Unbreakable (Cloverleigh Farms, #4)(10)

It awakened something small and fluttery inside me.





Four





Henry





I’d forgotten how beautiful she was.

I hadn’t spent any extended time with Sylvia, the oldest Sawyer daughter, since she’d lived in California as long as I’d worked here, but I’d met and chatted with her a dozen times over the years. She had always struck me as elegant and kind, maybe a little reserved—friendly, but not as outgoing as April, Chloe, or Frannie, whom I knew much better because they lived or worked here. So it surprised me that she’d wandered in here tonight to say hi.

The last time I’d seen her was at Mack and Frannie’s wedding. She and her husband had been seated at our table, but he was the kind of guy who liked to dominate the conversation, and all I could think of was that I finally had to explain Renee’s absence. I hadn’t told anyone yet that she’d already moved out. But I remembered thinking that Sylvia had looked sad that night—stunning, as usual, but sad.

One year, Renee had pitched a fit about my talking to Sylvia too long at the Cloverleigh Christmas party, not just because Sylvia was attractive, but she had two perfect children as well. So not only was her face superior, but her uterus was too.

“You’re being ridiculous,” I’d told Renee after she blew up at me on the ride home. “She asked me about this year’s crop because of the wet spring weather. We were talking about wine.”

“You don’t think she’s pretty?” Renee accused.

There was no good way to answer that question. “Listen. In all the years we’ve been together, I’ve never once been tempted by another woman’s face—let alone another woman’s uterus.”

It was true. I’d never been unfaithful to Renee, never even thought about it.

But standing here looking at Sylvia’s wide-set blue eyes, her cheeks pink from the cold, her long blond hair tumbling around her face from beneath her winter hat . . . I didn’t blame Renee for being jealous.

Of course I thought Sylvia was pretty—who wouldn’t?

She glanced around. “So what’s new and exciting? I haven’t been in here in a while.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that, since my idea of exciting wasn’t always the same as other people’s when it came to wine. Before I could decide if hearing about our new bottling line would send her racing for the door, bored to tears, she asked another question.

“What’s in the barrels?” She moved toward the large windows overlooking the cellar, which was one level down and lined with huge steel tanks and rows of big oak barrels.

“Several things.” I walked over and stood at her side. She smelled like cookies, and my stomach growled. “Chardonnay, cabernet franc, pinot noir.”

“And in the tanks?”

“Riesling.”

“Oh, I love riesling.”

“Want to taste some?”

She faced me, her eyes lighting up. “Sure.”

“Follow me.” I led her through a door at the back of the tasting room and down the stone steps into the brightly lit cellar. From an antique cabinet over on one side, I grabbed two glasses. “So the wine is going to be a little bit cloudy because it’s not filtered yet, and it’s also freezing cold, but—”

“Oh, wow. There’s ice on the tanks.” She took off her mittens and hat, shoved them inside her coat pockets, and fluffed her hair a little.

“Yeah.” Momentarily distracted by the feminine gesture and all that golden blond hair, I paused for a second before recovering. “This is what’s called cold stabilization, where the wine is stored just above its freezing point.”

“Really? Why?” Then she grimaced. “Sorry. I’ll just warn you now, all my questions will probably sound stupid to you. I love wine, but despite growing up here, I’m pretty ignorant about the process.”

“That’s okay.” I turned the spigot on one of the tanks and filled one glass halfway, handing it to her. “I’m happy to teach you about it—you just have to let me know when I’m getting boring. I could talk forever about making wine. Renee used to—never mind.”

She put a hand on my arm. “No, tell me. Renee used to what?”

I filled the second glass, sorry I’d opened my mouth, but at the same time thinking how nice it was to feel her touch. “She was just over it after a while. She got sick of hearing me talk about what I do.”

“But you love what you do.”

I exhaled as I straightened. “It was part of a bigger problem. Anyway, I’m happy to answer your questions. If you start to snore, I’ll stop talking.”

She laughed. “That won’t happen.” Lifting up her glass, she looked at the riesling, which was pale yellow and slightly opaque. Her fingers were slender and graceful on the stem, her fingernails painted a soft pink. “Why do you have to keep it so cold?”

“To prevent crystallization of the bitartrates—what we sometimes call ‘wine diamonds.’”

“Wine diamonds.” Her plush lips curved into a smile. “That actually sounds beautiful.”

I laughed. “Maybe, but you don’t want them in your glass. Next week we’ll filter this and get it ready for bottling.”