Drunk on Love(65)

She liked that he said that. She’d always thought of herself as the aggressor that night. That was one of the things that made her feel even more guilty that she’d slept with her employee, accidentally or not, when she agonized about everything in her life at two a.m. But he had been the one to kiss her. And he’d seemed just as eager for that night to continue as she had.

They smiled at each other, and the lingering nervousness that she’d felt about this date fell away. She thought maybe Luke had been nervous, too, because he seemed less tense than when they’d walked in together, or when he’d walked up to her door. Maybe she’d just imagined that, though, with her whole fit of first-date jitters. She had no idea why she’d been so nervous—she’d already slept with him! Multiple times now! She knew he liked her. Well, she knew he lusted after her, at least—maybe that had been why she’d been so nervous, because in addition to lusting after him, she already knew she liked him. And she wasn’t—totally—sure if he liked her, too.

This morning, he’d said he wanted to see if this was something. What did he mean by “something”? She knew what she wanted him to mean by that, she knew what she hoped he meant by that, but maybe he’d just meant If we keep getting along well and having great sex, that’s all. He was only twenty-eight; men that age didn’t care about real relationships, at least not in her experience.

Oh God, now she was nervous again. Margot, chill out, this is only your first real date, after all.

Luke cleared his throat.

“So, Margot. What do you do?” he asked in a slightly deeper voice than normal.

She raised her eyebrows at him, and he looked back at her straight-faced, but with a glimmer of a smile in his eyes.

Oh. This was their first date. So he was making first-date small talk. How . . . adorable.

“I work at a winery,” she said. His eyes widened, in fake surprise, and she forced herself to keep a straight face. “Actually, I’m the co-owner of a winery; my brother and I own it together. I’m on the business side, he’s the winemaker. What about you?”

“What a coincidence—I very recently left a job at a winery,” he said. Margot picked up her wineglass to hide her smile. “I was just in the tasting room, though. I loved working there; it was a ton of fun. How’d you get into the winery business?”

This whole first-date thing was kind of fun. Well, a first date with Luke was.

“My Uncle Stan—my dad’s brother—was a winemaker, and he started a winery in Napa Valley when I was a kid,” she said. “My brother, Elliot, and I spent a lot of time down here with him. He died a few years ago and left the winery to the two of us. So I quit my old job and moved up here to run the winery.”

“Oh, really? What did you do before moving up here?” he asked.

They’d never really talked about this, had they?

“I worked in marketing at a handful of big companies in the Bay Area and in L.A. I kind of miss living in big cities sometimes, but I get to visit a lot, and I love my current job, so it all balances out.” Now it was her turn. “You said you recently left your job at a winery—what are you doing now?”

He almost, but not quite, winked at her.

“Now I’m helping my mom out at her inn. She got in a car accident the other night; nothing serious, but she can’t work for a while. But before I was at the winery, I was a software engineer at a big tech company.”

“Oh? How’d you like that kind of work?” she asked, and then almost immediately regretted it. She knew exactly how he felt about his old job.

He half smiled, half shrugged.

“The work itself, I actually really enjoyed. When it was good, it was like a fun puzzle, where I learned something new every day and got to exercise my brain in all kinds of ways. I actually really miss that.” He’d never really told her about the parts of his old job that he’d liked. That was good to hear. “But I got a new boss about two years ago, and it stopped being quite so fun.” The smile left his eyes for a second. “But now I’m back home in Napa, and glad to be here.”

“Oh, Napa is home for you?” she asked. “Did you grow up here?” She knew he’d gone to high school up here, and that his parents were divorced, and that was about all.

He nodded.

“For middle school and high school, at least. We used to live down in San Jose, and then moved up here for my dad’s job. My parents split up when I was in high school and he moved back down there, but my mom loved it up here, and I stayed here with her. I still saw my dad a lot, though.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “What about you? Did you grow up here in Napa?”

“No, I grew up in Sacramento. My parents still live there.”

He hadn’t actually known that, she realized by the look on his face. There was a lot they still didn’t know about each other.

“Oh, that’s interesting,” he said. “You went to high school there? When did you graduate?”

She had to smile at that question.

“Is that your subtle way of trying to ask me how old I am?”

He grinned at her.

“Apparently not all that subtle,” he said.

“I’m thirty-four,” she said. Was that a problem for him? That she was so much older than him? Did he care?