“Don’t look at me, look forhim!” Laine demands.
I groan and lower the passenger side window. “Slow down! If he wandered into the woods, I won’t see him with you flying down the road like this!” I tuck my legs beneath me, rise to my knees, and stick my head out the window.
“What are youdoing?” Laine yells at my ass, which is probably fully on display judging by the breeze I’m feeling.
“What do you think? Here, goat!” I yell out at the blur of green, but no goat appears.
Hmph.So much for domesticated.
“If you lean much farther out that window, you’re gonna fall out.” Laine’s voice breaks in over the choppy air beating against my face. “Saying it now: I will not be held accountable!”
“Just take your heavy-ass foot off the gas pedal, and I’ll be fine.” I clasp my pink bathrobe a bit tighter around the neck, as if that will magically transform it into appropriate, ass-covering attire.
It doesn’t.
The truck swerves suddenly, then corrects, sending me jolting upward in the window frame. “Jesus.Are you trying to hit every pothole in Georgia?” I glare over my shoulder at Laine. “I said slow down!”
She waves wildly with one hand at my ass without taking her eyes off the road. “You’re distracting me! Can’t you aim that thing somewhere else?!”
“It only points in one direction, Laine!”
But then, a dark blur darts from the edge of the road across Into the Woods’s parking lot. “There! Up ahead!”
Laine slams on the brakes, taking the turn into the parking lot with too much speed, and the sudden shift in momentum sends me falling backward, ass first, right into Laine’s lap as the truck comes to a screeching halt.
We sit there a minute, both breathing heavily with the truck idling as I process that once again, I’m bare-assed atop Laine Woods. When I landed on her, her arms went around me protectively, wedging me between the old, knobby steering wheel and her. This close, I can feel the rapid patterof her heartbeat against my shoulder, and the intimacy of the sensation tugs something deep in my core.
Our eyes meet like magnets, my south pulled inexorably to her north, however unwillingly. A lock of the golden-brown hair she usually keeps swept to the side tumbles over her forehead, and my fingers yearn to touch it, push it back,insistit keep a business-professional posture here. That achingly soft wave of hair. How dare it so casually remind me of Laine mussed up from sex, her long limbs stretched languidly across the bed? But I can’t trust my hand to correct. Not when that impulse’s evil twin is right there, too, commanding me to bury my fingers into that naughty lock of hair and pull her to me, crushing my mouth to hers. Laine watches me, breathless, like she’s waiting to see what I’ll do, too.
“You drive like a batshit maniac,” I murmur, thoroughly annoyed at the cacophony of feelings she manages to produce in my once-quiet life.
She doesn’t deny it. Instead, she leans her head back against the headrest, eyes locked on mine. The strong line of her eyebrows and nose, her high cheekbones—all these perfect, angular features contrast starkly against the lush pout of her lips, so full and soft and sensuous it strikes me as obscene and entirely inappropriate. Laine Woods may be an insufferable snob who’s upended my life, but she is inconveniently gorgeous. My head feels light.
“We’ve got to find him,” she finally says, her voice so low it thrums in my belly.
“Who?”
The corners of her mouth lift, just a bit. Her eyes slide away from mine, down my neck, her arms flexing subtly to pin me in place, tighter. When her gaze returns to mine, it’s like melted chocolate, sticky and rich and delicious and wonderfullymessy.
“Our goat, boss.” The words slowly drawl across my skin.
“Wait.” My chin jerks at an angle. “Ourgoat?” When Laine doesn’t immediately answer, my brow creases into a demanding line. “Laine Woods, what did you do?”
She shrugs, a sly smile appearing. “Goats are amazing at clearing brush.” Then she slides out from beneath me for the second time today and out the car door.
My eyes widen. “I thought Maeve was lying! Tell me you didnotadopt that damn goat—” I jump out of the cab after her when a loud banging sound, like hooves upon metal, comes from up ahead.
Rachel’s sparkly white SUV is parked alongside the employee entrance to their tasting room, the trunk hatch open, revealing the telltale brown of grocery bags. Something loud crashes from within the car.
Oh,shit.
The employee door swings open, and there’s Rachel in expensive leggings and impeccably white tennis shoes, her hair pulled up into a long, swinging ponytail. She reaches the trunk before we do, and grabs the last two bags while staring at us.
“What thehellare you two doing here?” Rachel pauses to squint at me, then clicks a button on her key ring that closes the trunk. “And why are you in a bathrobe?”
A shadowy figure darts around the back seat, visible through the windows behind her.
Laine and I exchange a quick glance.You tell her, her gaze seems to say.
