Finally Yours (Love & Wine Book 1)

by Claire Raye

  “Dad’s a little pissed,” I say, kissing Lu on the cheek.

  “He is?” she asks, turning to look at me. “What’s he pissed at?”

  I laugh, kissing her on the lips this time as I explain, “No, pissed as in drunk, not pissed off.”

  Lu shakes her head as she turns back to the screen murmuring, “You Aussies are so weird.”

  I see the huge smile on my mum’s face as she watches us, clearly not missing the fact that something is going on here between Lu and me. I mean it’s pretty obvious considering she’s on my lap and I’m kissing her.

  “So,” Mum starts, gesturing toward us. “Is this a…” she asks, trailing off as though she isn’t sure how to define it.

  I chuckle. “Yeah, it is,” I tell her. “Lulu finally admitted she fancies me,” I add, squeezing Lu’s hip as she pinches me. “It was always going to happen, obviously.”

  Lu shakes her head at me as Mum actually claps her hands and nudges my dad, a murmured, “I knew this would happen,” still audible through the speakers.

  I shake my head, even as I’m smiling at them both.

  “So, you’re staying a while then?” my dad asks.

  I shrug. “Yeah, at the moment,” I tell him, even as I feel Lu tense in my arms because an end date to my trip is something neither of us likes talking about. “Still waiting on some parts for that crusher anyway, so I’m here indefinitely at the moment.”

  “Maybe we should come over and visit,” Mum says, her smile wide as she looks from me to Lu and back to me again.

  I smile, relieved for the subject change. “You should,” I tell them. “We’d like that.”

  The conversation continues for a few more minutes, but it’s clear Dad’s in desperate need of some sleep. After we tell them again that they should come and visit, we say our goodbyes and log off.

  “Your dad hasn’t changed a bit,” Lu says, sliding off my lap as she walks around to grab some wine from the fridge.

  I chuckle. “No, he kinda hasn’t.”

  “And your mum is so nice,” she continues, pouring us both a glass.

  I grin, pulling her into my arms. “Mmmm,” I murmur, leaning in to kiss the end of her nose. “This skype will have made her day.”

  “Really?” Lu asks, confused.

  “Really,” I repeat.

  “Why?”

  I laugh. “Seriously?” I ask her. Lu shrugs as though she doesn’t understand what I’m talking about. “You, Lulu,” I say, kissing her lips this time. “Seeing me with you will have made her day.”

  “Really?” she says again. “But she’s never even met me.”

  I shrug. “I know.”

  Lu stares up at me, the confused look finally giving way to a smile as it dawns on her. “Oh my god,” she says, swatting at my chest. “You totally told her all about me, didn’t you?”

  I laugh again, loving the look of smug satisfaction on her face. “Maybe,” I tease.

  Lu scoffs. “Bullshit maybe,” she says. “Clearly I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t stop talking now, was I.”

  I pull her closer, wrapping both arms around her waist as I look down at her smiling face. It hits me in this moment, hard and right in the chest, just how much this woman means to me. How much I can’t and don’t ever want to let her go.

  “You told her you fancied me too, didn’t you,” Lu continues when I don’t say anything, her arms slipping around my neck as she smiles up at me.

  I smile, even as I pull her closer. “Maybe I did.”

  Lu’s smile widens as she pushes up on her toes and presses her mouth against mine. “I knew it,” she says against my lips.

  I chuckle. “What, that I fancied you?” I ask, kissing her again.

  “Hmm hmm,” she says.

  I shake my head. “Yeah I’m pretty sure everyone knows I fancy you, Lulu,” I tell her. “And I’m pretty damn glad about that too.”

  Now it’s Lu laughing as she kisses me again. I tighten my arms around her, pulling her between my legs as I sit back on the kitchen stool, my hands sliding under her shirt and over her warm skin.

  “I fancy you a whole lot, Lulu Somerville and I don’t give a shit who knows that,” I whisper, even as my brain tells me it’s so much more than that.

  Lu giggles as she leans her forehead against mine. “I fancy you too, Jack Wilson,” she says, eyes locked onto mine.

  I stare back at her, smiling. “Of course you do, baby,” I say. “You always have,” I add, winking at her.

  Lu laughs again before kissing me once more. I pull her even closer, losing myself in how much I want and need this woman. How much I want to find a way to stay here with her.

  But nagging at the back of my brain, like an annoying song you just can’t get out of your head, is the knowledge that Mel has contacted my parents, trying to find me.

  And that I still don’t know exactly what they told her either.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Lauren

  I loathe grocery shopping and one of the perks of having a job like mine is that I can avoid the masses and go at random times of the day.

  I’ve got this shit down to a science. I avoid Tuesdays because that’s senior discount day, and like hell if I move that slowly through the grocery store. I’m trying to break the Guinness Book of World Records for fastest shopper and those old peeps serpentine down the aisles like a drunken toddler. Obviously Saturdays and Sundays are out because that’s when the rest of the world convenes in droves, and crowds and me just don’t mix. Thursdays are five-dollar take and bake pizza day, and while I love pizza, I pretty much hate people more.

  So that just leaves Monday and Wednesday, and I’m currently spending my Wednesday morning hauling ass down the aisles trying my damnedest to break my record of a full shop in forty minutes.

  It all comes to a screeching halt when I hit the dairy section and there standing at the end of the aisle is Nate in his perfectly pressed polo and his oddly starched jeans.

  What the fuck was I thinking?

  I pause long enough to watch him dig through some cartons of yogurt, fucking up the whole lot of them before he finds the one with the latest expiration date.

  Call it nosiness or fear or just plain stupidity, but whatever the reason is that I stopped, I stopped just long enough for him to notice me.

  The gasp that falls from my lips is practically audible from where Nate stands as I hightail it around the corner and curse this stupid small town grocery store and myself.

  “Lauren?” I hear Nate call and in my panic to get away from him, I take the corner a little too sharply colliding with an end cap filled with potato chips. I send about half the chips to the floor and then proceed to run the bags over with my cart.

  Fuck my life. How and why does this shit happen to me?

  I can hear Nate’s feet jogging toward me and my chip debacle, and I do what any self-respecting woman avoiding her ex who left her at the alter would do. I ditch my cart full of groceries and beeline for the nearest aisle.

  I nearly run until I reach the end and hide at the end cap on the opposite side, my heart racing and my breathing coming in hard pants as I realize I should really hit the gym more often. Not that I expected to be trying to outrun my ex in the grocery store today.

  I’m spread out; my back against the shelving full of pickle jars with my legs wide, making sure the end cap hides my entire body. I look ridiculous and I know it, but I’m still standing like a boozy teenager hiding from the cops after an underage party bust.

  I pull my phone from my purse and text Ellen. She’s my voice of reason since clearly my voice was left back with the smashed bags of potato chips.

  Me: OMFG!! Nate is in the grocery store and I’m hiding from him. What should I do????

  Ellen: Um, wtf. Just leave.

  Me: He’s going to see me.

  Ellen: So just walk out and don’t acknowledge him. I’m about to get on the Matterhorn so figure this shit out.

  Me: ELLEN!
!!

  This is the best advice I’m going to get so I guess I gotta go with it.

  I peer around the corner in an attempt to be stealthy and ninja-like but I fail miserably because I come face to face with Nate.

  Fuck my life once again.

  Instead of acknowledging him, I turn on my heel and attempt to walk in the opposite direction, but he grabs my arm, stilling me.

  “Lauren, where are you going?” he asks like we’re friends and I’m the one being rude.

  How dare he be here on my quiet shopping day! How dare he show up here when he doesn’t even live in this town!

  When I finally stop moving and make eye contact with him, he’s smiling and I want to claw his eyes out. He still acts like he didn’t try to ruin my life, that he didn’t take control of something and make it all about him. He obviously thinks embarrassment fades faster than my pre-wedding spray on tan. He’s wrong.

  “What are you doing here?” I hiss, yanking my arm from his grasp.

  “Shopping,” he replies holding up his basket of perfectly selected cartons of yogurt.

  “You don’t live here!” I shout and a man walking by mutters something about people not living in grocery stores. I really want to tell him to mind his own damn business, but I’m distracted by Nate’s ability to ruin everything.

  “It’s a grocery store, Lauren. It’s open to the public…”

  But I cut him off before he can say anything more. “You’re here because of me and you fucking know it. Leave me alone.”

  Nate chuckles and shakes his head. “I’m here because I’m shopping and if I happened to run into you on a Wednesday morning, then great.”

  He had absolutely no interest in the things I did while we were engaged and the fact that he remembers my shopping schedule makes me irate.

  “Listen, Nate. I have no interest in getting back together with you and I’m not just playing hard to get. I’m happy, happier than I ever was when we were together, so for the love of fuck, leave me alone.”

  Without letting him say anything more I do something I should’ve done the moment I saw him in here.

  I walk away, but he can’t take a hint and he follows me out to my car, calling my name as I ignore him.

  “You going to tell me who the guy is?” he calls out and I roll my eyes knowing this is exactly what this is about. He has no interest in me, but rather his interest is in that someone else wants me.

  “I blocked your number for a reason. Take a fucking hint,” I shout back as I approach my car and climb in.

  I will not let this turn into a screaming match in a parking lot. He will not knock on my window. He will not continue to embarrass me. I’ve done enough of that on my own today.

  Right now all I want to do is get the hell out of here and get home to Jack. There’s a safety in Jack that I’ve never had in anyone else, especially not with Nate. I find comfort in being with him, being near him and being able to be myself around him.

  Now if I could only figure out a way to tell him I didn’t just date Nate, but that we were supposed to be married.

  The whole getting left thing really fucks with you. It says so much with one small act. It told me I wasn’t enough, it said he wanted to do it in a way that I would remember forever, but more than all of that, he did it because it left him in control.

  It also made me question why he couldn’t have just told me before we got that far into it all.

  I contemplate this whole idea more than I should, the idea that I could right now be married to Nate.

  As much as I was devastated by the turn of events at our wedding, a part of me wonders if I would’ve been able to go through with it too. I wasn’t so much embarrassed by the fact that he left me, but more by the fact that I made the mistake of thinking I really wanted to marry him.

  Admitting it now is hard, but I went into it knowing I was marrying him for all the wrong reasons. I was alone, nearly thirty, far too dedicated to my job and wanting to have kids someday, but that someday was so far in the distance that it seemed it would never happen.

  Desperate.

  I guess that’s the best word to describe me at that time. I met Nate on a dating app and it escalated quickly from there. The crazy thing is, on my first date with him as I walked through the vineyard toward the front gate, all I could picture was skinny, nerdy Jack Wilson with his mud-covered glasses and his sincere smile as he apologized for tackling me.

  At the time I thought it was just loneliness and the memory of the last time I had felt anything for someone. But in the end it was more than that.

  At fifteen any attention from a boy will give you butterflies, but I missed that feeling and I wouldn’t feel it again until Jack walked back into my life.

  Marrying some who can’t give you that is a mistake and I almost made it. My mother always said that marriage should be easy; the person you’re with should make your life easier. If he or she doesn’t then it wasn’t right in the first place.

  When I pull in to the vineyard, Jack is helping unload a shipment from our restaurant supplier. Something he doesn’t have to do, but he does it anyway. From the day he arrived, he fit right in, picking up where he left off fourteen years ago, just knowing exactly what to do.

  Stopping on the gravel path that leads back to my house, I park my car and wave to him. A strange calm washes over me as I take him in.

  He’s disheveled from the work around the vineyard; his face smudged with dirt and his clothes stained with purple splotches, his blonde hair rumpled. He’s exactly who I pictured I’d someday end up with, someone who wants to be here, someone who loves this place and all its work as much as I do.

  Jack says something to the guys he’s helping and then jogs over to my car.

  “Okay if I get in?” he asks, giving his shoulders a shrug as he holds up his dirty hands.

  “Of course. This car has seen its fair share of dirty.” As I say it, I laugh, knowing what’s about to come next.

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure we can show it something far dirtier,” Jack jokes, leaning in through the open window to kiss me.

  “We’ll save that for later,” I reply winking at him, but shoving his hand away as he tries to grope my boob, too.

  We pull up to my house and he goes around to the back of my car, trying to open the trunk.

  “Open the boot,” he yells as I’m climbing out of the driver’s seat.

  “What?” Open what?”

  “The boot, silly girl. I need to get your groceries out.”

  “You mean the trunk?” I ask, as I stand beside him with one eyebrow cocked. “If you’re going to stick around here, you gotta brush up on your American dialect.”

  And in typical Jack fashion he proceeds to feed me a full-on Aussie-filled sentence that makes as much sense as putting my non-existent groceries in a boot.

  “No groceries, either,” I say, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. I have to explain to him why I went to the grocery store and returned empty-handed.

  “I thought you said you were going grocery shopping?” he asks, confused.

  “I was but…” I pause trying to figure out how to word this without making Jack jealous or making him think I’m still hung up on Nate. That fucker really knows how to show up at the worst possible times.

  Jack’s eyebrows scrunch together as he waits for me to finish my sentence, knowing there’s more to this conversation.

  “I ran into Nate at the store,” I finally admit and Jack’s face relaxes.

  “So where are the groceries?”

  “I left them at the store,” I confess, looking down at my feet.

  “You mean to tell me that fuckwit made you so uncomfortable that you left your groceries at the store?”

  “Yeah, and I knocked over a display of potato chips,” I say, my face growing warm at my admission of stupidity.

  “Aw, Lu, come here,” Jack says, pulling me into his arms and pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “I know you said he’ll disappear, but
I’m pissed he’s come round again.”

  “He will go away. He’s harmless and I need to grow up.”

  “Give me a list and I’ll go to the store for you,” Jack says firmly.

  “Huh?” I say, appalled at his offer. It’s probably the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.

  “Write me a list of what you need and I’ll go,” he repeats, his hands on his hips as if he’s waiting for me to drop everything and make the list.

  So I head into the house and begin making the list. Jack waits patiently as I think of the things I need and also tells me to add a few things he wants to it.

  His list is far funnier than mine, adding all the American things he loved as a kid, which basically amounts to nothing but crappy junk food.

  “Jack, that’s nothing but crap,” I admonish, patting his ridiculously muscular and flat stomach through his shirt.

  “This coming from the girl who ate her weight in Tim Tams and managed to make a sex deal based off of them?”

  “Touché.”

  I hand Jack the list, the keys to my car and attempt to give him my credit card, but he shoves it back into my hand, saying it’s on him.

  I try to argue but it’s fruitless because he turns his back on me and walks out to the car as if I’m not even talking.

  “You’re a stubborn ass!” I yell from the porch.

  “But you love it!” he yells back.

  And fuck me if I don’t, as I hear my mother’s words echoed back to me.

  The person you’re with should make your life easier.

  My life has never been easier than it is with Jack in it.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Jack

  By the time I head back to the vineyard, it’s quiet, the place now closed and all the guests long gone. I’d spent an hour or so strolling around the supermarket, half hoping to run into that fuckwit Nate just so I could tell him to piss off out of Lu’s life, for good this time. Unfortunately, he wasn’t there, so after I’d finished up, I’d headed back to Somerville’s.

  Just as I’m coming up to the turn-off though, I notice a “For Sale” sign in front of the property that runs along the far border of Lu’s. It must be new, because I don’t remember seeing it before.