Page 34 of Just One Taste

“We need the netting!” Her voice could hardly be heard through the wind.

“I’ll get it!” Daniel shouted. “Where is it?”

“Storage shed next to the tank room.” She surveyed the rows of vines, then glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the tank room. “I’d better come with you. Only way to protect the grapes is to get the vines wrapped.”

Against the wind, Paige ran faster than Daniel would have expected. He stayed on her heels.

As they rushed up the slope, Paige shouted at him, “There’s no doubt my people know what they were doing, this wasn’t their first hurricane. But with absolutely no warning, they’d had no time to prepare. I don’t even know if we have enough supplies on hand to salvage the entire crop.”

“We’ll figure it out.” At least he hoped they would. Saving the grapes mattered more to him than he would have expected. He understood, from now on, what mattered to Paige, mattered to him.

Pelts of rain were coming down so hard, Paige wiped the water away from her face in an angry stroke. “At this rate we might not need a hurricane to ruin my crop.” Crossing the last few feet to the door in one long stride, she yanked at the door. Nothing. Banging the wooden door with her hip, hard, she tried again. “Crap.”

“Let me.” Daniel moved in front of her and turning the handle he gave it a slight wiggle, lifted up and pulled.

Muttering a soft thanks, she rushed past him. The place was less organized than he’d expected, and from the way she stopped short and blinked, he suspected she was just as surprised. Her gaze darted from left to right and then she pointed to the back wall. Rolled up in bundles, the black netting was piled high. “There.”

There was just one problem, enough junk had been packed in front of the netting to slow down a charging bull. Too bad it wasn’t enough to slow down a hurricane. Frantically shoving boxes and other items aside as fast as they could, Daniel climbed over the last mound of crap and started hauling down the bundles. Paige was in full command mode, but he could see the worry deep in her eyes. And he didn’t like it.

“Put ’em here.” She’d pulled what looked like a flat furniture dolly in front of him. With the winds blowing as hard as they were, he had his doubts that the hole bunch wouldn’t topple over, but it was better than running them down to the vines one at a time.

“There should be zip ties too.” Her gaze darted around the piles of bundled netting.

“Here they are.” Daniel held them up then spotted some bungee cords hanging from one of the racks on the side wall. “We’ll secure the bundles with these.”

“Great idea!” she shouted over the wind outside. “When we get all this to the vines, we’ll connect one corner to the pole at the end of the row, then unroll it around and back.”

“Got it!” He actually had no idea what she was talking about, but hoped it would be obvious when he got there. He might not be a vintner, but he knew time was running out.

Chapter Fifteen

From where Paige stood at the storage room door, she could already see her brothers, who had still been at the ranch when she sent out the SOS, had arrived in trucks loaded with plywood and were hammering the sheets up to protect the exposed glass. So worried about the grapes, it hadn’t even occurred to her to protect the building.

Bless her Uncle Oliver’s sons, Derrick and Trevor were running rope lines from the building to the vineyard. Moving against the wind was growing more and more difficult, that would be a huge help.

She could barely hear the sounds of car door after car door slamming. The footsteps stomping across a parking lot already six inches under water were silenced by the angry winds.

“Where do you want us?” Her cousins Devlin, Cameron and Leah stood in front of her wearing wading boots and rain gear. She couldn’t decide if they looked like a fisherman for a fried fish commercial or the character from an old salt commercial. Either way, she had never been happier to see so many of her family coming to her aid.

“Follow us to the vines! My team are already pairing up with family and spreading out!” She was shouting as loud as she could and she could tell her family was struggling to hear. Car doors continued to slam shut and she could see more people dashing across the parking lot. The Governor must have sent off flairs. If things weren’t so dire, she might have laughed.

Arms waving people on, her cousin Leah turned, leaned in, and cupped her mouth to be better heard. “You go on! I’ll send newcomers your way!”

She really didn’t have time but she couldn’t help reaching out and hugging her cousin before running after Daniel, Devlin and Cameron. The only sibling missing from that branch of the Baron family tree was their sister Olivia.

In Paige’s business, rain was a necessary evil, but this was insane. As hard as it was already blowing, the wind picked up even more. And now the rain began to fall horizontally. That wassonot a good sign. Things were getting worse and for everyone’s safety she needed to get them inside sooner than later.

Taking up a position by a row of vines, she shouted at Daniel, “I’ll hold the end! You staple it to the post!” Despite holding on as tightly as she could, the wind snatched the black netting out of her hands.

With the reflexes of a goalie, Daniel stretched out his hand and caught it. “Let me hold it.” He handed her the stapler. “You put in the staples.”

Smart man. His grip was stronger than hers. She needed to remember with a man like Daniel in her life, she didn’t need to always do the hard parts. He would be a true partner in every sense. Moving along the row as fast as they could in the miserable conditions, she ignored her hair whipping in her face as they worked. All that mattered was to protect these grapes at all costs.

“Is this netting enough to do the job?” Daniel yelled through the whistling wind.

“It has been before. It’s all we’ve got!”

His gaze lifted to the tall cypress pines that surrounded the building and edges of the fields of grapes. “Are they supposed to bend like that?”

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