“Nice car.”
She glanced at him as she pushed the button to unlock the doors. “Thanks.” Her BMW Cabriolet was okay and it got her around.
He slid into the passenger seat beside her and fastened his seatbelt. She pulled out onto State Street, then turned right onto Chapala, the route to the ranch so familiar she could drive it in a trance. In fact, she sometimes did. Soon she was accelerating rapidly onto the freeway, merging closely into the speeding traffic. Joe gripped the door handle. She smiled.
“Don’t worry, I’m a good driver.” After a short stretch on the freeway they exited onto Highway 154 and started climbing into the mountains that snuggled Santa Barbara between them and the Pacific Ocean.
The sky was a cloudless blue and Tara spared a thought for the beauty surrounding her despite her mind being crowded with thoughts and sensations, most of them to do with the man sitting beside her, taking up a lot of space in her small Beamer. He smelled good, kind of spicy-citrusy, he was big and, God, he was sinfully gorgeous. She had to admit it. He’d pushed the seat back as far as it would go and his long legs still looked crowded under the dash. His thighs were big and muscular under the fine dark wool of his suit trousers.
She cranked up the air conditioning.
“I just have to make a couple of calls,” she told him. “Then I’ll tell you more about the ranch and the mill.”
“You’re going to talk on a cell phone on this road?” he asked, incredulity straining his voice.
“I’ll be quick.” She fitted an earpiece to her ear, punched in some numbers on the phone and called back the distributor who’d left her a message that morning. “Yes,” she told him. “We want into Safeway. No, we’re not paying that much rent.” She outlined her negotiating position. “Call me back once you’ve talked to them,” she told the man and ended the call. Then she called the ranch.
“You’re kidding,” she said when Juan answered. “Customs found some dirt on the roots? They quarantined them? Damn it. What do we have to do?” Juan didn’t know. She sighed. “I’m on my way. I’ll call them myself once I’m there.”
She snapped her small phone shut and tossed it on the dash, then told Joe about the calls. It was strange to be telling a total stranger such private details about the business. She gnawed on her bottom lip, and her annoyance at her grandfather for putting her in this position revved up again like the motor of her Beamer as they climbed the steep mountain road at seventy miles an hour.
“How far is the ranch?” Joe asked.
“About twenty-five miles from Santa Barbara. Near Santa Ynez. It’s about a thirty, thirty-five-minute drive in all. We’ll be there soon.”
“Tell me more about olives.”
She needed no urging to do so. “Well, the first olive trees were brought here by the Franciscans. Those were Missions, a variant of Spanish trees the conquistadores brought to North America. Then Manzanillo olives were brought to America in about 1875, and about ten years after that, Sevallanos were planted and an Italian variety, Ascolano. Now there are so many varieties, probably over a hundred. But a lot of other ranches around here have been turned into wineries.”
Joe nodded. “This area is known for its wineries. Not so much for olives.”
“That’s because you don’t know anything about the olive business.” She paused. “Anyway, the temptation has been there to go into grapes instead of olives for us too. I can totally understand why some people turned to vineyards and wine, rather than olives. Now some have gone back to olive growing, but it’s difficult. It takes so many years of care for trees to produce enough olives, careful pruning and irrigation. Luckily most of our trees are mature, although we’re always adding new stock.”
“That’s what the call was about.”
“Yes. We’ve brought in some nursery stock from Italy. Importing trees from Europe can be frustrating. There can’t be any soil on the roots of the trees, which means they have to be cleaned and packaged to retain moisture on the roots while they’re shipped. And then if Customs finds a bit of soil—which apparently they did—well, I’ll have to deal with that, dammit.”
She shook her head, turning the wheel as her BMW hugged a mountain-wrapping curve in the road. She’d seen the spectacular view so many times she hardly noticed anymore. Today, she spared a glance for the sweeping vista dropping away from the highway, wondering what this looked like through Joe’s eyes.
“It’s beautiful,” he observed, gazing out the window, although his knuckles were still pale where his hand gripped the door handle.
Soon they were descending into the valley, acres of rural landscape, gold fields shimmering under the hot summer sun, stretching away to rolling green hills dotted with round trees. In the distance, neatly planted rows of trees climbed up a hillside toward the dark outline of the mountains.
The road curved back the other way and Tara leaned into the curve, enjoying the way her car handled the winding roads without reducing speed. Soon, though, she slowed and turned onto a narrow road where a large green, red and gold sign at the highway said “Santa Ynez Olive Company”. She followed the narrow, tree-lined road for about five minutes.
“Is that a house?” Joe asked, looking around with clear interest.
“Yes.”
“Who lives there?”
“Nobody now.” She tried not to sound sad about that. “Grandpa used to, but after my parents died he moved to Santa Barbara to live with us. He thought it was better for us to stay in our own home. Sometimes I stay out here if I don’t feel like driving back to town.”
“When did your parents die?”
She pressed her lips together. “A long time ago. I was fourteen, my sister Sasha was twelve.”
“I’m sorry.”
She felt his eyes on her, shrugged. “It’s okay. Grandpa brought us up.” She stared straight ahead out the windshield, tightening her fingers on the steering wheel. Since the day her parents had died, Grandpa had drilled it into them that you showed no emotion about that, in fact, didn’t even talk about it. “The house actually belongs to my sister and me now. I’ve thought of buying out Sasha’s half, but I can’t do that until she turns twenty-five.”
“Why not?”
“It was the terms of my parents’ will. Everything is held in trust for us until we’re twenty-five. When I turned twenty-five, I got access to my trust fund, and Sasha will turn twenty-five in about five months. Until then, jointly held property—really only the house—can’t be disposed of. We each have part ownership of the company, although Sasha’s not interested in it at all.”
“I see.” He paused. “You love it out here, don’t you?”
She shrugged. “I suppose. I’ve thought of moving out here, but it just seemed easier to stay in the city.” She did love it out here. So much. But she wasn’t going to tell him that. That was way too personal.
She drove past the house, a sprawling ranch-style with white stucco and red clay tile roof, surrounded by huge cacti, flowers and mature olive and oak trees. Around another curve in the road they came to some other buildings.
“This is the mill,” she told him, rolling into a parking spot and coming to a quick, jolting stop. She flicked off her seatbelt and turned off the ignition. When they stepped out of the car, the heat slammed into them.
“Wow,” Joe said. “It’s a lot warmer here.”
“Yes.” She slid her arms out of her suit jacket and tossed it into the car. “Away from the coast the temperatures get a lot warmer. That’s what makes it ideal for growing olives here.”