Page 18 of Love You Always

“I didn’t imagine a thing,” she says, her grin widening into a full smile. I don’t get out of the way in time because the force of that smile—her straight teeth with a tiny space between the front two, her pillowy lips coated in the palest pink gloss, the apples of her cheeks which frame her heart-shaped face—it just about does me in. “And I’m going to find out the reason for it, mark my words.”

Shaking my head, I turn away from her and head back toward the barn. No point in arguing. I just need to do a better job of keeping my thoughts to myself and stop imagining her falling in love in vineyards—in movies.

“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter, more to myself than at her. Looking over my shoulder to make sure she’s following, I see that she’s still smiling. Great. Gotta find the one person in the world who’s immune to my moods and have her trailing around after me like a puppy after a nap. Sounds about right for my luck.

She also seems unable or unwilling to stop talking. Her voice sounds like a goddamn song as she narrates our walk to the building with the fermentation tanks. “Are these oaks? I should know from the shape of the leaves, but I’ll admit I was kind of a Girl Scout dropout, so I don’t know my plants. I don’t picture you in a Boy Scout uniform, but I guess if you grow up in a place with plants and trees and nature, you don’t need to join a club to learn what’s what. So…are they oaks? I don’t see any acorns on the ground,” she twitters, somehow oblivious to the fact that I’m only punctuating her observations with the occasional grunt.

“Yes. Oaks.”

“Ah, so I haven’t lost all the farm girl in me.” I sneak a look in her direction and see the blissed-out joy she seems to feel just being here. I used to feel the same way when it felt like being here was a choice, not a family obligation.

After twenty minutes of her yammering on with that silky voice, we reach the lab. I hold the door open and motion for her to walk inside.

“Ooh, I feel like I’m being invited into the inner sanctum,” she whispers, stepping quietly so the boots don’t make noise on the cement floor.

“I’m still not sure why I agreed to show you all this,” I say, and it’s the God’s honest truth. I’m not in the practice of bringing guests to the lab to show them how I determine when the grapes are ready to be picked. Sure, there are probably some who’d get a kick out of knowing the inner workings of Buttercup Hill, but we keep a tight wrap on what’s open to the public and what’s kept behind closed doors. Any competitor could come on a wine-tasting tour and learn far too much about our process if we let just anyone peek behind the screen.

“Because I asked nicely,” she says, eyes darting around the room. I watch her take in the clean white countertops, the assorted beakers and pipettes on neat shelves, the microscopes that make the place look like a science classroom. Ella studies the large wall where a map shows all of our vineyards, marked in different colors depending on what types of grapes are grown there. Next to that, whiteboards have lists of which grapes have been picked already and where they are now—the casks and barrels where they’re fermenting.

Ella takes it all in as I pull out the small plastic bags from the larger burlap bag. She doesn’t ask questions, making me think the way everything is laid out is self-explanatory. That fills me with an odd sense of pride, even though I shouldn’t give a rat’s ass what she thinks.

“Can I have my notebook?”

She opens it to the page where she’s neatly written down everything I rattled off in the vineyards, all the numbers and names that correspond to the grapes in the bags. I look it over and nod.

“Did I do okay, Grumpy Grape?”

“Don’t call me that.” I look over her list and take the first grapes out of their bags and drop them into test tubes. I use a glass rod to crush the grapes. Standing close to me, she watches over my shoulder, like a student memorizing every step in order to get an A.

“Deal, as long as you explain what you’re doing.” She leans on the counter and folds her hands under her chin. “We’re measuring Brix, right?”

I turn my head, surprised. “Yeah. How do you know about Brix?” I find her face inches from mine. The rush of heat I feel in my chest startles me and my eyes dart to hers. I never expected to find a woman’s wine knowledge such a turn on.

We stand frozen for a beat, something passing between us that I can’t identify. I clear my throat and glance away from the intensity of her gaze.

I pull two rolling stools over and place them a foot apart from each other. We each take a seat.

She shrugs. “Doesn’t everyone? One degree of Brix is one gram of sugar per hundred milliliters of solution. What’s the solution?” She cocks her head with such a matter-of-fact look of boredom that I almost think that everyone does know what Brix means. But…no.

Cocking my head to the side, I return her stare, my eyes tracing the lines of her face while I wait. By the time they land on her lips, she flinches. “Fine. I did some research. I’m kind of a science nerd, you might as well know.”

None of this tracks with what I know about Ella Fieldstone the actress, which is admittedly not much. I have to own the fact that I’ve made some sweeping generalizations about her based on one interaction with her and the splashy gossip rag stories no one can avoid without living in a cave.

“You are?”

“Totally.”

I nod, brow furrowing again as I turn back to the test tubes. “So if you already know about Brix, why are we here?”

“Oh, well, I read up on wine making a little bit, but only the broad strokes. There’s nothing like seeing it in person.”

“And you require this in order to pick wines for your wedding?” I’m still not understanding why this whole charade is necessary to throw a few bottles of cabernet at her guests. We have many vintages of wine at Buttercup Hill, but knowing about Brix doesn’t make them a better pairing with fish or meat.

“Not exactly. The wedding part is a party. But this—getting to spend time here learning about how everything works, getting down into the science of wine, that’s what gets my juices flowing. It’s what’ll make the rest of the wedding planning bearable, just between you and me.”

There’s so much to unpack. She isn’t excited about the wedding planning? It flies in the face of nearly everything I know about engaged couples and destination weddings. And her. I took a deep dive into social media and found way too many instances of her crowing about her wedding to that country star.

But before I can broach the subject of why she needs to make wedding planning more bearable, a veil of concern drops over her face. She waves her hands between us. “Please forget I said that. I’m excited about the wedding. And the planning. I’m just…like I said, I like science more. Got a little carried away, is all.”

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