Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek) (15 page)

Then came the scripted portion:

Four men are at a table in a casual restaurant, engaged in a merciless three-on-one rag fest hailing the tallest in the group as king of the first-year scrubs due to the volume of grunt workload he’s been getting lately in their law firm. Fittingly, the three ask their waitress to bring a double shot of Crown Royal for ‘King Evan,’ who just laughs and takes it all in stride.

A table over, a trio of women are eating and talking grad school research. As the men await their drinks, one of the women catches Evan’s eye. And vice versa. Despite her shy but inviting smile—and his obvious interest—he plays the cool card, pulling his eyes away from her to focus back on his friends who are busy solidifying their plans to go to a concert this weekend.

When Evan casually slides his gaze back to the woman a little later, sadly, she’s gone.

Outside, the camera catches her stopping outside of Desert Confections, looking thoughtfully at a flyer about their Valentine’s Day chocolate-making class.

A few nights later, Evan and his buddies are on the dance floor amongst a packed house watching Rylan’s band in concert at Ocotillos. The camera zooms in on Evan’s eyes widening when he spots the same woman he saw the other day hanging out with her friends, not twenty feet away from him. This time, he doesn’t hesitate. He heads right over to meet her.

But she gets swallowed up in the crowd. Evan searches every last corner of the deck until finally he frowns and gives up, turning around to head back to his friends.

Halfway there, however, someone taps on his shoulder.

It’s her.

The camera circles around them, slowing as the two stare at each other. The people all around slip out of focus, and the music morphs into the sound of a pair of heartbeats.

Gently, she presses something into his hand.

He looks down and sees a carefully crafted piece of chocolate in a clear candy box. Pleasantly surprised, he turns the box around to survey the intricate features of the finely detailed truffle. It’s striking. Beautiful in a masculine sort of way. Eyes soft with appreciation, he cradles the gift in his hand and looks up to thank her.

Only to find she’s vanished.

He immediately shoulders through the crowd to locate her but she’s nowhere to be found.

Frustrated, he inspects the truffle again, scanning the clear box all around and over to see if there’s some mysterious clue he missed.

There is.

A slow, sexy grin transforms his features and he immediately pulls out his phone to dial the number written on a tiny slip of paper underneath the chocolate.

* * * * *

“CRAP,”
whooshed Xoey,
as she clicked off the Desert Confections’ video ad on YouTube.

Dani shared her sentiments. The commercial was good—really good. Girls would no doubt fall in love with it and guys would secretly not hate it.
Damn.

The video had already racked up an exorbitant number of hits. Clever girl that she was, Quinn had asked Rylan’s permission to use one of the songs he’d sung during the concert scene as music for the entire commercial. She smartly put the band and song in the video description and in doing so, managed to piggyback off the band’s popularity to steal fan views.

What made the video hype take off from there, however, was her second genius idea of asking viewers to comment on the whole Valentine’s Day / White Chocolate Day package deal. That was all it took for folks to start debating the pros and cons. With way more pros. By this morning, the two-part holiday idea was trending on Twitter and headlining on Facebook pages and blog feeds. From teen lovebirds to silver anniversary couples, support for this holiday revolution was growing and spreading like crazy. It was a holiday revolution in the making.

And it was all thanks to Quinn. Due to her enormous web presence, a ton of attention was being drawn to what was being dubbed ‘the most unlikely romance battle of the season,’ aka the Desert Confections vs. Ocotillos throwdown. Remarkable. Something that had begun as a little town wager between two business owners was escalating into a colossal showdown. With the cyberstorm Quinn was detonating across the internet, a frenzy of folks from all over were starting to declare their dogged allegiances between Luke and Dani, chocolate and beer.

Dani felt the excitement brewing in her. For her, competition was worse than chocolate and almost better than beer. She thrived off it. All this couldn’t have come at a better time. A healthy battle like this was just what she needed to forget about failed winery ideas and the like.

Her eyes narrowed.
That
reminder provided the creative jolt she needed for a fun idea to take shape—well, fun by Luke’s standards at least. Soon, a slow smile spread across her face.

Xoey’s eyes rounded. “Tell me!” She sat down excitedly. “I know that look. It’s your evil genius grin. What do you have planned?”

She simply raised her brows in a way that had Xoey doing a cackling fist-pump. Dani reached for the town phone directory to look up Desert Confections’ phone number.

If she wasn’t mistaken, Quinn would be the one manning the shop right about now...

DANI HUSTLED AROUND
the deck of Ocotillos, rushing to add final touches for the last scene of their commercial shoot. Aidan, Rylan’s drummer and the band’s resident video guru, had translated her vision perfectly, capturing the fun, sexy marketing angle she was going for—first date romance, laid-back style. And because his day job consisted of shooting and editing wedding ceremony videos on site in time to be viewed by the guests at the reception, he was
fast
. Aidan had the first half of the video edited within an hour, which allowed Dani to watch it while he set up the equipment for the second half.

Hitting play, she smiled when Rylan’s voice crooned out her favorite love song to start off the scene capturing Rissa and Evan’s first date:

Evan fusses with his tie, repeatedly adjusting it until the sound of knocking at the door causes him to nearly strangle himself. Thankfully, he’s able to loosen the death knot cutting off his air supply as he races to open the door.

The moment he sees Rissa, his breathing is halted once again.

Mesmerized, he smiles and greets her with a gentle kiss on her cheek. Little bowl vases of red roses line every furniture piece in the living area of his bachelor studio, and tealight candles flicker on the romantically adorned coffee table. The ambiance is quietly elegant.

As is their conversation.

Stilted chitchat on current affairs segues to an awkwardly hushed wine glass clinking, followed by her faint cringe and his choking cough when they actually taste the fancy wine.

Evan runs a finger under his collar in growing despair at what’s looking to be the most uncomfortable first date ever.

The kitchen timer dings.

With visible relief, he rushes off to retrieve the plates of food he left warming in the oven. They were plated to perfection, like something off a Food Network show. His brief smile of confidence quickly fades, however, when chirping crickets mock his return to the living room. Even more nervous than before now, he puts the two plates of risotto-stuffed Cornish game hens and seasoned baby vegetables on the low table.

Eyebrows raised, Rissa quietly compliments him on the lovely meal.

And with that one brief, shining moment of promise, their sporadic dinner talk over tidy bites of the fancy food quickly goes from clumsy to nonexistent. They even begin a horrifically boring discussion about the unusual weather lately.

Then silence again.

Finally, one sterile, overlong minute later, Evan reaches for Rissa’s hand. “You want to pack all this up and go hang out at Ocotillos instead?”

Her eyes widen and a grateful smile emerges. “YES!”

They blow out the little candles and the room fades to black.

Dani was thoroughly pleased as the first half of the video ended, and not at all surprised that Aidan had decided to follow Quinn’s lead of using the band’s music in the video. But he took it a step further by laying a great remixed track with a few of their most popular songs, edited to fit the vibe of the commercial and each of its scenes perfectly.

Turning around, Dani located the real-live Evan and Rissa standing off to the side of the dance floor on the roof deck of Ocotillos amongst customers who, since this was a closed shoot, were really just every spare friend Dani could wrangle at the last minute. Rylan was already belting out their newest song from the stage, and on Aidan’s cue, everyone began dancing as the cameras started rolling.

Then the live recording continued where the video had left off:

Hands entwined, Evan and Rissa walk through the crowd to grab an open pub table up front near the band just as a friendly server comes by to get their drink orders.

Not hesitating in the least, Rissa orders an Irish Car Bomb and a dark lager.

Evan looks smitten. “Nice. I’ll have the same.”

As they wait for their drinks, the couple launches into an animated discussion filled with nonstop laughter. Their fun conversation flows easily as the music pulses around them and starts building to a sultry, fevered pitch.

Rissa shoots Evan a shy smile. “Do you want to dance?”

Grinning, he removes his stuffy tie completely. “Since the moment I laid eyes on you.”

Out on the dance floor, Rylan’s deep, heady alternative rock music is the soundtrack to their flirting, as their dancing turns into a fast, seductive ride. With her back against his chest, their bodies fluidly aligned, Evan lays his chin against her shoulder and murmurs something in her ear that makes her elbow him playfully in the gut. He chuckles and wraps his arms snugly around her waist as the velvety rich tune on stage strums to an end.

While everyone else is making their way off the dance floor, Rissa drops her head back against his chest, and this time it’s her mouth at his ear. Her words were brief, but it’s enough to inspire him to spin her around and draw her in close.

Their eyes lock.

“We’re not going to discuss the weather again, are we?” whispers Rissa against his lips.

Evan smiles and leans in.

For their first kiss.

“That’s a wrap!” called out Aidan. “Thanks, guys. We got it. You all did great.”

Dani beamed from ear to ear. Not just because the video was a slam dunk, but because from the looks of it, neither Evan nor Rissa wanted to finish their kissing scene. So cute. She’d seen their interest in each other grow throughout the shoot. They’d been inseparable all afternoon, flirting like no one else around them existed.

That’s why, along with their paycheck for doing the video, Dani also included a rather generous Ocotillos gift certificate for them to use together. On a real first date.

Okay
, so she enjoyed moonlighting as cupid from time to time. It wasn’t a big deal.

It certainly did
not
mean she was a fairytale romantic like Luke.

CHAPTER FOUR

LUKE COULDN’T
stop staring at her.

While some might pass off Dani’s girl-next-door looks as just ‘sweet’ at first glance, she exuded a simple, feisty grace that made her his specific brand of gorgeous. And in her faded
Dobson’s
softball shirt and wash-worn capri jeans tonight, both tumble-dried to its current body-hugging fit, she was just the sexiest little thing to boot. All combined with that quick wit and room-stopping smile, she was easily the most appealingly wholesome, tempting woman he’d ever met—a whole-package-deal that had every bit as much to do with how attractive she was on the inside. Caring to a fault and so infectiously lovable. He simply couldn’t get enough of her. Even when she was driving him crazy.

Speaking of crazy… After
weeks
of attempting to sneak past the defenses of the most stubbornly guarded, obsessively self-reliant woman he’d ever met, during which, he’d given her a truckload of assurances that he didn’t in fact have any grand expectations for some epic love story, he and Dani were finally out on their first meal outside of the brewpub—dinner at a Mediterranean café followed by a walk through town for dessert.

Their first official ‘non-date.’

Which was what the sanity-stealing woman was insisting on calling it.

Ridiculous name for the perfect evening aside, he was having a great time. The best part was that even though they’d been getting to know each other for over a month now, it took this non-date for him to discover that his adamantly non-mushy brewmaster was an unconscious hand-holder. Squeezing said hand, he smiled. “Alright, I give. What’s with the impish grin?”

Dani blinked innocently. “What do you mean? This is just what my face does when I’m having fun. It’s a smile. Look it up.”

“You know, I’d buy that if I didn’t already recognize that as your special little Dani grin that makes me crazy.”