Let Me Love You

by Kristin Miller

  Now, Dane was an afterthought.

  There was no way she’d go out with him now, especially not after she’d gotten involved with Joey this way.

  “Look,” Laney said smugly. “She’s glowing again.”

  Lucy hid her face in her hands.

  “Does Dane know?” Rachael whispered, leaning close.

  Lucy shook her head, but didn’t look up.

  “Sounds like you’ve got a problem.” Rachael wrapped her arm around Lucy’s back. “If he doesn’t know about what happened, he’s going to want a replacement date to make up for ditching you on the first.”

  She’d been expecting the call for two days.

  “And if he does know what happened, I’m guessing he and Joey will be going at it,” Laney interrupted, fishing more candies from her purse.

  Rachael pulled a Kindle out of her bag. “What are you going to do?”

  “She’s going to date Joey,” Rhonda answered simply. “They’d be perfect together.”

  The group gawked.

  Lucy groaned. “How do you figure?”

  “He’s adventurous, and that’s exactly what Lucy is looking for.”

  Umm…adventurous? Joey? Unless he was charging into burning houses or spelunking in his brother’s place, he wasn’t adventurous at all.

  Lucy sipped her coffee. “I think you’ve got him confused with his brother. Dane’s the one always hunting down the next adventure.” Or conquest.

  “Nope.” Rhonda unwrapped a candy and shoved it into her mouth. “I mean Joey. He hasn’t flown recently, but he’s still got the plane. That adventure is in there somewhere. Come to think of it,” she said, gazing out the window, “he used to fly all the time, but I can’t remember the last time I saw his plane flying over the ridge near my place. Wonder what made him quit…”

  Lucy remembered Joey in high school, and vaguely recalled classmates talking about how he’d gotten his pilot’s license before his driver’s license. She’d thought that was weird. Cool, but bizarre.

  But he hadn’t mentioned flying or a plane. He talked about the sky and stars, but if he had his pilot’s license and flew as much as Rhonda seemed to remember, why hadn’t he brought it up?

  She’d completely forgotten about Joey being a pilot.

  “It must be expensive,” April said, refilling their coffee. “Gas isn’t cheap. He probably can’t afford to fly.”

  Rachael shook her head. “Not when he’s supporting Janice. That’s got to be the reason. I always wanted to skydive before I had children, because I figured I wouldn’t want to leave them motherless if my chute didn’t open.”

  “Only you would think about something like that,” Lucy said.

  “Well, the day might be coming sooner than we think.”

  All eyes shot her way.

  “I’m not pregnant,” Rachael clarified, a toothy grin spreading across her face. “But we’ve set a wedding date. We’re getting married next summer at the inn. And we don’t want to wait to try to get pregnant. Cole wants little Rachaels running around as soon as possible. That’s what he said. Little Rachaels.” She glowed with happiness. “Isn’t he the cutest?”

  The friends swooned. Lucy teared up and embraced her friend.

  Everything was coming together for her. For all of them, really. Rachael had the perfect ending with Cole. April had Mason, the photographer who captured her heart at first sight. Laney had Charlie, “the one” who’d been right beneath her nose for years.

  Lucy glanced at Rhonda, the only other one in the group who was still single. While Lucy enjoyed solitude, Rhonda had been looking for Mr. Right since high school.

  As they gushed over Rachael’s news, a group of farmers came in, wearing flannel, work boots, and dirty tractor hats. If “country male” was a fashion trend, they’d own it.

  “I gotta work, guys,” April whispered. “We didn’t even pick a book yet.”

  “How about this one?” Rhonda said, pulling a paperback out of her purse. It had a woman in a red dress on the cover, holding a basket of flowers. “It’s a romance: Something Amazing by Grayson Thompson. He’s scheduled to come through Blue Lake on his book tour in a few months—after rescheduling half a dozen times—so if he does actually show up, it’d be cool to say we’ve at least read one of his books. What do you think?”

  “Yes from me,” April said, and then spun to the counter to help the new customers.

  “Sweet,” Laney said, and started tapping her Kindle screen. “I’ve got it.”

  Lucy didn’t want to read a romance that was all about the fanciful ideal of what a relationship should be. Whatever happened to female independence? The woman who didn’t want to find the clichéd man who’d propose and offer a future she hadn’t seen for herself when she first met him?

  That’s what Lucy wanted.

  She needed a man who wanted something for himself, and wanted his heroine to want things for herself too. There should’ve been absolutely nothing wrong with a man and woman sleeping together, and then splitting ways to sleep in their own beds, in their own home.

  Where was that book?

  She hoped Grayson Thompson came to Blue Lake. Because when he did, she planned on asking him to write it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Forty minutes into his grueling workout, Joey fought to press the bar off his chest. He exhaled as he extended his hands above him.

  Six.

  Adjusting his body on the bench, he heaved the bar over his head again.

  It felt heavier this time.

  Seven.

  AC/DC blared over the radio, echoing through the fire station. He’d been lifting for over an hour, and had gone for a six-mile run before that. It was the same workout he’d punished himself with yesterday.

  He couldn’t get Lucy out of his head.

  Eight.

  Sweat dripping off his brow, Joey lowered the bar, resting it on his chest. It was heavy. Dead weight.

  He hadn’t called Lucy after spelunking Sunday night, although he’d wanted to. She didn’t want something serious, and he didn’t want to spook her. After Dane had texted, Joey thought Lucy would’ve run out of his arms and right into his twin’s. She had wanted to date Dane over him initially. But she hadn’t done that at all.

  Nine.

  Dane hadn’t called Joey once. It was probably for the better. How do you tell your brother that you pretended to be him on one of his dates and then swooped in? Joey’d had his eyes on Lucy first, but Dane didn’t know that.

  As the bar pressed over Joey’s head a tenth time, the weight on his chest increased, threatening to crush his sternum. Only the bar wasn’t resting on his chest. The pain was from something else entirely.

  “Brackett!” Chief Hammock hollered, striding into the engine bay. “You’re making the rest of us look bad! Ron’s doing bicep curls, only he’s lifting drumsticks.” He belly-laughed at his own joke. “Want to eat with us, or wait until we set up at the school?”

  Tempting to eat now, but… “I’ll wait.”

  Joey tried not to breathe in the heavenly aroma of fried chicken and buttered corn on the cob, but he couldn’t help it. He breathed in deep, letting the mouthwatering aroma fill his lungs. Ron had a special recipe for chicken—they called him Colonel for shits and giggles—and he’d been talking about tonight’s feast for weeks. Once Ron was finished frying, the on-duty crew was delivering and serving dinners at a Blue Lake High School drive-through dinner fund-raiser.

  “Suit yourself,” the chief said.

  As he turned, the alarms went off, shrill and deafening. At the first piercing warning tone, Joey charged to the rack of gear, his step sure and determined, his head suddenly clear.

  Fire.

  * * *

  Late Friday night, Lucy walked the rows of grapes at the end of the work yard, with Zin—the adorable little sucker—following at her feet. Brushing her hand over the leaves, pride streaked through her and she couldn’t help but smile. Despite fears about the droug
ht, she had high hopes that the crop would be good this year. Better than the last, and that was really saying something.

  Her parents would’ve been proud of her.

  She knew how they would’ve felt—they didn’t need to be standing next to her, patting her back.

  The dirt beneath her feet was wet with the kiss of midnight frost and crunched beneath her boots. She retied her scarf and huddled into her coat, her gaze raking over the harvesters as they coasted through the grape-heavy vines. Her parents lived for nights like these: When the wind blew the sweet scent of wine over the hills and the stars shone like diamonds. When the harvesters gathered the year’s bounty, their soft hum lulling her to sleep through her open bedroom window.

  But there’d be no sleeping tonight.

  The StoneMill Grape Stomp Jubilee was scheduled for tomorrow. It was one of their biggest events, bringing in tourists from the valley who wanted to stomp grapes between their toes the way it happened in I Love Lucy. It was fun, she couldn’t deny it, and she used the one day of the year to let her hair down at work. The employees seemed to enjoy watching her skip around in the giant wine barrels.

  To make sure everything was running smoothly, Lucy had taken a four-wheeler around the property four times since nightfall, checking the harvesters, fermenting tanks, and truck scales. Zin followed Lucy everywhere, running alongside the quad, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. She didn’t have to check if he was behind her. Each time she stopped, he was there, sitting at her feet, staring up at her with those big brown eyes.

  “Hey!” Skylie’s voice rang out behind her as she pulled up in front of her studio. “Heard from your boyfriend yet?”

  Chest constricting, Lucy spun and met Skylie’s gaze head-on. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Well, whatever you call it.” She shrugged, and then stood at Lucy’s side, staring out over the rolling hills of grapes. “Did he call today?”

  “No. He didn’t.” Bitterness resounded in Lucy’s voice, despite her best efforts to hide it. “But I’m not expecting him to call. I told him not to.”

  Skylie laughed, a petite string of giggles only a teenager could pull off. “If you like him, why’d you tell him not to call?”

  Lucy faced her. “I never said I didn’t like him.”

  “But then why—”

  “Can we not go there?” Lucy put up her hand. “Please?”

  Zin sat between them, his puppy-dog gaze flipping from one to the other. He whimpered as Lucy looked down at him.

  “Okay. Sure.” Skylie picked up the winded pooch. “For someone who didn’t want a guy to call, you’ve been checking your phone, like, every fifteen minutes for the last five days.”

  “Skylie!” Lucy scolded, folding her arms over her chest.

  She hated to admit it, but Skylie was right. She’d been hovering over her phone, checking it whenever she thought about Joey. Which was more often than she would’ve liked. And when that damn blank “no calls” screen stared back at her, her insides coiled in aggravation. She had no right to anticipate his call or get angry when he did exactly as she’d asked, but…she wanted him to call.

  They’d had an amazing first date under the stars, lying in the back of his truck.

  They’d had a second date that rocked her socks, blowing all of her expectations about Joey and his sex appeal into the water. He was hotter than she’d ever known. They had chemistry. At least she thought they had.

  Even if she’d made him promise not to call…wouldn’t he want to meet up again at some point? Wouldn’t he call for no other reason than to see how she was doing?

  What did it mean that he hadn’t called? Had she misread their attraction? Was the chemistry one-sided? Or was he simply that much of a gentleman that he wouldn’t call since she’d asked him not to?

  Her head spun, the exact same way it had for the last five days.

  “Lucy, hello?” Skylie waved Zin in front of her face. “You okay? You’re zoning.”

  The dog stared, his tongue drooping out of his mouth. He actually looked to be smiling. Crazy thought, but true.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” Lucy blinked quickly, though the tension remained in her belly. “I’d rather not talk about my love life, if that’s okay with you.”

  “That’s fine by me!” Skylie set Zin down and removed her phone from her back pocket. She swiped her finger over the screen, apparently to her notes section, because she said, “Listen, I’ve got the barrels ready for tomorrow, the wine stocked, and the tunnels beneath the winery cleared for tables and chairs. We’ll have four chefs on staff, at your request, and enough food to feed an army. Is there anything else I need before checking out?”

  Would Joey show at the jubilee tomorrow? She’d seen him there a few times in the past, though he’d never participated in the actual stomping of the grapes. Probably didn’t want to get his feet icky.

  “No, I think that’s all, Skylie.” She patted her on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” She turned and looked back over her shoulder. “Frank’s on his way over. He doesn’t look pleased.”

  Oh boy.

  StoneMill’s foreman didn’t make personal calls unless there was something terribly wrong. She couldn’t afford anything else to happen at this point and felt like crumbling just thinking about it.

  “Ms. Stone?” Frank asked as he approached, overalls and fingers stained purple. His lips were turned down, his eyes fraught with worry.

  “Yes? Is everything all right?”

  The answer was written over his face.

  “No, I’m afraid it’s not.” He wrung a pair of gloves in front of him. “My wife just called and said there’s a ten-acre forest fire up Highway 60 near our home.”

  Why hadn’t she heard about the fire on the news? Had she really been that absorbed in her own drama? See, this was why boyfriends and husbands were terrible. They were too damn distracting from the things that really mattered.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. Zin whimpered as if he understood the direness of the situation. “Do you need to leave?”

  Frank scanned the vineyard, the work yard, and then his eyes met hers once more. “My wife says the forest service called as an early warning to evacuate. The fire is fifty miles over the ridge, but they had to notify every resident within a certain zone. You know how they have to cover their bases.”

  Evacuation? The fire was already that far out of control? She mentally shuddered. Forest fires were temperamental. Uncontrollable.

  “Yeah, they’ve got to take precautions, don’t they?” Was he panicked and hiding it, too? “I’m so sorry, Frank.” Her heart ached for him. He’d worked for the winery for over fifteen years, and was more family than employee. “I’m sure your home will be all right, but if you have to leave to get things in order, I’ll hold down the place.”

  “Thanks, Ms. Stone.” He nodded in appreciation, keeping his gaze on the dirt. “That means a lot. If anything, I’d like to head home and comfort my wife. She’s not taking this too well, even if it is a precaution.”

  “I can’t even imagine.” As a chill crept over Lucy’s body, she folded her arms and brushed her hands over them for warmth. “No one wants to get that call. I’m sure the fire crew will have the fire out in no time.”

  “Apparently they’ve been working on it for days. I’m sure they’ll have it out soon.” Frank swallowed hard and shoved the gloves into his pants pocket. “Our boys are the finest in the state.”

  Lucy was so busy worrying about Frank, his wife, their home, and the raging inferno, she’d almost missed it.

  “Our boys?” Her heart thudded as she spoke. The words came out clunky and soft. Even the possibility of Joey being sent to the wilderness to fight that fire made Lucy’s throat tighten. “The national forest fire service called Blue Lake firemen to help?”

  “That’s what my wife said.” Shrugging, he marched past her. Zin followed on Frank’s heels. Lucy let them both go. “So you don’t mind if I take
the rest of the night off?” he called over his shoulder.

  “Not at all.” Lucy forced a tight smile, though Frank was too far away to see it. “Do what you have to do.”

  She couldn’t help but wonder. Had Joey been called to the fire? Was that the reason he hadn’t called? She couldn’t be relieved, because she didn’t want him in harm’s way, but she couldn’t control the burdened exhale that came out of her, either.

  Maybe he’d wanted to call, but couldn’t.

  Excitement bubbled through her as she slipped her cell out of her back pocket and shot a quick text to Joey.

  Hey. It’s Lucy. In case he didn’t recognize her number. You working the forest fire?

  She read it again before hitting send. It was harmless enough. She’d told him not to contact her, but she didn’t say anything about the reverse. She wandered the work yard and cellar, wound around stainless steel tanks, checking the pressure.

  Fifteen minutes later, Joey still hadn’t texted back.

  “What the hell,” she said, checking the time.

  The fire station wasn’t too far away. In the fifteen minutes she’d waited for him to respond, she could’ve driven over to see whether or not the fire truck was parked in its stall.

  Making decisions as the ideas struck her, Lucy called the weekend foreman to come in. He wasn’t happy (from the sound of it, she’d woken him from a sound sleep), but he said he’d do anything for Frank. When he showed up, she took off toward town. It didn’t take long before downtown Blue Lake came into view. She turned off the main highway and slowed over the cobblestone streets. She passed April’s coffee shop, Laney’s candy store, and Rhonda’s bookstore. Each of the three was closed down for the night, quiet and dark. She drove over the narrow street and past a few saloons with patrons sitting on the wood-planked sidewalks. Other than the regulars at Shots Saloon, leaning against the shadowed brick wall, there wasn’t a single night owl in sight. When she passed Rachael’s historical inn, she turned right and followed the bend in the road toward the fire station.