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“Was there anything else either of you needed?” Julian asked, tight-lipped. “I need to shower and get to work.” He glanced at his watch and felt his pulse accelerate. “I’m already forty minutes behind schedule.”
Natalie staggered dramatically, gripping the handle of her suitcase. “The keeper of time hath spoken! To be idle is to smite his holy name.”
Julian gave her a dead-eyed stare. His sister smiled back, which was odd and unexpected. All because he’d intervened with their mother?
Corinne cleared her throat. “I only came down to let Julian know the gardener will be back tomorrow.”
The dueling spikes of relief and alarm in his chest were disturbing to say the least. “She’s coming back here, then.”
“Yes, I spoke with her on my walk over.” Oblivious to his imminent coronary, Corinne gestured to the side of the house facing the vineyard. “I like what she did with the begonias. The guesthouse is visible on the vineyard walking tour, you know. I should have made more of an effort to give it some exterior charm before now.”
“Is there no one else you can hire to plant some flowers?” Even as Julian posed the question, he wanted to take it back. Badly. Didn’t they agree to be friends, despite the sour taste the word put in his mouth? Someone else digging in the front yard would just be . . . wrong. Very wrong. But the thought of Hallie coming back and taking a Weedwacker to his itinerary unnerved him a great deal. Unnerved and excited him. Made tomorrow seem far away.
In other words, nothing made sense anymore.
“There is one other gardener in St. Helena. Owen something, I believe?” Corinne checked the screen of her phone. “But I’ve already hired the girl.”
So Owen was also a gardener?
Someone with her exact interests. Were they really friends? Or friends with benefits? Or had Hallie simply referred to Owen as her friend to be professional, when the man was actually her boyfriend?
Jesus Christ.
A few brief meetings and she’d already put him in a tailspin.
“Fine. I’ll deal with her,” he growled, a surprising wave of jealousy curdling the coffee in his stomach. “Is there anything else? Would you perhaps like to send the high school marching band over to practice outside my window?”
“That’s all,” Corinne said simply. Then to Natalie, “Welcome home.”
Natalie inspected her nails. “Thank you.” She wheeled her suitcase out of the room toward the guest room on the opposite side of the kitchen from Julian’s. “See you two around.”
“Good-bye,” Corinne called breezily on her way out of the house.
Leaving Julian standing alone at the counter with a ruined schedule and another visit from the ultimate distraction on the horizon. Why couldn’t he wait? “Fuck.”
Chapter Eight
Hallie shifted the truck into park in Julian’s driveway, heartbeat wild as a jackrabbit’s. There he was, stretching in the front yard. Deep, long movements that had her head tilting to the right unconsciously before she realized it. Wow. She’d never seen those kind of shorts before. They were gray. Loose sweatpants material that stopped just above the knee, a drawstring hanging down over the crotch. Which had to be why her eye was continually drawn there. Among other places. He could have cracked walnuts with those thigh muscles. Squeezed grapes in those butt cheeks. They were on a vineyard, after all.
“You should be locked up,” Hallie muttered, forcibly closing her eyes.
A full day had passed since she’d last seen him and—good news—she hadn’t been slapped with a restraining order yet. Which was generous of Julian, assuming he’d even found the letter in the first place. But that was the thing—she had no idea. And as the queen of avoidance, she would rather not know. Sneaking around for the rest of her life sounded so much easier.
Why did he have to be standing outside? She’d timed her arrival with the end of his run, hoping she could do her planting while he was in the shower and skedaddle again before he ever knew she was there. Now he was watching her through the windshield with that impeccably raised eyebrow. Because he knew she’d written the letter and found her cutely pathetic, like a puppy? Because he couldn’t believe the audacity of her, to show up after such a humiliating display of drunken affection? Or had the Napa winds been in her favor yesterday morning and the letter was halfway to Mexico by now?
Act natural.
Stop smiling like you just got your tax return.
You’re still waving. It’s been, like, fifteen seconds of gesticulation.
In her defense, Julian was sweaty—and that would turn a nun’s head. His white shirt was sodden, straight down the middle, plastering the material to his chest. With the sun beating down on him, she could see through the white cotton to his black chest hair and the hills and valleys of muscles it decorated. God almighty, celibacy was no longer working out for her. At all. A virgin in heat is what she’d become.
