Best Man...with Benefits. Nancy Warren
She was going to have to make time to get out more. Start dating.
Guys were always hitting on her in the tasting room at the winery. She always turned them down, but maybe she should start being more open. Why not?
She wished Amy were here. This was what a BFF was for. Times like this when you were stuck in your own head and something wild and crazy had happened. Who else could she talk to?
But Amy had left on her honeymoon. She’d received a short email from her telling her that Italy was fantastic and that she was having the best time ever. She’d ended her post with “ciao” and a happy face.
Which was great. But Lauren had to accept that now that Amy was married, she wasn’t going to be as available for everything from girls’ nights out to Saturday morning brunches and shopping expeditions.
Life as she’d always known it was changing.
She glanced at her watch and then began putting away her tools. She was on shift at two o’clock and it was almost one.
She didn’t make a huge amount of money pouring wine in the tasting room, but her meager wage came with a cottage on the property. She’d also wheedled the use of one of the outbuildings as a studio for her stained-glass work. The winery was family owned and run, and since she liked the owners as well as the wine, she enjoyed her job. Besides, having to get out there and interact with people stopped her from getting so caught up in her craft that she became a weird recluse, something that Amy insisted would happen to her if she didn’t work out a better balance in her life.
Whatever.
Back in her cottage, she showered, quickly put a few curls in her hair with the curling iron, slapped on some makeup and slipped into jeans and a crisp white polo shirt with the Leonato logo on the pocket. The only reason her work shirts were crisp and always gleaming was that they were sent out for cleaning and pressing.
She strode up the gravel road, enjoying the sight of all those green grapes fattening on the vines. The sun was warm and her work was going well.
If she could get rid of the constant buzz beneath the surface of her skin when she thought of That Night, she’d be having a really great day. A week had passed—when was she going to stop waking at night, hot and restless, reliving the hours of bliss? This had to stop soon.
She let herself into the back of the low, wooden building that housed the offices and the front tasting room. The Leonato family had come from Sicily and a tradition of wine growing. The same varieties of grapes did well in Napa and the business had grown.
She heard the buzz out front that suggested quite a few people had decided to tour wineries on this sunny June Saturday afternoon. She hurried through to the front and immediately got busy.
She’d been doing this job for three years now, ever since she’d finished art college. Naturally, artists didn’t generally make a living wage, but she’d been lucky in finding both a job and a place to live. The Leonatos had commissioned her to create a showpiece window in this very tasting room and even carried some of her creations, so long as they were wine-related.
She’d come up with a line of stained-glass wine holders, each one unique, that sold pretty well during the holiday season.
After three years, she was adept at reading the people who came in. She could identify the tourists who could barely tell red wine from white, and the wine snobs who liked to discuss varietals and soil and the weather of each particular vintage. Some of them were big spenders, others time wasters.
Usually, they started visitors on the simpler, cheaper wines. If they showed real interest or knowledge or were obviously planning to buy something, she would move them on to taste the premium wines.
Usually, everybody had a good time. Including her.
Today was typical. When she walked in, Sharon Leonato was pouring samples for a well-dressed couple she seemed to know.
She nodded when Lauren walked in. They’d catch up when they had a break.
Lauren checked stock, opened a new bottle of the standard Shiraz, wiped down the counter. A guy in his thirties strolled in with a woman he was clearly trying to impress. Lauren offered the guests the regular spiel that went with each wine, but the man soon took over from her, giving his date more in-depth knowledge than she probably cared for. He waved away the first-tier wines and went straight for the premium. Since Lauren had a strong suspicion he was going to continue trying to impress his date by buying an expensive bottle or three, she happily obliged.
Two couples came in, well dressed and obviously enjoying each other’s company. As she served them, it turned out that one of the couples was from London and, while visiting their friends in California, were planning to cook a gourmet meal. They’d come to the winery to purchase the wine for dinner. After an hour of tasting, they bought a case of wine to take with them. She rang up the sale with a pleasant feeling of accomplishment. She hadn’t been pushy, but she had a way of encouraging people she knew could afford it to splurge a little. Why not? Both her livelihood and that of the Leonatos depended on it.
As they were leaving, the British woman caught sight of her wine coolers and raved about them so much—even picking one up and carrying it to the window so she could see how the sun streamed through the panes of colored glass—that her husband gave in and pulled out his credit card.
Sharon caught sight of the transaction and walked over to tell them that Lauren was the artist. Of course they raved some more and the woman even asked Lauren to autograph the little card that went with the cooler.
“Lauren created that window for us,” Sharon told them, indicating the stained-glass creation. It depicted the Leonato family crest surrounded by grapes and foliage in big, bold colors. The window might not be what she’d have created without their input, but that was the thing with commissions. You had to give the customer what they wanted.
Yes, she thought as she waved them away, today had been a good day.
A minivan pulled up and out piled twelve older people. Leonato was listed on a few wine tours and they often got groups coming through.
She and Sharon exchanged a look and Lauren reached for the bread crisps they kept in bowls on the counter. The idea was to use the crisps to cleanse the palate between wines, but they’d found from experience that the tour bus groups usually feasted on them as if they hadn’t been fed for days.
This group was no exception. They sampled their wine and emptied all the bread bowls while either listening to her descriptions of the various wines, or pretending to. The tour guide, Michael, added information about the region and then reminded them to make use of the restrooms as it would be more than an hour until their next stop.
The group made some modest purchases and took a few photos.
Lauren waved the last of them off and then began refilling all the bowls.
Her skin prickled suddenly and she glanced up.
Jackson had just walked through the door.
For a second, she thought this was just another one of the sexual fantasies that had plagued her over the past week. He looked so good. His dark brown hair that had felt so thick and luscious when she ran her fingers through it had the shiny look of a recent washing. He wore a beat-up leather jacket, a black T-shirt that hugged his torso the way she longed to, and jeans that molded to his strong thighs.
He walked over and sat on one of the bar stools in front of her. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi.” A million thoughts jumbled together in her head, ranging from What the hell are you doing here? to Do me, now. She didn’t voice any of them, though, and simply stared at him.
“I took an afternoon off,” he said. “Thought I’d taste some wine.”
Wine tasting. Of course. That was where they were. In a wine-tasting room. “You came to the right place,” she managed. She put the bag of snacks away and was suddenly thankful that her spiel was so practiced