Chapter 6
Everything just had to go perfectly, that was all.
Even as the thought crossed her mind, Natalie groaned.
Why had she done this to herself? It wasn’t like it was a spur-of-the-moment thing; she had suggested it to the department heads before, but she hadn’t expected them to take her up on it.
Especially only a few days after her decision to at least try to get a date with Neil.
She took a deep breath, made eye contact with her reflection in the mirror, and breathed slowly.
“You look lovely, dear,” Sarah said. “Maybe a little overdressed for a tour. You’re not wearing high heels, right?”
With a measured breath, she turned to face her grandmother.
“No, I’m wearing a pair of lace-up leather boots, as you can see,” she said, wiggling her foot.
“They’re my nice ones instead of the beaten-up steel caps I usually wear—there are a bunch of important people from my department.
I need them to see me as a professional. ”
Something in her grandmother’s face told her she disagreed with some part of that statement, but even if she hadn’t seen the bus of guests arriving outside, she would’ve had no time to think about it.
“Wish me luck, Gran,” she said as she passed, pressing a quick kiss to her grandmother’s cheek.
“You don’t need luck; you have skill,” Sarah replied, pinching her arm lightly before departing down the hallway.
This exchange had happened many times before, and it was almost a tradition at this point. Her grandmother had started saying it to her in high school, but no matter how old she got, it still made Natalie glow.
“Thanks, Gran,” she said as she headed for the front door.
She hadn’t let on that it was more than just a desire for her department to see her as a professional that drove her to the nicest versions of all her vineyard clothes and a little more makeup than she would normally bother with.
Neil was attending, and this was her chance.
The bus pulled into the circular drive and opened the door for her. The driver knew the drill like the back of his hand. Stepping aboard, she put on her friendliest face and smiled widely.
“Welcome, everyone, to Fitzgerald Hills. The walking part of the tour usually takes around an hour, but because so many of you are interested academically, you’ll be accessing areas otherwise closed to the public.
I’m estimating around two hours in the vines, and then we’ll head to the cellar door and restaurant. Do you have any questions?”
The fifteen or so faces staring back at her ranged from completely blank to mildly alert—but all remained silent.
Lord, was this what giving lectures was like?
She didn’t want to imagine the increased awkwardness in a lecture hall with three hundred students.
Luckily, Neil had a seat free next to him.
As he waved at her, her heart skipped a beat like always.
This was the problem with Neil—he never gave her any signals at all.
He was friendly but not flirtatious. He sought her out socially—but only sometimes.
They talked about work and non-work-related things. They were friends? Sort of?
She didn’t know how he saw her, but she would find out.
“Hey,” she said, sitting down next to him. “How are you?”
“Great,” he said, grinning at her. “You look nice.”
Her heart skipped at least three beats that time.
“Oh? Thank you.” She shyly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Excuse me. I have a question,” a male voice interrupted.
Trying as hard as she could to forget that she was probably blushing like a teenager, she turned with her customer service smile on full power to see a man she didn’t recognize. “Sure, of course. I don’t think I recognize you from the department. How can I help?”
“Oh, well, I’m new here,” he said, looking at her like she had lost her mind. “Are you familiar with the classification chart Professor Langhorne published last year?”
Natalie nearly flinched. Yes, she was familiar with it; she was on the team that published the paper, establishing it as a baseline for the department’s ongoing research lines.
However, her name and the rest of the team responsible had not been attached, as Professor Langhorne had submitted the paper as a “supported but singular” effort.
He was senior to her and all the others on the team; all they could do was refuse to call it the Langhorne Chart, which he had initially tried to popularize.
“Yes,” she said, looking at the back of Langhorne’s head.
“Good,” the man said. “The varietals we’re seeing today, are they heritage rootstock, or are they something you’ve hybridized?”
“Uh, well,” she said, trying to get her mind to move on from Neil’s compliment.
“We have a bit of a mixture. Today, we’ll see Section Seven, which is classified as heritage, but the other main section will be Nine, which isn’t technically a hybrid but wouldn’t be classified as heritage. It’s a little complicated with Nine.”
He looked at her blankly for a beat. “It’s all right if you don’t know where they sit in the classification chart; you can just say—”
“I do, actually,” she replied. “But as I said, it has a complicated rating, and depending on how the researcher defines certain things not addressed in the published version of that chart, it could fit into multiple classifications.”
Despite being somewhat used to her mostly male colleagues talking ever so slightly down to her, this approach was new. It felt like he thought he was being nice about it. She had no idea what to do with that.
“Right,” he said. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ll explain it when we get there. Or will Professor Lang—”
“I will be,” she said quickly.
She hadn’t planned on it, but she had cloud access to her notes so she should be able to pull something together.
The stranger nodded curtly and returned to his seat.
“I love it when you get all sugar-snippy,” Neil said, bumping his shoulder into hers and smiling when she looked up at him.
“What do you mean?” Reminding herself to focus on his words and not on how incredibly good looking he was when he smiled like that, she watched his face as he explained.
“When you think someone is rude, you kill ’em with kindness.”
Did she?
“Uh, thanks…I think?”
Neil laughed and looked like he was about to say more, but his phone rang, and he jumped to answer it. Sighing, Natalie got into her notes on the so-called Langhorne Chart so Mr. Don’t Worry If You Don’t Know could eat his words once they arrived.