A Price Worth Paying - By Trish Morey Page 0,23
I thought you’d send someone. I didn’t expect you.’
‘Well, you got me.’
His eyes raked over her and her bullet-hard nipples suddenly had nothing to do with the cold because she was suddenly feeling hot.
‘I’ll get you that coffee,’ she said, discomfited, her cheeks flaring with heat.
He smiled as she turned away. ‘You do that.’
‘Who is it?’ asked Felipe as she returned to the cottage. ‘Who’s making all that noise?’
She poured coffee into a mug. ‘It’s Alesander. He’s fixing some of the broken trellising.’
‘Why? What is he doing meddling with my vines?’ He swayed backwards and forwards in his chair, gaining momentum and looking as if he was intending to get up and go and take issue with him. ‘They’re not his to meddle with!’
‘Abuelo,’ she said with her hands to his shoulders, squeezing gently, feeling a pang of guilt in her chest, knowing that soon they would be his to do anything he liked with them, ‘he’s being neighbourly, that’s all.’
‘Neighbourly? Pah!’ But he settled back in his chair, already wheezing under the strain of his efforts.
‘Yes, neighbourly. It’s about time this feud between the Esquivels and the Oxtoas was put to bed once and for all, don’t you think?’
He muttered something in Basque under his breath. Normally she’d ask him what he meant, but not this time. This time she had a fairly good idea what he meant without the translation. ‘I’m taking Alesander some coffee. I’ll be back soon.’
‘It’s the vines,’ he called out in his thin voice as she left. ‘He doesn’t want you.’
She didn’t answer. Felipe might be right, but she didn’t have to tell him that. Not when she needed him soon to believe the exact opposite.
Alesander was busy under the vines when she returned, intent on the task of replacing a broken upright, and she leant against his car and watched him work. She hadn’t pegged him as someone good at manual work, but he seemed to know what he was doing, every action purposeful and certain.
She watched him manhandle the new post into position, liking the way his body worked and the muscles bunched in his arms.
She watched him twisting broken wire together, increasing the tension on the wire supporting the heavy vines.
He was good with his hands.
And then she deliberately looked away while he finished the job, turning her gaze towards the view out to sea because she didn’t want to think of the man having clever hands, not when that was something she didn’t need to know.
It was better not to know.
It would be better if she didn’t think about it.
What was it about this man who turned her thoughts carnal when her intentions were anything but? Thank God he’d agreed that there would be no sex between them. Never again would she have sex with a man who didn’t love her one hundred per cent. Never again would she experience that sickening fear that she might be carrying the child of a man she didn’t love with all her heart.
She wouldn’t let it happen.
‘Is that for me?’ he asked, startling her, so lost in her thoughts she hadn’t heard him approach. She turned to see the job done, the once fallen vines now lifted high off the ground again.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, handing him the mug, pulling her hand away quickly when their fingers brushed. He sipped the coffee, thoughtfully watching her, and nodded.
‘Bueno. How’s Felipe this morning?’
‘Mistrustful. He wonders what you’re about.’
Alesander smiled. ‘He’ll come around,’ and put the coffee to his lips again—good lips, wide and not at all thin—and she suddenly felt awkward, standing here, watching a man drink a cup of coffee. She wondered if she should go. She’d delivered the promised coffee after all. Then again, she’d only have to come back for the cup …
‘Why are the vines grown so high?’ she asked, finally falling on something to say. ‘It must make looking after them more difficult.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s the way here. The weather from the sea can be harsh. This way the vines form a canopy that protects the fruit beneath, making it more suitable for the grapes to flourish. And of course—’ he smiled ‘—up high they get a much better view of the sea.’
And she blinked as she remembered a phrase from her childhood, a sliver of a memory she’d forgotten until now, some words an old man had told her as she’d trailed behind him around the vineyard asking endless questions while he’d snipped and trimmed the vines, answering her