The Crush (Oregon Wine Country #1)(6)
Sam shook his head. “That’s all Junie needs, to have to start the porch over on top of everything else.”
“Nice-size house. Junie live there all by herself?”
Sam headed back to the path. “She’s still got her mom.”
There was a flash of wings as a hawk zoomed down on an unsuspecting robin.
“Kestrel,” said Sam, as they watched the raptor fly away with his prey. He turned to Manolo. “Let’s get something straight. We pushed the envelope today. No real harm done other than a few broken glasses. I’ll take the blame for not stopping after two wineries—I like giving Junie business when I can. Just don’t go getting any half-assed ideas. Junie’s not hookup material.”
Manolo almost ran into him. “Hookup material?”
“You know. ‘Hit it and quit it.’ You don’t need to add Junie to your list of Tinderellas. And don’t think I won’t hear about it if you try to sneak in under the radar. Clarkston’s a small town. We all look out for Junie. Same way her dad looked out for us.”
They walked on. Behind Sam, Manolo grinned. “Now, that’s going to sting for a while. I’m more highly evolved than that. Don’t you know? I actually think of myself as a feminist.”
“Hah!” Sam huffed without turning around. “I must’ve missed the memo.”
“In fact—no disrespect, Cap’n—but I’m thinking maybe you got a bad case of the hots for Juniper Hart, yourself.”
“Negative, Lieutenant,” Sam replied without missing a beat.
A rush of relief surged through Manolo, surprising him.
“I blew my chances with Junie Hart a long time ago.”
Now this was interesting. “Out with it. You can’t leave me hanging after a line like that.”
“If you got to know. Ninth grade, spring dance. You remember ninth grade. Hormones raging? Junie was still new, didn’t have many friends yet. On top of that, she was kind of quiet. When it came down to time for the dance, I still hadn’t gotten around to asking anybody, and she was one of the last ones left.”
“So you asked her.”
Sam nodded. “Strictly platonic. We danced, some with each other and a little with other people. I left the gym to get a Coke or something, and that’s when I got kidnapped by Mona Cruz.”
“Ah.” Manolo nodded. “No mother should ever name her daughter Mona. That’s just asking for it.”
“Roger that. Mona was a sophomore, but she should’ve been a junior. A silver ring in her bellybutton, jeans so tight you could see the outline of her new permit in her back pocket. She’d been giving me signs all year, but I was too dumb to do anything. Finally she saw her chance, and dragged me around the corner and down the hall. I was supposed to fight that off?”
“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, even if he’s only in ninth grade.”
“Next thing I know, Mona’s got her tongue down my throat, I’m copping my first feel—and Junie comes walking around the corner. Woody melted like a popsicle in an oven.”
“Christ.” Torn between Sam’s predicament and Junie’s hurt, Manolo’s face twisted in a half grin, half grimace. “At least you went to your ninth grade dance.”
“What?” asked Sam. “You couldn’t get a date?”
If only Manolo could put a humorous spin on his own freshman dance. But even after all these years, there was nothing remotely funny about missing out on the cardinal event of his high school career to do what he did every Friday night, which was work. Even worse was when clusters of his classmates clamored into his family’s restaurant after the dance ended. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never be able to un-see all the other guys and their cute dates, un-hear their exclusive laughter over all the fun that he’d missed. Scribbling down their food orders, scurrying to fill them, he had never felt so left out, before or since.
“I don’t think I had a single date all through high school. My old man was unrelenting. All we ever did was work. My sisters didn’t date, either. Two of my sisters ended up marrying the first guys that came along after graduation, for better or worse. I hightailed it in the opposite direction.”
“You more than made up for lost time,” Sam joked.
“You could say that.” Manolo grinned unapologetically.
“Anyway, now I hear Mona’s got kids by two different baby daddies,” said Sam, going back to his story. “And I got my sights set on a full-bodied red with legs that’d make you cry.”
Well now. This is a good sign. Manolo had been concerned that the only people Sam trusted anymore were the ones he’d served with. Covert assignments that ran a couple years over time tended to mess with a man’s head like that. He slung an arm over his compatriot’s shoulders. “Why, Samuel, you old rascal, you.” Maybe Sam’s invisible wounds were finally starting to heal.
Sam grinned, glued his eyes to his feet, and endured Manolo’s brusque, one-armed squeeze.
“But I meant what I said earlier,” he added earnestly. “Bad as we pissed Junie off today, we take care of our own around here. You two would never work. She’s got enough aggravation.”
“That big-brother act wouldn’t have anything to do with old ninth-grade guilt, would it?”