Something in the Wine (14 page)

Drew.
She glanced at the gift certificate for the vegetarian restaurant that was still lying on her coffee table. Maybe if Drew wasn’t out after all, they could check out the restaurant and talk about their revenge plan tonight. She scrolled through the contact list on her phone until she got to Drew’s name. Her finger lingered over the call button. After hesitating for a full minute, she pressed the button.

* * *

When the phone rang, Drew nearly dropped the pumpkin she carried. She steadied it against her hip and reached for the phone with her free hand. One glance at the display made her lips stretch into a broad grin. She lifted the phone to her ear. “Hey, Annie.”

In the four days since Annie’s birthday, Drew had called Annie twice, just to talk for a few minutes, but Annie had never called her before. Drew held her breath while she waited for what Annie would say.

“Hi,” Annie said. “How are you?”

“I’m doing great. We brought in the late-harvest grapes, and now I can finally relax a bit. How are you doing?”

“I’m good,” Annie said, then paused.

As always, she seemed reluctant to return Drew’s recounting of her work day. Someone had probably made her believe that she would bore people if she talked about her job.

“How is training the new accountant going?” Drew asked. “Jonathan, right?”

“Oh, he’s doing great.” Annie’s voice became more animated. “He’s quick to understand things.” She hesitated.

“But?” Drew prompted.

After a moment of silence, Annie said, “He asked me out yesterday.”

Drew found herself frowning.
You’re not jealous of Jonathan, the accountant, are you? Annie and you are friends at best, remember?
“And you accepted?”

“No. I told him dating a colleague is a bad idea.”

“Good,” Drew said before she could stop herself.
God!
She mentally slapped her forehead and added, “I mean you’re supposed to be my girlfriend, and if Jake finds out you’re dating Jonathan, he won’t fall for our trick.” She decided to change the topic before she got herself into even more trouble. “So, what are you doing tonight?”

Annie was quiet for a moment. “Nothing special.”

Is she calling to see if we can get together and do something?
Drew waited, but Annie didn’t ask. Finally, Drew broke the silence. “Want to come over and help me carve jack-o’-lanterns for the tasting room? We can talk some more about how to trick Jake.”

“Does it involve your hangover-inducing red wine?” Annie asked.

Drew laughed. “It better not. We’re handling carving knives.” She set down the pumpkin and switched the phone to the other ear. “So, do you want to come over and help?”

“If you’re sure that I’m not bothering—”

“Annie, stop,” Drew said, her voice firm. This needed to be said once and for all. “If you were bothering me, I wouldn’t have invited you over—or even answered the phone for that matter. I like spending time with you, okay?”

For a moment, only Annie’s soft breathing filtered through the line. “Okay,” she said. “I’m on my way. Can I bring anything?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have an ice-cream scoop, would you?”

“Sure. You want me to bring some ice cream too?”

Drew laughed. “Don’t tempt me. No, the scoop isn’t for ice cream. It’s for hollowing out the pumpkins.”

“Oh.”

Didn’t she ever make a jack-o’-lantern with her parents when she was a kid?
Drew suppressed a sigh. “Drive carefully,” she said, then ended the call and went to get another pumpkin.

* * *

Annie patted her pumpkin, hesitant to cut into the smooth, shiny surface. “So how do we do this?”

She watched as Drew drove the knife into the pumpkin and cut a circle around the stem. It looked easy enough, but Annie still hesitated with her knife lingering above her own pumpkin. What if she cut the wrong way?

“Just imagine this was Jake,” Drew said.

Annie laughed. “I love my brother, but some days, I’m not so sure we would need to scoop out anything if this were his head.” Carefully, she cut into the pumpkin.

“Point the knife inward at an angle,” Drew said. “It’ll keep the lid from falling in.” She leaned closer to direct Annie’s hand. Her warmth covered Annie’s back.

Strangely, the physical closeness didn’t make Annie want to move away, as she usually did when someone got too close. She set the lid on the newspaper-covered table. “And now?”

“Now we scoop out the pulp. Damn, I forgot to get a bowl. Oh, wait.” A shower of gold-wrapped candy rained down on the table as Drew turned over a bowl. Drew unwrapped one of the chocolates, put it in her mouth, and hummed. “I bought these in case some trick-or-treaters find the way out here, but feel free to eat a few.”

They worked side by side, hollowing out their pumpkins and scraping them clean with an ice-cream scoop. From time to time, they unwrapped pieces of candy with pumpkin-smeared fingers.

Finally, Drew handed Annie a damp rag. “Now we draw scary faces on the pumpkins.”

Annie cleaned her hands and then slid them over the pumpkin as if that would give her some kind of vision. However, no image of the perfect jack-o’-lantern face appeared before her mind’s eye. Clearly, she hadn’t inherited even an ounce of her mother’s artistic talent. She hesitated with the black marker lingering above the pumpkin. “I don’t want to ruin it.” She glanced up and realized that Drew was looking at her.

“You won’t.” Drew gave her an encouraging smile. “It’s a dry-erase marker. If you don’t like what you draw, you can just erase it and start over. See?” She sketched large eyes, a triangular nose, and a mouth full of teeth on her pumpkin and then wiped off the lines of one eye. “Besides, there are half a dozen more pumpkins in the back room.”

Annie drew two tiny circles for nostrils and then placed larger circles for the eyes two inches above. She leaned back to study her creation. One eye wasn’t symmetrical, so she rubbed off the line and corrected it.

“It doesn’t need to be perfect,” Drew said. She stepped behind Annie and looked over her shoulder. “This isn’t a technical drawing or anything like that. Relax and have some fun with it.”

Annie squinted back over her shoulder. At Drew’s encouraging nod, she turned to face the pumpkin again. With slightly unsteady hands, she added an eerily grinning mouth that zigzagged its way across the pumpkin.

“Looks good,” Drew said.

Pleased, Annie reached for the knife and started cutting out one eye.

On the way back to her pumpkin, Drew reached for another piece of candy and then slapped her own hand. “Take those evil things away from me, will you? I need to lose a few pounds, not gain them.”

Lose weight?
Annie turned her head to glance at Drew. Her gaze slid up strong thighs, across full breasts, and up to wide shoulders. While Drew wasn’t model-thin, Annie thought her figure was just fine the way it—

A sharp pain interrupted her thoughts. “Ouch!” She wrenched her gaze away from Drew and looked down.

Blood dripped onto the pumpkin.

“Oh, Jesus!” Drew hurried over, took the knife away from Annie, and cradled Annie’s hand in her own.

Annie’s knees went weak.
Don’t be such a baby. You never had a problem seeing blood.

“Let’s rinse off the blood,” Drew said. “I want to see how bad it is.” With one arm around Annie’s shoulder, she pulled her toward the sink.

Annie had to sidestep not to stumble over Drew’s feet. “Um, Drew, this would be easier if you let go of me.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

When Drew let go, goose bumps formed on Annie’s forearms. She missed the comforting warmth.
Jesus, I’m going crazy. Why would I need comfort? I just nicked my finger. It’s not a lethal wound.

Drew turned on the water, and Annie stuck her finger beneath the faucet.

A stinging pain flared through her hand, then lessened as the cold water numbed her finger.

Gently, Drew wrapped a clean dish towel around Annie’s hand and lifted it to peer at the cut from close range. Her thumb rubbed circles against the back of Annie’s hand.

Annie cleared her throat and ignored Drew’s distracting touch. “So what’s the verdict, Doctor? Will I live?”

“Probably,” Drew said. She hurried out of the kitchen and reappeared with a Band-Aid, which she carefully applied to Annie’s finger. “You were lucky. The cut isn’t very deep. But maybe we should have you paint a pumpkin instead. My parents always had me do that when I was a child and they didn’t want me to handle sharp tools.”

Annie frowned. She didn’t want Drew to treat her like a child. “I am a bit of a klutz, but I’m not that bad, am I?”

“Of course not.” Drew smiled.

Is she making fun of me?
Annie wasn’t sure, but if Drew was teasing her, it was much gentler than the merciless ribbing Annie was used to, so Annie couldn’t be angry with her. “I’m not. I was just distracted for a moment.”

Drew wiped off the pumpkin and gave her a clean knife. “Be careful, please.” She wasn’t smiling this time. Her serious brown eyes looked deeply into Annie’s.

Annie nodded. No more looking elsewhere while she handled the knife. She glanced at the Band-Aid to make sure the bleeding had stopped before she reached for the knife again.

Twenty minutes later, they placed tea lights inside their first pumpkins.

“Want to do the honors?” Drew asked and held out a candlelighter.

After wrapping her fingers, including the bandaged one, around the lighter, Annie held the flame to the wicks and lit the tea lights.

“There.” Drew replaced the lids and turned off the light.

They stood side by side, admiring the glowing jack-o’-lanterns.

Even Annie had to admit that they looked good. Maybe there was an ounce of artistic talent hidden in her after all.

Drew bumped her with a hip. “Wanna do another one? Or is your finger hurting?”

The throbbing in her fingertip had lessened to a dull pain that flared up only when she put too much pressure on it. “It’s fine. It just won’t be so much fun Monday morning.”

“Ah.” Drew made a sympathetic face. “You mean because you’ll have to work on a computer?”

“No, because of all the questions I’ll get when I come in with a Band-Aid. Some of my colleagues have being nosy down to an art form.”

Drew patted her arm. “Just tell them it’s a wound received on the honorable battlefield of Halloween preparations. Speaking of Halloween ...” She fiddled with the ice-cream scoop, then stopped and looked into Annie’s eyes. “A friend of mine is having a Halloween party tomorrow, and I hate to go alone. If you don’t have any other plans, I was wondering if maybe you’d like to come with me.”

The question caught Annie off guard. She had practically invited herself over and intruded on Drew’s evening of pumpkin carving, and still Drew wanted to spend more time with her?

“We wouldn’t have to stay very long,” Drew said when Annie remained silent. “I swear I won’t keep you up past your bedtime.”

“It’s not that. I just ...” Annie fiddled with a loose edge on the Band-Aid. “I’m not much for parties.”

“How about we just go for an hour, and if you don’t like it, we’ll leave. But generally, Lynn’s parties are great.” With a grin, Drew added, “And you could tell Jake about meeting all my friends to make it more believable that we’re dating.”

Annie narrowed her eyes at Drew but couldn’t help smiling. “You’re fighting dirty.”

“Yep.” Drew grinned unrepentantly. “So what do you say?”

“Would we pretend to be a couple in front of your friends?” The thought made Annie’s stomach flutter. She still wasn’t sure she could pull off pretending to be in love with Drew.

Drew studied her for several seconds. “We don’t need to. Not if it makes you uncomfortable. Jake doesn’t know most of my friends, so he isn’t going to be there anyhow. Let’s just go as friends and have fun, okay?”

“All right.” Staying at a party for an hour or so wouldn’t hurt.

“Great,” Drew said. “Oh, and by the way, it’s a costume party.”

Ugh. Costumes.
Annie had no idea what to wear. The only costume she owned wasn’t exactly fit for a Halloween party, or was it? “What are you going to be?”

“Oh, no.” Drew shook her head. “I’m not telling you. You’ll just have to wait and see.”

Chapter 8

Drew smoothed her hands over her sash while she waited for Annie to open the door. She glanced down at her white shirt to make sure that just the right amount of cleavage was showing.
Hey, stop it. This is not a date. Annie won’t even notice your—

The door swung open, interrupting her admonishments.

She and Annie stared at each other, taking in the other’s costume.

Oh, be still my heart.
Drew sighed.
A woman in uniform.

Her gaze traveled up polished black leather boots, black pants, and a wine-red uniform shirt that ended in black shoulders, contrasting nicely with Annie’s golden-blond hair. A
Star Trek
insignia was pinned just above Annie’s left breast. Only the horn-rimmed glasses perched on Annie’s nose didn’t fit the futuristic look. “You’re a Trekkie?”