Chapter Seventeen
Tuesday night Hallie stood in front of her full-length mirror in two different shoes, trying to decide which one looked better. She snapped a quick picture with her phone and fired it off to Lavinia, who promptly responded with: Wear the heels. But if you replace me as your best friend tonight, be warned that I will stab you with one.
Never, Hallie texted back, snorting.
She kicked aside some of the clothes and beauty products on her floor and found the lint roller, dragging the stickiness down her snug black dress to rid it of three varieties of dog hair. She stepped over the pile of rejected shoes and entered her en suite bathroom, leaving the lint roller in a place she probably wouldn’t find it next time and—
Hallie straightened, her fingers pausing in the act of rooting through lipsticks to find the right shade of golden peach. Watching her actions as if they were being performed by someone else, she removed the sticky strip of dog hair from the roller, threw it in the trash, and replaced the essential tool for dog owners in the drawer, where she used to keep it.
She stepped back from the mirror and looked around, wincing at the clutter.
Now that she’d taken a big step in her professional life, tomorrow she needed to take a leap in her personal one—and rein in this house jungle. Or at least get a running start.
But first, she’d get through tonight.
Going to a wine tasting with Julian’s sister was a terrible idea considering she’d resolved to move on. For real this time. Especially after the awkward scene that had played out in his front yard. He’d made it clear that they were incompatible and written a letter to someone else, so what gave him the right to decide what she did with her time? Or whom she spent it with?
The guesthouse garden was almost complete. She hadn’t quite decided what she would use to fill the final spaces, but it would come to her. Hopefully on her next trip to the nursery—and then she could wrap up her responsibilities to the Vos family, bill the matriarch, and move on. No more secret admirer letters, either. They were just another ill-conceived part of her life. She’d acted on impulse, and where did it lead her?
To having him validate all of her feelings. The ones she’d held on to for so long. And those things were not good, because Julian remained unavailable to her. Nothing had changed. If she revealed herself to him as the author of those letters, he would probably be disappointed that she wasn’t some like-minded scholar with a home filing system.
Maybe she would write the letters to herself from now on, instead of to Julian. They’d led her somewhere useful, hadn’t they? She’d finally admitted that avoidance through chaos was harming her livelihood. Even her friendship with Lavinia, who had begun looking at her in that worried, measuring way. Hallie needed to turn onto a new path. A healthy one.
Hallie shuffled a few lipsticks into her makeup case and snapped it shut, suddenly looking forward to a cleaning spree in the morning. A fresh start. Maybe she would even pick a new wall color for the living room and do some painting. Peony pink or peacock blue. Something vivid that would serve as a reminder that she was not only capable of admitting her self-destructive habits, but of finding a way to correct her course while remaining true to herself.
With a nod, Hallie requested an Uber and spent the ten-minute wait saying good-bye to the boys, which led to another harried trip to the lint roller, but the snuffling snuggles were well worth it. She’d taken them to the dog park after dinner so they could run off any excess energy that might lead to her coming home to couch stuffing all over the floor. Now she put some extra food in their bowls and walked out the front door, clutch purse in hand, sinking into the back seat of the black Prius.
Julian must have given his sister Hallie’s phone number, because Natalie had texted her that afternoon with an address to the apparently SEAL-owned winery, Zelnick Cellar. The place had a website, but it was under construction, and she’d never heard of it from anyone in town. She was curious, even if spending the evening with a Vos wasn’t the wisest step on her road to separating herself from all things Julian.
Ten minutes later, the Uber stopped in front of a medium-size barn surrounded by wooden fencing. Flickering light shone from within, and she could see a small crowd standing around. She had to imagine they were locals, since she hadn’t been able to find the tasting advertised anywhere on the Web. Was it entirely through word of mouth?
Tossing a thank-you to the driver, Hallie climbed out of the back seat and stood, tugging down the snug hem of her dress. She opened the flashlight app on her phone—getting a lot of use out of it lately, huh?—and did her best to navigate the dirt path leading to the barn while wearing skinny three-inch heels. The closer she got to the music and the crowd, the more well-lit the path became, and she slipped her phone back into her purse. Glowing white bulbs bounced up and down in the breeze, strung from high points of the barn. Was that the Beach Boys playing? This had to be the most casual wine tasting she’d ever attended. No doubt she’d overdressed—
Julian stepped into the barn entrance.
In a sharp, charcoal-gray suit.
Holding a bouquet of wildflowers in his hand.
Time slowed down, allowing her to feel and experience the over-the-top response of her hormones. They sang like tone-deaf preteens in the shower, screeching the high notes with misplaced confidence. Wow. Oh wow. He looked like he’d walked out of an advertisement for an expensive watch with too many dials. Or Gucci cologne.
Good. Lord.
Wait. Wildflowers were her favorite. How had he known?
Honestly, it tracked that they would be. But still.
She recognized the pink cellophane wrapping. He’d gone all the way to the nursery for that colorful spray. Who were they for?
Why was he here in the first place?
Close your mouth before you start drooling.
Salivating became even more of a possibility when Julian closed the distance between them, striding forward in that purposeful way of his. And when his head blocked the light coming from the barn, she saw determination and focus in the set of his jaw, the intensity of his eyes, the deep line of concentration between his eyebrows.
“Hello, Hallie.”
The sheer depth of his voice, like the belly of a submarine scraping the ocean floor, almost had her backing away. Just dropping her purse and running.
Because what was happening here?
Without breaking eye contact, Julian picked up her free hand and wrapped it around the bouquet of wildflowers. “For you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
He seemed to be expecting that, because his expression didn’t shift at all. He merely seemed torn over which part of her face to study. Nose, mouth, cheeks. “I’ll explain. But first, I want to apologize for my behavior on Sunday. I acted like a jackass.”
Hallie nodded dazedly. Was she accepting that apology?
Hard to say, when she was watching Julian slowly drag his tongue from right to left along his bottom lip, an answering clench taking place between her thighs. Something was different about him. He never failed to be entirely magnetic, but this was on a whole other level. It was almost intentional. Like he’d forgotten his filter at home.
“I’d like the opportunity to spend time with you, Hallie.” His attention traveled downward, stopping at the hemline of her dress, that bump in his throat traveling high, then low, along with the register of his voice. When he reached out a single finger and traced the location where her skin met the hem, the air vanished from her lungs. “I want to . . . date you.”
He packed so much bite into the word “date,” there was no pretending it didn’t have more than one meaning. Especially when his finger was just inside the hem now, teasing side to side to side, setting her legs trembling.
“You want to date me?”
“Yes.”
“I still don’t understand. What changed?”
Julian hooked his finger and dragged her close by the hem of her dress. Breathless, her head fell back so she wouldn’t have to break eye contact. God, he was tall. Did he grow in the moonlight or did he just seem larger now that he’d apparently stopped withholding himself?
“Truthfully?” he asked.
“Yes, truthfully,” she whispered.
Acute distress flickered briefly in his gaze. “I felt you slipping away from me. On Sunday in the yard.” He paused, visibly searching for an explanation. “We’d left things up in the air before, but this was different, Hallie. And I didn’t like it.” He studied her closely. “Was I right? Have you slipped away from me?”
Under such intense scrutiny, there was no point in providing anything but the truth. “Yes. I have.”
His chest rose sharply, shuddering back down. “Let me try and reverse that decision.”
“No.” She ignored how sexy he looked with that single professor’s eyebrow hoisting into the air and let the word hang between them. Maybe the longer she left it there, the better chance she would have of actually keeping her resolve. Panicked by her slim odds, Hallie reminded herself that he’d written back to the other woman. Or what he assumed was another woman. He’d told a stranger deep, important things about himself, and that hurt, because he’d made Hallie feel like his confidant. Then he’d given that confidence to someone else.
Oh, she was the furthest thing from blameless here. Writing those letters had been deceptive and shortsighted. Part of the reason for distancing herself now was to leave her folly behind her, pretend she hadn’t acted so impulsively, and enjoy the clean slate she planned to start writing on tomorrow. She could admit that. However, the sting of him leaving a letter on that stump continued to linger.
And last, but definitely not least, hadn’t she proposed in her last letter that they both do something that scared them? For her, it was walking into the library and taking the landscaping job. For Julian, obviously it was her. She—this—scared him.
Hallie bit back the sudden need to knee him in the jewels.
“No?” he echoed Hallie, his fingertip pausing in its sensual travels beneath her hem, misery etching itself on his features. “I really have behaved poorly, haven’t I?”
In all honesty, they both had.
So she couldn’t answer with a yes. Not without being a hypocrite.
“What happened to us being wrong for each other?” she asked instead. “We decided that pretty early on, didn’t we?”
“Yes,” he said, moving his hand away from her with a visible effort, curling his fingers into a fist, and shoving it into his pants pocket. “It’s come to my attention that I am far more wrong for you than the other way around, Hallie. You’re nothing short of breathtaking. Unique and beautiful and bold. And I’m a goddamn idiot if I ever made you feel otherwise.” She could feel in her bones how badly he wanted to reach for her in that moment. “I’m sorry. Every second we’ve spent together, I’ve been restraining myself. Trying to keep . . . to stay controlled.”
“And that’s not important to you anymore?”
“Not as important as you.”
“Wow,” she whispered, breathless. “Hard to fault any of these answers.”
That fist came out of his pocket, and he shook it out, flexed his fingers and stepped forward to cup her cheek, his thumb tracing the cupid’s bow of her upper lip. “I want to learn you, Hallie.” His voice was low, imploring. “Let me learn.”
Oh my.
A tremor coursed from her belly down to her knees, almost causing her to lose her balance. She might have, if the magnetism of his gaze wasn’t holding her steady. Of course, when this man decided to be romantic, decided to try and woo a woman, the results were deadly. She’d just underestimated how potent his full effort and attention would be.
Also, if this was an inappropriate time to be turned on, someone needed to tell her vagina, because while standing with Julian in the swirling mist of the moonlit night, his breath bathing her mouth, belt buckle grazing her stomach, it took serious effort not to lick him. Just lick him anywhere she could reach. Maybe those cords in his neck or the forearms he was hiding underneath the sleeves of his suit—
“Everything you’re thinking is right there on your face,” he said, battling a smile.
Hallie took a step backward, losing the warmth of his hand, his breath. “I’m thinking about the wine I’m going to drink.”
“Liar.” He tossed a glance toward the barn. “And don’t get your hopes up. It’s terrible. If my sister wasn’t in there, I’d suggest we make a run for it.”
“Terrible wine?” She grimaced. “How badly does anyone need a sister?”
He laughed. A rich, rumbling sound that made the air feel lighter. “Come on.” He held out his hand to her. “We’ll spill it out under the table while his back is turned.”
“That sounds like the kind of plan I would come up with.”
His eyes flickered with determination. Affection. “I’m learning you already.”
Lord help her, she couldn’t do anything but twine her fingers through his after that. She watched with a grapefruit in her throat as he kissed her knuckles gratefully, pulling her at his side toward the barn. Then . . . she was walking into a wine tasting holding Julian’s hand. Like a couple. He led her through a light-strung barn, through a gathering of about two dozen people, the scent of fermented grapes and straw heavy in the air. Guests stood in groups around candlelit high-top tables, their glasses of wine remaining noticeably full.
The waiter who’d obviously been hired to refill glasses and prod attendees to buy bottles to go looked stressed, unsure of what to do with himself. And his boss, the Navy SEAL turned Napa vintner, was too busy staring deep into Natalie’s eyes to advise him.
“Oh boy,” Hallie muttered.
“Uh-huh. Ask me how glad I was when your Uber pulled up.”
“Maybe we should help.” Julian slid a full glass of red wine in front of her, looked at it pointedly. She picked it up and took a sip, bitterness oozing down her throat. “Dear God,” she croaked. “There’s no way to salvage this.”
“None,” Julian agreed.
Someone a few tables over called Hallie’s name—a recurring client—and she waved, smiling and exchanging some predictions about what would be blooming soon. When she turned back to Julian, he was watching her closely, that deep groove taking up real estate between his brows. All she could do was stare in return, sighing shakily when he rested a big hand on her hip, tugging her closer. Closer. Until she was in the circle of his heat, head tilted back. “You’re dangerous like this,” she murmured.
That thumb dug into her hip bone, ever so slightly. “Like what?”
Tingles ran all the way down to her toes, hair follicles prickling on the crown of her head. “Are you going to pretend like you’re not trying to seduce me?”
His focus fell to her mouth. “Oh, I am one hundred percent trying to seduce you.”
A long, hot clenching took place between her thighs, tummy muscles coiling, skin temperature skyrocketing. With a trembling laugh, she glanced over her shoulder and quickly scanned the room. “At least three of my regular clients are here. It wouldn’t be very professional to be seduced where they can see me.”
Was he looking at the pulse in her neck? It started beating faster, as if preening under the attention. “Then I suggest we go for a walk.”
She pursed her lips at him and hummed. “I don’t know about that. The last time we went for a walk in a vineyard, I only came back disappointed.”
The corner of his mouth jumped with humor, but his eyes were serious. “Not this time, Hallie.”
A promise. A confident one.
“What does that mean, exactly?” Hallie asked softly, haltingly.
He hesitated a moment, tongue tucked into his cheek. Then he dropped his mouth to her ear and said, “It means, this time I’m not finishing on your thighs.”
Holy mother of God.
Images bombarded her mind. Those wires in Julian’s neck straining, hands roaming desperately in the darkness, her knees in his big hands.
If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought that one sip of terrible wine had gone to her head, the giddy lift of lust was so magnificent. Letting herself get carried off on Julian’s current could be a really bad idea. Not only did she have a secret—that she was his secret admirer—but there was no evidence that a relationship would work. In fact, it was a total long shot. People couldn’t change so drastically, could they?
But weren’t moments like this why she’d finagled her way into fixing the guesthouse garden in the first place? She’d wanted her dose of magic with Julian Vos. Now that she knew him, now that she’d fallen for the real man, being happy with a single moment was impossible. She didn’t have to think about that tonight, though. She could just let herself be taken for the ride. The one she’d dreamed about since high school. The one that was so much more powerful now that she’d gotten to know him, this man who bought awnings for failing wineshops. Or jumped in to host children’s story time and saved her from being arrested.
Lost in her thoughts, she swayed forward involuntarily, and her breasts grazed his upper abdomen, the suggestive rasp of their clothing making her want to moan. Rub against him like a cat. Especially when his eyes went smoky, lids heavy.
“Hallie,” he half growled. “Take the walk with me.”
With the word “yes” on the tip of her tongue, her conscience made a last-minute attempt to throw up a barrier, talk her out of taking something she needed and wanted. Tell him the truth first, or you’ll regret it. But apparently she’d need more time to become a reasonable, non-reckless person. Because all she said was “Yes.”