Page 44 of Love on the Vine
I let out the breath I’d been holding as they said good night and headed out the door.
“How about a game of tarot?” Clémence asked.
“Tarot, like fortune-telling?” Olivia looked unsure.
“No, it’s a game, nothing to do with the future,” Claire explained. “Come on, it’s fun. Isn’t it, Jake?”
“That’s debatable,” I grunted, but agreed to play. As Claire explained the very long rules of the game, Olivia’s eyes glazed over and I bit back a smile. Playing tarot with the sisters was serious business. They were both extremely competitive. You’d think it was an Olympic sport. Olivia made a good go of it and even had beginner’s luck, which made the sisters sick with indignation. “Mais, c’est incroyable!”
I relaxed into my armchair and, against all odds, began to enjoy myself. At some point, Clémence served me a glass of their 2012 Premier Cru and I absently took a sip, sitting up straight as an arrow when my taste buds started firing. I tasted it again to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. No, it was all there: the dried cherry and tobacco, the hint of minerality at the side of my tongue. I shivered with relief. “This is one of your best.”
“I should hope you like it, since you’re our only exporter.” Claire laughed. “Ah, would you look at that,quelle pute.” She nodded toward King, who had managed to weasel his way onto the sofa and into Olivia’s lap, his big jolly head blocking her cards.
It was well after midnight by the time we made our way up the creaky stairs. Olivia stopped in front of her door, hesitating, and I stared at her mouth, remembering how soft it had been under mine.
“Well, good night,” she said softly.
“Good night.” I tore my eyes away from her lips and walked to my own room, running off quadratic equations in my head.
* * *
Over the next few days, we fell into a comfortable rhythm. Olivia and I met with winemakers during the day and then spentthe evenings with the sisters. Claire and Olivia cooked while Clémence and I sampled and priced different vintages, and then I’d spend the rest of the night getting my ass kicked at tarot.
I thought I’d prefer to visit local wineries by myself. After all, I knew my producers and their wines, even if my tasting ability wasn’t up to snuff. Having someone to train should have slowed me down, especially when my attraction to my trainee was distracting to a fault.
Strangely, however, instead of dreading having to spend the day with Olivia, I found myself looking forward to it. Introducing her to my favorite wines made them seem new and full of promise again, instead of something I took for granted.
Olivia was a quick learner and asked all the right questions, sometimes ones I hadn’t thought of myself. Her palate was impeccable—she really could have a career in wine if she wanted to—and if I had doubts about a particular bottle, I’d have her taste it.
Plus, the app was a real timesaver, making it possible to enter the tasting notes, the order, and the shipping information all in one place. Some of the winemakers had been so impressed by it that she’d put them in touch with the app creator.
As the week wore on, we’d grown more relaxed with each other, despite the effect she continued to have on me. I ignored the way the scent of her perfume lingered in my car, and I pretended to stare at her lips on the glass to gauge her reaction to a particular wine, not because I was imagining them sliding over the head of my cock.
The physical attraction I could deal with. What I couldn’t understand was how I could spend all day with her and still want to be with her in the evening. It was like I’d developed some kind of weird dependency.
I didn’t like that. And so, toward the end of the trip on our way back from visiting a winemaker in Chablis, I suggested that I visit the rest of the producers on my own.
“Why?” she asked, hurt etched over her delicate features.
“You’ve been a great help, really. But there’s nothing new to learn. There’s no point trailing me around trying to negotiate shipments. But you could learn more about winemaking from Clémence and Claire.”
“If you’re sure . . .”
“I am.”
But, over the next two days, instead of working faster and more efficiently by myself, I was bored and couldn’t taste jack shit. My mood tanked along with my taste buds and hit rock bottom when I met with two of my original clients who wanted to go wider with their distribution. They’d already decided to go with the Sungate Group, they explained. Apparently, the group’s new consultant had come around a couple weeks before and convinced them they’d sell more with a bigger distributor.
So that’s what Thomas had been up to in Burgundy when he’d visited Claire and Clémence.
I couldn’t argue with their reasons for choosing Sungate. From a financial standpoint, it made sense even if they were forced to lower the price per bottle. We’d always prided ourselves on our exclusive boutique approach to wine, believing there was more value in smaller production. I’d seen the way demand for more product from the bigger markets impacted traditional winemaking techniques and quality, but in the end the winemakers had to make a living.
Maybe it was inevitable that the bigger groups would win out. I’d received another proposal from Sungate last week offering to buy me out. I hadn’t shared it with anyone, not even Jin, and it was constantly on my mind.
By the time I returned to Savigny that evening, I felt like a dog who’d just had his nose rubbed in his own shit. It was a relief to pull into the gravel driveway in front of the familiar exterior of the farmhouse. But instead of heading inside to nurse my wounds alone with a bottle of beer, I found myself tracking down Olivia, who was out in the vineyard, her telephone poised over the budding vines.
“Oh, hey, how did it go?” she asked when I approached, throwing shadow over her subject.
“Okay,” I lied. “What are you doing?”
