Summer Days (Fool's Gold #7)

“Perfect. Your mom left us potato salad in the refrigerator. I finished a green salad. We’re good to go.”


“You forgot the wine.”

Her green eyes crinkled as she made a face. “We’re having hamburgers.”

“A good wine goes with everything.”

She followed him into the kitchen. He’d already picked out a bottle. Heidi stared at the label.

“Col Solare. Is it Italian?”

He reached for the bottle and removed the foil. “Washington State. It’s a blend made in partnership.” He smiled. “How many details do you want?”

“I think we’ve reached my limit. Is it expensive?”

“Define expensive.”

“More than twenty dollars a bottle?”

“Yes.”

“More than thirty?”

“Do you really want to know?”

She tilted her head. “It’s just wine.”

“You can’t use the words ‘just’ and ‘wine’ in the same sentence. You live five miles from a vineyard. You should support the local industry.”

“I’m more of a margarita kind of girl. What’s the difference between a ten-dollar bottle and a hundred-dollar bottle?”

“This wine is mostly aged in new French oak barrels. The best grapes are used, and the barrels are washed out during the aging processes. That’s a lot of expense and labor.”

“Why do they wash out the barrels? And how? There’s wine in them.”

“The wine is moved to stainless-steel containers, and then the barrels are cleaned out. It gets rid of sediment. The wine is then returned to the barrel to continue aging.”

He removed the cork and then got two wineglasses from the cupboard.

“Stainless steel because the wine won’t react with it?”

“Right.”

She took the glass he offered and sniffed. “It’s nice. You’re not going to talk about chocolate and black cherry are you? I’ve never understood that. It’s grapes, not chocolate. And if you say it’s pretentious, I’ll throw this at you.”

On his Nina-arranged date, he and the other woman had discussed wine because they’d had little else in common. That conversation had been slightly tedious and filled with “I know more than you” stories. He found he preferred Heidi’s honest assessment of wine.

“Tell me if you like it,” he said. “That’s what matters.”

“Do I swirl? Red wine drinkers like to swirl.”

“It aerates the wine.”

“I thought oxygen hurt wine.”

“In the bottle, yes. Once it’s opened and ready for drinking, oxygen opens up the flavors.”

She dutifully swirled her glass, then took a sip. She let it sit on her tongue for a second, then swallowed.

“Oh.” Her green eyes widened. “That’s nice. Smooth, but with a lot of flavor. I thought it might have that weird bite, but it doesn’t.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

They walked out onto the porch and sat on the steps.

They were a couple of hours from sunset. The days were getting longer and warmer as they inched toward summer. Buds had given way to leaves and flowers.

He and Heidi had brought the goats back for the evening. He could see the sheep and llamas grazing contentedly. He’d resisted coming to Fool’s Gold, but looking around now, he had a hard time remembering why.

“It’s Saturday night,” Heidi told him. “What would you be doing if you were back in San Francisco?”

“Working.”

“Not out on a date?”

“If I was dating, I wouldn’t need Nina.”

“There must be tons of women where you work or hang out.”

He shifted on the step, uncomfortable with the topic, but unclear on how to change it. “I’m not interested in going out with someone I do business with. I also won’t date an employee. There aren’t a lot of other women in my life.”

“You have a lot of rules.”

“I’m not looking to get sued for sexual harassment.”

“Good point. No likely candidates at your monthly tycoon meetings?”

He grinned. “No. All the good ones are married.”

“What about your season tickets to the opera or ballet?”

“I’m more a baseball guy. But I do like theater.”

“Musicals, where people randomly break into song?”

“Sometimes.”

“You’re full of surprises.” She put down her wine and grabbed his free hand. With her fingertips, she traced the calluses on his palms. “What will your tycoon friends say about these?”

“To tell you the truth, they’ll be envious.”

Heidi released him, which made him want to put his arm around her and pull her close. He liked when they touched. Lately he wanted to do a lot more than just touch, which made for some timing issues. He did his best to be gone before she stepped into the shower in the morning. The last thing he wanted was to spend fifteen minutes listening to the water running and imagining her naked. Not that leaving the house erased the image, but it made dealing with it easier.

“You’re a better cowboy than I would have thought,”

she admitted.

“I like the work. I can look out and see what I’ve accomplished in a day. I don’t get a lot of that in my regular life.”