by JC Harroway
Cole laughed then, a deep, rich sound that resulted in a pang of something unwanted in her stomach. Something suspiciously like butterflies instead of the petrified chrysalises that had been there previously and that she preferred.
“I’ll admit that I find it a little easier to get by in life when the woman I’m with is agreeable, but I’m not a liar either, Ms. Sandoval.” Then he paused for a moment, as if considering whether or not saying his next words would be wise. “But if I may say, a different, nonmouthy, kind of woman wouldn’t have pointed out the pandering at all.”
Blair struggled not to smile, having clearly been outed as an outspoken person herself, and made her way to the door. He beat her there, however, holding it open for her with a knowing grin on his face. Stepping out into the bright afternoon sun, Blair waited for him to join her before locking the door behind her. “You’re much cleverer than you look—you know that, right?” Blair told him with her own cheeky grin. Then immediately quit it because she was not flirting with men anymore. That was dangerous territory into which she was no longer venturing.
Cole laughed again. “Well, now, you’re not the first to say so.”
Giving him a small smile that was not at all flirtatious, she hopped into a golf cart with the intention of taking him to the farthest part of the vineyard first and then making their way back to the tasting room, which was the public-facing part of the operation.
Instead of taking one of the back seats like most people on the tours, Cole sat right beside her in the front seat, his massively wide and tall body taking up nearly the entire seat so she had to scoot right to the edge where the metal bar dug into her side.
“So you’re a sports announcer?” she asked, initiating the obligatory small talk as she rode north of the tasting room. She had a practiced script she’d use once they reached the actual vines, but for now she could get to know Mr. Takes Up Entire Seat a little better.
“Yep, racing mostly,” he said. “I announce for an American station, but I do the Formula One racing circuit all over the world. This is my first time back to the States in a couple of months.”
“That sounds exciting,” Blair said, even though she wasn’t much of a traveler. When she’d been learning about wine she’d traveled extensively, but since she was more of a homebody it wasn’t her comfort zone.
Cole just shrugged. “It can be,” he said, but didn’t sound as excited about it as she might suspect someone to be with such a noteworthy job.
Blair glanced over at him, but his expression didn’t give much away and seemed focused on their surroundings, which she couldn’t blame him for. The vineyard was beautiful if she did say so herself; the mountains peppered with towering pine trees, the trodden dirt paths that ran parallel to the bright green vine rows, the cement walkway they were on now that wound around it all like a meandering river and the bright sun gilding it all in gold—it all felt like someone’s dream of a vineyard come to life. In the evenings, her favorite thing to do was sit on her porch, which overlooked the entire farm, and drink her family’s wine. It was simple, perfect and never got boring for her.
“But you’re not from here, obviously.”
“Louisiana, born and bred,” he grinned proudly. “Not the bayou, mind, but Baton Rouge.”
“I’ve only ever been to New Orleans, but to be honest I don’t remember much of it.”
Cole chuckled again. “That’s a pretty common state of affairs in that town. Baton Rouge isn’t as exciting, but it’s certainly home. I take it you’ve grown up a California girl?”
“That’s me.” Blair nodded, glancing at him quickly before turning off the main trail onto another, smaller one that led to their white grape varietals. “So if you’re an announcer, that means this isn’t your first time to Sonoma County?”
He shook his head. “Nah, I’ve been here dozens of times. I come out to announce the Sonoma Speed Festival at least once a year and it’s turned into one of my favorite places on my tour.”
“And you’re interested in starting your own winery?” she asked, steering them to why he’d come to Sandoval Vineyard.
“I bought a house back in Baton Rouge, so I want to invest in one around there and need to make sure I know what the hell I’m putting my money into. Y’all have quite a reputation wherever I go, so I thought it would be a good place to start. Plus, I promised my sister I’d bring back her favorite wine. She’s obsessed with your chardonnay.”
Blair nodded, pleased. “I’m happy to hear that. I’ll give you some bottles of what I think of as our best year when we get back to the tasting room.”
Cole shifted in his seat to face her and his knee bumped the side of her thigh and stayed there, burning a hole in her jeans. She hated that she didn’t hate it, that she, a person who didn’t deserve to derive any pleasure from another man ever, was, in fact receiving it.
“Now, see there, that’s what I want to know, what makes one year better than another and all that. I know what I like, I know what people tell me is good, but I want to know that my vineyard can produce a product that’s reliable year after year.”
“You’re certainly in the right place,” Blair said, her fingers tingling with the prospect of talking about the process. This was her wheelhouse and she could talk a person’s ear off about what it took to keep grapes healthy, soil science, weather management, the works. “And I’m happy to answer anything you’d like. But while there are a lot of factors in the differences in wine from year to year, the largest one is simply weather. If it’s cooler with low sun, grapes are slower to grow, which is good for some grapes but not as good for others like cabernet, which needs more heat to ripen fully. That’s why our cabernet sauvignon grapes are planted where there is full sunlight as opposed to sauvignon blanc, which you want to ripen slowly to retain a more refreshing taste.”
A lot of people would be bored by just that small amount of grape information, but she saw that Cole was making notes on his phone. “This is great. Do you know what kind of grapes grow best in Louisiana?”
Blair looked at him. “I’d say the climate in Louisiana is too hot and humid for a profitable winery based on wine grapes and that anyone who told you otherwise is either a liar or a not very well-researched person.”
Cole looked at her doubtfully. “Well, now, I’ve been to wineries there before so I know they have to be growing something.”
Blair shrugged. “My guess would be they were fruit wines or made from grapes like muscadines or something. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but the varietals that could work there aren’t popular or especially hardy, which just makes grape growing, something that’s already challenging, even more so. And honestly, you probably wouldn’t be getting a return on your investment. Another practice is that wineries are making wine with grapes they’ve had shipped in from somewhere else. If we have a surplus harvest, for instance, we sell our grapes to other wineries.”
Cole stared at her. “Well, now, I’m again going to go back to my earlier statement about mouthy women. A nicer lady would have tried to break all that news to me gently like before trashing my hopes and dreams, but you just let it loose.”
“I’m just trying to be factual with you. Muscadines are the only variety of grapes that grow well in southern climates and there’s not a large market for that wine. There are some vineyards that live by it, but it’s a type of wine that hasn’t really caught on to the rest of the country, so if you’re wanting to invest in a vineyard, it wouldn’t be my first pick. I can give you the names of a lot of operations I think your money would be better spent on, but that’s entirely up to you.”
“Wouldn’t there be more competition if I went with a place that used traditional grapes? At least there aren’t a lot of muscadine producers in the first place.”
Blair shrugged. “That’s a better question for Nate. I just know most people don’t have a palate for muscadine wine.�
� She glanced over at him with a grin. “But then again, I’m a snob with a vested interest in people not drinking wines we don’t sell so you’ll have to take that into consideration.”
Cole snorted and leaned back into his seat. “I like you, Blair Sandoval, but you’ve clearly never had a sweet muscadine wine on a hot day while relaxing on a riverboat. I’ve traveled around the world and I’m here to tell you that there’s not much better in life.”
“Sounds like you miss home more than the wine.”
A deep “hmm” came from Cole this time. “You may be right about that.” His gaze wandered out to his right, down the hill into the valley of the vineyard, and he seemed to get lost in thought for a moment. “But you know what they say, you can’t go home again.”
Blair finally stopped the golf cart next to the field of sauvignon blanc vines. She got out and looked over the grapes she’d had a hand in growing and tried to imagine not being a part of this vineyard but simply couldn’t. From the moment her grandfather could feed her a grape, she’d been in love with the vineyard. “This has always been home for me,” she told Cole, plucking off a grape. The grapes were still a little over a month away from harvest, but they were coming along well enough. “We Sandovals bleed wine.”
“I hope it’s the red kind,” Cole quipped, meeting her at the row of grapevines.
Blair gave him a bland look. “Maybe.” Then she handed over a grape for him to try. “They’re small but mighty.”
He took the grape from her and popped it into his mouth, his face immediately puckering.
“Now that’s what someone might call a textbook illustration of someone eating sour grapes,” Blair laughed. “They’re not ripe yet,” she explained. “But they’re getting there.”
“You’re an ornery woman,” Cole said, moving closer to her as he inspected the grapevine. For what she didn’t know, but he was very large and his scent was in her nose again, piney and fresh and masculine. She wanted to bury her nose in the soft cotton of his shirt, but also the idea made her want to vomit. As had been her habit since her unfortunate ex, she looked down at Cole’s empty ring finger trying to spot a tan line, but she couldn’t discern one. Though that didn’t exactly make him single.
Not that she was looking.
Instead she imagined her future room at the nunnery and put to rest any lascivious thoughts she might be having about Cole.
Until, that is, he leaned close to whisper in her ear, his warm breath like a feather’s kiss on the shell of her ear.
“I might as well mention that I like that in a woman too.”
Blair’s eyes slowly closed and she mentally said about a thousand Hail Mary prayers even though she’d never been much of a church person, because just being near Cole Taggart made that nunnery seem about as far away as the moon.
Copyright © 2021 by Terra Rogerson
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ISBN-13: 9780369702579
Tempting the Enemy
Copyright © 2021 by JC Harroway
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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