Wine, Tarts & Sex

vineyards in France. Too fucking bad she had chosen Minnesota to practice her craft.

“I know Michel Chapoutier and Olivier Bernard, too. Nice places to learn your trade.”

“And the weather is better than here.”

So she knew and still had gone astray. Not that he said a word. “Let’s try the white,” he said instead.

“It’s made from one of our locally hybridized grapes. It’s a blend of an ice wine and a table wine and not bad, if I do say so myself.”

After tasting it, he offered his compliments and asked her some more questions about her vineyard.

In turn she asked him about what had prompted him to become a chef, their conversation a variation on the what-sign -are-you getting-acquainted discussions. His account was even more abbreviated than hers; Cornell, the Culinary Institute, and apprenticeships in some of the better restaurants on the planet.

“You’ve seen a lot of the world.”

“I expect you have, too.”

“More than enough, thank you. I’m in my Faustian stage now, and I’m pretty damned content.”

“I guess I’m on that same search myself.” He lifted his glass. “To fulfillment.”

She lifted her glass and smiled. “Amen.”

She was interested, he could tell. He was a master at recognizing willingness in a female. Not that she was flirtatious as was normally the case with him. But Liv Bell didn’t have to press; not when she looked like she did. He expected she was more familiar with sitting back and waiting.

It turned out he was wrong.

Abruptly rising from her chair a few moments later, she said in a voice that was either crisp or taut or some equivocal register in between, “Thanks for the conversation. But my friends are waiting. I’d better go.”

“Don’t go.”

She opened her mouth to say, Why, but didn’t.

“Forgive my bluntness,” he said, responding to the flush on her cheeks, coming to his feet with deliberate slowness in order not to frighten her off. “It’s just that you’ve been on my mind.” To her flaring gaze, he added, “Honestly,” not realizing the truth of his statement until he spoke.

“I’d rather not be on your mind.” She half-lifted her hand. “No offense, but I’ve deliberately left that glitzy world behind.”

“Me, too.”

Her gaze narrowed as though assessing his authenticity.

He smiled. “Word of honor.”

He looked so artless for a moment, she couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, right.”

“No shit. I have. Or I’m trying. You reach that stage-” He shrugged.

“When you’ve seen and heard it all.”

“Exactly. In fact, I was going to work on being a monk for a while.” He smiled. “But then you came along.”

“I wouldn’t want to lure you from the path of righteousness. ” Even as she spoke, she was struggling with the vice versa part of that equation.

“Please, lure away. You intrigue the hell out of me.”

He was way too sexy and too beautiful, and she seriously hesitated for a moment. “Thanks, but no thanks,” she finally said, tamping down her willful carnal urges. “I just don’t see an upside. And my friends are waiting,” she added, perhaps to bolster her self-control more than for any other reason. “I’ll deliver your order next week.” Swinging around on her spiky heels, she walked away.

“I’ll make you dinner afterward.”

The soft, lush intonation drifted after her. She knew what afterward meant. She knew what before afterward entailed. She should keep walking. She should go through that door, get in her truck, and drive away. “What would you make?” she asked, turning back.

“Anything you want.” His smile was benevolent. “Anything at all.”

Oh my God! She could feel his sexy promise of anything pulse through her vagina, whisper over her nipples, drift across the heated surface of her skin, spike through her brain. “I’m really tempted,” she said on a small, caught breath. “I’ve never had a personal chef,” she murmured, or any of the other pleasures her brain was suddenly conjuring up just looking at God’s gift to women standing no more than six feet away.

“There’s always a first time for everything,” he said softly.

He obviously wasn’t talking about food. Nor was she actually thinking about food.

“If it helps,” he added, moving toward her slowly, as though understanding her indecision required a certain degree of finesse, “I’m probably more tempted than you. I was planning on going to bed early and watching TV.” He lifted his shoulder slightly in a small renunciatory gesture as he reached her. “You changed my mind. I think it’s-” He caught himself before he said something outrageously stupid like the glow of your sun-kissed skin. Instead, he lightly touched her bottom lip with the pad of his index finger. “You know you’re beautiful. You hear it all the time, I expect. But you are.”

She started to say, Thank you, but his mouth suddenly covered hers and swallowed up her words, his kiss hard, invasive.

And a helluva lot more feverish than he would have liked.

He abruptly jerked away. “Christ-I’m going to scare you off. Sorry.” Drawing in a deep breath, he flashed a boyish grin. “Maybe we should have another glass of wine and give me time to cool down.”

“Let’s not.” Blatantly aware of his tantalizingly huge erection that had been very recently pressed against her stomach, her libido way past jazzed, she said in a tone of voice that could only be categorized as decisive, “I’m not really in the mood for more wine right now.” Reaching out, she ran her fingers over his rock-hard penis stretching the denim of his jeans. “And he doesn’t look like he is, either.”

As his erection swelled larger, he murmured, “So I don’t have to worry about scaring you off.”

She gazed up at him from under her lashes. “Not unless this gets too big for me to handle.”

The implication in her statement set off a chain reaction of salacious possibilities; it took him a millisecond to restrain his baser instincts. “Why don’t I keep it under control, then.”

“You can do that?”

He wanted to say, Maybe, if you stop doing what you’re doing, but he wasn’t abstemious by nature, so he lied and said, “Sure I can.” No way was he going to equivocate at this point. Particularly when they were both in the same frame of mind. Mustering up what he hoped was a casual tone, when he was, in fact, seriously cautioning himself to restraint, he gestured toward the kitchen. “Care to go upstairs? ”

She smiled. “Definitely.” Turning away, she moved toward the kitchen.

Darling Livvi doesn’t play games. Nice, he thought as he followed her.

“I can’t stay long,” Liv said as he caught up with her. “I really do have friends waiting.”

He didn’t often hear the equivalent of Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am in reverse. In fact, he never had. Whether inspired by vanity or selfishness, he pulled his cell phone from his jeans pocket and held it out. “Give your friends a call. No sense in rushing.” Although he didn’t know if he could give her any guarantees about the first time. He was fucking primed.

“I’ll give them a heads-up at least,” she said, taking the phone from him. “Although you don’t have to make me any food, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I wasn’t thinking about food.”

She smiled. “Two minds with but a single thought. It must be karma.”

“Damn right,” he said, grinning back, although his karma was pretty much self-motivated and action-oriented. “Tell your friends you’ll meet them later.” Much later-but he was polite enough not to say so.

Stopping at the base of the stairs, Liv punched in a number and, leaning against the doorjamb, she smiled at Jake while she waited for someone to answer.

“Something came up,” Liv said a moment later. “No, it’s not a man. Why would you say that?” She grimaced faintly. “I left my phone in my truck, okay? And for your information, that’s not true. It’s business. Yeah, yeah, cute. Look- I’ll be there before you anyway. You’re usually late. Yes, absolutely-it’s business. I swear.” And she flipped the phone shut while her friend was still talking.

“Sounds like you were getting some static.”