The Crush (Oregon Wine Country #1)(41)

They exchanged a look laden with meaning.

She averted her gaze, looking down again at where she scooped handfuls of dirt onto her buried treasure. “What brought you running out here?”

He sat back on his heels and brushed the dirt from his hands. “It’s done.”

She rose and let out a little moan when her thigh muscles cramped from squatting. He reached out and put a supportive hand on her arm, the skin inside her elbow petal-soft.

“C’mon,” he said, his earlier eagerness returning. “Let me show you.”

In his eagerness to show her the finished room, he had to force himself to slacken his pace to match hers until she regained her legs. Slowing down made him mindful of the buzzing of green and ruby-throated hummingbirds in the pear trees, and the heavy, almost cloying scent of honeysuckle that enveloped them like a cloud. He realized that more and more, he was becoming seduced by Junie’s world.

When they got to the door, he made her close her eyes until he steered her exactly where he wanted her.

“Open them.”

Junie gasped and stepped into the room. Just as he’d known they would, her eyes gravitated toward its showpiece—the floor-to-ceiling picture window.

Behind her, Manolo glowed with pride as he watched her absorb the seamless view of the vineyards spreading out to the greater valley, bordered by the distant hills.

“What do you think?” He approached her hesitantly, milking the magic of the moment. Compared with the buzzing of the gardens, the tasting room was so quiet he could hear his own heart beating.

“Oh . . .” she managed to get out. When she looked over her shoulder at him, her awestruck expression was something he knew he would cherish. “This is better than anything I ever dreamed of. . . .”

He wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Junie pirouetted on her toes like a ballerina to face him. Her face crumpled, her wrists floated upward to encircle his neck, and she buried her head in his chest.

For Manolo—soldier, problem-solver, professional horndog—profound fulfillment conflicted with terror. He took her slim body into his arms as gingerly as if someone had just handed him a priceless object of art.

When he felt her melt into him, he relaxed a little, too. He held her in stillness, allowing the moment to soak in, to become part of him.

Junie’s hands skimmed up his neck, cupping the base of his skull. Her fingers combed through his hair. She tipped her head up until the bridge of her nose found the sculpted hollow beneath his chin.

Manolo’s fingers teased lightly across her T-shirt. Her warmth radiated through the featherweight fabric. Lust overcame caution, and his hands slipped beneath her shirt, straying no higher than her waist.

After all the exotic locales he’d explored in the last fifteen years, all the women he had known, his world contracted to the center of that one room he had built for this one woman. Her skin was like a warm beach in winter, the expanse of her back a fertile plain. The contours of her shoulders were ridges, cloaked in velvet. He closed his eyes and sniffed her hair. Her hippie dippy blend of patchouli and wildflowers swept him away to mysterious opium dens and sun-dappled meadows.

Wrapped in her embrace, the sun and the planets and the stars seemed to revolve around them.

His heart swelled. Tenderly, he pulled back, intending to take her in a kiss. Junie gazed up at him with soft eyes.

If she hadn’t suddenly blinked—flinched—Manolo wouldn’t even have noticed the bleating car horn.

Not now. Anytime but now.

Her fathomless blue eyes peered into his. “Thank you so much for this,” she breathed. “I’ll pay you back someday, I promise.”

He was confused. Her thank you sounded ominously final.

Then the self-imposed blinders that had limited him to tunnel vision for so long fell away, and he saw what he hadn’t allowed himself to see until this moment: a full range of thrilling possibilities.

The end of this project didn’t have to be the end of everything.

This could be the start of something brand new. Something he’d never dreamed possible.

But before he could find the right words to tell Junie, she stepped out of his embrace and held up a halting hand.

“I have guests.” Reluctantly she slipped away, leaving him with empty arms and an aching need.

Walking backward, she gestured at the room around her and said, in a wistful voice, “After all, that’s the point of this, isn’t it?”

As he watched her walk away, his phone rang. In a daze, he pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the screen. AMANDA, ENGINEERS WITH COMPASSION.

“Pack your Speedo. You’re going to Belize.”

In his enthusiasm to finish the tasting room, he’d almost forgotten about Belize.

“Manolo?”

“Here.” Through the window, the swaying of Junie’s rear end as she went out to meet her visitors wouldn’t let him think.

“This isn’t the reaction I expected. Did you hear what I said? You got the consultancy! I’ll be emailing you the contract for your signature as soon as we hang up.”

For a moment he’d been seduced by the potent blend of an arcane solstice ceremony, the buzz of honeybees, the essences of green herbs, and the arms of a captivating homesteader.

But Manolo knew better than to believe in magic. If he let himself fall under the spell of this place he would be trapped, just like generations of Santos men before him.