“Just around the bend and you’ll be at the blackberries.” Gary assures us with a white bucket in his hand.
When it’s our turn, Nash takes the bucket and Gary tells us to pick at the end of the first row. When I heard we’d be making our own wine, I didn’t realize that we pick our own fruit. I’m not complaining at all, but I definitely see why the boots were needed. The terrain isn’t muddy by any means, in fact it’s bone-dry, but it’s definitely not meant for flip-flops.
“How many do we pick?” I ask Nash as he pops a blackberry in his mouth while we walk.
“I guess we fill this bucket.” He lifts the bucket up. “Then maybe they’ll let us squash them with our bare feet.” He picks another as we pass by a bush then throws it in the air, trying to catch in his mouth, but he misses.
“That’s gross. Do people actually do that?”
“You’ve never heard of wine stomping?” he asks, like I should have heard of it. “It’s a real thing. Back in the day, we didn’t have all these fancy presses. They had to get the juices somehow.”
“I sure hope these people washed their feet.”
“I think it sounds cool. Walking around in a big ol pile of grapes and letting them squish between your toes. Almost as cool as walking through a pasture of cow manure.”
“Okay”—I swat at him—“now I know you’re fucking with me.”
He laughs. “No, it’s a real thing. Come on, I know you lived in the city the past couple of years, but I thought you and Gemma were country girls. You should know this stuff.”
“Nope.” I shake my head. “Never heard of walking through cow shit and I don’t feel like I’m missing out by having no intentions of ever doing so.” I pause for a beat. “Besides, just because we grew up in a smaller town doesn’t mean we were country girls. We just weren’t given a choice in the matter.”
We reach the end of the row and the bushes are bursting with blackberries. “Well, now that we’ve talked about it, I’m putting it on my bucket list.”
“You enjoy that,” I say, plucking a berry from the bush and sticking in my mouth. Mmm, so good.
“We will, because you’re on that list with me.” He smirks and begins drawing in the air with his finger. “Must take Rowan to a cow farm to walk in cow dung.” We both start laughing. “I’m not even going to begin telling you how these fields are probably fertilized. We’ll save that for another day.”
Plucking a few more berries, I drop a handful in the bucket, save one for tossing it right at Nash’s face. “I’ll go with you to fulfill your bucket list wish, but if you try putting these pretty bare feet in any feces, you’ll be rolling in it.”
Lifting his head, mid-berry-pick, he looks at me and bites the corner of his lip. “Is that so?”
It does something to my insides. Warmth quivers between my trembling legs. Off balance with my mind in a fog. Unable to peel my eyes off from his lips, even when his teeth drag across and are no longer visible. A glimmer of blackberry juice mingles in the corner and I fight the urge to press my mouth to his and taste its sweetness. He says something, but I can’t even comprehend the words. “Hmm.” My eyes slide up to his.
“I said, do you really think you could take me down?” He tosses another berry at me and although I see it coming, my body tenses and it hits me right on my forehead. Then he just laughs and resumes picking.
What the hell is going on with me? Who the hell is this man standing next to me? It can’t be my sister’s husband, because I would never get weak in the knees for a married man. Let alone Gemma’s man.
Looking over at him while he’s oblivious to my gawking, I see him in a different light. Suddenly, every move he makes is enticing. The way his blue veins bulge out when he bends his tanned arm. The wispy strands of his golden hair that rest on his forehead, the tips dampened by the bead of sweat on his hairline. His chest. My God, the way his shirt hugs so tightly to his chest that I’m able to see the outline of every ridge. My fingers beg to weave through his clipped chest hair while feeling his strong arms around me.
Yep, I’m screwed. I’m falling for Nash.
Chapter Twelve
Nash
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at another blackberry again.” Rowan sits cross-legged next to a blackberry bush while I continue to pick. The bucket is only about three quarters full and we’ve been out here for almost two hours.
I look down at her and she pops another berry in her mouth. “Then why are you eating them?” I chuckle.
“I don’t know. It’s like I can’t stop.” She picks another.
“We’d get done a lot quicker if you’d put them in there.” I point at the bucket.
“Are you sure we need to fill the entire thing?”
“I hope not, because I think we’ve stripped every bush in this row.” And that’s saying a lot, considering we’ve traveled down a few rows after stripping the one we started in. Then we took a turn and ended up on the backside of the bushes.
“Hear that?” Rowan tips her ear to the sky.
The roar of the tractor can be heard in the distance. Alas, they are coming to take us away from blackberry hell. “Thank you, Jesus.” I fold my hands in prayer.
It started off good. Had a few laughs, ate a few berries. But one can only stand in this heat and pick for so long before going into a state of delirium. I may be exaggerating, but it sure as hell feels like we’ve been out here slaving away for a bottle of wine for a decade.
Rowan sticks her tongue out of her mouth and fans herself, “Must get water.”
“Come on, you camel.” I put my hand out and her palm meets mine. I give her a pull up as the wagon comes into view at the end of the row.
“Whitmores. This way,” Gary shouts while waving us down the trail.
I grab the five-pound bucket and we make our escape. Never doing this again. I’ll pay a thousand bucks for the made and aged stuff before I ever pick another blackberry again. On our way down, Rowan has me shaking my head as she still continues to pick and eat. “Girl, you’re going to get sick.”
She laughs. “I told you, I can’t stop. I think they have some sort of addicting agent in them.”
“It’s called willpower. Use it.”
Finally, we make it to the wagon, only to find that it’s empty, aside from Gary, who is waiting with a scowl on his face. Something must have pissed the young man off.
“I specifically said to stay on the trail we dropped you off on. I’ve been searching for thirty minutes for you two.”
Looking over at Rowan, she presses her lips into a thin line and looks like she’s fighting back laughter. “I’m sorry, sir. We didn’t even get the bucket full and we picked all the berries at the end of that row.”
He spits, “Full? Let me see that.” He leans over and looks into the bucket in my hand. “Mr. Whitmore! You were not supposed to fill the bucket. Your bottle of wine only requires one pound. You’ve picked enough for an entire gallon.”