Stirred: A Love Story (9 page)

“Go for it, girl,” Chapter Eight whispered.

Dragging her tongue across her bottom lip and following it with a tiny bite, Sage looked back up at Jeremy through her lashes and slowly dragged her hands over the smooth wood of the bar to push herself up to standing. Her eyes met his and she held.

“Sometimes.” That was all she said. It was well played. She let out a slow breath and folded her paper.

Jeremy, who had clearly committed Chapter Eight to memory, didn’t even flinch. His smile broadened, and Sage could see a faint outline of where his sunglasses sat across his nose as he slowly leaned over the bar toward her. Faking a little to the left, he took an olive out of her jar and popped it into his mouth, eyes never leaving hers.

“Huh, let me know if you ever need any help with that.”

He smiled and Sage couldn’t be sure, but she may have let out a squeak. Jeremy made his well-earned cool-guy exit, and when Sage looked over, Garrett was gone.

Crap, crap, crap.

Fail. Jeffries, complete and total fail.

What the hell is going on?
Garrett returned to his office after lunch and wondered when watching a bartender and some wine guy flirt with each other had turned into soft porn. The guy, who looked like he hadn’t seen dirt or a shovel in a while, was irrelevant. He’d barely heard that joker, but when Sage stood, her hands sliding across all that polished wood, Garrett felt like he should almost be embarrassed to watch her in broad daylight. The wine guy was clearly into her with his stupid question about her frustration. It was kind of a cheap shot when Sage was obviously talking about her music, and Garrett fully expected her to go all pink in the face and pull the nervous act she did with him. That was not what happened, oh no. She looked up at the guy with those take-me-right-here-on-this-bar eyes, and Garrett had almost dropped his phone. Where the hell did that look even come from? He’d picked her up when she was drunk, driven her home. Shit, she’d said she loved him, but he had never gotten that look, had never seen her bat her lashes and pout like that.

Garrett wasn’t sure which pissed him off more: that he’d been deprived of the look in all the years he’d known Sage, or that she was flashing it at the wine guy. He stopped reading and rereading the same e-mail and stepped outside for some air.
Let it go. Who cares?

It was unexpected, he told himself as he walked toward the fields. Garrett stopped at the edge of the first dirt road and rubbed his hands across his face. Until a couple of weeks ago, he could count on one hand how many times he’d noticed Sage Jeffries, let alone thought about her. Now, here he was up to his ass in maintenance reports and pricing structures and his mind kept tripping over shit like—
If she loves you so much, why the hell is she getting naughty with the wine guy?

That didn’t even make any damn sense. They’d talked it out and brushed it off, hadn’t they? She’d had too much to drink, plain and simple. Sure, she said that he still had great eyes and she’d meant what she’d said, but who knew with women? Clearly it was good he hadn’t listened to her because only a couple of weeks later, there she was burning up the bar with her. . . frustration.

He’d wanted to punch the guy when he leaned toward her. Garrett hadn’t wanted to punch someone since. . . shit, he couldn’t remember. He didn’t do that stuff anymore. There were other priorities, decisions to be made requiring his full attention so he didn’t fuck something up. Punching a guy, or even the urge to punch him, was so far out of his wheelhouse Garrett wasn’t sure he’d even remember how.

“Um. . . hell yeah, we would,” his ego cried, beating its chest as Garrett turned to walk back to the office. He didn’t need this right now. Things were crazy enough without his newfound awareness of Sage Jeffries. Where the hell had she come from? He thought about calling Kenna but decided that was stupid. There was nothing to say. Nothing had happened between the two of them. She was obviously hot for the wine guy, which was good. Great. Why shouldn’t she be happy?

Garrett dropped his face into his hands and for the first time in a very long time, he felt out of control. His mind raced and he couldn’t control his thoughts. All over a little naughty music and Sage’s pouty lips? Hell no, he thought, picking up the phone. She did have a great mouth, but he needed to clear his head now.

“Hey, is that tractor engine still in pieces in the shop?” Garrett asked George when he picked up the phone.

“Sure is. Does someone need it? I’ve been meaning to get to it, but I can’t figure out the manifold.”

Garrett closed down his e-mail, most of them unopened. “I’ll be right down.”

“You’re. . . going to work on an engine? Don’t you have—”

“I’ll be there in twenty.” He hung up, took the cap off his desk, and put it on backward. Whistling to Jack, Garrett jumped into his truck. He’d be working off-site today, as the white collars put it. He needed to clear his head and get his hands on something he understood.

Chapter Seven

S
he was being tested, Sage decided when she arrived Monday morning to find him sitting at her bar. Or maybe Garrett liked the naughty exchange between her and Jeremy last week. It was entirely possible. She’d seen enough interactions at her bar to know that lots of men responded to the grapes in a fruit salad. Maybe he was one of those guys, because unless it was her always-hopeful imagination, he’d been stopping by the bar alone more often. In the past, he’d sat when Kenna was around or would talk with Logan, but this was different. He was stopping by and sitting alone.

His gloves lay on the edge of the bar, so she knew he’d already delivered the produce for the day. Usually he’d be gone by now. Instead, he sat drinking coffee and scowling at something on his phone. Scowls were supposed to be ugly, scrunched-up looks, but his was more of a smolder that made her soft everywhere.

It figured the minute Sage decided to move on and practice her naughty exercises on men her heart could handle, Garrett would be everywhere.

“Maybe we should try one on him,” her stupid heart suggested.

“That’s a great idea. Remember how things turned out the last time you got involved?” her mind chimed in, putting her heart firmly back in its place.

He knew her feelings already. Whether or not he believed her, she’d been vulnerable. The naughty book strongly discouraged vulnerability. Sage recalled a few of the more progressive exercises from the book, and looking at Garrett, she was certain she’d pass out before anything happened.

She replaced the sanitized caps on the soda guns and tried, as the book instructed, to think of Garrett as a conquest. He was staring down at his phone, seemingly preoccupied, and she felt like one of those predators on the nature shows Paige watched. Sage smiled at the thought and heard the whispering voice of the host in her head, “As the female lioness surveys the herd of male gazelles. . .” Testing the shots of soda water from the now-clean guns brought her back to reality. Garrett Rye was no gazelle. He’d eat her alive.

Right on cue, he looked up.

“Are you waiting for Kenna?”

Garrett shook his head. “Having coffee. Am I in your way?”

“No, no. It’s. . . you’re here.”

What the hell are you doing? Cut oranges or something.

“I am.” Garrett grinned and then grew serious. “When did we meet?”

After a moment’s hesitation, she answered. “Summer, three years ago. Logan had given me the job that day and you were helping with the garden out front. My hair was still long back then.” Sage touched her now bare neck on instinct and wondered where this was going.

“You had a big flower on your purse.”

She didn’t reply. Her mouth was open a little.

“What?” he asked.

“You remember my purse?”

“I do. It was some purse.”

“It was. Still is. I have it, but I don’t use it much anymore. So, that’s when we met. We shook hands.”

“I remember now.” He set his phone aside and gave her his full attention.

“You wiped your hands on your jeans before extending one to me.” Sage refilled his coffee without asking. “The entire front of your T-shirt was soaked with sweat. It was white and you were wearing boots and a backward Dodgers cap.”

“If it was backward, how’d you know it was Dodgers?”

“I. . . I’m not sure. I must have looked back.”

“Okay.” He laughed. “If memory serves, I was filthy that day. Almost embarrassed to shake your pretty hand, but not quite.”

She basked in the memory, at how simple it felt to be with him now. “I think I interviewed on a Friday,” she said, wanting the conversation to continue.

“Good memory.”

“Yes, it was Friday, because I bought a couch that weekend. I was so excited.”

“About the job?”

“About all of it. I felt so free and ready for anything when I moved here from San Francisco.”

Garrett looked down at his coffee and if she didn’t know any better, she’d guess he was thinking of something to say. That was ridiculous, considering it was Garrett, but that’s how it seemed.

“Is your family still in San Francisco?” he asked.

Sage nodded. “Yes, Marin County.”

“Beautiful up there.”

“It is.”

They went on like that for several minutes: he asked Sage questions she never thought would interest him, and she answered with an honesty that felt organic. She wasn’t sure what had changed, why they were suddenly sharing, but she wanted the sun to stop right where it was, for time to stand still while she soaked in a little more. Garrett wasn’t exactly forthcoming when it was her turn to ask questions, but he did share that he’d never been out of the country once it was established, with some laughter, that Mexico didn’t count and that he’d had one other dog before Jack—an Irish setter.

“Do you like what you do?” he asked.

“I love mixing drinks and I love working here. I’m not sure I’d want to tend any bar, but I love what I do here. You?” she asked, cleaning out the coffee pot and slicing some oranges for the afternoon.

Garrett let out a breath and quickly glanced at his phone. “I love the farm. It’s important work. I’m still learning a lot of what I do now, but yeah, I guess.”

“You’d rather be in the fields.”

Garrett nodded. “It’s the best part, but things can’t stay the same forever, right?”

Sage agreed.

“I’m working on moving forward, ‘embracing change,’ as my father likes to preach.”

“Oprah?” Sage laughed.

Garrett confirmed and laughed, too. Deep and rich. Sage lost herself in him for a minute and cut her finger.

“Shit.” She put her finger to her mouth.

Garrett leaned over the bar, reaching out to help, but Sage stepped back because her finger was bleeding and she wouldn’t be able to concentrate if he touched her.

“You all right?”

Sage nodded, still sucking on her finger when their eyes locked. She blinked and when Garrett’s eyes dropped to her mouth, the hand not in her mouth hit the corner of the cutting board and her oranges went flying.

Grabbing a Band-Aid near the register, Sage shook her head as she bandaged her finger. Her cheeks were warm and as he came around the bar to help her clean up, they grew warmer.

“You don’t have to—” Her words fell when she noticed she had juice all down the front of her skirt. Grabbing a bar towel, she cursed her dry cleaning bill and blotted at the beadwork. The fringe of the towel caught on her skirt, and Sage felt the skin of her bare leg as she tried to untangle the towel. Feeling her stomach flutter, she glanced up, skirt still hiked, to find Garrett with his hands full of oranges, his eyes on her skirt, and his body so close she could see the stubble on his chin.

She cleared her throat and finally pulled the towel loop free, the cotton of her skirt cascading down her leg. Their eyes locked as he stood there with juice dripping through his fingers. Sage wasn’t sure where she found the wherewithal, but she put her hands on his waist and turned him toward the sink. Garrett dropped the oranges and turned the water on to wash his hands. Once again, they were standing in that tiny space behind her bar.

He dried his hands and she leaned her back into the bar, not wanting to leave but needing to create space.

“When did you know?” he asked in a voice low and gravelly. The look on his face told her he was asking her how long she’d loved him.

Sage was trying to decide whether to stick with the honesty they’d shared or pretend not to understand when Logan came through the kitchen doors.

“Hey, Sage, can I steal a few of those lemons for a dressing I think would go—” He stopped short at the sight of them behind the bar. “Oh. . . sorry. I didn’t realize. . . you were still here. . . bro.” Logan’s eyes filled with mischief.

Garrett shook his head, visibly finding his place in the order of his life, and returned to his phone on the other side of the bar. “I do need to get going.”

“Don’t let me chase you off.” Logan leaned over the bar and grabbed a few lemons out of her basket on the back bar. “You should stay for lunch. Shouldn’t he, Sage?”

She said nothing and stooped to finish cleaning up the oranges, thankful for the dark space and the chance to collect herself.