The girls giggled some more, until Slade found himself chuckling, too.
“This has been fun,” Christine said. “But it’s almost ten o’clock and I need to get out to the winery and spray for skunk again.”
He patted Faith’s knee. “Come on, girls. Let’s find Flynn and Truman.”
Because Slade was in need of some masculine grounding and space without high heels or feathers or closets.
* * *
THE LAST TIME Christine had hung out in her bedroom with a guy, she’d been thirteen and her father had just bought her a new video-game console. Her older brother and his friends had camped out on her bed for days.
Having Slade in her bedroom was extremely different. Often when she’d interacted with him before, he appeared stiff and standoffish, about to turn up his nose and dismiss her at any moment. This morning, his nervousness had been refreshing. His arguments for winery growth compelling. His warm papa-bear personality captivating.
And every once in a while—not often enough to be sure—she caught him eyeing her speculatively with a look of desire that spoke volumes. I could be in deep trouble here.
That zing of awareness made uncovering the layers beneath Slade’s perfect veneer even more fascinating. A worried papa bear. She suppressed a sigh. There was nothing wrong with those girls a heavy dose of fatherly love wouldn’t cure. They were testing him, plain as white bread. Grace and Faith would talk to him soon. No girl could hold her silence longer than a few days with such a good-hearted man.
When Christine arrived at the winery, she power washed the main building’s floor again. The skunk smell was receding, although she suspected it wouldn’t be the last time she had to spray the place down.
Later, using the tasting-room counter as a desk, Christine stood and shuffled through paperwork, playing with combinations of expensive tractors versus inexpensive tractors, new forklifts versus used forklifts, and different types of truck scales. Every time she added a column and compared it to Slade’s original budget, she went back and changed something else. She ended up with two budgets—one that was her ideal, and one that was a compromise between her budget and Slade’s original plan. Then she sent out more queries about the positions she had available.
She was flipping through a file of the winery’s legal documents, just starting to read their application for bottling permits, when the tasting-room door opened, practically giving Christine a heart attack.
“Hello! Remember me? Mayor Larry Finkelstein.”
She drew a breath, closed the folder, and put it on a stack of others she’d already gone through.
Thankfully, the mayor was fully clothed. He wore flip-flops and the kind of controlled smile that said he wanted something. “I thought we should discuss your little winery, since we’re neighbors.”
Christine invited him to sit on the window seat across the room. She really needed to find time to furnish the place. But more importantly, she had to find out what the mayor wanted.
“I know you still have much to do—set up the bottling facility, landscape the grounds, put up signage at the end of the driveway.” Mayor Larry’s smile hinged upward at signage.
“Whatever we decide to put up—” and she was a little surprised Slade hadn’t installed a sign yet “—you can rest assured it will be sophisticated and in keeping with town ordinances.”