Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
DANI
Four hours later, Sawyer and I are seated at an outdoor table overlooking Lake Osoyoos. The evening blazes August-hot. I take a sip of water, scoping out the trendy steakhouse. Furnished in dark wood and posturing, it’s as sleek and polished as Sawyer. His lustrous dress shirt reeks expensive, diamonds twinkling on the pristine white cuffs. Slacks pressed just so.
With his probing questions on the ride over, I’m picking up on a date vibe.
A tall, fresh-faced waitress hustles over, smiling brightly through her frazzle. The restaurant is packed and buzzing like game seven in the Stanley Cup Finals is about to unfold.
“Good evening,” she says. “My name is Elaine. I'll be your server tonight. Wine to start, by the looks of it?”
Deeply engrossed in a wine menu thicker than a September issue of Vogue, Sawyer slides his eyes to meet mine. “Do you prefer white or red?”
“I’m a red girl, but I’m happy with any color.”
Sawyer snaps the wine list shut. “A bottle of the Oculus, please.”
Elaine hesitates and glances at me for some unknown reason. “That one is five hundred dollars a bottle.”
Sawyer pins her with a look. “If I order something,” he says, “it means I can pay for it.”
Sawyer flaunted his extensive wine knowledge all afternoon, dropping the big names out of Napa and France. But our well-meaning server does not deserve a dress down in a tone reserved for bitches of the highest order.
Elaine smiles charitably, as you do with a fussy a-hole guest. “Of course. I double-check to be on the safe side, what with the prices being unlisted.”She reaches for the wine menu and comically battles with Sawyer over who retains possession of it.
Sawyer wins, yanking it out of her grip. “I’ll hold on to this for later.”
I dig deep inside myself not to panic. Later? How long does he plan to be here? We knocked back wine with Evelyn in the tasting room for two hours with most of the selling points discussed. She seemed quite taken with Sawyer and his grand schemes. The idea of replacing Shania with Pop My Cherry tickled her pink.
While we quaffed every Nero Vino varietal, Rhys dropped several hints about joining us for dinner that Sawyer flatly ignored. My guess? It tied back to the weird tension that flared between them on our walk earlier.
But I hold on to the small spark of hope that Rhys will appear.
If a window of opportunity arises, I’ll text him our location.
“I guess they’re not used to the high-rolling crowd,” I say after Elaine moves on.
“Amateur,” Sawyer mutters, flicking a crumb off the tablecloth. “Anyway…” His gaze settles on me. “Tell me about you. Is your relocation here permanent? You mentioned at the wine tasting that you might work part-time in Vancouver.”
Subtle as a sledgehammer, that Sawyer. And I was right. A woman always knows.
“I’m playing it by ear,” I say.
We cruised here in the luxury of his BMW 8 series, top down, warm wind gusting through my hair. His cologne smelled spicy and spendy, and the whip-stitched leather seats cradled me like a cocoon.An attractive, high-powered man whisking me to dinner?
Funny, how all that once mattered.
Tonight, it plain irritated me when Sawyer asked if I owned my condo. Qualifying me, the little snot! Did he think myhumble abode worth a measly eight hundred grand could ever measure up to his gated mansion next to Lululemon mastermind Chip Wilson, with the Pacific Ocean as his backyard? (Yes, he dropped all of those details.)
My neighbor is a sixty-year-old pensioner who loves opera at full blast and cooking everything with garlic.
“But will you be…”
A hush settles over the restaurant, halting Sawyer mid-sentence.Like every other set of eyes in here, we turn toward the shift in vibration.
Rhys.
Scanning the restaurant from the hostess stand. A guy who lights up the room merely by being in it.
I don’t miss the way his expression brightens when he finds my face in the crowd. He holds up a hand in a gesture of hey there. I wave back with a genuine case of the flutters.
My rescuer, in all his dreamy glory.
Rhys cuts past the crowded tables, oblivious to, or pretending not to notice, the stares and whispers. Sawyer, mouth drawn into a thin, hard line, oozes annoyance. Rhys and his carefree ease only amplify that whatever makes him cool and hip somehow bypassed the rigid and world-weary Sawyer.
Tableside, Rhys knocks his elbow playfully against my shoulder. “Small world, huh? Nicole recommended this place for dinner. You mind if I join in?”
“Sure.” I throw a look at Sawyer.
He smiles, but it's tight. “Pull up a chair.”
Rhys asks the couple one table over whether he can swipe their extra seat. Much to the chagrin of her balding date, the woman, wearing a tie-dye muumuu, gushes, “Of course!”
She practically throws the chair and herself at Rhys, who is deeply sexy draped in a lilac t-shirt stamped with HANG LOOSE and his simple Seneca pendant. In comparison, the one-million-thread-count shirt and gold link Gucci necklace Sawyer wears scream trying too hard!
Rhys settles beside me, glowing serenely for someone who just lied. Nicole pointedly told me to avoid the crowd here—nothing but wannabe tourists and Albertan cowboys throwing around their dirty oil sands money.
Eyes darting back and forth between us, Rhys asks innocently, “Am I interrupting anything?”
“No,” Sawyer answers, although his flat tone says otherwise. “But thrilled you can pick up the tab.”
Rhys laughs and helps himself to Sawyer’s glass of water. “Nice try, See Saw. This is a write-off for you, business and all.”
I feel the tension rise. That business had a bite to it. Will this turn into a full-blown pissing match? Then Rhys slides his arm around the back of my chair, cementing whatever power play is going down. He leans in, our faces almost touching. His warmth, all that vanilla-scented goodness, sends my brain spinning, heartbeat in my ears.
Whispering loud enough for Sawyer to hear, he says, “I told you he was chintzy.”
Before Rhys dropped in, Sawyer seemed intent on stretching out the evening. But he waves off Elaine’s inquiry about a second bottle of wine. Then he inhales his spiced duck breast and signals for the check the second I swallow my last bite of salmon.
“What’s the rush?” Rhys soaks up the last vestiges of balsamic and oil with a heel of crusty bread.
“I need to be fresh.” Sawyer signals Elaine again for the check. “Six a.m. leave.”
Rhys rolls his eyes and turns to me. “Did you want dessert or coffee?”
“I’m fine.” I’m happy to blow this joint and all the eyes that pretended not to stare at us as Rhys shared colorful stories about their childhood, Sawyer constantly interrupting to correct his version of events.
Elaine scurries to our table with the payment terminal and a nervous expression. Sawyer glares at Rhys, dumps his napkin on the table, and excuses himself.
Meow.
“Typical,” Rhys mutters.
He whips out his credit card to pay, making friends with Elaine along the way. She giggles a little too loud at his friendly banter.
I sit up straighter, aware of the flush on her cheeks, and Rhys seemingly pleased to be the architect of it.Okay, wait. I’m not supposed to feel territorial and protective. But during dinner, our knees touched more than once under the table.
And this time, I didn’t jump.
Elaine finally glides away on cloud nine, and Rhys leans both elbows on the table, his eyes slowly skating across my face. “Hey,” he says in that smooth, suave voice. “Nice night, minus you-know-who.”
The bubbles fizz in my chest again. He’s beautiful, in a poetic way. And he exudes an air of mystery beneath his happy-go-lucky persona. Like I have only scratched the surface of him.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s up with you and him?”
I wait for his shoulders to clench or the smile to slip, but he only shrugs. “Quality time with Sawyer is an oxymoron.”
“Is that why he doesn’t manage you?”
He reaches for Sawyer’s glass of wine, drains the remains, then spins the empty glass on the tablecloth. “One of the reasons,” he finally says. “Maybe you can tell him I’m a dream to work with. Aside from the workplace hazards.”
His eyes snap to mine, and a rush of fire comes with his wink, one that has me reaching for my water to drown out the chaotic rhythm of my heartbeats.
“Hazard is the perfect word to describe you,” I say.
Rhys chuckles, once more nudging his knee against mine. He’s done a lot of that tonight—finding ways to touch me. “I’m the wrong brother if you want safe and square.”
“In that case,” I say, “I’ll tell Evelyn she made the right choice.”
Rhys searches my eyes. The lights in here dimmed at some point, and the glow softens every edge like the wine has softened my resolve. I smile through the mounting pressure coming over me with every flicker of his lashes.
“I’m not talking about Evelyn,” he says.
I’m silent, grasping for something to say. Rhys waits patiently, and the way he looks at me, with that simmering charisma—it eats me alive. Where is the clever comeback at the tip of my tongue? And how many more times can I resist him?
After wishing all night for Sawyer to disappear, his return saves me from falling into the black hole of Rhys, where time has no meaning and words elude me.
He yanks on his Hugo Boss blazer, blunt and businesslike. “Did you pay?” he asks Rhys.
Rhys stands and beats Sawyer to the draw, pulling back my chair with a gallant flourish. “Consider it your fee for my ride home.”
“Is this normal traffic?” Sawyer asks.
Like Vegas, Osoyoos also has a strip—a far less glamorous stretch of asphalt known as Highway 3.You have to time it right on peak summer days to avoid bumper-to-bumper traffic,but the road clogged with cars at eight thirty on a Tuesday night?
“Not really,” I reply.
Sawyer aggressively noses in front of a dusty old Chevy truck, flipping the bird to whoever honks in displeasure. The sky is molten yellow, and shadows are starting to stretch longer. It's still deadly hot.
“Can anyone see in through your windows?” Rhys pipes up from the back seat.
Sawyer glances at him in the rearview mirror. “No. I had them all tinted. Why?”
“Just curious.”
Concern has leaked into his voice, and when I glance back,Rhys is eyeing the Corollas and Civics cruising past—windows rolled down, sharp-eyed females locked on the Beemer.Suddenly, I feel very conspicuous. We are the equivalent of the Hope Diamond in a sea of dime-store knockoffs.
Minutes later, we veer off the highway onto the back road leading to Nero Vino, and my spidey sense kicks into overdrive. Several cars tail us, but where are they headed? All the wineries along this lonely stretch have shuttered for the night.
The answer becomes clear as we crest the final hill before the winery. A bottleneck of cars parked helter-skelter blocks the entrance, headlights spraying eerie yellow beams across the desert. A cluster of young women in shorts and tank tops camped out front swivel in unison to zone in on us.
“Can you pin it, bro?” Rhys mutters anxiously from the back seat. “Get past this.”
“I can’t run them over,” Sawyer replies as the pack forms a semi-circle barricade on the road.
Hungry looks and unstable energy.
On the hunt.
“Fuck!” Rhys slides to the floorboard like we’re in a zombie invasion and he’s the last brain standing.
“What’s going on?” I squint at a splinter-thin guy with a shock of orange hair, arguing with a girl draped over the hood of his Cross Trek like some car mechanic calendar pin-up. She looks ready to leap up and feast on his throat at any minute.
“Piss off, okay?” he shouts. “I have no clue where Rhys is. And can you please get off my car?”
Ah, now I understand who he is. The appropriately named Francis Shutter looks exactly like his Facebook profile picture—eighty percent freckles and twenty percent geek.
“What the heck?” I mutter. “Stop the car, please. That’s our camera guy.”
“Don’t leave your door open,” Rhys warns. “I’m telling you, this could get weird.”
Sawyer pulls onto the shoulder and parks. I hop out and hear the soft clunk of all the door locks engaging.Smart move, considering the herd of females surging forward to descend on the Beemer.
“Is he in there?” one cries.
“Is that him?”
A buxom redhead in a tube top mashes her face against the window and coos, “Rhys! I love yooou.”
Like an ant infestation at a picnic, they crawl around the car leaving sticky fingerprints and Revlon blusher streaked on Sawyer's immaculate windows. Not wanting to miss any action, the females in the cars that followed us stampede out to join their brethren, eyes wide with wonder. My quick head count ends at twenty-five.
“Dani!” Francis recognizes me from our Zoom call and storms over. “I’ve been trying to get up, but they won’t let me pass.”
Shit. He said my name. I was hoping to fly under the radar.
“Hi,” I say. “Let me handle this. Is Rita here?”
“Not yet.” He keeps a firm eye on the gum-snapping girls. “But I warned her about this zoo.”
With his weak chin and science nerd vibe, it's safe to say Francis is not a teenage girl's wet dream. But the girl he was clashing with stink-eyes me in a judgy head-to-toe sweep.
“Who are you?” she asks, all winged eyeliner and attitude.
“I work for the winery. This is a private road, and whoever owns these cars needs to move them. Now.”
None of them budge. If anything, they band tighter together in lip-glossed solidarity until a stout ponytailed girl steps forward. In a bright yellow onesie and combat boots laced tight mid-calf, she carries herself with the air of someone who runs the show.
“Is Rhys staying up there?” she asks. “We saw his posts about this place.”
Filled with families and retirees, Osoyoos is the most unlikely hub of celebrity stalking. And Rhys doesn’t court fame. He keeps a safe distance from it. But I recall the woman in the corner of the restaurant holding up her phone in our direction. After a long, hard stare from me, she set it down. Who knows if she, or Ponytail, contributed one of the hundreds of slightly deranged comments on his recent posts? All I know is that I need to protect Rhys. And brush these divas-in-training out of our hair.
“He’s doing some promotional work with us,” I admit because they know the truth. “But I have no idea where he’s staying.”
The group exchanges wary glances of the Can she be trusted? variety. Being suspicious of adults never goes out of vogue if you’re a teenager.
Ponytail takes a hit of her vape. “Will he be here tomorrow?”
“Not sure. It’s all very hush-hush. And,” I add, taking a stab at their ages while knowing the enforcement of this is loose, “anyone under nineteen has to be accompanied by an adult at all times. You can't come up there otherwise.”
As they digest that news in pouty silence, the heavily tinted driver’s window of the Beemer rolls down. I can hear the collective drawing of breaths, followed by slightly disappointed ones. But only slightly. While Sawyer is not Rhys, he is easy on the eyes.
“Hey, babe,” he says to me. “We need to go. Sorry, ladies.” He flashes a confident smile at the group. “My girlfriend and I need to Netflix and chill. It’s been a long day.”
Fake dating to get out of a pickle? Brilliant. But will they buy it? They huddle together and debate in low-level murmuring. I glance at Sawyer, who signals with his eyes that he’s ready to take them on if necessary.
Jesus. Is this how tonight ends? In a rumble?
The council of teeny boppers separates, and Ponytail addresses them in the determined tone of a bounty hunter. “Let’s get some food and call every hotel. This place is tiny. We’ll find him. Or come back tomorrow.”
“The owner lives up on the property, and she’s old-school tough,” I warn her. “One thousand percent she will not tolerate a bunch of minors hanging around. Stay away, unless you want the cops involved.”
Ponytail snorts a laugh. The threat of police? Bring it on, sister. But she rallies her crew for departure, and they disperse, blue smoke blowing out of the tailpipes as they convoy away.
After they clear out, Francis brushes off dust from his garden-variety film-set wardrobe of Dickie’s and Doc Martens. “Nice work and all,” he says, “but if we need to deal with that for the next few weeks, forget any clean sound takes. You should look into crowd control.”
I sigh, watching the dust plumes from the mob’s departure settle in the twilight. “I’ll talk to Evelyn tomorrow. We may need to hire security.”
In the car, Sawyer asks Rhys, “Is it always like this?”
Very slowly, the rear window slides lower. Rhys has unfolded himself from the floor, his face pale beneath the tan. “Only a few times. But once is enough never to forget.”
“Oh shit, man!” Francis exclaims. “You were in there the whole time? You play the dangerous game.”
Rhys and I lock eyes, his flecked with doubt. Damage control never came up with Bettina, and she left no stone unturned. Or so I thought.
But here we are, not even a week in, and a fangirl squad is already on alert, ready to pounce. Small numbers now, but if even a fraction of his thirty million fans descend on Osoyoos, we're screwed.