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That was what happened when a man chose poorly. He lost everything.
“The tenderloin should be ready in about twenty minutes,” Tiffany said as she bounced in. “Eric wants me to reheat slowly so it doesn’t get dry.”
And she really bounced. She’d been serious about the no bra thing. Those beautiful breasts were moving freely, making his palms itch to get on her again. How sensitive were they? Could he make her squeal and squirm by tugging on her nipples?
Would she recoil in horror if he actually made love to her? Or would she retreat into that saucy, flirty exterior she put on and try not to show how much the sight of him disturbed her? She’d seen him once without his legs—a miscalculation on his part—and that was how she’d chosen to handle it. She’d turned a nice shade of red and tried to tell him it was all right and that she found him appealing.
Of course she did. Everyone loved nasty scars and misshapen limbs.
So why when he’d started to dream about sex again had it been with Tiffany and not Alicia? When had he started to let go of that dream?
He was worried it had been the minute Tiffany had come into his life, and that scared the hell out of him.
“Excellent. It gives us a chance to go over the house rules.” He poured a second glass. He needed to take control. It was the only way to proceed. Tiffany could be reckless when it came to her personal life. She could also be far too kind and he wasn’t going to ruin this time for her.
“How do you do that?” She was shaking her head as she hopped up on the barstool in front of him. “I’m always in awe of how you manage to pour the exact same amount into each glass.”
Ah, this was something he could talk about. “Precision. Care. Years and years of training. It’s something the Court of Master Sommeliers scores a som on. There’s three parts to the master test. Blind tasting, service, and theory. I was always best at the service part. Only had to take that once. My family ran a small restaurant in the town I came from. By the time I was a teenager, I was working behind a bar. Oh, I wasn’t legally supposed to, but no one really cared. My father loved wine and how it played with food.”
“Your father was a chef?”
“Not by the industry standards. He was taught by his father. Lowe’s was a south Georgia institution. It had been around for fifty years.”
“I would love to go there sometime.”
“It’s gone now.” Because of him. “After my father died, they had to close up shop, I’m afraid. Here you go. I think you’ll find this goes well with the pork. Rieslings tend to do well with fish and pork.”
She took the glass from him and dove right in, swallowing a mouthful. “It’s pretty tasty.”
Philistine. He shook his head. “How on earth did you grow up in the household you did and not learn to savor something as fine as wine?”
He’d learned a lot about her that day in the hospital. He’d learned even more when he’d snuck back up and visited her father. Harlon Hayes had headed an empire of his own. He’d come from old money and for years had run his family’s department store empire before selling out at the ripe old age of forty-five and founding a charitable organization. Still, Tiffany had been raised around too much money to behave like a teen downing her first tequila shot.
“My mom loved Manhattans and margaritas. Daddy still drinks his bourbon.” She shrugged and took another drink. “Sorry. It’s all alcohol to me.”
That was one thing he could help her with. “Stop. You have to consider the wine before you drink it. Look at the color.”
She groaned a little but if there was one thing he was going to do while they were forced together, it was to teach her a greater appreciation of wine. “It’s yellow.”
He held the glass up to the light. “It’s a clear, bright wine. The color and clarity of the wine tells me it’s been filtered, as are all American wines. I would call this a star bright wine because of how much light is filtered through it.”
She held up her own glass. “I hadn’t thought about it that way. It’s pretty. I like the term star bright.”
“Take a deep whiff and tell me what you smell.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Sebastian, I smell wine.”
“But there’s so much underneath it.” He held it up and let the scents wash over him. What he loved was the complexity, the warring scents that blended somehow to make the vintage. “Lime. Crisp green apple with the hint of wet rocks.”
She smiled, the sight somehow going straight to his dick. “Wet rocks? I’m not sure that sounds appetizing.”
Because she didn’t understand the exercise. “Wine is about the land it comes from. This Riesling is from the Columbia Valley in Washington State.”
“I thought you only liked European wines.”
Everyone thought he was a snob. “Not at all. I appreciate many different types of wine. I love an Argentine Malbec and a French Bordeaux. One of my favorite wines to drink is a shitass strawberry wine sold in boxes in convenience stores around Southern Georgia. It costs seven dollars a box, and that’s a big box.”
“Seriously? I would not have taken you for a lover of cheap hooch. I’ve never even seen you drink a beer.”
