Here With Me (9 page)

He pulled himself up straight and his broad
shoulders seemed even wider, to take up more space, to spread
maleness in the midst of what had always been purely female. When
he shook his head, she could feel the warm relief flow through
her.

He inclined his head toward the bed. “You
going to hang that photograph?” he asked.

“Yes. If you don’t mind,” she added. “I mean,
it’s your room, too.” Brother. Could she be any more awkward at
this?

He didn’t say anything for a minute. Finally,
he looked at her and gave her one of his gentle smiles. “I think
I’d enjoy seeing it,” he said. “Reminds me of home.”

By the time they got halfway to the large red
shed, George could feel his lungs start to work again. For a
minute, when he’d seen Melody holding that photograph up against
the wall, he’d thought all the air had been sucked right out of
him.

He’d taken the photograph of John Beckett and
Sarah Tremont the night before he had gotten into a stage with them
headed for Cheyenne. The plan had been for Sarah to get on a train
there and return to California, to her own place, hopefully to her
own time. John Beckett was to have returned home to his ranch in
Cedarbrook, Wyoming, and George was to have gone back to his
position as sheriff of Bluemont, North Dakota.

But instead, they’d gotten halfway to
Cheyenne before the storm had started. Before he’d seen the next
dawn, he’d placed his feet in the footprints and traveled more than
a hundred years forward, to Sarah’s place, to Sarah’s time. And the
photograph, made from the glass plate he’d put in his bag with the
intention of giving it to John once Sarah had left, had been
waiting for him.

How did things like that happen?

“Let’s find Bernard,” Melody said, breaking
into his memories. “You can learn more about winemaking from him in
ten minutes than you could from most people in ten days.”

“He and Pearl seem fond of each other.”

“I think it’s a lot of mutual respect.
Grandmother knows that Bernard works like crazy and that Sweet Song
of Summer wines wouldn’t be half as successful without him. Bernard
knows that Grandmother trusts him implicitly—she never
second-guesses his decisions.”

Maybe it was the photograph or maybe it was
hearing her describe the relationship between Bernard and her
grandmother so simply that suddenly made him homesick. He’d had
that kind of relationship once. With a whole town. He’d liked the
people of Bluemont, North Dakota, and he’d worked hard to earn
their respect as sheriff. In return, they’d trusted him. At least
until he’d left, a mere day after he’d buried his wife.

He taken their trust, their respect, and set
it aside because the fire, the pure need for revenge, had burned
hot in his belly. Probably some of the good townspeople had
disapproved, him being a lawman. But most knew, most understood,
that a man couldn’t go on when his soul was gone.

He’d left them and spent six months chasing
the three men responsible for murdering his wife. Two were now
dead. The third was still out there somewhere.

And that had the power to haunt him.

Melody stopped walking and grabbed his arm.
Her skin was warm and her touch gentle. “You’re awfully quiet all
of a sudden,” she said. “Do you want to do this later?”

“No. Now is fine.” They’d reached the
building and entered through the open, ten-foot-wide door. Barrels,
each three feet in diameter, stacked twelve feet high, flanked them
on either side. A young man, no more than sixteen, he guessed, sat
eight feet off the ground, on top of a big yellow machine that made
more noise than the car. Wide silver forks extended from the front
of it and a barrel rested on them. George watched the young man
pull a lever on the machine and the fork raised higher still. In
less than a minute, he’d moved the barrel up to the top of the
stack.

Melody waved at the young man. “How goes it,
Montai?”

He gave her a big grin. “I get to run the
forklift this year,” he yelled.

She smiled at him. “Excellent. I’ll see you
later.”

They walked another ten feet. “Montai’s
father has been working here for over twenty years. Montai and his
sister were both born here. His mother helps Bessie in the
kitchen.”

When they were three-quarters through the
shed, they saw Bernard. He was talking with a man who looked to be
about his age, maybe a few years younger.

“Gino,” Melody said.

The man looked up and a smile crossed his
weathered face. “Well, if it ain’t Sweet Pea,” he said. He held a
clipboard in one hand, and with the other, he patted her head and
ruffled her hair, like one might a small child. “Good to have you
home.”

“It’s good to be home, Gino. How are the
grapes?”

He smiled. “It could be one of our best years
yet. But the season is young.”

“I know, I know. Don’t count your wine until
it’s bottled and corked.”

The older man laughed and turned toward
George. “Welcome,” he said, holding out his hand. “Know much about
grapes?”

“No, sir,” George said. No sense trying to
kid this man. He had a look in his eye that told George he didn’t
suffer fools lightly.

“Good. Then I can train you right.” He put
down the clipboard. When he looked at Melody, his eyes were
serious. “So, you’ve seen your grandmother?”

“Yes.”

Bernard and Gino exchanged a glance before
Gino again turned to Melody and said, “Your grandmother is sick.
Really sick. She won’t complain and she sure as hell won’t tell you
the truth about being scared or being so weak that she can’t walk
out to get her own mail.”

Melody’s pretty eyes, which had been so
bright just minutes before, filled with tears. “How much time?” she
asked, her voice husky.

Bernard shook his head. “We don’t know,” he
said. “But she told me that she doesn’t expect to see the fall
harvest.”

Melody’s body swayed and George moved fast.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her tight up
against his body. “Steady,” he said, his voice low. This couldn’t
possibly be good for her child.

“I’m all right,” she protested and moved out
of his reach. He let her go but stayed close enough that he could
easily catch her if she fell again. Her face was pale and she was
blinking her eyes furiously.

She looked first at Bernard, then at Gino.
“Thank you both for being here for her, for taking care of things
the way you always have. I know that must be a comfort to her.”

Gino shrugged. “Having you here is what’s a
comfort. Especially you being married and pregnant. When she told
Bernard and me about it, her face just lit up.”

Pearl hadn’t told Tilly, her daughter, yet
she’d told her hired help. Very interesting.

“Maybe the thought of having a
great-grandchild will give her something to live for,” Gino said.
“Sort of romantic how the two of you got together again after
having been apart for a couple years.”

George stood close enough to Melody to sense
her body stiffening.
A couple years.
Try a hundred and
eighteen.

But it was the story she’d told. Given that,
he’d have thought she might be a little more adept at keeping false
about it. She wasn’t too skilled at this kind of thing.

Like a calf facing a branding iron, she
looked like she might bolt if given the chance. He put an arm
around her shoulder. “I’m grateful she waited for me,” he said,
smiling at her.

Melody’s upper lip twitched nervously in
response.

“Maybe we should check on your grandmother,”
he suggested.

She gave him a grateful nod. “I’ll see you
later,” she said to Gino and Bernard. “You’ll both be at dinner,
right?”

“Wouldn’t miss your first dinner home, Sweet
Pea,” Gino said. “I imagine Bessie’s going all out, probably fixing
every one of your favorites.”

Melody’s eyes filled with tears again and
George tightened his grip. “Come on,” he urged. With his arm still
around her, he turned her body toward the door. Sensing that she
might want a minute to compose herself, George kept the pace
slow.

They were close to the door when Bernard
called after them. “Hey Melody, when can I show you the data entry
that needs to be done?”

They both turned. Bernard stood in the same
spot where he’d been. There was no sign of Gino.

“I can come tomorrow,” Melody said. “How
about at—”

Bernard held a hand up to his ear, telling
her that he couldn’t hear. Melody slipped away from George and took
several steps back toward her old friend.

And what happened next, happened so fast,
that George didn’t have time to think, barely had time to react. He
heard the sharp
whoosh
of air moving and looked up to see a
heavy barrel rolling from the top of the stack. It was gathering
speed, headed straight for Melody.

George sprang forward, wrapped his arms
around Melody, and hauled her back. He hit his shoulder on the oak
barrels directly to his left and the pain shot down his arm. He saw
the now-airborne barrel fly across the center aisle.

It hit less than a foot in front of them.
There was a sharp crack of oak against oak, then a dull thud as it
dropped to the cement floor. George stared at it and knew that if
it had hit Melody, it would have killed her.

If he’d have been a fraction of a second
slower, he would have been too late. The realization made him
swallow hard, twice.

Then, the realization that she had her back
to his front and he had one arm wrapped just under her breasts and
one around her middle, made him afraid to breathe. It was wrong to
hold her so, to be so forward. To hold her in the way that a man
holds a woman when that woman is his. To hold her in such a way
that all he had to do was arch his hips and he’d be pressed in
behind her, her curves suddenly a part of him. To hold her in the
way a man holds a woman when he wakes up in the middle of the night
and his need is great and her body is warm and welcoming.

“George,” she said, her voice a mere
whisper.

He kept his hips right where they were
supposed to be. “Yes,” he said. He was afraid to breathe, afraid to
jar their careful balance.

He could hear her take a deep breath and he
felt her chest expand. She turned her head, and her lips were just
inches away from his. And for the briefest moment he thought that
she was going to kiss him, like he had kissed her before lunch, and
his whole body started to shake.

He let his hands drop back to his own sides.
What the hell was he thinking? He took a step back, giving them
both space.

She smiled at him. “It seems a bit
inadequate, but thank you.”

He wanted to come up with something witty or
smart to say but it had been too close a call. He managed a nod and
was grateful when Bernard ran toward them and Melody’s attention
was diverted to the older man. His face was pale and his hand shook
when he held it out to touch her face.

“Are you all right?” Bernard asked.

“I’m fine,” she said.

Bernard whirled around. Montai was off his
machine and standing thirty feet away, his face much paler than his
bare arms.

“Damn it, Montai. What the hell happened?”
Bernard demanded.

The boy shook his head. George could see he
was scared to death. “I don’t know. I wasn’t anywhere near that
barrel. I put my load at the end, just like you showed me how to
do.”

Bernard walked to where the barrel had rolled
from and looked up. Then he looked over his shoulder, back at
George and Melody. “Somebody forgot to set the chock. Who the hell
could have done something so damn stupid?”

Montai shook his head. “I never touched
them,” he said, his voice quivering.

George looked across the aisle. Sure enough,
in front of every remaining barrel, there was a small angular piece
of wood, propped just so, to keep the barrels in place. It was
pretty easy to see what had happened. Montai had dropped his load
on the opposite end and there’d been just enough vibration to start
a chain reaction.

Bernard walked over and kicked the oak
barrel. It didn’t even roll an inch. The metal banding around the
two ends and in the middle was bent but the lid had stayed on.
“I’ve been doing this for forty years and I’ve never see anything
like that,” he said. “If it would have been full, it would have
never budged, but these barrels are empty. We’ll use them this
fall.”

Montai wiped a hand across his mouth. “I’m so
sorry, Melody. I would never want to see you hurt.”

“I know that, Montai,” she said. “It was a
crazy accident. It’s not your fault.” Her voice sounded
surprisingly strong.

George was grateful for that because his
knees felt pretty damn weak. When Melody turned to look at him, he
wondered if she somehow knew.

Her eyes looked concerned. “Was that your
head that made that thump?”

“My shoulder,” he said, relieved that she was
focused on something else entirely. “It’s fine,” he lied. He was
going to have a hell of a bruise. It would match the bruises on his
ribs that he’d seen in the mirror when he’d changed clothes at the
store.

“Empty, those barrels weigh almost a hundred
and fifty pounds,” Bernard said.

“Well, it didn’t hit me so there’s no sense
worrying about how much it weighs. Whatever you do, don’t tell
Grandmother,” Melody said.

She’d no sooner finished speaking before the
dogs, followed by Tilly and Louis, bounded into the shed. They ran
up and sniffed the barrel, then ran circles around it, like nobody
needed to tell them that something was wrong. George noticed that
Montai had slipped into the shadows of the wine barrels.

“What’s going on?” Tilly asked.

“Barrel slipped off the stack,” Melody said,
her voice very matter-of-fact. George didn’t miss the warning look
she sent Bernard’s way.