Chapter 18
Jansen
I look at Bianca and our eyes meet. My annoyance fades in the face of her dancing eyes and the laughter she’s trying to hold back.
“How to impress a woman,” I deadpan.
Her laugher bursts free, and I fucking love that sound.
“You have wine on your chest.”
She glances down. “So I do.”
I set my plate on the nightstand and lean over to her. “This is a fantasy come true.” And, surrounded by grape carnage, I drag my tongue between her breasts, licking up red wine. “Licking wine off your naked body.”
“I-it is?” She tosses her plate onto the nightstand.
“Of course. You make wine.” I lick again, lower, then around her navel where wine has pooled. “What could be better?”
“You fantasize about me?”
I groan, licking back up to one nipple. “Oh fuck, yeah.” I slide my tongue over to the other one. They taste amazing even without the wine. “Every goddamn night. I fantasize about you wearing a purple silk slip.”
“Ohhhhh.”
As I suck her nipple into my mouth, she gives a full-body shiver.
I draw back to inspect my clean up. Her round breasts are wet, shining in the light, her tight nipples the color of merlot. My dick is hardening into a thick spike. “Beautiful.”
She gazes at me with melting eyes.
“We should clean this up,” I say reluctantly.
“Yes.” She lets out a hearty sigh.
I move away and she slides out of bed. I enjoy this view as she helps me pull the duvet cover off the bed. The white top sheet is stained with spots of purple, but the fitted sheet is unscathed.
“I have another quilt.” I go out to the hall and retrieve it from the closet along with a clean sheet.
We make the bed together, both of us eying the other. I’m wearing shorts, but my hard on is evident beneath the gray cotton and when her eyes drift there and she smiles, I get even harder.
“I love gray sweatpants on men,” she remarks. “Or shorts.”
“Yeah?”
“Mmmm.”
Sweatpants and shorts were a staple of my wardrobe when I was playing. Maybe I should wear them all the time. “I like what you’re wearing, too.”
“I’m not wearing anything!”
“Exactly.”
We each pick up a corner of the clean quilt and lay it over the bed. Moose jumps up into the middle of it.
“Maybe dinner in bed wasn’t such a good idea.” I purse my lips regretfully.
“It was a great idea.” She leans over and rubs Moose’s head. “Just not with this little stinker here.”
“Here.” I turn and grab a T-shirt out of my dresser. I hand it to her. “You can wear this.”
“Thanks.” She takes it and slides it on over her head. It’s huge on her, of course, but her tits push the fabric out, showing off her hard nipples, and the hem ends mid-thigh. I swallow.
“Let’s go sit in the kitchen.”
Bianca picks up the wine bottle. “Oh hey! It didn’t all spill. Lucky, because we broke the rule.”
“What rule?”
“Always drink responsibly. As in, don’t spill.”
A laugh rises in my throat. Jesus. What’s happening to me? I feel so relaxed. So loose. Free.
We eat at the kitchen table while Moose sits at our feet, much better behaved out here. Bianca fills clean glasses and we finish the wine as we eat, and talk.
“How’s harvest going at Caparelli?” I ask.
She filles me in on some details, mostly positive. I’m still blown away by the fact that so many people came to help them pick grapes. Between her and Rosa, they know everyone in town and apparently people like them enough to support their new venture. The small community where everyone knows each other has its downsides—that story about the bar brawl being one of them—but also advantages, too.
The only one not helping them is her uncle. And cousins, I guess. I can see how that bothers her.
“You’ll show them,” I say.
She lifts her chin. “We will. It’s just kind of disheartening, you know? I don’t think Nonna would like this. Family was so important to her.”
I nod.
“What about your family?” she asks. “You haven’t said much about them.”
“My parents are great. They were always supportive of my hockey career. A little too supportive at times.” I grimace.
She sets down her fork and rests her chin on her hand, watching me. “They pushed you to play?”
“They did, but I also loved it. They were convinced from the time I laced up a pair of skates that I was going to be a superstar.”
“Ah. That’s nice.”
“Yeah. They did a lot for me, that’s for sure. Made a lot of sacrifices. They’re a little concerned about my mental health, not to mention my investment portfolio at the moment.”
She smiles. “Because of buying the winery.”
“Yeah. They didn’t want me to retire in the first place. To them, that was giving up. Never mind that I’d had a pretty good run—twelve years in the NHL. Then they tried to talk me out of buying a winery. And if I was going to buy a winery, they thought I should at least buy one close to home, like Niagara-on-the-Lake.”
“Where do they live?”
“Toronto.”
“Ah. Is that where you grew up?”
“Yep. Until I was fifteen. Then I moved to Ottawa to play major junior hockey.”
She purses her lips, a small indent appearing between her eyebrows. “Did your whole family move there for you?”
“No. Just me. I was billeted with a family. Both my parents worked and they couldn’t just up and move. But they were still really involved.”
“That’s really young to leave home.”
“It is. Thank God for billet families. I landed a really good one.”
“Do you have siblings?”
“No. Only child.”
She nods. “So hockey was really a huge part of your life.”
“It was my whole life.” I meet her eyes and give a thin smile. “In retrospect, it probably shouldn’t have been. That may be why my marriage flatlined.”
She tilts her head, and her focus on me and open expression make me feel like I matter. “Really?”
I shrug. I shouldn’t have said that. I tried to make it sound flippant. I don’t want to talk about my failed marriage
“Well.” Bianca stands, takes two steps over to me, and sits on my lap. She slides her fingers around the back of my neck, her face inches away from mine. Her skin is so pure, the texture of her lips so inviting, her shaggy hair a messy temptation. I close one hand around her waist and rest the other on her smooth thigh. “I have thoughts.”
“Oh yeah?” I glide my hand up, up, under the hem of my shirt.
“Yeah. I think you’re hot.”
My lips quirk. “Go on.”
“That’s it.” She smirks.
“That’s only one thought.”
“I’m kidding. I have lots of thoughts.” She traces her fingertips over my bottom lip. “You’re hot. You don’t say a lot, but what you say is worth listening to.” Now her fingers play with my hair. “You work hard, you’re determined. I think you’re hard on yourself—harder than you need to be, and I think that right here…” She presses a hand to my chest. “Your heart is big. You just protect it. You took in a dog. You care about the people who work for you.” She pauses. “I know that night at the fair you didn’t park near me. You just wanted to make sure I got to my car safely.”
Busted.
She tips her head and closes the distance between us to kiss me. Her mouth moves on mine softly.
Her words sink into my consciousness while I kiss her back, drinking in her sweetness. I feel like I don’t deserve those words, like I’ve screwed up so much and I’m probably going to screw up more. In spite of that, I love what she said…what she thinks about me. It makes me feel like maybe I’m not a total loser.
“Do you miss hockey?” she asks.
“Yeah.” I stroke her shoulder. “I thought about things I could do to stay involved with the sport. But I’m not a coach. I’m not a talker. Had to figure out something else.”
“You couldn’t get much farther away from hockey than buying a winery in Napa.”
“I know.”
“Is that why you did it?”
“Nah. I was interested in making wine, that’s all.”
“Tell me what you loved about hockey.”
“Ah. Everything. I love skating. I love puck handling. Shooting. I love competing and winning.” Wistfulness tightens my chest for a moment. I do miss all that. With my marriage imploding soon after retiring, I really haven’t acknowledged how much I miss it.
“I watched you on YouTube. You’re pretty famous.”
I’m a little startled, but I shrug. “I guess.”
“So modest. From what I saw online, you’d have every right to be full of yourself. You’re really good. Not that I know anything about hockey, but the guys talking about it in those videos seemed impressed with you.”
I laugh. I’m surprisingly moved by her praise. I was a good player; I knew that. But hearing her say it feels important. “Thanks.” I kiss her shoulder. “I also miss the guys.” I pause, my throat squeezing briefly thinking about Stephanie with Austin. “We were all so close. They were like my family.” Before one of my family betrayed me with my wife.
She studies my face and I guess she can see how wound up I am. “Do you keep in touch?”
I taste acid at the back of my throat and I swallow. “With a couple of them, yeah. My buddies. They came here and visited me right after I moved here, to check out the place.”
“You should invite them back.”
“The hockey season is just getting started. They probably don’t have time.”
“You could check with them. It’s good to keep people we care about in our lives.”
“Did you do that when you left here?”
She pouts and her eyelids lower. “Ouch.”
“Sorry.”
She huffs out a breath. “No. I didn’t. I wanted out of here, and I wasn’t really thinking about the relationships, you know? My friends. My sisters. The rest of the family.” She traces her fingers over my chest. “I’m lucky my friends were better about staying in touch even though I never came back to visit. I regret that I wasn’t here when Nonna died. I thought she’d always be here.” Her voice thickens. “And I wonder if some of the problems with Uncle Geno and the boys are because I wasn’t here.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that.” I fucking hate how her family is reacting to her and her sisters inheriting Caparelli. Family should support each other. They should be doing everything they can to make sure the sisters are successful. Instead, her jackass uncle is trying to make things worse. That pisses me off.
“No, I’m not. But I have been thinking about family and how we support each other and I…haven’t really been here. For any of them. I don’t know what the hell Allegra is up to in Europe, or how Rosa really managed these past years, especially now Nonna is gone. Nonna was the glue…the one who kept us girls, the Martinellis, joined with the Lambertis. Three girls, three boys…when we were little we all played together. Went to school together. We were all friends. And now…” She clears her throat. “I don’t even know Gianni and Vittorio and Leo anymore.”
“Is it too late? I don’t think it’s too late.” I move strands of hair off her neck. I like hearing her talk, although not when she criticizes herself.
“I guess not.” She goes pensive. “I’ve just been so busy with harvest. That’s all I’ve been able to focus on.”
“I know. And I asked even more of you.”
She tilts her head back. “But I love it. You know I do. Yes, it’s hard work, but there’s so much satisfaction when I taste something that I helped create.”
“Yeah. I don’t contribute much, but I like feeling like I helped create something, too.”
“You do contribute!”
“Not like you.”
“Well, Mother Nature does most of the work; I’m just trying to bottle it. It’s like bottling the wind, the sun, the rain. Even the soil. And if I’m lucky…a little magic.”
My chest tightens hearing her words. I entered into this thinking I understood what I was doing, but Bianca is both an artist and a scientist. Her connection to wine goes so deep and it’s an incredible, beautiful thing. She’s incredible and beautiful.
“But the best thing about winemaking…” She lifts her head and regards me with twinkling eyes. “Is that I get to use the word bunghole.”
A laugh bursts from my chest. My arms tighten around her reflexively, an unfamiliar lightness rising up inside me.
Christ. What is happening to me? She convinced me that a little hot sex isn’t a problem because neither of us are looking for more, but now I’m worried that might not be exactly true. After having her, after feeling her come around me, after tasting her, after talking to her and her stroking my ego with compliments and greedy eyes, and now her making me laugh, in bed for fuck’s sake, my world is shook. Somehow more than my dick is involved in this situation now. I’m starting to wonder how I can ever live without her in my life.
That’s fucking dangerous thinking.
If I open up to the wrong person, trust the wrong person again, I’ll be screwed with a capital F. Again. I can’t do that.
And yet, if she got up to leave right now, I’d stop her.
This internal conflict of wanting her beyond anything and yet being terrified out of my mind by that is really inconvenient.
Well, since I’m not going to kick her out of bed, might as well make the best of it.