by Grace Conley
She needed to get it together enough to save both of them. Their life together might have shattered a year ago, but maybe something as crazy as an earthquake could help them piece things back together.
“Luke!” she tried again, swallowing. Frustrated, she slipped out of the loft bed and nearly fell as she caught the t-shirt he’d loaned her on the wood ladder. She disentangled herself, made it to the first floor, and padded back up the ladder to the loft where Luke slept.
He was on his back now, chest naked and glistening in the stifling heat.
“Hey, Luke, hey big guy,” she crooned, trying to wake him. She brushed his arm.
Luke thrashed, pushing and kicking out at the same time.
“NO!” he yelled, waking himself up as his hands connected with Presley’s shoulder.
She rolled backward and bumped hard into the safety rail.
“Sweet Jesus, woman! Are you all right? I’ve told you to watch out when I have nightmares. I could have knocked you over that railing, hurt you!”
“I’m incoming,” she said simply. “Move over.”
Luke paused, looked at her. It was Presley’s turn to breathe shallowly, from the adrenaline. Her insides turned to jelly, but she somehow found enough strength in her bones to continue to speak.
“I said, move over. Now, scoot. You’re too big for this bed, roll over.”
He knit his dark eyebrows and rolled over on his side. “What time is it?”
“Sometime after midnight.”
“Hmm, witching hour with my redheaded girl.” Luke reached out and drew his thumb along her lower lip, causing delicious shudders. He cupped her face, then scooted over as far as he could and pulled her in close.
“Far as I can go.”
“You really are a giant. I don’t see how you live in one of these things.” In a moment of bravery, Presley planted a kiss on the top of his shoulder, like she had a million times before. It stopped her heart and soul. She rested her head on his shoulder then, listened to the night and his breathing for a long time.
He spoke after a long while, playing with a strand of her hair. “I’ve been having the nightmares again.”
“I was in this one, apparently.”
“What?”
“You said my name.”
He went silent for a long moment. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I haven’t been sleeping real well this year. I guess it’s different forms of stress – mourning losing you and the baby, and mourning everything that I witnessed on duty.”
Her heart pulled tight. “We should talk,” she started.
“No, not now,” he murmured in her ear.
He drew her arm closer around his middle and pulled her up on top of him, turned so their faces lined up. Presley started to sit up, whacked her head on the roof of the loft, and laughed, putting a hand up to figure out just how low the ceiling was.
“I repeat: you’re way too big for this, and it’s next to impossible with both of us.”
He rubbed her head where she’d bumped it, and put another finger lazily to her lips.
“Talk later. Just kiss me.”
He drew her to him and brushed his lips against hers, a feather soft, light kiss that grew more urgent as she responded in kind.
Presley gentled her kiss, pressed one to his temple, and rolled over so they were spooning.
“Let’s get some sleep,” she said, pressing her backside to his front.
By the way his body was reacting even now, Luke was not sure that was going to happen. But he tried.
He looped an arm securely around her waist. Presley quirked her mouth up in a smile as the two of them drifted back asleep, wrapped up in one another.
“Maybe we do make our own futures,” she said. She fell asleep, still not sure about the curse, but certain that is was the best sleep she’d had in a year.
Chapter Eight
They woke up again a few hours later, in the early morning hours when the cock from Charles’ flock of heritage chickens starting crowing.
Luke found himself smiling as he burrowed his face into her hair. How did she still smell the same? Like orange and vanilla and all sorts of deep voodoo goodness. He figured he should stop while he was ahead, stop before he was tempted into anything further. Before his heart and soul were crushed again, when she up and decided the next time that she needed to bolt.
He spied Dawg, who was sleeping over in the other loft. The little cat usually slept curled up at the foot of his bed.
“Traitor,” he whispered to the cat. “Remember who feeds you, buddy.”
He lay there thinking he was in trouble. Big, life-altering trouble
“Just for the record, I’m NOT cursed, but in the event that I am, I’d rather enjoy myself while I can,” he whispered to her sleeping form.
They slept spooning, which made it easy for him. He slid a hand beneath the t-shirt of his that she was wearing – when had she had a chance to put that back on? He slid it up slowly, dragging a finger from the crease where her legs met up her hip and waist, and finally, just beneath her breast. He cupped a creamy, round breast with one hand and squeezed gently.
“Marie Antoinette,” he said in her ear, squeezing again. “You know that story?”
Her eyes opened fractionally and she took a sharp intake of breath.
Oh, yeah, she was awake, all right.
Luke took the opportunity to weigh and admire one breast, and then the other, thumbing her nipples to hard peaks.
“No, what story?” she asked sleepily.
“Marie Antoinette. I’m amazed Chi Chi didn’t come up with this one for you. There’s a story, a famous one that the champagne coupe is modeled on the size of her breast.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
He shrugged, pretended to measure hers. “I think it could be based on yours.”
Presley laughed, a good laugh that he had missed all this time.
He settled her on her back then and lowered himself down to suck on each breast in turn.
He loved her so much that he felt broken inside. Except he was already broken, before he ever found her. The PTSD would come and go with him. Sometimes he wanted her close, to comfort and other times, he needed his space. This was long term for him. And he felt like she understood, like she got it and accepted it, until the day that she ran. Like she felt like he couldn’t support her back when things got bad for her. Luke was having a hard time maintaining a grip on his feelings.
There’d been a lot of beautiful girls growing up in St. Helena, but at his core, Luke was a gentleman. He might go all alpha and defend his country and be all bad-ass swagger like his cousins Jonah, Dax, and Adam, but he had a strong streak of old man Charles in him. When the woman was right, she was right.
And in Presley, he’d found his home.
He loved her, had never stopped.
He needed her.
He looped an arm around her thigh, parting her legs, rubbing an exploratory finger inside. Again with the clothing! How had she found time to get her panties back on to sleep in earlier?
He made a frustrated sound in his throat. “I thought we were sleeping naked.”
She laughed, “I thought we were sleeping.”
“Well, we could go back to doing that, but it wouldn’t be half as fun.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, grabbing his thick head and moving in unison to his fingers on her.
“You’re so bad,” he rasped.
“Hmm, I know. Women are evil,” she said with a smile. “That’s how anything and everything gets done in the world.”
“And especially, here in St. Helena,” he joked, kissing her urgently.
“Clothing – off,” he ordered curtly.
“Sir! Yes, sir!” she teased, pushing him off of her. She sat up and deftly flicked his t-shirt off, throwing it down into the main cabin. It landed on his fold-up work desk. She smiled, shimmied out of her panties, and flicked those to land directly next to the shirt.
“Good
shot!” he said, pulling her back down to him.
“Inside. Right now,” she said with a teasing gasp. “Before I wake up from this dream.”
“Nooo,” he murmured. “Don’t wake up yet, Bubbles. I get to play with you.” He drew her close, pushing her breasts together so he could easily go back and forth from nipple to nipple.
“I want to know if a champagne cup fits these,” he said wickedly, keeping her distracted by continuing to move back and forth between the two. “We’ll have to get a pair of glasses and see.”
Luke knew he was assuming a lot in thinking there would be another time, but he realized it was what he wanted and hoped it was what she wanted, too. He wasn’t sure he’d survive if she left again. He thought of the coyotes that they’d heard in the distance overnight. They mated for life.
He was the same way. Any other woman wouldn’t be right for him.
It was Presley. All this time, and suffering, and trying to get over her.
He pushed up on his arms, moved back so he could see her.
“Don’t bump your head.” She rubbed hers, where a few hours ago she had conked it.
He laughed, then grew serious.
“Presley, look at me. We need to settle something.”
She looked back at him with intensity. “All the women in my family – all the Trask women – lose their men.”
“I’m not a Trask man,” he exploded. “And I’m sorry for a chain of misfortune in your family, but you don’t need to cave to that! Did you ever think, for one minute, if things worked out with you and me and went further, that you wouldn’t have to be a Trask woman? You could be a Baudouin?”
“Luke?”
“Damn it! This is not me asking. This is not the way I want to ask you that question. So, no, that’s not what I’m saying right now. But what I’m saying it, give me a chance. If we make love right now, I don’t want to wake up a few hours from now and have you pull another disappearing act. I want to know you’ll be here, with me.”
“I lost our baby,” she whispered, all the pain and sadness of the last year evident in those four words.
He shushed her. Luke needed her to move forward, not backward, to let him comfort her and make love to her.
“We both lost the baby, sweetheart. And I would have loved her, too. As much as I love you. And damn it, Presley, I cannot take the idea of losing you again. So I just want to be straight about this, I want you. I want to make love with you right now, more than anything. But it comes with a catch.”
He waited, and watched her response to what he said next.
“You have to keep me.”
She hugged him as her answer, and kissed him hard. For Luke, that was all the answer he wanted right now.
“I think we’re in agreement,” said Presley, pushing her smaller body with all her might to try to roll him over, and laughing when he finally let her succeed. “Come inside, Luke.”
His heart raced as she rode him, slowly at first, then faster. He reached a hand up to cup her face as they made love, gazing deep into each other’s eyes.
“Oooh raah, sweetheart,” she said, so he upped the ante and flipped her over. Laughing and entangled, they bumped elbows and heads in the small loft space.
A good Marine, he took her challenge, switching around the rhythm and slowing things down as he plunged slowly inside her, thrusting until they both built to a staccato rhythm and rose and fell together, exhausted as the first morning rays broke through the horizon on the other side of the vineyard.
Chapter Nine
Six months later…
“It’s time, everybody!” called out Presley.
Revelers young and old were bedecked in sequins and feather boas in honor of St. Helena’s first-ever New Year’s Prohibition Party at Coupe.
Presley popped the cork on a bottle of Ryo Wines Champagne and tipped it over the topmost coupe in a pyramid of champagne glasses, sending the golden liquid flowing as cheers and whoops kicked up from the crowd.
She turned, raised her eyebrows and smiled, searching as she made her announcement.
“Everyone, I give you St. Helena’s new woman owned and operated champagne bar. Cheers to Coupe, and to everyone who came out to support us as we, and St. Helena, rebuilt this year!”
She, Chiara, and Chi Chi grinned and mugged for the cameras and toasted one another as dozens of cell phones snapped away.
Chi Chi toasted the crowd in true grand dame fashion, “and especially, at this time of year, to old friends, enduring love, and new beginnings.”
She and Charles exchanged glances from across the crowd, and they each gave a knowing look to Presley as Chi Chi took Chiara’s arm and led her over to her fiancée, Ben, and proceeded over to stand with Charles, first giving him a kiss on the cheek.
Leaving Presley standing all alone by herself.
Presley surveyed the crowd, and still couldn’t see him anywhere. She paused, “Wait, where’s Luke?”
There was a rustling sound back in the kitchen, some muffled male laughter, and suddenly a trio of smiling Baudouin brothers – Jonah, Dax, and Adam – burst through the swinging doors, rolling along a giant paper mache champagne bottle from a float from the Holiday Parade a few weeks prior. Their wives, Shay (who Presley knew now), Emi, and Harper, giggled and locked arms in their sparkling evening dresses, looking from Presley to the giant bottle.
Jonah tapped Dax’s shoulder – hard, Presley noticed – and Adam ignored both of them and picked up a piece of cord that evidently Dax had dropped. He gave it a yank and suddenly, there was a huge pop!
Luke, holding Dawg and looking nervous, stood tall and proud in a tuxedo. The Baudouin wives came around then, choreographed like game show hostesses. Shay picked up Dawg the cat from Luke (it was true that she was an animal whisperer, because the nervous little feline was on good behavior). Emerson and Harper swooped up on either side of Luke and gallantly offered him an arm out, making a show of it.
Presley smiled and laughed, tickled at the New Year’s stunt until, with wide eyes, Luke got down in front of her on one knee and presented a sparkling diamond ring.
“Presley, I won’t tempt the Fates,” he said. “But I will say, I’m a Baudouin and I’d like for you to be one, too. Will you marry me?”
After she’d said yes, and kissed him in front of as many Baudouins and DeLucas that had ever been under one roof at the same time, Presley whispered in his ear that she needed his help measuring something to start the New Year.
Saying their good-nights to the crowd early, Presley and Luke each grabbed a champagne coupe on the way out. He looked giddy.
“What was that about?” Jonah asked Shay, who was cat-sitting Dawg for the night.
“Oh, nothing,” Shay said with a smile. “Just something about Marie Antoinette.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Grace Conley lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her engineer husband, two darling daughters, and three feisty-yet-adorable Scottish terriers. Grace writes both Young Adult and Contemporary Fiction. When she's not behind her computer, you can find Grace hiking through National Parks, obsessively reading the books of Nora Roberts and Kristan Higgins, and enjoying the quirks of living in a small town at the edge of Silicon Valley.
Find Grace at:
Website: www.graceconley.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GraceConleyAuthor
