I turned at the sound of her footsteps as she followed me outside, tugging her coat on over the elf dress. I was struck once again by the beauty of her body and the sexiness of her costume as it disappeared under the longer coat. She held the moleskine and pen out to me.
“You forgot these,” she said, in a way that almost sounded like ‘You forgot me.’
Indeed, I did, my little darling. I felt a smile form on my face, wonderful and terrible thoughts joining the plans and strategies already in the blender of my brain.
“Thank you,” I said, taking them and returning them to my pocket.
I wanted to talk to her, if for no other reason than to keep her around, but I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t business related. Krystal saved me the mental labor, with a gleam in her eye that implied she knew what I was thinking and concurred.
“So, how does the winery work?” she asked with the sweetest smile, looking around a little.
“I was just going to tend the crops if you want to see.”
“Sure.”
As we walked down to the fields, I took a risk as well as her hand. She didn’t pull away, and I led her into the fields of grapes and other fruit.
“We’ve been doing it for a while,” I said. “The family, that is. Handed down for generations, usually from father to son. Our parents moved to Florida, leaving it to us a bit earlier than usual. They insisted that we have equal ownership, even though Clarence and Emma didn’t seem to want it. They are still young, after all. So I took on the responsibility of running the daily business and gave them comparatively easier jobs. I don’t think Clarence wants to be here, but Emma seems to like it.”
“Do you?”
“Want to be here?” I asked.
“Like it?” Krystal clarified.
“No, I love it. Don’t get me wrong, I never had running a winery at the top of my list of ambitions, but I knew I would do something important that would make use of my skills. Keeping the family legacy going fit the bill nicely. I had to learn a lot in a very short time, but I’ve come to love it for its own sake as well.”
“Did you grow up here?”
“Yeah, but not in that big house. My dad had it put up. Until pretty recently, the wine making was run out of the barn over there, and we lived in the smaller house. Dad switched up the game and used the barn for parking, and the smaller house for production. The new way still keeps cost down pretty well. All the production and bottling is done on site with minimal staff. It lets us keep our quality up and the prices down so we can compete with the more commercial producers.”
“Not just a money man, are ya?” Krystal grinned.
“Not at all. I can understand how one might get that impression with my suits and all. What I really like is the strategy. Doing things just right, so they work out as well as possible.”
“Something tells me you’re good at chess,” she remarked.
“National junior champion eight years running,” I admitted with a laugh.
“Wow, what happened?”
“Puberty. Once I discovered girls, I kind of got distracted and my game started to slip.”
“Could you still play if you wanted to?”
“Oh sure, though these days the pieces I’m moving have more to do with keeping things gravy for the winery and the kids.”
Krystal didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to either. I knew I had misspoken and lurched to correct myself.
“Emma and Clarence. I call them the kids. Have since we actually were kids. An eleven-year age gap can do funny things to your perspective.”
“How old are you?” Krystal asked, seemingly out of nowhere.
“I’m thirty-one. They’re both twenty. Twins, you see.”
“Oh, gotcha. Must have been a surprise for your mom. Two babies eleven years later.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” I laughed, “She’d had me pretty young though, and they’d been thinking about having more kids for a while. You're about twenty, right?”
“Yeah, twenty-one,” she said.
Her cheeks were turning crimson. No wonder she was so cute. I didn’t want to embarrass her, so I decided to change the subject. Taking her up to a vine of my favorite variety of grapes, I showed her how I checked them, removing any that had gotten too ripe.
“The best view is up there on the hill. Especially at sunset,” I said, a little dreamily. “There is also a tree my great-grandad planted. It looks a little funny, a great big oak in the middle of an otherwise flat field, but cool, too. We called it the tree of life. Not least because of the number of droughts it has managed to make it through. It must be getting water from somewhere, but I can’t imagine where.”