Laura Drake - Twice in a Blue Moon

“I’m right behind you.” She stood. “Oh, by the way, the manager’s quarters are clean and ready for you to move in.”

“Thank you. I’ll do that after work today.” He stood and gestured to the door. “Shall we?”

* * *

HENOTEDAfine tremor in her hand when she reached for her notes. She hides it well, but she’s nervous. At least I’m not the only one. Hopefully the last-chance jitters he put on with his clothes this morning would wear off as the day went on.

He led the way to the vines, noting the drainage, exposure and sheltering along the tree-lined border. It was obvious that Bob Stone understood grapes. Nurturing delicate vines was a labor of love that required a scientist’s knowledge, a shaman’s intuition and strong parenting skills. He squatted to inspect a vine, gratified to see strong bud nodes and new shoots while his boss rattled off facts she must’ve looked up since he last saw her.

“The vines are a hybrid with the European Vitis vinifera , which I understand to be a good thing.”

“The best. What else do you know?” He dug his fingers into the too-hard soil.

“Our grapes are Cabernet Sauvignon and merlot on the red side, and a Chardonnay on the white. Those are European. Uncle Bob was experimenting with a few American zinfandel varietals before he passed away.”

He grunted a reply and brushed dead leaves from the base of a vine to inspect for bugs.

“I think it looks pretty good out here, no? A little tidying maybe...” Her voice trailed off to a wish.

He brushed the dirt from his hands and straightened. His boss stood pen in hand, ready to make more lists. He hoped she’d brought enough paper. “It looks like nothing has been done since pruning last winter.” He gazed over the messy rows that sprawled down the slope of the hill. “The debris from last year’s crop needs to be removed, and the soil tilled. We’re already late putting up this year’s trellis and tying the tendrils to it. All the support posts need to be tested and loose ones pounded back in. We need to put together a spray schedule for fungus and determine what fertilizer the soil needs. Do you know when the last soil analysis was done?”

She scribbled fast, her tongue caught between her teeth. “Um...soil samples?”

“Never mind. I’ll find them. Let’s go.”

She finished writing then jogged to catch up. He led the way to the covered outdoor grape crush pad and press, noting that they were at least clean. They wouldn’t be used until the crop was harvested in the fall, but all looked in order.

When they reached the production facility, he held the door for her.

She ducked under his arm. “When I arrived ten days ago, the AC was out. Luckily, it had just happened.” She pointed to the ceiling. “The repairman finished replacing the whole thing earlier this week.”

Shiny aluminum ductwork snaked across the ceiling. “What’d it cost?”

She named a figure that was a third higher than it should have been.

He cleared his throat. “That is...”

She scanned his face with a look of innocent hopefulness, like a young girl who just asked for verification that there was a Santa.

“Fine.” He cleared the gruff from his throat. She would have enough to worry about by the time he was done. No need to make her feel bad about a decision that it was too late to rectify.

She led the way through the shipping area. Cardboard boxes stacked on pallets filled the floor.

“Where are your—our warehouse employees?”

She glanced to the empty shipping tables and the abandoned forklift beside them. “We’ll have to hire some.”

“No shippers? Don’t we have orders waiting to be filled?”

“Not so much.” She put her lists and her pen down on a case and turned to him. “Look. I’ll be upfront with you. The last manager was a lazy drunk. The employees quit. I haven’t asked around about our reputation, but the trickle of orders tells me what I don’t want to know.”

She jammed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, which squared her shoulders. And pulled the green apron tight across her chest. “Getting The Widow in shape is going to take a lot of work. I know it. Now you know it.” Her chin came up. “But it’ll be so worth it. I can tell you exactly what it’s going to be like.” She looked off into the warehouse, but he was sure she wasn’t seeing metal walls or new ductwork. “We’ll have a pond in front with those fancy goldfish. Customers sipping wine on the front porch will be able to hear the ornamental waterfall. We’ll have wedding receptions on the lawn. I’ll teach yoga classes and aromatherapy and do massage.” Thick brown hair curtained her face when she ducked her head, but not before he saw her pink-stained cheeks. “I have ideas. I know looking at it now makes all this sound crazy. But this could be so much more than just a place to sell wine.”

“Well, with you and me working together, we’ll make that dream happen.”

She had her aspirations. He had his. He imagined a dark bottle with a black label that read: DiCarlo Select Merlot.

He shook his head. This dreaming thing was contagious. “We’d better get started if we’re going to get all that done.” He smiled at her and got a tentative one in return. She was a naïve dreamer, but damned if she wasn’t a good-looking one.

Rein it in, DiCarlo. That’s what got you in trouble last time. He’d learned the hard way that work and women didn’t mix.

He stopped at the glass wall of his office, overlooking the bottling line. He’d love to begin work in the adjoining lab, but first things first. “I’m going to find those soil sample reports and see what other information was left by the last manager.”

“All right. I’ll be in my office, trying to scare up a couple of warehouse employees.”

“Could we go over the financials later? I need to know where we stand so we can determine how many more employees we can afford to hire.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Hope mingled with the dreams in her brown eyes before she walked away.

Lucky thing she didn’t know what an unlikely hero she’d hired. But Indigo’s enthusiasm was catching. Jitters gone, he walked into his office, his step light.

And for the first time in months, his spirits lifted from the floor of hopeless.

* * *

SEVENHOURSLATER, Danovan returned the test tube of wine to the wire rack and jotted one last note. He’d found the testing equipment dusty and outdated. Apparently the last manager believed that tasting wine in large quantities was superior to using chemistry. And the wine quality showed it.

His stomach growled, protesting his decision to turn down his boss’s lunch offer. But he’d been trying to get his arms around the production end of the business. He closed the spiral notebook. Time to fill her in on his armload of problems.

His steps echoed in the dim production building. No reason to burn lights in a deserted warehouse. The bottling line disappeared into gloom, and the fermenting tanks looked like boulders in a dark canyon. He passed through the barrel room into the lit-up tasting room. The long wood bar gleamed, the slate floor had been washed and there was not a cobweb or speck of dust to be seen. Looked like the retail employees had been busy. He flipped off the lights on his way out.

Pushing open the door to the private wing, he was surprised to find Indigo’s office dark. Had she forgotten they were going to meet? Damn, he’d wanted to review those financials tonight.

As he walked to the door of his quarters, he figured he shouldn’t have expected otherwise from a Hollywood A-lister.

Clang! “Dammit!”

The sound came from across the hall. He pushed open the door to the long storage room.