17. Philip
Philip
Nate grunts as I hand him another case. “So, what’s up with you and the sister?”
His question is so unexpected that I almost drop the case of wine I’d just picked up. “Excuse me?”
“You and Maggie’s sister. What’s the deal?” He hefts another case and adds it to the stack.
The tasting room closed thirty minutes ago. Cassie left an hour ago, a knowing look on her face when she hugged me goodbye. I have a feeling she knows something she shouldn’t, but I wasn’t going to ask, when not only Nate but also a cluster of customers were standing nearby.
Besides, I have my own questions for my wife. Like what Cassie meant by an opportunity on the East Coast? Why don’t I know anything about this?
“She’s a good friend. My best friend,” I finally answer, moving to the next stack he brought in from storage.
Ole When-we pauses, his hands digging into the small of his back as he arches his spine. “Your best friend often sleeps over? And wears your shirt while drinking coffee on the front porch?”
I make a sound of protest, but he keeps talking.
“It’s real quiet out here at night. Sound carries.”
The heavy case slips as I set it on the floor, pinching my finger. “Fuck.” I step back, shaking it off. The storage room at the back of the wine bar is just big enough for the pair of us to move around in, but not enough that I can pace off the pain. I back out of the room, Nate taking over the stack I was moving.
I’d been ready to race down to my cabin and see Ophie when he’d appeared at the back door, a dolly stacked with cases. After helping him wheel up another six stacks from the cellar beneath the main building, I’d felt obligated to stay and help him organize the upstairs storage.
“Hurts like a bitch, right?” Nate’s leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. “I saw a guy in Bordeaux get his whole hand crushed. It got caught under a dolly when we were packaging cases.”
“Damn. That sounds awful.” I shake my hand out again, the pain receding. “And, um…sorry? For the noise, I mean.”
“Better than hearing Kel and Maggie. Listening to your best friend have sex should be illegal.” He smirks as I hand him another case. “Unless you’re also participating, I guess.”
I burst out laughing. “You got me there, mate.”
I’ve never seen Nate this relaxed, but if he’s going to remove an inch of stick from his ass, I’ll take the mile. “How’s the growing going? Not sure what the right word is, but you know what I mean.”
“Crop is looking good so far, although I hope we don’t get too many more heat waves this summer. The pinots don’t tolerate the heat so well.”
We keep stacking and sorting the bottles as he waxes on about different grape varieties he wants to try that might do better with the changing climate. He’s downright chatty, like he hasn’t had a real conversation in months and has been bottling it all up with no one to talk to.
“How many people are you expecting at the wine club event this weekend? If you need some extra help, I could see if Ophie is free? She works at Latte Da, so she knows how to serve and work a crowd.”
In truth, I just want an excuse to keep her here a little longer. I missed waking up to the sound of her singing in the shower, or her arm being thrown across my chest in her sleep. I just miss her.
“Are you going to work or flirt?”
“We would be the utmost professionals.” I pause, shoving a couple of bottles deeper onto a shelf with a grunt. “Besides, it’s kind of a secret? And Maggie would be there…”
“Ah. I see.” Nate does that old-fashioned nose touch thing that I’ve never understood. “If she’s free, I’m sure we could use the help. Anything to keep the Sutton girl from being a nuisance. She’s hell-bent on working here, and I don’t know how much longer I can hold her off.”
Grabbing more bottles, I keep stacking them on the shelves. “Emma? Why are you so against her helping out? She seems eager enough, and she wouldn’t drive away customers with a grumpy attitude.”
“Touché.” Nate laughs. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him sound so human. “For starters, she’s not twenty-one yet, and she’d have to take a test and get a pourer’s permit, which we don’t have time for before Saturday. But most importantly, Sophie Sutton made me promise not to let her work here. Not until she graduates.”
He shakes his head, grunting as he stacks more wine. “I may not like the Suttons or the fact that they bought my home, but I’m not stupid enough to piss off Sophie. Especially when it comes to her kid.”
The last box unloaded, I follow Nate out of the storage room so he can lock up. He pockets his keys and starts off toward his cabin. I’m just a few steps behind when he turns around. “I’m going to shower and then head into town for a drink. Probably be gone for a couple hours. Hopefully, I can get a good night’s sleep tonight.”
He turns and is gone before I can answer, leaving me at the top of the path leading down to the cabins. I’m still chuckling as I open the front door. Ophie is sitting on the couch, her feet tucked up underneath her dress, laptop on her knees. Her hair is pulled up off her neck with a clip, one long strand that she must have missed trailing down her neck.
A hint of sweat dots her temples from the hot day, and her cheeks are flushed. The flush deepens when she looks up and sees me.
“Cassie knows—”
“Nate definitely knows—”
We both speak at the same time, choking off the words. “You told Cassie?”
Ophie sets her laptop on the coffee table, hugging her knees. “She guessed. Apparently, I need to work on my poker face.”
“So, what did you tell her?” I perch on the cushion beside her, letting my hand cover hers. When she’s silent for a moment, I flip her top hand over and lace my fingers with hers, my thumb tracing circles against her skin. “Ophie?”
“Nothing, really.”
I lift her hand and kiss it, my tongue slipping out to taste her skin. “Did you tell her it was the best sex of your life?”
A delicious grin tips her lips. “I told her it was amazing, yeah.”
I pull her closer, tucking our joined hands between my legs, her knees coming down on the couch beside my thigh as she resettles beside me. “Did you tell her we broke the bed?”
I pull her close and kiss her cheek, then her jaw.
She lets out a quiet sigh before answering. “No.”
“Why not?” I keep kissing along her jaw, dotting extra kisses in the space beneath her chin just for fun.
Her ears turn as pink as the rest of her skin, and she pulls as far away as she can. “Because it’s embarrassing?”
“It’s embarrassing that I flipped you over my shoulder?” I loosen one hand and slide it between her ass and her calves, threatening to pick her up and flip her over me. She squeaks and sits down hard, trapping my arm.
Fortunately for me, this position has her collarbones and breasts at the perfect height for my lips and tongue to explore. Especially with the delightful way her dress plunges low, inviting me in.
“Philip,” she whispers but doesn’t pull away. “It’s embarrassing that we had sex while Sydney was passed out drunk in the other room.”
My arms and legs slacken with surprise at her point of view, and she pulls free. “One, she was not passed out drunk, she was just sleepy drunk.” Ophie snorts at my perspective but doesn’t argue. “And two, I just can’t resist you. No one on earth could possibly have enough willpower to walk away from you.”
“That’s bullshit. People walk away from me all the time.” Just like she’s willing to walk away from me, apparently. She snorts and tries to pull away, but I catch her before she can get far, this time pulling her across my lap before capturing her lips in a deep kiss.
“If they walk away from you, then they don’t matter, liefling.” I kiss her again. “But most importantly, I couldn’t walk away from you. Not when everything between us was so new.” I feel like there’s more to uncover here, but her lips and body are too much temptation for me to resist.
So we stop talking and start kissing. A good old-fashioned make-out session with Ophie draped across me, her ass nestled between my thighs. The kind that used to get me in trouble with the girls at school as a teenager. Well, the girls didn’t seem to mind—it was their brothers who objected when I didn’t follow up the making out with a declaration of everlasting love.
Tonight, it’s working to distract me from all the questions we’re carefully not asking. Or answering.
My fingers are already working their way underneath Ophie’s dress, and I can feel her heat ready to welcome me. She squirms, rubbing my dick just right through my jeans. “Yes,” she breathes, throwing her head back as my fingers skate across her underwear, already damp.
Unable to resist teasing, I slide my fingers beneath the edge of her panties, barely grazing her lower lips. I brace and lift her close enough to whisper in her ear. “And did you tell her that you’re madly in love with me?”
Ophie opens one eye, barely turning her head to look at me, and smirks. “I told her the truth—”
My heart races at her words. The truth? The real truth? That we got married on a whim, and there’s a possibility that maybe we’ve been in love this whole time?
She bites my ear, swirling her tongue against the sensitive nerves there, before whispering, “I told her that we were just banging.”
I didn’t think my heart could break at the same time my dick could get hard. I thought men weren’t good at multitasking.
My breath escapes in a low moan, half from the sensation of her lips against my skin and half from sadness. But I force myself not to react, not to correct or contradict her. It doesn’t matter that my feelings are deeper, that I want more.
This was the reminder I needed that Ophie doesn’t want a romantic relationship with me. And I don’t want to lose her. Losing her would leave me anchorless, adrift in a sea of choices with no idea which way to turn.
So I push aside my feelings and concentrate on the feel of her wet heat and the way my stroking fingers make her moan. She kisses me again, our tongues dancing as our mouths meet. I keep stroking her, two digits slipping inside while my thumb finds her clit.
Mouths still fused, she vibrates with pleasure against my lips. My thumb continues circling as her humming gets higher pitched and her back stiffens.
With an inarticulate cry, she pulls back, her nails digging into my shoulders as she falls apart. There’s a faint contraction around my fingers and her breathing peaks then slows.
“Definitely the best sex of my life,” she murmurs before her eyes come back into focus and I pull her dress straight. “Not that I would tell Cassie.”
The broken pieces of my poor heart flap sadly inside my chest. I must make some kind of noise because her eyes snap to my face and narrow.
“What’s wrong?”
I lean in and capture her lips in a sweet kiss. “Nothing.”
As soon as our lips part, Ophie shifts, turning to get a better look at me. “Something’s wrong. You have that eye thing.”
“What eye thing?” I touch the side of my face. What is she talking about?
She points to the side of her eye. “When you’re worried, or there’s something you’re not telling me, your eyes get tight right here.” She moves to touch the side of my face. “It’s like squinting but not.”
“I’m not doing an eye thing.” Relaxing my face is hard, and I don’t want to admit that I can feel the tension around my eyes loosen when I make a conscious effort. “And nothing is wrong.”
As she wriggles, her sit bones dig painfully into my thighs. “Philip. Are you mad I told Cassie? She guessed. Apparently, I wasn’t checking out Jaxon enough. And you know I’m a terrible liar.”
“I’m not mad Cassie found out. Nate already knows. And it’s not like your sister hasn’t almost caught us more than once.”
“Then why are you upset?”
“I’m not upset.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “You are.”
“I’m not.” My casual attempt at saying it doesn’t fool her. It wouldn’t fool anyone. But god, I wish she would let it drop so I don’t have to explain why I’m upset.
“So, you’d be happy to just make out with me all night, no conversation required?” Shifting, she swings one leg over my thighs so she’s straddling me. But instead of pressing close and letting me go back to pretending all I want is sex, she slides back to my knees and pokes a finger in my chest. “Husband. Talk.”
Fuck, she’s called my bluff.
I take her hands in mine, stalling while I dig deep for the courage to admit the truth that’s been twisting my guts for the last four months.
Ophie rubs her thumbs across the back of my knuckles, the motion soothing, just like always. My gaze is glued to our hands resting on my thighs.
She always knows how to make me feel better. Braver. More myself than the charming vagabond who arrived in America with two suitcases and the knowledge that there was no going back home. She grounds me. Reminds me that there are more important things in this life.
“I don’t want to keep lying.” I finally find the words to start.
“I mean, I don’t like it either, but we agreed—”
“Not to everyone else.” I look up, meeting her confused eyes. “To you.”
Her hands jerk in mine, but I keep hold. “To me? What are you lying to me about?”
I take a deep breath, bracing myself for some kind of explosion. Good or bad, I’m not sure. “It’s not just sex. For me.” Ophie doesn’t say anything, and I keep babbling, not sure how to stop once the words start. My focus drifts back to our hands as I stumble through my confession.
“I love you. Not just as my best friend. I mean, you are my best friend. You’ll always be my best friend. But I don’t know if that’s enough. Not anymore.” I turn my head to the side, afraid to see her expression.
“Philip, I—” Ophie chokes off the word and falls silent.
The quiet is broken only by the slam of a car door outside and the rumble of Nate’s engine starting.
As my heart slams against my ribcage, Ophie shifts, releasing me as she stands. I let go of her hands, tucking mine between my knees, my shoulders slumping. A moment later, she sits beside me on the couch, right in my line of vision.
Her brown eyes are glassy, a tear threatening to fall from one. Her chin quivers as she parts her lips to take a breath. “You ninny,” she whispers, the words broken and catching as she hiccups. “It’s not enough for me either.”
The rest of her words are cut off as I cup her jaw and pull her in. I need to kiss her again like I need to breathe. In a desert, she’s my oasis. The air my lungs burn for after a deep dive. My home. Touching her, tasting her, melting into her—it’s not a choice.
Ophie makes a contented noise, kissing me back as fiercely as I’m kissing her. Lightning strikes as her hands slide under my shirt, leaving hot trails against my stomach and chest. Eventually, I pull back with a relieved chuckle.
“I love you, Ophelia.” The words are so familiar. I’ve said them to her a million times before today, but I never meant them like this before. “You are everything to me. My best friend, my better half, the rock who keeps me from drowning.”
She opens her mouth, but I keep going, laying my finger across her lips so I can finish. “You are smart. Determined. Gentle and compassionate. Why you put up with my silly ass is beyond me, but I am so thankful that you do. Also, you’re hot as hell. Like, definitely out of my league.”
“Don’t say that—” She smacks lightly at my arm.
I grin, but I’m right and she knows it. “Mrs. van der Merwe, I love you. Can we please make this marriage real?”