I lean forward and kiss him.
His lips are warm and soft and there's a moment of surprise where he goes completely still, frozen, and then his hands are on my waist, pulling me forward off my stool and against him. I make a sound against his mouth, something between a gasp and a sigh, and his lips part and my tongue finds his and he tastes like honey and figs and everything I've been trying not to think about for a week.
One of his hands slides up from my waist to cup my jaw, his thumb brushing my cheek, then his fingers thread into my hair and he tilts my head and kisses me deeper. I grip the front of his t-shirt with both hands because I need to hold onto something or I am going to fall right off this stool and onto the floor.
He reaches up and pulls the blindfold off with one hand, and for a second we just look at each other, breathing hard, his eyesdark and searching mine like he's asking a question he already knows the answer to.
Then his mouth is back on mine, his hand spread flat against my lower back, pulling me closer. I sink into him and the heat radiating off his body is so intense he might as well be on fire and I am more than happy to burn up with him.
I grip his arms, his shoulders, anything solid I can find. He's still sitting on the stool but he pulls me flush against him so I'm standing between his legs and his hands are on my hips, my waist, sliding up my back under my sweater. His mouth moves from my lips to my jaw, then down to my neck, and I tilt my head back and make a sound I don't recognize.
His hand slides lower, gripping my hip, his fingers digging in, and I want him to take me right here on this counter. I want to forget about the stress and the critics and my father and just let Alex make everything disappear.
But reality crashes through the haze like cold water, and I hear my father's voice in my head—You should be in New York right now—and I see his Seattle deal, and I see tomorrow's opening night, and I realize what a catastrophically terrible idea this is.
I pull back, stumbling off the stool and nearly knocking it over in my haste to put distance between us. "I can’t!"
He stares at me, both of us breathing hard, his hair even more disheveled than before.
"I shouldn't have done that." The words tumble out in a rush while I back up and hit another stool, making it scrape against the floor. "My father would kill you, and tomorrow is opening night, and this is so unprofessional, and I don't even know what I was thinking?—"
He stands up, concern written all over his face. "Isabelle, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have?—"
"No, it wasn't you." I hold up a hand to stop him from coming closer because if he touches me again I'm going to losewhatever shred of resolve I have left. "It was me. I kissed you. This is my fault. And I have to go."
I turn and push through the kitchen door and run back to my cottage as fast as I can, my heart slamming against my ribs. I don't even care about the vineyard or the aliens or the dark rows stretching out on either side of me.
Because there is nothing in that vineyard scarier than what just happened in that kitchen.
Nothing is scarier than how much I wanted that.
CHAPTER 8
Alex
It's opening night, we're an hour from first service, and Isabelle has been avoiding me all day. I walk into the pantry, she walks out. I round a corner, she goes the other way. I ask her a direct question about the seating chart and she answers it while looking at anything but me.
Which is fine. I'm not going to push her. But I'd be lying if I said the kiss hadn't kept me up half the night, staring at the ceiling of my cottage. I knew there was something between us. I'd been testing it since I got here, flirting, seeing if she'd flirt back, enjoying the friction.
But last night knocked me sideways. She kissed me first and damn, it was good. Better than every scenario I'd been running through my head for the past two weeks, and I'd been running through plenty of them. I went back to my cottage and took a cold shower that didn't help at all, then spent the rest of the night hard and restless, replaying it on a loop until the sun came up.
I glance over at her now, at the far end of the kitchen doing afinal walk-through of plating with Sofia. She looks beautiful, which is becoming a problem because I'm starting to think she'd look beautiful covered in flour or mud or literally anything.
Right now she's got that slight frown of concentration between her brows as she adjusts a nasturtium petal, her hands moving with precision that makes me think about what those hands would feel like on me instead.
But I'm a gentleman. Or at least I can fake it convincingly enough to survive the next four weeks. Which is going to be a challenge when what I really want is to pull her into the walk-in and fuck her against the shelves and find out if she makes the same breathless sounds when I'm inside her that she made last night.
And at this point my pants are uncomfortably tight, my dick half-hard just from thinking about her, and I need to get out of this kitchen before I do something monumentally stupid. I glance around for an escape route. The thyme container on the shelf is running low.
I grab it and catch Martinez's eye. He gives me a thumbs up from his station. I'll restock this for service and get some air away from Isabelle and whatever gravitational pull she seems to have over my common sense.
I push through the door, breathing in evening air and head outside along the herb path. The sun is dropping lower, that time of evening where everything goes soft. I can see around the building to where the terrace is set for the pop-up—white linen moving slightly in the breeze, candles waiting in their holders, the vineyard rolling out in neat rows behind it all. It couldn't be a more perfect evening for an opening night. If you were going to launch a career, you'd want it to look exactly like this.
I turn left toward the herb beds, inhaling rosemary and lavender. I find the thyme and crouch down, pulling my knife and starting to cut stems close to the base. The repetitive work helps. Gives my hands something to do. Gives my brainsomething to focus on that isn't Isabelle Beaumont and how badly I want to?—
Footsteps crunch on the gravel behind me. I turn and there she is, stopped dead on the path like she's just walked into an invisible barrier.
Of course. Because why would anything be easy today.