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She gazed up, hand frozen mid-air, the foliage around her suddenly watery at the edges, her vision shuddering just as if she really were suffering from the migraine she had been pretending to have.
It wasn’t a cloud. It was the beautiful chestnut horse she had seen in the barn yesterday. Acrux—was that his name?
Yesterday, she had thought he looked like a rocking horse, but he seemed a lot bigger this time. Probably because he was standing closer to her. Or maybe it was because Trip was sitting on his back, his broad shoulders blocking out the sunlight.
‘Try some if you want, but you might be disappointed,’ he said, shifting forward slightly on the horse’s back so that his face suddenly slammed into focus, all dazzling blue eyes and glossy brown hair and that body, solid and humming with that energy that instantly made everything around him feel hyperreal.
‘The berries are smaller than with table grapes and the skins are much thicker so there’s a much higher ratio of skin to pulp. So you can eat them, but you have to chew a lot and then spit out the skins and the seeds.’
That he was riding without a saddle or bridle was mind-boggling enough to a non-rider like her, but now she watched, muted by a slideshow of emotions, some contradictory, each more intense than the last, as he dismounted, dropping to the grass with the same smooth grace with which he did everything physical. He removed the rope from the horse’s neck and gathered it in one hand.
‘We do grow some grapes for the table over here.’ As he started to walk away, the horse followed him and, after a moment, she followed too.
‘These are Italia Muscat. They mostly grow in Puglia commercially, but my father always likes...’ He paused, his eyes leaving hers briefly to scan back to the villa. ‘He always liked to have table grapes, so when he bought the estate they started growing this variety, too, just for the family. I think they taste like wine before it’s bottled.’
She felt her nerve ending twitch as he held out a small bunch of golden-skinned grapes. ‘Don’t worry. They’re seedless so you won’t end up in the underworld for half the year,’ he added as she hesitated.
Her eyes jolted up to meet his. Trip knew about Persephone and the pomegranates?
‘Are you comparing yourself to a Greek god now?’
That smile. The one she knew by heart.
‘Just try one. Please,’ he said softly, but there was a tension beneath the softness.
She was still working to breathe but now she glanced up at him, caught off balance by the hook in his voice. It wasn’t an olive branch or even a pomegranate, but it was a peace offering...or an attempt at one. And the strangeness of that, of Trip Winslow following her here to broker peace, allowed her to take the grape from his hand and bite into it.
It was sweet and the flesh melted in her mouth so that she had to press her hand beneath her lips to catch the juice.
‘Good?’ Watching her nod, he seemed to relax a little.
He ate a couple and then held out his hand to Acrux.
She frowned. ‘I didn’t know horses ate grapes.’
‘They love them, which is why I don’t normally bring him up here.’ His eyes found hers. ‘But needs must.’
Needs. The word quivered between them and his gaze felt heavy and hot, like the earth beneath her feet.
The sky felt as if it were pressing down on her head and yet something in his eyes made her feel as if she were being lifted. But that was the trouble with Trip—he made her feel two often contradictory things at once.
She cleared her throat.
‘How much wine do you produce here?’ It was just something to say. She didn’t much care, nor did she expect him to know the answer, but he replied immediately. ‘Around five hundred cases. We’re what you might call a micro-winery, but we’ve won awards for our rosato. According to Stefano, the vineyard manager, we have high hopes for this year’s crop. He dropped by this morning. Apparently, they’re days away from harvesting, so you’ll get to see it, which is lucky. Although I’m guessing you probably don’t feel lucky,’ he added after a moment or two.
She stared up at him, her heartbeat jamming her throat.
‘It’s just I didn’t think about that until yesterday. When you got upset.’ He frowned. ‘And I know that you hate me right now, but I didn’t have a choice. You see, I was never a contender.’ She could see that his anger was back—no, not anger, she thought a moment later. It was frustration and pain too. He was wrapped in it.
She waited, watched him regain control.
‘It was always going to be Charlie and then suddenly it was me and I knew a lot of people had their doubts, but I knew I could make the business work harder, smoother, leaner. Just better. And I did, but then I went to Ecuador and when I got back everyone was freaking out and I had to do something because I couldn’t lose control of the company. I couldn’t prove them right. Not after everything that I’d—’
He broke off, his gaze scanning across the vines, and she knew from the slight rigidity in his shoulders that he was no longer in Tuscany, but back in Ecuador. Her own body tensed as her brain tried to imagine what it must have been like to face violence and death alone. And if she hadn’t been here, he would still be alone, she thought with a jolt.
‘I don’t hate you,’ she said at last. Because she didn’t. ‘But you do stupid things sometimes.’
Thinking back to that moment when the police car had appeared from nowhere and Lucas’ pale, frightened eyes had met hers in the rear-view mirror, she cleared her throat. ‘Everyone does. And the reason I’m here is because you were right. There will be other, better times for us to break up. Any point, really, when the world isn’t fixated on your return from the jungle.’
