by Marina Adair
“This isn’t funny, Marc.” She smacked his chest, trying to not smile back. Marc’s charm was potent enough to break through her suddenly bad mood. “Saturday is important.”
“I know it is.” He stepped closer and wrapped his arms around her. And God, he felt good. Warm, strong, and totally safe. Marc had a way of making her feel like she was the most precious thing in his world. It took everything she had not to nuzzle closer and get lost in him.
“But it’s also not the end of the world. So to address your concerns. First, we are in a pantry surrounded by food.”
“Ingredients.”
“I have champagne in case we get thirsty.” He pulled back enough so that he could meet her eyes. “And I think this is just what you need. A little time away from the kitchen to really celebrate landing your first client before you drive yourself insane trying to perfect an already perfected dish for your soon-to-be second client.”
She rolled her eyes. “My hopefully soon-to-be second client. Natasha’s a talented chef. I won’t underestimate her again.”
“Who cooks from the wrong place.” Marc tightened his arms just enough to bring all of his yummy parts in contact with all of hers. “You put Lexi on a plate and there is no way those judges won’t choose you.”
When he said it like that, confident and sincere, as though his belief in her was unwavering, Lexi’s heart rolled over.
All that flirting and swagger was a front. Beneath the easygoing façade was a man who craved connection. Lexi could recognize it anywhere. It was like looking in the mirror.
Marc was lonely. He was starved for that intimate bond that only comes from committing wholly to another person, but he was terrified of giving a part of himself away. And that, more than anything, called out to her.
Lexi tightened her arms and gave in to the moment, burying her face in his chest. “Thank you,” was all she said, but something between them shifted. His body relaxed, molding around hers, and as he rested his cheek on the top of her head, she knew that somehow her feelings in this fauxmance had become 100 percent real.
Marc cleared his throat and, his charm firmly back in place, took a step back. “Grab that tablecloth and lay it down. We can do this picnic style.”
Lexi took in the small quarters, the locked door, the champagne, the sexy bachelor in jeans and a ball cap, and laughed. “Why does this suddenly feel like one of those ‘whoops, baby, my truck ran out of gas’ moments?”
He neither confirmed nor denied, only popped the cork.
“Come on,” Lexi said, reaching for the tablecloth to spread it across the concrete floor. “A guy like you has to have used that trick once or twice.”
“Nope.”
“Not even back in high school?”
“Never needed to.” Marc lounged on the tablecloth, his back against the wall, long legs stretched out in front and crossed at the ankle. He held up the bottle. “To you, for getting your first of many clients.”
“You planned this?”
“Getting locked in the pantry? No. Seducing you with expensive champagne and my good looks? Yes.”
“Why?” She should have known something was off when she saw the bubbly.
“Because you’ve had a long few weeks and a big day tomorrow, and it’s my job, as your boyfriend, to pamper you.” He blinked, as though shocked at what he’d said.
“We’re in a pantry.”
Lexi liked this new Marc, the one who seemed unsure and a little off balance.
“With champagne. Now drink up. Quickly.”
She rolled her eyes. “Trying to get me drunk, huh?”
He took a long swig. “I’m just trying to empty the bottle.”
“Why?”
“Can’t spin it when it’s still full. Now”—he patted the empty spot next to him and spread open a bag of, sweet Jesus, éclairs—“tell me about your day so we can get to the celebrating part.”
“I think that is deserving of a bite of my éclair,” Lexi said, smiling up at him with those big green eyes and holding out the end of the pastry.
Problem was, Marc wasn’t in the mood for an éclair. He wanted to sink his teeth into a cream puff. The one sitting so close he could smell her shampoo, her skin, the sweet and spicy fragrance that was uniquely Lexi.
“You go ahead,” he said. “You need all the food you can get, since you’re already drunk.”
“I’m not drunk, just a little tipsy.” She smiled, and holy shit, he was screwed.
Not only was she a few sips past tipsy, she was dressed in one of those soft, flirty dresses that made women feel feminine and made men think of sex—which made the ever-growing problem in his jeans even harder to hide. Her hair only made things worse. It was loose and shiny and tumbled over her shoulders, brushing his arm every time she got excited about a topic and felt the need to press into him, like she was doing now.
Marc reached out and grabbed the empty bottle to keep from running his fingers through her hair, which would lead to his hands all over her body, which would lead to sex. Right here in the pantry.
Over the last several weeks, it had become apparent that not only had Jeff been less than honest about his divorce from Lexi, he’d never treated her right to begin with. But no matter how big of a jerk his friend had been, no matter how badly he wanted Lexi, Marc wasn’t that guy. He didn’t take advantage, and he didn’t poach. Ever.
But if she didn’t stop touching him and looking at him like he was some kind of freaking hero, his good intentions might just lose out.
“So you have the celebrity-judge thing all figured out?”
“Pretty sure, but I’m waiting for the guy to sign on the dotted line before I say anything.”
“Judge found and you organized a tasting committee to make sure that tomorrow night is fair. All in less than eight hours.” She patted his arm, and a potent shot of lust ignited in his gut and dropped lower. “And people say you’re just a pretty face.”
“I still have a dog on the jury.”
“Which you’ll fix.” She popped the piece of pastry in her mouth, her tongue peeking out to lick off every single finger. “People will be talking about this for years, Marc. You brought their beloved Showdown back to St. Helena.”
He felt his neck warm. “It’s just a wine tasting.”
“No, it’s not, and you know it. Not to this town and not to you.” Lexi leaned back against the wall, her head thunking against the exposed brick as she stared at the ceiling. For a second they were both silent, then her head lolled toward his. “You did this for your parents, huh?”
Marc swallowed. He did not want to talk about his parents. Not here, in this small room, where the outside world didn’t exist, where the past seemed tangled with the present and the woman in front of him felt so much like his future. “I thought we were going to play spin the bottle, not truth or dare.”
“I never played that with anyone but Abby,” she said, her sugary breath skating across his face.
He blinked. “You played spin the bottle with my sister?” Definitely not the image he wanted, but maybe, he thought as he took in just how close her lips were to his, the one he needed.
“No, I mean I played truth or dare with Abby. I’ve never played spin the bottle.”
Marc wondered just how many other normal high school experiences Lexi had missed out on, dating Jeff all those years. He also wondered what kind of secrets she kept. Knowing that this might be his only chance to find out, he said, “All right, I’ll play, but we go three rounds, and you’re next. I get to ask any question I want, and you have to answer.”
She considered his terms briefly and then offered him a sassy smile. “Agreed. But I might just choose dare.”
Even better.
Marc took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I wanted to host the Showdown at the Napa Grand to prove that I could and because it will grow my hotel twice as fast. But the real reason I did it was because I wanted to honor my parents. This year would have been forty
years.”
Lexi leaned over and gave his shoulder a little bump. “I remember one night when Abby and I were helping your mom in the kitchen, your dad came in the room to check on dinner and…” She swallowed and her eyes went soft, but she didn’t look away. “I had never seen a man look at someone like that before. I mean, he just walked in the kitchen, saw your mom in a dirty apron with spaghetti sauce on her face, and it was magical, Marc, I could feel how much he loved her. My mom fell in love a million times when I was a kid, but never like that.”
Which was why she’d lived in a million places, Marc thought sadly. New marriage, new daddy, new school—at least until she landed in St. Helena. It must have been lonely.
“Pricilla always talks about her great love with my grandpa. But I never knew that kind of love really existed until I met your parents.”
“Yeah,” Marc whispered. His parents had had more ability to love than anyone he’d ever met. Not just their kids, but each other and life. Growing up, watching that kind of connection between two people was a blessing and a curse. There was no way Marc was willing to settle for anything less than what his parents had shared, but after losing them in high school, he wasn’t sure if he had the balls to put himself out there. When you are that connected to someone and they go away—Marc didn’t think he could survive that again. “Did you have that with Jeff?”
Figured he was already raw and exposed, might as well go for bust. But the second he asked the question, he regretted it. Lexi’s face paled, and he watched her throat work hard to keep control.
“No,” she whispered, worrying her lower lip. “I thought I had, wanted so badly for it to be real, but in the end…” She shook her head. “No. And since I don’t remember you asking truth or dare, that is all you get.”
“Fair enough.” He moved so that their shoulders were barely touching. The contact was gentle, but the connection was palpable. “Truth or dare?”
“God, if that was a freebie, I’m almost scared to say truth,” she admitted, but at least she was smiling again.
“Sugar, if truth scared you, dare will have you begging for mercy.”
“We’ll start with truth. But make no mistake, you don’t scare me, pretty boy.”
“All right. Why didn’t you ever have kids?” That wasn’t what he meant to ask, and he didn’t even know why he did. It was just that she and Abby had gone on and on as teenagers about their weddings and babies; they’d even named them. Yet she and Jeff were married for nearly a decade and no kids.
“Um, I, we—” She might not have been begging for mercy, but he was pretty damn certain she was about to cry.
“You don’t have to answer that. It’s none of my business, and I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. That’s part of the game, right? You have to put yourself out there and risk being embarrassed.” She shrugged as though it was no big deal, but for the first time all night she couldn’t meet his eyes. “I wanted kids, but Jeffery wanted to be financially stable. Actually, you know what? I’m not going to put this all on him.” She turned and looked him straight in the eye. “I wanted kids desperately, maybe too much, but he saw that there was something missing in our marriage and held off. It hurt at the time, but in the end he was the wise one.”
Wise wasn’t a word Marc would have ever used to describe his friend, even back when he’d still considered Jeff a stand-up guy.
“How about you? Do you want kids?”
“I assume that this is your official question. And yes.” He smiled over at her. “I was going to choose truth.” He leaned his head against the wall. “Part of me wants an army, the other part is terrified that I’d somehow screw it up and lose everything. Plus I have to have a, what did you call it, oh yeah, a serious relationship first,” he joked, and before she could respond to his response, threw it back at her. “Truth or dare?”
She raised a brow, calling him on his avoidance, but let him have it. “Truth.”
He could’ve asked more about Jeff, but now the guy whom Marc had always admired and envied no longer felt so impressive. In fact, he no longer even factored into this equation.
Lexi had missed out on a lot growing up, and Marc wanted to lighten the moment, give her a taste of what high school was like when you weren’t tethered to a douche.
“What is your most embarrassing secret?”
“Oh God.” Her hands flew to her face. “I can’t lie.” She peeked at him through her fingers, pure horror latching itself onto her every expression. “Can I?”
“Sugar, I won’t know if you lie.”
“But I would.”
I know, he thought. And that, right there, was why Marc was screwed when it came to Lexi. She was loyal and genuine and honest to a fault.
“Okay, you have to turn around, though.”
“What?”
She dropped her hands, her expression dead serious. “You have to turn around or at least close your eyes because I can’t say this with you looking at me.”
“This had better be good.”
“Oh, it will have you begging for mercy,” she murmured, her face the color of a good merlot.
He closed his eyes but made a big deal about it. He felt her hand fly past his face a few times, and it took everything he had not to smile or peek. He grabbed her hand midfly. “Get on with it before your buzz wears off and you chicken out.”
“I won’t chicken out, and I’m not buzzed.”
He opened one eye.
“Okay, maybe just a little buzzed.” He closed it. “Remember how senior year you took Kimberly Baudouin to homecoming? And she wore that dress with the slit up to her thong line? And remember how Jeffery and I had a big fight because I danced one slow dance with Martin Liscouski, who I only danced with because we were friends and because his date was making out with some guy from another school?”
“Yeah.” Marc was starting to lose hope that this was going to be juicy. “Homecoming. Thong. Liscouski. Got it. Now get to the good stuff.”
“Well, after homecoming, we all went to your house because Gabe was gone on some trip.” And his parents had passed away the year before, which meant his house was the designated after-party. “Jeffery was mad about the dance and then because I didn’t want to sleep with him. So he called me a tease in front of Natasha and Isabel Stark and their whole group.”
Marc opened his eyes. He couldn’t help it. First, because what kind of guy does that, and second, because that had been during their senior year. “You and Jeff hadn’t—”
She shook her head. “Not until a few weeks later.” Which is why the prick said it, he thought angrily. Being called a cock tease in high school was even worse than being crowned a good-time girl by Isabel and her clique.
Marc tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry he did that. I didn’t know.”
She shrugged, then made a little twirly gesture with her pointer finger. “Now turn around. You obviously can’t be trusted not to peek.”
He did. And the whole time he sat cross-legged on the floor, staring at the shelves and listening to her shuffle around behind him, he wondered if that wasn’t her most embarrassing high school secret, then maybe he didn’t want to know what was.
“I was upset and didn’t want everyone to see me cry, so I went to find Abby, but she was making out with Chad.”
“Chad Spencer?” He was going to kick that guy’s ass.
“I know, gross, right? She was heartbroken over some other guy; it was nothing. Anyway, I heard someone coming up the stairs, so I ducked in your room.”
The idea of her in his room made him hard. “Did you lie on my bed?”
“Only one question, remember?” She gave him a reprimanding smack on the back of his head. “But yes, I did, until you came in with Kimberly. Then I ducked in the closet. Oh God, this is the embarrassing part. Don’t you dare turn around!”
He couldn’t move, much less turn around. He remembered that night. Knew exactly what she was going to say, and damn if
his pants didn’t get that much more uncomfortable.
“So you and Kimberly started making out and”—he heard her swallow, and when she continued her voice was low and raspy—“I watched. The whole time. From your closet.”
The silence stretched so thick it took everything Marc had not to turn around and see if she was flushed. Because he was so turned on he was about to burst. Which was why he asked, “Did you like it?”
She was quiet for so long he was afraid she wouldn’t answer. Then he heard a slight rustling and a warm, gentle hand settled on his shoulder. He could feel her brush up against his back, which made all sorts of stupid things happen to his front.
“I’ll answer, but this will be your last question. I’ll still have two left, and I get to choose the last one for you. Deal?”
Truth or dare had never been this much of a turn-on when he was a kid. If it had been, he would have spent all of high school playing it instead of drinking with his buddies. Giving control over to her raised the stakes, taking it from a turn-on to erotic as hell, and they weren’t even naked. “Deal.”
“Yes. I couldn’t look away. Now it’s my turn,” she whispered, her breath teasing his ear. “Truth or dare.”
“Truth,” he said, because he wanted her to ask him about that night.
“That first time you took me to the Napa Grand, when we broke in that day, you leaned in to kiss me, and then stopped. Why?”
“Because the day before, Jeff told me that he was going to ask you out.” Marc had been considering the same thing, but his friend seemed so spun over Lexi he backed off. And had regretted it ever since. “And I didn’t kiss you on graduation night and every other time I saw you because he was my friend. And no matter how many times you broke up, you always got back together. And no matter what happened, no matter how much I wanted you, you’d always be my best friend’s girl.”
“Oh.” He heard her swallow. “Okay, since I know how you love risks, you are going bold on the last one. You choose dare.”
“I do?” he groaned.