Crazy in Love (Blue Lake #3)(30)

Skylie Evans was Lucy’s operating manager, and the only one she’d found who she could trust to run things when she was out. Even though Skylie had been on staff for over a year, tonight was the first weekend Lucy had ever taken off, leaving things in Skylie’s care.

“It’s not every day you get invited to dinner by a rock star.” Lucy’s eyebrows waggled. “There’s a benefit to stressing about the grapes, you know. For four months of the year, the weather warms up and I can invite whomever I want to play at the amphitheater. Cole Turner’s one of my favorites. If you think I’m going to work the night of his concert, you’re nuts.”


“You’ll still be working,” Rachael argued, grabbing her coat. “You’ll be running around making sure everyone’s doing their job.”

“You know me so well.”

Honk!

Lucy squealed. “That’s him!”

“Nah, it’s someone from his crew. Cole’s been at the winery for hours.”

He’d left shortly after breakfast (without saying a word), and had sent the car back at two o’clock to pick up three bags and two guitar cases. Not that she’d been paying attention or anything. She’d had plenty to do through the afternoon to keep her busy. She’d cleaned the inn top to bottom, baseboards to ceiling. She’d tried to hold her breath when she cleaned Cole’s room and told herself it was from the bleach fumes in the bathroom.

“Didn’t you see him there earlier?” Rachael said, picking a glob of wax off the pad of her finger.

“Of course! I don’t mean it’s him, I mean it’s him. His people.” Running to the door, Lucy crossed her purse over her body and onto her shoulder. “Ready?”

Rachael got the feeling if she weren’t ready, Lucy would leave her behind.

“As I’ll ever be,” Rachael said and opened the door.

“Oh. My.” Lucy gasped. “Limo!”

The thing was black and stretched longer than the width of the inn. People walking the street stopped and ogled; wasn’t every day a limo cruised into Blue Lake. Cars denied the space to pass on the opposite side of the narrow road lined up behind them. The driver stepped onto the curb and opened the rear door.

“Ms. Stone and Ms. McCoy, I presume?” he said.

Lucy dove through the door, like Alice jumping through the limousine’s rabbit hole. “Get your behind in her, Rach! There’s champagne!”

They drove west, out of town and toward the winery. At the last second, before the exit for StoneMill, the driver veered left off the freeway.

There was nothing this way but old gold-mining sites.

The driver parked not far off the road, in the middle of an empty gravel lot. He killed the engine and strode around the back end of the car to open the door. Lucy got out first.

“Where is he?” she asked, spinning around.

Rachael stepped out, and gazed over the grape vineyards below. StoneMill was to the right, over the freeway, but the grassy rows of the amphitheater stood out in the distance.

“Down here,” Cole said.

The deep rumble in his voice sparked something in her belly. How could he elicit that kind of a response so easily?

They walked to the edge of the lot and gazed down the gentle slope of the mountain. On a raised wooden platform that had once been used for some kind of gold-mining contraption, a table and three chairs had been set up. White lights dangled down from the edges. Candlelight flickered over the table. Cole stood in the center of it all, lifting his arms from his sides.