Taste (Cloverleigh Farms, #7)(60)

As I was setting the platter on the marble kitchen island, I heard a knock on the back door, which I’d left unlocked for Winnie. Then it opened. “You here?” she called out.

“I’m here. Come on in.” I brought the two glasses of wine to the island, sat on one of the counter stools, and ditched my flats. “How were the roads?”

“Not too bad. Dex actually let me drive myself.” She took off her boots, tossed her coat onto the back of a chair and came and sat on the stool next to me. After work, she’d changed into jeans and a blue cowl-necked sweater that brought out the color of her eyes. It was a shade that would have looked nice on Gianni too, although his eyes were a deeper blue than Winnie’s. “But I have to text him when I’m leaving, even though he’s already asleep.”

“He’s working tomorrow?” Dex was a firefighter and worked twenty-four-hour shifts, starting at seven in the morning.

“Yes. So I’m not in a rush to get back tonight, since he’s gone to bed already.” Her eyes gleamed over the rim of her glass as she took a sip. “Tell me everything. The long version.”

I started with the disastrous dinner at Fiona Duff’s house—how everyone had paid so much attention to Gianni, the way I’d struggled to hold anyone’s attention, the offer he’d gotten from Fiona at the end of the night.

Winnie paused with an olive halfway to her mouth. “No way. She offered the spot to him?”

“Not just the spot, but the cover.” I shoved a dried apricot in my mouth. “I was in the car already, so I didn’t hear it or I’d probably have died on the spot.”

“So he told you about it when he came out?”

“No. He waited until we’d already had sex, of course. He must have felt guilty or something.”

“Okay, back up.” Winnie reached for another olive. “I need to know how the sex got started. When you two left here on Monday, you swore you wouldn’t sleep with him if he was the last guy on earth.”

“And I meant it.” I frowned. “It must have been the blizzard. I think I lost my mind.”

Her eyes grew big as I told her about pulling off the road, finding the Pineview Motel, and discovering our room only had one bed.

Winnie grinned. “You must have about died. I wish I could have seen your face.”

“I was not pleased,” I said, able to laugh about it now. “The two of us stood there staring at it, and there wasn’t even a couch or anything for one of us to sleep on. We had to share the bed.”

“So then what?”

“Then there was some crying, some wine, some junk food.”

“Crying?”

“I was upset about the evening—and mind you, I didn’t even know about the offer he’d gotten yet. I was just disappointed in myself and embarrassed that I’d let such a great opportunity slip through my fingers somehow.”

“I’m positive that had nothing to do with you and everything to do with Lick My Plate and Fiona Duff’s bottom line.”

“Maybe. Anyway, we just hung out—sat on the bed and drank wine and ate shit and played Truth or Drink on my phone.”

Winnie laughed. “Did you learn anything interesting about him?”

“Not really.” I munched on a cracker. “He’s pretty much exactly who you think he is—a twenty-three-year-old guy who loves food and sex and never wants to sit still or grow up. Although,” I went on coyly, “he did surprise me in one way.”

“Which was?”

“He’s very good in bed,” I admitted. “Generous. Patient. Attentive.”

“Stop skipping ahead!” Winnie grabbed her wineglass. “How did it happen?”

I tried to recall exactly how we’d ended up naked between the sheets. “We had a big fight about something, and he ended up chasing me around the room.”

“What was the fight about?”

“About the seven minutes thing. We argued about who was to blame for the fact that we never actually kissed in that closet.” I explained what had actually gone down that night, and Winnie’s jaw nearly hit the marble counter.

“Shut up! So after all that, you asked him to kiss you and he didn’t? After lying to get you in there and then going through all that trouble to get you to say yes?”

I nodded. “It was infuriating. And humiliating. Anyway, he sort of roped me into giving him a second chance at that kiss, and then things went on from there.”

“So was it just the one time?” Winnie asked.

I popped an olive into my mouth. “Nope. It was so good we did it again like an hour later, and I initiated it. And there was no faking. Not once.”

She laughed and tapped her glass to mine. “I’m very proud of you.”

“We had a good time.” I sighed and took a sip of wine. “It wasn’t until afterward that things went south. That’s when he admitted that Fiona had offered him the Tastemaker cover, and in addition”—I hesitated here, because I wasn’t sure if I was betraying a confidence by telling Winnie about Hot Mess, but Gianni hadn’t said it was a secret, had he? And I trusted her. “He’s leaving Etoile.”

She gasped. “Seriously? Already?”

“April,” I said. “He has another reality show offer. But don’t say anything about it. It’s not really public yet.”