Page 6 of Love Among Vines

She groped blindly in her purse. Could it be?

“Coming?” Blake held the door.

Jade’s fingers froze on the spiral of her sketchbook. This was probably a false alarm. She had never been a landscape painter, anyway.

“Yes, sorry. It’s so beautiful here.”

“It’s no Napa Valley,” Blake slurred with a note of condescension. Despite her attempts at snobbery, she had been more than happy to finish off Kenya’s fruit-forward flight at the last winery. It was a good thing they were going to lunch after this.

Her comment seemed to have drawn the attention of a stupidly attractive man in a three-piece charcoal suit. He was on one knee, restocking bottles in a display. Piercing green eyes set under a furrowed brow lifted to meet Jade’s.

Her breath caught in her chest. Had she stepped into some weird winery MRI machine? Because she swore he had just looked right into her core.

With her face growing hot, she shuffled off to the tasting room. They crowded around a table, and Jade sat facing the gift shop area where the man was still restocking. Her gaze was drawn to the bulge of biceps beneath his suit. She hunkered down to hide behind Kenya’s springy corkscrews as their server chatted with them.

She was in her fifties, with kind brown eyes and a midnight blue blazer. Did all their employees dress so formally? “This is our Blaufränkisch, a dry red with notes of black cherry and blackberry. You might also notice a distinct peppery taste that’s unique to this varietal.”

Jade was barely paying attention as she lifted the glass to her lips.

The velvety liquid washed over her tongue. There was the sting of tannins, but so much more. Hints of plum and rich spice. An earthy full body that warmed her from the inside out.

A memory hit her out of nowhere—crowded around a table with her parents in their favorite Italian restaurant in Queens, lifting glasses and toasting to her twenty-first birthday. Her mom’s laugh lines stood out in the flickering candlelight. The scent of marinara was sharp in the air as her dad reminisced about the trials of sleeping in a chair at the hospital.

Her heart ached.

“This is amazing,” she whispered. Her eyes were watering, and she sniffed. Memories or no memories, she wouldnotbe crying on Ashley’s day.

The others turned to look at her. Ashley’s nose had wrinkled. Camila pushed her glass to Jade. Kenya shrugged and downed the rest of her sample.

“That’s great,” their server said. “If you take some home with you, it pairs really well with hard cheeses and smoked sausage.”

Jade, who regularly had a charcuterie board for dinner, nodded enthusiastically. She accepted the rest of Camila’s wine and savored the hint of cedar on her tongue. She made a mental note to tell her CrossFit friend Lindon about this place. He was a food and wine critic for theNew York Timesand they had shared many bottles over the course of the last two years. But none of them had ever elicited a memory like this.

“Next we have a dry Riesling. This batch was produced by some of the oldest vines on our vineyard. They were planted in 1975 by Valentina Rhodes, an Austrian immigrant who came here with her husband to start a new life. Her family was in the wine industry, and they’re credited with bringing some unique varietals to the Finger Lakes.”

The Riesling hit Jade’s palate like Pop Rocks. Stone fruits mixed with fresh citrus. The tingling feeling was back, racing up and down her spine like she’d sat on a live wire. Holy shit. She reached for her purse and quietly drew out her sketchbook. Could it be? All she had to do to throw off her artist’s block was come to the Finger Lakes and sample some wine?

Her fingers trembled as she wrapped them around a pencil. The tip was dull, but it would have to do.

With notes of grapefruit and lime zest on her tongue, she cast a glance around the crowded tasting room. What would she draw? The view of the lake through the floor-to-ceiling windows? Sunshine filtering through the exposed beams on the ceiling?

Her gaze moved back to the mysterious man who was now standing and chatting with another employee. A laugh broke the grumpy mask of his face. His eyes crinkled in the corners, full lips embracing a row of white teeth. His dark hair was molded back into place, but she could picture it hanging over one eye, disheveled in the unseasonal October heat.

The pencil moved across the paper almost without a thought from her.

It was happening. Finally, something. Nobody was going to want to buy a sloppy sketch of some random guy in a winery. But even if it was absolute garbage, it was something. And something was so much better than nothing.

The server refilled her glass. Jade raised it to her lips and sampled greedily. It had the crispness of chardonnay, but less oak. Apricots teased her palate while her pencil glided over the paper, filling in a crease here, a line there. Shading above the brow—not too much.

“This wine is trash,” Blake whispered loudly.

Their server faltered as she was pouring the next wine.

Jade broke out of her trance and squared her shoulders. For the past twenty-four hours, she had given Blake the benefit of the doubt. She had put up with the constant side-eyeing of her wardrobe, the self-important shouting on the phone, and the never-ending negativity.

But this was not her fucking bachelorette party.

As if some unseen force had taken over her body, Jade ripped the wineglass out of Blake’s hand and slammed it down.

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