by Jayci Lee
“That’s perfect, because Lucien and I are coming for a visit,” she announced.
“Today?”
“No time like the present. If you’re free, that is.”
“My evening is wide open.” He was thrilled about Aria and Lucien’s sudden visit even as his suspicions grew.
“I am absolutely not coming over to check up on you,” she said as though she’d read his mind. “Landon would never ask me to do something like that. He trusts you because you’re a big grown-up now.”
Seth rolled his eyes. Landon couldn’t help himself. He would hover and fuss over him until they were both old men with walkers. “Do what you gotta do, Aria. Landon’s an asshole, but this will just go to show him that he could finally lay off. The restaurant is coming along incredibly well.”
“I think Landon wanted to make sure you were doing okay with such a big change coming up in your life. He wouldn’t have trusted you with overseeing the completion of the restaurant if he didn’t trust you with his life,” she said, loyally defending her friend. “Besides, I want to get my fill of you before you abandon all of us for Paris.”
“I can’t wait to see you guys.” Seth chuckled. He adored Aria, and he definitely wanted to spend time with her and Lucien before he moved. “Is it safe to assume that you’re covering dinner as usual? Because all I could manage for a dinner party is takeout.”
“Don’t you dare ruin my fun. I’m just going to throw some things together for us.”
Which translated into a gourmet feast. Tara loved Aria’s cooking. That’s it. He could invite her over for a dinner with their friends. He was actually surprised that Aria hadn’t suggested it yet. And it was definitely nondate territory. “And by us, you’re including Tara, right?”
“Of course. How could I forget Tara? I would love to invite her gorgeous twin brothers, too, but I don’t think they can shut down the brewery for the night to come play with us.”
Seth heard Lucien’s muted voice in the background say, “The gorgeous twins can’t come? That’s a damn shame.”
“Don’t be jealous, baby,” Aria told her husband. “You’re handsomer than the two of them combined. I was just saying. You know, objectively speaking.”
“Stop with your lovers’ spat,” Seth cut in. “So should I ask Tara to join us around seven?”
“Yes, we’ll be there by four to prepare dinner, but we can eat around seven.”
“Should I get the wine?”
“Are you trying to insult Lucien?” Aria made a good show of sounding horrified. “We’ll be bringing a box of his vineyard’s finest wines. But do ask Tara to bring a few growlers of her best ales. I’ll make some beer-friendly appetizers to pair with them.”
“Got it. I’ll see you guys soon,” Seth said.
“We can’t wait, sweetie.” Sometimes she seemed to forget that he wasn’t the gawky teenager he was when they’d first met.
And like the sap that he was, the first thing he did when he got off the phone was to text Tara.
SETH: Can you get tonight off?
TARA: Why? I already took too many days off for my sprained ankle. I should be working extra days.
SETH: Aria and Lucien are coming and want to invite you over for dinner.
It wasn’t his idea at all.
TARA: Ugh. How can I resist Aria and Lucien?
SETH: Hey … and you can resist me?
There was a pause before she responded.
TARA: You know I can’t resist you.
Her breathless cries as she fell apart in his arms echoed in his mind. No, she can’t resist me. A lazy smile curved his lips at the thought.
SETH: Just making sure. So can you come over? Around seven?
TARA: I’ll prevail upon the kindness of my brothers’ hearts. Again.
“Yes.” Seth pumped his fist, extraordinarily proud of his accomplishment.
Then he heard a small cough behind him. He spun around to find the interior designer standing at the door of the restaurant’s office. Ah, yes. He hadn’t closed the door.
“The chairs are here,” the designer said with the slightest arch of his brow. “Do you want to check them out before we accept delivery?”
“Sure. I’ll come with you,” Seth said, keeping his expression bland.
He stood back and let the interior designer take charge of inspecting the chairs since it was his area of expertise. Once the chairs were accepted and lined up in one corner of the dining hall, Seth called it a day and headed back to the house.
He was used to coming home to an empty house, but his place was a minimalist two-bedroom condo. It seemed happy to be empty. But Aubrey and Landon’s house seemed lonely and sad without its family. Suddenly missing his brother and his new family, Seth climbed the staircase and headed to his room. It hit him that he would be moving across the sea in a couple weeks, and he would rarely get to see them. And he would miss and worry about his mom.
I’ll miss Tara like hell.
The thought stopped him midstep. He could barely stand not seeing her for a few days. Would he be able to turn around and leave her in two weeks? Fuck. It wasn’t a matter of what he could or could not do. He didn’t have a choice. He resumed his trek up the stairs. There was no point in torturing himself about the future. He had her for now, and he would make the most of their remaining time together.
When he reached his room, he headed straight for the shower. He bowed his head under the hot spray and let the water stream down his face and the rest of his body. He washed away his sudden punch-in-the-gut panic and focused on the evening ahead with Tara and his friends. After drying off, he pulled on a pair of jeans and a charcoal pullover and jogged down the stairs. Just as he reached the bottom of the stairs the doorbell rang, announcing the arrival of guests.
Seth swung the front door open with a big grin on his face, only to witness a makeout session in progress. He immediately proceeded to close it shut, but Lucien slapped his hand against it, his laughter floating into the house through the narrow gap. Seth opened the door again but stood blocking their path with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Hey, is this the way you treat your friends?” Aria said, bending down to pick up the lemons that had spilled out of a shopping bag—the bag she’d obviously dropped on the ground to wrap her arms around her husband’s neck.
“It only took me a few seconds to open the door. How do you end up shoving your tongues into each other’s mouths in that short amount of a time?” Seth said with almost convincing indignation. “Have some control, guys.”
Lucien kissed Aria again for good measure, and smiled happily. “Your time will come.”
“Now you’re quoting a fortune cookie.” Seth threw his hands up in the air. “I give up.”
He stepped aside to let his friends come in, giving them belated hugs. It was a good thing Lucien hadn’t dropped his bags, because he seemed to be carrying the bulk of the groceries that was destined to become their dinner.
“So how have you been doing out here all on your own?” Aria said teasingly, while rummaging through the groceries. “You must miss your social life.”
“Not to mention your tall, leggy friends.” Lucien joined in the fun.
“I’ve been doing great. Early nights and celibacy do wonders for one’s health,” he said wryly. Aria and Lucien burst into laughter. Like most people in his life, they were firm believers in his playboy persona.
He’d been partly serious, though. Slowing down his hectic life and enjoying the calm of Weldon had unknotted some of his tension. He’d been running too fast to take in the blurry images of his life. Everything was quieter, slower here.
Then there was Tara. Being with her made everything around him too clear, too bright. It was bringing into focus his deliberately hazy life. He was having trouble ignoring his increasing need to reassess his life. His mind was clamoring to conjure up what-ifs that would include Tara. But he wasn’t going there. The shortcut to heartbreak lay that way.
&n
bsp; Wiping her eyes, Aria continued to arrange the ingredients on the kitchen island, while sticking others in the fridge. “So how’s Tara doing?”
“She misses Aubrey.” He cleared his throat. He didn’t know if he could sound casual talking about Tara. He wanted to shout to the world how amazing she was. “But otherwise, it’s business as usual. She mentioned something about getting started on a new seasonal brew.”
“So you guys keep in touch?” Lucien asked, handing Seth a glass of red he’d just poured.
Seth cleared his throat again. When that didn’t work, he took a sip of his wine. “Well, she is the only person I know in Weldon. Besides, she’s been helping me with the restaurant’s website. Did you know she has a BA in graphic design?”
Now he was just blabbering. Shit. If Tara saw him bumbling around like this, she’d probably kill him. She was absolutely adamant about keeping their dating a secret.
“Really? So she didn’t always want to be a brewer?” Aria said, cocking her head to one side. “She seems like she was born for the job.”
Seth was this close to blurting that she’d originally started out as a viticulture and enology major, but that had been a private story that Tara had shared with him. And it didn’t seem like a lot people knew about her asshole ex.
He was acting like a nervous wreck just talking about her. How was he going to be when she showed up? Could he make it any less obvious that he was interested in Tara? But the truth was, he was more than interested. He was downright infatuated with her.
That was not good. Not good at all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Thank you so much, oppa.” Tara kissed Jack on the cheek for covering for her. Sometimes the perks of being the baby sister came in handy.
She couldn’t wait to hang out with Aria and Lucien, but she was dying to see Seth. She felt a bit shy about spending time with him after that night in Mammoth, but then again, maybe that was why her heart was racing to see him again. Good gracious, that was hot.
Her mind flooded with heated thoughts as she slid into her car and pulled out of the parking lot. Her phone dinged with a text from Roger, and she impatiently deleted it. There was only one man she hungered for right now.
Tara got to Aubrey and Landon’s house in record time and sprinted up the porch steps, unable to tame her desperation to be with Seth. Before she could knock, the front door swung open, and she was wrapped in a pair of strong arms.
“You’ve stayed away too long,” Seth growled before his lips crushed against hers.
Tara welcomed his hard, hungry kiss, because she was starving, too. She pushed him back against the door and proceeded to show him how much she’d missed him. He moaned against her sensual onslaught, and she growled like a wild thing, rejoicing in her conquest. She actually wanted to laugh triumphantly when she felt the evidence of his desire pushing persistently into her stomach. The validation that he wanted her as much as she wanted him was heady, and she didn’t want the kiss to end.
“Tara, wait.” Seth tried to avert her next kiss by turning his head but she grabbed his hair in her fists and turned him to face her again. “Baby, we really need to stop.”
“Not going to happen,” she said against his lips.
“If you kiss me one more time, I’m going to throw you over my shoulder, take you upstairs to my room, and make love to you until you can’t see straight,” Seth warned in a low, sexy voice. “Aria and Lucien might think it very strange that we’re not coming out of the room to join them for dinner.”
“Shit. I completely forgot that Aria and Lucien are here. I’m a horrible friend.”
“Not a horrible friend but maybe a horny one.”
“Shut up,” she said, punching him lightly on his shoulder. With her breathing slowing down to a semi-pant, she waved her hands in the general direction of his nether region. “Do you have all that under control?”
“Give me a minute.” He walked to one end of the porch and took deep breaths. They sounded unsteady at first, but slowly evened out. After a few more breaths, he returned to her side. “All right. Let’s see how long it takes for Aria to figure out what’s happening between us.”
“No, no. We can’t let her figure anything out. Quite honestly, even I don’t have us figured out. We need to be very careful. Don’t smile at me too much. And do not give me that look.”
“What look?”
“That look you’re giving me right now. Like you want to throw me down on your bed and have your way with me.”
“I can’t help it because that’s exactly what I want to do.”
“Well, stop it for just a few hours. Okay?” Her whole body flushed with desire, but they had to hold it together. “You promised to keep our dating a secret.”
“All right. I’ll do my best. I’ll undress you with my eyes at a later, more convenient time.”
“At a later, more convenient time, you can undress me with your hands and teeth,” she said in a husky voice.
“You’re so cruel. Do you know that?”
“Maybe a little, but I so enjoy watching your eyes turn nearly black when you’re turned on.”
“If you do anything remotely close to this, I’ll kiss you senseless with Aria and Lucien watching.”
“Sorry, sorry. I’ll behave. Okay?”
Seth mumbled something under his breath and opened the front door to let her through. As soon as she walked into the open kitchen, Tara realized she’d forgotten the beer in her frenzy to see Seth.
“Shit,” she said, covering her face with her hand.
“Well, hello. Nice to see you, too,” Aria teased, pulling Tara into a nice, tight hug. “What’s going on?”
“Hi, Aria. It is so great to see you, and your hubs. Hey, Lucien.” She waved at him. “But it just hit me that I forgot to bring the beer.”
“That’s a shame. We do love your beer. But it isn’t a catastrophe,” Lucien said, coming to stand beside Aria, tugging her close. “I brought plenty of wine to get all of us happily drunk.”
“Well, thank heavens for that.” Tara smiled at the couple. “I promise to visit you guys soon and bring over a keg of beer.”
“We’ll take that.” Aria high-fived her husband.
They were just so gosh darn cute. An invisible thumb pushed down on a pressure point in her heart, making it ache just so. The point where she felt her loneliness the keenest. But having Seth by her side eased the ache.
“It smells like foodie heaven in here.” Tara walked toward the kitchen island. “What do you have going?”
“Oh, a little of this and a little of that,” Aria said with a shrug.
“Well, madam.” Seth appeared at her side and twirled an imaginary mustache. “First, let me lead you to our table, where the antipasti have already been set out for us. It’s a charcuterie board large enough for a party of twenty with all the meats and cheeses you can imagine.”
Tara’s eyes widened at the beautiful sight. There were prosciutto and iberico in the mix, and myriad arrays of hard to soft cheeses. When she spotted both crumbly and creamy blue cheese, she nearly swooned. With the honey, preserves, and a variety of fruits and crackers, she could make dinner out of the charcuterie board alone. But alas, Aria had other nefarious plans to fatten her up.
“The primo will be bucatini all’Amatriciana. She’s generous with the chili flakes, so expect a robust kick,” Seth continued. Mmm. Bacon-y, tomato-y, spicy pasta. Tara had already been salivating at the salumi and cheeses, but she was all but drooling now. “The secondo will be osso buco with a side of roasted seasonal vegetables.”
“Don’t tell me. She even made dessert, right?”
“Why, of course. The dinner won’t be complete without the dolce.” Seth did a decent job of looking mildly outraged. “The dessert will be Limoncello mousse cake.”
“Oh, my goose bumps, Aria. So you threw this together just like that?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say just like that.” Aria laughed. “Good food takes time. I�
�ve been in the kitchen for nearly three hours.”
“And you still look like you walked out of a fashion magazine. Oh, I give up.” Tara threw up her hands.
“Ha! Says the hottie who turns heads everywhere she goes,” Aria retorted, shaking her head.
“Yes, yes. Both of you are ridiculously gorgeous,” Seth jumped in. “But Lucien and I helped, too. I set out that spectacular charcuterie board, and Lucien poured the wine to keep our chef happy.”
“That’s awesome. Thank you, everyone.” Tara was actually impressed. The meat and cheese board was beautifully laid out. He really did have an artist’s eye. “Whereas I had one job to do…”
Seth chuckled and tousled her hair. He’d become increasingly affectionate toward her, and it felt normal for them to constantly touch, nudge, and bump each other. But to Aria’s keen eyes, it was a new development. And her raised eyebrow told Tara that it was noted with interest. Seth awkwardly stepped aside from Tara, and she busied herself rearranging random items on the island.
“So when do we eat?” Tara blurted a little louder than necessary.
“Right now,” Aria announced, clapping her hands together. Tara was grateful she didn’t say anything about Seth and her unintentional PDA. “Let’s enjoy the charcuterie that our host set out like an artist’s palette.”
“I know. I almost feel bad messing it up,” Tara said, popping a chunk of blue cheese into her mouth. “Almost.”
Everyone started out taking a small slice here and there to maintain the gorgeous layout as long as possible, but once the wine was poured, they all dug in properly. Tara had to remind herself to savor each bite instead of wolfing down the whole board. She didn’t want to miss out on the feast to come. But cheese.
“The pasta water’s boiling,” Aria said, stretching her neck to get a good look at the stove. “Tara, do you want to keep me company while I put together the pasta?”
“I would love to.” Tara stood and piled her plate with more meat and cheese to hold her over.
“Hey, leave some for us,” Seth teased.