Once Tasted: A Silver Creek Novel (17 page)

The easy answer came first. Over the last few days he’d realized that the task of boosting the winery’s profits excited him. The winery and his family’s guest ranch shared certain similarities. Both businesses straddled the hospitality and agriculture industries. From his work in the back offices at the guest ranch, Reid had learned a fair amount about building a solid and loyal customer base. It’d be interesting to see whether he could take that knowledge and apply it to the winery.

It wouldn’t be easy, because there was one important difference between the guest ranch and Mia’s winery. No one in Mendocino, Napa, or Sonoma had an enterprise that could compare to Silver Creek Ranch. In Mia’s case, the competition was all around her. Literally.

These days it seemed as if every other property owner in this part of California was plunking grapevines into the soil with the intent to make fermented grape juice come the fall. Those were the mom-and-pop hobbyists. Then there were the huge, fancy wineries and vineyards—temples to the grape—where entire hillsides and sun-kissed tracts were covered in trellised vines and the wineries looked like châteaux on steroids. These were the super wine producers, whose labels could be found in liquor stores and restaurants around the world.

The Bodells’ boutique winery fit in between those two extremes. But even here the playing field was crowded. It meant Reid would have to come up with a
multipronged approach to raise the winery’s profile. He’d have to be creative, and that could be kind of fun.

An easy way to increase the winery’s profile and generate new devotees was to make it so people could actually
get
to the winery. Hence the tractor and Howie Briggs.

But Reid knew that the other reason he was perched on one of his father’s beloved tractors—his dad, talented horseman and cattleman, was like a needy six-year-old when he browsed a John Deere catalog—had to do with Mia alone. And that made her even more dangerous.

He spied Howie up ahead, leaning against the door of his dusty dump truck. Good man, Reid thought. He’d driven the load over personally.

Reid waved and, easing up on the pedal, slowed down to a crawl as he pulled alongside him.

“Good to see you.” Reid braked and leaned over to shake Howie’s hand. “Thanks for coming out.”

Like Reid, Howie wore shades and a cowboy hat. “I had an estimate on another job scheduled out this way. Figured I could kill two birds with one stone. How’s it going, Reid?”

“No complaints.”

“Glad to hear it. And the horses? Got any nice prospects for sale?”

“Yeah. You in the market?”

“Sure,” Howie replied with an easy nod. “My son’s joined the business, so I have more free time on my hands. Might as well enjoy it before I need a cherry picker to hoist me into the saddle.”

“No argument there,” he said. “We’re vaccinating the calves this afternoon, but if you come by early evening—say five-thirty or six—I can show you a couple of them.” Even though Roland was still green, the four-year-old might suit Howie.

“It’s a date. So, where do you want this gravel? This one of your properties?” Howie asked, hitching his thumb in the direction of the Bodells’ drive.

“No, it belongs to friends of ours. How about you dump the gravel as you go up—you’ll understand real quick why I called you—I’ll follow.” After rolling over the first crater, Howie wouldn’t be traveling any faster than Reid on the tractor. “I’ll lower the rake attachment on the tractor once I turn into the drive,” he said.

“Sounds like a plan. Let’s get to work.”

Mia was reading Thomas’s notes on the wine presently aging in the oak barrels. It had been racked four months earlier. Racking involved transferring the wine from one barrel to an empty one so that it didn’t rest too long on the lees, the sediment that collected at the bottom and could affect the wine’s taste if contact was too prolonged. The procedure also allowed the wine to aerate briefly, encouraging its flavors to develop and deepen.

Thomas was meticulous when it came to planning the shaping of a wine. But when Mia looked at his desk calendar to her right and flipped to the next month to see if he’d marked a date for the next racking, the entire month was blank, as were the following ones.

The reason was clear. Thomas had purposely left the future of the next vintage in her hands. She knew she should be pleased at his tacit confidence in her ability to take over as winemaker, but those blank squares mirrored the emptiness she’d felt in the house. Less than twenty-four hours had passed, and she missed her uncle so.

She wished she could telephone him and ask his advice, perhaps engage in one of their many debates about wine. Even more, she longed to hear his voice and assure
herself that he was happy with the decision to leave Acacia.

She wanted him to be happy. How could she not, when finding love was so rare? If Thomas had a second chance at happiness with Pascale, it would be marvelous. Amazing.

If only his newfound love hadn’t taken him so far away, and if only walking into the cellar didn’t cause a lump of sadness to lodge in her throat.

A noise reached her, a loud one. It penetrated the enclosed glass wall of the temperature-controlled cellar. For a second, she reacted like any Californian, wondering whether a quake had struck. But there were no distinctive tremors. A violent storm, perhaps? Always concerned about her acres of grapes, Mia was a National-Weather-Service junkie, so she knew the answer to that. The forecast had predicted nothing but clear skies.

The rumble came again.

She pushed back the webbed office chair, which she’d gotten for Thomas two Christmases ago when he’d complained of an aching back, and hurried outside.

The din and the dust were unbelievable, a scene straight from one of those monster-truck shows, with gnashing and crashing and brown-gray clouds filling the air. It made it impossible to see who was in the infernal machines, but she had an idea who must be driving one of them.

The Knowleses had a number of tractors, but only one member of the family would be so high-handed as to overhaul her road without even asking.

A heavy-duty steel-toothed rake was attached to the back of the tractor. When the anonymous truck driver disgorged a small mountain of gravel, Reid went into action. Maneuvering the tractor this way and that, he raked the gravel over the area in front of the winery, the
carriage barn, and the smaller outbuilding used by the staff, filling in the craters and potholes.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when the truck driver leaned on his horn, a blare loud enough to wake the dead. Then he stuck his arm out the window to wave goodbye before heading down the drive.

Reid continued his work, crisscrossing the lot and spreading the crushed stones until the area was smoother than Mia had ever seen it. At last he stopped the tractor, turned off its engine, jumped down, and approached.

His walk had always screamed “male.” Now she knew just what those hips, legs, and what lay between them could do for a woman. She crossed her arms about her middle.

“So, what do you think?” He looked as pleased as punch. “Great, huh?”

“Not,” she uttered through clenched teeth. “Not great at all.”

He looked at her as if she were insane. “And that would be because you like trashing your suspension every time you venture up or down your drive?”

“No, that would be because I like being asked before things are done to my property. You didn’t.”

“I assumed this would be a welcome change. And I seem to recall you wanting me to prove my chops. Well, Mia, this here is Marketing 101. Real basic stuff. A lot of wine buffs these days like to visit wineries. No one’s going to come and taste your wine and buy a bottle, let alone a case, if the customer can’t make it up the road without blowing a tire. And here’s a tip from Marketing 201: You’ll make more money selling wine directly to customers who visit your tasting room.”

“We don’t have a tasting room.”

“Another thing to rectify.”

“And what other unilateral decisions are you going to make?” she demanded, angry enough now to forget
how weak-kneed he made her. Angry enough to overcome the sheer bizarreness of the situation. She’d slept with him! “Will I come back from a trip into town to collect my mail and find you building the damned tasting room?”

“I repaired the driveway, Mia, that’s all. Don’t make a federal case out of it.”

Of course that was exactly what she was doing—blowing a desperately needed repair way out of proportion. It didn’t help that he was right. She drew a breath. “I know your family’s invested in the winery,” she said. “But it still belongs to us. So I get a say in everything that happens. Understood?”

In a gesture of frustration, Reid swept off his Stetson, raked his fingers through his gold-streaked hair, and resettled his hat. “Fine. I apologize for fixing your dri—” He left the sentence unfinished. “What? What are you looking at?”

“Your eye.” She swallowed a lump of horror at the sight of the purple bruise lurking behind the curved lens of his sunglasses. She hadn’t noticed it until he’d removed his hat.

“My eye? Oh, yeah.” He removed the aviators.

Her gasp was involuntary. “My God.”

Bizarrely, her reaction seemed to alter his mood with lightning speed. His frustration vanished, replaced by a teasing grin. His blue eye—the one that wasn’t swollen shut and surrounded by a ghastly blue-black bruise—twinkled.

“Does it hurt very much?” she asked.

“Like a bi—like the devil,” he finished with contrary good cheer.

“I’m—I’m so sorry,” she said. She couldn’t get past the fact that she’d done that to him—after everything they’d done to each other.

He stepped closer. “Feel like kissing it and making it better?”

“I …” Distracted by his nearness, it took a minute for his words to penetrate. “…  What?” They’d had sex and now Reid was flirting with her? Had she entered some alternate universe?

“You’ve got a vicious right elbow, Bodell. I figure I deserve at least a couple of kisses for the unimaginable pain I suffered.” His grin widened.

The man could make her dizzier than a dozen cocktails. Incapable of speech, Mia stared at his handsome face, and she might as well have been fourteen and tongue-tied with love.

“Come on, Mia, I dare you.” He lowered his head, angling it so his mouth would fit perfectly over hers. The world went still as she waited for the touch of his lips. Her eyes drifted shut.

“Hey, Mia, the road totally rocks!” Leo’s cheerful call had her jumping halfway to Sacramento.

With a soft curse, Reid straightened and put his shades back on, hiding his black eye and shielding his expression.

Leo dismounted from his bike. Thomas’s winery assistant was into living off the grid and traveled everywhere on his bike. Except when he bummed rides off others. “Hey, Reid,” he said, nodding his bandanna-covered head in greeting. “You responsible for the sweet repair job?”

“Yeah. Glad you appreciate it.”

“What’s not to appreciate?” Leo replied good-naturedly. “Fixing the road has been high on Mia and Thomas’s wish list for, like, months. Right, Mia?”

She felt the weight of Reid’s gaze on her. “Yes,” she admitted.

Reid could have won this last round in their ongoing battle of wills with a single sarcastic comment about
how that was news to him. Instead, he said, “I’m hoping it will bring more wine lovers this way.”

“Cool.”

Reid turned to her. “I have to tend to some things at the ranch. I’ll be by tomorrow. Maybe you’d like to write a list of things—a wish list—you think would help the winery. I’ll do the same. We can see whether any of our ideas mesh.”

She hated the polite formality that infused his tone. “Okay. And, Reid?” She paused to clear her throat. “Thanks for fixing the driveway.”

Even with his hat obscuring his expression, she could tell he was surprised. She guessed he hadn’t been expecting her to agree with his proposal and certainly not to thank him, however belatedly. Because what kind of relationship did they have but an adversarial one?

But their last almost-kiss had left her confused, off-kilter. It had been broad daylight, with no alcohol in either of their systems, and she’d wanted nothing more than to feel his mouth on hers. She still did. Was it possible that after all these years of pretending that she was invisible to him, he wanted her, too? Could she believe it, or believe in him?

She wasn’t sure.

“Bye, Leo,” Reid said.

“Take it easy.”

She watched Reid climb back onto the tractor. It didn’t seem to matter what he rode—motorcycle, horse, or mammoth machine. He looked amazing doing it.

The tractor rolled off. She listened to its rumble long after it disappeared from sight. Finally Mia drew her gaze away from the rut-free road and told herself it was time to stop wondering what would have happened if Leo hadn’t interrupted Reid and her. She should simply be grateful he had.

A tall order.

M
IA SPENT THE
rest of the morning in the wine cellar with Leo and Johnny, who’d arrived shortly after Reid departed. Johnny, too, exclaimed over the “wicked smoothness” of the repaired drive. The two assistants were die-hard Thomas acolytes—Frodo and Samwise to Thomas’s Gandalf—but surprisingly they didn’t seem unhappy about her taking their beloved wine wizard’s place. They’d been helpful, drawing samples from the different barrel lots and recording the pH and Brix levels.