?” Abby asked with a jolt of excitement. “There’s a god of debauchery?”

“Of course. In Greece, he was Dionysus.” He paused, eyes on Abby’s. “There are gods for everything.”

“Where I come from, there’s only one.”

His mouth turned down dubiously at the corners as he looked around for a place to set his thief. “I need a table in here,” he muttered.

“You could set an empty barrel on its end,” she said, picturing a row of them down the middle of the room. “You could have people in here, tasting straight from the barrels and—”

“No people.”

She stopped, crushed.

“No people? Oh. I thought with that room out there and the—”

“No people. Here.” He handed her the thief, which she held along with the wineglasses, and disappeared through a door. He returned rolling one of the enormous barrels before tilting it up to stand. It was obviously empty, but goodness, it must have been heavy. He set it upright, and Abby put the thief atop it.

“Which glass did I fill first?”

“This one.” She handed him the one in her right hand.

“This one is native yeast. From my grapes. The yeast helps with fermentation.” Luc pointed to the other glass. “And this is inoculated yeast. Purchased. Proven.” He smiled at the question in her eyes. “The wines should be different. More science. Chemistry.”

She nodded and caught his gaze, feeling something charged between them. Was this what he meant by alchemy? This particular blend of sensation and anticipation?

After a long few seconds, he spoke. “Go on, Abby.” He sounded breathless, his face expectant, almost eager. “Taste.”

* * *

The smile that blossomed across her features made his breath come in hard, hot, heavy. He felt like he was auditioning for something. Interviewing. Passing a test.

She examined the contents of the first glass, eyes alight but unsure.

“This is my first wine.” Her voice was breathy, appealing in its excitement.

He figured. Although in France, children drank wine in church; here, even God’s blood was treated like a sin. Ridiculous people.

“It’s not finished, this wine.”

“Not finished?”

“No. After the barrels, it goes into bottles. And more time before you drink it. But try it,” he urged, hoarse with nerves. Anticipation thrummed through his veins.

Her hands were lovely on the glass, delicate and graceful, her lips pursed in preparation. Luc couldn’t look away, reading clues into every tiny movement: the quirk of a brow, the vibration of her throat as she swallowed. Blinking, she took a second sip, which lingered longer in her mouth. Her tongue moved, testing, and her lips curved into a smile. Did she like it?

“What do you think?” he asked.

“It’s so…” Another dip of the lips, her features scrunching together as if in search of the right word. “Bright. But dark. Rich. Kind of warm.” Why was she blushing at that? Or was it the wine coloring her skin?

“Try the other.” He held the air in his lungs, waiting.

She tasted. Her expressions were so vivid. Curious, serious. She was trying with all her might, and he loved that.

“Here, let me show you.” Luc’s fingers grazed hers when he reached for the first glass. He lifted it by the stem, swirled its contents, and dipped his face to breathe in the wafting odors. “You sniff, like this. What you’re looking for is the nose. The…perfume, you know?” He handed her the glass and watched closely as she did the same, awaiting her prognosis. “You smell things, yes? Fruit or something else?”

“Cherries maybe?” She bent back to the glass she held, tried again, the movements so unpracticed they were pure. “But there’s also wood. Is that because of the barrels? I smell lots of things, but not really grapes.”

Luc couldn’t help the smile that took over his face. “They’re made of… C’est quoi chêne? Um…oak!” He snapped his fingers as the word came back. “French oak.”

“I can smell that! In the glass!” she announced gleefully, her smile beautiful.

“What else? Anything else?”

“Hold on, hold on. Yes, there’s something mineral to it. Like eating dirt.”

“You’ve eaten dirt?”

“Yes!” She laughed, her golden eyes ablaze with humor. “Haven’t you?”

“No, I…” It came to him—a memory, lost in the gnarled vines of his past. “Maybe? Once? Or once that I recall. I was in the vineyard, with Olivier, my half brother. We were… Oh, I don’t know. I must have been five or six, and he was older. I remember Grandpère always talking about the importance of terroir. The…” At her curious expression, he fumbled the words. “The place. Like here, this mountain and earth, the sun and weather. It’s all the terroir. My family’s is Bordeaux, one of the world’s most important regions. Everything about it is unique: the earth, the plants, the seasons, even the landscape itself. Olivier decided if I truly wanted to understand it, I should eat it.”

“How was it?”

“Honestly? I don’t remember the actual moment I put it in my mouth, but I remember the sensation.”

She cocked her head, listening closely.

Luc continued, enjoying her concentrated attention. “That mineral thing you speak of, it was that, only I remember that it fed a craving in me. In my body, my blood.” Looking up, he realized he’d lost her. “It’s…silly, I know.”

“No. No, I think I get it, because I don’t taste it as much here.” She reached for the other glass, which he handed over with something like intimacy, and took another sip. Her lips were already stained from his wine, and he couldn’t look away, couldn’t stop wondering how his grapes would taste on her skin.

“Taste what?” he mumbled, brain hazy, before forcing himself to stop. He’d die before he took advantage of this woman. With a deep inhale, he stepped back, blinking hard and pretending he didn’t see the way her eyes skipped all over him.

“I don’t taste the dirt as much in this one.”

Needing to clear his head, he turned back to the tasting room. “Come with me,” he said, picking everything up and setting it on the bar before taking a few steps away from her. He needed space or he’d do something stupid.

“Why won’t you open this up, Luc? To outside people?”

“It’s not for me.”

“What isn’t?”

“You know. People.” He almost smiled. “I don’t like them and they…generally don’t like me.”

Instead of smiling, Abby looked sad.

“I like you. I think you’re lovely.”

His hands tingled. His face heated, and he looked away. “Yes?”

She nodded. “Yes. You’re so…good. To me.” Why did that disappoint him?

“I’m not good, Abby.”

“You are,” she said with a wobbly nod. “I’m the bad one.”

“You’re bad?” He could almost laugh. “How?”

“I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered, looking devastated.

He shook his head in disagreement, slowly like the air’d gone thick, like he’d bathed in syrup or in the moût—the must. That dense mix of juice and skins and seeds and stems that gives the wine its color, its body.

“I’m sorry that you’re unhappy here.”

“No. It’s not that. I’m here to work.” She looked distressed. “I didn’t come here for me. I’m not supposed to be doing all these new things.”

“What new things?” he asked, frantic at the notion that she’d never come back.

“Things like drinking coffee or eating ham and butter sandwiches. Like today. I came here to work, and instead, I’m tasting wine.” With her accent, the word came out almost as a long and fluid waaaa, so much better than the tiny, pathetic, one-syllabled vin of his native tongue.

But her expression was angry or frustrated, and Luc wanted to make that go away. “This wasn’t at all the plan. This and all the other things I shouldn’t have done.”

Her gaze dropped to his lips, and he heard the words she didn’t say about a stolen kiss in the vineyard. It had been his fault, all of it. He’d been the one to press the food on her—and the kiss and everything else.

“I’m sorry, Abby,” he said, wracked with shame.

“Why are you sorry?” she asked, looking truly puzzled.

“For making you do th—”

“Making me?” Abby put down the glass and moved toward him, her eyes not even close to accusatory. “Don’t you understand what I’m saying? I want more, Luc, now that I’ve had a taste. I know that I shouldn’t, but it’s all I can think about, and I do. I do.”