by Jill Shalvis
He strode directly toward her.
“Scoot,” he said to the table, and since no one else scooted—in fact no one else even looked over at him—Lanie scooted.
“Thanks.” He sat, reaching past her to accept the plate that Mia handed to him without pausing her conversation with Alyssa. The plate was filled up to shockingly towering heights that surely no one human could consume.
He caught Lanie staring.
“That’s a lot of food,” she said inanely.
“Hungry.” He grabbed a fork. “You’re the new hire.”
“Lanie,” she said and watched in awe as he began to shovel in food like he hadn’t eaten in a week.
“Mark,” he said after swallowing a bite, something she appreciated because Kyle used to talk with his mouth full and it had driven her to want to kill him. Which, as it turned out, hadn’t been necessary. A heart attack had done that for her.
Apparently cheating on a bunch of wives had been highly stressful. Go figure.
“You must be a very brave woman,” Mark said.
And for a horrifying minute, she was afraid she’d spoken of Kyle out loud, and she stared at him.
“Taking on this job, this family,” he said. “They’re insane, you know. Every last one of them.”
Because he had a disarming smile and was speaking with absolutely no malice, she knew he had to be kidding. But she still thought it rude considering they’d served him food. “They can’t be all that bad,” she said. “They’re feeding you, which you seem to be enjoying.”
“Who wouldn’t enjoy it? It’s the best food in the land.”
This was actually true. She watched him go at everything on his plate like it was a food-eating contest and he was in danger of coming in second place for the world championship. She shook her head in awe. “You’re going to get heartburn eating that fast.”
“Better than not eating at all,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I’ve got ten minutes to be back on the road chasing the bad guys, and a lot of long, hungry hours ahead of me.”
“One of those days, huh?”
“One of those years,” he said. “But at least I’m not stuck here at the winery day in and day out.”
It was her turn to go brows up. “Are you making fun of my job at all?”
“Making fun? No,” he said. “Offering sympathy, yes. You clearly have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. You could still make a break for it, you know.”
That she herself had been thinking the very same thing only five minutes ago didn’t help. Suddenly feeling defensive for this job she hadn’t even started yet, she looked around her. The winery itself was clearly lovingly and beautifully taken care of. The yard in which they sat was lush and colorful and welcoming. Sure, the sheer number of people employed here was intimidating, as was the fact that they gathered every day to eat lunch and socialize. But she’d get used to it.
Maybe.
“I love my job,” she said.
Mark grinned. “You’re on day one. And you haven’t started yet or you’d have finished your wine. Trust me, it’s going to be a rough ride, Lanie Jacobs.”
Huh. So he definitely knew more about her than she knew about him. No big deal since she wasn’t all that interested in knowing more about him. “Surely given what you do for a living, you realize there’s nothing ‘rough’ about my job at all.”
“I know I’d rather face down thugs and gangbangers daily than work in this looney bin.”
She knew he was kidding, that he was in fact actually pretty funny, but she refused to be charmed. Fact was, she couldn’t have been charmed by any penis-carrying human being at the moment. “Right,” she said, “because clearly you’re here against your will, being held hostage and force-fed all this amazing food. How awful for you.”
“Yeah, life’s a bitch.” He eyeballed the piece of cheese bread on her plate that she hadn’t touched. It was the last one.
She nodded for him to take it and then watched in amazement as he put that away too. “I have to ask,” she said. “How in the world do you stay so . . .” She gestured with a hand toward his clearly well-taken-care-of body and struggled with a word to describe him. She supposed hot worked—if one was into big, annoying, perfectly fit alphas—not that she intended to say so, since she was pretty sure he knew exactly how good he looked.
“How do I stay so . . . what?” he asked.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that fishing for compliments is unattractive?”
He surprised her by laughing, clearly completely unconcerned with what she thought of him. “My days tend to burn up a lot of calories,” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
He pushed his dark sunglasses to the top of his head, and she was leveled with dark eyes dancing with mischievousness. “Such cynicism in one so young.”
A plate of cupcakes was passed down the table and Lanie eyed them, feeling her mouth water. She had only so much self-control and apparently she was at her limit because she took one, and then, with barely a pause, she grabbed a second as well. Realizing the deputy sheriff was watching her and looking amused while he was at it, she shrugged. “Sometimes I reward myself before I accomplish something. It’s called pre-award motivation.”
“Does it work?”
“Absolutely one hundred percent not,” she admitted and took a bite of one of the cupcakes, letting out a low moan before she could stop herself. “Oh. My. God.”
His eyes darkened to black. “You sound like that cupcake is giving you quite the experience.”
She held up a finger for silence, possibly having her first-ever public orgasm.
He leaned in a little bit and since their thighs were already plastered together, he didn’t have to go far to speak directly into her ear. “Do you make those same sexy sounds when you—”
She pointed at him again because she still couldn’t talk, and he just grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “I bet you do. And now I know what I’m going to be thinking about for the rest of the day.”
“You’ll be too busy catching the bad guys, remember?”
“I’m real good at multitasking,” he said.
She let out a laugh, though it was rusty as hell. It’d been a while since she’d found something funny. Not that this changed her idea of him. He was still too sure of himself, too cocky, and she’d had enough of that to last a lifetime. But she also was good at multitasking and could both not like him and appreciate his sense of humor at the same time.
What she couldn’t appreciate was when his smile turned warm and inviting, because for a minute something passed between them, something she couldn’t—or didn’t—intend to recognize.
“Maybe I could call you sometime,” he said.
Before she could turn him down politely, the little cupcake twins came running, leaping at him, one of them yelling, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy! Look what we got!”
Catching them both with impressive ease, Mark stood, managing to somehow confiscate the cupcakes and set them aside before getting covered in chocolate. “Why is it,” he asked Lanie over their twin dark heads, “that when a child wants to show you something, they try to place it directly in your cornea?”
Still completely floored, Lanie could only shake her head.
Mark adjusted the girls so that they hung upside down off his back. This had them erupting in squeals of delight as he turned back to face Lanie again, two little ankles in each of his big hands. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said into her undoubtedly shocked face. “I think it every day.”
Actually, even she had no idea what she was thinking except . . . he was a Capriotti? How had she not seen that coming?
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m one of them, which is why I get to bitch about them. And let me guess . . . you just decided you’re not going to answer my call?”
Most definitely not, but before she could say so out loud Cora was back, going up on tiptoes to kiss Mark on the cheek. “Hey, baby. Heard you had a real tough night.”
He shru
gged.
“You get enough to eat?” she asked. “Yes?” She eyed his empty plate and then, with a nod of satisfaction, reached up and ruffled his hair. “Good. But don’t for a single minute think, Marcus Antony Edward Capriotti, that I don’t know who sneaked your grandpa the cigars he was caught smoking last night.”
From his seat at the table, “Grandpa,” aka Leonardo Antony Capriotti, lifted his hands as if to say, Who, me?
Cora shook her head at both of them, helped the girls down from Mark’s broad shoulders, took them by the hand, and walked away.
No, Lanie would most definitely not be taking the man’s call. And not for the reasons he’d assume either. She didn’t mind that he had kids. What she minded was that here was a guy who appeared to have it all: close family, wonderful children, a killer smile, a hot body . . . without a single clue about just how damn lucky he was. It made her mad, actually.
He took in her expression. “Okay, so you’re most definitely not going to take my call.”
“It’s nothing personal,” she said. “I just don’t date . . .”
“Dads?”
Actually, as a direct result of no longer trusting love, not even one little teeny, tiny bit, she didn’t date anyone anymore, but that was none of his business.
He looked at her for another beat and whatever lingering amusement he’d retained left him, and he simply nodded as he slid his sunglasses back over his eyes. “Good luck today,” he said. “You really are going to need it.”
And then he was gone.
He thought she’d judged him. She hated that he thought that, but it was best to let him think it. Certainly better than the truth, which was that the problem was her, all her. She inhaled a deep, shaky breath and turned, surprised to find not just Cora watching, but Mark’s sisters, grandpa, and several others she could only guess were also related.
Note to self: Capriottis multiply when left unattended.
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About the Author
New York Times bestselling author JILL SHALVIS lives in a small town in the Sierras full of quirky characters. Any resemblance to the quirky characters in her books is, um, mostly coincidental. Look for Jill’s bestselling, award-winning books wherever romances are sold and visit her website for a complete book list and daily blog detailing her city-girl-living-in-the-mountains adventures.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com
Also by Jill Shalvis
Women’s Fiction Novels
Lost and Found Sisters
The Good Luck Sister (novella)
Coming Soon
Rainy Day Friends
Heartbreaker Bay Novels
About That Kiss
Chasing Christmas Eve
Accidentally on Purpose
The Trouble with Mistletoe
Sweet Little Lies
Lucky Harbor Novels
One in a Million
He’s So Fine
It’s in His Kiss
Once in a Lifetime
Always on My Mind
It Had to Be You
Forever and a Day
At Last
Lucky in Love
Head Over Heels
The Sweetest Thing
Simply Irresistible
Animal Magnetism Novels
Still the One
All I Want
Then Came You
Rumor Has It
Rescue My Heart
Animal Attraction
Animal Magnetism
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Excerpt from Rainy Day Friends copyright © 2018 by Jill Shalvis.
the good luck sister. Copyright © 2018 by Jill Shalvis. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
Digital Edition MAY 2018 ISBN: 978–0–06–246359–3
Print Edition ISBN: 978–0–06–246361–6
Cover design by Nadine Badalaty
Cover photographs © Cynthia Kidwell/Shutterstock (dog); © fotohunter/ Shutterstock(Sky); © fotohunter/ shutterstock (picnic basket and blanket); © Tomas Zrna/ Getty Images (landscape)
William Morrow Impulse is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
William Morrow and HarperCollins are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers in the United States of America and other countries.
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