Love You Always (Buttercup Hill #5)

Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

A rcher

Finally, I feel like I’m making some headway on the giant stack of papers in my office. Orders from sixteen new California wine shops confirmed. One new overseas distributor secured. Most of our numbers for the month look like they’ll add up, as long as we don’t have an unexpected cold snap that could freeze the vines overnight. I cross my fingers under my desk, newly open to things like manifesting and hoping.

I don’t want to think too hard about why I might have a slightly less gloomy outlook on the world, but I know. Just spending a little bit of time with the sunny Ella Fieldstone has been like sprinkling fairy dust around Buttercup Hill. I may be grouchy, but I’m not made of stone. My mood is lighter from the sheer delight she seemed to take in every aspect of the job I inherited and normally see as a chore. In a couple hours, she had me remembering what I used to find fascinating about the wine-making process before it became a daily grind .

Surprising myself, I pick up my phone, pull up my social media account, and enter Ella’s name like the stalker I’ve become. The usual string of photos pop up, most of them candids of Ella and Callum at one event or another. But this time, I zoom in, analyzing her expression, trying to find evidence that she’s as joyful with him as what I experienced with her in the wine cave. In most of the pictures, even though they’re not posed, she seems aware of the camera, tipping her head against Callum or giving her characteristic pixie grin.

But in a couple of the photos, she looks less guarded, more resigned to walking next to him hand in hand, like it’s a job. I’m clearly reading into the situation, but when I compare them to photos of Ella on her own, there seems to be a veil of something I can’t pinpoint when she’s with Callum, an effort to plaster on a smile. It looks like acting. And like a movie-goer who suspends disbelief for the sake of a story, I’m seeing what I want to see.

On that note, I go back to my pile. Enough daydreaming about another man’s fiancée.

I put in a call to Graham, making sure he’s growing enough sauvignon blanc grapes to supplement what we have so we can collaborate on a special edition next year. He assures me that we’ll be good to go, so I pencil that into my planner. Next month, next year—it’s all a blur of projections.

I skip lunch, feeling good about the groove I’m in. Maybe I can even finish early today and get out for a hike before dark. But that’s when Beatrix calls me with an urgent S.O.S. She’s talking into the phone before I even say hello.

“I know you’re up to your eyeballs, but I can’t reach anyone else with a truck, and it’s sensitive because it’s her.”

“Slow down, Trix. I missed half of that. Who is her ?”

She covers the receiver, and I hear a muffled directive to someone else before she starts repeating whatever she said before. “Ella. She was meeting with the florist in St. Helena and got a flat. There’s already paparazzi buzzing around, so she ducked into a shop to buy a hat. She’s been trying to get roadside assistance from Fiat, but they can’t get a tow truck here for two hours. Do you think you can tow her car to a shop on your truck hitch?”

Slapping a hand against my cheek, I look at my pile of papers. So close, yet so far…

“Why’s she need a tow? Doesn’t she have a spare?”

“I don’t know, Archer.” A frustrated sigh tells me Trix doesn’t have the bandwidth for this.

“Fine. I’ll get her. Tell her to text me her location.”

“Perfect. Thank you. I owe you,” she says. I nod, not entirely unhappy about the errand and still willing to collect on whatever Trix thinks she owes me.

Ella greets me with one tanned leg in the street and a hand in the air like she’s hailing a taxi. Why does it have to be a hundred-degree day so that Ella is out here in a tank top and shorts? I almost swerve into a parked car after staring too long at her leg, bare under a pair of denim cut-offs that make my mouth water like a goddamn pervert.

Jesus. Tow the car and get back to work.

I park behind her little blue powder puff of a car, which has one very flat rear tire. She comes over to the driver’s side of my truck, nearly getting side-swiped by a passing car in the process. I reach for her shoulder through my open window and pull her toward my truck. “Let’s not add a hospital visit today, yeah?” Her bare skin feels so good under my hand, so right, and I pull back from it like a lit match.

“Yeah. Good plan.”

She takes a step back, so I exit my truck and follow her to the sidewalk, where she points at the offending tire. “That’s the one.” In a baseball hat and dark sunglasses, with her hair tamed into a knot, she’s unrecognizable unless someone is really staring. I look around. Nope, just me.

“Yes, I see that. Do you have a spare? Easier to just change it instead of dragging it to a service station.”

A look of confusion pulls her mouth into a frown. She takes a step closer to the car and pats at the tire, as if testing its temperature. “I don’t know how to change it.”

“I can help you with it, darlin’. But do you have a spare?” Music hums from the car speaker, so I open the door and turn off the ignition, but I notice her tank is on empty and shake my head.

She pops the trunk and peers inside, hands on her cheeks with concern. I see a tennis racquet and a yoga mat, but no spare. “Does this lift up?” I point as I lift the floor of the trunk, revealing an unblemished tire and some tools. Ella’s hands drop from her face, and she pats my forearm.

“Oh, that’s a relief.”

I wrestle it out from its harness and retrieve a tire iron she probably never knew she had. “Okay, princess. You’re going to learn to change a tire. I’m fully aware you probably have ‘people’ to do things like this, but I was raised to believe everyone should be able to change a tire.”

“I believe that too. I just didn’t find anyone willing to teach me. Until you.” I feel a strange twinge of pride at being her first—even if just to pop her tire-changing cherry. Her happy, willing face is all the encouragement I need to motion her to sit next to me on the sidewalk as I walk her through the steps.

It takes a few tries to get the jack positioned right under the chassis, but she insists on doing it herself. When I lean in to move it over an inch, she mock-glares at me and slaps my hand away. “Use your words. Let me do the work.”

“Move it over an inch or you’ll crank right through the flimsy plastic this car is made of.”

“Hey, I like this flimsy plastic car. It’s much more me than the Beemer the studio bought me after my last film. I like to fly under the radar.”

Looking at the partial face visible beneath the hat and glasses, I start to appreciate the effort that takes. “Yeah, I’m sure all you mega-stars say that, trying to seem humble and all,” I tease.

“Yup. It’s in the mega-star manual.” Her laugh sounds like fine crystal glasses welcoming everyone within earshot. It lets loose something inside me, the final bit of resistance to admitting to myself that I like her.

And that I’m in deep trouble because of it.

She moves the jack to the proper spot, and I show her how to turn the crank. A big stripe of grease marks one of her legs and her hands are covered in black exhaust residue, but she never complains, never implies she’s too pristine to get a little dirty. I find myself wishing she’d be just a tad less adorable through the process so I’d have a reason not to like her. But she’s giving me no reason not to find her utterly charming.

Despite my fierce insistence that she’s just another client of Buttercup Hill, I feel my resistance slipping. I like her.

Once Ella gets the car cranked off the ground, she admires her handiwork. “Pretty good for a newbie,” she says, standing up. She immediately pitches forward, and I reach out to steady her. She puts a hand on mine like it’s nothing, like we’re in synch now, me knowing when she needs steadying, me reaching out almost without thinking. “Thanks.”

I nod. “Now we need to get these lug nuts off. And if you’ve had your tires rotated recently, they’re probably on pretty tight.” I give one a test turn with the wrench. “Do you have a rag or towel or something? Might help your grip.” While she searches her yoga bag for a towel, I quickly loosen all the nuts and hand her the wrench. While she uses it to twist each of the five nuts, I sit on the sidewalk next to her, giving her quiet encouragement. “You’ve got this, princess.”

She nods and keeps working. I see the side of her that must show up at work in long hours on the set. I appreciate her focus as a dribble of sweat runs down her cheek. I blot it away with my finger and wipe it on the hem of my shirt.

People mostly ignore us as they walk by on the sidewalk.

“Are you one of those Zero Club people,” I ask, crossing my arms.

“I have no idea what that is.”

“People who drive until their tank has zero miles left and then keep going to see how far they can go without running out of gas. It’s a thing.”

“That’s the dumbest club I’ve ever heard of. No, I’m just the regular kind of busy person who puts off getting gas until the last minute. Is there a club for that?”

“Prolly not. Membership would get too big.”

“Ah, see? You understand. I’m glad you’re not judging.”

“Who says I’m not judging? You’re outta gas with a flat tire in the middle of nowhere.”

“I tried to get gas at this place out of town, but it turned out to be only a self-serve carwash. Then I got sidetracked.” She pops her head up and looks around to where there are, admittedly, plenty of shops and people. “And we’re hardly nowhere. It’s almost as busy as San Francisco.”

And yet…she’s here in my neighborhood, yet again, without her fiancé. And here I am, yet again, warming to her when I had no intention of doing so. Only now, I’ve stopped resisting it.

With the bolts loosened, we pull off the damaged tire, which has a large nail deep in the tread. “This may be able to be patched,” I say, picking up the tire and stowing it back in the trunk.

“Cool.” Ella lifts the new tire on, and I watch her do everything in reverse, putting the lug nuts back and cranking down the jack. When she’s done, I stand up and help her to her feet, holding onto her hand and looking to see if she’s wobbly. But her wide grin is all I see. “I changed a tire,” she whispers. It feels like a secret between the two of us, so I keep my voice equally low.

“You crushed it.”

“I did.” She brushes a strand of hair from her cheek, leaving a grease smudge on her cheek. Using the hem of my shirt, I wipe it away. “Can’t have you looking like you work in a garage or someone’s liable to hire you.”

I retrieve a container of wet wipes from my truck and wipe down her hands. With her new tire and a promise to hit up the gas station just outside of town, Ella thanks me with a hug that somehow manages to make me half hard. Fuck me. I need to send her on her way.

“You good?” I take a step back. She looks as startled as I am by the wild electricity that passes between us with every touch.

“I’m good.” Her voice is a quiet rasp.

“You going home by way of a nice, safe freeway at a reasonable speed? No driving through construction sites or fields of broken glass.”

She holds up a hand. “Scout’s honor, Grumpy Grape.”

I nod and she slides into the driver’s seat. I close the door, trying to hide my smile at the nickname I don’t entirely hate. Her smirk tells me she sees it anyway.

Trouble. Deep, deep trouble.