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“Bet you’d have done anal,” Lavinia said out of the corner of her mouth.
Thankfully, Jerome and Owen were engaged in a conversation about golf and didn’t overhear. “Could you please never bring that up again?” Hallie implored.
“He’ll be the one bringing it up, if you catch my meaning.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I do. You’re as subtle as a chain saw.”
Hallie ordered herself to stop staring at Julian, who was now crossing the tent with his mother and sister. And she failed. Everyone in the tent did. Vos Vineyard might be in need of an upgrade, but the first family of St. Helena moved like royalty and looked the part, too. Meanwhile here she stood in mixed patterns talking about butt sex.
She wouldn’t change a thing. But the contrast only brought it home how utterly unalike they were.
None of that seemed to matter when Julian glanced over sharply, slowing to a stop when he saw her behind the Fudge Judy counter. Oh my God, her heart was going to beat right out of her body. It was magic, having this gallant, thoughtful man notice her from across a crowded room and stop dead in the middle of it all. Those times she’d opened up to him about her grief and one-third life crisis, she’d felt so utterly safe sharing with him. Did she imagine that bond?
No. She couldn’t have.
In addition to the magic of being pinned by those whiskey eyes across the tent . . . was now lust. The urgent, frustrating kind she’d never experienced with anyone else. The kind she’d only half understood while mooning at him on YouTube, before his return to St. Helena. Beneath those lusty layers, though, was the wistfulness of regret.
Every time they connected, the disconnect between their personalities became a little more obvious, and what could be done about that?
“Hallie?”
Owen laid a hand on her arm, and she caught the barest change in Julian’s expression. It clouded over, a groove fashioning itself between his brows. A muscle had begun to tick in his jaw when she finally managed to wrestle her attention away from Julian and focus on Owen. Who, apparently, had been addressing her to no avail for quite some time.
“I’m sorry. All this excitement . . .” Her laugh sounded strained. “I think I have wine envy.”
Owen quickly set down the donut he’d picked up with the provided pair of silver tongs. “I’ll get you a glass. What are you in the mood for?”
She could not let this man run around fetching her a drink when she was remembering how Julian’s abdomen felt flexing against hers. “No, that’s really okay, Owen—”
He was already off like a shot.
Hallie traded a guilty look with Lavinia, but they didn’t have time to talk. The tent was quickly filling up and people wanted donuts. Mainly because, unlike last year, a lot of guests seemed to have brought their children. In the past, no one under the age of twenty-one had been admitted to wine-tasting events in Napa, but since the fire that damaged so much of the region, followed by the economic wrecking ball of the pandemic, St. Helena had slowly adopted more of a family-friendly image in the hopes of appealing to new visitors.
Apparently kids were the newest caveat.
And, in the case of Wine Down, the pitfalls of that decision quickly became obvious.
Children ran figure eights around the older clientele, their mothers receiving more than their fair share of judgment. The hosts of the event might have allowed children, but being that the beverage of choice was alcohol, there was nothing for the youngsters to drink or eat.
Except for the donuts.
That’s how Hallie became the official babysitter of Wine Down Napa.
It started off with a single offer to watch the toddler of an overstressed mother while she went off and indulged in a glass of wine. Then a second family approached, inquiring about the professional childcare services, to which Hallie saluted them with her wineglass—and they left their child, anyway. Although Lavinia needed Hallie as an extra set of hands, the parents were buying donuts in gratitude, so they took the trade-off and booted Hallie in favor of the extra sales. Half an hour later, she had a football team of kids under the age of eight playing red rover on the field outside the tent and chomping on chocolate crullers.
She actually lost track of which one had eaten what. Or how many.
Now that, out of everything, turned out to be the biggest mistake.
Hopped up on an obscene amount of sugar, the kids decided they were thirsty.
“I want water!” announced one of the dinosaur-obsessed twins while picking a wedgie.
What was his name? Shiloh?
“Oh, okay,” Hallie said, looking back toward the tent. There had to be water in there somewhere, right? “Um, everyone hold hands and let’s go inside quietly and check—”
