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She could feel her dad flash her a look.
“It’s not helpful to look as young as I do, in business. People don’t always take me as seriously as I’d prefer.”
Saber smiled at him apologetically.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make a joke of it.”
“I truly don’t mind,” he said, setting down his wine, smiling again. “Shall we?”
She was hungrier than she thought. The salmon was tender and pink as a sunset, the rice nutty and chewy, the little salad sweet and tart, just perfect. She had not had such a fine meal maybe in her entire life. When she looked up, she saw that Ansel was just pushing things around his plate absently with his fork. She couldn’t believe that someone could get bored of such incredible food. She wondered if he was unwell. That would explain his startling pallor.
“Another beer?” he asked, looking up at her dad.
“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” he said, indicating the untouched glass of red next to Ansel.
“Oh, yes, I’d love to share it.”
Lia seemed to be summoned without any effort on Ansel’s part whatsoever. He raised his glass and gestured at Saber’s dad.
“Only one glass?”
Ansel looked at Saber.
“Oh, uh—”
“I guess I should be asking your dad. I don’t care at all if you have one. Where I’m from, a teenager having a glass of wine with dinner is the most normal thing in the world.”
“You can have some if you want,” her dad said.
“No pressure,” Ansel said, smiling a very charming smile now. His teeth, impossibly white, distracted her. She realized she was very tired after the long day, and her thoughts were wandering.
“Ok, sure,” she said, smiling at Lia, who swept silently from the room. “Where are you from?”
“Oh, uh, Europe.”
“Europe? JustEurope?”
Ansel laughed a little.
“My family moved around a lot, and I came to the states at such a young age.”
Lia returned with two large crystal glasses on the small, black lacquer tray. The wine was dark and deep, and Saber thought of a tube of watercolor in her collection, oxblood red.
She took her first sip of the wine, and let it rest on her tongue.
Then she looked over at Ansel.
For a moment, gazing into his ember-bright eyes, she could taste not only the wine, but the grapes as they had been, ripening on the vine somewhere in Southern France (how did she know it was Southern France?). She felt the warmth of the sunshine on their taut flesh and heard the sound of a man whistling as he picked the grapes with a rough, well-tanned hand. The image was so real she could feel the sun on her arms.
She gasped a little and opened her eyes, and the images dissipated like mist over water. For a moment, Ansel looked at her, his eyes shining, reflecting a fire that didn’t exist. Maybe they were mirroring the candlelight? She gazed right back at him, silently curious. Then he broke eye contact and looked back down at his plate with disinterest. She saw again that he had barely eaten anything. What, she wondered, had just happened?
She must be very, very tired.
Back in the car on the way home, she felt like she was in a strange daze. Ansel’s house, warm, elegant, and dreamlike,had definitely seduced her, had made her forget her constant anger, sadness, and frustration over her loss and the move. The moment when she had taken a sip of wine had been really strange, but she was tired, and the wine had been incredible. Hadn’t she heard of people being transported by tastes and smells? It wasn’t that weird, really, when she thought about it. And Ansel. He was hot, attentive, intelligent, had great taste, and, of course, he was insanely rich. No wonder she was attracted to him. He was also utterly unattainable. When he looked at her, he saw nothing but a kid, his employee’s awkward daughter.
Her dad slammed on the brakes suddenly, making Saber gasp and throw her hands out on the dash, heart racing. Stepping lightly across the road in front of the car was a deer, a buck, with stunning antlers. The headlamps from the car illuminated it as it picked its ghostly way across the dark, misty road, glancing at them serenely.
“Wow,” she said.
