by Donna Ball
Bridget obliged, but her expression was dismayed. “You didn’t call him?”
“Well, who else could put together that kind of money on such short notice?”
“The boys,” said Lindsay thoughtfully, gazing at the reflection the dancing fireplace flames made in the ruby depths of her wine. “If it wasn’t Richard, and it wasn’t Mark’s parents, they’re the only ones left with money.”
“I don’t think so.” Bridget shook her head. “They don’t have any reason to keep it a secret.” “And besides,” Cici added, “Lori was right. Their hearts may have been in the right place, but they just didn’t have the time to make the transfer.”
“It’s just weird, isn’t it?” Lindsay frowned and sipped her wine. “To think that somebody has done something that big for us, and we don’t even know who it is.”
“It’s going to drive me crazy,” Cici said. “Who does that?”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Bridget said. Her expression was ruminative in the firelight. “Maybe we don’t need to know.” She glanced at them. “Think about it. If we knew, we would feel weird. Obligated. But not knowing, we can think the best about everybody.”
Cici considered that for a moment. “Well, except Richard.”
“Except Richard,” Bridget agreed, and Lindsay saluted her with her glass.
They sat for a time in the silence of the winter evening, listening to the crackle of the fire and the sigh and creak of the old house settling in for the night. Then Lindsay said, “I kissed Dominic.”
Cici said, “We know.”
Bridget gave an apologetic shrug of her shoulder. “It was broad daylight. You were right on the porch.”
Lindsay tried to scowl but couldn’t pull it off. Instead, a secret smile played with her lips as she gazed into her wine.
“And?” prompted Cici.
“How was it?” Bridget urged.
Lindsay thought about that for a moment, and her smile deepened. “It was okay,” she said and sipped her wine. “It was really … okay.” But as she turned her gaze toward the fire, her smile suggested that it had been a great deal more than that.
And that was okay, too.
~*~
~*~
~TWO~
Bigger Dreams
~*~
CHAPTER TEN
Blossoms
It was generally agreed that there had not been a more spectacular April in recent memory. On Ladybug Farm, snowy pear blossoms danced against a bright blue sky and cast lacy shadows over the new lawn. The distant mountains were a thousand shades of green, ranging from the base notes of deep blue to the treble of bright yellow. Lilacs burst into extravagant bloom and daffodils bathed the hillside in yellow. The windows and doors were flung open, and the house was suffused with the taste and smell and the balmy breezes of spring.
March had been bleak and muddy, with temperatures mild enough to be unseasonable but just cold enough to be miserable. The ladies had spent days in the cool wine cellar, dressed in layered sweat suits, gloves, and wool socks, sweeping, vacuuming, and polishing. They hauled buckets of hot soapy water down the stairs and used stiff brushes to scrub every inch of the floor, the walls, behind the sinks, under the tanks. Dominic cleaned and repaired the tanks and, with Noah’s help, cleared the steel door that opened onto the vineyard, which over the years had become so overgrown it was inoperable. Farley brought his tractor and cleared the path that Dominic said once had been a road that led from the vineyard to the barn. Then Dominic called in trucks to reinforce the new roadbed with gravel. When the tanker pulled up on that road with their order of custom crush wine, the three ladies stood in the rain, holding hands and grinning like children, their hearts beating so hard with excitement they could barely speak. Lindsay took photographs and e-mailed them to Lori, who posted them on Facebook with multiple exclamation marks.
But after the initial thrill, the ladies soon learned that owning a winery consisted in great part of paperwork and waiting. Cici spent hours on the computer, ordering supplies and tracking orders. Bridget spent hours on the phone, tracking down permits and licenses. Lindsay spent a lot of time in her studio, working on the label design and sketching out the mural for The Tasting Table. Sometimes Dominic joined her there, helping, as Lindsay explained blithely, with the design. Bridget and Cici exchanged secret looks and asked as few questions as possible.
The last days of winter limped out on tired legs, drawing out its final exit interminably. When the first weeks of April burst into bloom so lavishly, the energy in the house, and in its occupants, was palpable. Dominic planted cuttings; Bridget planted broccoli. Cici fought with roofers; Lindsay fought with printers. Ida Mae embarked upon her annual spring cleaning campaign, which consisted mostly of giving orders to the other three women. The house shone with beeswax and sparkled with lemon oil.
Cici began striding around the house, making notes of what needed to be painted and repaired before the wedding. Bridget began measuring and marking off sections of the barn that might be suitable for her restaurant, much to the dismay of the barn’s current residents. The chickens laid golden-yolked eggs. The sheep grew fat with fleece that was almost white, and the nanny goat munched grass in the sun. Lori called six times a day. Noah spent most of his free time chasing Bambi out of the garden.
Lindsay planted her rose bush next to the ladybug-painted bench that Noah had built for them in the garden on his first Mother’s Day at Ladybug Farm. Dominic helped her, and Lindsay kept a wary eye on Bambi, who pretended to only be interested in munching the shoots of new grass that were sprouting up along the garden paths.
“There,” Lindsay declared, stripping off her gardening gloves and admiring her work. “Perfect. Look, it’s even starting to bud again, and that rusty-red color in between the Peace rose and the Mr. Lincoln is going to be stunning.”
Dominic extended his hand to help her to her feet again. “Do you know the story of the Peace rose?”
She dusted the mud off the knees of her jeans, glancing up at him. “It has something to do with World War II, doesn’t it?”
He nodded, taking her gloves and the gardening spade in one hand and resting the other easily on her waist as they walked toward the potting shed. “It was cultivated by a Frenchman …” His eyes twinkled as he glanced at her. “Naturally, by the name of Monsieur Meilland. When he saw the German invasion of his homeland was inevitable, he knew he couldn’t keep the rose safe, so he sent cuttings to his colleagues all over Europe and in the United States. In fact, one story says that the rose escaped France on the last flight to the US before the invasion. When France was liberated, Monsieur Meilland wanted to name the rose after Field Marshal Alan Brooke, who had played such a crucial role in bringing the war to an end, but Brooke was a modest man and suggested the name “Peace” instead. The name of the rose was officially announced on the day Berlin fell, and Peace roses were given to the delegates at the first ever meeting of the United Nations later that year. Thousands of Peace roses were planted around the world over the next few years in memory of fallen soldiers.”
He nodded over his shoulder down the path they had just left. “Those two there, on either side of the fountain, were in memory of Miss Emily Blackwell’s two sons, buried somewhere in France.”
Lindsay gave a small shake of her head. “I forget sometimes.”
“What’s that?” He opened the door of the small cedar potting shed, releasing the odor of cool musty earth and well-oiled tools.
“That you were here before us. How much you know about this place. It must feel strange, having other people live here.”
“Not really.” He smiled at her. “Actually, I kind of like it.” He hung the spade on a hook by the door and placed Lindsay’s gloves neatly on a shelf. “I spent some happy days here, yes.” He closed the door and held out his hand. “Shall I show you my favorite place?”
Lindsay opened her mouth to protest that she really couldn’t spare the time, she had far too much to do, sh
e really should get back and help with lunch, but what came out was, “Okay.” And she slipped her hand into his.
They walked around the barn and took the path into the woods that curved by the sheep meadow. Bambi followed for a while, occasionally lingering to strip the leaves off a bush or a low-hanging branch, and Dominic observed, “That buck of yours is getting quite a rack on him.”
“I guess he is a buck now,” Lindsay said, a little surprised. “I still think of him as a fawn.”
“I don’t guess I’ll ever get used to it, seeing a wild creature roam around here like a pet.”
“He is a pet,” Lindsay objected. But a small frown pinched her brow briefly as she added, “Even though he’s a lot more trouble than most.”
And then her face cleared and she laughed out loud with delight as she suddenly realized where they were going. “Oh, I love this place, too!”
Her pace quickened until she was running the last few steps, tugging Dominic behind, and in a moment it came into view: the circular, tin-turreted folly with its decaying gingerbread scrollwork, its sagging walls, its broken windows. The rusty-hinged door stood half open, too swollen with moisture to fit the frame, and there were boards missing from the charming porch that surrounded it. Lindsay clapped her hands together and beamed, gazing at it.
“It’s like a little piece of magic from another time, isn’t it?” she said. “The glade, the stream … It always makes me think of girls in white dresses and gentlemen with bow ties. Can you imagine the trysts that must have taken place here over the years?”
He replied with a slight quirk of his brow, “Not only can I imagine, I may have actually had a few.”
In a single graceful step, he bounded up onto the porch and swept open the door. He extended his hand to her. “My lady.”
She closed her fingers around his wrist and he pulled her up with a firm grip. She glanced at him askance. “Trysts? Really?”
“Well,” he admitted, “as a teenager I mostly came here to smoke—” He caught himself with a small, amused compression of his lips and finished simply, “to smoke.”
At her look of pretend shock, he gave a negligent lift of one shoulder. “It was the sixties, after all.”
Lindsay laughed softly, holding onto his arm as she picked her way carefully across the debris-strewn floor. “Nice to know you were once a bad boy, actually.”
He turned her to him with one hand lightly on her back, the other cupping her neck. Everything he did was like a dance. He said, “I can still be a bad boy, when it’s called for.” And he kissed her.
He made her feel like a teenager: silly and delirious and completely clueless. She melted into that feeling, every single time. When the kiss ended in sweet, soft surrender, she leaned back from him and smiled into his eyes. “You’re very good at this.”
“What’s that, chérie?” His voice was a bit husky, and he traced the shape of her eyebrow with a delicate fingertip.
“Flirting,” she replied. “You make me feel all giddy and gooey-eyed.”
The smile in his eyes deepened, crinkling at the corners. “A lifetime ambition, to make a beautiful woman feel gooey-eyed. But I think we have both seen too many summers to waste time with flirting, am I right?”
Lindsay caught her breath and turned away from him, gesturing toward the tangled vista beyond the bank of east-facing windows, where the creek could be heard gurgling and splashing only a few feet away. “I’ve always fantasized about renovating this place. This is where Noah used to camp out when he was living on the run. Did I tell you that? And even after he moved into the house with us, he wanted to live out here and have a place of his own. Since then, I’ve been toying with the idea of what I would do with it. It wouldn’t take much, you know. Replacing a few floorboards on the porch, glass in the windows … The roof is still good, even if it is a little rusted, and the floor inside is solid marble, not to mention that darling marble fireplace. I think some simple canvas curtains, maybe a really plush daybed with tons of cushions, a couple chairs and a table, a new coat of paint. Wouldn’t it be a perfect summer house?”
She turned with a bright and rather shallow smile, and his hand fell lightly upon the crown of her head, smoothing back her hair. He was not smiling at all. “Love,” he said softly, “enough.”
She looked up at him, her throat tight, her heart beating slow and hard.
“Enough flirting,” he said, “enough dancing, enough pretending we’re both sixteen with a lifetime of mistakes yet to be made. I don’t know about you, but I’ve made all the mistakes I can afford to make.” Gently, he smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear. “I need to know, chérie. Either we go forward, or this stops now. But I need to know. Is that unfair?”
Lindsay swallowed hard. She could feel everything inside her quivering, yet her voice was surprisingly steady. She had known this moment would come. It always did.
She said, “I’m never leaving here.”
No surprise showed in his eyes. “Okay.”
“What I mean is …” Now she was uncertain, casting about for the right words. “I’ve had a lot of boyfriends.” Flushing, she corrected herself. “I mean, not a lot, in the sense of a lot …” And then she lifted her chin and met his eyes and repeated simply, “I’ve had a lot of boyfriends, and it took me a long time to understand this, but none of them have made me feel as comfortable and safe and at home as I do now, at Ladybug Farm. Cici and Bridget are my family. This is what I want. I’m not leaving them; I’m not leaving this place, not for a man, not for anything.” She drew a breath. “You need to know that.”
He said cautiously, “Okay.”
She sucked in another sharp breath. “I like you, Dominic. I might even … I might even like you more than any man I’ve ever known, and I might even, I mean it’s possible I might even have … but at this point in my life I’m just not looking for anything more. At the end of the day the only place I really want to be is on the front porch with Cici and Bridget and a glass of wine, watching the sunset. And that’s the truth.”
He said gently, “It’s a big porch.”
She looked up into his eyes and the slow twisting pain she felt in her chest might have been her heart trying not to break. She replied simply, “But there are only three chairs.”
Dominic dropped his gaze, and his fingers, resting so lightly against her neck, gave her skin one last butterfly caress before drifting away. He said, “I understand.”
Lindsay searched his face. “Do you? Do you really? Because I thought it was important that you know.”
He nodded somberly. “And I think it is important that you know this. I am quite hopelessly in love with you. I hope that won’t be a problem.”
Lindsay looked at him, barely breathing. Somehow she managed to shake her head. “No,” escaped hoarsely. “Not a problem.”
He smiled and touched her shoulder. “And now I think we’ve malingered long enough, eh? Tomorrow we begin planting the vines and between now and then, we both have work to do. We had best get to it.”
They walked back to the house together, but neither had much to say along the way.
~*~
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Labors of Love
“
April twenty-third,” Bridget announced. “That’s when the ancient Romans held their spring festival to honor Venus, the goddess of the fruit. They called it venalia prima. The blessing of the vines. So I think that’s when we should hold our blessing. On April twenty-third.”
Her words were a little choppy with exertion as she struggled to wind a length of wire cable tightly around a clamp on a support post. They were all, at that moment, laboring in the vineyard among the vines that were waiting to be blessed. Dominic and Noah worked a row or so ahead of them, digging post holes and pounding uprights into the ground. It was Cici’s and Bridget’s job to string and tighten the wire between the posts while Lindsay dug the holes and carefully placed the new vines in the ground. It was dirty, sweaty, back b
reaking work, but on this glorious spring day, it was also a labor of love.
Lindsay straightened up now, arching a pain out of her back, and said, “I don’t know, Bridge, seems to me these vines are already blessed enough with my blood, sweat, and tears.” But her gaze was on the two men who worked on the row beyond them, and her expression was vaguely troubled. Noah, in muddy jeans and T-shirt with his sweatshirt tied around his waist, steadied a post while Dominic pounded it into the ground with a short-handled sledge. Dominic had his hair tied back with a bandanna and wore a plain black T-shirt, now stained with sweat. He had the muscles of a man half his age.
Cici noted the direction of her gaze. “Can you imagine if we had tried to do this by ourselves?”
Lindsay gave a short, quick shake of her head, as though to clear her thoughts, and picked up her shovel again. “I didn’t even know you were supposed to tie up the vines. I mean, I guess I did because I can see someone else did it here with the old vines, but I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to begin.”
“Not just that. Everything.” Cici used a screwdriver to tighten down the clamp that held the wire, gritting her teeth with the effort. When she was done, she pushed back her baseball cap and wiped the sweat from her forehead, leaving a smear of mud from the back of her glove. “Maybe Bridget is right. We have an awful lot of be grateful for. A little show of appreciation to the gods might not be a bad idea.”
“Seriously,” agreed Bridget. She carefully removed one of her gloves to examine a blister that was beginning to form on her palm. “After all this, are you willing to take a chance on not blessing them?”
Once again, Lindsay found her gaze straying toward the two men who worked ahead of them, and she quickly brought it back to her work. “So what did the Romans do at this festival?” she asked.
