And that kiss, which felt an awful lot like coming home.
Fuck.
I am in so much trouble.
CHAPTER 16
DARCY
The Bardot spring rosé release draws half of North Fork on Saturday afternoon. Annie abandons me before we're even through the vineyard gate, because Evan is stationed at the welcome table, crutches propped against a wine barrel, and my best friend has never once pretended to be subtle.
Which leaves me alone in a tasting tent with a glass of warming wine I keep forgetting to drink. Jane Bardot is holding court by the entrance, radiant and surrounded, and I steer myself the other way. I compliment Mrs. Johnson's sundress. I nod along to the string quartet under the big white tent. I behave—convincingly I hope—like a woman whose week contained nothing remarkable.
Meanwhile, on a loop, without my permission is the sound Finn made against my throat on Thursday night.
My memory has been merciful enough not to replay the whole kiss on infinite loop, probably because I wouldn't survive it in public. Just slivers of it, ambushing me between polite hellos. My keys hitting the sidewalk, which I heard before I understood my own hand had let go of them. His voice saying "Go on upstairs, Darcy" rough in a way I'd never heard from himin my life. And that sound, low against my throat, like the word he wanted didn't exist yet.
Then he stopped. He kissed me until I forgot this town has windows, and then he pressed my keys into my hand and sent me up my own stairs, and in the two days since there has been nothing. No call. No text. I haven't sent one either, so I can't even be righteous about it. I teach ambiguity for a living, and I have never hated it more.
I did, for the record, wear my dark denim jeans today. The good ones that make my ass look like it's living its best life. The lower-than-normal neckline of my blouse is doing some decent things for my breasts too. I made the outfit decision at nine this morning, standing in front of my closet and wishing I taught something sexy like drama and had the wardrobe to match. Then again, Finn kissed me when I was dressed in my schoolmarm best, so there's that.
"Ms. Gable."
The deep voice lands somewhere behind me, pitched low, meant for me and not the room, and the excellent, but too warm rosé nearly leaves the glass.
I turn and find Finn standing beside me in a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up his forearms, holding an unopened bottle down against his leg like it might trip an alarm. Two glasses hang upside down from the fingers of his other hand. His eyes make one unhurried trip south and back, and he doesn't say a word about the denim, and the grin says he doesn't have to.
"Are you stealing that?" I ask.
"Liberating it. This one's from the family vault. It's not on today's menu, and my brothers don't deserve it." He tips his head toward the vines. "Come on. Before Evan spots me and requires a hostage."
I should say no. Annie is somewhere behind me falling in love at a welcome table, my mother knows most of this party’s attendees by name, and the last time I was alone with this man I kissed him so intensely I dropped my keys on the sidewalk. Another five minutes with him and it likely would've been my panties on the ground too.
"Okay," I say.
He raises his voice just enough for the benefit of the couple beside us. "Right this way, ma'am. Your private tour begins at the crush pad and concludes with a view we don't advertise."
He delivers the lines with a sweep of the wine bottle—full showman—and two complete strangers look genuinely jealous. I follow him out of the tent before my common sense catches up.
We walk past the crush pad and between the rows, the party thinning to a rumor behind us. We keep walking, until the vines give way to the scrubby back edge of the property, toward an old barn I have never once noticed from the road. Gray shingles gone soft at the corners, doors faded to the color of driftwood. Retired, clearly, decades ago.
He hauls the sliding door open one-handed, muscle moving under the rolled sleeve, and I make myself look at the barn instead of the lickable veins that thread over his tan skin.
Inside it smells like hay dust and sun-warmed wood. A ladder climbs to a loft where the light comes through the board gaps in long gold bars.
"After you," Finn says. "Be careful, though."
"Such a gentleman."
He smirks. "I just want an excuse to get a better look at you in those jeans. You look amazing, by the way."
"Thanks." I sound incredibly calm and unaffected, considering it feels like a swarm of butterflies has just been unleashed inside me.
I head up the ladder, trying not to fixate on the fact that Finn is watching my every move.
The loft is small and warm and improbably romantic. Two hay bales with an old flannel blanket thrown over them, a low shelf, a milk crate against the wall, and that buttery light lying across all of it. He comes up the ladder behind me, sets the glasses on the shelf, and digs into the milk crate like a man who knows its inventory by heart. He comes out with a corkscrew.
"That lives up here?"
