I give him his head start. I walk back alone between the rows, rehearsing composure, and by the time I reach the tent I am a calm, unremarkable woman who has been admiring the vines.
Annie is waiting with two glasses. She hands me one, looks at my hair, and picks out a piece of hay with two fingers, holding it up like evidence.
"Nice tour?" she asks.
"Mm-hm. It was... educational," I say, in my best teacher voice, and fool exactly no one.
Least of all myself.
CHAPTER 17
FINN
The Sunday library group lets out at four. It is three forty-one, and I am parked across the lot with the windows down, waiting for Darcy.
She doesn't know I'm here. The impulse to see her again after yesterday's kiss in the vineyard loft finally got the best of me, so I took my brothers' ball-busting about it like a champ then headed over to meet her.
Somehow, wanting Darcy Gable has stopped being a condition and has become a mission.
I have plans for tonight. Detailed ones. They start with dinner because I want to watch her laugh over a table for two hours, and they end—if the universe has any decency left—with our clothes on the floor and my mouth learning her body from the throat down. I'm half hard thinking about it in the vineyard’s old pickup truck outside a public library on a Sunday afternoon, which should embarrass me and doesn't. A man should know what he's about.
The last time I was in this parking lot, I left it like the building was on fire. Today I showed up early and picked the spot with the best view of the doors. At four on the nose the doors open and the library empties its teenagers into the afternoon.Loud, all elbows and backpacks, bickering about something with the full-body commitment only sixteen-year-olds can bring to an argument. And in the middle of them, herding without appearing to herd, is Darcy.
She's got a folder stack riding one hip and the snack tin under her arm. She's wearing a sweet, floral-print dress today. Soft-looking, the kind that moves when she walks, and her hair is down, all her glossy dark waves loose on her shoulders, and all I want to do is lose my fingers in those brunette strands while she's pressed beneath me on my bed.
Damn. The vision comes on so forcibly, I have to shift my stance where I'm leaning against the truck.
She says something that makes two of the kids groan dramatically. Then she points at a third with the full teacher point, and gets a salute back. She is completely, unselfconsciously in charge of her little republic, and they love her. It's clear that she loves them back. It's written all over her. She's the kind of teacher any kid would want. The kind of woman who gives selflessly and wholly. Not just when it comes to her students, but when it comes to the whole town and anyone else lucky enough to be near her.
Hell, she even cares about me. I never would've thought it possible after the way things were between us in school, or even as recently as a weekend ago when she put me through the wringer. But everything feels different now.
Especially me.
The kids race off and she lifts her head in my direction.
She stops for half a step, a look of surprise on her face. And then she smiles and heads my way.
"Are you loitering?" she asks.
"Just hiding from a seventeen-year-old overdue fee." I push off the truck, unable to curb my grin now that she's next to me. "How was the class?"
"Restless. Lisa wrote something so good even I got jealous." She shifts the folders. Her eyes do a quick, appreciative trip over me, and she doesn't hide it. "What brings you into town on a Sunday afternoon?"
"You do." No wind-up. No attempt to dodge. I'm past that now. "I was hoping you'd have dinner with me later tonight. Seven o'clock. Windows on The Bay."
Her eyebrows lift. "Fancy. On a weekend, I hope you made reservations."
"It's all handled."
"What if I have plans tonight?"
"Then I'll ask about tomorrow. And Tuesday. I've got a flexible calendar and one priority."
"One priority, huh?"
I nod. "After the last couple of times we've been together, it seems like I owe you a proper date."
"A date. With you."
