“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 soinstinctivemost 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,Grandpèrehad 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. Anexperience. No. No, in English, the word wasexperiment.
“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 thebrouette, and flasks of hot wine thatGrandpèrelet them drink, againstMaman’s wishes.
He missed that—throwing branches into thebrouette de taillewith 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.”
