Chapter 19 #2
I took it because refusing would have made a scene.
Not because the fabric still held the faint heat and shape of his body.
Alina was staring. I decided the oak barrels were more deserving of my attention.
Marieke stopped beside a row of barrels. “The estate works with varietals suited to heat, dry winds, and poor soil. Stress can produce remarkable concentration if the vine is supported instead of forced.”
Naomi made a soft sound of approval. “That feels like a management philosophy.”
“It’s also a warning,” Alina said.
Graham peered at a barrel. “Are we the vines in this metaphor?”
“You’re the reason the vines need support,” Cufflink said.
The tasting took place on the terrace.
By then the sun had lifted high enough to turn the white umbrellas bright at the edges.
A long table waited beneath them, set with thin-stemmed glasses, slate boards of cheese and dried fruit, small bowls of olives, and bread still warm enough to steam when broken.
Beyond the terrace, the vines fell away in ordered lines until the land roughened into scrub and low trees.
Nick stood near the low wall with Elias, close enough to hear everything and far enough away to remain officially uninvolved.
He had removed his sunglasses and hooked them into the front of his shirt.
His sleeves were rolled, forearms bare, posture easy to anyone who didn't know how much work went into that kind of stillness.
A flush started low in my belly and spread up my throat before I could stop it. I watched the way his weight settled into one hip, that easy stillness, and my fingers twitched against my thigh. I remembered exactly how those forearms felt.
I didn't need to think it. My body already knew.
Oh, for fuck's sake. Get a grip, Jules. You've had him three ways since Tuesday.
Marieke poured the first wine, a Chenin Blanc that caught the light in pale gold ribbons.
“This block is dry-farmed,” she said. “Older vines. Lower yield. More concentration.”
Graham lifted his glass with grave importance, then sniffed.
I looked at him. “Do not say you detect notes of shareholder value.”
He lowered the glass. “Now I can’t say it because you stole my brilliance.”
Naomi tasted and closed her eyes. “Pear. Citrus. A little honey.”
Cufflink swirled once. “Good acidity.”
Owen nodded. “Bright.”
Graham tasted, paused, and frowned toward the vines. “I’m getting smoke.”
Alina looked past him to the outdoor grill being lit for lunch. “That’s the fire.”
Marieke didn't laugh, which proved her professionalism exceeded mine.
Nick’s head turned slightly.
He had heard.
His mouth stayed neutral, but his eyes touched mine for half a second, and there it was again. The private line under the public day. The part of him that remained with me while he stood fifteen feet away, armed, sober, and responsible for everyone’s pulse rate.
Alina leaned closer while the others debated the second pour.
“He’s careful with you,” she said.
I didn't look at Nick. “He’s careful with everyone.”
Alina held her glass by the stem and studied the color. “No. He is professional with everyone.”
A little wind moved across the terrace, lifting the corner of a napkin and carrying the scent of crushed herbs from the kitchen.
“That sounds like a distinction designed to create trouble,” I said.
“It usually is.”
“He is the lead ranger.”
“Yes.”
“He is responsible for the group.”
“Yes.”
“You’re circling a point.”
“Only because you keep choosing the weakest argument.”
I set my glass down. “Should I ask how much you think you know?”
“Absolutely not. You would dislike the answer, and I’m enjoying the wine.”
Across the terrace, Nick spoke into his radio, his profile turned toward the hills. He looked carved out of function and sunlight. Every line of him belonged to the place in a way I didn't.
And yet his jacket sat on my shoulders.
Alina followed my gaze. “That’s a very official jacket.”
“It was cold in the cellar.”
“Of course.”
“I have circulation concerns.”
“Tragic.”
“Possibly fatal.”
“Then we should alert the ranger.”
I looked at her.
She smiled. “Or perhaps he already knows.”
Lunch unfolded beneath the umbrellas in a slow, elegant ambush of food and wine.
Grilled lamb with rosemary and charred lemon.
Roasted aubergine brushed with olive oil.
Baby potatoes blistered at the edges. Bitter greens with shaved fennel.
Bowls of apricots and almonds between the bottles.
The bread tore open under my fingers, crust crackling, the inside soft enough to make me briefly believe civilization had value.
Naomi steered the conversation toward conservation funding.
Cufflink wanted to know how scalable the estate model was.
Graham suggested a subscription club called Grapes for Giraffes and was immediately told by three people never to say that aloud again.
Owen, after half a glass more than his usual tolerance, began explaining that wine could be part of a balanced lifestyle if consumed mindfully.
Nick didn't drink.
He accepted water from Marieke, thanked her, and stayed near the edge of the terrace with Elias and Daniel.
Every so often, staff passed him with trays or crates, and they adjusted around his presence without being told.
The estate security manager checked in twice.
Nick listened, nodded once, and returned his attention to the group.
Authority, I had learned, was rarely loud when it was real.
After lunch, Marieke led us through a narrow side door into the private cellar, where reserve bottles were kept behind glass and iron.
The room was cooler than the terrace, lit by low sconces that left the corners in shadow.
Labels lined the walls in neat rows. The air held old paper, cork, and the dry mineral smell of stone.
“This is our archive room,” Marieke said. “Some vintages are held for donors, some for conservation auctions, and some because my father refuses to open them unless someone marries royalty.”
Graham looked around. “Do counts count?”
“No,” Cufflink said.
“I have emotional nobility.”
“You have a podcast voice and unresolved brand strategy.”
Naomi laughed, and even Marieke lost the battle with her mouth.
The group spread out, reading labels and peering into cases. I moved toward the far wall, where a row of older bottles rested behind glass, their labels cream-colored and slightly uneven at the edges.
Nick stepped in behind the group.
The room became smaller.
He didn't come straight to me. He spoke briefly with Marieke near the door, checked the small window set high in the wall, then moved to my side when the others drifted toward a display of auction bottles.
Not close enough to touch.
Close enough for my skin to remember.
“Still with me?” he asked.
I kept my eyes on a bottle marked with a year that had meant nothing to me until I started counting how long a person could keep something sealed and still call it preserved.
“Physically, yes.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
The quiet around us changed.
A laugh broke from the other end of the cellar, Graham’s voice carrying through the cool stone room. Someone opened the outer door, and a blade of terrace light cut across the floor before disappearing again.
Nick waited.
The man could outwait stone.
I turned my head. “You’ve made up your mind.”
His eyes stayed on mine. “Yes.”
He said it like a man who had already done the hard part in private.
My pulse moved once, hard.
“About me?” I asked.
His gaze dropped to my mouth for less than a second. When it returned, the answer was already there.
“About us.”
Us.
A short, ordinary word with catastrophic implications.
I looked back at the bottles because glass and cork suddenly seemed more stable than my own body. “That’s a confident position for a man with incomplete information.”
“I know enough.”
“You don’t know what happens when I leave.”
“No.”
“You don’t know what I can offer.”
“No.”
“You don’t know if this survives outside your perimeter.”
His jaw shifted once. “Tomorrow doesn’t erase today.”
The words were spare enough to survive witnesses and intimate enough to ruin me anyway, pressing into the place beneath my ribs where last night had been sitting all morning.
“Nick.”
“I’m not asking you for an answer in a cellar.”
“How generous.”
“I’m asking you not to turn this into something you can dismiss because the timing is inconvenient.”
He wasn’t asking me to give anything up, and somehow that made my hesitation harder to defend.
My throat worked. No sound came out.
Across the room, Alina glanced between me and Naomi, clearly deciding I was the nearest available authority on unreasonable people. “Juliette? Naomi needs someone to explain why Graham’s wine club name is a felony.”
Nick stepped back before I had to.
I lifted my chin. “Professional emergency.”
His eyes stayed on me. “Go.”
“You’re very commanding around fermented grapes.”
“Only when necessary.”
I walked back to the group with my spine aligned and Nick’s jacket still over my shoulders.
By late afternoon, the heat had settled thickly over the estate, turning the stone terrace pale and bright. The final stop was behind the production buildings, where the polished paths ended and the conservation work became visible.
Marieke walked us along a narrow track beside the vineyard boundary, explaining the wildlife corridor project and the camera traps placed along the scrub line. Beyond the last row of vines, the land changed texture. Cultivation gave way to thorn, rock, and long grass moving under the wind.
“Animals don’t care about our property maps,” Marieke said. “We learned to build around that.”
Cufflink studied the interrupted fence line. “And crop loss?”
“Lower than expected. Stress points decreased once we stopped forcing movement into fewer channels.”
Naomi shaded her eyes with one hand. “That is annoyingly elegant.”
Nick walked behind the group, close enough to intervene and far enough to let Marieke lead.
The additional rangers kept the outer edges.
Their presence could have made the outing feel tense, but it didn’t.
It made the privilege of the day visible.
Wine, lunch, linen, laughter, all of it held up by people who watched the borders so everyone else could pretend there were none.
I glanced back.
Nick was already looking at me.
Then Graham stepped directly into a shallow rut and windmilled with both arms.
Nick caught the back of his shirt before the man could introduce his face to the conservation corridor.
Graham froze, arms out. “I had that.”
Nick released his shirt. “You had momentum.”
“Momentum is half the battle,” Graham said.
Owen lifted his phone. “I may have captured the healing moment.”
“Delete that,” Graham said.
Nick released Graham’s shirt and stepped back.
“Stay on the track,” he said.
“To avoid wildlife?” Graham asked.
“To avoid becoming paperwork.”
I pressed my lips together, but the laugh escaped anyway.
His eyes cut to mine, and the look that passed between us was not private enough for my peace of mind.
The drive back was quieter.
The late sun turned the track copper and threw long shadows from the thorn trees.
The second vehicle followed at a safe distance, its outline rising and falling through the dust behind us.
Naomi’s voice drifted from the back seat now and then, low with Alina’s, while Graham appeared to have fallen into a contemplative silence that may have been wine, emotional growth, or a nap.
Nick drove without speaking for several kilometers.
The jacket was still around my shoulders. It held the day’s accumulation: cellar cool, terrace heat, woodsmoke from his cabin, the faint clean edge of his soap. The scent should have faded by now. Instead, it had woven itself through the collar and into the hollow beneath my jaw.
“You meant it,” I said.
He kept his eyes on the track. “Yes.”
No question. No request for clarification.
“About us,” I added.
“Yes.”
“You’re very comfortable with one-word answers.”
“They work.”
“They create operational inefficiencies.”
That earned the smallest sound from him, almost a laugh but held too low to count. “Do they?”
“Yes. They force the other person to do excessive interpretive labor.”
His gaze moved briefly to me. “You enjoy labor.”
“I enjoy strategy.”
“Then strategize.”
The word should have annoyed me. It did annoy me. It also slid under my skin and stayed there, because he was not challenging me to escape him. He was challenging me to stop pretending I had already decided to.
“My life is in Florida,” I said.
“I know.”
“My company is there.”
“I know.”
“My sisters.”
“I know.”
The third answer should have felt repetitive. It didn’t. Each one landed like a stake driven into ground he was not disputing.
“I don’t do impulsive decisions.”
“No.”
“And I don’t abandon what I’ve built because of a man.”
His jaw shifted once. “Good.”
I turned to him. “Good?”
“Yes.”
“Most men would object to that sentence.”
“I’m not most men.”
No. He really wasn’t.
“I’m asking you not to decide from a distance before you’ve even left.”
My fingers tightened on the edge of his jacket. There it was—not a demand or a promise, but a logical trap. Nick Mercer at his most reasonable was a devastatingly effective strategist.
Naomi’s laugh drifted from the back seat, followed by Graham’s voice as the world waited for us to rejoin it. I removed the jacket slowly and folded it once across my lap.
“I should give this back,” I said.
“Yes.”
Neither of us reached for it. The silence stretched until his fingers brushed mine—not an accident this time. His thumb touched the inside of my wrist for a fraction of a second before he took the weight of the jacket from me.
“Dinner at nineteen hundred,” he said.
“Is that an order?”
The corner of his mouth moved. “Wear something warm. I’m concerned about your circulation.”
He stepped out before I could decide how to answer. By the time I climbed down from the jeep, the group was already moving toward the lodge. Cufflink was clutching a bottle of reserve red like a trophy while Alina walked slowly, her gaze lingering on the back of Nick’s head.
I had less than twelve hours left. And Nick had not given me a single reason to make leaving easier.