“Hi, Sean. Good to see you, too. I didn’t realize you were here now.”
He picked up two menus and tapped something at the computer before he led them to their table.
“Yeah, I’ve been here since they opened. Sydney helped me get this job, I owe her one. Tell her I say hi.”
Margot apparently had a great deal to tell Sydney the next time she talked to her.
“Will do.”
Luke laughed after Sean walked away.
“Do you know everyone in this town?”
Margot shook her head.
“Not at all—I’m brand-new here, by the standards of Napa Valley, but I’ve tried hard to remember names, it makes a big difference when you’re trying to establish yourself. But the thing is, as you know, there aren’t all that many Black women in Napa Valley, especially not Black women winery owners, so everyone seems to know me. Which definitely keeps me on my toes.”
“Ah.” Luke smiled at her, with a little glint in his eye. “So you weren’t just saying that, that first night. About how too many people know you around here for me to kiss you on the sidewalk.”
Margot tried to keep a straight face.
“Excuse me, are you trying to tell me that you thought I was just making that up to try to get in your pants? That it was a handy excuse to invite myself back to your place?”
Luke twitched his eyebrows at her.
“It’s honestly kind of an ego blow for me to realize you were just telling me the exact truth.” His leg touched hers under the table. “Though to be fair, you didn’t immediately invite yourself back to my house—you clarified first whose place was closer.”
She laughed.
“Oh, that’s right, I forgot that part.”
“If I’d been a little farther away, you would have just turned toward your house, and I would have run right after you.”
She liked that he said that. She’d always thought of herself as the aggressor that night. That was one of the things that made her feel even more guilty that she’d slept with her employee, accidentally or not, when she agonized about everything in her life at two a.m. But he had been the one to kiss her. And he’d seemed just as eager for that night to continue as she had.
They smiled at each other, and the lingering nervousness that she’d felt about this date fell away. She thought maybe Luke had been nervous, too, because he seemed less tense than when they’d walked in together, or when he’d walked up to her door. Maybe she’d just imagined that, though, with her whole fit of first-date jitters. She had no idea why she’d been so nervous—she’d already slept with him! Multiple times now! She knew he liked her. Well, she knew he lusted after her, at least—maybe that had been why she’d been so nervous, because in addition to lusting after him, she already knew she liked him. And she wasn’t—totally—sure if he liked her, too.
This morning, he’d said he wanted to see if this was something. What did he mean by “something”？ She knew what she wanted him to mean by that, she knew what she hoped he meant by that, but maybe he’d just meant If we keep getting along well and having great sex, that’s all. He was only twenty-eight; men that age didn’t care about real relationships, at least not in her experience.
Oh God, now she was nervous again. Margot, chill out, this is only your first real date, after all.
Luke cleared his throat.
“So, Margot. What do you do?” he asked in a slightly deeper voice than normal.
She raised her eyebrows at him, and he looked back at her straight-faced, but with a glimmer of a smile in his eyes.
Oh. This was their first date. So he was making first-date small talk. How . . . adorable.
“I work at a winery,” she said. His eyes widened, in fake surprise, and she forced herself to keep a straight face. “Actually, I’m the co-owner of a winery; my brother and I own it together. I’m on the business side, he’s the winemaker. What about you?”
“What a coincidence—I very recently left a job at a winery,” he said. Margot picked up her wineglass to hide her smile. “I was just in the tasting room, though. I loved working there; it was a ton of fun. How’d you get into the winery business?”
This whole first-date thing was kind of fun. Well, a first date with Luke was.
“My Uncle Stan—my dad’s brother—was a winemaker, and he started a winery in Napa Valley when I was a kid,” she said. “My brother, Elliot, and I spent a lot of time down here with him. He died a few years ago and left the winery to the two of us. So I quit my old job and moved up here to run the winery.”