St. Helena Vineyard Series

by Lulu M. Sylvian

  “I like your way of thinking,” he managed as she nibbled at his lips.

  Her legs twisted with his as they lay next to each other on the couch. His hands tangled in her hair, and she dug her fingers into his back. Her lips were soft and pulled at him.

  He knew exactly what this house was missing. It was missing a family, a family that started with her. Craig tightened his arms, bringing her in closer. His kisses grew deeper, intertwining tongues. He trailed kisses across her face and down her neck.

  Lysia responded and eased back. Craig worried he had crossed a boundary until she lifted her shirt off over her head and guided his head down to her chest.

  Heaven.

  What had he said last night? Men do stupid things when women let them touch their naked bodies. How could this be stupid?

  “Lysia.” His voice was rough. His throat didn’t want to work. It wanted him to keep going.

  He wrapped his hands around her hips. His palms begged to caress the lace of her bra that protected her breast. My God, they were outstanding, hand-sized, perfect.

  “Is this okay?” she asked, her nervousness warble in her voice.

  “This is amazing, but…” He breathed deeply.

  “Second date. This is as far as we go. Bra stays on.” She told him exactly what he needed to know.

  “Thank you.” His mouth found the soft flesh above her bra. Lysia moaned. His hand cupped her breast, and he knew this was definitely heaven. They kissed until his mouth felt raw. Her lips were red and swollen from making out. It was an amazing look on her, one he could get used to, one he wanted to see every night, and every morning. Green eyes, black hair, red lips. Perfection.

  An obnoxious ringtone he did not recognize broke his focus and pulled him away from kissing her.

  Lysia squirmed, pressing into his lower body and dug into her back pocket. “That’s me.”

  He knew entirely too well that was her squirming. They had been restrained and kept their lower bodies relatively still as they made out. It was a small saving grace, considering how strung out his body was with want for her. His physical reaction was impossible to miss. Had she rubbed against him earlier, all bets would have been off for stopping at shirt. Now he suppressed a groan and tried to think about cold showers and the Prime Minister of England naked. Lysia felt good under his fingers, under his mouth, and now with her hip pressed to him and fidgeting. How could he miss all that friction through his jeans?.

  Craig sat up with a groan, found Lysia’s discarded shirt, and handed it over. He was sad to watch as she covered the most perfect pair of breasts that had ever been framed by a sexy lace bra.

  She clicked off her call and shoved the phone back into her pocket.

  “I’m late.” She stood, grabbing his arm and pulling him up.

  She leaned into him and kissed him again. Yes, this was what this house needed. Sex and plenty of it. It was too much of a monastery. He kissed her back, not wanting to let her go off to her next appointment.

  She slid her hand into his. “Come with me and play with some puppies. This house needs some noise to bring it to life.”

  Craig knew exactly what kind of noise it needed. It needed moans and gasps and Lysia crying out his name. But first, he would follow her to the dog rescue. If Lysia wanted puppies, he would get her puppies.

  Chapter Three

  Eyjafjallajökull confronted Lysia’s reflection. She pronounced it Eya-freakin-skull, but it meant that Icelandic volcano that had disrupted air travel between the States and Europe a few years back. Josh was an ass for calling it herpes, but damn if the blemish wasn’t tenacious.

  Maybe she should name it. Bob. She would name it Bob, big obnoxious blemish.

  “Hi, Bob, it’s been interesting knowing you, but it’s time to leave or start paying rent.” She had to laugh, or she would start crying.

  She had no job, the guy she liked hadn’t called, and Bob was interfering with her face.

  She flinched as she prodded at Bob. The pressure under her skin was building and painful. Bob had to go. Lysia gritted her teeth and attacked with an esthetician assault. “Good-bye, Bob Boil!”

  The bathroom door jumped with a banging knock. “Who the hell are you yelling at in there?” her roommate called through the door.

  “I’m killing the zit from hell,” Lysia called back.

  “Who’s Bob Boil? Isn’t that some game show host?”

  “I named the zit,” Lysia replied.

  “You’re weird, you know that?”

  Lysia laughed. Samantha was right.

  “Good luck on the job hunt today. Fingers crossed for you. See you later.” With that, her roommate left her to finish her slaughter of the pustule.

  Confident the zit had been abated, Lysia ticked off her mental list for the day. One: get a job. No, one, drop off the supply list she worked up for the intern at St. Paws for the float.

  They had a highly creative and successful afternoon working on the St. Paws holiday parade float. Emme, the intern, said they had to keep budget in mind. With the weather behaving, they should be able to get away with papier-mâché, and it would dry with plenty of time for them to paint. Craig had even said he would donate a hundred bucks for their supplies.

  Of course, Emme had figured him out as a softy and put him in a pen full of puppies. The puppies had worked their magic on him. While they hadn’t gone home with him en masse as Lysia had almost expected, they had wrangled a decent donation out of him.

  Lysia had left promising she would do the recon on getting supplies cheap, and be back the following weekend to work on it. They didn’t have much time, but she would give what she had.

  Lysia pulled into a parking spot in front of the dog rescue. She leaned over to pick up her bag when she heard the blurp of a police car. When she sat back up, she saw the blue lights flashing in her rearview mirror. Great, now what? Her car was registered. She had stopped at the last intersection. She remembered because the jerk at the stop sign kept trying to wave her through when it was his turn to go.

  She pulled her license and insurance information from her wallet, rolled down the window, and waited.

  The officer blocked her window with his torso before leaning down to speak to her. She wondered if he did that with smaller cars just to be intimidating. Considering the source, she had her suspicions.

  “Hi, Jonah,” she said as he took off the reflective shades that covered half of his face.

  He cleared his throat.

  “Sheriff Baudouin.” Jonah Baudouin had been sheriff for a few years now, was married to Shay, who ran the dog rescue, and was some distant cousin of Lysia’s mother. She never was quite clear on exactly what their relationship was, but it had ‘thirds,’ ‘steps,’ and ‘removeds’ in it. In either case, he was someone she had known off and on for most of her life.

  “I take it this is official?”

  “I’m following up on a complaint of mass murder, flaunting body parts, and property theft.”

  “Oh ,come on,” Lysia whined.

  “I need you to step out of the car.”

  “You aren’t arresting me are you?”

  “Step out of the car,” he repeated.

  Lysia slunk out of the car. Great, she could add another stellar experience to this holiday season. No job, dumped, no call from Craig, Bob the zit from another dimension, and now arrested.

  Jonah stepped back and crossed his arms. “You want to tell me why Nora Kinkaid posted on Facebook that there was a mass murderer with body parts hanging out of some car trolling her neighborhood? And why that post included a picture of your vehicle with disembodied legs in the back window? And why Patrice from Josie’s Prom Bridal Tux commented under that post that you should be arrested for theft?”

  Lysia groaned and slumped against the hood of her car. He was messing with her and giving her a heart attack.

  “Patrice fired me.” She paused, deciding how to express her complete loserness to the sheriff.

  �
�And?”

  Lysia let out a heavy sigh. “I did the shop display for Christmas. Patrice didn’t have a place for me to store the mannequins and asked me to tuck them into my car until she cleared a space for them. I’ve been driving around with them for over a week.” Lysia flipped her hand at the back end of her car in annoyance.

  “So she fired me the other day, and I haven’t really had it in me to return the mannequins because that means I have to face her.”

  “What did you do?” Of course, he would think it was all her fault. Distant cousin or not, he was one of the ones who considered Lysia to be a weirdo.

  “Patrice has had it out for me ever since I forgot to set the alarm. I locked up. I just didn’t push the buttons. So I was on a very tenuous probation at work.” She concluded by describing the fiasco with Craig and the brides and the loss of two hefty sales, and the loss of her job. “I haven’t stolen anything.” Lysia pouted.

  “That explains the random body parts. Why were you stalking through Nora’s street?” Why did he always have to look so serious?

  “She lives in one of the big Victorians, right? Why do you think? I was looking at the pretty houses feeling like a loser. Happy?”

  He grunted. “Now, why are you here?” His nod indicated St. Paws.

  “I’m helping Emme with the float. I needed to drop off some shopping ideas before I head over to the library and humiliate myself with job applications. Any more questions?”

  “Yeah. You know you have a big zit on your chin, right?”

  Lysia growled at his retreating back while he chuckled and did his police swagger into St. Paws ahead of her. She leaned in and grabbed the notes, then locked up. Now that Patrice had a stick up her butt about getting the mannequins back, Lysia certainly didn’t want them to disappear on her.

  Emme wasn’t available to chat, but she did thank Lysia for the footwork, and the budget would help them tremendously. Lysia plodded back out to her car and sat waiting for Jonah to stop making out with his wife and move the police cruiser so she could get on with her humiliating morning.

  ***

  Another paper airplane whizzed past his desk. Craig barely noticed. As long as he kept the class of twenty-three tenth-graders relatively quiet, no one else would notice either.

  The weeks between Thanksgiving and winter break were always so drawn out and slow. In the upcoming weeks, they would participate in holiday activity after holiday activity, and no one would get any learning done.

  Craig couldn’t focus on his lesson, so he gave the students open study time. He didn’t feel like telling them about the Crusades, or how this was the period that set the backdrop for the King Arthur legend. His favorite combination of history and myth and an academic excuse for them to watch any number of given movies.

  Craig’s hook for teaching history was to tie it into the stories and myths the kids knew. He made sure to include those movies, shows, and graphic novels into his lesson plans. So far it seemed to be working. His students were learning, as demonstrated by the dreaded standardized tests. And they were enjoying history, as demonstrated by students telling him they named their new dog/cat/goldfish/gofer/hamster/rat Caesar, or Leonidas, or Nebuchadnezzar.

  Today he wanted to tell his class how he met a beautiful girl and she kissed him, and the world stopped. Instead he mentioned that he played with some puppies over at the dog rescue, and he was considering adopting one or two of them. Which somehow dissolved into a discussion of what movies everyone wanted to see, and then he had completely lost control.

  One thing Craig knew—once the room was lost, it was in his best interest to just do noise control and let the kids do their own thing. Tomorrow everyone would be focused again. The problem was, this wasn’t happening in only one of his classes. It had been going on all day. He hadn’t managed to deliver one single meaningful piece of historical information in any of his classes. With seventh period, he hadn’t even bothered and just told everyone it was open study. He gave passes to those students who needed to get other work from their lockers.

  Yesterday he had been able to focus and deliver his lessons. Last night he had wanted to call Lysia but didn’t want to pester her. Today he was going in to pick up the steamed and pressed tux after school.

  God, he could remember with crystal clarity the expression on her face when she’d measured his inseam and gazed up with those big green eyes. He needed to halt this line of thought. He was in a room of hormonal teenagers. Someone would hone in on the teacher getting a boner faster than sharks on chum.

  Margaret Thatcher naked. He shivered, and his blood ran cold.

  The bell rang. Students scampered like roaches under a switched-on light. He really needed to stop thinking in animalistic metaphor about the kids. Then again, it did fit. Hot on their tails, he zoomed out of the building as soon as the teacher dismissal bell rang thirty minutes later.

  Behind Josie’s BPT, he eased his car into a parking space next to an old Camry. He got out and knocked on the driver side window. Lysia flinched. The window lowered.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you.” Craig leaned down to look in the window. He should have called her last night. “How did yesterday go?”

  She peered up at him. “Which part? Almost getting arrested or the miserable job hunt?”

  “That doesn’t sound promising. I clearly should have called you last night to check in. Is there anything I can do?” He was rewarded with a small grin.

  Lysia opened her car door and climbed out. She stepped into Craig’s embrace. “You can do this.” She leaned against his chest and held on tight.

  He hugged her back. “I’m sorry I didn’t. I didn’t want to seem pushy.”

  “You’re not pushy. I want you to call me. And I want to be able to call you. We’re friends, right?”

  “Of course.” He stroked her hair. Comforting her was soothing. He felt like a heel not calling yesterday.

  “Good. Can we be more than friends too? You know,skip the awkward dating phase? I want you to call me Lees or some other nickname. And I want to hold your hand in public, and I want to have third-date sex.”

  Craig froze. His whole body forgot how to function. “Okay.” It was the lamest thing in the history of lame things to say, but his brain was stuck on the word sex in conjunction with Lysia.

  Blood flow and thought rushed back into his brain. “That would be exceptional, but it’s not a requirement, you know.”

  “Well… I… ah…” Lysia stammered and then finished in a rush. “I was hoping it might get you to help me do something difficult.”

  “I’d do that for you regardless. I like you, Lysia. I like you a tremendous amount. So much that I’ll do stuff for you without the bribe of sex.”

  “My internal editor failed, and uhm, yeah. That slipped out. But hey, at least I now know we’re on the same page.” She blushed, and it was incredibly sexy.

  “What’s the difficult thing that needs to happen?” he asked.

  “I have to go in there and get Patrice to help me take all of these mannequin parts out of my car. She already called the police and said I had stolen them,” Lysia explained.

  “That’s why you were almost arrested?”

  She nodded.

  Craig rubbed his hand across his forehead and pushed his glasses back up his nose. “I have an idea.”

  A few moments later Craig came out of the shop with his tux in a garment bag hanging from his finger. He hung it carefully in the back of his car so as not to wrinkle it.

  “I told her she’s getting some big delivery and should be propping the doors open any second now,” he said as he lifted a few fiberglass body parts from Lysia’s car.

  He followed Lysia into the shop where she deposited the first load of body parts in the middle of the floor. Patrice began sputtering.

  “Nope.” Craig turned to Patrice. “You don’t say anything, or I start calculating the square footage of the interior of her car, the cost of rental space in the area, and how
long you failed to provide a location for these things to be stored at the shop. So unless you want to pay Lysia rent for keeping your mannequins for you, shut it.”

  Patrice snapped her mouth closed.

  Lysia placed the last load of limbs on the floor and smiled up at Craig. “Thank you.”

  He followed her from the shop. “Better?”

  “Much. I couldn’t face her alone. Thank you for helping me avoid talking to her. Ever again.” She hugged him again, and his entire body felt like warm butter.

  “Let me take you out. You can tell me how the job hunt is going.”

  “And then we can have third-date sex?” She waggled her eyebrows at him.

  He laughed. “Only if you still want to.”

  Lysia paused before getting into her car. “You keep saying that almost as if you aren’t interested.”

  Craig leaned in. “Oh, I’ve been interested since before I knew your name. I just can’t believe my luck and am trying to play it cool.” He pulled her to his chest and slid his lips over hers. She let out a soft moan when his tongue slipped between her lips and found hers. She sucked on his tongue and dug her fingers into the backs of his arms.

  She was breathless when she said, “Maybe we should have sex and then the third date.”

  Craig eased his hold of her. “Your body, your rules. And you have already established the third-date rule.”

  “Okay, I need to change and get ready. It’s not a date if I’m wearing the same clothes,” she said.

  “Sure it is.”

  She tried another excuse.

  “I haven’t shaved.”

  “I don’t care,” he countered.

  “Fine, but can we at least drop my car off at my place and let me pick up a few things?”

  “How about I pick you up at seven? Is that enough time to do what you need?”

  “I should be able to make myself presentable by then.”

  Chapter Four

  Lysia sat in a small skiff. It rocked slowly, lazily. Seagulls cried out. A large seal rubbed its face up and down her arm. Suddenly the animal jumped out, and the boat tipped to the side. Lysia woke up. Craig sat next to her stroking her arm.