Blush - Jamie Brenner Page 0,64

do to make this vineyard appealing to buyers. Which we’re already doing,” Leonard said.

“Are we?”

Everyone looked at Leah in surprise.

“Yes, we certainly are,” Leonard said, his voice gravelly and low. It was his “I’m barely keeping my temper under control” voice. “So let’s just keep that tasting room full all summer and focus on having a strong harvest. And in the meantime, considering this setback, I don’t want any talk of the sale around our staff. We don’t want to scare off valuable members of the team when we need them the most. John Beaman is already asking me questions. The last thing we need is to lose our sales rep.”

Did Leonard look pointedly at her when he said this? No, it was Vivian’s imagination.

And yet it was difficult not to think that she had been the one to insist they hire Delphine as their wholesale rep. She was their first female employee at the winery—and it had ended disastrously.

Until Leonard fired Delphine, the baron’s aversion to the United States had kept him on the other side of the Atlantic. After nearly four years without seeing him, she could pretend her attraction to him had never existed. And yet, the morning of his arrival on a bright day in late May, she found herself dressing with particular care. With fumbling fingers and a shiver of guilt, she tied a navy-and-gold equestrian-patterned Hermès scarf around her neck.

Leonard apologized for firing Delphine, explaining that he had tried his best to employ her but it hadn’t worked out.

“I need a man in that position, as you can surely understand,” Leonard said. The baron had responded convivially, and both Vivian and Leonard felt a crisis had been averted. Together, she and Leonard took the baron on a tour of the vineyard. She was relieved to find herself feeling calm and professional. Until the baron turned to her and said, “I’d like to see your stables.”

“What?” She thought for a moment that she’d heard him wrong.

“Back when you visited the château, you mentioned you had horse stables.”

She couldn’t believe he recalled the offhand comment.

“Did I? Well then, I must have also mentioned we don’t have horses,” she said, touching the scarf around her neck.

Leonard, who was uncharacteristically insecure while hosting the baron, jumped on their guest’s show of enthusiasm.

“Well, we might someday,” he said, just as Peternelle appeared to tell Leonard the tasting room manager needed him. “Vivian, why don’t you two go take a look at the grounds and then meet me back at the winery.”

The baron was silent for their walk to the rear of the house. He was taller, broader, more kinetically present than she had remembered. She suspected it was the change in scenery, the relatively humble Long Island estate rather than the sweeping backdrop of Bordeaux. They strolled with half a foot between them, and yet she felt like they were touching.

“It’s a shame Natasha couldn’t make the trip,” she said, desperate to normalize her breathing. Willing herself to forget the way she’d imagined his hands on her body.

“Natasha and I are no longer together,” he said. He stopped walking, looking at her in a way that felt searing, like he could see through her clothes. And then it rushed back, the old attraction, as fierce and unwelcome as it had been four years earlier.

“Oh.” She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Why did she have such a reaction to this man? She didn’t know him and probably wouldn’t like him if she did. Whatever pull she felt toward him was clearly just chemical, a trick of the body. And yet she was thirty-seven years old and had never experienced anything like it.

Inside the stable, he politely admired the stone masonry and woodwork. Still, she knew he had to be underwhelmed by the modesty of it all. They had spent very little of their renovation budget on building the stables, and now she wished they had been able to be more ambitious. But the simple, barnlike structure did have a lovely brick interior with stalls of southern yellow pine.

“We really built this on a whim,” she said, turning to face him. “I can’t imagine when I’ll have time for horses again. And my daughter shows no interest—”

He touched her elbow and, in a movement that took her by surprise even as it seemed to happen in slow motion, kissed her. She felt enveloped by that faint tobacco scent she’d first experienced in France, and the warmth of his mouth sent