Twice in a Blue Moon (18 page)

“No, no, of course not.”

Hope rose when she took his hand, but she was feeling for his pulse. “You just look tired, that's all.”

He pulled his arm away. “I'm fine.”

She watched him out of the corner of her eye. “I know you are.”

Shit. That's it. You're back on a jogging regimen, starting today.

She lifted the lazy mutt from the bucket of the wheelbarrow and set him on the pavement. “Go on, Barn. Want a drink?” She pointed to a small stream that emerged from a culvert under the road. The dog trotted over and drank in slurping gulps.

Maybe he could distract her from watching him take stampeding buffalo breaths. “You know your dog is ugly, right?”

“Hey, just because your ego is bruised, don't take it out on Barney.”

“I'm just stating a fact. And why would you want a dog who can't run?”

She put her hand on her hip. “Why would I want a jogging partner who can't?”

“I'm just saying. His snout is longer than his legs, and I think he borrowed his feet from a much bigger dog. He looks perpetually depressed, and—”

“I think he's cute. And at least he has a sweet personality, which is more than I can say for you.”

Barney stopped splashing water and sniffed the weeds.

“Barney, come.”

Muzzle and ears dripping, he trotted up to the road.

“Sit.”

He plopped on his butt, back legs splayed to the side.

Indigo squatted and petted him, making cooing noises. “He just doesn't know you, does he, Barn?” Lips tight, she glared up at Danovan. “You say something nice to him.”

“The dog?”

“Yes. You hurt his feelings.”

He crossed his arms. “It's a dog. It has no idea what I'm saying.”
So why did you talk to him that night?
Desperation, that's all it was.

“Think of one nice thing to say about him. He's waiting.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

The dog looked up at him and thumped his tail.

“Okay. His ears are soft. Can we go now?”

Her quick kiss on his cheek granted absolution. Her carefree smile hit his soft parts.

They only talked of business, and it wasn't until he was back at the winery and in the shower that he realized she'd never answered his question.

* * *

“T
ONY
,
DON
'
T
FORGET
the stretching I showed you. Keep that up, and you'll nail that Plow Pose.” Indigo stood at the door to her studio, ushering out her evening yoga class. “Good night, Karen.”

“Thanks, Indigo. See you next week.” Karen walked to the door of the winery, but it opened before she reached for the knob.

Danovan held the door for the rest of the students, then limped back into the hallway.

Indigo pulled her sweater closed over the T-shirt that left her midriff bare as she walked to the doorway of her studio. “What happened?”

“Nothing. I'm fine.”

“You're obviously not. Was there an accident?”

He walked stiff-kneed to his door and stood flipping keys on his key ring. “No accident. I went jogging on purpose.”

She should have known. “Aw, poor baby.”

He winced. “Fine, insult to injury. Just rub it in.”

Ask him.

He found the key and slipped it in the lock. “Give me a day to regroup, and I'll meet you Friday morning, same time.”

She tugged the belt of her sweater tighter.

He opened his door. “You're locking up, right?”

She nodded.
Ask. Him. In.

He stepped into his apartment. “Okay, well, I'm just going to soak my sore ego in a hot tub now.”

“Wait.”

He turned.

“Come back in here.” She didn't wait to see if he followed, just turned and walked. She'd been avoiding him, his hints and the questions in his eyes for too long. Well, not only
his
. She saw those same questions reflected in her mirror every morning. And now the only question left was did she have enough guts to do something about it?

“Where are we going?”

She led him around the privacy screen to her massage table. “I'm going to go lock up. You take off your shirt and pants.”

He eyed the table with a smile. “Will that handle our weight?”

“Massage isn't something I joke about.” She crossed her arms, hugging her sides. “You're in pain. I can fix that. Do you want me to?”

“I'm sorry.” Danovan's contrite tone said he knew he'd overstepped. “Yes, please.”

“Okay, get undressed.” She'd taken only a step when she stopped. “You do have underwear on, don't you?”

“Yes'm.”

“Good. You can keep them on.” She continued walking into the hall, through the door to the tasting room, flipping off lights as she went.
How much to say?
She did want to go out with Danovan. Did want...something. Just not everything. Not the nuclear explosion of emotion and intimacy they'd shared on the porch. She'd never experienced anything like that—like standing at the top of a high place, clutching a railing, fearing not that she'd fall but that she'd throw herself off. The yin/yang of thrill and terror unsettled, even as it tempted her.

And she'd been unsettled ever since.

Locking the front door of the tasting room, she flipped on the porch light and then strode through the darkened quiet to her studio.

Danovan sat in his boxers on the massage table.

She walked to her music player and inserted a rainforest CD. The sounds of a gentle rain and exotics seemed to close in the space. “Have you ever had a massage?” Perusing her large collection of essential oils, she looked for one that would be masculine but soothing at the same time.

“Um, no.” The lines on his forehead telegraphed dubious.

“In that case, get ready for an amazing experience.” She pulled from the back a bottle of sage and cedar wood oil she saved for special clients. “Just lie on your back.”

While he complied, she rolled a towel. When she touched his leg, he jumped. She slipped the towel under the back of his knees. “This will relax your lumbar spine.”

“Oh, okay.” He looked up at the ceiling with a focused stare and tense hands.

“Danovan, relax.” She squirted oil into her palm and rubbed her hands to warm it. The rich earthy scent filled the air. “You know how you're good with wine? How you know a wine's strengths and weaknesses from just tasting it?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, this is what I'm good at. I can tell your body's strengths and weaknesses through my hands. But only if you relax enough to trust me.” She looked down on him. “Can you do that?”

He scanned her face. His shoulders lost their tight line. “I can.”

“Good. Now, close your eyes. Listen to the music and breathe in the scent. Let your mind wander.”

She started at his feet, using hard pressure on the bottom, squeezing the heel, separating and pulling the toes. When he moaned, she knew she had him.

“Roll over.”

“Hmm.”

“Come on, the best is yet to come.”

“In that case...” Danovan rolled over.

“Just put your face in that keyhole in the top of the table and relax.”

His calves were tight and lactic-acid-tender, so she went slowly.

The music and aromatherapy worked on her anxiety as well, calming her jittery thoughts. Even so, she was to his shoulders before she figured out the right sequence of words to use. “Could we start over?”

“Oh, yeah. The foot massage was heaven.” He sounded almost dreamy.

“No, I mean...personally.” She took a breath. “See, I'm not very adept at all this. I think we skipped a couple of dozen steps there on the porch, and I kind of lost my place.”

He would have gotten up, but she pressed his shoulders back to the table. “I'm not done yet.” She worked her way down his biceps, kneading, loosening the tightness in the muscle. Besides, this would all be easier if she didn't have to see his face.

“Is it Harry?”

“Yes. No. I don't know. I think that's part of it. But mostly, I'm just confused. This—thing between us—happened so fast. I feel like we jumped in the deep end, and I don't know how to swim.”

This time, when he pushed up from the table, she let him. He sat up and, legs dangling off the side of the table, he took her hand. He turned it over, studying it. “Such capable hands. They're soft, feminine hands, but so strong.”

He looked up with an expression that shattered her serenity. He cared. A lot.

“You won't drown. I'll hold you up.”

“I don't need some man—”

“Only until you learn to tread water.”

He ran his fingers over her palm in an intimate caress that made her shiver. Or maybe it was that gorgeous face of his. Apparently her leading-man vaccination had completely worn off. Heat spread over the skin of her chest. She had no interest in a booster.

“I've seen how fast you learn, Indigo Blue.” He leaned over, cupped a hand behind her neck and kissed her forehead. “We'll go back and take those steps we missed.” He eased off the table and reached for his clothes. “Starting tomorrow.”

His words released the regret that had weighted her for the past week. When she breathed out, it dissipated in the scented air. “I'd like that.”

“Thank you for the massage. You were right about that, too.” His clothes fisted in his hand, he gave her one last lingering look then turned to go.

She watched him stride away, wondering how a man wearing nothing but boxers managed to look so...imperial.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

V
INEYARD
SUMMERS
ARE
THE
BEST
.

Indigo adjusted her floppy hat to block the rising sun. Not a leaf marred the pristine row stretching ahead of her. She took pride in keeping the soil tilled and fresh. The pace in the vineyard slowed as the grapes grew. Her work in the vines was now mostly done by hand: tucking the questing shoots back into the vines and leafing around the growing clusters, to assure they received the right amount of sunlight. Mothering the vines in the cool mornings brought her peace—she liked to think that the crush from these grapes would be just a tiny bit sweeter for it.

“And next, singing bluebirds will be circling your head, weaving in the stray hairs for you.” She smiled. Lately her life did resemble a Disney movie. The market had good things to say about The Widow's “rediscovered” wines. The staff was working well together, falling into routine days. With the tasting room busy, even Sondra was happy. Well, maybe
happy
would never be a good descriptor, but she snapped less. Indigo's expanding knowledge even made the sales calls less scary.

And she and Danovan were dating. She felt a silly teenager's thrill at his covert smiles in passing while at work. They were taking the skipped steps slowly. They'd been to the movies, jogged on the beach and gone shopping in Santa Maria earlier in the week, and tonight they were going out for pizza. And so far, all they'd shared at the end of the dates was a good-night kiss.

In their initial rush, she hadn't had time to appreciate Danovan's kissing expertise. She'd had ample time to realize it since. He focused with laser intensity on her face, his dark eyes almost hypnotic, before lowering his head to take her lips, soft, slow and sensual. She relished every single one. But a hollow place had formed in her rib cage that expanded with every night that she watched him walk away down the hill, whistling. She wanted more. She was ready.

Fanning her flushed face, she broke off a runty bunch of grapes and dropped them into the compost bag at her feet.

Maybe I should make the first move.

Her phone buzzed in the back pocket of her jeans. She lifted it and, seeing the number, smiled. “Hello.”

“Hey, boss.”

It was their code for “Someone's listening—I can't flirt.”

Didn't mean
she
couldn't, though. “I'm looking forward to a bit more than pizza tonight. What do you think?”

“I think that would be outstanding.” He cleared his throat. “Could you stop by my office on the way in?”

“Is everything okay?”

“Sure. Just have an idea to run by you.”

“And tonight, I may have a few things to run by you.”

“I look forward to that...opportunity.”

Chuckling, she clicked End. Who knew romance could be so playful? In Hollywood pre-Harry, she'd never gotten past the bar scene. Life with Harry had been wonderful and full of humor, but she wouldn't use
playful
to describe it.

Maybe she was too old for this, but she'd skipped steps in her abbreviated love life, and she was taking full advantage of her chance for a do-over.

After a quick shower and change of clothes, she roused Barney from a nap, and they walked down the hill. The parking lot held a few cars, even this early in the day. That was a good sign. She took the rear entrance to the production facility.

“Barney is in the building!” Sean, their twenty-something warehouse rat called from the shipping area, tape gun in one hand, holding a carton closed with the other.

Barney looked up, tail whipping.

Indigo never could resist those sad eyes. “Okay, you go visit with Sean. I'll come get you in a bit.”

Barney trotted to the shipping table.

“You're not to feed him Fritos from your lunch, you hear me, Sean?”

“Yes, ma'am, I know. They give him the squirts.”

Not how she'd have put it, but... She strode to Danovan's glass-walled office. He sat studying the paperwork spread out before him, his thumbs doing a drum roll on the desktop.

She stopped at the door. “Uh-oh. I recognize that look.”

His smile pulled one from her. “That is the look of a genius at work.” He waved her over. “I have an idea. A big idea.”

She perched a hip on the edge of his desk. “Hit me with it.”

Leaning back in the chair, he rested his elbows on the arms and played with his pencil. “The Widow is in the black, which is excellent. But since we're so small, it'll take years to rebuild.”

“You knew that when you started here.” A ball, small but containing something scary, formed at the bottom of her rib cage.

“Yeah, yeah, but hear me out.” His foot bounced. “We could speed up the process with a bigger crush. Your amazing sales skills have increased the demand for our wine. More product equals more sales and more opportunity to grow our reputation.”

“That would mean more land—which we can't afford. But even if we could, it would take a couple of years to get it in production.”

“That's why I think we should buy grapes.”

“Huh?”

“Wineries do it all the time. Some vineyards don't produce their own labels. They just grow to sell to other wineries. Bacchanal buys grapes every year.”

“Where are you going with this? You know we don't have the money.”

“I know. But assume we did.” He pulled a graph from the papers on his desk and held it out. “Here's a projection of revenue if we could double our crush.”

But revenue didn't always equate to profit. “That's impressive. But Danovan—”

“I've scheduled an aggressive plan for competitions next year. Our Chardonnay and merlot are going to slay the judges. But our Harvest Moon Cab isn't up to that level of scrutiny. I'm thinking our varietal needs to be changed to create that signature wine I told you about...” He stared off at nothing, tapping his pencil on the desk with a dreamy gleam in his eye.

She waved a hand, beginning to rethink her stopping in. “Ground control to Major Tom.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He straightened and leaned forward in his chair. “Anyway, if we buy grapes, we can improve the Cab and cut at least one year off our five-year plan. Maybe two.”

She studied the cliff-face bar chart. It was a nice dream, but there was less risk in slow, steady progress. “Okay, say we had the money to buy grapes. We don't have the equipment to process them.”

“True. We'd need to buy more tanks, expand the bottling line and hire more help in the warehouse.” He dug through the snowdrift of papers on his desk. “I've got a budget here somewhere.”

“Danovan, have you been drinking the product? We don't have—”

“Here it is.” He slid a piece of paper from under his keyboard and handed her the sheet.

It was an income statement. A rosy-lens scenario, with lots of pretty green zeroes at the bottom. Apparently her Disney bluebirds had flown down here, too. “It's pretty and all, but...” She let the paper fall to the desktop and pointed to her lips. “We. Don't. Have. The. Money.”

He looked up. “So? We borrow it.”

Her heartbeat stuttered then sped up, a tiny tapping at her ribs. She barked out a laugh that sounded fake, even to her. “No problem.” She snapped her hair over her shoulder in what she'd always thought of as the Hollywood flip. “I'll strut in and tell them that I'm
the
Indigo Blue, and they'll just open the vault and ask me how much.”

His steady gaze was unnerving. “Indigo, you have collateral.”

The silence thickened the air, making it stale and hard to breathe. The tapping at her ribs increased tempo. “That's ridiculous. The only thing I own of value is...”

He nodded, his eyes scanning her face.

The tapping became a jackhammer. “You don't know what you're asking.” Put Uncle Bob's legacy at risk?

“Yes, I do.” He didn't argue. He didn't pull out more hearts-and-flowers spreadsheets. He just waited.

He's got guts, asking me to risk the only thing I have left. I'm not doing this. No one can make me.
“Nope, sorry.”

His expression didn't change. His wild hawk gaze didn't shift away.

Instead it rammed against her wall of “no.” Unease skittered along her nerves on little spider feet. She shook her head. Between Harry's death and the debacle afterward, she'd just begun to stand again, after much struggle. “Everything is going so well. Why put that at risk?” Was she referring to more than the winery?

He cocked his head. Did he wonder the same?

Then the intensity of his gaze diffused. The taut lines of his face softened. He tossed the pencil onto the desk. “I understand.”

“I'm sorry.” And she was. She hated dousing the fire in him. Without it, he was simply handsome, like a model in a men's clothing catalog. Passion was what made Danovan DiCarlo an irresistible force, in business as well as...other places. It made him larger than life, and she realized that was the tractor beam that had drawn her like a moth to a porch light. She might be immune to good looks, but coupled with passion...

He glanced out the window-wall to the warehouse, looking pensive. “Indigo, I do understand. It's too much, too fast.” He turned and took her hand.

Smoky tendrils of heat spread up her arm at his touch, but it was the softness in his gaze that convinced her. He did understand. Not only what she said, but what she hadn't. She squinted in a half smile, half wince. “I guess I'm just not good at skipping steps.”

“For good reason.” He released her fingers and rose from his chair. “Well, I've got some lab work to do, and you probably need to start your day, too.”

As she walked out, a cold thought flitted through her mind. Did his business proposal have strings attached...to other things? Given her untrustworthy gut instinct, she couldn't be sure. “Are we still on for tonight?”

“I wouldn't be anywhere else.” The warmth in his smile drove out the chill.

She walked through the barrel room and into the tasting room. The soaring timbers and picture windows overlooking the porch and the rolling green lawn always lifted her spirits.

Natalie stood behind the bar, a bottle of Harvest Moon in hand, laughing at something one of the three women standing at the counter had said. Sondra looked on, wearing what Indigo thought of as her glacier-queen face.

The silk pants were the first clue that the women weren't from around here. Probably LA babes. These were the type of client she'd love to cultivate: chic, sleek and well-heeled.

Well-heeled is right. Those are Sergio Rossi boots.

She walked over to introduce herself. Two steps away, something about the shade of chestnut hair on the closest one hit her in her chest, halting her forward progress. When the woman turned slowly, her profile burned through the covering of Indigo's brain, searing the soft tissue beneath.

Four months hadn't dimmed the cruel glitter in those emerald eyes. “Well. If it isn't Indigo Blue.” There was no surprise on Brenda Stone's smooth features.

Indigo was surprised enough for them both. When she left Hollywood, it hadn't occurred to her that she'd see her step-daughter again.

Brenda's swank minions, wearing identical smirks, turned to watch the show.

“I didn't know you owned this little...place.”

Yeah, right.
Indigo's surprise splintered, and cold trickles of anger seeped through the cracks. She'd had to put up with Brenda in Hollywood, but not now. Not here. Straightening, she put a hand on her hip, grateful that she'd showered and changed into slacks and a silk blouse. “What do you want, Brenda?”

“Why would I want anything?”

The innocent, “oh, Daddy” voice singed Indigo's tender beginning-to-heal scars. “Because you always do. ‘Daddy, I want this,' and ‘Daddy, I need that.'”

One of Brenda's girlfriends tittered.

The amused cat-with-a-cricket look slid from Brenda's face, revealing her witchy side. “Well, I don't need anything now.” When she flipped her hair over her shoulder, the diamonds on her fingers flashed. “I have it
all
.”

It was comical, really. Brenda had always tried to enrage Indigo by waving things in front of her that she cared nothing for. But still, their last meeting stung.

She might have thrown me out of Harry's house, but this is my turf. If she came all this way to play games, then dammit, she's going to get her wish.

She patted Brenda's arm. “Except you never got the one thing you really wanted, did you, dear?”

Brenda shot her a haughty look. “Oh, unlike some, I got
everything
I wanted.”

“Not your father's approval.”

Brenda actually raised her hand, fingers curled to claws. Remembering her lofty station, she turned her hand, pretended to check her nails and said to her minions, “Let's blow this dump. If I lowered myself to buy wine somewhere besides Napa, it'd only be from a reputable winery like Bacchanal.” Brenda pivoted on her heel and, groupies trailing, sailed out the door. Indigo watched them walk to a white convertible Maserati, pile in and peel rubber.

She shouldn't have said it. It was childish and lowered her to Brenda's level.

But damn, it felt good.

Seeing Natalie and Sondra's stares, she wiped her smile. “I owed her that. The last time I saw her, she insulted my dog.” She turned her back and stalked to her office.

Winning a word war with the bitch didn't make up for Brenda pretending to be a friend, then laughing at Indigo behind her back. And it surely didn't make up for Brenda seeing a man as wonderful as Harry as little more than a wallet.

Success is the best revenge.

She banished the stray thought with a shake of her head. Brenda was
not
a good reason to consider Danovan's crazy idea.