Just a Kiss: The Single Girls Wine Club (A Wine Country Romance #1) (18 page)

“Jesus, Sarah.” He picked up in a nano second. “I was so worried. What happened last night? Why did you leave?”

How demoralizing.
She’d been right about Jamie. He
had
planned on seeing her
after being with Nikki all night
. “I left because it was the right thing for me to do.” She heard nothing on the other end.

“I don’t understand,” Jamie said. “The right thing?”

“I’m not going to go into my reasons. I simply needed to leave and I did.”

“But why?” Jamie asked. “What happened last night?”

“I don’t need to tell you why I did this or why I did that,” Sarah said. “You don’t deserve to know anything more about me and I would like to keep this call short.”

“What’s going on?” He sounded frantic. “Sarah? I don’t know what’s happening here.”

“What’s happening is… I’m calling to tell you that I don’t want to hear from you anymore. No calls, no texts, no anything.”

“What?” Jamie’s voice cracked. “What are you saying?”

“Exactly that.” Sarah felt her anguish surfacing and took a deep breath. “I have the courtesy to
call you and not text
, so you can hear my voice say I don’t ever want to see you again.”

“For the love of God… Sarah, what did I do?” Jamie asked. “This just doesn’t make any sense to me. We're so perfect together.”

“Perfect for you, not for me,” Sarah said. “So I’m doing what’s best for me.”

“But I only want the best for you.”

“Well, let’s put it this way, you are
not
what’s best for me. You are the worst thing for me.” Her throat hurt it was so dry. “A massive mistake on my part.”

“Sarah stop! Please just stop. Let’s talk about this in person.” She’d never heard his voice break that way, and it practically killed her.

“We have nothing to talk about,” she said. “Our lifestyles are polar opposites. You can see that right?”

“I don’t see any of this, none of what you’re saying. We have different careers but so what? That’s not what matters.”

“Not careers Jamie,
lifestyles.
I’m just not up for the Hollywood ride, okay? So if you sincerely have my best interest at heart, please don’t call, don’t text, mail, visit, or anything.” She heard him draw a shuddery breath. “Please let me be over you.”

Jamie gasped. “D-d-don’t do this, Sarah, please.”

Sarah swallowed and blinked her tears away. “I’m hanging up now.”

“Don’t do this,” Jamie said in barely a whisper. “I’m in love with you. I love you.”

Sarah focused every ounce of willpower on holding her tears back. She needed to stay strong. She couldn’t travel down this path again and didn’t think she could survive another blow like the one last night. She took a deep breath.

“I’m hanging up now. Goodbye, Jamie.”

The usual Chill Hour of four to six in the summer and fall morphed into Chilly Hour in the winter. The tradition of drinks together on the patio continued but instead of gazing into the pool, the women huddled in fuzzy blankets and watched the fire crackling in a raised stone pit. They divvied up the chore of lighting the fire by the week, and every night it didn’t rain, it blazed by five in the evening.

Juliet concocted a signature version of a popular cocktail raging around Wine Country and dubbed hers a Hot Valentine Kiss. It was comprised of hot chocolate, brandy, and a secret liqueur Juliet refused to name. She garnished tonight’s cocktail with leftover candy canes from Christmas.

Sarah caught the drips of her drink off her half-melted candy cane and sucked on it. “More like a Hot Mess,” she said.

“Worth all the time you spent making the hot chocolate from scratch. Delish.” Danica nodded and took a sip.

Romance still headlined most conversations over cocktails. Lulu had been on several dates with Uncle Leo Santino and was having dinner at his place. Juliet still randomly dated people she met through work, mostly songwriters, or singers, and people connected to the music industry. Danica and Michael Santino were still not in an official relationship, but Danica thought she was on the verge of the biggest love affair of her life.

Sarah knew the girls walked on eggshells around her and the dating subject, but Jamie Santino’s name always seemed to crop up unexpectedly.

Danica pointed to the headline of the Sonoma Register. “Are we going to talk about this or just pretend we don’t want to?” she asked.

Sarah glanced at the headline
Jamie Santino Back in Sonoma
.

“He’s going to be here tomorrow, Sarah. Right here, about thirty feet from where you work every day,” Juliet said.

“I don’t know why he’s coming here.” Sarah crunched on her candy cane. “It’s not even his movie.”

“Pre-promotion,” Juliet said. “Probably part of his deal. It’s another Simon Francis film, so they’re both getting their names out there. It’ll only help the buzz for Jamie’s movie. Don’t you want to see him?”

“Not sure what I want to do. Do you have any more of these?” Sarah held out her empty mug and gave her most persuasive pretty-please look.

In the past few months, Nikki Lean had shocked the world by marrying a real estate mogul and owner of a chain of spray tanning franchises in Southern California. Juliet had filled Sarah in on the blow-by-blow details.

Allegedly, they’d met on the studio set of
Belize
on a cold winter’s day in Burbank. Nikki’s new paramour had apparently provided her with all the bronzing she’d needed and more. They tied the knot on Christmas Eve, at a lavish lodge ceremony on Lake Tahoe’s North Shore a little less than a month after Sarah and Jamie’s breakup. So whatever had occurred between Jamie and Nikki couldn’t have been serious.

Even if Juliet hadn’t filled her in, Sarah would’ve heard about it one way or another. Photos of Nikki Lean decked out as a snow princess bride in white fake fur pretentiousness had garnished the covers of every tabloid for weeks. Every newscast in the country had covered the event. Sarah still wasn’t sure what had happened, but she knew she didn’t have the whole story.

“Do you want me to arrange a casual meeting?” Danica offered.

Juliet and Sarah laughed.

“Nothing you do is casual,” Sarah said.

“I don’t think you even know casual.” Juliet nodded.

Danica pushed the hair from her face and looked at Sarah. “I could bring you over to the Santino’s when I know Jamie will be there. He arrived yesterday. Michael would love to see you two back together.”

“Nah, no thanks,” Sarah said. “It sounds a little forced…and awkward. Besides, a lot of time has gone by. He’s probably moved on, way past me.”

“He hasn’t.” Danica’s forehead scrunched. “Michael says Jamie’s still very down. He never knew why you broke up with him. Don’t you even want to tell him what you saw? Why you left? Or even explain why you broke up with him?”

Sarah sighed. “It wouldn’t make any difference.”

“It may. It could, you never know, you need to talk,” Juliet said.

Danica put her drink down and edged her chair closer to Sarah. “Listen to me. Jamie just thinks you decided he was wrong for you because of—nothing. He doesn’t know why. He thinks you just hate his career because he’s an actor. He called Michael and asked for his opinion because he wanted to contact to you. But you told Jamie if he truly cared about you, he’d never contact you again. That’s the only reason he hasn’t reached out.”

“Well, you and Michael seem to be talking a lot,” Sarah said, hoping to get Danica off the subject of Jamie and back on her favorite subject, Michael.

Juliet took the cue. “Where are we in the Danica and Michael Santino story anyway? You’ve been pretty hush-hush.”

“That’s because I don’t want to jinx it.” Danica’s facial expression changed as she studied the fire. “You know how sometimes if you’re out in the woods somewhere, doing something that woodsmen, or wood people do, and you need to start a fire?”

Juliet corrected her. “They’re called campers, Danica. Campers, not woodsmen or woods people. You crack me up.” Juliet turned to Sarah. “Who calls campers woods people?”

“Anyway.” Danica leaned in close to the girls. “You know how sometimes it’s not easy to start a fire? It has to start slowly because if you put too much wood on it, all at once, you’ll just put it out? So, you have to coax it carefully, maybe blow on it, until the pile catches and starts to burn. Then it turns into embers, which then ignites the rest of the wood, and before you know it, it grows into a big hot stack of slow burning love.”

Sarah grinned. “Wow. You sure know how to light a fire.”

“You sure you don’t come from a large family of woods people?” Juliet asked.

Danica smirked. “For your information, Michael and I are at the coaxing part.”

“So are you actually dating or just blowing on his wood?” Juliet laughed.

“There has been no wood blowing, I can promise you that, but things are starting to heat up,” Danica said. “It started at the New Year’s Party. Remember Juliet? Sarah, did I tell you Michael brought a date but kissed me at midnight?”

It worked like a charm. Just a little nudge in the direction of Michael Santino got Danica off and running. They didn’t mention Jamie for the rest of the evening, but that didn’t mean Sarah wasn’t thinking about him.

When Sarah finally tucked away in her bedroom, she pulled the section of the Sonoma Register out of her purse. Of course, she’d seen the article. There were at least five copies of that paper and five of the San Francisco Chronicle in the Vine Café every morning.

Jamie looked hot, exactly how she remembered him the last time she saw him. She remembered how he’d kissed her right in the open, for the whole universe to see. He’d seemed euphoric, and she’d felt such intense bliss, she knew she’d never come close to anything like that again.

The Vine Café felt even smaller than usual because it seemed everyone in Sonoma had crammed inside to get out of the rain and load up on sweets.

Sarah observed the tidy method her employees used to store the outdoor tables in the room behind the kitchen. She wished the awnings could provide enough cover to allow her to seat some of the customers waiting in line. She still hadn’t saved enough for outdoor heaters.

By next February, if her plans came through, a lot of things would change. She’d have a waterproof awning, thick plastic curtains to surround diners, and outdoor seating year round.

When the Vine Café celebrated its first anniversary in June, Sarah would finally give Manny the promotion he deserved. Although she hadn’t told him yet, she needed to find a suitable candidate for his replacement by March.

Manny had more than proved he knew the business almost as well as she did. The customers loved him, the staff would do anything for him, and he had earned her trust.

She’d asked him to place a few help wanted ads on winejobs.com last week so they'd have plenty of time to train Manny's new Right-hand guy or gal. Sarah would then have a little more free time to continue her studies.

She’d taken a few weekend cooking classes and discovered she enjoyed preparing food as much as baking desserts. If things continued to roll along as they did, she hoped to open a small restaurant in the next few years.

Sarah walked to the front and greeted the candidate Manny recruited. After opening the door of her fogged up, crowded café to get the air circulating, she sat across from him at a table and felt him studying her as she went over his application.

Dishes clanked, pans banged and the customers lined up for Valentine’s Day treats loudly entertained one another with stories while they waited. Sarah couldn’t think straight.

“Would you please excuse me” —she glanced at the handwritten application— “Howard.”

She left the table and found Manny in the kitchen feeding the little orange tabby. “He’s soaked,” Sarah said reaching for a hand towel. She crouched down and patted the kitty dry.

“He looks pretty good, huh?” Manny asked.

Sarah looked up. “Butter Ball looks terrible.” She picked up the cat and rocked him in her arms. “Poor baby is freezing.”

“Not Cat Boy. I set up a bed for him next to the heater in your office. He’ll be okay.” Manny had his hands on his hips while he watched Sarah and the cat. “I meant Howard, the guy you’re interviewing. How’s it going?”

She put Butter Ball down, and he sauntered into her office.

“It's noisy out there, and I can't concentrate," Sarah said. “I think I'll take Howard for a walk, maybe grab a coffee over at The Swiss. Is that okay with you?”

“Not a problem.”

“I’ll be back in about an hour. If I shut my phone off, you know where to find me.” Sarah headed out the swinging doors, and then came back to give Manny a hug.

“Whoa. Hold up, I know it’s Valentine’s Day but…” Manny swatted at her. “Are you hitting on me? Aren’t there sexual discrimination laws about that? I know I’m irresistibly hot, but control yourself, woman.”

Sarah stepped back laughing. “Just stop for a minute and listen to me. I’m serious. I wanted to thank you, Manny. You're such a blessing. I want you to know I appreciate you and everything you do here.”

Manny looked speechless for a second. “Sure.” He lowered his voice. “You know I love it. I got your back.”

Sarah grabbed her yellow rain slicker from the broom closet and had it on when she reached the front door. She motioned Howard to join her.

They took a right out the door in front of the Sebastiani Theatre landmark, one of the last original theaters in California. Every big event in town happened there, and they always had a special event for every holiday. The vintage white marquee read
: Jamie Santino and Simon Francis Valentine Special: “Dinner in a pocket.”

Sarah peeked down the covered entrance hall, past Mable the mannequin, a permanent fixture in the small ticket booth. Although Sarah loved the theatre and hosted many fundraisers in support of it, today she wanted nothing to do with it and couldn’t get away fast enough. The doors were closed. The four-thirty show had begun. Jamie Santino would be in there now.