He closed his eyes. ‘I don’t want to put any pressure on you,’ he said at last. ‘But if the thought that people might find out about us scares you so badly – is this really something you want to be doing?’
Here it was again. He was perfect, and so he’d provided me with a second perfect out, another opportunity to make a clean break, no harm, no—
‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘It is.’
I fisted my hands into his T-shirt and rested my forehead against his. ‘But the second you don’t want to anymore, just say, okay? I won’t hold it against you. I might have to hit pause for a few weeks, anyway – Elias is staying with me and I don’t know if I’ll beable to sneak away on Thursdays – and I would completely understand if you were sick of me and all my messy bullshit, so—mmph.’
Satoshi’s mouth crashed into mine, his fingers twisting hard into my hair, and by the time I managed to get out of the car, the windows were very, very foggy.
That wasn’t what I thought about later, though, after another bottle of wine, when Sadie and Jonah had finally left and Elias had gone to bed. As I stacked the glasses in the dishwasher, I didn’t think about the way Satoshi had kissed me, or the heat of his skin against my palms when I’d slid my hands under his shirt, or even the erection I’d felt against my thigh, literal hard evidence that he really did want me.
Instead, it was the way he’d gently thumbed a stray fleck of mascara off my cheek and helped me redo my ponytail so I looked presentable before I went back inside. The way he’d looked, crouching down on my kitchen floor, holding Georgia so carefully, so tenderly. The way he’d sounded, when he told me he’d kiss me in front of the whole world if that was what I wanted.
I knew better than to read into a statement like that. I’d let a man kiss me in front of the whole world once, and it hadn’t meant anything in the end.
But even though it was careless – reckless – completely and utterly foolhardy – I couldn’t stop Sadie’s voice echoing through my mind.I think you can have it all.
Chapter TenSatoshi
Tasting today: ahead of vintage, pinot noir, Tasmania, Australia.
Multiple vineyards are often blended to make quality Tassie pinots, but sometimes a single vineyard needs to stand alone.
‘Try this,’ Isamu said.
He used a glass wine thief to extract tiny amounts from two different barrels of pinot, dispensing them into the tasting glasses in my hands. ‘These come from the two blocks I use to make the Noriko. I’ve always blended them before, but I’m considering releasing them as two separate single vineyard wines this time. What do you think?’
I looked at the wines against the white of my sleeve (both pale, one slightly more purple than the other), smelled them (fresh strawberry and raspberry in one; darker notes of cherry and baking spice in the other), then tasted them. ‘Do you actually think they’ll be better as single vineyard? Or do you just not want to make the Noriko anymore?’
‘I’m genuinely wondering whether they’ll be better as single vineyard.’
I tasted them individually again, then tipped one glass into the other and tasted them together, as we both pretended he hadn’talready long since decided what he was going to do. ‘You’ll sacrifice some balance if you don’t combine them, but as a blend, they’re working at cross purposes – speaking over each other.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
Of course it was.
We spent ninety minutes walking around the winery, trying some of the wines Isamu had in progress. ‘Thanks, Sato,’ he said, as we emerged into the Sauternes-coloured sun of the late Monday afternoon. ‘I appreciate getting your palate on these.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I replied, like he hadn’t been extremely obviously buttering me up.
I’d been bracing for a reckoning ever since I’d let the wordOnisanpass my lips, and I steeled myself for it now.Okay, I’ve pretended I need your help, let’s talk about how you clearly can’t do anything without mine.
As we trudged back up the hill, though, Isamu didn’t say anything.
Okasan was waiting for us in the doorway of the B&B. ‘There you are!’ she said in Japanese. ‘Okaeri. I was wondering where you’d – oh, there she goes again.’
‘There she goes,’ Isamu echoed long-sufferingly. Yquem – who I’d dropped off before we headed to the winery – had launched herself at him and was wrapped around his neck like a scarf.
‘It continues to be utterly mystifying to me,’ I said, trying and failing to punch the pang of jealousy down, ‘that even though I’m the one who looks after her every need, she likes you a thousand times better anyway.’
Isamu only grunted, blowing a tuft of Yquem’s fur out of his face.
Okasan had made chicken katsu. I took a brief look through Isamu’s cellar and selected a bottle of Condrieu to pair with it. ‘Itadakimasu,’ Okasan said, as we sat down to eat.
‘Itadakimasu,’ Isamu and I dutifully repeated.
Our mother was a great cook, and the wine was beautiful (it was from my brother’s cellar, after all), but I was eating and drinking on autopilot, not really tasting anything. My head felt overfull, stuffed – not like it did when I tried to cram too much information from my theory binder into my head in too short a space of time, but like someone had cracked open my skull and rammed a whole heap of cotton balls in there with my brain.
