For Taco Tuesday.
With Parker.
It wasn’t lost on either of us that this would be the fourth day in a row we were together. Bringing dinner last night, as promised, he sat with me until closing. Just as I’d suspected, there were few orders and even fewer customers.
Did I really want to do that job for the rest of my life?
The answer was almost as scary as what was happening with me and Parker. I went from a red light immediately to green, skipping yellow altogether. That night at Crystal Peak was like a switch being turned on inside of me after months of hurt and healing.
Of course my friends wanted to know everything, and while I didn’t tell Pia or Jules about Parker’s penchant for dirty talk, I may have said something about that night being the best sex of my life. Only because it was totally true.
Heading back upstairs, I stared at my supplies for a few minutes before cleaning. Parker had signed up for his workshop and was heading to Rochester next weekend. I could tell he was really excited about it with good reason. Although he’d always planned to start his own construction company in Cedar Falls, Parker admitted last night he had felt stuck, unsure where to start. He volunteered to help Mason renovate Heritage Hill partly to get a big job under his belt that wasn’t associated with the company he worked for. And even though he was moving in the right direction, he never really saw a clear path forward.
Until now.
Niching into log cabin home construction might be, as Parker had put it, “his ticket out.”
What was my ticket out? Could I follow in his footsteps and take such a risk? Probably not. Home building was a viable career. Art, as my parents often reminded me, was not. Plus, I had so many years of schooling, and money invested, in my pharmacy degree. And a job that Mom said was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” since the turnover rate of pharmacists in Cedar Falls was next to nil.
Shaking my head, I cleaned up and headed into the bathroom to shower. It was only a few blocks’ walk through the town square and down the hill to the lake, to Heritage Hill, but I needed to leave early to stop at Casa Di Vino. Walking into the empty wine store, I empathized with poor Emilio, the owner. He looked positively bored, staring at a magazine of some sort, though he didn’t seem to actually be reading it.
“Slow day, huh?”
“Days,” he clarified. “Not even foot traffic. You’d think we had two feet out there.”
“Busy on the weekend?”
“I was,” he said. “No one wanted to get stuck in a storm without their favorite vino.”
“A fate worse than death,” I agreed. Heading to the back to grab a bottle of Pia’s favorite, Pinot Noir, I prepared to be chastised by the Italian immigrant who had owned this shop for as long as I could remember.
“Willamette Valley Pinot is good,mia cara, but I have something better.”
His family still owned a vineyard in “the old country” as Emilio said, and it was excellent, but this wasn’t for me. “I’m heading down the hill,” I said. “This is for Pia.”
“Ahh, she’s a stubborn one too. Perfect for the Bennett boy,” he said, ringing me out.
I loved the fact that he called Mason, a thirty-two-year-old former Army Ranger, “the Bennett boy.” “They really are perfect for each other,” I agreed.
“What about you, Miss Thorton? Do you have a perfect man, or woman?” he quickly added. “Don’t mean to discriminate. I try to keep up with the times.”
“You’re doing great,” I assured him. “But no, I don’t have a perfect man. I mean”—I thought about that for a second—“I’m not sure if I do or not.”
Emilio’s brows raised. “We aren’t talking about Makis?”
“No, we’re not. But the fact that you know that tells me how horrible he really was for me.”
“Signoria Delaney, any man who makes you question yourself is not the one for you.”
“You could have told me much sooner,” I teased.
“Would you have listened?”
“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t.”
“So who’s the new guy?”
I didn’t want to define us yet. Not after less than a week. “He’s so new I don’t want to jinx it.”
