It wasn’t until Abby came over the top of the rise the next day that Luc realized just how nervous he was. She’d made it about halfway down by the time Le Dog limped up to greet her. An old friend, judging by their interaction.
She squatted to give the animal a hug, sweeter and warmer and kinder than anything this mountainside had seen since Luc had moved in. Le Dog, in return, bathed her face with his tongue, and Luc had to look away.
“You know each other,” he said. Not a question.
“Rodeo. He and I… We used to spend time together.”
He asked, “What happened?” and watched her face whiten, wishing he hadn’t said anything.
“He was taken away.”
“Why?”
She shrugged, the movement perfectly nonchalant, but the words… They were incisive. Sharp, like small darts. “I wasn’t supposed to get attached.” The smile she gave was a brittle shadow of her usual expression. He hated it. “I’m glad you got him.”
Curious but unwilling to delve too far into the workings of the lunatics next door, Luc nodded. “He is good company.” He didn’t mention that the dog had cost him a fortune. No point rubbing that in when the woman didn’t seem to have any say in the matter.
Abby eyed the big barrow he’d worked late into the night to build.
“It’s abrouette de taille,” he said, tamping down the ridiculous edge of pride that tinged his voice. “For burning the branches.”
“Oh…looks kinda like a wheelbarrow. Do we roll it with us?”
The air was frigid, and this close, he could see the pink in her nose and cheeks. He’d been right to stay up working on thebrouette, no matter that his body dragged today.
He nodded, feeling silly and proud of his accomplishment. A littlebricolagein the workshop—not as easy as he’d thought, getting the parts. The steel drum, oddly, had been the hardest to find; he’d had to drive thirty miles out for that. Odd because burning a fire in a steel drum was one of those iconic images of America he’d always seen on TV. The rest he’d taken from an actualbrouette. A wheelbarrow.
“And it keeps us warm.” He reached into the sack hung on the end, took out a rawhide that he threw to Le Dog and a pair of gloves that he handed to her. “Put these on.”
She looked up and caught his eye. She started to smile but flattened her lips. “They fit.”
Was she upset? Why would she be upset about new gloves? Luc swallowed back his disappointment and spoke, all business. “We continue as before. I cut, you pull the branches and throw them in here.” He indicated the place where he’d cut doors into the steel drum. It lay with its doors wide open now, flat on what had once been a wheelbarrow. He’d close it up when the day was done to avoid any risk of sparking a fire on the mountain or—God forbid—his vines.
“Okay” was all she said before getting right to work.
They made good progress together. Their rhythm was quick and easy, and they worked until the sun was high in the sky. He’d found a couple of adequate sticks and carved them into skewers that morning, just sharp enough to spear some sausages he’d gotten in town. While she continued to pull last year’s growth out from the trellis and shove it into his barrel to burn, he turned to prepare sausages and small onions, setting them off to the side of thebrouetteto cook while they finished the row. Why hadn’t he thought to burn the branches like this before? It was, after all, the perfect tool for pruning in a place this cold. Lunch, heat, and transport all in one place. No more hauling everything up to the enormous brush pile at the top of the rise.
The sight of her flushed from the heat and the work set off an unexpected spark of interest that Luc quickly tamped down.
Abby caught his eye, and Luc wondered if he had perhaps muttered something aloud. If he had, it would have been in French, which at the very least meant she couldn’t understand. But what on earth would she think of a man who muttered under his breath all the time?
It didn’t matter, he decided, as they approached their stopping point, Le Dog a few steps behind. His stomach grumbled as the smell of charred onions and meat told him that it was time for lunch anyway.
“Sit here.” He indicated a log a few meters from the vines. He’d taken a chainsaw to the rest of the fallen tree when he’d bought the place. One of the many things he’d had to do in order to get the vineyard back up and on its feet. All of it enjoyable work, satisfying in a way his family would never understand. No, they’d been royalty—at least on their own small plot of grape-growing paradise.
He didn’t like to think of what they’d done to the vineyard. Olivier, Maman, and Céline, with their new business partners. It couldn’t last. It wasn’t possible. The spraying and the abuse of the land. He pushed it from his mind.
What wouldGrandpèrethink of this place, he wondered—not for the first time—with its bright-red underlayer of soil? Farther down the mountain, it was red clay, making it impossible to grow grapes. Here, though, the ground was sandy, with just the right hint of tiny Bordeaux gravel. And if that rich iron color had an influence on the grapes, well…who knew how that would pan out? He’d thought he’d gotten hints of iron in his early tastings, but…probably just his imagination. It didn’t work like that. Well, it did, but not overtly. Not in ways you could identify immediately on the nose.Terroir—that indescribable element of place. More a translation of sunlight and rain and the shape of the mountain than a simple regurgitation. Like how what you ate affected the way your sweat smelled.
He sniffed, unconsciously hoping for a whiff of woman. How would she smell up close? There’d be no perfume, nothing like French women with their designereaux de toilette.
And there, he’d brought himself full circle—right back to thinking of Abby in inappropriate terms.
He shoved bread into her hand abruptly, along with his pocket knife. “Open that, for sandwiches.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“This is the tradition, when it is cold. Thebrouetteto cook lunch.”
