Once Tasted: A Silver Creek Novel (20 page)

“Jay Bodell showed up?” Reid asked sharply.

Quinn nodded, unfolded her napkin on her lap, and passed her plate to him so their mother could load it with salads. “Yeah. In a shiny car, a shiny suit, and shiny shoes. All that shine gave me the creeps, let me tell you.”

“And Mia? Is she—”

“Mia’s okay, Reid. You can sit down,” Quinn said.

He hadn’t even realized he’d pushed his chair back or that he’d risen to his feet.

Luckily, everyone’s attention was focused on his sister. He dropped back into his chair and said, “Jay is bad news.”

“No kidding. He made my flesh crawl.”

This time Reid forced himself to remain seated. “What did he do?” he asked.

“Other than eyeball me like a lecherous creep and act all aggressive toward Mia?”

“Aggressive? How?” If he’d touched one hair on her head …

“You know, puffed up and territorial, talking about
his
home,
his
father,
his
percentage, blah, blah, blah. But then, when Mia stood up for herself—and, man, was I proud of her for not taking any of his BS—he changed tactics, going all smiley and pleasant. Way too smiley,” she muttered.

“I can’t ever remember Jay being a pleasant young man,” Adele said.

Quinn nodded. “It seemed as fake as his tan. He even suggested he and Mia get together tomorrow night to discuss the particulars of our partnership with the Bodells. I told him she was having dinner over here.”

“Good thinking, Quinn,” Daniel said.

“I try, Dad, I really do,” she replied with a teasing grin. “Tess, I thought you might join us so we could leave Ward and Reid to FaceTime with Brian about the bachelor party.” Brian Nash was Ward’s best friend and would be in the wedding party, along with his wife, Carrie. It was Carrie and Brian’s wedding at Silver Creek that had brought Ward and Tess together.

Tess smiled in pleasure. “I’d like that. I think Mia’s interesting. She impressed Anna, too. It’s not easy being a woman vintner.”

“I’m glad you like her. She needs friends who understand what she’s all about,” Quinn said, helping herself to the grilled eggplant and zucchini and digging into her mountain of salad and vegetables.

There were times when his kid sister really showed what she was made of, and this was one of them, Reid thought, elbowing her affectionately in the ribs. Typical Quinn, she elbowed him right back and twice as hard.

Finished with her mouthful of food, she spoke again. “Oh, and guess what I’ve decided Mia needs. A dog. A big one. He can be a cream puff at heart, but at least he’ll be there, standing by her side with lots of muscle and teeth.” She shifted in her chair and flashed him a
wicked smile. “Kind of like you, Reid, only with a brain.”

The family didn’t even bother to stifle their mirth.

He gave an exaggerated sigh. “You do realize they’re just laughing to make you feel better about the calf that ran you and Domino ragged.” Quinn had actually done a great job, but the calf had been wily as hell.

Quinn scowled and then waved off the taunt with a breezy “whatever.”

“So back to Jay,” said Ward, who liked to have all the facts. “Did he stick around long?”

“Long enough for me to realize a big dog would have been excellent company right then. Mia and I only had Vincent—you remember the cat I gave her and Thomas, don’t you, Dad—and a cake knife to fend him off. I was
not
happy.”

“I’m not sure I’m happy about Mia being all alone at the vineyard, either,” Daniel said.

“Until Quinn locates a suitable dog for Mia, we could ask Grant to go over and …” his mother began.

Okay, he’d had enough. Grant Hayes did not need to start patrolling Mia’s house, as his mother well knew. Mia didn’t know Grant, and it would spook the hell out of her to have a stranger knock on her door.

And what would Mia do if Reid showed up? Give him another black eye? At least then he’d have a matching pair. “I’ll make sure everything’s secure at Mia’s. But why don’t we have Grant check into what Jay’s been doing down in L.A? I, for one, would like to know.”

“Go ahead, son,” his father said.

His mother merely smiled serenely.

Reid tried to tell himself that wasn’t a really bad sign.

Rather than risk Mia’s sneaking up behind him and braining him with a cast-iron skillet as he circled the
house to check that her windows and doors were locked, Reid decided to knock on the front door.

He wanted to know she was okay, a perfectly normal need considering that less than twenty-four hours ago she’d been in his arms and he’d been deep inside her. It didn’t represent anything more than basic kindness and neighborly concern.

He lifted a brass knocker molded in the shape of a cluster of grapes and let it fall. It took two more raps for her to answer—and half that time for him to realize that the worry nibbling at him was at odds with his usual attitude.

One glance told him his concern was justified. Her hazel eyes were enormous in her drawn face. The lashes framing them were dark and clumped from recently shed tears. Her nose, that snooty organ so often angled skyward in his company, was red from too many encounters with a tissue.

She was dressed in a white T and a pair of gray cotton drawstring bottoms decorated with navy-blue polka dots. Her sleepwear was a far cry from sexy, but that didn’t matter to Reid’s libido or his imagination. After all, her arms and feet were bare and, judging from the voluptuous swell resting against her crossed arms, she was braless.

Oh, yeah, those details were more than enough for him to picture the two of them on her bed, his fingers tugging on the drawstring’s looped bow, loosening the waist to allow his hand to slip past and skim over soft, quivering flesh to the curls and moist heat waiting for him. His other hand would be just as busy traveling north to explore the twin mounds and their exquisitely sensitive peaks.…

“Do you want something?”

She had to ask? “I heard Jay came by today.”

“Yes, it was … unexpected, though now that I’ve
had time to think about it, I’m not surprised he decided to pay a visit.”

“Money?”

“Of course. With Jay it’s always a question of money. He’d have enjoyed the chance to rattle me, too.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” She hugged her middle even more tightly. “I was looking at our family album.”

“Album” in the singular rather than plural, and Reid bet the images inside it didn’t give rise to smiles and fond anecdotes, as his family’s pictures did. He had a sudden vision of Mia sitting in the large, empty house and scrubbing away tears as she flipped through the pages of photos. Quinn had said how proud she was of the way Mia had stood up to Jay. He thought her solitary battle with the sadness that had marked so much of her life was equally impressive.

“Any word from Thomas?” Maybe her uncle had thought to ring her.

“No. He and Pascale were making their way directly to Corsica. He told me the cellphone connection would be spotty.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter.

Her shoulders had been soft and surprisingly strong, he remembered. Like the rest of her. The hours working in the vineyard were to thank for those toned muscles. How much emotional pain had she endured so that she could handle her present sadness?

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”

No, damn it, it wasn’t. He liked Thomas, but that didn’t mean his friend wasn’t being appallingly selfish right now. “Do you ever wonder about your father?”

For a second, there was silence. Under the weak bulb of the porch light, he could see the shadow that dimmed her eyes.

Feeling like an ass for having voiced the question, he opened his mouth to apologize again. She spoke first.

“Yeah, I used to wonder. I don’t anymore. It doesn’t help. And there’s no point, since there’s no way to find him. My mother was nomadic—a romanticized way of saying transient. She had no credit cards or bank account; her only ID was an expired California driver’s license. When she drowned, she left behind three hundred dollars, her ID and my birth certificate, a shoe box with some photos in it, and me.”

Now he felt like an even greater ass, because again he wanted—needed—to ask if she was okay when it was obvious she wasn’t. There were lots of broken and jagged things in Mia’s life. She dealt with them as best she could, but imagining they could be magically fixed or airbrushed away was just wishful thinking on his part.

“You haven’t told me why you’re here,” she said.

“I wanted to make sure you locked your doors and the windows on the first floor. You’ll do that, right?”

She nodded, her arms still wrapped about her middle. He read her body language. It screamed defensiveness. He hadn’t missed the other not-so-subtle cue: She hadn’t invited him inside. Talk about action speaking louder than words.

He knew better than to kiss her and attempt to stoke the fiery passion between them. But he could do something else.

He knew how to move quickly—quickly and smoothly. He closed the distance between them, cupped his hand beneath her chin, and molded his lips to hers before she could do more than blink. He kept the pressure light and allowed himself only a mere sampling of Mia, beguiling and unique, before he reluctantly released her.

Even that gentle kiss, meant to soothe and heal, had his libido lighting up like Times Square on New Year’s
Eve. Too aroused to feel triumph at her stunned expression, he said huskily, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Taking the porch steps two at a time, he jogged into the enveloping darkness, away from the woman who was beginning to matter too much and in too many ways.

T
HE
SNIP, SNIP
, snip of her pruning shears was methodical, practiced. The thoughts inside Mia’s head were not. There was, however, a pattern to the seeming chaos: The thoughts all eventually wended their way back to Reid.

They’d slept together. They’d fought. He’d fixed her driveway. They’d fought. They’d almost kissed. He’d taken the time to come and check on how she was doing. And then he’d kissed her, a sweet, enchanting kiss that had pierced her heart. A heart that was already far too vulnerable where he was concerned …

It was no wonder she was exhausted. Her emotions had been on an endless roller-coaster ride, careening from highs to lows and everywhere in between. But hadn’t Reid always made her feel more than anyone else? The only difference now was that he’d given her a tantalizing taste of what it could be like if he ever really cared for her.

The sun had grown hot. Slipping the shears into the back of her jeans’ pocket, she tugged off her baseball cap, mopped her brow, and picked up the jug of water she’d brought with her, taking several gulps. Though the ice inside had melted long ago, it still refreshed.

“Hello, Mia,” Reid said from behind her.

She spun around. Couldn’t there ever be a moment—just one—when this man saw her in a remotely attractive state? She didn’t only have hat hair, she had
sweaty
hat hair. A voice reminded her that Reid hadn’t seemed exactly repulsed by her when they’d had sex. Perhaps because she’d insisted they keep the lights off.

She jammed the cap back on her head. “Uh, hi. You’re here.” Great. Now she sounded like a dope. She pulled out her pruning shears and resumed pruning the lateral shoots, staring fixedly at the vine as if she’d never seen one before. She dropped the cuttings into the wheelbarrow with exaggerated care, all the while feeling his gaze on her.

And to think that two weeks ago he’d treated her as if she were the Invisible Woman—kind of like Sue Storm from the Fantastic Four—only not so fantastic.

“I thought maybe you’d be having lunch by now.”

“I sent Paul and Roberto up, but I wanted to finish this row before I took a break.” Lost in her thoughts of him, she’d lost track of time, too.

“Right. I’ll give you a hand. Have you got another pair of pruners?”

She turned to stare at him, then quickly jerked her gaze back to the leafy canopy. “There’s an extra pair in the canvas bag. Thomas always misplaces his.”

Reid leaned over to rummage in the bag hanging from one of the wheelbarrow’s handles. She tracked the play of his muscles beneath his gray T-shirt, and her mouth went dry all over again. “Do you know how to trim lateral shoots and pull leaves?” she asked.

He squeezed the shears in his hand, unlocking the safety catch. “Nope. But I’m betting you can teach me. I guess this will be a working meeting. Once I’ve got the hang of this trimming-and-pulling thing, we can move on to discussing what the winery needs. I have to be
back by two o’clock to meet the vet who’s checking a horse we’re selling.”

“Is that the horse Quinn told me about? The one you trained?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re selling it to the man who supplied the gravel for the road?”

“Yeah. Howie likes our horses.”

It was funny how he kept saying “we” and “our,” even though Quinn had made it clear it was Reid who’d trained the horse and negotiated the sale. Mia had always viewed Reid as arrogant and cocky. But here he was, muting his horn rather than trumpeting it. It made him even more attractive to her.