Chapter 11
“Are you seriously here again?” Natalie asked as she arrived by his side.
“Oh, hello,” Ian said, turning to face her. “How are you this fine afternoon?”
“Give it up,” she snapped. “And tell me, what are you doing back here?”
Carefully, he placed the small white bucket on the ground next to his feet—which were, of course, wrapped in shoe covers.
A silent moment passed between them as she realized that hers, by comparison, were not.
She hadn’t been in the rows, had disinfected her shoes with the tray by the back door to the restaurant, and hadn’t been anywhere since—but she knew saying any of this would sound like a child having a tantrum.
Instead, she remained silent, and after a few seconds, Ian sighed.
“Yes, I’m back,” he said. “Obviously. I’m not here for fun and games or to torture you. I think this blight is something you need to be taking seriously—”
“I am!” Natalie exclaimed.
“Well, clearly not enough,” he said. “There are already several plants in the kindergarten field with what appear to be early signs of it—or do you not care?”
Annoyance turned to rage in her chest at his inflammatory words.
“How dare you question my dedication to this vineyard? How would you even know the first thing about me or this estate? And why do you think you’re somehow capable of discerning this blight when I’ve been researching it since the first day and haven’t found anything like it? ”
Wait…how did he know they jokingly called it the kindergarten field?
Luckily, it seemed like he was still processing the barrage of her response to his rudeness, and he hadn’t noticed her abrupt descent from fury into confusion.
“Well, I question your dedication because it doesn’t seem to me as if you care. Your first instinct when seeing it was to hide it from people who could potentially help you. Then, you go out on a date with your boyfriend when you could’ve been learning about it—”
“Not my boyfriend.”
“Not your boyfriend, but a date with flowers and playing dress up?”
“Excuse me?” Natalie asked, almost choking on the words.
“You spent, what, a few hours getting ready for this outing with your not-boyfriend, then spent even more at dinner or whatever?” Ian said. “You care more about that than figuring out what’s going on with your vines.”
She knew her stammering wasn’t helping the situation, but she couldn’t find the words to reply.
It was not that she cared more for going out than the vineyard, but she had gone out with Neil when she could’ve stayed home to look for answers.
The timing of his accusation didn’t help either, barely two minutes after she had asked her grandmother’s opinion on that very thing.
“I do care. You have no idea how hard I’ve worked for this place.” Her voice squeaked toward the end of her sentence as her throat tightened in embarrassment.
“There’s no need to get upset,” he said calmly. “I’m only answering you truthfully.”
“You don’t have to be so rude about it,” she replied.
Ian pressed his lips into a thin line before scoffing. “Rudeness is just people’s way of stopping others from saying what they mean.”
“Seriously?” she asked. “So if I told you that you look like an idiot in your hospital shoe covers, you’d just be, what? Fine with it?”
He looked down at his feet, a puzzled expression on his face. “But you wear the same ones? Do you think you look like an idiot?”
“What? No, that’s not the point—”
“And no, being fine with it isn’t what I’d be.” Ian rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t care either way because, first of all, your opinion on how I look is extremely low on my list, and second of all, I’d know you didn’t mean it because I’ve seen you wear the same things. So it’s not a true statement.”
Conversing with this man was like arguing with a computer, but his responses weren’t emotional at all. She was suddenly struck with the strangest feeling of being alone in this argument.
“Why must you run everywhere?” Sarah barked from behind her.
Oh, no—she shouldn’t be out here.
“Gran! Stop, the ground is—”
“Stop it, will you?” she said before continuing in a high-pitched singsong. “Oh, the ground is uneven. The old woman will fall to her death, blah blah blah.”
“Gran!”
Ian chuckled. Natalie shot him the dirtiest look she could muster, and he quickly stopped it.
She could never actually say this to her grandmother, but she did look properly frail right then. Standing on uneven ground with loose stones, holding on to her cane so tightly that her knuckles were turning white, Natalie hadn’t been this concerned about her grandmother in months.
“Stop it,” Sarah said. “And stop harassing the poor boy. He’s only doing as he’s told.”
Natalie blinked hard and stared. “I’m sorry, but what?”
“Don’t act so surprised,” she said. “This blight, it’s not good. I saw you not finding any answers, so I brought someone in who could help.”
“Aside from neglecting to tell me you were doing this, you chose this guy. How?”
The conspiratorial way Ian and Sarah glanced at each other caught Natalie’s attention.
“Tell me!” she exclaimed.
Ian spoke up. “I took what you said to heart. When you told me that if I genuinely believed I was doing nothing wrong, I wouldn’t have gone into the rows without telling and asking you. So, I approached your grandmother and requested permission to investigate.”
An unexpected bark of laughter escaped her. “Investigate? What, like you’re a grapevine detective?”
“No, not exactly,” he said, looking pained.
“He is, however, a botanical pathologist,” Sarah said, smiling brightly. “Just joined your department. I thought you would’ve known that, dear.” When her grandmother spoke that sweetly, it was only ever on purpose.
“Maybe if he had introduced himself instead of coming at me with insults and disdain, I might’ve cared to ask for his qualifications,” she snapped.
“I’m just going to…” Ian awkwardly pointed toward the restaurant.
Both women stood silently as he slowly approached them, removed his shoe covers and gloves, and headed toward the restaurant.
“When I asked you about what else you should have been doing, I was not referring to you taking one evening off to see your friend. What do you now think I was talking about?” The tone in her grandmother’s voice was familiar—and unwelcome.
It was the same way she had asked teenage Natalie for the names of the friends she had supposedly been studying with when she had been at the arcade with a boy from her class, and one of her grandmother’s bridge partners had seen her there.
The same voice she used when Natalie had been desperately trying to hide a failed math test, but the teacher had already called the house, concerned at the sudden downturn in her grades.
“Gran…”
“One of the lessons you need to learn, Natalie, is that asking for help early is not a failing,” Sarah said. “If you are going to be the head of Fitzgerald Hills, then you need to put your ego aside and do what is best for the vineyard.”