Some Like it Hotter

“Yeah...” Chris lifted her chin, letting the sun have at her face again. “He is kind of hot.”

“Mmm.” Eva sighed.

“Do not get any ideas. The guy’s a narcissist. Not your type at all.” It immediately occurred to her that Ames was Eva’s type, since she invariably went for guys who were wrong for her. But that didn’t mean she had to do it again.

“No? We’ll see. Now sit down and enjoy the ocean for an hour or two.”

“An hour or two? Staring at waves?” She snorted. “Not me. But it is a beautiful place to work.”

“Chris, you just arrived! Enjoy the place!”

“I am enjoying it. It’s stunning up here. Now leave me alone while I study your sales reports.”

“You are hopeless.”

“I know.” She ended the call reminding her sister of a couple of restaurant suggestions in her neighborhood on Eighty-Seventh Street, and settled back with her report.

Hmm. Sales okay, fairly steady, but not really taking off. Looked a lot like her own track record in New York, except most of Eva’s traffic occurred midmorning and midafternoon, NYEspresso’s dead times. In a place like—

“Whoa, sorry, man. Didn’t realize someone was here.”

Chris looked up, startled. She hadn’t heard anyone com—

Oh, my God.

Dark windblown hair. Blue eyes. Shorts and T-shirt revealing a gorgeous body. Warm, white-toothed smile. The hottest guy she’d ever seen.

Her heart launched into triple time. She was unable to speak or return his smile, just sat there staring in a flood of hormones.

When was the last time a guy had affected her like this? Not John, not Rob, not even Steve, her most serious boyfriend. This crazy, overwhelming reaction was a first. What did it mean?

Something really good.

She took a deep breath and indicated the other half of the table. “Have a seat. There’s plenty of room.”

3

“GUY CHAUMONT PINOT Noir. Three cases? Four? Like last time. Okay, glad you enjoyed it.” Ames scribbled on his notepad. “He’s got an excellent Chardonnay, too. Twenty-ten, a classic dry Burgundy, with apple and melon notes, great with vegetarian and vegan dishes. Want me to bring a bottle when I see you Thursday? Okay, good. And the Chateau Moulin Bordeaux, too? Excellent. Nice talking with you and I’ll see you Thursday at two. Right. Bye.”

Ames tossed his pen onto the desk in the office he’d set up in one of his condo’s extra bedrooms. Working from home was one of the greatest perks of his job and also one of its greatest challenges. Days like today, when he was restless and irritated, there was no one else around to bring him out of it except Jean, his Tuesdays-and-Thursdays cleaning woman, cook and sometimes assistant, who was convinced he couldn’t live without her. She might be right. But her way of bringing him out of a funk was to tell him exactly how he was living his life wrong.

Didn’t seem to help.

Finding out that Chris Meyer had left New York and flown about as far away over land as possible without telling him hurt more than Ames had expected. He’d been settling in for a slow and steady campaign to win her, and had thought he might be making some progress. To put it mildly, this didn’t look good.

He pulled his laptop closer and brought up the file on Manhattan Vine, one of the biggest chains of liquor stores in the city, an account he’d singlehandedly landed for Boyce Wines, a coup that had been instrumental in getting him promoted in the venerable company. He’d spent the morning visiting retailers to check signage and point-of-purchase placement and probing managers for their openness to hosting wine-tasting events. He was thinking some of Manhattan Vine’s east-side stores might be a good place to push Boyce’s higher-priced wines now that the midlevel bottles had done pretty well.

Funny, the second he’d laid eyes on Chris he’d felt a pull, as if she was familiar somehow, as if he already knew her and it was only a matter of getting through the formalities of preliminary dates before they’d be together in a way Ames felt certain would be significant. He’d felt that way only once before about a woman and had ended up dating Sarah for four years before they came to a mutual realization that it was time to commit or break up, and they’d both chosen the latter.