“I didn’t bring a bathing suit,” I protested.
“I know,” he replied. “Neither did I.”
Afterward, he led me to his cavernous bedroom. The mattress was surprisingly comfortable, when we finally fell asleep in each other’s arms. The Studebakers had sold him all the curtains, but we didn’t close the heavy brocaded drapes so we could see each other as we made love in the scuffed silver wash of a nearly full moon.
I woke at daylight, briefly disoriented as to where I was. Then I saw his tousled head next to mine and reached for my watch on the floor. Five-forty. He must have felt me stir because he opened his eyes and pulled me into his arms.
“You don’t need to get up this early,” I said as he kissed me.
“I do if you want a lift home.”
I was suddenly self-conscious about my foot again, which he seemed to realize. I showered alone in his spa- like granite bathroom while he made coffee.
“When can I see you again?” he asked as he dropped me off at my house.
“How about tomorrow? It’s primary day. Come by the Inn after the polls close. Seven o’clock. Noah’s going to win and I’m sure there will be a victory celebration,” I said. “Though it’ll probably be muted, under the circumstances.”
“I’ll try. I’ve got more meetings with my architect. If I can’t make it I’ll ring you.” He kissed me until I was dizzy and left.
Quinn was in his office when I got there shortly after seven. I called out good morning without sticking my head through his door and continued down the hall. A moment later, he stood in my doorway, tossing his tennis ball in the air and catching it.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“No. Why?”
“You didn’t stop by.”
“Sorry. I know I’m late,” I said.
“In a hurry to get to your desk chair?”
“Ha, ha.” I covered my mouth, stifling a yawn.
“I thought I’d check the Chardonnay and Riesling,” he said. “The boys have been tying up the vines and pulling leaves the past few days. Want to come along?”
“All right.”
“I’ll get the Gator,” he said. “Meet you out front in five.”
“They’ve been working in the south fields,” he said when I joined him. “We’ve got three new guys this season. I want to make sure they did this right.”
“Isn’t Manolo keeping an eye on them?”
“Sure he is.” He sounded surprised. “But I want to see for myself.”
If he left, I would miss his thoroughness. Jacques had been attentive, but Quinn was downright obsessive.
The tasks of tying up the vines to the trellis wires so they don’t hang down and pulling leaves off by hand, exposing the grapes to sunshine and air, are mind-numbingly tedious. Come harvest time we’re always glad we made the extra effort because of the difference it makes in the taste of the grapes. What Quinn wanted to check was to be sure there were no leaves covering each bunch of grapes. Otherwise the ripening process would slow down, robbing the fruit of the sunshine needed to increase flavor and sugar.
He turned down the service road toward the orchard. It was as good a time as any to get this over with.
“I talked to Mick,” I said. “I heard you’re thinking about leaving here and going to work for him.”
He was sitting with his profile to me, but I could still see the visible shock that went through him. “He told you that?”
No point involving Bonita in this, even though she was the one who spilled the beans. “Yes,” I said, and yawned.
“How’d the subject come up?”
“We were talking about vineyards.”
He grunted. “Opportunity’s good. Pay’s better.”
“So you’re going to take it?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
My mouth felt dry. “What’s stopping you?”
He turned down a row in the Riesling block and stopped the Gator. We both climbed down and he reached out, touching leaves, trellis wires, and bunches of grapes as we slowly walked down the row. Honeybees buzzed and tiny black flies alighted on the Gator. A hot breeze blew and I regretted not grabbing Eli’s Mets cap off the credenza in my office.
Quinn, who’d been walking ahead of me, stopped abruptly and turned around to face me. I nearly collided with him in the middle of another yawn.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” he said. “I’m asking. Do you want me to stay?”
Here it was. My chance to ask him not to go. “Of course I do.”
“I’m bowled over by your enthusiasm.”
“Quinn,” I said, “I don’t want to stand in your way if a better opportunity comes along for you.”
“And this is a better opportunity,” he said in a hard voice. “Plus it’s not like I wouldn’t see you anymore, being as you’re getting so tight with Mick.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to make a retort about Bonita, but instead all I said was, “So you’ve made up your mind, then?”
“Let’s go check the Chardonnay,” he said abruptly. “The crew is doing an okay job here.”
We went back to the Gator. He started it, shifting quickly through the gears until we were really motoring and I had to hold on to the edges of my seat to keep from falling out.
“I’ll miss you,” I said softly, but he didn’t turn his eyes away from where we were going or acknowledge that I’d spoken. He probably hadn’t heard me. It had been hard enough to say it once.
I let it go and we continued in silence, checking the Chardonnay block. After that we headed toward the equipment barn. I was surprised when he drove past it.
“Where are we going?” I asked. “North block? I thought you said the crew hadn’t done it yet.”
“They haven’t.”
“Then why are we going there?”
“We’re not. We’re going to your place,” he said. “You know what you need?”
“A winemaker?” I said.
The look on his face was completely inscrutable. “No,” he said. “A nap.”
Bonita called me Tuesday morning when I was still home. “Hey, Lucie,” she said, “you just got a call from someone at Seely’s. Apparently we, like, never paid them for some bedding plants they dropped off a few weeks ago. She said you’re always so, you know, punctual that she wondered if you didn’t get the invoice.”
“I bet it was the shipment that arrived the night of the freeze,” I said. “And the night Georgia…” I didn’t finish.
“Oh.” She sounded flustered. “Want me to ask her to, like, send another one?”
“She could fax it. Unless your mom has it. I think it was her order.”
“I’ll ask her.”
“Thanks. Just leave it on my desk. And tell Seely’s I’ll send a check right away. I’ll be in as soon as I finish voting.”
Bonita had propped the nursery bill, still in the envelope, against my lamp with a note that read, “My mom says sorry she forgot to give this to you.”
The bill, for seven hundred and forty-eight dollars and fifteen cents’ worth of bedding plants, was signed by Jennifer Seely. “Thanks for your business. Jen.” There was another paper in with the bill. A sketch of a rose and “C U 2NITE” written inside a heart.
Randy was supposed to pick up that delivery and take care of it. If he’d done that, he would have seen the bill before anyone else—and removed that note. I fingered the paper. The red roses in the shipment weren’t from
