A wife addiction.
It’d gone a long way toward getting her over the hump of the grieving process. So had the fact that several other women had come out of the woodwork claiming to also be married to Kyle. Not that she intended to share that humiliation. Not now or ever.
You’re my moon and my stars, he’d always told her.
Yeah. Just one lie in a string of many, as it’d turned out . . .
Cora came back around and Lanie nearly leapt up in relief. Work! Work was going to save her.
“I see you’ve met some of my big, nosy, interfering, boisterous, loving family and survived to tell the tale,” Cora said, slipping an arm around Mia and gently squeezing.
“Yes, and I’m all ready to get to it,” Lanie said.
“Oh, not yet.” Cora gestured for her to stay seated. “No rush, there’s still fifteen minutes left of lunch.” And then she once again made her way around the tables, chatting with everyone she passed. “Girls,” she called out to the cupcake twins, who were now chasing each other around the other table. “Slow down, please!”
At Lanie’s table, everyone had gotten deeply involved in a discussion on barrels. She was listening with half an ear to the differences in using American oak versus French oak when a man in a deputy sheriff’s uniform came in unnoticed through the French double doors. He was tall, built, and fully armed. His eyes were covered by dark aviator sunglasses, leaving his expression unreadable. And intimidating as hell.
He strode directly toward her.
“Scoot,” he said to the table, and since no one else scooted—in fact, no one else even looked over at him—Lanie scooted.
“Thanks.” He sat, reaching past her to accept the plate that Mia handed to him without pausing her conversation with Alyssa. The plate was filled up to shockingly towering heights that surely no one human could consume.
He caught Lanie staring.
“That’s a lot of food,” she said inanely.
“Hungry.” He grabbed a fork. “You’re the new hire.”
“Lanie,” she said and watched in awe as he began to shovel in food like he hadn’t eaten in a week.
“Mark,” he said after swallowing a bite, something she appreciated because Kyle used to talk with his mouth full and it had driven her to want to kill him. Which, as it turned out, hadn’t been necessary. A heart attack had done that for her.
Apparently cheating on a bunch of wives had been highly stressful. Go figure.
“You must be a very brave woman,” Mark said.
And for a horrifying minute, she was afraid she’d spoken of Kyle out loud, and she stared at him.
“Taking on this job, this family,” he said. “They’re insane, you know. Every last one of them.”
Because he had a disarming smile and was speaking with absolutely no malice, she knew he had to be kidding. But she still thought it rude considering they’d served him food. “They can’t be all that bad,” she said. “They’re feeding you, which you seem to be enjoying.”
“Who wouldn’t enjoy it? It’s the best food in the land.”
This was actually true. She watched him go at everything on his plate like it was a food-eating contest and he was in danger of coming in second place for the world championship. She shook her head in awe. “You’re going to get heartburn eating that fast.”
“Better than not eating at all,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I’ve got ten minutes to be back on the road chasing the bad guys, and a lot of long, hungry hours ahead of me.”
“One of those days, huh?”
“One of those years,” he said. “But at least I’m not stuck here at the winery day in and day out.”
She went brows up. “Are you making fun of my job at all?”
“Making fun? No,” he said. “Offering sympathy, yes. You clearly have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. You could still make a break for it, you know.”
That she herself had been thinking the very same thing only five minutes ago didn’t help. Suddenly feeling defensive for this job she hadn’t even started yet, she looked around her. The winery itself was clearly lovingly and beautifully taken care of. The yard in which they sat was lush and colorful and welcoming. Sure, the sheer number of people employed here was intimidating, as was the fact that they gathered every day to eat lunch and socialize. But she’d get used to it.
Maybe.
“I love my job,” she said.
Mark grinned. “You’re on day one. And you haven’t started yet or you’d have finished your wine. Trust me, it’s going to be a rough ride, Lanie Jacobs.”
Huh. So he definitely knew more about her than she knew about him. No big deal since she wasn’t all that interested in knowing more about him. “Surely given what you do for a living, you realize there’s nothing ‘rough’ about my job at all.”
“I know I’d rather face down thugs and gangbangers daily than work in this looney bin.”
She knew he was kidding, that he was in fact actually pretty funny, but she refused to be charmed. Fact was, she couldn’t have been charmed by any penis-carrying human being at the moment. “Right,” she said, “because clearly you’re here against your will, being held hostage and force-fed all this amazing food. How awful for you.”
“Yeah, life’s a bitch.” He eyeballed the piece of cheese bread on her plate that she hadn’t touched. It was the last one.
She nodded for him to take it and then watched in amazement as he put that away too. “I have to ask,” she said. “How in the world do you stay so . . .” She gestured with a hand toward his clearly well-taken-care-of body and struggled with a word to describe him. She supposed hot worked—if one was into big, annoying, perfectly fit alphas—not that she intended to say so, since she was pretty sure he knew exactly how good he looked.
“How do I stay so . . . what?” he asked.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that fishing for compliments is unattractive?”
He surprised her by laughing, clearly completely unconcerned with what she thought of him. “My days tend to burn up a lot of calories,” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
He pushed his dark sunglasses to the top of his head, and she was leveled with dark eyes dancing with mischievousness. “Such cynicism in one so young.”
A plate of cupcakes was passed down the table and Lanie eyed them, feeling her mouth water. She had only so much self-control and apparently she was at her limit because she took one, and then, with barely a pause, she grabbed a second as well. Realizing the deputy sheriff was watching her and looking amused while he was at it, she shrugged. “Sometimes I reward myself before I accomplish something. It’s called pre-award motivation.”
“Does it work?”
“Absolutely one hundred percent not,” she admitted and took a bite of one of the cupcakes, letting out a low moan before she could stop herself. “Oh. My. God.”
His eyes darkened to black. “You sound like that cupcake is giving you quite the experience.”
She held up a finger for silence, possibly having her first-ever public orgasm.
He leaned in a little bit and since their thighs were already plastered together, he didn’t have to go far to speak directly into her ear. “Do you make those same sexy sounds when you—”