by Jo McNally
She’d tossed and turned last night, trying to figure out the best way to tackle turning this place around. Helen had gone on and on about the importance of the Blessing of the Grapes Festival. The festival coincided with the beginning of the grape harvest. There was a fierce wine competition there among the Seneca Lake wineries.
The festival was held in the center of town, with booths and rides, and even a parade. Many wineries put floats, or at least vehicles of some kind, in the parade. Wineries also had wine-tasting booths, which was a great way to get new people to try the different wines available.
Falls Legend Winery hadn’t participated in two years. Helen said they needed to be a part of it this year. They had to show the public, as well as the other vintners, that the winery was alive and well. That they deserved to be taken seriously again, and not be the object of everyone’s pity. Or a target for vultures.
“I saw it in their eyes when I went to the quarterly growers meeting in May,” Helen told her last night, as they sat in the kitchen after dinner. “Luke had been going on his own, but he convinced me I should get back in the swing of things. When I walked in, all I saw was pity. Not just for me, but for this winery. Herb Daniels even asked if I was ready to sell yet. It was right then, when I saw everyone leaning toward us to hear my answer, that I knew we had to put this place back together. For Tony’s sake. He’d never want me selling, especially to a guy like Daniels.”
Whitney had reached over to take Helen’s hand. “You can’t change the past, Helen, but we can go forward from where we are.”
Helen had laughed at that. “Luke said the same thing to me the other day. You two are just what I need to make this work. The three of us will make a great team.”
Whitney hadn’t responded. There were still too many gaps in the bookkeeping records for her to be willing to completely trust Luke as a teammate. Yes, Helen created the mess, but there was something...off...in the bank records. Things didn’t jive and she couldn’t figure it out. But they needed his expertise to make repairs and handle this year’s harvest and festival. After that, she’d have to figure out if he had any role in the mystery. According to Tony’s records from before his death, there should be a lot more money somewhere. She frowned at the wall display again. Diagonal colors would be more eye-catching.
She’d given up on sleep hours earlier, and started typing ideas into her laptop. She’d split her time between the books and getting ready for the festival. And first on her list? Using consumer research to change the shop around and make it more appealing. Marketing in general was a little too “smoke and mirrors” for her analytical mind, but she liked the research and analytics part of it. She’d taken enough marketing classes in college to know what consumers responded to.
Freshly energized, she’d pulled on a yellow tank top, a pair of shorts and a pair of flip-flops. She’d taken the key off the hook by the kitchen door and had snuck into the wine shop while it was still dark. Uncomfortably aware that Luke’s apartment was directly overhead, she’d been as quiet as possible while juggling wine bottles and rearranging them. She did her best not to think about the brooding winemaker in bed, but it was a tough image to dispel.
He irritated her to no end. She wasn’t sure he was trustworthy. And yet, there was a little buzz under her skin when he was around that was more than simply irritation. More like attraction. She huffed at herself—that was her mother coming out in her. Always attracted to the worst guys. She heard a muffled bark, but, after holding her breath and freezing in place with one foot suspended in air for longer than she imagined possible, silence returned.
She had to shift only a few dozen more bottles to get her diagonal design, but that was a few dozen more than her body was apparently willing to handle, considering she’d already moved every bottle on this wall at least once. The final bottle of the red blend slipped from her fingers as she set it on the top shelf. It crashed to the terracotta floor neck first, smashing to a million slivers of glass and sending bloodred wine everywhere.
Damn it! She unconsciously went to her tiptoes in her flip-flops, trying to stay dry.
“Don’t move!”
Whitney let out a squeak of surprise at the barked-out command from behind her. She spun around, feeling the swish of sharp glass slicing the skin on the side of her foot. It was one of those nasty cuts—clean, deep and straight. It didn’t even hurt at first, but she knew without looking that she was bleeding.
“Jesus. Do you always listen that well?” Luke was stepping off the staircase, giving his dog a hand signal that clearly meant stay. Molly was twitching to follow, but there was broken glass everywhere. Luke’s voice was emphatic. “Don’t move, either one of you.”
Whitney was still trying to wrap her head around his sudden appearance, dressed in low-slung jeans that didn’t appear to be buttoned, a pair of tattered sneakers and nothing else. The cut on her foot was starting to burn, but she was too mesmerized by Luke’s slow, careful approach to care.
“Where did you...?”
Luke grabbed a bundle of kitchen towels from a display. They had pithy sayings on them, like “How low will you merlot?” and “Is it wine-o’clock yet?” Before she could protest the destruction of sales merchandise, he’d removed her flip-flop and wrapped one of the towels loosely around her left foot, ignoring her hiss of pain. He stood, scooping her into his arms as he did so.
“Hey!”
“Shush.” The one-word command worked. She snapped her mouth shut and reluctantly grabbed his shoulders for balance. He was the one wearing actual shoes in a minefield of broken glass. She was not. He deposited her on top of the wine-tasting counter in the back of the store. He held up his hand the same way he had with his dog and said, “Stay.”
She was tempted to hop off the counter just to make the point that she wouldn’t be bossed around. But her foot hurt like hell, and Luke had already turned his back on her, so the move would be pointless. He went to the closet and pulled out a huge cotton mop and a wheeled bucket that already had water in it.
“Looks like you were prepared.” Good little Boy Scout.
He grunted, bending over to pick up the larger pieces of glass with a heavy towel draped over the side of the bucket.
“It’s a wine store. With a tile floor. When things drop in here, they break in pretty spectacular fashion.”
“Maybe tile wasn’t the best choice?”
He glanced over his shoulder as he started mopping. “You think? Tony would have nothing but Italian terracotta floors in here.”
“It won’t stain?” She hated creating a problem when she’d been trying to help.
Another grunt. “It’s sealed.”
Whitney had no idea what that meant, but she discovered she couldn’t ask for an explanation. In fact, she wasn’t sure she could assemble the words to say anything. Luke leaned into the mop, swinging it in narrowing circles to pull the glass shards and spilled wine into a smaller area. Every time he swung the mop, the hard muscles in his shoulders bunched and released, sending ripples down his spine, and down Whitney’s spine, too. Holy good lord, the man was carved out of granite. By an artist. A really freaking good artist.
And his ass. Oh, my my my. Those worn, faded jeans hugged his butt cheeks and made them look...perfect. Whitney sighed. Damn. He was one fine example of the male human form. She barely managed to look away in time when he turned to grab a big squeegee. He glanced her way, seeming surprised she hadn’t moved. He had no idea watching him was the reason she was frozen in place. He finished cleaning the floor and rolled the bucket back into the closet. He walked toward her, and, as much as she tried, she couldn’t control the way her heart started to race.
“How’s the foot?” he asked.
“What?” Her cheeks went hot. She’d forgotten all about her bleeding foot wrapped in a dish towel that said Save Water—Drink Wine. “Oh...it’s okay. I’m pretty sure the to
wel is ruined, though.”
He grunted again. He did that a lot.
“Can you walk on it, or do I have to carry you upstairs?”
It must have been her lack of sleep, because the idea of a shirtless Luke carrying her anywhere was ridiculously tempting. His dark hair was tousled, with one lock falling across his forehead. She fought off the urge to reach out and touch it. She started to slide off the counter. “I’m fine. I’ll go up to the house and put a bandage on it.”
“I didn’t see any large bits of glass, but there could still be a sliver embedded in there, and you won’t be able to find it on your own. Come on. I’ll make us some coffee and take a look.”
Mmm—coffee. A jolt of caffeine might snap her out of her crazy, lustful thoughts about this guy. Practically speaking, it would be a good excuse to get a look at the place Helen said he was living in rent-free. Going up those stairs could be considered research for auditing purposes, right? Okay, that was a load of hooey, but...coffee and curiosity won out.
Luke wrapped a rock-solid arm around her waist and helped her down off the counter.
“Use the other aisle. I’ll come down and vacuum this one after the water dries to make sure I got all the glass up.” She didn’t argue, wincing as she tried to walk on her heel. Luke followed her up the wooden stairs, with Molly trotting ahead of them.
The apartment was essentially one large room, taking up the entire top floor of the carriage house. The walls were painted a nondescript beige. Two well-worn leather chairs faced a smallish flat-screen hanging on the wall. The kitchen area was in one corner, with a small butcher block island on wheels. A metal table and two chairs, painted bright blue and obviously meant for use on a patio, sat near a window looking up the hill at the vineyard. And in the opposite corner sat a bed, placed in front of another window that offered a breathtaking view of Seneca Lake below, now shimmering in shades of light blue as the sun rose higher over the hills.
It felt open and inviting. Or at least, it would have with less clutter. Clothes were stacked near the bed, some folded neatly, others hanging on hooks along the wall. A jumble of shoes sat at the foot of the bed. The end tables and coffee table were piled high with papers, magazines and wine supply catalogs. The limited kitchen counter space was barely visible under the dishes, glasses, bread, cans of soup, bags of chips, many wine bottles, and pots and pans. It was all clean. But messier than any corner of Helen’s house.
No wonder those two got along so well.
Luke brushed past her, pointing to the blue kitchen table. He noted her expression and shrugged.
“I wasn’t expecting company. This is basically just a place to sleep. Sit down and I’ll look at that foot.”
In the vineyard outside the window, the vines marched up the hill in perfectly straight rows, neatly pruned and tidy. The apartment was the exact opposite.
“But it could be so much more. You’ve got great views up here. With some paint and some shelves for storage and a nice rug and curtains and maybe a dresser—” she gave the clothes in the corner a pointed look “—this could be a charming little apartment.”
Luke was opening the door to what she assumed was a bathroom in the far corner. He turned to look at her, his mouth slanting into an amused smirk.
“Do I look like a ‘charming little apartment’ sort of guy?” She tried not to give his half-naked body another perusal, and failed. He looked like something, that’s for sure. She cleared her throat.
“I’m only saying a little more...order...up here would make it a more restful place to be.”
He flipped on the bathroom light, and then rummaged through the small medicine cabinet on the wall. “By the end of most days, I’m so tired a bed of nails would be restful. And I’d have been well rested this morning if the motion sensor in the tasting room hadn’t woken me up at five o’clock.” He was walking toward where she sat, making no attempt to hide his scowl. Now that he mentioned it, he did have dark circles under his eyes and a drawn expression.
He set a box of gauze on the table and kneeled in front of her before making eye contact. “After getting to bed at two.”
She started to bristle. He made her feel like she constantly had to be on guard. Like her heart might be in danger around him. As if he could end up provoking far more than her temper, which was always sharpest when he was around.
“Maybe you should get to bed earlier.”
He was slowly untying the towel around her foot now, and studied her face through thick, dark lashes. “I was working. I closed up the bar last night. Tonight. Whatever.”
Of course. She forgot he worked at the Shamrock, too. And she’d disrupted what little time for sleep he’d had. There was something about having Luke Rutledge on one knee, cradling her foot in his hand, that fried her brain. It was agitating, but in the sweetest, sharpest way. Her confusion put even more of an edge to her voice.
“Maybe you should focus on the job my aunt gave you, instead of hedging your bets by starting a second career serving drinks.”
He didn’t deserve that, and she knew it. Snarking was their normal shtick, but, for the first time, she wished things were somehow different. She was always such a bitch around him, and she didn’t understand why.
Luke’s fingers were far more gentle on her unwrapped foot than either of their moods at the moment. He was still examining the cut when he answered.
“Maybe we should both stop talking for a few minutes. You concentrate on how you’d redecorate the place while I get this glass sliver out of your foot.” He produced a pair of tweezers from somewhere, and she quickly looked away.
This wasn’t the time to lecture him on his work habits or tell him he lived like a slob. The guy was a hard worker, putting in long hours at the winery and then at a second job. And he was helping her. Yes, she had suspicions about him, but her heart was starting to whisper that maybe she’d been making him a scapegoat for her own anger and guilt. An unfair target for her frustration with herself and all the male asshats at KTM who pulled the rug out from under her plans and dreams.
Being in Luke’s home made her see him more fully as a person. Something in her softened, just a little. Something else whispered that she still needed to be careful.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHITNEY FLINCHED AND let out a hiss when Luke plucked the sliver from the ball of her foot. She let out a lot more than that when he wiped that spot and the half-inch cut on the side of her foot with an alcohol pad.
“Ow! Shit! What the hell are you doing?” She jerked her foot out of his hand, but he calmly took hold of her heel again, reaching for the gauze pads.
“What I’m doing is dressing the injury you gave yourself while breaking and entering.”
Luke had not been happy when the chime of the security camera went off a few short hours after he’d fallen asleep. He’d grabbed his phone and had to rub the crust of sleep from his eyes to focus on the image. Their so-called security system was a smattering of digital surveillance cameras that sent alerts to his phone when triggered. It wasn’t high-end by any means, but it was what he could afford out of his own funds.
Whitney sounded miffed. “It’s not breaking and entering if you use a key.”
Luke grunted in response. When he’d seen the dark-haired figure unlocking the front door, he couldn’t believe it. She’d walked in and flipped on the lights, and sure enough, it was Whitney. She was dressed in a simple tank top and shorts. Wide awake at that point, he’d sat up and watched in fascination as she emptied the entire wall of bottles, then restocked them. At first he thought she might be having some sort of sleepwalking episode. Then he’d realized what she was doing—arranging by color. No one did that. Wine should be arranged by vintage or variety. White wines together. Reds together. That’s how everyone did it. But damn if the wall didn’t look pretty decent when she was done.
Of course, she hadn’t
been satisfied with it. Big surprise. He’d learned the woman was rarely satisfied. She’d stared hard at the shelves, hands on her hips, scowling. Then she attacked it again, creating angled lines of color. The angles made it look like the wall was in motion. She was almost finished when a bottle toppled from the highest shelf, barely missing her head and exploding on that tile floor Tony had loved so much.
“You do that a lot,” Whitney said.
He finished taping the gauze and made the mistake of looking up. Kneeling at her feet left him on eye level with her breasts. He stilled, her foot in his hand. It was all he could do to resist running his hand up her long, shapely calf. Damn, he was losing it. He’d been too long without a woman. He needed to fix that and get this urge out of his system.
“Do...what?”
She studied the bandaging job and found nothing to complain about with her neatly wrapped foot. He wondered if she was disappointed.
“You do that grunting thing when you don’t want to say what you really think. Or when you don’t think a question deserves an answer.” An edge of playful challenge hit her voice as he stood. “Or maybe it’s the best you got.”
Luke stared down at her, forcing himself not to grunt in response. He wasn’t used to people psychoanalyzing him—with the possible exception of Father Joe—and he sure wasn’t used to someone cutting so close to the truth. He glanced down at her foot and back up again.
“You’re welcome.”
Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. One corner of it slid up, and she nodded.
“Thank you.” She lifted her leg and examined the bandage again. “Such a nice, neat job.” Her gaze swept around the apartment.
He got her point. The place was messy. At least, it looked messy. But he knew where everything was—most of the time—and he was the only person who ever saw the place. He’d never been comfortable bringing a woman back to the winery. It would be too weird. On the rare occasions he hooked up with someone, they went to her place. Hotel room. Rental cottage. Maybe even a boat.
