The Promise of Provence (Love in Provence Book 1) (40 page)

Kat felt as though an obviously phony smile was betraying her confused emotions.

“Katherine, I want you to meet my daughter, Adorée. I had no idea she would be here!”

Laughing, the young woman with long chestnut-brown hair leaned in to greet Katherine with
bises
.

“I’m so thrilled to meet you! I have heard lovely things about our family’s new Canadian friend,” she said.

Katherine smiled sincerely now and hoped her sigh of relief was inaudible.

“My father should know I would never miss
la vendange
!” Adorée explained to Katherine. “But I always give him my flight arrangements, and this year I thought I would play a trick and tell him I was just too busy at work to get away.”

The surprise only added to the festivity of the evening, but at 11:00 p.m. Joy rang a bell and announced everyone had to leave and go to bed immediately.
“Dormez bien,”
she added with a twinkle in her eye. “We begin at dawn tomorrow morning, which will be precisely 6:27.
Bonsoir! Bons rêves! À demain!
”

The morning began with coffee and the usual croissants,
pain aux raisins
, and
pain au chocolat
.

“Allez vendangeurs!”
rang through the air, and the backbreaking work began. The air had a healthy coolness at that hour, and everyone attacked the vines with careful but vigorous efforts, clipping bunches of grapes and placing them in baskets at their feet. The contents of the baskets were emptied into bins placed along the rows, and others were assigned to load these bins into trailers attached to tractors. The tractors would then begin winding their way along the narrow country roads to deposit their cache at the wine co-op.

Katherine was amazed at the parade back and forth along the bordering roads she could see from the field. Tractors of every size pulling bins and wagons were accompanied by massive mechanical harvesting machines. The procession was endless through the entire day.

She was told that until the early 1970s, every grape in France was picked by hand. As well as the friends and family, who might only pick on the weekend, at the other end of the vineyard, grape pickers from Spain were employed until the job was done.

Picking grapes all day was no easy task, Katherine realized as the hours passed, and she congratulated herself on remembering to bring Advil with her. Straightening her back and stretching on a regular basis, she was thankful for the benefits of the yoga sessions on her terrace most days.

Toward the end of the afternoon, Philippe and Adorée found Katherine, who had been picking with the Lalliberts. They instructed her to turn in her clippers and basket for the day and whisked her over to the co-op so she could see, smell, and hear the excitement of watching the grapes go into the machines for processing.

After being carefully emptied from their box or basket, bad or unripe grapes were removed before the rest went into a de-stemmer/crusher. Stems and leaves were separated from the grapes in that machine before they dropped onto a sorting tray and then onto yet another tray to wash any airborne particulates that may have adhered through the growing season.

“No bird poop, please!” Adorée exclaimed.

Philippe explained how the grapes then go into a grape crusher to separate the skins and begin the juicing process before it all went into the grape press to extract any remaining juice from the skins. The juices ran through hoses into barrels and vats to begin the fermenting process.

“It’s all done with such military precision!” Kat observed as her camera shutter clicked away, capturing the deep rich colors of the enormous mounds of grapes. The satisfaction of the growers’ smiles as they watched the process and congratulated each other on a fine harvest provided wonderfully authentic portraits of grizzled faces at the end of days of hard labor.

Musty sweet smells of fermenting grapes filled the air.

Philippe and his daughter laughed as Katherine insisted on getting as close to the action as possible, her shoes sticking to juices that covered the floor. “An occupational hazard,” they explained. “Now the next best part begins, as we will feast tonight back at the
manoir
. Antoine and Hélène and their kitchen army have been cooking all day.”

Adorée took Kat’s arm as they walked back to the car. “If you thought last night was a party, just wait! Here’s the drill—shower, snooze, and be ready for
une grande fête
!”

“Then be ready to do it all over again in the vines tomorrow,” Philippe added.

Driving back to Antibes on Sunday evening, Katherine was barely able to keep her eyes open.

“I’m sorry, but I know I’m going to fall asleep any minute,” she said.

Philippe chuckled knowingly. “I would be amazed if you didn’t. This weekend was hard labor and hard partying. Go to sleep and don’t worry about it.”

Philippe took the key from Kat’s hand and opened the door to her house. Much to her embarrassment, she had slept during the entire drive. Turning down her invitation to come in for a drink, Philippe said, “Now it’s my turn to, as you say, crash. I need to lie down very quickly.”

They both laughed.

“But I want to invite you to come with me tomorrow afternoon for a few hours. There’s something I would like to show you.”

Without hesitation, Katherine agreed, thinking she would cancel her bridge commitment in the evening just in case she was not back in time.

“I will meet you at two o’clock at the statue in front of the market. Wear jeans and running shoes and bring a light jacket, even though it will be warm. And bring your camera.”

Standing in the doorway, he leaned in and kissed her on each cheek. Katherine wondered if it was simply her imagination or whether there was something different about his touch this time.

She was intrigued by his invitation, but he would offer no further details.

“Thank you—for everything,” she said, her voice strangely full and throaty. “This weekend was an amazing experience in so many ways. It was great fun to see everyone and spend such a happy time together—exhausting but happy! Your daughter is a beautiful young woman, and I’m so pleased I had the opportunity to meet her.”

She suddenly was aware she had taken his hand in hers, and she felt her face flush. Their eyes met as he told her how much he enjoyed her company, how easy she was to talk to. Raising her hand to his lips, he kissed it lightly, his eyes never leaving hers. Then he backed out the door and was gone.

Katherine stood for a minute, still holding that hand in front of her, staring at it as her heart raced.

Going straight to her computer, she sent Molly a message marked “Urgent” and hoped her friend would check her mail when she got up for work. Stunned by the change in the dynamics with Philippe, Kat felt like a lovesick schoolgirl who needed to confide in her best girlfriend.

Her phone beeped again as she climbed into bed, and she remembered that Nick had been calling her. She let it go to voicemail. In the excitement of the weekend, she had completely forgotten about her phone. Listening to the messages—days ago he had left three—she was almost pleased to hear he was still in London with no firm return date, due to “complicating factors.” And he missed her.

She didn’t miss him.

Lulled by soothing sounds from the sea, she fell asleep, feeling fortunate to have shared another unique experience of
plaisir
.

One month left. It’s not going to be easy to leave, but what memories I’ll be taking with me.

Katherine was wakened the next morning by loud knocking on the front gate and her name being called through the open window.

Grabbing her robe, she poked her head out to see Twig and Tim looking up.

“Sorry! I guess we woke you?”

Katherine dashed down to the courtyard and unlocked the gate.

“Hey, come on in. What’s up?”

“Nick asked us to come and let you know what is going on. He doesn’t want to call anyone now, as things suddenly are heating up.”

Katherine offered coffee, but they said they wouldn’t stay long.

“Nick wanted us to reassure you that he hasn’t done anything wrong, but he’s in a bit of a pickle,” Twig said in her delightful British accent that took the edge off any conversation.

“He won’t be traveling anywhere for a while,” Tim said. “He has been warned he may be arrested if he sets foot back in France, and the boat is under a travel restriction until further notice.”

“It’s all about an unfortunate association that has become extremely complicated.”

“Here’s a different e-mail address for him. He would like it if you got in touch, and he sends his apologies for his rather abrupt disappearance.”

Katherine assured them she would think about it. Her session with the
gendarmes
had left a sense of unease.

“We’re going to be staying with the boat to take care of things here, but let’s get together for a drink before you leave.”

Molly Skyped Katherine as soon as she read her “urgent” e-mail. She caught Katherine just after noon and listened as Katherine breathlessly recounted her weekend. There was a different timbre to her voice today.

After the Saint-Tropez weekend, Molly had celebrated Katherine’s breaking through her “fling fear factor,” as she put it.

“You stepped outside your comfort zone. Good for you,” she had congratulated her.

Now Katherine’s voice was full of passion and excitement, combined with apprehension, as she described her feelings about the weekend with Philippe.

“Something changed, Moll. I can’t precisely pinpoint what it was, but we both seemed to respond to each other in a more intimate manner. When he introduced me to his daughter, there was something different in his voice. I didn’t know who this beautiful young woman was when I first saw her with him, and I can’t begin to describe how jealous I felt!”

Molly listened carefully. “It sounds to me like romance may be in the air, girlfriend! Perhaps that little roll in the hay with Nick opened you to other possibilities.”

Katherine chuckled. “I don’t know about that, but I do know, whatever it is, it feels good. I have no idea where this is going, but I just had to tell you!”