Page 48 of Too Busy for Love

‘I remembered Abby saying she liked Shiraz,’ he tells me excitedly as I negotiate the narrow roads. ‘The wine I want to buy is called Ribas de Cabrera. It’s only twenty per cent Syrah grapes, with the remaining eighty being Mantonegro, a localgrape variety, but it tastes like Shiraz on speed. They only make it when the harvested grapes are of exceptional quality and, get this, they select the grapes for this wine individually.’

‘Wow, I bet that doesn’t come cheap.’

‘It’s not as expensive as you might think. Depending on where you get it from, you can pay anything from sixty to eighty pounds a bottle.’

‘That’s still a hell of a lot, James. I don’t want to rain on your parade, but do you think you might be overthinking this, just a little? I’m sure she’d be happy with something a fraction of that price. What if she doesn’t like it, or just knocks it back?’

‘She might be happy with something cheap, but what does it say about my feelings for her if I skimp on the wine? She’s an exceptional woman, and I wouldn’t be comfortable serving her anything less than an exceptional wine.’

I give him a brief grin. ‘You’re the boss.’

I’m relieved to discover that the people at the bodega speak fluent English, so I’m not forced to translate wine-talk. I also should have guessed that James knows the owners, so there’s lots of discussion about their various wines and different vintages. A seemingly endless array of bottles is brought in, opened, tasted and discussed at length. I’m also relieved to note that he carefully spits each wine into a container after tasting it; he’s never going to impress Abby if he’s plastered. We’re there for nearly an hour before we finally climb back into the minibus with James cradling his bottle of Cabrera like a baby.

‘Right,’ I tell him. ‘Rosa has recommended a florist not far from the villa, and I’m afraid she’s also given me a list of things I need to pick up for her. What sort of flowers are you after? Roses would be the obvious choice.’

‘Yeah, but they’re terribly clichéd. I don’t know what I want exactly, but hopefully I’ll spot something when we get there.’

If I thought the visit to the winery was drawn out, the florist is agonising. In the end, I set James and the florist up with a kind of pointing and gesturing system so I can leave them to it and go to get the things on Rosa’s list. When I get back to the minibus, he’s waiting for me with the largest bouquet I think I’ve ever seen.

‘Goodness,’ I exclaim. ‘Did you buy the whole shop?’

‘It does feel a bit like that,’ he admits. ‘I couldn’t decide, so in the end I asked her to make me a bouquet with a bit of everything.’

‘I bet she loved you. I dread to think how much it cost. I just hope Abby appreciates all the effort you’ve gone to.’ I stow Rosa’s shopping in the boot while James reverentially lays the bouquet on the floor between the back seats.

‘I’ve just had a thought,’ James says suddenly as we drive through the gates of the villa. ‘How am I going to smuggle the flowers in without Abby spotting them?’

‘Leave them with me,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll take them into my room and store them until you’re ready. Do you want me to put them next to your seat so you can give them to her at dinner? I don’t think we have a vase big enough, so I might need to put them in a bucket.’

‘That would be brilliant, thank you. Do you know if you have any decanters?’

‘I would have thought so. I’ll ask Rosa for one and bring it to your room.’

‘Thanks. The wine is too young to have a sediment but it will still benefit from breathing properly.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I tell him with a smile.

Rosa is unimpressed by both the flowers, which she dismisses as ‘ridiculously extravagant’, and the fuss over the wine. ‘He’s putting too much expectation on the poor woman,’ she says with a sniff. ‘I saw it a lot when we had the restaurant – men making lavish displays and ordering everything expensive, when it’s clear the woman would have preferred something simple. It was good for our profit margin, but for the women? Not so much.’

‘I think it’s only a problem if he becomes a wine bore over dinner. Nothing is likely to turn her off more than a lecture on top notes andterroir.’

‘How did you become such an expert all of a sudden?’ Rosa asks.

‘An hour at a vineyard listening to wine buffs will do that to you. Between you and me, I was fidgeting with boredom by the end. If anyone offers me a job doing vineyard excursions, remind me to say no.’

‘People like James are useful, though. Neither Pedro nor I know very much about wine, so we relied on a woman called Isabella to suggest the right ones for us to stock.’

‘Maybe we should introduce her to James if things don’t work out between him and Abby.’ I laugh.

‘She’s married, and she wouldn’t thank him for the flowers. She once threw a man out of one of her wine tastings because he was wearing aftershave.’

‘Why?’

‘She said the scent of the aftershave would interfere with his ability to smell the wine properly, and therefore it was a total waste of her time him being there.’

‘Wow. How to win friends and influence people. I doubt he bothered to darken her doorstep again.’

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you. But he was back for the very next tasting, minus the aftershave of course, and now they’re married.’

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