Summer in Napa (A St. Helena Vineyard Novel) (5 page)

“If I hadn’t spent thirty-nine hours in labor with her, and if her daddy hadn’t died when she was just a child, I would have shot her by now.” Pricilla sighed. “Honey, you could never be like your mother even if you tried. You’re hardworking and driven and just about the sweetest, most loyal person I know. Which is why you would never ask me to go
back to those nice young men and cancel their dates. They are looking forward to seeing you, and it would be rude.”

Grandma was right; Lexi was never rude. She prided herself on that…although when it came to Marc, she couldn’t seem to remember her manners.

“Fine, I will go on the dates”—she held up a hand as Pricilla practically quivered with delight—“but
only
the ones that I have already agreed to, no more. And no more Match.com, got it?”

“You always were stubborn.” Pricilla leaned over and kissed Lexi on the forehead. “Think of it as preparation for Mr. Right.”

“Mr. Right?” Lexi’s stomach suddenly hollowed out. The twinkle in her grandmother’s eyes only made it worse.

“How are you supposed to know what you
are
looking for if you’ve only ever really dated one man?” Pricilla stood and gathered the dishes. “Your mother’s problem was she would never go out with a Mr. Wrong, so everyone became Mr. Right. If you date a bunch of different men with no pressure about the future, you won’t mistake a Wrong for a Right ever again. That way you’ll know a Right when you meet him.”

Lexi ducked into Picker’s Produce, Meats, and More, grabbed a bar of specialty chocolate, and managed to sneak past the owner, Mrs. Craver, who was arguing with Mr. Craver—her estranged husband, who also happened to be the butcher.

Normally Lexi would say hello and politely inquire as to how things were in the grocers’ business, but today she
was in a rush. She needed some kind of citrus for her citrus-infused chocolate sauce and a few minutes to pull herself together before she went back to the bakery, where three very opinionated grannies were setting the table for lunch.

Lexi had wanted to thank Pricilla for letting her stay in the apartment, and ChiChi for giving her grandmother a place to live until Lexi found her own pad. What she hadn’t wanted was to endure an hour-long interrogation about yesterday’s date with Mr. Monday Night, especially since Mr. Monday Night had turned out to be every bit a Monday: jarring, exhausting, and a calamity of errors. He was cute in that finance-guy kind of way and late in that my-meeting-ran-over-and-it-will-never-happen-again kind of way. The only thing he did get right was the never-going-to-happen-again portion of the evening.

When she’d decided to move back to St. Helena and Pricilla had insisted on Lexi taking over the apartment completely, she had believed her grandmother’s intentions to be pure. A quiet place for Lexi to grieve and reassess. Now, after seeing her list of bachelors, the only thing Lexi had reassessed was Pricilla’s motive—she didn’t want her granddaughter to have to fiddle with a sock on the doorknob.

Well,
Grandmère,
you moved out in vain
, Lexi thought. She was done with knobs, fiddling or otherwise.

Her heels clicked on the barn-style wood floors, stopping right before she reached the white painted line that separated Mr. Craver’s part of the store—the butcher’s shop—from Mrs. Craver’s part—everything else. The specialty grocer had been around since 1894 and the Cravers for about as long. Marilee asked for a divorce about a year after they were married, and Biff denied her request on the grounds
that the divorce would make his wife happy. Livid, Marilee painted a white line down the middle of the store and told her husband that if he ever crossed the line she’d claim crime of passion. And the fighting had been going on ever since.

Lexi dropped two Valencia oranges into her basket and then paused, looking at the sour oranges two barrels over. She picked one up and smelled it, the bitter scent tickling the tip of her nose. The blood orange might be too sweet, but was the sour one too acidic?

She didn’t know. And that made her nervous. Today’s lunch was special because it was the first time she would be cooking for her grandmother since Jeffery left her for chicken noodle soup. Too bad that it was not the first time since discovering the affair that Lexi had been unsure of what ingredients would work best. Not a good sign for her future as a Michelin-starred chef hopeful.

“Bought some of those last week. Biggest mistake of my life.”

Lexi turned and found Nora Kincaid, current treasurer of the Daughters of the Prohibition and a big enough busybody to give ChiChi a run for her money, hunched over her shopping cart, her teeth bared in what appeared to be a smile.

“Why’s that?” Lexi asked, even though she knew better. But she was having a crisis of the culinary kind and needed help.

“Bitter, I tell you. Made me salivate until my Harvey though I’d gone rabid.” Nora grabbed the orange and set it back in the barrel with a disgusted tut, and Lexi wasn’t so sure it was the salivation that had led Harvey to that conclusion. “If you ask me, things here have been going downhill ever since Marilee started selling produce from Chile.”

Nora shot a glance at Marilee, who was standing behind the cash register, and dropped her voice. “I hear it’s because Biff told her that real Americans didn’t sell foreign wares and he would have nothing to do with it. She told him that real men don’t need so many little blue pills to make it happen down there and then started importing things from all over.”

Nora leaned in closer. “My Harvey never needed any of those blue pills. His plumbing works just fine, and I do my job as a wife.”

“Um, congratulations,” Lexi said, looking around, not sure what she was supposed to say.

“Oh my. This is awkward, isn’t it? I didn’t mean to imply—” Nora glanced down at Lexi’s bare ring finger, and before Lexi could defend herself against the nonimplication, Nora changed the subject. “Nonetheless, I’m glad I ran into you.”

Lexi wasn’t sure she could return the sentiment.

“Your grandmother signed on to provide all the pastries for the Book Walk this Saturday.”

“I saw it on her calendar.” The Book Walk was run by the Community Action Committee and helped the library raise funds for new books. Pricilla had been the food vendor of choice ever since Lexi could remember.

“Last month we advertised her being there, and she only showed up with enough pastries to feed a handful of people,” Nora sniffed. “So unless you can promise me provisions for half the town, I’m going to have to give her contract to someone else.”

“What?” Lexi stammered. “No, my grandma loves that event.” She had no idea what the real story was, but if Pricilla was shorting her customers, then it wasn’t good. “There’ll be more than enough for everyone. I promise.”

“Good, because my grandson Grayson is taking you to BoVine Thursday night, and he doesn’t like flaky women.” The woman gave Lexi a slow and thorough once-over. The wag of her head told Lexi she’d come up short. “He’s also never needed a blue pill. But just to be safe, try dressing to inspire, dear.”

Lexi looked down at her dress. It was fun, cute, and showed just enough cleavage to be flirty. She set her basket down and tugged at the neckline of her dress. Still not satisfied, she gave another tug.

“Any lower and Mr. Craver might just fall over the counter.”

She looked up. Nora was gone and—

Great.

Marc leaned against the display housing cucumbers and zucchini. Dressed in a pair of cargo shorts, a gray shirt that hugged his muscular chest, and a navy baseball cap, he held a bag of beef jerky, a power drink, and enough raw testosterone to make what should have been vineyard casual look ruggedly sexy—and extremely inspiring.

“It’s the hair,” he said, and she agreed. He had really great hair. Even though it was only peeking out the back of the cap, she knew it was dark and thick, and she understood why women would want to run their fingers through it—other women, that is, not her.

She’d given in to lust with Jeffery, and look where that had gotten her. Nope, not a cycle she was interested in repeating anytime soon.

“I meant
your
hair,” he said, reaching up and taking out the elastic band she was wearing. Her hair came loose and tumbled down her back.

When he ran his fingers through it a few times and then pulled it forward over her shoulder, his hand grazing her bare skin, her body started to tingle. And when he murmured, “Hair like yours should never be pulled back,” that annoying tingle became a full-blown hum.

No way in hell
, she thought, taking a step back.
Not him.

She didn’t have the time for men right now. And she didn’t have the experience
with
men to tangle with a guy like Marco DeLuca—ever.

Her first thought was to grab her oranges and run. Then she remembered that Marc loved food almost as much as she did. That she still hadn’t figured out what was wrong with her sauce. And that she was tired of running from men.

Sexy hum or not.

She grabbed a dark-chocolate bar from her basket and broke off a square. “Open up.” He did, and she shoved it in his mouth. “Now smell this.” She placed the Valencia orange to his nose.

“It smells really”—he cracked a smile—“orangey.”

“Orangey? That all you’ve got?”

“Fruity?” He shrugged matter-of-factly, but his eyes were twinkling with humor.

“Never mind, smell this.” She grabbed the sour orange and put it to his nose.

His nostrils flared, and he scrunched up his face.
Dang it.
Why was this so hard? She was picking out an acid for her sauce, for God’s sake. It was Cooking 101.

“What were you hoping for?”

“Well, not fruity or
orangey
, and definitely not—” She mimicked his disgusted expression, and he laughed. “I was hoping for more tart, I guess. It’s for a sauce to go over a pepper-crusted lamb chop.”

He turned the bill of his cap backward and surveyed the choices. Lexi was too busy trying not to survey him to notice how many varieties of oranges the store offered.

“How about this?” He broke off a chunk of chocolate and held it to her mouth. When she didn’t open, he teased it across the seam of her lips until she parted them on a gasp. He slid the chocolate in and she nearly moaned, because of the chocolate or the fluttering going on in her girly region, she didn’t know.

Marc reached behind him, and when he turned back around, he stared down at her with those intense brown eyes and cocked a brow. She figured
what the hell
and opened.

“Oh my God,” she moaned, savoring the bitter and tart and dissecting each individual taste. “Is that a kumquat? I never would have thought to add that. It’s incredible.”

“Yes, you would have. You made me a chocolate cake with these things on the top for my eighteenth birthday.”

She had. How had she forgotten that? And why had he remembered?

“How many do you need?” he asked, smiling smugly.

“About twenty, I guess. They’re so small.”

Marc bagged her citrus and dropped it in her basket. Bending over, he grabbed the handles and strode off—with her groceries.

“What are you doing?” She followed behind him.

“What else do you need?” He didn’t slow down.

“What I
need
is to carry my own basket to the counter and pay so I can get home.”

“Great, checkout it is.” He never broke his stride and wouldn’t give up the basket.

“Fine,” she conceded, looking at his groceries, “but I need a few things first.”

M
arc smiled as she led him around the store, those heels of hers slapping the ground and a delicate, feminine scent lingering behind her. “A few things” didn’t even begin to describe what she was buying. She loaded up the basket with a loaf of herbed focaccia bread, a block of wasabi gouda, adding an apple and some kind of bone that Biff wrapped specially for her. He had no idea what she was going to use it for, a broth maybe, but the way she carried it instead of dropping it in the basket told him that it was important.

Then she added in a jar of fig preserves, and Marc wondered what he was doing. He had run into the store to grab a quick lunch, which he’d done. And now he was good to go.

Hell, he needed to go. Needed to get out of this store. Away from Lexi before he did something that he wouldn’t be proud of—like break man law and kiss his best friend’s ex-wife.

Plus, instead of playing “carry the hot girl’s books to class” he should be in the truck, halfway out of town already.
He’d promised a buddy in Sonoma that he’d drive over the hill and pick up ten cases of wine slated for the Showdown wine tasting.

He’d been looking forward to getting out of town since last week. No office meant no e-mail, no phone calls, no BS. Just him, his dog, and a winding country road.

Then he saw Lexi in that sundress and those shoes, looking frazzled and adorably irritated, and his plans changed because she appeared as though she needed the time away as much as he did.

Maybe more.

He’d overheard Nora giving her a hard time. Saw the look on Lexi’s face when she was trying to figure out what was wrong with her dress. And wanted to tell her she was perfect, that nothing was wrong. Hell, Lexi could be inspiring in a freaking potato sack. Then he’d touched her hair and, Christ, all he could think about was touching her more.