‘That really wasn’t a good idea, was it?’ she said shakily.
‘No.’
No, thought Simone bleakly.
‘Dammit, Simone,’ he said next, and his voice was tight and hard. ‘What the hell do you want from me? You asked for friendship, conditional or otherwise, and I’m doing my damnedest to deliver, but that wasn’t friendship! It was war.’
She knew it. She wished she’d never kissed him. She wished she’d never come. ‘You wanted war, soldier boy. From the moment you stepped from your truck,’ she said defiantly. ‘All I did was oblige you.’
‘I did not want war,’ he said bleakly. ‘I wanted…something else. God knows what exactly, but something that would satisfy Gabrielle and the children.’
Children? Bewilderment took the edge off her defiance and her shame, and she grabbed it for the lifeline it was. ‘What children?’
‘Gabrielle’s children.’
‘Gabrielle’s pregnant?’
‘No.’
She hadn’t been drinking. Swear to God, she hadn’t touched a drop. But she couldn’t for the life of her follow this conversation. ‘Do you think that some day we might manage a simple comprehensible conversation?’
‘Working on it, princess.’
‘Oh, I can tell.’
‘Stop,’ he said curtly. ‘I’m working on it. It would help a great deal if you worked on it too. Do you want us to be at loggerheads on Gabrielle and Luc’s wedding day?’
‘No, but—’
‘Zip.’ His hand signal repeated the order. ‘Neither do I. We’re starting again. Here and now. Do you still want to see the vineyard?’
‘Yes. But not if—’
‘Stop!’ he ordered, exasperation writ clearly on his features. ‘I swear you’ve become irritatingly argumentative in your old age.’
Old age? She was twenty-six. ‘Better that than an autocratic bore.’
He sent her a sinner’s smile. ‘You’re not bored.’
‘This is never going to work,’ she muttered as her body responded lovingly to that smile.
‘I knew you’d see it my way eventually,’ he said. ‘But for the sake of this wedding, let’s pretend there’s at least an outside chance that it might. Twenty minutes to tour the plant. Another twenty to show you the vines, after which I’ll take you up the hill and show you the view. An hour, at most, and during that time we shall attempt to find new common ground. How hard can it be?’
‘You’re right. We need to think positive,’ said Simone. ‘No touching. No talk of the past. No incendiary comments. No problem.’ She needed to stop thinking about that heart-wrenchingly beautiful tattoo. ‘Got any alcohol?’
‘Follow me.’
He showed her the crushing plant, the mixing, processing, and ageing vats—stainless steel and state-of-the-art, all of them. The bottling equipment was older and labour-intensive, but his volumes were small at the moment too. Doubtless he would trade up and it would be replaced when volumes grew.
The brand-new wine storage shed stood behind the processing one and if it lacked a little something by way of character when compared with the storage caves of Caverness, well, that was only to be expected. Temperature controlled and ruthlessly organised, his oak barrels stood in neat rows, pale as sand and also very new.
He noticed her frown and gave a Gallic shrug. Seasoned oak wine barrels were a rarity in Australia and the people who had them held them, he told her. They were impossible to import. He’d had to buy new.
He kept strictly to the topic of winemaking.
Simone aided his endeavour by asking technical questions.
Rafael gave technical answers and stayed at least three metres away from her at all times.
Apart from the hungry snake of desire in the pit of her stomach, her greedy eyes, and his warning glares, everything seemed to be going very well.
Only forty-nine and a half minutes to go.
They headed for Rafe’s work vehicle, a high-wheeled table-top truck and completely incompatible with a knee-baring sundress. Her dress rode up to high thigh as she settled into the passenger seat. Damn Gabrielle and her wardrobe suggestions. She knew she never should have listened to them. Rafael’s hands went to the steering wheel and stayed there. His knuckles turned white. His gaze turned black.
‘Fix it,’ he said tightly.
She fixed it.
Rafe drove. He wasn’t three metres away from her now. Simone battled the tension that came with enforced proximity and tried to think of questions that would make it go away and stay away, but she was running out of questions and Rafe’s answers were getting shorter. Yes, the trellising was his design. He’d wanted maximum sunlight, better air flow through the canopy and easier picking. Yes, the companion planting worked to keep pests away. The predatory ladybirds he released onto the vines also worked to keep pest numbers low.
Yes, he did eventually have to spray towards the end of the growing season. Yes, it wiped out his ladybirds. He released new ones straight after harvest.
Yes, the ducks were in residence in order to keep the grubs down.
No, they did not have names.
He showed her the dam and the wetlands below the vines. Half a dozen waterfowl and a pair of magnificent black swans had made the wetlands their home.
The swans didn’t have names either.
He drove up a steep dirt track to the top of a hill and showed her the lay of his land while the minutes ticked away, the silences grew longer, and the tension between them reached excruciatingly lofty heights.
‘What time is it?’ she said.
‘Four thirty-eight.’
Thirty-eight minutes in each other’s company without bloodshed was good. ‘You about ready to call it an hour?’
‘God, yes,’ he muttered gruffly, and that was that.
He stood staring at the view while she got in the truck and smoothed her skirt down her legs as far as it would go. ‘It’s all good,’ she said. ‘You can get in now,’ she added, and sent him a bright and guileless smile to deflect the glittering gaze he shot at her.
He got in. They started down the dirt track at speed. Rafe was clearly in a hurry to put an end to this tour. It wasn’t wimpish to cling to the door handle and start reciting the Lord’s Prayer, was it?
He shot her a glance, still glittering but this time tinged with
