The Villa

increased by one.
    "I told you to wear rough clothes."
    She puffed out a breath, watched the rain dissolve it. "These are my rough clothes."
    He studied her sleek leather jacket, the tailored trousers, the stylish Italian boots. "Well, they will be before it's over."
    "I was under the impression rain delayed pruning."
    "It's not raining."
    "Oh?" Sophia held out a hand, palm up, and let the rain patter into it. "Isn't that strange, I've always defined this wet substance falling out of the sky as rain."
    "It's drizzling. Where's your hat?"
    "I didn't wear one."
    "Jesus." Annoyed, he pulled his own cap off, tugged it over her head. Even its wet, battered ugliness couldn't detract from her style. He imagined it was bred into her, like bones.
    "There are two primary reasons for pruning," he began.
    "Ty, I'm aware there are reasons for pruning."
    "Fine. Explain them to me."
    "To train the vine," she said between her teeth. "And if we're going to have an oral lesson, why can't we do it inside where we'd be warm and dry?"
    "Because the vines are outside." And because, he thought, here he ran the show. "We prune to train the vines to facilitate their shape for easier cultivation and harvesting, and to control disease."
    "Ty—"
    "Quiet. A lot of vineyards use trellising techniques instead of hand pruning. Here, because farming's an unending experiment, we use both. Vertical trellising, the Geneva T-support and other types. But we still use the traditional hand-pruning method. The second purpose is to distribute the bearing wood over the vine to increase its production, while keeping it consistent with the ability to produce top-quality fruit."
    When he told her to be quiet, he did so like a patient parent might to a small, irritable child. She imagined he knew it and fluttered her lashes. "Is there going to be a quiz, Professor?"
    "You don't prune my vines, or learn trellising, until you know why you're doing it."
    "We prune and trellis to grow grapes. We grow grapes to make wine."
    Her hands moved as she spoke. It was like a ballet, he'd always thought. Graceful and full of meaning.
    "And," she continued, "I sell the wine through clever, innovative promotion and marketing techniques. Which, I'll remind you, are as essential to this vineyard as your pruning shears."
    "Fine, but we're in the vineyard, not in your office. You don't take an action here without being aware of the cause and the consequence."
    "I've always thought it more being aware of the odds. It's a gamble," she said, gesturing widely. "A high-stakes game, but a game at the core."
    "You play games for fun."
    She smiled now and reminded him of her grandmother. "Not the way I play them, sweetheart. These are older vines here." She studied the rows on either side of them.
    The rain was dampening his hair, teasing out those reddish highlights, the color of a good aged Cabernet. "Head pruning here, then."
    "Why?"
    She adjusted the bill of the cap. "Because."
    "Because," he continued, taking his pruners out of their sheath on his belt, "we want the bearing spurs distributed evenly on the head of the vine."
    He turned her, slapped the tool in her hands. He pushed a cane aside, exposing another, then guided her hands toward it and made the cut with her. "We want the center, the top, left open. It needs room to get enough sun."
    "What about mechanical pruning?"
    "We do that, too. You don't." He shifted her to the next cane. She smelled female, he decided. An exotic counterpoint to the simple perfume of rain and damp earth.
    Why the hell did she have to splash on perfume to work in the fields? He nearly asked her, realized he wouldn't like or understand her reasons, and let it go.
    "You work by hand," he told her, and did his level best not to breathe her in. "Cane by cane. Plant by plant. Row by row."
    She scanned the endless stream of them, the countless vines being tended by laborers, or waiting to be tended. The pruning, she knew, would run through January, into February. She imagined herself bored senseless with the process before Christmas.
    "We break at noon," she reminded him.
    "One. You were late."
    "Not that late." She turned her head, and her body angled into his. He was leaning over her, his arms around her so that his hands could cover hers on cane and tool. The slight shift was uncalculated. And potent.
    Their eyes met, irritation in his, consideration in hers. She felt his body tense, and the tingle of response inside her own. A slightly quickened pulse, a