Julian shook his head at Natalie. “Let’s not. It was bad enough watching my sister’s attempts at flirting this week. Not once but twice.”
Natalie sat up straighter. “Attempts?”
Julian’s mouth twitched. “I’ll let the end result speak for itself.”
“Oh you’re the expert, are you?” His sister sputtered a moment, before her attention zipped to Hallie. “Since my brother seems to be implying that he’s an expert at flirting, please tell us about his masterful technique.”
Hallie dove in without a single hesitation, flattening a hand to her chest. “Well, first, he forgot we knew each other in high school. That really got the ball rolling. But then . . .” She fanned her face. “He criticized my gardening technique and called me chaotic. That really sealed the deal.”
Memories stomped to the forefront of his mind, his stomach roiling. He turned to Hallie to apologize, but she spoke again before he could get there.
“Unfortunately, he foiled my plan to ignore him, when he bought three cases of wine from my favorite shop on Grapevine Way. Corked. They’ve been in danger of closing down for a while and it was my grandmother’s favorite place. I told him that, never knowing he would have business cards made for Lorna and finagle you all into passing them out at Wine Down. And then have a brand-new awning installed, giving the place a much-needed face-lift that would triple her business overnight.”
Julian realized his jaw was in his lap and snapped his mouth shut. “You knew?”
“I knew.”
He grunted, finding it difficult to look at her in public with that shy gratitude on her gorgeous face. He didn’t need credit for his deeds, but the proof that they’d served their purpose and made her happy? God, he’d choose her smile over oxygen, right here and now. Any day of the week. And if she thought she was happy now, tonight could not come fast enough. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I was holding out for Corked’s new line of merch, of course.”
“T-shirts and corkscrews would be a good start,” he said gruffly.
When did he get close enough to kiss her? With a hard clearing of his throat, Julian put an appropriate distance between them. But that distance didn’t last very long, because his sister, wine drunk as usual, said something next that made Hallie scoot closer. “Don’t forget about how he masterminded children’s story time at Wine Down, Hallie.” She dropped her voice to a baritone. “‘I don’t like it when Hallie is in distress. I will explode if I don’t fix it for her.’”
All right. Now he was starting to sweat. “Enough, Natalie.”
“Did you really . . . you said that?”
“Perhaps some version of it,” he answered briskly. “Are we ready to order?”
“I’ll have one of you, please,” Hallie said, for his ears alone. In a way that was clearly meant to be spoken inside of her head, not out.
A hard object flipped in Julian’s chest, and he pressed his mouth to her temple, inhaling the paradise scent of her hair. Skin. Hallie. “You’ve already got me, sweetheart.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Okay. Change of plans.
Come clean. In real life. Face-to-face.
Hallie could not let him find that letter.
That approach was too impersonal after he’d eaten lunch with one arm around her waist, that thumb occasionally digging into her hip like a promise. Not after she’d caught him looking at her so often between appetizers and dessert, as if he were seeing her over and over again for the first time. Not when they were kissing against the front door of her cottage, her keys having clattered to the ground five minutes earlier, neither of them making a move to pick them up.
His knuckles had traced her cheekbones as if they were made of porcelain. When they broke for air and locked eyes, they were in their very own solar system, the real world light-years away. His hard frame pressed her against the door securely, his hands familiarizing themselves with her breasts and hips and even her knees—he seemed particularly interested in those. Squeezing and circling his thumb around the cap. Dragging one of them high around his hip and keeping it there while he worked her up and down against the wooden barrier, his lower body rolling, surging. Bringing her up onto her toes over and over again with hoarse gasps.
God, she had goose bumps everywhere.
An escalating warmth between her legs.
She was a body of sensations and nerve endings and needs. And the more Julian kissed her, feeding her his tongue with licks she felt down to her toes, the sexier she became in her own skin. How could she feel anything but incredibly desirable when every reverent scrape of his fingertips on her waist made her breasts feel fuller, more tempting. He was so aroused, he seemed to be in pain, and now his hands were climbing the backs of her thighs to palm her butt, his huge body crowding her into the doorway with a guttural sound. Oh Lord.