Autumn in the Vineyard (A St. Helena Vineyard Novel) (27 page)

“Don’t do it, Mittens,” she hollered, but not angrily. Because it wasn’t the alpaca’s fault that he was forced to dine on plastic and vinyl for breakfast. He was a nervous eater, Frankie knew that, and yet last night she had kind of yelled at him for nibbling at her new lemon tree and then, in her hormone induced haze, forgot to brush him before bed, something that had become kind of a ritual. “I’ve got your breakfast.”

But as Frankie stood there, on the porch, waiving the foil wrapped toaster pastry as though it were her kid’s lunchbox, she realized that Mittens wasn’t anywhere near the tank. Nope, her shy alpaca was nickering and prancing behind Nate, who stood by a semi that held the enormous water tank, although at fifty-thousand gallons it was more of a tower.

Nate turned around to look at her and, one hand on his hip while the other slid Mittens a carrot top, gave Frankie an amused grin. A ball cap was pulled low on his head, shading his eyes and the lower half of his face. Instead of his usual polo, khakis, and loafers, he wore a grey t-shirt and a pair of loose cargo shorts that hung from his lean hips. Sweet Jesus, the man was dirty, sweaty, and looked like your basic, sexy-grape-grower for hire.

“Morning, sweet cheeks,” he drawled as he walked toward her, his stride slow and easy.

She wasn’t sure if it was the casual clothes or the dirt under his nails or seeing him in his element yesterday and nothing but shag last night, but Nate, like this, all manly and undone, was a sight to behold.

He stopped at the bottom of the front stoop and, flipping the bill of his cap backward, his heated brown eyes traveled from her face to her mouth and down her chest where it hung for a long, intense moment. His gaze felt like a gentle caress of
sheer male appreciation, skimming over her hips and down her legs, making her heart flutter a little—and leaving her feeling ridiculously feminine.

“You look like—”

“Shit?” Frankie said with a self-conscious laugh. Hating how hard it was to breathe. She didn’t do feminine and she didn’t do morning afters for a reason. She sucked at both of them.

He walked up the steps, not bothering to stop until he was all in her space. Sweaty from shoveling dirt, he looked so big and imposing and so—manly. Nate DeLuca, uptight, loafer owner, looked manly. God, he even smelled manly.

“I was going to say, half asleep. You can barely hold your eyes open.” He reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear and she forgot how to breathe all together. “Long night?”

Feeling way too dainty and too vulnerable, she batted his hand away and leveled him with her most intimidating glare. Only he didn’t look intimidated, or leveled. The jerk actually smiled. It was a slow, sexy tilting of the lips that had her nipples breaking out the party poppers. Nate noticed.

“Who says I’m tired?”

“Honey, you’re standing on the front porch in nothing but an epic case of bedhead, my shirt, lace and—” He looked down and, party poppers in full effect, there went that smile and—when he looked up at her through his eyebrows—that annoying fluttering. “There is a crew of about ten guys who are all silently hoping you’ll notice you forgot to tie your boots and bend over, making it a great morning.”

Palms flat against his chest, she rolled up on her tiptoes, looked over his shoulder and—yup, a construction crew of ten, including Hard Hammer Tanner, stood silently watching. Smiling.
A few of the guys tipped their hats in greeting. Tanner raised a hand and waved as though a half-naked client welcoming his crew was a normal occurrence in his line of work.

Frankie waved back. “Yeah, well I don’t care.”

Which was a lie. She totally cared, but he was making her feel all protected and girly and all she could think about was how she had slept in his bed. With him. All night. Hell, she’d almost cried in front of him. Talk about embarrassing.

Nate stepped closer, so close that she could smell his crisp, clean, sexy scent. It was a lethal combination. He molded his hands in the curve of her waist, his body crowding hers until she could feel his heat seep through the thin cotton of her, whoops, his shirt.

“Well, I do,” he grumbled, his hands warm and possessive on her body as he backed her through the door.

Once inside, he kicked the door closed with his foot, but his hands never left her hips. And his eyes, serious and intense and heavy with lust, never left hers.

“Oh,” she whispered. And there went that heavy feeling in her chest again.

“And I know what you’re doing,” he whispered back. But his whisper came out a smooth rumble. “It won’t work.”

“What am I doing?” Really, she wanted to know. Because whatever it was, it was driving him crazy. And she kind of liked it.

“This whole prickly, nothing gets to me thing you’ve got going on doesn’t fool me, Francesca.” She loved it when he called her that. “Not anymore. So you can be upset about last night, mad that your brothers are jerks, mad that your grandpa left early, mad that you’ve worked your ass off and no one in your family even noticed. But,” his hands slid around to the small of
her back—then lower, “don’t be mad that I saw you last night, the real you, okay?”

Frankie didn’t know what to say. She was upset, but not for the reasons Nate listed. Okay, so maybe she was a little disappointed that her brother Adam, executable excuse or not, flaked and that her grandpa was proving to be every bit the jackass that Nate accused him of being. But if she were being honest, it wasn’t anger that had her heart pounding, it was fear.

She was scared. Because, although they hadn’t had bed-sex, she felt all connected and weird around him now. Like he knew things about her that he could use against her. And when he looked at her, how he was now, all understanding and patience, something soft and vulnerable and totally off limits started swirling in her chest.

Bed-sex with an expiration date before sunrise would have been better, safer
, she thought.

Then she woke up. In his bed. Alone, but in his bed all the same, which meant that he’d put her there—that he cared. And her knowing that Nate cared, that he had seen the real her last night and that he hadn’t run screaming made her stomach pinch painfully. Because he would run eventually, and the longer he stayed around the harder it would hurt when he did.

He must have taken her long silence as agreement because his smile slid higher, while his palm slid lower, right over her silk panties to cup her bottom. His thumbs, however, teased up under the lacy edges, gently exploring. The warmth of his skin on hers sent tiny tingles scurrying everywhere, making the tingles in her heart less noticeable.

“Now, you’ve got about ten minutes before Tanner kills the water. So why don’t you go shower off and get dressed because the longer I stand here,” he pressed a quick kiss to her mouth,
“smelling me on you, the less likely I am to let you take that shower alone. And then you and I will wind up naked and skip going out.”

Out?
She didn’t want to go out, she wanted to stay in. With Nate. Having wild monkey-sex all day. On the couch. To remind herself that she can have fun and manage to stay unattached.

“Why don’t you join me?” she whispered, her hands doing some exploring of their own. Down his impressive chest, over each muscle of his six-pack. This she could do. Lust, shower sex, things that didn’t involve talking and feelings. Or the bed.

His body curled closer and he buried his face in her hair, and oh yeah, delivered a very wet, very hot openmouthed kiss to the sensitive spot behind her ear. She was just getting into it, tilting her head to give him better access, when he pulled back and delivered a friendly smack right to the ass.

“Since every guy out there will be so busy focusing on what we’re doing in here instead of their job, I’m going to pass.” He stepped back and gave Frankie one last heated look. “Ten minutes. And pack a bathing suit.”

“A bathing suit?” Frankie asked, not liking the sound of it. “Where are we going?”

“On a date to celebrate your win.”

Nate watched Frankie’s toes glide across the water as they sat on the dock. The ripples moved under the lily pads at the middle of the lake, and he felt frustration and something significantly more noticeable swell. He could make a list of at least a dozen things that were the source of the growing problem but for now, he’d settle on listing the top three.

First of all, Frankie had become downright hostile when he’d offered to drive so he had agreed to ride with her, not wanting this day to end before it even got the chance to get good. Which meant that he’d spent the past hour riding bitch on her motorcycle with her rubbing up against his dick every time she turned, sped up, or slowed down. He hated motorcycles, almost as much as he hated driving through town on one while Frankie honked at Marc, who sent him a wave with his pinky while laughing his ass off through the window of the Sweet and Savory Bistro. But the rubbing part, he didn’t mind that at all. Even though he knew the bike was just another way to avoid conversation.

Secondly, they were sitting on the dock, only a few inches separating them and yet he felt as though they were on opposite sides of the lake. He’d given her an opening to talk about what happened, but every time he even circled serious she clammed up, or took a walk, or inhaled another Pop Tart—her addition to the picnic they’d packed. It wasn’t that he’d minded last night—in fact it had been unbelievably hot and sweet—but he wanted to take this past great sex.

And third, he was pretty sure she wasn’t wearing a bra. Or a bathing suit. A curiosity he’d slyly tried to ease on the ride up the mountain, but the thick leather jacket she’d been wearing made it impossible to tell. And the wondering made it impossible to focus. And if he had any chance to make today about more than just chemistry then he’d need to have some kind of conscious thought process available to him. They needed to talk about the fire, last night, and where they were going. Because Nate wanted to get the first two out in the open so they could move on to the last, which he had strong opinions on.

Frankie rested forward on her hands, her feet making cute figure eights in the water. Between the white shorts, which left
her legs mostly bare, and her soft lavender toe nails, Nate had a difficult time swallowing. Feminine and adorable and completely unexpected.

“I don’t want to talk about it, so can you please stop thinking about it?” She nudged him with her shoulder and he nudged her back until she smiled. “You’re scaring away the fish.”

Nate tapped the fishing poles. “I didn’t say a thing and nothing ever bites here.”

Frankie shot him a glace, a penetrating flash of blue. “I know that look on your face, golden boy.” And he knew
that
look. Great. She was positioning him squarely in the friends category. Well, now it would be the friends-with-benefits category. “I know what you’re thinking.”

Nate knew that Frankie liked him. There was no doubt of that in his mind. She was just jumpy when it came to emotions, and he couldn’t blame her. Her parents’ divorce had been one of the nastiest this town had seen, with six-year-old Frankie being the prized commodity in the negotiations. So even though her evasive tactics frustrated him, after a childhood filled with heartache and disappointment, it didn’t surprise him.

Wanting to lighten the mood, he dropped his eyes to her cleavage. “Really? And what is that?”

After he’d had a long and thorough study—his money was on no bra—he finally shifted his gaze to meet hers, which was equally amused and turned on.

“You know, you could always just ask,” she said, then leaned in and kissed him. It was sweet and slow and had a whole lot of tongue. Which definitely made the talking part difficult. It also made the swelling problem a hell of a lot more dire. Too bad he was so set on talking, because her mouth felt incredible and his hand was on her waist. All he had to do was slide it up, just a
few more inches and that aching question would be solved. But then they’d be no closer to solving the real problem—how to move forward.

So he pulled back, resting his forehead to hers. “Okay, you don’t want to talk about last night, the fire, or your family. Then let’s talk about mine. Come with me to ChiChi’s Saturday night.”

“Isn’t that Baby Sofie’s thing?”

“Yes, her one month-day and, according to Regan, she is the official harvest baby. It will be casual, fun, and I’d like you to come.”

“I saw the invitation. I promise you there is nothing causal about it. Plus I’m already invited and have to go. I tried to back out,” she admitted. “But the kid started crying and showing her gums and Regan said it was because Baby Sofie knew I didn’t want to go. So now I have to go.”

“I know,” he said casually, trying not to make this a big deal. Even though everything in his gut said that it was. “I was asking you to come
with
me.”

She pulled her feet in cross-legged and sat back, looking every bit the scared girl she’d been when they were seventeen and he’d brought up prom. It would have been funny, except she was on the verge of bolting over a casual dinner. “Like I told Regan, I don’t do family dinners. Not even my own. Well, not anymore. Just going seems stressful enough.”