The Apple Orchard

by Susan Wiggs

  “I told you I was freezing.”

  “Jesus, Tess.” He took off his jacket and slung it around her shoulders. She welcomed the enveloping warmth of his body heat.

  “I appreciate this. Did I pull you away from something important?”

  “The bank at quitting time. No problem,” he said.

  She deflated just a little. She’d fantasized—momentarily—that she was important, the kind of important that made a guy drop everything and dash away to find her. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been that important to someone. It was a terrible thing to want to be, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “So how’d you get caught in the rain?” he asked.

  “I had to get away,” she confessed.

  “What’s the matter?” He grabbed her hands and rubbed her cold fingers. “Besides the obvious, I mean.”

  “It’s hard, having a sister.”

  “I’ve told my sister so, many times.”

  Having a sister was wonderful...but hard. It was different from having a friend. Friends tended to come and go, but once she’d discovered she had a sister, someone who shared her father, her DNA, possibly a whole hidden history, she couldn’t not have her.

  “Is Isabel okay?” Dominic studied her.

  “Everyone asks that about Isabel. Maybe if we all quit tiptoeing around her, she’d stop being afraid of her own shadow.”

  “What happened?”

  “I went to see Magnus and when I got back, I snapped at her and now I feel terrible.”

  “Sounds like a pretty normal exchange between siblings.”

  “Does it? I wouldn’t know. I really want us to get along.”

  “Everybody gets along with Isabel.”

  “It’s just...I’m starting to care about her so much.”

  “What’s wrong with caring about someone?”

  “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, but it’s not easy. I don’t like seeing her hurt, or scared, and I can’t fix it for her.”

  “A word to the wise,” he said. “Nobody can fix another person. But everybody tries.”

  “Ouch,” said Tess. “I assume this means you tried fixing someone.”

  “You’re starting to know me pretty well.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t look so smug. It’s not a stretch. I’m a guy, remember?”

  “Like I could forget that.”

  He grinned. “Grab your stuff and I’ll give you a ride.”

  “All right.”

  “Unless you want to hang out here.”

  She was surprised. An opening? “To tell you the truth, I’m curious about this place now. I wouldn’t mind exploring. What do you know about it?”

  “I haven’t been in here in years,” he said. “I liked coming here as a kid. There was always something to eat, always something interesting to look at, like a puzzle of bent nails or one of Magnus’s boxes, things made of beeswax from the local hives.”

  “Isabel said her grandmother used to be in charge of the shop.” Gratefully she buried her nose in the fleecy lining of his jacket. I’m such a goner, she thought, lost in the scent of him.

  “During the harvest season, it was a busy place. Eva sold produce from the orchards, local honey, baked goods, freshly pressed cider.... Man, I’ll never forget her cider and homemade donuts. As I recall, you’ve got a thing for donuts.”

  “Ha, ha. Isabel must’ve inherited her talent in the kitchen from Eva. Why didn’t the place stay open?”

  “It was Eva’s baby. She organized it into a co-op for growers and artists. After she got sick, no one else was around to take it on.”

  “That’s a shame,” Tess said, looking around at the empty shelves and display tables. She shivered and drew the jacket tighter around her.

  “I’ll make a fire,” he said, helping himself to wood from a bin by the stove.

  “That’s too much trouble,” she said, feeling silly for wanting to linger here with the rain battering the roof.

  “What, you don’t want a fire?”

  “Of course I want a fire,” she blurted.

  “Then sit tight and let me make one. I like making fires.” He whistled as he laid old paper and kindling in the stove and opened the flue. Within a few minutes, the place was alight, and warming up quickly.

  “My grandmother had a shop,” she said, looking around, filled with nostalgia.

  “You kept her desk,” he said. “You used to play around it when you were a kid.”

  “I’m impressed that you remember me telling you that.”

  “I remember everything you told me. You’d be surprised how much I think about you, Tess.”

  “Really?” She wondered if it was even half as much as she thought about him. The wind whipped past, banging the battered sign outside against the eaves. “It’s strange to think Eva had a shop, as well. One of my earliest recollections was of watching the hand-painted sign swaying in the wind against a stormy sky, kind of like today.”

  She could still picture it perfectly in her mind’s eye. Things Forgotten was written in gold leaf script on black. Underneath, in smaller lettering, it said “B. Delaney, Proprietor.” The memories were powerful, imprinted on Tess’s heart, and she felt a wave of sentiment as she thought of that girl long ago, dashing in from the weather to a hot cup of tea.

  “Two shop-keeping grandmothers,” Dominic said. “It’s in your blood.”

  Looking around the derelict building, she pictured the shop, revitalized. At present, the space was a great hollow box, waiting to be filled from the wood-planked floor up to the hammered tin ceiling. She was quiet, listening to the fire and the rain on the roof, imagining the shop she would have. “Nana had exquisite taste,” she told Dominic. “Her clients came from all over.”

  “And your grandfather?”

  “Nana never married,” Tess said, thinking about what her mother had shared about the shame and hurt of growing up the mistress’s daughter. “She had bad luck with men.”

  “What about you?” he asked. “Do you have better luck?”

  Her standard answer was that she did just fine without a guy in the picture. Instead, she said, “That depends.”

  Twenty-Two

  Dominic took her to his place, which was exactly what she wanted, even though she knew it would complicate things. Maybe, she thought, she could handle a few more complications. He gave her a WWF robe to wear while her clothes tumbled in the dryer. The bulky sweater was hung on the porch to drip dry.

  Combing her fingers through her hair, she indicated the robe. “WWF? That’s very...badass of you.”

  He laughed. “Right. Here, try this.” He went to the counter and poured her a glass of wine.

  She savored the deep, complex flavors. “Amazing,” she said. “I’m sure there are all kinds of terms for this—peppery, floral, with notes of red crayon and Tootsie Roll, right?”

  “Very funny. I’ll stick with amazing.” He grinned at her. “Drink up. I have some others for you to try, if you want. The kids are with their mom.”

  “‘The kids are with their mom,’” she repeated. “That’s got to be some kind of code.”

  He nodded. “It’s a direct invitation.”

  She could see it in his eyes, behind those ridiculously sexy horn-rimmed glasses. “I’d love to try some others,” she said.

  He lined up several glasses. “This is a flight of my last four vintages, oldest to youngest. I can get incredibly geeky about it and give you all kinds of information, or I can just let you sit back and taste.”

  “I don’t mind a little geekiness,” she said. “I like it when people talk about something they’re passionate about.”

  “Okay, so this one is... You’re looking at me funny,” he said.

  “I’m not laughing.” She finished the final glass of wine. “You’re like two different people, Mr. Rossi, the banker, and another guy entirely when you’re talking about your wine.”

  “It’s a bit more interesting than amor
tization schedules and conversion clauses.”

  “And you’re more interesting when you’re doing something you love.”

  “There are a lot of things I love doing.”

  The look in his eyes was unmistakable. Her breath caught. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  She actually had butterflies in her stomach. Butterflies. She’d never had that sensation with a guy before. Everything about him was different, unexpected. Impossible to resist. Like magnets, they leaned in toward each other until she could feel the gentle heat of his breath, until she could almost taste his kiss.

  The dryer beeped, startling them apart.

  Dominic gave her a slight smile. “To be continued,” he said, and fetched her clothes. She changed in the bathroom, feeling flushed and, to her shock, a little shy. Normally she wasn’t shy at all with guys.

  Dominic went upstairs, and when he returned, he looked much more relaxed in faded jeans, a well-worn T-shirt, tennis shoes.

  “Put this on,” he said, handing her a fleece jacket. Unexpectedly, he took her hand. Iggy and the Dude trotted to the door, clearly reading his intent.

  In the wake of the storm, sunset lay in a pink-and-amber swath over the rolling landscape, the trees in the orchard casting elongated shadows on the hillside. To the other side of the slope were Dominic’s vineyards. The vines were heavy with fruit, the dense bunches of grapes nearly black in the deepening light.

  They held hands like a couple of teenagers. It felt ridiculously good to hold hands with this man. His touch was both safe and sexy at once. He walked with her through the vineyards, pointing out the different grape varieties, planting dates, grafting techniques. And always, like a song playing in the background, was the sense that they were moving together toward something, and she was scared and eager all at once.

  “Taste this,” he said, plucking a darkly colored grape. “It’s one I developed on my own. I call it Regina. Means ‘reigning queen.’”

  He held the grape gently to her mouth. The soft flesh of the fruit wore the fresh chill of evening. She bit into it, letting the juice fill her mouth. It had a mysterious flavor, not like the sort of grapes found on a cheese platter but something more exotic and sensual. The taste was earthy and barely sweet at all.

  “Well,” she said, wondering if he could see the warmth in her cheeks. “I’m pretty ignorant about grapes, but it tastes like something that could turn into a delicious wine.”

  Grinning, he tossed a grape into the air and caught it in his mouth. “You have no idea.” He fit seamlessly into his surroundings, as if he’d never done anything but cultivate grapes.

  She stepped back, gazing up at him. He reached out with his thumb and caught a drop of juice that lingered on her lower lip.

  It was all she could do not to groan aloud. She stepped back, trying to get a grip on herself. “Why don’t you do it, then? Why not be a winemaker, doing something you love?”

  “As a profession, it’s about as stable as betting on horses.”

  “You need something steady for the sake of your kids.”

  “Exactly. But this—” He encompassed the vineyards with a sweep of his arm. “I do it the way some people make art or play a sport. Just trying to do well at it makes me... It’s hard to explain. It makes me a better person, maybe, better than I would be without it.”

  He was showing her his dream, the same way she’d shown her dream to him in the abandoned shop. Dreams changed a person, and there was a little danger in that, because having a powerful dream made you vulnerable to failure and disappointment.

  “Listen to you,” she said quietly, “going all romantic on me.”

  He slipped his arms around her waist, pulling her snugly against him. “I’m finding it easy to do when you’re around.”

  “Yeah?” Her heart sped up. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

  “You lose. You’re the only one I’ve ever said that to.” He was smiling as he slowly and gently lowered his mouth to hers.

  She knew instantly that their previous kiss had not been a fluke. It really had been that good, because this one affected her the same way—it made the world disappear. His evocative touch made her feel as soft and ripe as one of his designer grapes, and her hands moved searchingly over him, up his arms and along his shoulders, fingers tangling in his hair. She pressed herself against him, fiercely needing the closeness, and a small sound moved in her throat, a nonverbal signal of yearning. She wanted the kiss to go on forever, but at the same time, she craved so much more than a kiss.

  After a long time, he pulled back. “Well,” he said.

  She detected a world of meaning in that single syllable. “My thoughts exactly.”

  It was nearly dark now. Flames from the distant orchard heaters cast an eerie, intriguing glow over the rows of trees on the Bella Vista side.

  “Let’s go back to the house.” Keeping hold of her hand, he started walking. “I’ll give you a taste of the 2006 Regina.”

  “Okay, you said that on purpose.”

  “I like the way it sounds.” He stared down at her for what felt like a long time. She grew self-conscious under his gaze. “I want you to stay tonight,” he added.

  A hundred questions crowded into her mind, sprouting like weeds. His statement could mean all kinds of things. Did he want to start a relationship with her, or just get laid? Did he see some kind of future for them together? Was there any possible way to construe this as a good idea?

  She knew the risks. She understood perfectly the hazards to her heart.

  But all she said was, “Yes.”

  * * *

  They barely made it back to the house. She found his impatience incredibly sexy; the feeling that he wanted her so much was like an aphrodisiac. Just inside the back door, he pressed her against the wall and started kissing her again until she forgot the whole world. Her skirt rode up, his jeans rode down and she wrapped her legs around his body as he lifted her against him. How quickly she was lost, forgetting everything except a crazy overwhelming need to be close to him. It was over all too quickly, leaving her breathless, her forehead leaning against his, both of them dazed and practically hyperventilating.

  In a fog, she slid down his body as if it were a tree trunk.

  He let out a long, shaky sigh and pulled up his jeans, leaving the top button undone. “I’ve been wanting to do that since the first time I met you.”

  And I’ve been wanting it. She didn’t say so. The admission made her feel too vulnerable.

  “Mission accomplished,” she said softly, straightening her skirt.

  The dogs clicked into the kitchen, offered them a diffident look and moved on.

  “Not hardly,” Dominic replied, bending to trace a path of kisses down her neck. “We’re only getting started.”

  After rearranging his jeans, he grabbed a bottle of wine and two goblets in one hand and led her into the living room. “I hope you don’t have other plans for tonight,” he said.

  “Um...no, why?”

  “I want to take my time with you.”

  A shiver of anticipation coursed through her. “That sounds... God, Dominic, what are we doing?”

  He flashed a cryptic smile. “Everything.”

  Then he went and made a small fire in the grate, just enough to ward off the twilight chill. They sat together on the sofa, and she felt mesmerized by the gentle bright flames, and the color of the wine and the crazy anticipation flowing through her.

  “To your dream,” she said, touching the rim of her glass to his. The wine was as delicious as he’d promised. The flavor was deep and slightly mysterious, and it went straight to her head.

  He stared at her for a long time. Though sitting close together on the sofa, they weren’t touching...yet. She was still buzzing from the encounter in the kitchen.

  After a while, he poured them each more wine, and they clinked glasses again. “Here’s to...something new,” he said.

  Her heart stumbled. “This might not
be such a good idea.”

  He kissed her, his mouth flavored by the wine. “Are you kidding? This is the best idea I’ve had in a long time. Maybe ever.”

  “I’ve never been anyone’s best idea before,” she admitted.

  “Then you’re not hanging out with the right people.”

  She flashed briefly on her friends in the city, ready to say something in their defense. Her friends cared about her. They did all kinds of things together—going out, staying in, shopping and gossiping, celebrating life’s victories and commiserating when someone fell down. However, none of them ever put her first. They weren’t there for her, not for the important things.

  “And you’re the right people,” she said, unable to keep from smiling.

  He answered by setting their glasses aside and kissing her again, deeply and with lingering intent while his hands mapped the contours of her body. He moved slowly, as though savoring her. She didn’t think a guy had ever savored her before.

  A little inner voice crept up, warning her not to start something with this man. She brushed aside her misgivings. She was on fire, and all hesitation burned up in the face of her yearning. If what had happened in the kitchen was any indication, the two of them were extremely compatible in at least one key area.

  “All right,” she said. “I’m in.”

  He laughed softly. “You’re not anteing up for a card game here. It’s not a game at all. I don’t play games.”

  Something in his tone made her hold still and catch her breath. “Neither do I.”

  He led her to the bedroom, where he yanked off his sweatshirt one-handed over his head and let it drop. Her breath caught at the sight of his bare chest and enviably fit abs.

  “What are these scars?” she asked, leaning forward to kiss a sickle-shaped ridge near his collarbone. “From the accident when you were in the navy?”

  He nodded, and she felt a pulse of grief, hating the image of him wounded, suffering. “Oh, Dominic...”

  “They’re just scars,” he said. “I don’t hurt anymore.” Then he undressed her slowly, taking the time to kiss and explore every part of her. In contrast to the clash of lust in the kitchen, this was a slow, exquisite torment, each moment leaving her more and more on fire.