“So, Margot,” he said as he picked up his drink, “what do you do?”
She lifted her hand in the air and swatted his question away.
“Oh no, please, let’s not talk about work. It’s Sunday night, no one should talk about work on a Sunday night, don’t you agree?”
A strange woman at a bar who not only didn’t quiz him about why he’d quit his job, but didn’t want to have the normal bar conversations. Even better.
“I agree, absolutely,” he said. “Okay, then, tell me something more interesting.” He stopped and thought. “When’s the best time you ever had to get a tow truck?”
She laughed loudly this time. Her laugh was less throaty, more explosive. He was glad that he’d made her laugh like that.
“That’s a much better question,” she said. “And I have a good story about that, actually.”
His appetizers landed in front of him, and he smiled at the server.
“Thanks,” he said. He pushed the plates over so they were in between the two of them. “Please. Feel free.”
She reached down and picked up a piece of prosciutto.
“If you insist,” she said.
“I also insist that you tell me your story,” he said.
She took a sip of wine and grinned at him.
“Well,” she said. “I was in graduate school, and two friends of mine and I were in a rented pickup truck, driving through Death Valley.”
He looked up from the charcuterie plate to her.
“Oh, this is going to be good,” he said.
Her grin got wider.
“It absolutely is.”
He listened to her story and tried to figure out more about her. If she hadn’t said she was a local, he wouldn’t have pegged her as being from here. Partly, yes, because she was Black—when he’d gone to high school here, he’d been one of the only Black people in his class. But also, just in the same way she’d been able to tell he wasn’t local from his clothes, he wouldn’t have guessed that she was local because of hers. She looked too . . . stylish to live and work in the valley. Not that people around here dressed badly—it was just that they dressed for work, and work was at wineries or on farms or at hotels or spas, and each of those jobs had their own kind of uniform, official or unofficial.
None of those uniforms were the snug, sleeveless black dress Margot wore—a dress that showed all of her curves—or the armful of bracelets that jangled every time she gestured, which was frequently, nor the leather jacket slung over the back of her barstool.
But more than the clothes, it was the attitude. Margot walked, talked, even sat, like she was in charge. Like she commanded all of those around her to do her bidding, and they did it, no questions asked.
He was already very glad she’d introduced herself to him.
“And that’s when we decided to stand by the side of the road and see if we could hitchhike back to town,” she said.
He laughed out loud.
“What? Hitchhike? Forgive me if I’m wrong on this one—we only met ten minutes ago, but you don’t strike me as much of a hitchhiker,” he said.
She laughed, too.
“You’re correct about that—it’s the only time I’ve done it.”
He turned his whole body to face her, to make it easier to watch her.
“So you were successful, then?”
She opened her eyes wide and gave him a sly smile.
“We were indeed. You see . . .” She leaned in closer to him and lowered her voice. That, of course, made him lean in closer to her. “We made my friend Julian be the one to flag down a car. He was the only white guy of the three of us, you see.”
Luke burst out laughing, and she joined him. She seemed very amused with herself, and—he thought—with him, for appreciating her story. He liked the way her eyes shined at him.
She’d given him another bit of information, he realized—she’d said this had been when she was in graduate school. Business school, it must have been. She must be an executive, somewhere here in Napa; high up at a hotel, or a big wine conglomerate, or something like that. She probably wasn’t from here at all, but had come here for this job, and despite all of what she’d said to him about the way people dressed in Napa Valley, she still dressed however she wanted to.
He liked that about her.
Especially since he really liked the way she looked in that dress.
“Okay, but where does the tow truck come in?” he asked her.
She picked up her glass of wine. The light reflected off the red liquid and onto her face.