“Who?”
“Those people. From over there. Your dress and shoes. The Church of the…”
“Apocalyptic Faith,” she finished for him. Her brow lowered and her mouth hardened, gossamer softness turning rigid and defensive.
“Did they send you to me?” he asked. He reached back to find a vine, his fingers shifting from cordon to brittle canes—not one of his family’s. No, this vine was his alone. With a proprietary stroke, he removed his hand and forced his attention to stay on the woman.
“I need money. I knew you’d hired those men last year and—”
“No. Too many…questions.” The workers had been a nightmare. More exhausting than the work itself. He couldn’t get around hiring them for harvest and crush, but pruning he would do alone. Leave the big-time personnel management to hot shots like his half brother, Olivier.
“Oh,” she said, and he hadn’t realized how lively her face had been until her features sank even further. “I could learn,” she said again. Her chin lifted with the words, baring a long neck, pale and slender and covered in gooseflesh.
“You need the money to buy a coat?” Where were these questions coming from? He didn’t want to know. Shoving the curiosity down, he turned back to his half-pruned vine. He let his hands lead from spur to spur, snipping before moving on to the next. If he ignored her, maybe she’d leave.
“One of those shiny, puffy ones,” she said with a smile he tried hard not to see. “They look real warm.”
Was she being serious? He couldn’t tell. She sounded too nervous to be joking.
As his body worked and his brain did its best to pretend the woman wasn’t there, Luc’s mouth continued of its own volition, asking questions without his consent. “Your coats don’t warm you?” he asked.
It took a few cuts for the secateurs to become an extension of his arm again, sharing in his warmth, giving it back. He almost never wore gloves for pruning. At least, he hadn’t back home. Here in this frigid place, he probably should. But gloves cut him off from his plants, dulled the connection he felt when cutting away each cane. Shaking his arms to relieve them of their numbness, he moved on to the next vine, cradling its trunk with one hand. He ran his fingers up the head, along the closest cordon to the first spur, and snipped, leaving two buds and adding another crisp, dry sound to a crisp, dry day.
Without answering, the woman followed his progress.
He slid one bare finger along the arm to the next spur, small and pitiful. The brittle sound of it succumbing to the secateurs confirmed that it wasn’t meant to be. He gave the cane a quick, affectionate squeeze before pulling it out of the wires, throwing it down onto the ground, and moving on. His gaze caught the space on his hand where a ring finger used to be. Even weak, useless appendages deserved respect in their final moments.
“What happened to your finger?” she asked, as if reading his mind.
“Are you all so curious in your…” What was it? Not a village, although it sort of looked like one from afar, with its log cabins and big, ugly central building. And calling it a cult to her face didn’t seem right. “Your group?”
“Oh, goodness. I’m sorry.” She seemed abashed.
Luc felt a rush of shame at picking on her. This was why he didn’t do this conversation thing. He always managed to say the wrong thing.
“I cut it off. With secateurs. Battery-powered ones that my broth—” He stopped himself from telling her the whole story, took in a couple of deep breaths, and blindly trimmed a spur he should have left.Merde. He breathed in slowly, out slowly, the way he’d learned to do whenever faced with strangers. “It was a cold day like this. You see? It is too dangerous for you to help.”
“You could cut and I could pull the branches out, to save you time and—”
“No!” The word came out sharp and loud enough to echo off the cliff face. It sounded, if possible, angrier in the retelling.
She stiffened, her hand dropping from the canes he’d already cut. She took a step back and, head low, whispered, “Thank you, sir. For your time.”
Bordel, he hadn’t meant to hurt her. He’d…Just let her go.
As she turned and made her way up the row of vines, Luc looked at the shadowy rocks above her. Their faces, normally benevolent as they oversaw his progress, exuded something different today—something forbidding. Ominously biblical shards of sunlight shone through the roiling clouds. None of this was good. She needed to leave him alone to his work and go back to her side of the mountain, but he didn’t like this dirty feeling the encounter had put in his gut, like a film that needed rinsing.
He called out to her, “Good luck,” hating how badly he wished she’d turn back for one final glimpse.
When she didn’t respond, irritation rose up in a childish burst.
Why the hell had those cult people sent her to him? What kind of maneuver was this? And if they hadn’t sent her and she was…escaping, or whatever it was, she should just leave. The woman was old enough to know better. If a person didn’t want to be part of a religion, she should take off. Simple.
He’d learned from experience that if you wanted it badly enough, you could rip your roots from any soil, no matter how deep they’d grown.
Or how much it hurt.
* * *
