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I was a few minutes late getting to the restaurant, and Kane was waiting outside for me when I pulled up. Embarrassed, I hopped out. Kane had walked up to the car to greet me.
“Hey,” he said. “I have a table waiting for us.”
“Great, I’m starved.”
Kane smiled, and his eyes ran across the back seat of my car before looking back up at me.
“Is that a backup pair of mud boots?”
“It is,” I said. “I’ve noticed that I need to always have one just in case. One time the rubber ripped in one and filled my entire sock with mud. It wasn’t fun.”
“I bet,” he said, nodding.
Yep. That was exactly what I should be doing at this moment. Launching into an embarrassing story with zero need. Perfect. I just couldn’t seem to think straight when I was around him unless we were talking about work. I hoped we would talk about work a lot over dinner.
Secretly, I also maybe hoped we wouldn’t.
Kane held the door open for me, and the hostess brought us to our table. I couldn’t help staring at his ass as he turned to pull my chair out for me, and I had a brief wonder of what he would look like naked.
A shudder went down my spine, and I felt my cheeks warm at the thought of exploring where the rest of the tattoo I could barely see on his arm where his sleeves were rolled up, went. And if it had friends.
Derek showed up at the table alongside a waitress, and I looked up and smiled.
“Hello,” he said. “I have taken the liberty of creating a tasting menu for you tonight.”
“Oh, you didn’t need to do that,” I said, but he shook his head and held out his hand.
“Nonsense. This is your server, Katie, and she will be available for anything you need. Kane, I assumed you wanted to start with the pinot?”
“I did,” he said, and Derek grinned. “And you?”
“I’ll have whatever he’s having,” I said. “The spirit of the tasting menu, I guess.”
“Fantastic,” Derek said. “Enjoy.”
As he walked away, I grinned and looked down. Normally at that point I would bury my head into the menu, but since it was a tasting, there was none. That left me with the option of just kind of awkwardly looking around the restaurant, pretending I didn’t have butterflies in my stomach.
It was gorgeous inside and very clearly had recently been redone. I noticed ornate light fixtures above the table, and the view of the vineyard from our window in the corner was spectacular, even at night. I sighed.
“This is a great view,” I said.
“It’s my favorite seat,” Kane said. “Even with all the renovations, Derek and Noah kept this seat exactly the same as our grandparents had it. We used to come here for dinner sometimes, and we always sat here.”
The wistful look in his eyes was endearing, and I felt myself blush. Shaking my head, I tried to return the conversation to something I felt I had better control over.
“So, the wine,” I said. “The blend you’re working on.”
“Yes,” Kane said, shaking his head. “The blend. What about it?”
We discussed some of the more technical aspects of it while we had our first plates delivered. Despite the talk being mostly about wine and soil, the atmosphere was fairly romantic, and I found myself losing my inhibitions as the wine started to hit me and the delicate and delicious plates arrived one after another.
As each tasting of wine came through, I found myself smiling more and talking about work less. We delved into the food and talked about his brothers and how they all took over different aspects of the vineyard. He spoke so passionately about the grapes and wine that I was mesmerized by every word he said, zeroing in on his lips as he spoke.
Soon, we had finished our courses, and we laughed as we continued to flirt in earnest.
“You know, you’re really fun to talk to,” I said.
“So are you,” Kane responded. “I think your brain is sexy.”
A fierce blush raced burned in my cheeks, and I smiled, glancing away. No one had ever said something like that to me, and I tried to move the subject along. Men had found me attractive, but it was always my body that they were drawn to. Even as nerdy as I could admit I was, I could tell when men leered at me. But no one had ever told me they found my brain sexy. That was new. Usually, my brain intimidated men. Being smarter than they were usually turned them off.
But not Kane. The sparkle in his eyes told me that my challenging him on the very thing he dedicated his entire life to only seemed to spark his interest. The feeling was mutual. Very, very mutual.
