“I’ll dance.”
“You coming, George?”
Jessie forged a path to the dance floor, tall and willowy and easy to follow. She immediately started moving with the music, her body sinuous and easy in its undulations. George, smaller and curvier, was different, her movements limited to shoulders and hips.
And Abby… After a few seconds of hesitation, she closed her eyes and sank into the sea of sensation. The music, the beat, came from inside her. Her heart, her blood sliding through veins, limbs heavy but full of a new sort of energy. Sin—a sea of it. A hand landed on her hip, and her eyes shot open. Isaiah.
Turning, panicked, she encountered someone she’d never seen before. A short, older man.
Not the Church. Not Isaiah.
With a quick smile and a shake of her head, she backed away from the man. She took in the other women with a smile and danced. The way she’d always wanted to dance.
My choice. Me. If I’m going to sin, I’m going to sink into it, do it for real. Live in my body this once instead of floating high above it.
On she danced, through to the end of the song. The music wrapped around her as surely as the safety net created by these two other women. Another song came on, and she opened her eyes to find them beside her. Another hand landed on her hip—one belonging to a younger, bigger man this time. It tightened, pulled her in too close, the smell of cologne cloying. She pushed away, turned to catch sight of the man. He was fine, nice-looking, smooth and shaved and perfect in a way she’d never experienced. But everything about him was wrong, and suddenly, she was too hot, too sweaty, the music too loud, the sensations overwhelming.
Jessie appeared in his face and said something Abby couldn’t hear. Immediately, the man disappeared into the sea of revelers, but Abby’d had enough.
Pushing away from the throng, she wound her way back to their table, where she picked up her glass of water.
Jessie joined her. “I’m done,” she said, out of breath.
“Shall we?” asked George, and when Abby nodded, they grabbed their coats and took off for the door.
“What’d you think?” George asked on the way to the car. “Of dancing like that?”
“I like it.” On a sharp exhale, Abby added, “Not really what I’d pictured, though.”
“No?”
Abby couldn’t bring herself to extrapolate, but an image arose in her mind, unbidden: a man behind her, messed-up hands on her hips, tightening like that other man’s had, but…but different. Funny how, in that hot, sweaty place, there’d been nothing of Luc, but out here, she could smell him perfectly, on the clean, cold, snow-drenched air. And she missed him so much it hurt.
24
After a long day of hard, hard labor, with his neighbors keeping a constant watch, Luc was twitchy and tired and ready to jump out of his skin. With those assholes following his every move, he hadn’t been able to sleep in days. He missed Abby and couldn’t count the number of times he’d caught himself wondering what she was doing and where she was, or why she hadn’t called him. What if she wasn’t recovering properly? Could that be the problem? He hadn’t considered that possibility before, focusing instead on the worrying possibility that she’d attempt to get Sammy out on her own.
He ran back to the cabin, propelled by fear, and after a frantic search for Sheriff Navarro’s card, realized he had the number on his phone. The man picked up after a couple rings.
“Navarro.”
“It’s Luc Stanek.”
“Luc.”
“I was…” Jesus, he was breathing hard. He swallowed, trying to calm down. “How is she?”
The sheriff didn’t answer immediately. When he did, his voice sounded more hesitant than usual.
“She’s left us.”
Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit, what did that mean?
“Got a place to stay in town. And got herself a job.”
Luc breathed a sigh of relief. Christ, was this what it felt like to have a heart attack? “My God, Clay, you nearly killed me there.”
Clay huffed out a laugh. “Sorry about that. We’ve been… I was planning on calling you today. We’re going to be heading your way.”
“Who’s we?”
“Look. I should warn you that you might be asked to evacuate your place in the next couple of days. We’re putting together a joint—”
“No. I won’t do that. The second I leave, they’ll… Fuck, I don’t know what they’ll do.”
“We can’t just go in there without being fully prepared. Can you hold out a couple more days? I don’t have the manpower yet, but I’ll send a deputy out if I have to.”
Luc glanced at his front window, constantly covered by the curtains now, when before, he’d never closed them. He’d even tacked a piece of fabric onto the kitchen door. “No. No, I’ll be fine for now.”
“You’ll let me know, though, if anything changes?”
“Yes.” He was about to hang up when he remembered why he’d called. “Wait! Where is she? Abby, I mean. Where’s she working?”
“The Nook.”
Surprised, Luc asked, “The bar in town?”
Clay chuckled. “Yeah. She’ll be good at it. Even sick, she was chatty, friendly.” He paused. “She’s a good kid.”
Luc nodded. Kid. What an inadequate way to describe so incredible a woman.
After ending the call, Luc made his way to the front window and pulled back the curtain, with Le Dog’s curious eyes on him. There, at the top of the hill, directly behind the fence, stood his twenty-four-hour-a-day armed guard, keeping watch over the house. Making sure he didn’t cross the fence. But also, he suspected, waiting for him to leave his place. One wrong move, and they’d be on him.
In the past forty-eight hours or so, fear had given way to frustration, which he knew was just a thin veneer over the anger that threatened to swallow him up and push him to do stupid things. Like find a way through that fence in the dead of night, locate Sammy on his own, and bring him to Abby. The thought of presenting her with the boy, like some kind of knight giving her his obeisance, made him feel both pathetic and excited.
Stifling that energy, he went to make dinner for himself and Le Dog, noting that there wasn’t much left. He’d have to go to town soon, or they’d starve. He’d finished up dinner and was thinking about heading to bed when the sound of an engine reached him, struggling up the drive.
It’s her. Excitement bubbled up, and he leaped down the stairs, nearly stumbling at the bottom. Pulling up his pants, he opened the front door, started to run out on the porch, and stopped short.
The woman who stepped out of the car was not Abby Merkley. She wasn’t pale and soft-looking, with long, burgundy hair. This woman was all sharp angles, plucked and perfumed, with razor-thin bones and an imperial nose. Starlet sunglasses perched atop her polished hair, and she wore a slick silver coat over skin-tight jeans. Who in their right mind wore stiletto boots in the country, on a vineyard?
A second, different wave of hope rose in his chest, though, as she made her way up to the cabin, heels crunching on the remnants of two-week-old snow. They want me back, yelled the voice in his head. Pathetic voice, quickly tamped down, especially as nobody else emerged from the car. Not Olivier or Maman, the ones who mattered most.
Luc swallowed his disappointment and ignored the tightening in his chest.
“I was just heading out, Céline,” he lied, grabbing his keys from the hook by the door as if his ex traveled from France to see him every day. “What do you want?”
“T’as vu comme tu me parles, Luc?”
“Yes, well,” he responded in French. “I’m sorry I’m curt. Your visit is a bit of a surprise.”
“Can we talk?”
The last thing he wanted was this woman in his house—his space—but with that constant presence up the hill, he had no choice.
“What the hell are you doing here, Luc?”
“What do you mean?”
“You go from one of the most prestigious terroirs in the world to”—she waved dismissively at the cabin’s rustic interior, Le Dog, even him—“to this.” Trust a Frenchwoman to express such scorn in a single, innocuous syllable. “There’s nothing wrong with being the peasant in the family. The earth, the life’s blood. Without you, the wine is nothing. Nothing. But this…”
“Yes, well, here everything is mine.”
“So? You’re selling the grapes.”
He hesitated, oddly nervous at the idea of outing himself. “I’m making wine.”
She stopped in the process of removing her coat, eyes wide. “Really? How is it?”
“Young,” he said. “But good. Interesting.”
“Are you selling it?”
“Not yet.”
She laughed, taking off her coat and handing it to him. “No surprise there. Do you even own anything besides work clothes?”
“It’s different here,” he said, irritated at her immediate assumptions. “You sell to individuals. Tastings and wine clubs and—”
“And you plan to do that? Luc”—she leaned in and put a hand on his arm, sweet and condescending—“you don’t like people, remember? You love your vines and animals. No time for anything as base as us humans.”
Luc looked down at the coat in his hands. Her signature perfume wafted up. He hung it up and turned back to her. “What are you doing here, Céline?”
“Don’t you listen to my messages?”
“No.”
She made a long pffft sound through pouty, red lips, making Luc feel sick with the excess of it. Too much. Too much everything. “Things are not going well at home.”
“Home?”
“Our home, Luc. Your family home.”
“It’s not my home.”
“How can you say that? It will always be home, Luc.”
He studied her earnest expression, tinged with a jot of desperation. And then he knew. “Is it the upper fields?”
“What?”
“It’s the upper fields, right?” She didn’t have to answer. He could see it on her face as she sank onto his sofa. All the pressure, all the stupidity of planting those fields when he’d warned them. Grandpère had told them not to. Nobody, in all the generations of growers and winemakers before, had planted that field. They’d given it instead to the villagers, those without gardens, to plant for food.
Not profitable enough, Olivier had said. And Maman had agreed. Céline had, of course, stayed silent. She’d had his back then, not Olivier’s. At least he’d thought so.
“When did you and my brother start fucking?” he asked, fueled by curiosity but still unable to stop the anger that rose up at the memory.
“Oh, Luc, we’re not going to—”
“We damn well are. You came all this way to discuss things. To drag me back there, right?”
“I didn’t think—”
“No. You didn’t, Céline. You never did. If you or any of the others had ever thought about a damned thing besides your own personal gain, you would have realized that the upper fields were meant to stay fallow. That the gardens Grandpère let the villagers plant were full of roses and marigolds and fruits. Those fruits attracted the stupid flies.” He paused, standing above, waiting for her to catch on. “Away from the vines.”
The look of surprise on his ex’s face would have been comical if it hadn’t meant he was right. And if he was right, he should—
No. He wouldn’t go back to France. Not unless Olivier got down on his knees and begged. Let them save their own asses. Their own heritage.
“It’s the fruit flies, right, Céline? Hein?”
Her voice came out close to a whisper. “Yes.”
“You all thought it was hocus-pocus. You and Maman and Olivier. You thought Grandpère and I kept the vineyard small because we weren’t ambitious enough. Or to control you. You thought our decisions were absurd, superstitious fantasy. Like biodynamics. Like planting near to rocks or burying the horns.” He paused, pent-up anger dangerously close to the surface. “Where’s Olivier?”
“At home.”
“He sent you here? To get me?”
Her mouth tightened, those overly full lips compressing, her face losing some of its confidence, and suddenly he understood. He sank down to squat in front of her, but not too close. Christ, he didn’t want to risk touching her.
“He has no idea you’re here, does he?” Luc whispered, the certainty burning a hole in his stomach. His half brother didn’t even want him back. His mother would rather deal with their problems on her own than ask her son for forgiveness. “Where does he think you are? Girls’ trip to Saint Tropez? Spa weekend at Aix-les-Bains?”
She didn’t answer, but her face, normally perfectly pale in the winter, had taken on a sickly greenish hue.
“Always going behind one of our backs, aren’t you? Were you planning on telling him you came here? Or would this be another seduction?” He shifted away, righteous anger humming in his veins. “Well, good luck, ma chère. Good luck getting out of the pit you have dug. You can go.” He stood up and backed up even farther.
“Where am I supposed to go?”
“I don’t know. You must have had some kind of plan when you came here.”
“But there’s nothing here, Luc,” she protested. Shit. She’d planned to stay here, hadn’t she? To seduce him, no doubt. Christ, what a sick, sick woman.
“There’s a B and B,” he said, thinking of the frou-frou establishment in downtown Blackwood. “Or better yet, get on the motorway and head back toward Charlottesville. They have places almost fancy enough for you there. Not the George V, but you can make do for one night.”
She stood, tall in those deadly looking boots, and assessed him openly, eyes sharp and admittedly beautiful. “Always the martyr, Luc, aren’t you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Always the one being taken advantage of; always the one pushing everyone away, so wounded. Did you ever ask yourself why I slept with your brother to begin with?” When he didn’t answer, she continued, relentless and in his face. “You weren’t the only one who was hurt in our relationship, Luc. You gave me nothing. You’re the victim because I was obvious about it, but if you take a step back, you’d realize you never cared to begin with. All you cared about then was your vines. And now…”
She ran her eyes over him, to his left hand with its missing finger. “Your finger? Olivier’s fault, right? Because of the secateurs he forced you to use? Your Maman’s fault they didn’t get it sewn back on in time?” With a cynical smile, she went on. “If you’d stopped working that night, maybe you’d have a finger. You were out there late, in the cold. Olivier didn’t force you.” She looked him head-on. “You’re not a recluse, you’re a misanthrope. More interested in being alone than trying to make things work. You’re so afraid of compromise, aren’t you? Of anything that would take away from your stupid vines. Growing them your way. The right way.” She leaned in and focused on him, that smile dropping from her perfect features. “You can’t stand to be hurt, can you? I don’t mean this kind of pain.” She grasped his hand, lifted it, and then shoved it away. “This you enjoy. You enjoy being right, even if it means alienating your own family. You’re not capable of love, Luc. You’re too interested in being the wronged party. That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve never loved anyone in your entire life as much as you love those stupid plants.”
He opened his mouth to respond and then shut it again. She might have been right before. But now, God, she was wrong. So totally wrong he wanted to laugh.
He loved Abby. The knowledge was so clear, so right, that he could almost have hugged this woman for showing him.
Almost. Instead, he
smiled and put out his hand—to her obvious shock. Now, he wanted one thing and one thing only: to get rid of her so he could go to Abby. He’d have to brave the crowds at the Nook to get to her, but what did that matter?
“Thank you.”
“What?”
“I appreciate you coming here and trying. I know how hard this must have been.” She blinked. “But I’ve got to go.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Actually…will you take me into town?” he asked, to Céline’s obvious surprise.
“What are you talking—”
“Don’t ask, all right? Just…just go out to your car. Pretend to say good-bye to me on the porch, drive past that curve down there, and then wait. Will you do that?”
“You’ve gone mad,” she whispered, eyes round with shock and pity and a hint of revulsion.
“Please. Just take me into town and drop me—”
“Luc, you’re worrying me. Let me take you back to France. Back to your life, not to this…wild place.”
“If you don’t want to give me a ride, fine. I’ll just—”
She huffed a sigh, looked around the cabin, and turned back to him. “Around the bend? That’s where I wait?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head but finally agreed. “You will explain this to me?”
“Yes, of course,” he lied. But he didn’t owe this woman a solitary thing. Nothing.
It was night outside when he made a big show of waving her off before heading inside again and locking the front door. He stuffed the fire full of wood, turned off the lights, grabbed his coat, and whistled for Le Dog. No way he’d leave him out here alone when God only knew what those crazies would do next. As quietly as he could, he made his way out the kitchen door—too bad he didn’t have a key for this one—and down the hill, half expecting that Céline had left without him.
He ignored her protests when Le Dog hopped in first, then got in, pulled the door not quite closed, and said. “Let’s go. Go!”
They rode in silence, Luc ducked low until they’d gotten to the main road. Céline’s driving, too fast and choppy at the best of times, was much worse with an automatic. Her hand hovered over the gearshift, as if she itched to grab it.
In His Hands Page 27
