She padded into her bedroom, proceeded to dry off, and wrapped up in a thick warm robe.
Once all bundled up, she walked down the short hall into the rest of her apartment, really just a large room with a narrow kitchen along one side, separated from the rest of the space by a short counter top. The end-unit apartment wasn’t the biggest, but it had nice hardwood floors. Her downstairs neighbor was a home furnishing store, so there was never any noise at night, and her other neighbor was a middle aged couple who kept to themselves.
Tori pulled a frozen dinner from her freezer and noticed she was out of ice cream. She closed the door and made a note on the shopping list magnetized to the front of the fridge. The paper board box made a zipping sound as she ripped the package open, and the plastic wrap made a satisfying pop pop pop as she punched holes in the top. Tori set the temperature on her small oven, and slid the frozen meal in, on a cookie sheet. She set a timer on her phone, and went to lay down for a micro nap, while she dried off and her dinner cooked.
And after all her preparations, it looked like it was going to turn into a crappy Les night.
Tori’s heart sank when Les walked into the dance school escorting a beautiful woman with languid dark eyes, full red lips, and a cloud of dark hair. Tori instantly wished she hadn’t selected a body contour dress tonight. It had been a bold choice, because she wanted to make a bold move. Now she felt like the bad example in how to dress for your body type while Les’s date was the example of how to make a bodycon dress actually work.
She slapped her best fake smile on and asked Lucinda if she wanted to dance. They were down a man, no Miguel tonight and an extra woman. Joy. Tori refused to let this get to her, at least not during the hour she had with music and movement. She could drown herself in vodka and ice cream when she got home. Well, vodka, since she didn’t have any ice cream.
After Lucinda, Tori danced with Trey.
Les danced with the goddess twice before he let himself be taken in by the geriatric set.
Tori couldn’t help but notice the men were all clamoring to dance with Les’s date. She was gorgeous, so of course they were. Tori was partnered with Lucinda or Pricilla when she wanted to dance with Les. Even though there was nothing in the rules that said she couldn’t ask him just because he’d arrived with another woman, she just couldn’t.
The one dance she got with Hank, he was so concerned with Les’s date that Tori ended up bowing out before the song was over.
The night couldn’t be over soon enough. For the first time in the month Tori had been coming, the evening dragged. Finally Sara called last song, and Tori made a beeline for Charles. His wife got there first. Tori turned to see who else was available. Les.
Okay, she would do it because she didn’t have any other options.
“I guess it’s you and me for this one,” she said as she approached him.
Les shook his head and sat down. “Not this time, Tori. I’m done for the night. It’s been a long day.” He nodded to the empty chair next to him. “Sit, enjoy the music.”
Tori huffed out a sardonic half chuckle. “I’m going home. Let everyone know I said good night.” She offered a small wave to Pricilla, lifted her coat from the line of hooks along the wall, and pushed through the door.
She didn’t pause to put on her jacket but slid her arms in as she walked. Picking up her feet took extra effort. They suddenly felt like lead.
“Hey, wait up. I’ll walk you home.” Les ran up next to her.
“Why?”
“So that you don’t have to walk alone in the dark. So that we can talk. So…” Les shrugged.
“You won’t get back before the song’s over.”
“So?”
“Your date. Won’t she be wondering where you went?”
Les guffawed, not nearly as nice on her ears as his laughter. “Sofi? She’s Hank’s girlfriend. Definitely not my date. Hell, she isn’t even my type.” Tori had seen Les with women who looked like that numerous times. “Oh and your type is?”
“I like women who can form complete sentences. You thought she was my date?”
“Well, you did walk in with her, and then you spent all your time dancing with her,” Tori said, abashed.
“I wanted Sara to be able to show her how to dance, but we got there late. Hank sucks at teaching anything. I mean, he’s not that smooth on his feet anyway, so I had to show her the basics. The tops of my feet are beat to hell from her pointy-ass shoes.”
“So Hank brought a girlfriend to dancing? I guess he was trying to impress her?” Tori asked.
“Or show her off. Or both. He won’t admit it, but I think he really likes her. He even went to Sunday dinner at her mother’s house.”
“Sounds serious.”
Les tilted his head and raised an eyebrow in a noncommittal answer.
“Here you are.” They stopped at the bottom of the stair leading up to the landing in front of her apartment.
Tori’s stomach flipped. Should she ask him up for a drink? Crap, what did she have to offer? Tap water. She couldn’t invite him up for tap water. She had some vodka in the freezer, but how much? Maybe she should lean in to kiss him on the cheek.
As she panicked over her next move, Les patted her on the shoulder.
Ah, right, she was the shoulder pat kind of girl. Hey, buddy, how ya doing, buddy, there ya go, buddy, see ya later, buddy.
“I’ll see you next delivery, right? Or will I?” Les asked.
Tori shrugged. “I’ve started working the farmer’s market for Penny, so it just depends on who is on the schedule. I’ll make the delivery rounds a few times each month to check in on everything, but it won’t be nearly as often.”
“Then I’ll catch you at Carnita Joe’s or something.” He lifted his chin in a nod.
“Yeah, I’ll see you.”
The stairs were impossible to climb. But somehow she managed to run up them and into her apartment without a backward glance or one last wave at her door.
***
Tori sat with her feet up. Her laptop was open on the table in front of her, open, with a movie streaming. Her feet hurt from working at the farmer’s market all day, and she desperately needed to find a sun hat so she could continue to be outdoors for this job. If Penny was going to insist she spend time working the farmer’s markets she was going to need better sun protection than just sunscreen. And she was going to make Penny pay for it.
While the “social” in her job title did mean talking to people, it meant talking to them online. Of course, if she brought it up, Penny would counter with the “Special Projects” portion of her job title.
It was hard to balance working the markets and minding the media outlets on her phone. It made her look like she was slacking off and playing on Facebook instead of selling vegetables. Well, she was, sort of. But she was paid to interact with clients and fans online. Tori wanted to make sure that the sixty new followers PnK had gained on Instagram remained. If PnK ignored them, they might not stick around. But if PnK responded to their shout-outs with a happy quirky reply, Tori increased their chances of getting a second share.
Tomorrow she would bow out of accompanying Karen on deliveries and spend a high-quality day in the office. Or not. Depended, really, who was on the delivery route for the day. Tori ground her hand across her face. She should know this by now, but with her focus on the farmer’s markets, she couldn’t remember the delivery run for the week. Was tomorrow a Napa Grand day or not?
She hadn’t seen Les at all last week, except for the dance class. And she hadn’t enjoyed that at all, believing the hot chick was his date. Not that Hank couldn’t get a hot chick, but she just didn’t view Hank that way. Meanwhile, Les was gorgeous and always had his arm around some chick, so Tori had assumed.
She had ass-oomed herself right into a depressed and pissed-off state. And when she had no choice but to ask Les to dance, he had said no.
Face it, you are a friend, with a capital F. Her best course of action was
to get over him pronto.
She picked up her phone and typed up a quick text. How am I supposed to get over the hot guy?
Maybe she needed to take a page out of Ali’s playbook: thick necks, ripped abs, no brains, and no need to remember their name because they were tourists anyway and going home the next morning.
She should get all dolled up and see if she could follow through with that plan. How would she feel if she woke up in some guy’s hotel room in the morning? Or should she bring the big meat puppet here? Ew, no. She shuddered. She did not want to think about letting some oaf know where she lived.
Les knows where you live, the back of her brain taunted. Yeah, and he wasn’t some oaf either. No, Les was a friend, and the sooner she came to terms with that, the sooner she could get over him.
Chapter 10
The light drizzle was unexpected, but the weatherman had said to expect the possibility of rain this week. With rain, Tori would believe it when she saw it. It was time to believe. Typically the clouds blew in, taunted the region, and then continued farther east to dump on the mountains. Today they hung around. Besides, it was a little late in the year to expect a heavy rain. The rain they were getting made for a miserable and chilly day to be working outside.
The crowd at today’s farmer’s market was thin. probably staying indoors out of the wet. Sales were noticeably down. Hopefully it wouldn’t be enough of an impact for Penny to pull the plug on the entire project. They were now vending at two markets and waiting to hear if they’d been accepted into a third one. Penny had yet to let Tori know if this was a success or not.
If not, Tori would be out of a job in a few months, and that meant she needed to start applying now. If Peaz’n’Karrit’s Farm had the numbers to support financial growth through Tori’s employment, then Penny would qualify again for the grant that funded Tori’s salary. But Tori wasn’t even certain if this was all worth it. Maybe she should be looking for another job anyway. After all, this was not what she expected when she’d taken the position. She had been hired to create, grow, and maintain the farm’s social media. She understood why she needed to go on deliveries every few weeks. It was a great way for her to make contact with and show off their clients. But then Penny had tacked “Special Projects” onto her job description, and it felt like nothing had been going right.
Her phone pinged with a notification. PnK had been mentioned in a post from the Napa Grand Hotel.
Les’s gorgeous face smiled up at her, surrounded by bushels and bushels of lavender. Her tummy did a little flip. She needed to get over him. Well, good, his delivery came in, and he was a happy man. That “special project” had been a fiasco. It shouldn’t have taken her three weeks to track down a lavender supplier. She hadn’t even known where to start. It was all good now, but that initial failure was probably in her file: Tori is unable to locate a source of edible lavender while standing in the middle of a lavender field.
Sigh. Les. Double sigh.
She should have been there for that delivery, not sitting in the rain hawking deformed carrots.
“Does this taste any different?” A woman held up a misshapen zucchini.
Tori slid off her perch and stepped closer to her side of the display. “Not at all. They look a little weird, but once chopped up and cooked, they taste the same.”
“But it doesn’t look right. At the grocery store they all look, you know, like zucchini. These are all curly. It looks like it tastes funny.”
Tori smiled. This was the perfect teaching opportunity, the whole theme of the PnK market booth. “True beauty is on the inside, and that goes for veggies, too.” She selected a bifurcated carrot. “Take this little guy, for instance. Your standard grocery store won’t carry it because it won’t sell. But do you have any idea what your carrots originally looked like in a piece of carrot cake? Would you be able to tell the difference between a cake made with this, or, say, a picture-perfect one?”
The lady nodded. “I hadn’t thought of that. Are all the vegetables at the farmer’s market going to be like this?”
Tori pasted on her get-me-through-this smile. “No, you’ll be able to find normal looking produce at other booths.” Another sale lost.
She was going to need booze to survive this day. It was wine country, so it was totally within her rights to start day-drinking. Or maybe she just needed to dress up and get a margarita. She hadn’t done either of those in days.
She picked up her phone and sent a quick text to Ali and Erin. Then she did her Social Media Manager job and shared Les’s tweet about being a happy chef with loads of lavender.
Peaz’n’Karrit’s Farm loves to make you smile. Our pleasure putting in the extra effort. P.S. I’m really looking forward to more of your lavender delights.
She hit send before she thought about it. Was that too flirty? Would Les take it the wrong way?
Argh, she needed to not care if he did. He would just have to get over it if he thought she was flirting with him, and she needed to figure out how to stop. More stupid f-words, flirt, friend, frustrated, faulty, farfetched, fucked up.
Tori picked up one of the odder shaped zucchini. It was particularly phallic—which she did not need a reminder of right now. Powerless to fight it, she started laughing, wishing someone was here to be silly with over the incredible way nature loved to make this very particular shape. Clearly Mother Nature loved the D.
She had an idea.
A few minutes later, Tori had drawn up a sign—“Dirty Veggies, Adults Only”—and taped it over a small display bin.
Of course the first person to look was a man. His roar of laughter made Tori’s day. He purchased a selection of items from the bin. One mother of a particularly inquisitive child was aghast that they would have anything so prominently displayed until Tori showed her that they were actual dirty vegetables, covered with more of the field mud than the rest of their selection. Any other implications were imaginary. Flushed from embarrassment, the mother ushered her child away from the booth.
Her phone pinged. Ali had replied. It had taken her long enough. Good—they would meet her at Carnita Joe’s.
Within an hour Tori had to refill the dirty veggies basket twice. She needed to find another slightly twisted pun to try out on the customers. She found another phallic shaped veggie. No, that would be crude. Or would it?
She wrapped her fingers around the bulbous zucchini and…
Yep, too much, too far, too rude.
***
Les sat on his motorcycle with the engine off in the parking lot of Carnita Joe’s. Tori was in his line of vision, and headed this way. He should get off the bike, say hi, and buy her a beer. The lavender delivery this afternoon had been exceptional.
He hadn’t realized until this second, seeing her hair bounce around her shoulders, that he’d missed her when the flowers had come in. Why wasn’t today’s big delivery a social media moment, one deserving of her attention?
She wore a swishy little skirt tonight. One that emphasized the boom-boom-boom of her backside when she walked. He felt a sinking in his stomach and a tightening in his groin. Looking down at his crotch, he said, “What is it, boy, see something you like?”
He scanned the parking lot and returned his gaze to Tori. His cock throbbed.
“Dude, it’s just Tori,” he chastised his anatomy.As she approached the front of the restaurant, a crowd of men blocked the entrance. They looked like a bunch of preppy fraternity boys and they kept getting in her way. At first he thought it was bad timing, but then he realized they were doing it intentionally.
She tried to walk around the group, but her passage was thwarted. She said something, and one of the larger guys loomed over her. When she backed up a few steps, she bumped into another one of the men, who moved in behind her.
Les saw red when the asshole flipped the hem of her skirt. She smacked his hand hard. It was about to get ugly.
Confront or deflect. Those were his choices.
A confrontation would de
finitely result in him getting beaten. A punch or two was no big deal, but Tori could get injured. No matter how mixed up his feelings over her were right now, that would never be okay. He needed to get her away from those guys.
He slid over the hood of the car blocking the group, took a long step, ignored the men, and scooped Tori into his arms.
The electric charge that surged through his body left him breathless.
He barely managed to say, “Hello, beautiful,” before his lips were on hers.
His body raged. Every cell screamed, “Finally, you asshole!”
She was soft and warm and pliant, and his arms never wanted to let her go. He crushed her to his chest and his heart pounded with joy. His balls clenched with need; his manhood, erect and ready for action. She fit like his missing half, like no other woman had ever fit before.
Les sank his fingers into her curls, the flat ribbons of hair that he wanted to pull just to watch them spring back. Now he recognized that urge for what it really was, a desire to touch her. Any excuse to be close.
Her hand fisted in his shirt, and she either was holding on from shock or pulling him closer. Les opted for the pulling closer choice and redoubled his embrace. Holding her even tighter. Deepening the kiss.
Her soft lips tasted like peaches. She worked his lower lip and moaned slightly as he slipped his tongue in to dance with hers. His lips were no longer his own. They were forever hers, and he never wanted to stop kissing her.
In the history of first kisses, and Les had more than a few, this was the most perfect. The way she sucked on his tongue, his body felt it in is cock. And that little soft noise she made, again straight to his groin. If she touched any part of his body right now, he might just explode like some pubescent teen groping naked breasts for the first time. Hell, she felt like the first time, the first time he had ever felt so perfectly wrapped around a woman, the first time a woman’s breast crushed ideally against his chest. Tori was his first, the first woman he had fallen completely in love with, and he was only now cluing in that this is what these feelings were. He was an idiot.
St. Helena Vineyard Series: Sweet Satisfaction (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 7