The Crush (Oregon Wine Country #1)(44)
He blinked into focus the horizon beyond the Clarkston Savings Bank that sat across the street from his apartment. Something about the Willamette defied the quiet, pastoral quality of an ordinary agricultural zone. He felt it wherever he walked, an energy humming just beneath the surface.
At first, he’d dismissed it as the shock of the new. Every unexplored place gave Manolo a rush. But then weeks had passed. He’d learned his way around the valley, started recognizing landmarks. Maybe he was getting sentimental, at the ripe old age of thirty-four, but this time the sensation didn’t go away.
Analyzing topography was his specialty. He noticed things other people didn’t. For instance, the ridgelines and valleys back east were packed together tighter than prom night. Here, the landscape rolled out gently, past Douglas fir, feathering softly out from a point like Christmas trees in a children’s book, to the horizon of snow-capped peaks.
So he did some research. The Appalachians are old—four hundred eighty million years old. The Coastal Range is much younger—only forty million. Twelve times younger. Was that what gave the Willamette Valley its youthful feeling . . . a sense of untapped potential, as if anything could happen, and the best was yet to come?
Then there were the unique layers of Willamette soil, basalt on top of lava on top of ancient ocean floor. Junie said that and the maritime climate were the secrets to her wine. It went against logic, but he couldn’t shake the sense that anything rooted in that soil could produce miracles.
Chapter Twenty-five
An hour into the Clarkston Splash, a casual observer would have thought Manolo Santos was having the time of his life . . . quaffing beers with the guys, competing to see whose cannonballs could make the women scream the loudest, run the farthest. No one would have guessed he was paying more attention to the area outside the chain-link fence than inside it.
Dusk was falling. Manolo estimated the crowd at fifty, give or take. Keval and Poppy, Junie’s closest friends, were there. Sophia, the therapist who was nicknamed Red and whom Sam had a thing for, was poised poolside holding her plastic wineglass. Whew, Manolo whistled admiringly under his breath. Legs for days, just like Sam said.
So where was Junie? Asking would only start tongues wagging. He’d just have to wait.
Manolo’s volleyball team was up by two when his ears detected an approaching vehicle. It was his turn to serve. He spiked it, then glanced toward the sight of the flame-blue pickup roaring toward the pool area.
When it reached the entrance, its driver stomped on the brakes. The rear end fishtailed around as the truck came to a screeching halt across two spaces.
Conversation stopped. The volleyball rolled out of bounds, unnoticed, while the truck bounced on its struts and the dust settled. Over on the board above the churning water, a swimmer poised to swan dive changed her mind at the last second, teetering precariously on one foot.
The alpha driver jumped down out of the cab and paraded around the hood. He was tall and undeniably handsome in his aviators and leather jacket, worn in all the right places.
“I’d love to take that bad boy for a spin,” Keval breathed over the pop song playing in the background.
“The truck?” asked Poppy, eyes glued to the spectacle.
Daryl held open the passenger door, strategically positioned to showcase the emergence of its occupant like a butterfly from a cocoon.
The crowd held its collective breath as a pointed and polished toe laced into a strappy sandal dipped out.
“Who’s that?” Heath drawled, craning his neck.
Daryl had timed their arrival for that moment when the sun’s long rays lent a golden glow to everything in its path. A tanned leg was followed by a yellow sundress, fitted to a waist the span of a man’s hands, and a head of glossy seal-brown hair.
“There’s something you thought you’d never see,” murmured Rory.
“What?” Keval asked. “Junie Hart with Daryl Decaprio? Or Junie, all decked out for a Vogue cover shoot?”
“Either,” Poppy said, wide-eyed.
Manolo’s jaw clenched. She was killing him in that dress. For once, he couldn’t fake his usual careless smile. He didn’t even try.
With her weighty canvas bag in one hand and Junie’s arm in the other, Daryl led his queen toward them, and the crowd parted as if a bridal couple was marching down the aisle.
Her lips glistened with a hint of color, her lashes had been curled and lengthened until they almost brushed her freshly groomed brows. Even the most polished New York diva had nothing on her. Yet her expression was as inscrutable as the Sphinx.
Manolo sent her a silent plea. What the hell are you doing?
Daryl broke the silence with a loud slap to Heath’s back. “Hope you saved me some brewskis.” He found a bench to deposit the bag on. Then he abandoned Junie without a word to stroll over to the clutch of people standing at the opposite end of the pool and pop open the dripping cold growler someone handed him.
Manolo’s muscles bunched in anticipation of springing toward Junie, but Keval, Red, and Poppy beat him to it. They closed ranks around her, shutting him out of their inner circle.
He felt the vein in his neck throbbing. Thank god his burgers needed attention. That gave him something to do with his hands, instead of marching over there and waterboarding Daryl Decaprio for no reason except for that jacket and the fact that Daryl had had the unmitigated audacity to lay his hand on Junie Hart’s arm.