Summer in Napa (A St. Helena Vineyard Novel) (19 page)

Lexi pulled back her hand back. Clean.

She glared at Abby, who merely shrugged with an I-told-you-so grin. “I will give you one week, and then you have to spill.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lexi said, smoothing down her light-blue summer dress and suddenly wishing she had gone for the green one with the halter top. It matched her eyes and made her boobs look more D than full C.

“The sad thing is, I believe you. And for your sake, I hope that you figure it out
before
you sleep with him.”

“I have not, nor will I ever be sleeping with Marc,” Lexi snapped in the quietest possible way.

“Never took you for a fibber, cream puff,” Marc drawled. Not only was all of his six foot three of pure, testosterone-loaded charm smirking down at her, he had his arm slung around her waist and his hand resting on her ass.

“What are you doing here?” She batted at his hand, which he didn’t move, except to gently cup her left butt cheek.

“Making sure your pants aren’t on fire,” he whispered, his lips purposefully grazing her ear. Then, louder, he added, “And bringing you this.” He held out a coffee cup in his free hand and smiled at Abby. “Hey, sis.”

When Lexi didn’t make a grab for the coffee, he shoved it in her hand. “Figured after a late night in the kitchen and an early morning in the bakery, you’d need a little sugar and caffeine to stay awake.” He looked back to Abby. “She hates mornings. It’s why she became a chef instead of a baker. Right, sugar?”

Rolling her eyes, Lexi took a sip to keep from saying something that would blow their cover when she felt herself flush. It wasn’t the heat of the coffee that warmed her, rather that behind all the meathead BS Marc was spewing out, he was silently showing her that he listened, paid attention, and that fake relationship or not, he cared. Because a dark-chocolate mocha with a shot of hazelnut and lots of whipped cream was not only her favorite, it was the exact caffeine fix that she needed.

Problem was, the charming playboy with the badass smile and disarming dimples could easily become more than just a quick fix.

Marc’s smile faded as though he read her mind. “Hey, look at me.”

Unable to resist, she did, her heart clogging her throat. She didn’t care if Nora Kincaid and her gossiping biddies were watching or that Abby was two feet away. She wanted Marc to kiss her, right there on Main Street, in front of the farmers’ market, and in turn the entire town.

So when Marc leaned down, Lexi went up on her toes to meet him halfway. When he was close enough that she could smell his skin, feel his breath skate across her lips, he opened his mouth and—licked up the entire left side of her face.

With a horrified gasp, she pulled back.

“What?” He shrugged. “You had a huge glop of chocolate on your cheek.”

S
he was wearing yellow tonight. A paper-thin yellow dress with little white flowers that she filled out to perfection. It barely had straps, just skinny strips of fabric holding it up over her otherwise bare shoulders. And when she moved, hell, even when she breathed, the dress swished back and forth over those long, toned legs.

She was killing him. And so was that damn smell.

Wingman, nose shoved in the half-inch crack at the bottom of the window, whimpered. He’d been that way for most of the night, drooling over the smells wafting in from Lexi’s apartment. So had Marc.

Marc’s stomach grumbled, and on cue Wingman looked over with those big doggie eyes. “I know, boy. Let me finish this and then we can go upstairs and grab some dinner.” He’d gotten a pretty fair understanding of where the bakery stood, financially. All he needed to do was finish jotting down his ideas.

Glancing at his computer, he noticed it was after eight. If he stopped staring out the window and focused, he could be done by ten.

Wingman barked, as though saying no, and looked back out the window. Every night, right around this time, Lexi would start tinkering in her kitchen, and Wingman sat like a lovesick pooch waiting for the pretty lady with yummy treats from across the alley to invite him over for dinner.

Tonight it was pork with—Marc sniffed the air—some kind of herby sauce.

And there he was—once again—staring up at her window instead of focusing on his work. Between trying to catch glimpses of Lexi, going over Pricilla’s books, which were a complete disaster, and coming up with a business plan to help Lexi save her grandmother’s floundering bakery, he’d accomplished jack shit. Lexi was only part of the problem. Guilt, for spying on a woman who was obviously struggling to keep her grandma’s shop afloat, intensified when he discovered a staggering amount of unaccounted monies in Pricilla’s books. Marc couldn’t think past how much he wanted to pummel Jeff for putting him in this situation.

Lexi, on the other hand, had been much more productive. He watched her pick up four plates, balancing them on her arms like a pro, and disappear from the kitchen window, only to reappear in the dining room. She arranged the plates in a precise order, centering each one on the place mats she’d set out earlier in the evening. Two plates were identical, a beautiful chop of meat, the perfect proportion of what looked to be wild rice and a fancy drizzle of pink sauce. The other two plates, although identical to each other, were drastically
different from the first, but even though he was squinting he couldn’t make out what was on them.

She stood back and eyed each one, tinkering with the silverware before taking a seat in front of the far-right place setting. After taking just a single bite, she glared at the first dish and shoved the plate back.

Even pouting, she was cute. Tonight she was supposed to be mastering the pork portion of the menu, and the irritated look in her eye meant that she had stuck to their grandmothers’ cookbook, using logic instead of instinct.

Marc leaned back in his chair and smiled at her dilemma. Lexi had always had a problem saying no. Which was why she often found herself torn between pleasing others and pleasing her need to break out of the box. Too bad that tonight people-pleasing Lexi won out, because the one who waved her finger at the rules was sexy to watch.

“Shit,” Marc whispered, lounging back in his chair. Everything inside of him went still, because Lexi, with all of her polished manners and practiced properness, was watching back.

Their eyes held for a moment and neither moved. Then she smiled. It was small and a little self-conscious, but it was a smile, and he realized that she thought she’d been caught spying on him. Before he could process what that even meant, Lexi made her way over to the window and opened it.

When Marc opened his, Wingman took it as his personal invitation to leap out in Lexi’s direction. Marc snagged his collar and tugged him back inside. “Sit or you get kibble for dinner.”

Wingman’s ears lowered. He glanced at the window and back to Marc, deciding with an irritated snort to plop his big old butt down on Marc’s foot—hard.

“You’re working late tonight,” she said, leaning out the window far enough that her hair, tied back in a single braid, fell over one bare shoulder.

“I was just finishing up your grandma’s books,” he said, resting his palms on the sill and looking up at her. Even from here he could see the way her smile faded a little.

“How bad is it?”

“Bad,” he said, going for honest. “But nothing you can’t handle.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He leaned farther out the window, his stomach groaning when a gentle breeze picked up whatever she had baking up in that kitchen. “Something smells good.”

“Are you trying to charm yourself into a dinner invitation?” She rested her elbows on the sill and grinned down at him.

“Well, unless you invited your entire crew up for dinner”—his eyes landed on the overflowing table set for four—“watching that much meat go to waste would be a sin.”

“We couldn’t let that happen now, could we,” she said with a saucy smile. Cream puff was flirting—with him. “I guess I did overestimate a little.”

“That is why we are the perfect couple.”

She laughed. “Because I overcooked?”

He loved it when he made her laugh, which was probably why he was now drooling worse than Wingman. “And I like to eat. A lot.”

“I remember. But that’s like saying we are perfect for each other because I’m tall or have two eyes.”

“I like my women tall, and two eyes are damn sexy.”

She shrugged. “All right, I guess it’s only fair. You did spend all day working on the bakery. You can break the bad news to me over dinner.”

“Let me take Wingman up to my room and freshen up and then I’ll be over.”

Wingman barked, loud, long, and angry.

“Get out of that suit and bring Wingman.”

“You might want to rethink that.” He looked down at Wingman, who glared back, ready to take Marc out at the knees and make a leap for the window if things didn’t go his way. “Behind that cute face and those big brown eyes lies a fluff ball of trouble.”

“I don’t think so. You’re a good boy, huh, Wingman?” she cooed, and Wingman straightened his spine, and if he hadn’t been a dog, Marc would have sworn he smiled.

“Yeah, that’s part of his charm. Just when he’s got you thinking that he’s trained, he wolfs down dinner, drools all over your couch, and with one last doggie high five to the crotch, he’s running out the door without even a thank-you, dragging your favorite pair of shoes behind him.”

“He’s a dog, Marc. I like dogs.” She raised a brow. “And you just described yourself. Now are you coming up, or should I toss out the meat?”

It took Marc less than five minutes to pull on some clean jeans and a button-up, drag Wingman across the alley, and ring her bell. Then he felt stupid for changing. This was two friends having dinner, not a date. But when she answered the door, he felt himself relax. Because Lexi had been just as confused. She was still in that tissue-thin yellow dress that clung to her curves, all of them, but her silky hair was down around her shoulders, her lips were all
shiny, and, aw hell, she looked like she was about to renege on her invitation.

“It’s just dinner, Lexi,” he said quietly.

“Right,” she whispered, her gaze dropping to his mouth. “Just dinner.”

Marc nudged his dog on the rump, and Wingman, who was sniffing every inch of the stoop and rubbing his back against Lexi’s railing, got to his wingman duties and loped into the house before she could change her mind. After a sniff to Lexi’s crotch, Wingman found his way upstairs, and Marc used the distraction to step inside and close the door behind him. “I brought wine.”

“What a surprise,” she deadpanned, but she seemed to have a hard time taking her eyes off him when she grabbed the bottle. “It’s a DeLuca.”

“Sure am, cream puff. And you look nice too,” he whispered and gave her a kiss on the cheek, quick enough for friendly, but too close to her lips to pass as casual.

Wingman stationed himself at the top of the stairs, ears alert, tail up like an antenna, plate already licked clean, while they took a seat at the table. Lexi remained silent, her hands shoved under her thighs, and Marc realized that she was forcibly restraining herself from yanking the plate with a standard pork chop out of his hand and making him try the other dish.

He chewed his bite of chop, and the second he swallowed she asked, “So?”

“It’s good. Cooked to perfection, the sauce—”

“A fig-jam glaze.”

He smiled. “The fig-jam
glaze
is sweet and tart and goes well with the rice. Technically perfect.”
And boring.

“It’s a braised pork chop in a fig-jam glaze over a bed of wild mushroom and pistachio pilaf. A Showdown classic.” Unable to help herself, she reached across the table, snatched the plate right as he was going for a second bite, and replaced it with the other dish. “Now try this.”

Marc raised a brow, chuckling when she sat back and once again shoved her hands securely under her legs. He slid the plate closer and sniffed. It was meat, but sliced thin and rolled around some kind of smelly cheese. He wasn’t big on smelly cheese, but she was watching, all wide eyes and hopeful stares.

Deliberately, he took his time cutting into it, loving how her mouth opened when his did and how she was moving her lips as though the simple act would hurry him along.

The first bite exploded in his mouth, and Marc groaned, he actually groaned, over a piece of meat and cheese with a red sauce drizzled on top. All that crap he’d said a minute ago was exactly what a-holes like Trey would say when trying to impress some chick. Marc didn’t know julienne from mandoline. Hell, pretty much all he knew about food was what he liked, meat, and what he didn’t, anything with bell peppers, green shit, and french toast. But this, this was…

“Jesus Christ, Lexi. What’s in this?” He took another bite. Groaning again, this time louder.

“A rolled pork loin stuffed with sautéed figs, gorgonzola dolce, and pistachios, basted in a balsamic and red wine reduction and served with a wild mushroom and truffle oil quinoa.”

“So there’s no unicorn hooves or leprechaun blood in here?”

She pressed her lips together as she shook her head, but he could still see her smile. It was too big and honest to hide.

It took a glass of wine and him eating half of his dinner before Lexi took her first bite. Another half glass of wine later and she finally started to relax. By the time he was refilling her glass for the second time, she had slipped off her shoes and tucked her bare feet up under her legs until everything but her pink-tipped toes disappeared under the skirt of her dress.

Figuring that this was the portion of the evening where he got to charm and delight her with his business prowess, Marc pulled out two files, one explaining exactly where the bakery was, financially speaking; the other was his plan for how she could save her company. Too bad she couldn’t get past how bad the first one was to even get to the part where he got to beat his chest and revel in his brilliance at the second.

“So then expanding right now isn’t the smartest decision,” she said, looking down at the spreadsheet of Pricilla’s current financials. She was no longer smiling, and Marc was pretty sure she was about two seconds away from crying. The numbers were bad, but not bad enough that they should make one of the toughest women he knew cry.