Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek) (8 page)

Noah, meanwhile, looked very interested.

“And would you partner in on this project with your brother?”
he had asked curiously.

After acknowledging she would, Noah practically hijacked the meeting from there, explaining his hunch that a craft winery sister business next door to a craft brewery would be a solid investment idea. He went on to shower more praise at Dani’s next spontaneously-rambling idea of adding a few wine-based dishes made with the proposed house-vinted wines to Ocotillos’ unique food menu, already well known for its entirely beer-based rustic fusion cuisine made with their own brewed beers.

Culinary gold, Noah called her idea. A newly expanded menu to match the newly expanded business—the potential for success, he said, was vastly exciting. She’d practically preened at the assessment. Coming from Noah, that was high praise indeed.

Why had she never thought of this before? Honestly, before today, a brewpub-winery partnership had never occurred to her, let alone a mutually beneficial real estate merger bridging her commercial property with the one next door. It truly was the perfect idea.

For everyone but Desert Confections, that is.

Desert Confections.
Strange how hearing the name of her neighbor’s business was now filling her with guilt instead of the blinding anger she’d felt an hour ago.

And the guilt was warranted.

She could’ve stopped at the persuasive brewpub/winery details. She
should’ve
stopped after the part about how her proposed brother-sister team—a human-interest angle in itself—would never do the lowdown things Desert Confections had done today. But no, like a possessed woman, Dani simply hadn’t been able to resist ending her spiel with one final parting shot...

“Derek and I will even lease out the space for more than what you’re currently getting.”

That
had earned her a very disappointed look from Harold.

And Noah’s business card.

Dani leaned back in her chair and covered her face with unsteady hands. Whether it was to stifle a gasp of hope for Derek or a self-flogging condemnation for actually having suggested a means to shut down a fellow business, she wasn’t sure.

Both probably.

The dreadful churning in her stomach was undoubtedly due to the latter though.

Don’t get ahead of yourself, Dobson. That wasn’t even a real sit-down.
It’s not as if she’d presented a formal plan of action that would actually get
acted
on. No, that meeting had just been a hoop-dreamy little ‘what if’ talk.

…With her dad’s old buddy and a friend she’d practically grown-up with.

Damn, there was that churning again.

Shaking her head, Dani tossed the business card on her desk—she really was getting worked up over nothing. The chocolate shop had just barely started their preliminary half-year contract last month. And if her hunch was correct, they were going to do well for themselves here. She did
not
just lay the groundwork for ending their business dreams to pave the way for her brother’s.

Had she?

It would take one phone call to clear everything up.

Unsure yet if she was pushing or pulling, she picked up the card again and started dialing...

CHAPTER FOUR

LUKE GOT UP
around two pm, a few hours earlier than he usually did, mainly because the missed message alert on his cell phone was beeping the sanity right out of his head. He went into his text inbox and blinked as the words on the screen wiggled into his sleep groggy brain.

Before slapping him fully awake.

Dani had sexted him.

The quick, flirty sentence was exactly like Dani, sweet at first glance, but enticingly suggestive below the surface. He shot up off the bed and quickly sexted her back a red-hot reply.

Then he waited...and waited...and waited some more. He finally understood why people sexted. It was wickedly hot. The entire time he waited for her to respond, his mind ran through scenarios of Dani seeing his sext message and blushing, right in the middle of bartending at Ocotillos. Or right in the middle of her bed as she thought of an even hotter reply to send him. He could just picture her biting her lip while she...

Seriously.
Sexy. As. All. Hell.

By the time he figured out she was likely too busy to sext back, the rabid horndogs in his head were already howling. He groaned and tried to get himself to stop thinking about Dani.

Yeah, that was just a stupid idea. He let out a resigned sigh. Ice-cold shower, definitely. Followed by an earlier-than-usual return back to work as well.

What was that saying about idle hands and all?

ALMOST AN HOUR
later, finally back to his normal non-blue coloring, Luke walked into the shop and sat down in his office to get some work done.

...Only to leap right back up when he read the short, scathing note awaiting him on his desk. He immediately ran up front to find Quinn.

She was busy by the door talking to a particularly chatty elderly woman who’d happened by to see how the grand opening plans were coming. Luke held his tongue and listened in frustration as the woman talked Quinn’s ear off about something completely unrelated to chocolate. Allergy medication, it sounded like. It took nearly a minute for the customer to finally stop gabbing long enough to look at the gift box order brochure they were still continuing to hand out for phone, internet—and apparently walk-by—orders.

When Quinn turned to look his way during the brief silence, she glanced down at the letter in his hand guiltily, and mouthed a silent apology.

Good god, the note was real.

How the hell had Quinn managed to piss off the owner of Ocotillos?
This
badly? Each word on the handwritten note was like a lethal dart angrily stabbed into paper by a ‘D. Dobson’.

Luke reassured Quinn with his eyes that he’d take care of it. Though he had no idea how he was going to accomplish that, or even what was going on, he thought it best to get over to Ocotillos to try and clear this whole mess up
ASAP
.

He made it across the lot between their two buildings and stepped foot into the brewpub a record ten seconds later. A quick request to talk to the brewmaster led him straight on over to the back of the brewpub.

Where he ran smack dab into a woman.

A bump and slide later, all his senses roared in recognition as they took in the sleek feline limbs, the faint smell of fruity lotion, and the breathy gasp that gave him a semi in an instant.

“Luke!” Dani sounded so delighted to see him, he momentarily forgot why he was there. “Sorry, I...” she began, her eyes dropping to his lips as if she was recalling his very vivid sext to her earlier. “Some craziness was going on so I couldn’t… That is, your, um, message was...”

She stumbled through a few more partial sentences before suddenly snapping her mouth shut.

No doubt in offense to the enjoyment that was surely lighting his face.

Her eyes narrowed, then gleamed with the promise of retribution. “Sorry I can’t catch up with you just yet, Luke. I have a quick text message to get out first.” She smiled sweetly and began backing away, phone in hand like she was arming a bomb. “I sure do hope you came back with all your friends again,” she added with a fiendish grin that took all the brewpub hospitality right out of her statement.

He shot his hand out to stop her, chuckling all the while. Damn, she was fun.

“Play nice,” he whispered, pulling her gently to a dark corner near the storage closet he remembered so very fondly from the other night. “You have me all tied up in knots too.”

Her gaze softened at that. The frisky glint, however, remained. It was a nice little warning that said he’d better avoid checking his text messages in church…around relatives...or in public as a whole. Luke let out a hearty laugh. “Woman, you can’t look at me like that while we’re standing here, two steps away from my favorite room in this brewpub.”

A shy blush highlighted her cheeks, an adorable contrast to the heat igniting her warm whiskey eyes. God, he could get lost in those eyes. Slowly, she turned her face up to his.

A split second before his lips caught hers.

One spectacular, mind-numbing kiss later, Luke came up for air. Reluctantly.

“Christ, you’re addicting,” he breathed, brushing another kiss on her lips as if it were impossible not to before resting his forehead against hers. “But no more of these brief backroom trysts. I want to do this right. Take you out, subject ourselves to a few hours of semi-chaste flirting, maybe some high school just-over-the-clothes action if I’m lucky. The whole deal.”

The smile she laid on him was blindingly seductive.

“Or not,” he wavered, barely stopping himself from kissing her right back into that storage room. “Jesus. I have zero control around you, Dani.” He dropped a soft kiss on the side of her neck. “I’m really not usually like this.”

She closed her eyes, absorbing the tender gesture. “Neither am I.” She slid her hands up his chest before admitting quietly, “But I like it.”

He let out a strangled breath.

His heartbeat sped up under the weight of her fingers as they went on an expedition of his back, each muscle in her path tensing and hardening from even the lightest touch.

Unable to be a passive bystander to her explorations for long, he caught her chin and dipped down to claim another kiss.

But slowly this time.

As if they had all day.

And they just might’ve too, if it hadn’t been for her soft, unfiltered moan that prompted an answering groan to rumble out from deep in his throat.

“I have to get out of here while my brain still has some semblance of control,” he muttered, his breathing staggered, heavy.

Looking at her with what he was sure was devastating disappointment, he caught the tiny hint of a grin threatening to appear on her lips. One of his eyebrows rose gamely as he stepped forward again to nip her earlobe. “Vicious woman. You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” He then teased her lower lip with his teeth, his dimples creasing shamelessly when her breath broke on a shiver. When he felt just the very tip of her tongue flirting with his, he slanted one more searing, double-edged kiss on her lips before eventually exhaling another strained breath and taking a giant step away from her.

“Your kisses make me drunk.” He reached for her hand while making sure to keep the rest of his body a safe distance from hers. “Just like they did the other night when I forgot to get your last name. I’m sorry, Dani. I swear I care enough to get your whole name. Hell, your whole life story even.”

She gave him a smiling shrug. “I didn’t get your last name either.”

“Bradford,” he filled in immediately. “I’m Luke Bradford. I want you to get to know me, just like I want to get to know you.” The last few words came out considerably rougher. “Unless…that isn’t what you’re looking for?” he added unsure for the first time, but knowing regardless that he was already too far gone to bow out completely even if casual no-name hook-ups with customers were her thing.

Something in her eyes gave him pause then, made him wonder at the flash of hurt he saw hidden deep.

But before he could ask her what was wrong, a piece of paper fell out of his pocket and landed between them. Her eyes zoomed in on the distraction and a gasp burst out of her.

She sounded…livid.

Jerking her gaze up to him, her blinking expression was the very definition of confusion when she growled, “
Why do you have my letter?!
”

Now it was his turn to gape at her. “
Your
letter?” Understanding dawned on him like a ton of slow bricks. “
D. Dobson
,” he remembered from the letter. He looked at her with a touch of awe. “You’re the brewmaster and owner here.”

“Don’t sound so surprised.” Irritation warred with lingering confusion in her scowl.

He met her glare thoughtfully. “You know, I’m not actually.” He smiled as he turned and looked through the portal glass openings in the swing-through doors to the front of the brewpub. “This place is great,” he said with honest appreciation.

Unmoved, she crossed her arms. “You didn’t answer me. Why do you have my letter?”

Hearing her confounded tone drop in temperature with each word, he ventured forward a little more carefully, answering neutrally, “Well, because you wrote it to me, it seems.”

Her hands balled up into two aggravated little fists. “
You’re
the owner of Desert Confections?!”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” he parroted back to her, still markedly amused at the situation.

His grin died quickly though when he realized those were waves of pure anger rolling off her. He held the letter up with two fingers. “Look, I don’t even know what all this is about. But that’s no excuse. Quinn works for me so if she upset you today, I’ll take full responsibility.”