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“Oh, I shouldn’t drink on the job,” Danica said.
“Later, then,” I said, winking. “At dinner.”
She smirked and looked down at the papers. Then, without preamble, she dove right in.
“Did you know that the disparity in your soil is so bad that you are going to have a few harvests of wildly uneven crop? I am seeing a thirty to thirty-three percent change in yield year to year and inconsistent results for at least four seasons before recovering at your current situation.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, the humor and lightness in my voice suddenly gone. “That has to be inaccurate. I’ve been testing the soil myself for weeks.”
“I am just reading the lab results, Mr. King,” she said, suddenly very professional.
My brain was engaged, and for the next little bit of time, we bantered back and forth on the science of making wine. Everything from theory about how grapes took on sunlight and why our area of Northern California was even more ideal than France or Italy, to why my method of pruning was tedious and ultimately useless according to her, while I saw it as timeless and relaxing. A throwback to how running a vineyard had always been.
She was maddeningly smart. It bugged me, actually. She clearly knew what she was talking about and had her own, very firm, opinions about how vineyards should be run and what they could do in certain situations. I argued back about the legacy of our vineyard and told her she would see why I thought our specific place was worthy of exceptions to certain usual regulations. Or at least I hoped she would. I was certainly going to do what I could to make that happen.
10
Danica
The afternoon rolled on, hours blending into each other as we continued to discuss everything involving the science of winemaking. While we didn’t agree with every aspect, eventually our differences began to be less problematic, and we agreed more as time went on. Eventually, he took me down into the lab, and we went over some of the experiments he was doing along with some of the more in-depth ways he was working on saving the soil in areas that had been left to decompose for far too long.
The discussion went back and forth, getting heated every once in a while as we clashed about one aspect or another and then cooled down again. The rest of the vineyard closed around us, and before long it was just the two of us and the restaurant that was open. All of the brothers other than Derek had been long gone for some time, and he was in the kitchen, doing his thing.
“Alright,” Kane said, running his fingers through his hair and leaning back in the chair. “I don’t know about you, but I could go for something to eat.”
“Actually, that sounds good.” My stomach had been grumbling for some time, but I was damned if I was going to give up on some of my more salient points just because I hadn’t eaten much that day. “It’s getting kind of late anyway. I guess we’ll continue this bright and early tomorrow morning.”
“Actually, why don’t we continue it over dinner? If that’s okay with you. We can talk as long as we want, and he can’t really kick us out.”
“Sure,” I finally said, then hesitated. “But do you mind if I run back to my room and freshen up a bit first?”
“No problem. Meet you back here in an hour?” he asked.
“Perfect,” I said, standing. “I’ll see you then.”
Kane waved as I walked out of the main door, not insisting on walking me to my car this time. I was thankful for the chance to get back to the room at the bed-and-breakfast. A chance to get out of those clothes and into something a little more quasi-dinner-date appropriate would be good. As would getting out of my mud boots. They were great for keeping my feet dry and stopping me from ruining decent shoes in the vineyards, but they could be heavy and sticky sometimes.
I went back to the room and grabbed a quick shower, then sent up a quick word of thanks for the invention of the blow dryer. Drying my hair always took three times as long as the rest of the shower process, which meant by the time it was mostly dry, my hour had passed. In the meantime, I had gotten dressed and put on makeup again after debating for a few minutes what I should wear.
Business casual for the clients and T-shirts and jeans for the friends worked fine. But this was a weird cross between a work date and a real date, and I had nothing that seemed to fit that at all. Finally settling on black slacks, black heels, and a pretty blouse that I had picked up shopping at a store my first day in town, I got ready rather quickly and got back in the car once my hair was dry.
