Be Mine Forever (A St. Helena Vineyard Novel) (17 page)

“Do you want me to help you come up with a dance for Frankie’s wedding?”

“Her dad passed away when she was young and as far as I know, none of her brothers know how to dance.” He shrugged. “We aren’t really close. My fault, not hers.” He paused to make sure Sara understood. “So I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t invite me, but if she does, and they have the daddy-daughter dance…”

He faded off and Sara teared up. So did the older man when he added, “Every girl should feel like a princess on her wedding day.”

“I agree,” Sara said decisively.

If she had been onboard to make Charles the smoothest dancer before, then she was aiming for Fred Astaire now.

“How about we focus on you sweeping ChiChi off her feet at the Gala, and then afterward, we can continue the lessons three times a week until the wedding?”

“Thank you,” he whispered and took out a handkerchief.

“As long as it’s ChiChi we’re sweeping away.”

“It’s ChiChi,” he said with a laugh. “It’s always been ChiChi. From the time we were kids I knew.”

“What about your wife?” Sara asked over her shoulder while she walked over to the stereo and flipped through the songs, looking for the right one. She needed the perfect song for the perfect courting.

“Evie?” His voice held a reverence that warmed Sara’s heart. “Prettiest girl I had ever saw.”

“You might want to leave that part out when you’re charming your way into ChiChi’s arms,” Sara warned, pressing play. A smooth jazz song filled the studio, and Sara didn’t know if it was perfect, but it fit the mood.

“ChiChi was never a girl,” Charles laughed. Hooking his cane over his forearm, and taking Sara into his hold, he glided her across the room. Bad leg or not, the man had moves and was a daredevil on the dance floor. “She was born a woman with opinions and sass, much like she is today, only shorter.”

Which explained so much, Sara thought. “So what happened?”

“By the time I got around to telling her, she was in love with someone else.” Sara didn’t know what to say, so she kept her mouth shut and let him lead. “He was my best friend and looking back, he deserved her. But I never stopped loving her.”

Sara stumbled a little, but gained her balance. “Even when you married?”

Charles didn’t stop moving, even when Sara fixed his frame and back-led him through a complicated turn.

“Evie was the love of my life. We raised a family, made it through the rough years together, always reminding each other to laugh. But ChiChi,” Charles looked down at Sara and she could see the love there, so raw and intense she had to look away. “She’s my true love.”

Sara did stop this time. Even though he wasn’t making sense. “I don’t understand. How could you love ChiChi and Evie?”

Charles moved her through a series of reverse turns into promenade. “You say that like your heart only has enough room for one person.”

“Because it does.” She loved Garrett so much she couldn’t imagine loving another person with the same fierceness.

“I fathered two children and three grandchildren and I love them equally. Differently but equally.”

Sara shook her head. “That’s not the same.”

“I used to think so too, but I was wrong,” Charles looked at her softly. “ChiChi is all spit and vinegar, full of so much passion and vigor she makes me feel alive.”

That’s how it was with Garrett. He was wild and spontaneous and vowed to live life on the edge, forcing her to leap, for the first time in her meticulously planned life, without a net. They jumped from one thrill to the next, never slowing down, taking chances that, even when she landed on her butt, she never regretted.

Looking back, she realized, those years had prepared her for single motherhood. She knew how to love and nurture, but Garrett taught her how to rebound and move forward—take things in stride.

“Now, Evie,” Charles said softly, and even his movements became more fluid, less showy. “She had this gentle spirit, a quiet quality about her that softened me as a man, allowed me to be the kind of husband and father I needed to be. When she died, I thought she took that softness with her, but I was wrong. For years I had it all wrong. It’s been inside of me all along. It was her gift to me.”

Trey was fun and sexy, but when they flirted and danced, she felt warm and desired and utterly adored. He challenged her in a way that felt safe, as though she could leap without fear of falling because he’d catch her.

“But you don’t think that loving ChiChi diminished what you felt for Evie?”

“I am who I am because of both of them. If Evie were here, I’d be dancing with her instead of trying to court ChiChi. And I would be the happiest man alive.”

Sara believed him. Every emotion he felt toward his late wife was on his face for Sara to see.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve a second chance, but I’m not going to let love pass me by again because I’m too busy being angry and living in the past.” Charles gently turned them. “ChiChi may have prepared me for Evie, but in the end Evie prepared me for a great love with ChiChi.”

The song stopped and so did Sara’s heart. Trey made her feel things she hadn’t felt in years. He also made her feel things she had never felt before. Taking a risk on a guy who was leaving the country, knowing that he could shatter her heart, was terrifying.

Then again, taking risks was Garrett’s gift to her. Maybe Trey’s gift was to be the next big adventure of her life.

After a beat of silence, “At Last”
by Etta James poured through the studio. Charles took Sara gently in his arms and she allowed him to lead.

“Now, this is the perfect song for a waltz,” Charles said and Sara had to agree.

This thing with Trey wasn’t love, but it was something. All she needed was the courage to leap.

Trey had finished up his last interview of the day, finalized the Garden Society’s wine order for the Gala, and was about to order up some dinner when he heard a tap at the door.

Dropping his feet to the floor and his tie on the back of the sofa, he padded over, hoping it wasn’t one of his sisters-in-law in need of a Hubby-for-Hire, and praying it wasn’t ChiChi with another one of her schemes that would end with him playing assistant to Deidra Potter and her wandering hands again.

It was neither.

It was the exact the person he wanted to see. Needed to see. Just looking at those big trusting eyes made his hellish day circle right back to where it should be—easy. It was as though with one smile, she could make all the BS disappear, and turn him from stressed-out sales guy to someone who didn’t have to struggle just to breathe normally.

“Sara?” he asked, unable to help the grin that overtook him. “I thought you had class.”

She shook her head, then nodded, the confusion sending her long hair spilling over her shoulder. “I do, I did, but—”

“What class?” he said his gaze running the length of her. “Because if that’s what you wear when teaching, sign me up.”

She was dressed in one of those silky dresses that clung to her body and was held together by two flimsy little straps, which tied around her neck and were designed to make men think about sex. Which, point to Sara, that was all he was thinking about. Sex. With her. In that dress. Especially since it was red and hit low enough to display an interesting amount of cleavage and high enough to show off those legs.

“It was a private, and I ended it early so I could go home and wash up, because I realized that we didn’t have our lesson today.” She flung her arms out to the side, fingers wiggling. “So I changed and, here I am.”

Indeed, here she was. Trey forced his gaze off of her legs and back to her eyes. Only that was worse because she was gazing back—clearly unsure and trying hard to muster the courage to state why she was really here.

“What kind of lesson are we talking about, Sara?” he asked, because he could see the heat flickering in her eyes. He just didn’t know if she was ready to follow through yet.

“The improper kind,” she whispered, following up with a grin that, according to his dick, was 100 percent trouble. She looked around the room and took a step forward, the hem of her dress brushing his thighs. “Only it seems that we’re short a pole.”

Holy Jesus
, she was serious. And he was one lucky bastard. Just picturing her in nothing but a pink thong—he looked at her dress—make that a red thong, her back against the pole, legs wrapped around his waist as she reached for his pants—

“I wasn’t sure if you still needed time to think,” he heard himself say as she rested her hands on his stomach and slowly pressed him further in the room. She was too small to move him, but he let her because—
fuck—
this was really happening. “Please tell me I gave you enough time.”

Instead of taking the kid-free day to get caught up on paperwork and find his domestic sales replacement, Trey had spent all of his time picturing what he wanted—Sara naked and moaning out his name.

“You did. And thank you,” she whispered, her fingers traveling slowly up his chest, pushing him further and further into the room. “I’ve decided that maybe we both need to start checking things off our bucket list.”

“You want me to wear the thong?” If wearing a thong meant he got to see her in one, Trey was game. Even if it cost him his man-card.

She smiled. “Maybe. But before anything happens, I need you to understand that we have to set some ground rules so no one gets hurt.”

“Agreed.” He slid his arms around her waist and slowly tugged her against him. “I’m into conventional, unconventional, pretty much any scenario that involves you naked, and I could be persuaded to experiment with role playing, with or without the thong.” He sculpted her ass, to get a better idea of what she was wearing under the dress. “I’m particularly interested in the dance teacher and student angle. But I draw the line at animal costumes and bondage.”

She raised a brow.

“I could be talked into bondage, but my hard limit is animal costumes.” He flashed a wicked grin. “We’ll need a safe word.”

She smacked his chest, but didn’t push him away. “I’m being serious, Trey.”

“So am I.”

“I meant that we have to be careful around Cooper. He needs to think that you’re just his sitter and I’m just your friend. I don’t want him to jump to the wrong conclusion, thinking he’s getting a daddy only to have you leave.”

Trey pulled back. “I would never hurt Cooper. Or you.”

“I know.”

Two words. Two simple words. But they were spoken with so much confidence that Trey felt them resonate through his entire body.

“It’s just that for Cooper to believe it, then the town needs to believe it. Which means we’ll have to, um, be creative when it comes to meeting.”

His heart slammed against his ribcage and refused to move because she was looking at him like she was starved and he was what was for dinner. And dessert. If this went well, maybe even breakfast.

Please let this go well.

“As I already mentioned, I can do creative.” He could do anything if it meant she was saying yes. “And what we do or don’t do is nobody’s business but yours and mine.”

“Okay,” was all she said.

And then, without further explanation, she dropped her hands and walked through the French doors to the veranda off the main room of the suite.

He took a minute to enjoy the view, swaying perfection encased in red silk and a beautifully bare back that left his hands sweating, and then followed her outside.

Sara stood at the railing looking over Main Street as the breeze blew her hair across her back and a light mist stuck to her bare skin. The sun had set and the clouds had moved in, leaving St. Helena lit by only the soft street lamps below. But even in the dim light, he could see that she was nervous. And that Santa had come early, because there was no way she could be wearing a bra.

“You okay?” he asked from the doorway.

“Just needed some fresh air.”

“Second thoughts?”

She nodded slightly and he moved closer, wrapping his arms around her from behind. She hesitated for only a moment, then her body relaxed into his. He felt her release a deep breath before turning in his arms and whispering the five words he’d been waiting to hear since he first saw her at the hospital. “Will you be my February?”

Trey didn’t answer, afraid that something stupid would come out. Something like,
How about February and maybe the first few weeks of March?
Which would lead to wanting to cross off the rest of winter and all of spring, only he wasn’t going to be here in spring. He’d be in Italy. Alone with his freedom and a hard-on. And Sara would still be in St. Helena, out there in the dating pool, probably making nice with some steady, reliable guy.

Like Roman.

Fuck!

So instead he kept his mouth shut, mentally gave himself until March first, and then grabbed Sara and pulled her to him. If his non-verbal form of communication fazed her, she didn’t show it. In fact, her hands were threaded in his hair before his lips even made contact. But when they did,
aw man
, it was mind-blowing
.

She was soft and pliant and so damn welcoming. Then she moaned—no, it was more of a groan—and before he knew it, his hands were back on her ass, a place he’d spent every waking moment dreaming they could be, but reality was even better because she took that as a green light to wrap one of those toned and silky legs around his thigh and shimmy even closer. Which he had no problem with because it caused her skirt to shift, and with a little negotiating, his hands slipped down and under and,
thank you, Jesus,
she was wearing a thong and his life was complete.