Wine, Tarts & Sex

to go anywhere for however long.”

“So we could, like, stay in bed and we wouldn’t starve.”

“You read my mind, babe. Let me call my aunt, and then I’ll hit the road.”

“I’ll come with you. There’s no way I can relax anyway-what with wiseguys on the prowl and the enticing prospect of lurid sex with you revving up my psyche.”

Jake looked up from dialing the phone, one dark brow cocked. “Lurid?”

She grinned. “I meant it in the very nicest way.”

Jake gave her one of those amused, whatever-you-say-babe looks, then said, “Hey, Aiko, guess where I am?”

After Jake’s aunt in Seattle was thanked for her hospitality, Jake made a quick call to Eduardo. He didn’t explain why he needed him to come to Minneapolis; he only said, “Something’s come up. I need help. Bring out the usual crew tomorrow.” And he hung up.

Apparently the two men weren’t the chatty type, or maybe the usual crew was always held in readiness for such eventualities, Liv decided. But any further speculation had to wait, for the moment Jake put down the phone, he said briskly, “Let’s go tell everyone we’re going for supplies.”

The rest of the party had settled in down by the lake. They were given a heads-up on the run to the grocery store and offered their pick of bedrooms, save for the one at the head of the stairs that had been Jake’s as a child. “It shouldn’t take us long at the store,” he finished.

“Tet me tandy,” Matt shouted from where he was digging a hole in the sand. “An ice ceam!”

“Just a little,” Janie noted. “Any kind. He doesn’t care. And maybe a bottle of champagne. You know”-Janie smiled-“to celebrate Leo’s denouement.”

By the time Janie was finished adding to her list of necessities, Jake was nodding his head and thinking, If I can remember it all. But he only smiled and said, “We’ll be back soon,” waved, and he and Liv walked away.

“I really like that bedroom of yours-the porch, all those windows, the view.” Liv was lying back in the car seat, her bare feet up on the dash, the breeze from the open window ruffling her hair, bliss inundating her senses.

“That was my room as a kid. What can I say-it brings back fond memories.”

How darling. How sweet. How perfectly adorable, she thought, thoroughly awash in Pollyanna feelings when she should be uptight about wiseguys and her languishing vineyards. Instead of succumbing completely to Jake’s intrinsic darlingness, she should be worried about losing her grape crop- not drifting in some I’m-in-heaven parallel universe. “I’ll bet you slept on that bedroom porch when it was hot,” she murmured, imagining the darling boy-or maybe the even more darling teenage heartthrob-sleeping there on a hot summer night.

“Yeah. Without air you had to.”

His matter-of-fact response was transposed by her euphoric mind-set into a tantalizingly macho reply. Blunt, pithy, incisive, all male. A tiny quiver of desire warmed her senses at the thought of the coming night. “Could we sleep on the porch tonight?”

He grinned. “If you promise not to scream.”

She gave him a sulky look. “Be reasonable.”

“Seriously. Sound travels across the lake-especially at night. I don’t want the cops coming to check on us.”

Such brusque manliness only stirred her desires. Like, me Tarzan, you Jane. Like she was getting weak with longing just thinking about his hard-muscled virility and amazing stamina. Not that it would do to concede to such yearnings when they were only minutes away from the grocery store. “Tell me,” she said on a small, suffocated breath. “How did an aunt from Seattle happen to settle at Deer Lake?”

He shot her a look, her voice patently restive.

“I was just wondering,” she said lamely, unable to think of a more clever response when she was semifrenzied. “I mean, really, I want to know,” she managed to say with a slightly more decisive inflection.

“Aiko and my uncle were married while he was an exchange student in Japan,” Jake offered, careful to speak in a mild tone of voice. If she wanted what he thought she wanted-from a practical point of view-he’d rather wait until after shopping. “When they returned to Minneapolis, she opened the first Japanese restaurant in the city. A few years later, my uncle Joe had a job offer in Seattle. They moved, Aiko opened a restaurant there, my mom came over on a visitor’s visa, met my dad, and that’s pretty much it. You’re from around here, right?” Talk to me, babe, he thought. I’m too tall to even think about fucking in this small car.

Be mature. Act like an adult, Liv cautioned herself. Sex right now was out of the question anyway. Not that her body was completely willing to acquiesce, but she tamped down her lust with effort and gave Jake the short version of her life. She described her family: her mom and dad who’d retired to a lake nearby, her sister, Lila, and husband, Larry, who owned a dairy farm nearby, and their two kids who would be three and four next year. “So everyone’s close. And we all get along, which is nice. I can’t remember-do you have siblings?”

He had always been super easy to talk to. He was a good listener who asked pertinent but not overly inquisitive questions, and before too long, Liv had relaxed once again against the pricey leather seat. Jake should be a therapist, she thought; their conversation was soothing, tranquilizing, evoking warm, cozy feelings apropos family and childhood memories. It was pleasant and odd at the same time, because she’d never before felt like bringing a guy she was sleeping with home to meet her family, and now…

Wonder of wonders-Jake Chambers was a possible.

Not that she was about to mention her unusual feelings.

No point in scaring him off.

Especially before they slept on the porch.

Although it didn’t help her strength of purpose that their grocery shopping turned out to be one of those deja vu experiences-like they’d done it a thousand times before. Nor did it help her tenuous self-control when he’d lean over from time to time and kiss her. He didn’t even care if people were looking. The first time he did it in the produce aisle, she’d panicked, her eyes flaring wide, and he’d only said, “Relax. No one knows us.”

By the time they reached the checkout counters, it was only a question of where they could have sex-not when. “Stand in front of me,” he whispered. “Or I’ll embarrass myself.”

“You shouldn’t have kissed me so much,” she whispered back. “I’m about to lose it.”

“Think of something gross. We’ll be out of here in ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes!” she shrieked, or shrieked as much as one could when they were whispering.

Shutting his eyes, he took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and said, terse and low, “Help me unload this cart, and then we’ll test out that backseat.”

“We can’t!” she whispered frantically enough that the checkout girl looked up and gave them a slow once- over.

“Damn right we can,” Jake muttered, ignoring the checkout girl, currently in the mood to ignore the world at large. For a fraction of a second he debated saying, I’ll be back for the cart, and dragging Liv out to the car. But then all his years of training kicked in, and he decided the ice cream and Popsicles would melt into a puddle before he returned.

Or maybe Liv’s petrified expression stopped him.

Shoving his hand into the cart, he grabbed the closest item, slapped it on the conveyer belt, and hastily unloaded the groceries.

A short time later, as they walked from the store, Jake tossed the car keys to Liv. “I’ll throw these groceries in the trunk. Turn the air on full blast.”

Liv made a moue. “We probably should wait.”

“Too late, babe. Come on,” he said with a grin, “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“There’re people everywhere.” His make-it-worth-your-while phrase was doing a number on her reservations, however.

“No one can see, baby. The windows are tinted.” Reservations weren’t on his radar with his libido in high gear. “Turn on the air, make yourself comfortable in the backseat, and I’ll see you in five.”

He always was so assured and on mission, although she couldn’t discount her own explosive passions. She