Summer in Napa (A St. Helena Vineyard Novel) (9 page)

Wingman barked his approval.

“I think I can manage without, thanks,” Lexi said, turning back around and resuming her seat on the hot asphalt. Wingman’s whole body shook excitedly as he loped over. He nosed at the ground and around her legs, and when he
couldn’t get to her rear end he settled on a big, doggie face lick.

“Wingman, come. Sorry about that, he’s all muddy from the trail.”

Wingman rolled into her and plopped down—right on her feet. Mud dripped off and speckled her jeans.

“He’s not that bad.”

“Really?” Marc looked across the street and frowned. “He’s a total tool.”

“I was talking about the dog.”

“Good, because you can do better than Chad. In fact, I’ve got a friend. Nice guy. Single, loves to travel, owns a hotel, handsome as hell. In fact, I think you already have a date with him tonight. He wanted me to ask what you were planning on wearing, and suggest something with no straps, bra optional.”

“Really?”

He shrugged.

“It’s not a date. And I’m not listening to you right now,” Lexi said, also
not
noticing how his running shorts hung low on his waist and highlighted his impressive thighs. Or how his shirt, a little damp from the heat of the morning, clung to his broad chest as it would to someone who’d been pounding the pavement, which she’d guessed he’d been doing before he decided to poke his unwanted nose in her business.

“Stevens, huh? Never figured him for your type.” Even with his mirrored sunglasses on, Lexi could feel Marc staring straight at her, pinning her with a gaze that made sitting still impossible. “A little too handsy for the prom queen, if you ask me.”

“Maybe I like handsy.” Wingman pressed farther into her legs, letting out a protective growl and sending a big glob of mud splatting to the ground. “Plus, Chad and I were friends back in school.” Okay, that was a lie, but there was no way he would remember that she hated Chad.

Marc pocketed the sunglasses, his whiskey-brown eyes flickering with amusement and—crap! He remembered. “You kneed the poor bastard sophomore year when he tried to get up close and personal with your pom-poms.”

It had been junior year, when she and Jeffery had broken up for three days because she had tried out for the cheer team and it conflicted with her ability to support him from the stands on game night.

“He helped me put up my posters for class president, senior year.” Another time that she and Jeffery had taken a break.

“He liked to look up your cheerleading skirt. But hey, who am I to stop true love?” Marc looked over the top of the car and waved. “Hey, Chad. How’s it going? Are you looking—”

Lexi grabbed Marc’s hand and yanked him to the ground. “Can you not? I have enough people trying to run my love life.”

“So you admit that there is a love life.” When she didn’t answer, except to drop her head to her knees with a frustrated grunt, Marc leaned against the car next to her, close enough so that their thighs brushed. Wingman rested his snout on Marc’s running shoe. “Ah, too much of a love life.”

“My marriage officially ended two weeks ago. I have a bakery that needs to become a bistro, and my grandma has set me up with at least two first dates a day. Although they
are nice enough guys, I don’t have the time, or interest, to date right now. My apartment is overflowing with flowers, and the idea of another cup of get-to-know-each-other coffee makes me want to cry.”

“Easy solution. Call your bachelors and tell them no.”

Lexi had never been good at saying no. Her whole life she’d worked hard at making people happy. A lifetime of revolving parents could do that to a girl. “I can’t.”

She paused, waiting for Marc to laugh at her, disagree with her. For him to say that it was as easy as looking them in the eye and saying, “N. O.” To point out that people did it every day and, in fact, it was something she should have mastered by high school.

But he didn’t do any of those things. He didn’t do anything at all except lean his head against her side door and patiently stroke Wingman. In silence.

Also not good with silence, Lexi felt compelled to add, “I promised my grandma I would fulfill all of the scheduled dates that she had agreed to. It would be rude to cancel on them now.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Natasha said, her heels slapping the concrete as she approached. When she was certain that the towering effect was in place, Natasha stopped, her hands on her hips.

Today she was dressed in cream-colored pants, with matching pumps and a summer jacket, an ice-blue silk shell, and enough sparkly accessories and bad attitude to make Lexi squint.

Natasha turned her eyes on Marc. “I thought we were meeting for lunch at eleven thirty?”

“We are,” he confirmed innocently.

“Really?” Lexi whispered.

Marc ran a hand over his face and sighed. He avoided Natasha’s gaze, instead fiddling with the cuff of his shorts. Marco DeLuca, total ladies’ man, was squirming, and not in a good way. In fact, he looked slightly harassed, and Lexi suddenly wondered if he was hiding from his love life as much as she was.

“Oh, because it’s eleven fifteen and you’re dressed for the gym. BoVine has a strict dress policy,” Natasha said, then turned to Lexi. “By the way, I forgot to tell you the other day how sorry I was to hear about you and Jeffery.”

“Thanks, but I’m doing well,” Lexi lied. Natasha was only sorry that she hadn’t yet had the chance to rub it in, and by the sparkle in her eye she was getting ready to do exactly that. Especially since Lexi had witnessed yet another rebuff from the great playboy himself.

“I mean, divorced and thirty. Sounds rough. They write articles about people like you.”

“Twenty-nine. Remember I was a year
behind
you. And Jeffery and I parted amicably. Actually, we’re still close,” Lexi shot back. “Oh, and I love those pants. Are they cream? No, too yellow. What color are they? It’s hard to tell with the sun in my eyes.”

“These, well, they are more of a custardy color—”

Wingman’s ears perked up, his tail started beating the concrete, and he let go a single bark.

Natasha took a step back, obviously startled.

“Lexi,” Marc warned.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear. What color did you say it was?”

Eyes firmly on the dog, Natasha took another step back and said, “Custard—”

The words had barely left her lips and Wingman was up. He charged Natasha, his tail flicking mud in every direction as his big dirty paws landed right in the center of Natasha’s ice-blue heart.

“Oh. My. God,” she shrieked as she backed into the gas pump. “Get him off!”

“Down, Wingman,” Marc said, but Lexi noticed that he took his time getting to the dog to haul him off a very angry Natasha. “Down.”

By the time Marc got Wingman settled, Natasha was sporting two enormous doggie prints on her silk and two pissed-off slits for eyes. And they were zeroed in on Lexi. “You did that on purpose!”

“I guess you’d better go get cleaned up. I hear that BoVine is uptight about who they let in.”

“Lexi? That is you!” Chad said from behind them, sidling up to the group and giving her a big hug, his hands sliding a little far south for Lexi’s liking. “It’s so great to see you. I was waiting for you to come out of the station, and I had almost given up.” He looked at his watch. “I have to be in court in an hour. I’m just so glad that I finally ran into you.”

He hugged her again, his hands slipping—again.

A low, threatening growl sounded, and Chad slowly backed away.

“Good boy,” Marc whispered and gave Wingman a ruffle behind the ears.

“It’s good to see you too, Chad,” Lexi said, patting her thighs in a silent call for Wingman, who dutifully walked over to sit on her feet and lean into her legs. Chad would have to get past her keeper if he wanted to cop a feel.

“At first I thought you were avoiding me, running out of the supermarket, not returning my calls, but then I told myself that you were probably busy getting settled. How is the bistro coming along?”

“You know about the bistro?” Not that she had kept it a secret, but she hadn’t advertised it either. She had finalized the blueprints and design with her designer last week, perfected her summer menu, and met with the contractor—twice. Until they broke ground on the remodel, and she knew what her grand-opening date would be, she was keeping a low profile.

“Well, yeah.” He reached inside his jacket and fished around in the pocket. He pulled an envelope out, shoved it in her face, and smiled. “For you.”

Wingman barked in warning, but Lexi took the offered envelope. It was official looking, with the Stevens, Stevens, and Stevens corporate seal on the upper left corner. And it was heavy—way too heavy to be an invitation to the yearly office party. “What is this?”

“Alexis Moreau,” Chad began, “I hate to be the one to inform you, especially since I am planning on picking you up a week from Saturday for a picnic and maybe a little dip in the lake, but you’ve been served.”

After Lexi swallowed back the bile that rose at the image of the kind of dip he had in mind, she asked, “Served? I don’t understand.” Her divorce was final. The assets divided. What the hell was going on?

“Jeffery has gained a court-ordered cease and desist that prohibits any use of recipes served in his restaurant Pairing.”

“Those recipes are mine.” They were
all
hers. And they were all that she had. “I created them.” She had breathed life into them, and they into her.

Experimenting in the kitchen had been the only time she felt truly happy in New York. She couldn’t keep her husband satisfied, couldn’t be a mother, couldn’t recognize who looked back at her in the mirror most days. But she could cook.

“Actually, the recipes are assets of the corporation that now owns the restaurant.”

“What corporation? Pairing is a family-run business.”

Ignoring her last comment, Chad looked at his watch, stepped forward as though to kiss her good-bye, and wisely settled on an awkward shoulder pat when Wingman bared his teeth. “Gotta run, Lexi. Pick you up at nine.” And he was gone.

Natasha straightened her top and smiled. “I better get going since lunch is in a few minutes. Great to see you, Lexi. And I am so happy to hear what an amicable divorce you and Jeffery had. It warms my heart. Really.”

I
t was official. Marc was a stalker.

It had started out innocently enough, a quick glance out his office window at the precise moment that a light flickered on across the alley. He’d never noticed before that his office window, situated on the northwest corner of the hotel, afforded him a perfect view of Pricilla’s apartment, and if he angled his chair just so, he could see directly into her kitchen. If he stood he was able to steal peeks through the breakfast nook area and get a great view of Pricilla’s dining table. And if he stood up and pressed his face to the window, he could see all the way through to the family room and partway down the hall toward the bedroom, which was currently housing a tight little ass that he had the pleasure of watching swish its way around the house.

That night, he should have packed up his things and gone upstairs to his suite. Instead he’d watched her move through the kitchen, her bare feet and legs dancing around the room to Louis Prima as she took out nearly every pan and
utensil in the house and spent hours cooking enough food for a large dinner party, only to take a single bite, dump it in the trash can out back, and start over.

That had been six days ago, after she’d been served, after she’d posted a note on her door canceling their dinner, and after she’d refused to return his calls.

That look on her face when she’d been handed those papers still got to Marc. She’d been shocked, then confused, then hurt, which made Marc equal parts confused and pissed—at himself for not making sure Jeff had handled his shit. Marc assumed that Jeff had made it clear to all involved that after the divorce the menu would remain an asset of Pairing. He’d also assumed that when he finally saw Lexi again, the sexual pull between them would be gone.

He’d been wrong on all accounts.

Marc paused for a moment, just watching her. Elbows-deep in a saucepan, she whisked for a good three minutes, her forehead scrunching when she took a little taste with a spoon. Quickly she opened the cabinet to her left, reaching up on her tippy toes and tugging this morning’s ensemble of choice, a dark-blue tank top and striped cotton boxers, high enough up her body to expose a tiny strip of torso and a whole lot of leg.

Nope. The pull was still there, and he was still watching.

Marc swore and angled his chair so that he would be forced to stare at his computer, as though she wasn’t right behind the window, whisking her flambé or whatever, with her breasts gently swaying because she’d decided to roll out of bed this morning and forgo a bra—again.

The movement startled Wingman, who was sleeping under Marc’s desk and awoke with a grunt. He grunted again before rolling over to offer up his belly for a rub.

Marc gave it a valiant effort, staring at an e-mail from Natasha outlining exactly why she would be a brilliant pick to cater the Summer Wine Showdown. He’d put off his reply, hoping to find a solution that didn’t involve a clingy woman—a clingy woman he’d slept with.

He’d called every chef he knew and a few dozen he didn’t. Either they were booked or too damn expensive. His own chef, who was pissed that Marc still hadn’t hired him a sous chef, refused to do the event, claiming it wasn’t in his contract.

The easy solution would be to call Jeff, ask him to recommend someone local. More than a thousand spectators, members of the media, and celebrities were due to start arriving in just under a month, but no food had been ordered, and he didn’t have enough staff to handle the event—and he still hadn’t been able to call.

At first he told himself that it was because he didn’t want to interrupt Jeff’s honeymoon; his friend deserved a little alone time with his new bride after a hellish year. Then Marc watched, day after day, as Lexi struggled to find peace in the one place she used to thrive, and his reason for not calling was out of sheer preservation—of his and Jeff’s friendship.