Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Archer was picking through a crate of older vintages in the front-of-house cellar when the door slammed shut behind him. He righted himself, spun, and found his best friend poorly glaring at him.
Translation: Trouble.
“What the hell are you still doing in here?” Al said, trying and failing to sound stern, her hiccuped “Hell” and crooked grin betraying her.
He held up a bottle in each hand. “Getting us more wine.”
She pushed off the door and crossed the tiny room in three steps, pulling up in front of him, all five-foot nothing of her.
“There’s a gorgeous man out there”—she jutted a thumb over her shoulder—“and he wants to take you back to your cabin and drill you into the mattress. So I ask again”—she poked him in the chest with a blunt nail—“why are you still in here?”
“You’re drunk, counselor. How many bottles in were you before we got here?”
When they’d returned from Ruby’s, Noah had dropped him and Elton off in the vineyard.
With bud break just around the corner, there’d been plenty to do.
Dormant pruning, repairing trellises, tying canes to wires, and prepping the vineyard floor for the clover and mustard crops that would turn these hills yellow and white until the vines grew bushy and green.
By the time they’d returned to the barn, the parking lot was full of cars, and Archer had been reminded of the RH company meeting kicking off tomorrow, right before his phone had started blowing up with texts from the troublemaker herself.
“A bottle,” Al said.
“Liar.” She held her alcohol better than that.
“For me,” she drawled in New York nasal, then counted off on her fingers. “Plus one for CC, one for Ezra, one for Sloan, one for Tyler—”
“Number, babe, if you can still count.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Nine-ish.”
He laughed and set aside the bottles in his hands.
Add in the dinner empties, and they were already a case in.
Tomorrow’s actual business meetings—financials, marketing, strategy, legal—were going to be shit if he didn’t do the responsible thing and cut them all off.
Someone had to be the parent, and since Al had recused herself from that duty tonight, he was the most sober person left standing.
Because he had something—someone—else to focus on. At least for tonight.
Which Al, even as tipsy as she was, had noticed. “He can’t take his eyes off you.” She closed the distance between them, flattened her palms on his chest, and smirked up at him with dark eyes full of mischief. “And you can’t take your eyes off him either. He the reason you’ve been a hermit?”
He started to shake his head, then paused. “Not exactly” was a truer answer than an outright no. At her arched brow, he covered her hands and added, “He only came back into my life last fall.”
“The harvest party?”
He nodded. “He was the stranger lurking around the distillery that night.”
“Rewind,” she said, the other brow lifting to match. “Came back?”
“I’ll tell you when you’re sober.” When she wouldn’t go back out to the dining room and mention the truth Elton hadn’t yet seemed to realize.
For once, the attorney let it go, and Archer made a mental note to baby the aglianico that had done him a solid. Al, though, wasn’t totally off the scent. “You want to try with him?”
His gaze skipped over her head, out the two-way mirrored glass in the cellar door, and to the long farm table in the middle of Hanover’s dining room.
Elton sat near one end, his head close together with CC’s and Sloan’s, probably trading more Bay Area stories.
He’d effortlessly fit in with Archer’s family, only momentarily taken aback by the crowd waiting for them when they’d first arrived.
A blink later, Elton had widened his smile and activated charming mode.
While it had been practiced at first, Archer wanted to think that as the hours and wine had worn on, the conversation drifting from food to wine to travel to music and more, Elton had actually seemed to enjoy himself.
His smile more real, his shoulders more relaxed, his gaze whenever it drifted to him warm and grateful.
Archer was glad he could give him that, at least for one evening. But Archer wasn’t getting any younger, and he wasn’t sure Elton could give him the more, the partnership, he needed. “I’m not sure it’s the best time in his life for me, for something more.”
“He was at the party last fall, he can clearly hang with us, and he makes you smile.” A bottle tapped him on each hip, Al having slipped around him and grabbed the wine while he’d been mooning over Elton.
“Do you want him to drill you into the mattress?” He opened his mouth to make an excuse, and Al talked right over the futile intention. “Give me the truth.”
“Yes.”
Her lawyer glare melted into a cheeky grin. “Well, then, it’s a good thing we’re taking up all the rooms in the barn. He’s got no choice but to stay with you.”
“He’s only here for one night.”
She shoved one of the bottles against his chest, forcing him to take it. “Then make it count.”
“He has a flight out in the morning, and I have no idea if he’ll be back.”
“Oh, sweetie.” She rose on her toes and kissed his cheek, distracting him long enough to swat his ass and grab another bottle. “You were sexy as sin the day I met you, and you’re even sexier now. And you’re a good person. Have a little faith.”
The boost of confidence was appreciated and so was the humor, the both of them laughing all the way back to the table.
Seeing the wine in their hands, cheers went up from everyone, including Elton, who clapped and kept his gaze locked with Archer’s as he rounded the end of the table.
He rested his forearms on the top of his empty chair and lowered his voice, whispering to Elton, “What do you say we get out of here?”
Elton’s grin was as cheeky as Al’s had been. “And leave these beautiful ladies?”
A virtual bucket of cold water splashed over Archer, and he moved to straighten.
Until Elton covered his dangling hands with one of his.
Out in the open, for everyone to see, and stopping Archer in his tracks.
“Yes, I want to leave with you.” Gone was the cheeky grin, gone were the soft eyes, and in their place was fierce determination and blistering heat. “I came back for you.”
The clatter of plates, the clink of silverware, the other voices around them became a distant buzz as Archer mentally obsessed over Elton’s words.
I came back for you.
Came back for him this weekend?
Came back for him after the harvest party?
Came back for him after fifteen years?
Did he realize the truth?
And if he did, why would he come back here if he didn’t want more?
Starting with tonight, when he seemed to want the same thing as Archer.
Given the ticking clock, Archer decided to stop crashing out and start taking his best friend’s advice.
The shot he’d always wanted was here, staring up at him with dark, heated eyes, making his heart pound and his dick throb.
Flipping his hand over under Elton’s, he kept hold of it as he stepped back and waited for Elton to follow.
“You’re cut off after that,” Archer said to the rest of the table, gesturing with his other hand at the two new bottles.
“I even changed the code on the cellar door to keep you out.” That last bit was directed primarily at Al, who blew a raspberry at him in reply.
Noah and Sloan joined in, and it became a symphony of sputters.
“You know I have another wine fridge in the house,” Ezra said.
“You know you have to look at a million spreadsheets in the morning once Feb gets here with Greg and Ford.”
Ezra added his raspberry too, and the entire table lost it, including Elton beside him. Once he recovered, he flashed the table a wide smile—genuine, judging by the deep grooves at the corners of his eyes and the sincerity of his words. “Thank you all for an excellent evening. It was much needed.”
“Make sure Archer gives you what else you need,” Al quipped, and Archer flipped her off before dragging a snickering Elton away from his troublemaker friends.
Elton, though, was a step ahead of all of them in the trouble department.
They’d barely cleared the restaurant door when Elton, using Archer’s hand in his and a combo of FBI moves that made Archer dizzy, flipped him around and shoved him up against the stone wall.
Archer’s breath hitched as Elton pinned his arm to the flagstone and crowded into his space, a thigh shoved between his legs, that hard body pressed tight to his.
“All those people staying in the barn tonight?”
The drop in octaves, the gravel in his voice, made Archer shiver, made his “yes” sound like a two-syllable warble.
“Is there room for me somewhere?”
Elton rolled his hips, erection digging into Archer’s hip, and Archer tipped back his head, groaning out a “With me.”
Chapped lips pressed against the column of his throat, tentative at first, before the next one landed more firmly, each one after that more steady as Elton kissed a path along the line of his beard. “That’s where I wanted to be.”
Archer snaked his free arm around Elton’s waist, aiming his hand down, clasping a handful of cheek and encouraging him to rut harder. “Just like that.”
Elton braced his other arm against the wall beside his head, all of that big body surrounding him, their hips grinding in unison, and Elton’s lips inching toward his mouth, sharpening into a point of desire like nothing Archer had ever felt before.
He was coming apart, and he wanted to do that in his bed, with Elton stretched over him, his bare skin under Archer’s hands and his dick pounding inside him. Not here against this wall but fuck if he had the willpower to push Elton off him right then.
A high-pitched whistle did the trick.
Elton jumped back like he’d been burned and glanced over his shoulder to see who it was. When he realized it was just some of Archer’s family stumbling from around back, he stepped close once more, hiding both their turned-on states. “I thought my friends were bad.”
“Venture a guess mine are worse.”
“I’d take that bet.”
Archer returned the laugh, imagining what kind of trouble Elton’s lot could get up to, allowing that to distract him momentarily from Elton’s initial reaction.
Then allowing Sloan, who was draped against her best friend Miller’s side, to distract him further.
“Since you two are still here,” she called, “can we get a lift down to the barn?”
“Where are Al and CC?”
“Helping Ty to stand.”
“Your CEO?” Elton said.
“Sure you want to take that bet?” Archer challenged, then after a quick glance down to confirm neither of them would embarrass themselves, gave Elton a gentle shove. “How many glasses of wine did you have tonight?”
“Just two.”
“Can you get them down to the barn while I help the others?” At Elton’s nod, he reached into his pocket for his keys, handing them to Elton with the third key on the ring singled out. “That’s for the cabin. I’ll be right behind you.”
Elton palmed the keys, heat flaring once more in those dark eyes. “I’ll be waiting.”