Page 16 of Vine (Island Love #3)
CHAPTER 15
MAX
There was a fine line between stalking and viewing someone from afar to check they were okay. I most definitely did not stray from the proper side of it. I wanted to, though. I wanted to follow Caspian Pumkin-Watts everywhere. Because whatever his marital status, I was in love with him, and he was not happy. Happily married men didn’t cut themselves. Or work at whichever end of the vineyard his husband wasn’t. If Caspian and I were married, I wouldn’t let him out of my sight. Let alone tower over him yelling, with my hands on my hips, like his husband did the day before yesterday.
“I know you’re there, Max.”
I’d been spotted, skulking three rows down from him. Even when the vines were covered in foliage, I struggled to conceal myself behind them. Too tall. And a bit noisy probably.
At Caspian’s voice, Noir wandered over. Being a Labrador, Noir didn’t understand we weren’t supposed to be talking to Caspian.
“Just walking my dog,” I said. “Like normal dog-owners do.”
“Who’s a good boy. Such a good boy.”
“I’m twenty-five. A good man.”
La mer Caspienne sounded tired, his English accent stronger than usual. “I know you are. I was talking to Noir.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you had a husband.”
The bushy vines hid Caspian’s slight frame, but I could tell where he was from the clipping and snapping sounds. May was a busy month in a vineyard. At the other end of each row, the blonde woman had started stem cleaning, removing unwanted new shoots from the main woody one.
Caspian was pruning hedgehogs—I called them hedgehogs, at any rate—ridding the buds of all the extra unneeded shoots sprouting out of them like hedgehog spines, keeping the strongest one. From what I could see, he was doing a decent job. As I kept up with him, I snapped a few off myself with my pocketknife. He’d have a nice surprise when he reached this row; it might cheer him up.
“Because I haven’t. I was telling the truth. We’re not married anymore. I… he… he cheated on me, and we divorced eighteen months ago.”
“But you’re still sad.”
Caspian’s feet stopped moving along the row. I imagined his pale face examining the plant in front of him, deciding which was the best shoot to keep, and I shuffled a little closer to him. “Yes, I am.”
“So you still love him.”
“No, I… it’s not that simple. I… love what we had. I loved having someone, meaning something to someone. A partner who looked out for me. I don’t have that anymore. I’m not very good at looking after myself, as you’ve probably noticed.”
“Yes. You are too anxious.”
Mon dieu, I could look out for him. He wouldn’t cut with me. He wouldn’t be anxious with me. We were made for each other; Caspian silly-surname Watts was a perfect mix of everything fucked up I liked to fix. I’d mend him, care for him, keep him whole. “Did you cut yourself when you were married.”
His answer took a long time to come. While I waited, he patted Noir some more. “Hardly ever. My anxiety was much better controlled. But I did towards the end, when I realised that he was cheating.”
“Why are you still here with him then.”
His sigh sounded like vine leaves rustling. “That’s an excellent question, Max. Some days, I’m not sure it would matter to anyone if I wasn’t.”
My heart clenched. “It would matter to me.”
An even longer pause. We were the opposite sides of the same vine now— Noir lolled in an untidy black heap between our feet, his tongue hanging out. Caspian snipped a shoot, and it floated down to land on his silky head. “So does this mean we’re friends again, then?” Even though French wasn’t his first language, Caspian asked questions beautifully, each one lilting up at the end.
“I want to be.” Mon dieu, how I wanted to be. “I want to trust you. Except I’m still cross you didn’t tell me.”
“I’m cross about that too.” He sighed. “I… don’t know why I didn’t. Perhaps I thought you’d probably heard enough of my sagas. My fucked-up head.”
“I would tell you if I had.”
He huffed a laugh. “Yes, I should have realised that.”
“I don’t mind your mental health issues, Caspian. I like things that need extra care. My dog only has three legs. My tractor needs a new rear tyre.”
He made a sound like politely stifling a sneeze. Pollen counts had increased with the warmer weather, and Caspian was exactly the delicate sort of person I would imagine at risk of hay fever. “I’m… um… well, yes,” he managed, like he was trying not to sneeze again. “I’m grateful for all four limbs, I suppose.”
His fingers snaked between the vine leaves, searching for mine. Recognising this as one of the romantic opportunities described in Perfect Peach , I went one better and parted the foliage to locate his face. I only found thin air the first time, being approximately 32 centimetres taller than him. Bending my knees solved the problem.
“Boo,” I said as my head popped through, to make him laugh, and he almost did. Our hands got tangled up in the vine, and that nearly made him laugh too. One of his broken-off hedgehogs wrapped itself in my beard, and a cluster of grapes tickled my ear. But none of that mattered when his lips and my lips met in the middle.
I breathed in the sweet, ripe earthy scent of the foliage all around us. Caspian’s mouth tasted even sweeter, and he was panting when we parted, like he wasn’t ready to stop. We would, though, because my knees had begun to ache from bending awkwardly. And I had to go to work.
“I’m bringing you on a date, Caspian,” I informed him. I think he liked it when I took charge. “At the weekend, when I’m not working. Away from here.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It will be a good one, I promise. I might even dig out my red sequinned waders.”
That got a laugh out of him, a real one where his eyes joined in too. He picked a leaf from my hair. “What should I wear?”
I looked him up and down. Today, he was dressed in the grey jeans that made my belly lurch and a long-sleeved pale blue shirt with the top two buttons undone. The forecast for the weekend predicted mean temperatures of 21 degrees Celsius with a twenty-percent chance of light drizzle on both Saturday and Sunday.
“Something warm and waterproof.”