‘Oh, good,’ he said without enthusiasm.
He stared at the dog. The dog stared back at him. He loved animals, and they normally gravitated towards him—but not this one. The big dog’s loyalty was firmly fixed in stone. Nacho’s attention switched back to Grace. From the back you wouldn’t know anything had changed about her. Life could be very cruel sometimes, but that didn’t change the facts. What the hell had Elias been thinking? What use was a blind sommelier?
‘So, tell me about your job, Grace,’ he said, starting to seethe as he thought about how he’d been duped by the wily old wine importer. ‘How does that work?’
‘What do you mean, how does it work?’ she said without breaking stride. ‘I might be blind, but I can still taste and smell.’
‘And what about the clarity of the wine?’ he pressed with increasing impatience. ‘What about the sediment—the colour, the viscosity?’
‘The colour I have to take on trust, when people describe it to me, but like most people I can detect sediment on my tongue. And I wouldn’t expect to be offered thin or cloudy wine by anyone who took their wine seriously.’
Was that a dig at him? ‘You seem very confident.’
‘That’s for you to judge when we hold the tastings.’
‘We haven’t got that far yet,’ he reminded her, wondering if he had ever encountered this much resistance from a woman.
His gaze swept over her again. Subduing Grace would give him the greatest pleasure. And was something he would most certainly resist. He knew all about the long-term consequences resulting from impulsive actions, and he had no intention of travelling down that road again.
‘Why else would I be here if not to taste your wine?’ she said. ‘Elias can’t wait to get my verdict—and not just on your wines but on the way you produce them too.’
He heard the dip in her voice. Was she holding him to ransom so she could stay and do her job? The thought of being judged by Grace was anathema to him, but her employer, Elias, was not only one of the most respected voices in the wine industry, he was the biggest distributor in Europe. Nacho needed him. Bottom line? He couldn’t risk offending Elias. But Grace had neither the experience nor the wisdom for this work. How could she match a man like Elias, who had a lifetime devoted to the development of top-quality wine?
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she called back. ‘And I understand the reasons why you want to send me home. I apologise again if I don’t fit the mould of expert you were expecting, but you should know I take my work extremely seriously and I’m very good at it—which is why Elias trusts me to do this job. Why don’t you wait until you’ve seen me in action before you act as judge and jury and send me home?’
Was he that obvious? And as for seeing Grace in action—
Kill those thoughts. Being much younger than he was, and his sister’s best friend, meant Grace occupied a very privileged position—not that she would ever know that.
Her dog had slowed as they approached the white picket fence marking the boundary of the guest cottage, and as Grace reached out at fence height in answer to some unseen tension on the guide dog’s harness she said, ‘Thank you for escorting us home, but we can take it from here …’
She was dismissing him? His gaze hardened. What if he wasn’t ready to go?
Those thoughts were turned on their head by the sight of Grace tracing each blunt tip of the fence with her fingertips as she made her way to the gate. Her independence and her vulnerability touched him somewhere deep.
Having reached the gate, she was feeling for the latch. A shiver coursed down his spine at the thought of the darkness surrounding her. His instinct was always to protect and defend, so he dismounted—only to be dismissed with a blithe, ‘See you later, Nacho …’
‘I’ll see you in,’ he argued firmly. Grace was on foreign soil, and the little he knew about blindness said familiarity was everything where confidence and safety were concerned.
Opening the gate, he walked ahead of her to the front door. They’d talked the whole way, he realised, and yet his head was still full of questions: How long were you ill? Did your sight fade quickly or slowly? How long did it take you to regain your confidence? How long have you had the dog? How much can you see—if anything?
‘It’s very chivalrous of you, Nacho,’ she said, pressing back against the door as if to keep him out, ‘but it’s really not necessary. I can manage perfectly well on my own from here.’
‘Please allow me to decide what is and isn’t necessary,’ he said, and reaching past her opened the front door. He didn’t play second in command to anyone. He’d taken the lead all his life and that was how it would stay.
‘Goodbye, Nacho.’
Before he knew what was happening Grace had felt the gap between him and the door and had slipped through it with the dog at her heels.
The door closed.
So she had no more need of him? Good. He should be pleased.
He wasn’t pleased.
Springing back onto his horse, he wheeled it round and galloped off.
HE WAS still overheated from his exchange with Grace when he got back to the hacienda. The call he made to Elias would be straightforward. All he had to do was explain that Grace would be on the next flight home, and that if Elias couldn’t provide an acceptable replacement Nacho would have no alternative but to look elsewhere for an expert to evaluate his wine. His hope was that it might be possible to keep Elias on board as a distributor and find an expert in whom they could both place their trust.
He should have known life was never that simple …
A coward? He had never been called a coward before by anyone—let alone by an elderly wine merchant.
A misogynist? Okay. Maybe he’d been called that a few times.
Safe to say, the conversation with Elias didn’t go well.
Was Nacho referring to his Grace? Elias asked. Did Nacho dare to condemn Grace before even giving her a chance to prove herself?
All this was said on a rising cadence of wrath.
Was Nacho bigoted? Was he prejudiced against visually challenged individuals? Or was he frightened to put his wines to the test by a true expert, perhaps? Should Elias be seriously concerned? Did Elias even have time for this nonsense?
And Nacho’s answer …?
He subscribed to none of the above. He was the least prejudiced individual he knew.
He handled Elias coolly, remembering that the last time he had given free rein to his feelings the day had ended in tragedy.
‘Give Grace a chance,’ Elias insisted. ‘You won’t be disappointed.’
What did he have to lose? He could be looking for another expert while Grace did as much as she could do, he reasoned.
Having allowed Elias sufficient time to vent his anger, he ended the call with a reassurance that for Elias’s sake he would give Grace another few days.
‘That’s too kind of you, I’m sure,’ Elias snapped, and he cut the line—but not before Nacho heard the want and need in the other man’s voice. They both needed something from the other, so for now Grace was staying.
And so the games begin, he thought as he stowed the phone. But, however intriguing he found Grace, he would send her home before intrigue turned to something more. If he had learned anything from the past it was that women could appear