Best Man...with Benefits

by Nancy Warren

  “Lauren created that window for us,” Sharon told them, indicating the stained-glass creation. It depicted the Leonato family crest surrounded by grapes and foliage in big, bold colors. The window might not be what she’d have created without their input, but that was the thing with commissions. You had to give the customer what they wanted.

  Yes, she thought as she waved them away, today had been a good day.

  A minivan pulled up and out piled twelve older people. Leonato was listed on a few wine tours and they often got groups coming through.

  She and Sharon exchanged a look and Lauren reached for the bread crisps they kept in bowls on the counter. The idea was to use the crisps to cleanse the palate between wines, but they’d found from experience that the tour bus groups usually feasted on them as if they hadn’t been fed for days.

  This group was no exception. They sampled their wine and emptied all the bread bowls while either listening to her descriptions of the various wines, or pretending to. The tour guide, Michael, added information about the region and then reminded them to make use of the restrooms as it would be more than an hour until their next stop.

  The group made some modest purchases and took a few photos.

  Lauren waved the last of them off and then began refilling all the bowls.

  Her skin prickled suddenly and she glanced up.

  Jackson had just walked through the door.

  For a second, she thought this was just another one of the sexual fantasies that had plagued her over the past week. He looked so good. His dark brown hair that had felt so thick and luscious when she ran her fingers through it had the shiny look of a recent washing. He wore a beat-up leather jacket, a black T-shirt that hugged his torso the way she longed to, and jeans that molded to his strong thighs.

  He walked over and sat on one of the bar stools in front of her. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.” A million thoughts jumbled together in her head, ranging from What the hell are you doing here? to Do me, now. She didn’t voice any of them, though, and simply stared at him.

  “I took an afternoon off,” he said. “Thought I’d taste some wine.”

  Wine tasting. Of course. That was where they were. In a wine-tasting room. “You came to the right place,” she managed. She put the bag of snacks away and was suddenly thankful that her spiel was so practiced she could describe each of the Leonato wines in her sleep.

  She handed him the menu. “Welcome to Leonato,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  She knew she should launch into her standard speech about the winery and each of the wines, but she didn’t have it in her. She said, “Take a look at our wines and let me know what you’d like to try.”

  He didn’t even open the handsome leather folder with the Leonato coat of arms emblazoned in gold on the front of it. He gazed at her face. “What do you like?”

  She felt hot and cold flashes dance over her skin. What did she like? Who knew better than he did? In one night he’d brought her more pleasure than she’d experienced with anyone before.

  She felt like telling him in exact detail exactly what she liked in case he might have forgotten in the past seven days. She felt like begging him to take her somewhere and do every one of those things to her until she could get some relief from the wanting.

  Instead, she pulled herself together and said, “My favorite wine is our cabernet sauvignon from 2011. It won some awards. Normally, we don’t sample that one, but we opened a bottle earlier, if you’d like to try it.”

  “I’d like to try it,” he said.

  She poured him a more generous glass than usual. Watched him sip and savor. He nodded. Then his eyes crinkled around the corners. “I don’t know a lot about wine, but it tastes good to me.”

  An older couple came in at that moment and, when she would have excused herself to greet them, Sharon, who’d been at the other end of the wooden bar polishing glasses, rushed forward. “I’ve got it,” she said.

  Sharon was always trying to get her interested in any single men who came into the tasting room, so Lauren wasn’t surprised.

  Under the hum of conversation, she wondered if Jackson would say something to her, maybe tell her why he was here. But, no. He acted as though he really had just stumbled into this winery out of all the wineries in Napa. “Have you toured many wineries today?” she asked him.

  “No. Just this one.”

  “I can give you a map. There are lots of amazing wines in this area.” She rolled her eyes at her own inanity. Jackson was as cool and distant as if they were complete strangers, and she was tripping all over her nervous tongue. “Obviously. This is Napa,” she added inanely.

  “Okay,” he said. He took the map but didn’t seem in a big hurry to open it.

  “Have you heard from Seth?” she finally asked, thinking maybe he was here because something was going on with Amy and Seth.

  His eyes crinkled again. “He’s on his honeymoon. I got a one-liner from him saying Italy was awesome.” He took another sip of the dark red wine. “You? Heard from Amy?”

  “Just a quick email. Sounds like they’re having fun.”

  There was another pause. He finished the wine in his glass. Put the empty goblet down.

  “Would you like to try something else?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll take a bottle of that, though.”

  “Sure.”

  She grabbed him a bottle, wrapped it and took the credit card he offered. Once she’d rung up the purchase, she gave him his receipt.

  “Thanks,” he said. “See you around.”

  “Yes. See you around.”

  She watched him walk out, wanting to run after him and drag him back to her cottage. The way the man filled out a pair of jeans was almost too good to be true.

  She had no idea why he’d come here. All she knew was that his little visit wasn’t helping her squelch the demon of lust that had overtaken her body.

  Shaking her head, she moved to clear away his empty glass. And then she froze. Those hot and cold shivers danced over her skin once more.

  Beside the empty glass was a key folder, the kind they gave out in hotels.

  She glanced up, but he was gone.

  Her heart began to thud. She didn’t think he’d remembered to take his wallet, his credit card and his receipt and somehow accidentally left his key card folder on the counter.

  She didn’t think it was an accident at all.

  She picked up the paper folder, which had the name of the hotel on it. She knew it. A nice inn not far from the winery. She opened the folder. Inside, in handwriting that she recognized as Jackson’s, was a room number: 505. Underneath it he’d written, “Tonight!” And underlined the word.

  6

  AS JACKSON STRODE to his car, got in, carefully stashed the bottle of wine and started the engine, he wondered if he’d completely lost his mind. What kind of a jackass gave a woman a key to his room? No invitation to dinner, no personal chitchat of any kind, just a key and what amounted to a dare. A challenge.

  The truth was he’d no sooner thought of asking her to dinner than he’d rejected the idea, knowing she’d spurn the offer in an instant. They didn’t want to sit across a table from each other over dinner and talk or get to know each other.

  They already knew each other and didn’t like what they knew. She was cold, superior and sarcastic, and he certainly wasn’t going to put a dinner invitation out there for her to scorn.

  But he had a problem.

  He couldn’t get their night together out of his head. He thought about her when he was at work, when he was trying to sleep at night; when he was in the shower, when he was driving.

  The surprise he’d felt when she’d turned out to be not a cold fish in bed but a warm—no, hot—exciting woman still hadn’t worn off. He thought that was probably why he’d been obsessed with memories of that night. Nothing about their night together had been expected, from the moment he’d seen her emerge in her bridesmaid dress looking softer and p
rettier than he’d ever imagined to the moment he’d walked out of her room the next morning, his body sated and his mind blown. The entire affair had ended only a few hours after it had begun.

  He hadn’t nearly finished with Lauren. He wanted one more night, under more normal circumstances than a booze-fueled, unexpected rendezvous in a honeymoon hotel complete with moonlight and ocean breezes.

  One more night.

  He’d known that she worked part-time at the winery and, assuming she’d probably be working on a busy Saturday afternoon, he had taken a little road trip and discovered that he’d been right. She was working.

  When she’d spotted him, he’d had the pleasure of watching her blush slightly, looking for a moment as though she was really happy to see him. So far, so good. Then her usual cool mask had descended.

  He’d left her that key and the note. The rest was up to her.

  Okay, so he’d chosen an inn that was on the classy side, also a popular honeymoon destination—mostly so she’d show up. Maybe he wasn’t planning to take her to dinner, but he wasn’t going to bed her in a roadside motel, either.

  He liked to show a little class where women were concerned.

  But would she show up? That was the question that gnawed at him as he showered and shaved with care. He didn’t know what time she got off work, so he settled in front of the TV and tried to concentrate on the news, a movie, a football game. He left the game on in the end, but he wasn’t really following the play. He kept wondering, would she come to him?

  Or had he just made the biggest mistake of his life? He could imagine her now, texting her girlfriends, telling the fine wine samplers of Napa about his foolish move between sips of Shiraz, blogging about the loser who’d left her his room key. For all he knew, that was exactly what she was doing.

  But the woman who had shared her bed and her body with him wouldn’t do that. She might not show up in his hotel room, but she wouldn’t be cruel.

  Daytime Lauren, he wasn’t so sure about.

  * * *

  LAUREN GOT THROUGH the rest of her shift somehow, with the key card and its provocative note stuffed into the back pocket of her jeans, where it burned like a warm hand resting there.

  Sharon hadn’t missed how seriously hot Jackson was. She fanned herself the minute he left and commiserated with Lauren that he hadn’t stayed longer. “A man like that and a bottle of wine? Sounds like heaven to me.”

  Sounded like heaven to Lauren, too.

  Would she go?

  Would she do it?

  There was something admittedly exciting about having a hot guy show up and slap a key card down in front of you. No, “Hey, I really missed you.” No invitation to dinner or “Let’s get together for a movie.” Just “Let’s get to it, babe. Here’s the hotel room key, and isn’t it your lucky night?”

  When she thought of the sheer arrogance of the man, assuming that, first, she’d be free on a Saturday night and second, that she’d drop everything to fall into his bed, she was tempted to toss that key into the trash.

  But then she imagined him asking her out for dinner or a movie, and the idea was impossible. What would they talk about over a long dinner? They had absolutely nothing in common, didn’t even like each other. What they had was purely chemical. That was all this was.

  And when she thought about that, she respected that he wasn’t pretending that this thing, whatever it was, was any more than sex between strangers.

  Okay, great sex between two people who might like each other better if they were strangers.

  So she smiled, she poured, she got subtly hit on, she got not so subtly hit on, she took credit cards, she wrapped and boxed bottles, and at the end of her shift she was no closer to a decision than when Jackson had sauntered out of there three hours ago.

  Was she going to go to him or not?

  She walked home and flipped on the lights. Her tiny cottage felt ridiculously silent.

  She shucked her jeans and the polo shirt that was basically her uniform. Got into the shower. She shaved, because really, who didn’t love smooth skin? And when she’d dried herself off, she slathered on a heavenly body lotion that Amy had bought her for her birthday. It was the kind of expensive luxury she’d never have bought for herself.

  She brushed out her hair so it swung around her shoulders, and slipped into the nicest set of lingerie she owned, which she’d bought for Amy’s wedding.

  Amy. If only she were back. She wanted to pick up the phone and call Amy so badly it hurt.

  But things had changed. Amy wasn’t going to be available at all hours anymore. She was married. And in Italy.

  “Why are you putting on makeup?” she demanded of her reflection. And continued sliding smoky shadow over her eyelids, adding two coats of mascara and then slicking a tinted gloss over her lips.

  But she knew why she was applying makeup with care and wearing sinfully rich body lotion and wearing barely there lingerie. Because her body was humming with excitement.

  And why Jackson Monaghan should be the one to set her humming like a tuning fork was beyond her comprehension.

  She threw on a simple cotton dress for two reasons. One, the color looked great on her and two, the dress was easy to take off.

  But she didn’t rush out of the door and into her car.

  She hovered.

  She watered the plants.

  She paced.

  And, while she hovered and watered and paced, she thought about what she was contemplating doing.

  The first time she could blame on chemistry and the reaction of two naked people finding themselves in the same bed in a fancy hotel, after consuming large quantities of alcohol.

  The second time? That involved planning.

  The key card was in her hand. It was on the table and the handwritten word, Tonight!, taunted her. Like a promise, a dare and a tease, all in one.

  She couldn’t think about tonight and not be reminded of that other night when something as unexpected as it was magical had happened between them.

  What if the second time ruined it? Maybe they should leave well enough alone.

  In fact, there were a lot more reasons not to go to Jackson and only one reason to turn up. Lust. Pure, horny lust.

  Lust that was pricking at her with sharp fingernails, urging her to go to him.

  When her cell phone rang, she thought it was Jackson checking on her, but of course he didn’t have her number. She glanced at the call display and saw it was Amy. Damn, that girl might be married, but she was still the best friend Lauren had ever had and they were still close enough that she’d picked up on her friend’s dilemma and was calling.

  “Amy!” she cried as she answered. “I was just thinking about you.”

  “I know I said I wouldn’t call from my honeymoon, but I had to,” Amy said, her voice sounding choked.

  All thoughts of Jackson and sex flew from her mind. “Are you okay?”

  “No-o-o-o.” A sob answered her. “Me and Seth had our first fight.”

  Visions of a terrible accident, the theft of all their belongings, a mugging, a death in one of their families fled thankfully back to the recesses of her mind where worry lived, and a tiny flicker of amusement took their place. “Your first fight? You’ve been together, what? Three years? And you’ve never had a fight?” Of course they hadn’t or she would have heard about it.

  “No.” Amy dragged in another choked breath. “We’ve always been so happy. I thought our love was perfect.”

  “Honey.” She sat down on her couch. “No love is perfect.” Then, realizing Amy probably hadn’t called to hear her talk, she said, “What happened?”

  The story that poured out wasn’t very dramatic. It wasn’t even all that interesting. The only thing that made it either of those things was that Amy seemed so shocked to discover that she and Seth weren’t going to be in perfect harmony for every second of the rest of their lives together.

  They’d been getting ready to go out and he’d snapped at her
that she was always late.

  It was true, as Lauren knew better than anyone. Amy would always be nearly ready and then decide to change her outfit, or decide she was hungry, or that she just needed one second to send an email she’d forgotten she needed to send right away. Lauren was used to Amy’s habits and she’d have thought Seth was, too.

  After he’d snapped at her, Amy, stung, had snapped back that she’d be on time if she wasn’t so tired of constantly cleaning up after him.

  “Honestly, Lauren, he’s a slob.”

  “Didn’t you know that?”

  “Not really. I think he always cleaned up before I came over and now he doesn’t bother. I told him that I’m not his mother.”

  Ouch. “Then what happened?”

  “He went out. And he slammed the door. I don’t know where he is or when he’s coming back. I don’t know what to do,” she wailed.

  “Maybe you two need to talk. Marriage is an adjustment. It’s going to take some time to get used to each other being around all the time.”

  “I guess. I used to go home to my place so I always had a break from him. But now, he’s in my space all the time. Do you have any idea how much noise he makes when he brushes his teeth? Seriously, it’s like a construction crew doing roadwork in there. And he makes noises when he sleeps.”

  “You mean he snores?”

  “It’s more like heavy breathing. It’s driving me nuts.”

  So, she let Amy unload, knowing she wouldn’t be asking her best friend’s advice on whether she was going to go to Jackson or not.

  She was on her own for that decision.

  * * *

  SHE WASN’T COMING.

  Jackson popped a grape off the fruit and cheese plate he’d foolishly ordered from room service in case she arrived hungry.

  It was nine o’clock and the leaden feeling in his gut was disappointment.

  When his cell phone rang, he jumped for it, and then realized it couldn’t be Lauren calling because Lauren didn’t have his cell number.

  Wouldn’t be getting it any time soon, either.