Chapter 13 #2
Over the next few days, we fell into a comfortable rhythm.
Olivia and I met with winemakers during the day and then spent the 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?”
“Documenting. I always go on vacation and forget to take pictures and then regret it when I have only a sad photo taken from the plane window to remember it by. So I’m trying to take at least one photo each day.
” She flipped her phone around. “I wanted to capture the light on the leaves, but I’m not doing a great job of it. ”
“Here, change the angle.” I put my hand over hers and guided it lower. Her backside pressed into me, and it took all the force I had not to slide my hands over the bit of exposed skin at her waist. Her breath hitched, and I tensed and stepped away as if I’d been burned.
“Thanks.” She smiled weakly up at me. I was struck by the changing colors of her eyes—in this light, the edges were a deeper, vibrant indigo, fading to luminescent in the center. Realizing I was staring, I looked away.
“You don’t take many photos anymore,” she said, and I shrugged. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken a picture. “You don’t miss it?”
“I never think about it.” I frowned. Why was that?
Probably because I spent all my time running from one place to another.
Photography required you to slow down, to be present, all your senses crystallized into now .
That’s how it was with wine as well. I wasn’t doing a great job at being present these days, in fact I preferred to avoid it, for reasons I didn’t want to analyze.
“ Jake, viens !” Claire called from the next plot over, waving her arms like she was drowning in the sea of vines.
“She’s been waiting to show you her vine transplant,” Olivia explained. We took our time walking over to the other plot. I didn’t feel like working anymore or worrying about the business. I was content just walking with her in the vines.
Her phone buzzed with a text message. “Oh, how sweet! Chantal’s granddaughter invited me to her birthday party.” Her face fell. “Except that it’s at the end of July. I’ll be back in Paris by then, helping Lucie.”
“Oh, right.” I had to stop myself from saying that she didn’t have to go if she didn’t want to. But that was ridiculous. It would make more sense for her to work with Lucie and meet her industry contacts than to stay with me in Moustiers. I rubbed my hand against the sudden pressure in my sternum.
“Did your meetings go well?” she asked.
“Honestly, I don’t know.” I stopped and turned to face her. And then, somehow, I found myself admitting the secret I’d been hiding for so long. “I feel like I’m not cut out for this job anymore.” It was a relief to finally say it out loud.
“What do you mean?” Her wide eyes searched mine.
I shoved my hands into my pockets. “You noticed I don’t drink much.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s because I can’t taste anything anymore. Or I can, but it doesn’t taste the same. There’s an aftertaste, a sort of bitterness.”
“Since when?”
I scratched the side of my head, not wanting to admit to the timeline. “It started last December.”
When I went back home for the first time in over a decade and realized I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted anymore.
“Is it just wine or food?”
“Mostly wine, but sometimes food too. There’s no physiological reason for it. I had tests done.” I kicked at a pebble on the ground. “And I haven’t told anyone.”
“Oh,” she said softly as it dawned on her that she was the only one who knew. I couldn’t understand myself why I’d chosen to tell her.
“It’ll pass. It’s not important.” I tried to downplay it, turning my attention to the setting sun. “I’ll tell you what is . . . the sunset from that rock up there. Come on.”
“What about Claire?” she asked as she followed me up the gently sloping hill.
“She’ll have to wait,” I said, reaching out my hand to help her onto the rocky viewpoint at the top. “This is where I used to come by myself after a harvest. It’s one of my favorite views.”
“Wow, it’s breathtaking,” Olivia said, catching her breath, as she took in the valley below. “Now I see why they call it the C?te d’Or .”
The sun glinted off the burnished highlights in her hair and I caught a wayward strand, rubbing it between my fingers before pushing it behind her ear.
She went very still, her lips parted, and I was suddenly conscious of how close I was standing to her.
I could so easily bend down and taste those lips again, feel her tremble beneath me.
Instead, I moved away and looked back out over the valley. “Everything I loved about wine—that I do love about it—is here. I just wish I could recapture the same sense of purpose I had back then.”
“Maybe it’s a good thing that you had to come this week,” she said uncertainly. “If you’re able to remember why you love something, it helps, right?”
I hoped that would be the case, but I wasn’t holding my breath. All I wanted for now was to forget about sales, meetings, and bottom lines. All that mattered was right now.
As we walked down the hill toward Claire, I tried to fix the moment in my memory: the golden light of the setting sun, the tender green leaves of the vines, and the familiar sound of Claire’s gravelly laugh.
“Olivia, give me your phone,” said Claire as we drew nearer. “You’ve been photographing the vines all day. You should have a photo of yourself.”
“You’re right.” Olivia smiled and held her phone out. “Oh no, the battery’s dead.”
I took my phone out and passed it to Claire. “Use mine. Just remind me to send it to you.”
“You should be in the photo too, Jake.” Claire waved me toward Olivia. “Ah, come on. I know how much you love photos of yourself.”
I rolled my eyes at that but pulled Olivia closer, surprised at how natural it felt to hold her in the space between my shoulder and my heart.
She wrapped her arm around my waist, and just as Claire was going to take the photo, King jumped against my leg, pushing me off balance and sending everyone into peals of laughter.
“ Mais quelle pute !” cried Claire as she scolded King.
Only then did I notice that I still had my arm around Olivia. I held on a little longer, then let it drop away.