Page 18 of Sigh of Relief

The grin Archer tossed over his shoulder was as devastating as his earlier blush, nearly taking out Elton’s knees. “That you’d be back.”

Thank fuck for the railing holding him up. “You told her about me?”

“No, the goats did, of course,” he deadpanned, before hustling across the lot to Noah, shouting something at the chef, but the Maybe now ringing in Elton’s head drowned out everything else.

Including his fears.

Chapter Twelve

Archer was picking through a crate of older vintages in the front-of-house cellar when the door slammed shut behind him. He righted himself, spun, and found his best friend poorly glaring at him.

Translation: Trouble.

“What the hell are you still doing in here?” Al said, trying and failing to sound stern, her hiccuped “Hell” and crooked grin betraying her.

He held up a bottle in each hand. “Getting us more wine.”

She pushed off the door and crossed the tiny room in three steps, pulling up in front of him, all five-foot nothing of her. “There’s a gorgeous man out there”—she jutted a thumb over her shoulder—“and he wants to take you back to your cabin and drill you into the mattress. So I ask again”—she poked him in the chest with a blunt nail—“why are you still in here?”

“You’re drunk, counselor. How many bottles in were you before we got here?”

When they’d returned from Ruby’s, Noah had dropped him and Elton off in the vineyard. With bud break just around the corner, there’d been plenty to do. Dormant pruning, repairing trellises, tying canes to wires, and prepping the vineyard floor for the clover and mustard crops that would turn these hills yellow and white until the vines grew bushy and green.

By the time they’d returned to the barn, the parking lot was full of cars, and Archer had been reminded of the RH company meeting kicking off tomorrow, right before his phone had started blowing up with texts from the troublemaker herself.

“A bottle,” Al said.

“Liar.” She held her alcohol better than that.

“For me,” she drawled in New York nasal, then counted off on her fingers. “Plus one for CC, one for Ezra, one for Sloan, one for Tyler⁠—”

“Number, babe, if you can still count.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Nine-ish.”

He laughed and set aside the bottles in his hands. Add in the dinner empties, and they were already a case in. Tomorrow’s actual business meetings—financials, marketing, strategy, legal—were going to be shit if he didn’t do the responsible thing and cut them all off. Someone had to be the parent, and since Al had recused herself from that duty tonight, he was the most sober person left standing.

Because he had something—someone—else to focus on. At least for tonight.

Which Al, even as tipsy as she was, had noticed. “He can’t take his eyes off you.” She closed the distance between them, flattened her palms on his chest, and smirked up at him with dark eyes full of mischief. “And you can’t take your eyes off him either. He the reason you’ve been a hermit?”

He started to shake his head, then paused. “Not exactly” was a truer answer than an outright no. At her arched brow, he covered her hands and added, “He only came back into my life last fall.”

“The harvest party?”

He nodded. “He was the stranger lurking around the distillery that night.”

“Rewind,” she said, the other brow lifting to match. “Came back?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re sober.” When she wouldn’t go back out to the dining room and mention the truth Elton hadn’t yet seemed to realize.

For once, the attorney let it go, and Archer made a mental note to baby the aglianico that had done him a solid. Al, though, wasn’t totally off the scent. “You want to try with him?”

His gaze skipped over her head, out the two-way mirrored glass in the cellar door, and to the long farm table in the middle of Hanover’s dining room. Elton sat near one end, his head close together with CC’s and Sloan’s, probably trading more Bay Area stories. He’d effortlessly fit in with Archer’s family, only momentarily taken aback by the crowd waiting for them when they’d first arrived. A blink later, Elton had widened his smile and activated charming mode. While it had been practiced at first, Archer wanted to think that as the hours and wine had worn on, the conversation drifting from food to wine to travel to music and more, Elton had actually seemed to enjoy himself. His smile more real, his shoulders more relaxed, his gaze whenever it drifted to him warm and grateful.

Archer was glad he could give him that, at least for one evening. But Archer wasn’t getting any younger, and he wasn’t sure Elton could give him the more, the partnership, he needed. “I’m not sure it’s the best time in his life for me, for something more.”

“He was at the party last fall, he can clearly hang with us, and he makes you smile.” A bottle tapped him on each hip, Al having slipped around him and grabbed the wine while he’d been mooning over Elton. “Do you want him to drill you into the mattress?” He opened his mouth to make an excuse, and Al talked right over the futile intention. “Give me the truth.”