Page 33 of Wind Called

Sabrina smiled. “Well, that’s fun. Then it’s probably high time you visited Angel Hill Cellars. We’re kind of famous around here. Do you want a white flight, a red, or a combo?”

On the drive over, Bellamy and Marc had already agreed to share tastings so they wouldn’t get utterly wasted, and that was why they decided to start with a combo flight. Sabrina was definitely knowledgeable about the wines, even though she’d gone to Arizona State to get a degree in marketing rather than sticking around here and earning her certification in enology the way Bellamy had done.

They ran through all of the wine samples and then decided to get a couple of glasses of chardonnay to finish up.

“You should have those out by the pond,” Sabrina told them as she handed over their drinks. “We finally replaced the pergola out there, so there’s lots of nice shade.”

Marc and Bellamy agreed that sounded like a good idea and headed outside. As promised, a large pergola covered a concrete pad furnished with several tables and a little conversation area with two love seats facing one another, and a few yards away, ducks and geese floated on the surface of the water, doing their best to beat the heat.

“If the pergola is new, where did all the vines come from?” he asked as he settled himself in a chair at the table nearest the pond, then cast a curious look up at the lush grapevines that offered shelter from the midday sun.

“Oh, that was a big undertaking,” Bellamy said as she sat down in the seat next to him. For just a second, her knee brushed against his, and another of those happy little thrills went down her back.

The guy definitely had an effect on her, that was for sure.

“How so?” he asked, then lifted his glass of chardonnay so she could clink hers against it.

Tradition satisfied, they both drank, and then she said, “There was an older pergola here that had all the grapevines growing on it, but the wood was starting to rot and Connor and Tony knew they needed to do something about it. So they got a bunch of people to carefully unwrap the vines from the pergola and laid them on the ground, and then they came back in and rebuilt the thing in one day so the grapevines wouldn’t suffer too much.”

“They look happy now,” he said, craning his head to look up at the lush leaves and the clusters of pale grapes that hung from them. Bellamy wasn’t sure if they would be included in the harvest, but they were pretty.

“Oh, everyone did a great job of preserving them,” she replied. “I think Connor was prepared to plant all new ones if he had to, but luckily, it turned out that the original vines survived just fine.”

Marc was silent for a moment as he sipped his chardonnay and watched a pair of ducks squawk at each other before retreating to opposite sides of the pond. Dappled shadows moved across his handsome features, and he appeared unusually contemplative.

“This is a gorgeous place,” he said at length. “I like how you can have such different biospheres so close to one another. You don’t have to drive very far to be someplace completely different.”

Well, that was true. Jerome felt very different from Cottonwood and Clarkdale, just as those towns were utterly different from Sedona. And Page Springs, lush and green thanks to the creek that ran through the narrow canyon, was its own space as well.

“It was a fun place to grow up,” she said, then added, only halfway teasing, “even if it turns out that Sedona is messing with my head somehow.”

His brows drew together, and she could tell he didn’t want to view the situation quite so lightly. “I’m not sure if ‘messing’ is the right word. Maybe it’s nothing…or maybe there really is something about the vortex energy that affects witchy powers.”

Because they were the only ones out here, they didn’t have to worry about anyone overhearing what they were saying. Otherwise, Bellamy doubted he would have been quite so casual with the W-word.

“Hopefully, we’ll find out when we talk to the elders tomorrow,” she said, and sipped some of her chardonnay. It was cool and crisp, with just the slightest buttery taste and absolutely no oakiness at all.

Tony Rocha wouldn’t be caught dead putting his chard in oak barrels. No, it was stainless steel all the way for his whites.

Marc nodded. “Yes, it would be good to know what’s going on.”

If it was anything at all. The experience had been just surreal enough that Bellamy still wasn’t sure what to make of it. She still might have imagined the whole thing.

Because how powerful was Sedona if it had already begun to exert its influence on her when she’d only been sleeping at the ranch for a couple of days?

She didn’t know if she wanted to contemplate that slightly alarming prospect, so she did what she could to push it out of her head. No, much better to concentrate on the cool taste of chardonnay on her tongue, and the way the bright August sun danced on the waters of the pond.

Odd how no one else was out here, considering how comfortable the air felt under the pergola. But maybe the two other people in the tasting room — an older couple who looked as if they might be in their late fifties or early sixties — had decided they didn’t want to leave the comfort of the air-conditioned space just in case it turned out to be too warm outside.

And Marc seemed to understand that she preferred to be quiet for a while, to just sit there and drink in the day and not allow too many troubling thoughts to crowd her mind. More than ever, she thought how lucky she was to have met him, how he could have stayed safely in Tucson and only called or texted his grandmother to let her know about his dreams rather than driving all the way up here.

Something had told him he needed to be here in person, though. Was that simple dumb luck, or had some sixth sense decided to exert itself even outside his dreams, subtly compelling him to make the trip north?

They might never know, and she realized she needed to be okay with that.

After they finished their wine, they went inside and handed the empty glasses off to Sabrina, who told them she hoped they’d have a nice rest of their day.

Which of course they did, going next to D.A. Ranch and doing a tasting there before sharing a glass of zinfandel on the big farmhouse’s wraparound porch, and then at last ending up at Page Springs Cellars, where they decided to go straight to having a glass each so they could head outside and stand on the large balcony that overlooked Oak Creek.

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