sipped his coffee; it was good. He thought about asking Mom for a doughnut but discarded the idea, amusing though it was to watch one flying through the air.
“They seemed friendly,” he said to Mike. “The Angelinis, I mean.”
“There are no nicer people in the world. You don’t want to get on the wrong side of them, though. About Gina—everyone thinks she’s pretty special, and folks in Rio Robles didn’t like it that she wasn’t picked to win the million dollars.”
“I gathered that,” Josh said on a note of regret.
Mike eyed Josh speculatively. “You’re not figuring to make a play for her, are you?”
Josh didn’t want to tip his cards to someone he’d just met. “You never know,” he said.
“You do that and you hurt Gina again, the Angelinis won’t let you get away with it.”
Great. A threat. That was all he needed.
“What kind of business did you say you have here?” asked Mike.
He hadn’t. “I’m writing an article about the valley.”
“For some big newspaper or something?”
“No, it’s for a company newsletter. The company has an interest in winemaking.” A recent interest, and the article would appear in the newsletter after the beverage conglomerate in which his family had a controlling interest bought out a winery or two in the valley. This was all hush-hush so far, and it was going to stay that way, at least as long as Josh had anything to say about it.
“You might like to read The Juice,” Mike said, pushing it toward Josh. “Being that you write for a newsletter and all.”
Josh accepted the folded paper and stood up. “I’d better be going. Thanks for the paper and the warning,” he said as he tossed a bill on the counter.
“Sure. Nice meeting you. I’m here every morning about this time, and I hope we’ll run into each other again.”
When Josh left, Mike was asking Mom for a doughnut. This time Mom ran with it to the kitchen, feinted and tossed it overhand.
“Best play I’ve seen since the last Super Bowl,” hollered one of the customers.
“One of their scouts tried to recruit me last week,” Mom said.
This provoked a round of good-natured jeers. But Josh didn’t stick around to hear any more. He had business here, all right. He was going to put his phone calls on the back burner and try to talk Gina into having lunch with him. He’d struck out with his invitations to drinks and dinner, but lunch? It was a nonthreatening suggestion, time limited and requiring no special dress.
He was willing to bet that Gina would say yes when he asked her. She’d had that glint in her eye that was the giveaway of an interested female, and come to think of it, he seldom met any other kind.
Chapter Four
“No,” Gina said firmly. She was standing on a ladder, tacking up bunches of dried flowers over the cash register. Josh sneezed.
“You really should take an allergy pill whenever you decide you’re going to stop by and be a nuisance,” she said as she climbed down from the ladder. She had discarded this morning’s smock and put on a short, sleeveless ribbed top. It fit so snugly that he could see her nipples through her bra.
“You’re right,” he said, unable to tear his eyes away. When he did, they aimed themselves downward and focused on the strip of skin between the top and her jeans. Her belly button showed, a sweet little dimple that put him in mind of intimacies that the two of them had never shared.
She folded the ladder and shoved it behind a tall screen covered in burlap. Sprigs of various dried herbs were pinned to the screen, all tied up in bright scraps of ribbon. Gina had an artistic bent; he could tell from the way she’d decorated her store. She had draped lace fabric across shelves and scrunched it up to make display places for packages of herbs, and here and there he saw several other original touches.
A customer walked up to the counter and set several small paper and plastic bags of herbs that she’d selected from bins set into old wine casks arrayed along the side wall. “Hello, Gina. I’m on my monthly run over from St. Helena to stock up on my favorites.”
“Did your mother try brewing the chamomile tea you took home last month?” Gina asked.
“Yes, and she’s sleeping much better, thanks.”
“Wow, Tori, that’s great. Tell her I said hello.”
“I will.”
Gina rang the transaction up on the cash register and put all the bags into a larger one with a handle for carrying. During the few minutes it took, Tori looked him over with more than a little curiosity. Josh was sure she recognized him from the TV show—who didn’t? He tried to downplay his presence by wandering off to study a row of cookbooks.
“I’ll see you next month, Tori,” Gina said as she handed her customer the bag.
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss my visit to Good Thymes for the world,” Tori said. With a last lingering look at Josh’s back, she left.
“People don’t want to let the Mr. Moneybags show die,” Josh observed to Gina as her customer’s big SUV jolted out of the parking lot.
“I certainly do,” Gina said as she began to tick numbers off on a list.
“Was the experience so bad?” he asked. A shaft of sunlight penetrated the filmy curtain on the nearby window, sparking silvery highlights in Gina’s hair. She wore it combed to one side, and she had braided a small strand and tucked the braid up with the help of a small daisy. The effect was enchanting.
“I don’t see any need to rehash what happened.” Her head remained bowed over her list.
“That’s fine. We should pick up where we left off and forget about the past.”
“Mmm,” Gina said, clearly not paying attention.
That Gina could ignore his heartfelt friendship and his wish to let bygones be bygones irked him. At the same time he realized that this could be the opportunity he’d been waiting for. “And I’ve heard that polar bears have eaten all the reindeer, so Santa won’t be here for the little boys and girls this Christmas.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Gina replied.
“And as far as stocks are concerned, they’ve gone through the roof, so how about if we have lunch together today.” He was talking nonsense, of course, but it might have the desired effect. He held his breath.
“Mmm…what?” Gina tossed aside the pad of paper and frowned.
“Lunch. You almost agreed to it.”
She stood up. “That’s it, Josh Corbett! You’re not going to trick me into something I don’t want to do. Out!”
She
