10
Clear Skies
I wokeup to something I hadn’t expected… pure, utter silence.
There was no whooshing of air in vents, no hum of electricity in the walls. There wasn’t even the sound of wind outside the motel.
Just the sound of breathing in the dimly lit room.
I looked to my left, where I found Tyler sleeping. He’d kept me warm all night, even after the power went out sometime after we all fell asleep. Austin took the other bed, and Randy had grabbed one in my room.
“How’s the view?” I asked, when I saw Austin crawl out of bed to look out the front window.
“A lot better in here than it is out there,” he said, his eyes roaming up and down my body.
At some point in the night, one of the guys had helped me put a fresh T-shirt on, one of Austin’s I think, to replace the one Randy had torn off me. But still, as Austin’s gaze followed my every curve, I could feel a warmth that more than made up for any lack of heat.
“Come see for yourself,” he said, pulling aside the draperies.
I shivered when I saw what was outside. The snow had stopped, and the sky was starting to clear. In fact, I saw spots of brilliant blue sky between the fluffy white clouds.
But everything was buried in white, my car looking more like a lump than an actual vehicle.
“Well, at least you can see your SUV,” I said. “But I guess I’m not getting out of here anytime soon, am I?”
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s going anywhere,” he said.
Behind me, I heard a light groaning, and then the sound of shifting as Tyler kicked his legs up and got to his feet, still naked from the night before, and padded towards the connecting door and my room’s bathroom.
“Would you fine people excuse me for a moment?” he said, disappearing around the corner.
“Put some pants on, dude,” Randy called from his bed next door. “Jesus Tyler!”
“He had no problem seeing him naked last night,” I pointed out, and Austin laughed with a shrug.
“That’s because we were entirely focused on you,” he said. “You’re the sort of woman a man could look at for a very long time and never be bored.”
Oh god. He could really lay it on. “Thank you,” I said, shaking my head.
“About that,” Austin said, “I had a question for you.”
“If it’s whether you can have more of my food, please help yourself. I’m pretty sure that between what I bought and then what Tyler picked up, it will cover us three or four days.”
He took my hand and sat me down on the edge of the bed after wrapping a blanket around my shoulders.
“Actually, my question was about you. Now that you’ve slept on it, how do you feel about last night?”
Oh god. What did he mean by that?
Scrunching the blanket around my shoulders, I got up and returned to the window, stalling for a moment before answering. “I… I loved it. It was so freaking hot. And I don’t regret a minute of it. It was so liberating.”
“Well, if that’s the case,” Tyler said, having rejoined us from the bathroom, “why not liberate yourself a little more?”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is, getting a winery up and running isn’t easy. I know the winemaking side well, but the retail side? Running the business side? That’s my weak spot. I need help. Like the kind of help you could probably provide.”
My help? At a winery?