Chapter 4
FIFTY FIRST HATES
Declan
I smile as I approach the caterers. “Morning. Need an extra hand?”
People talk.
They might let something slip.
“Hell, yeah, they need a hand.” Ten grins at me, and then he does a slow clap that turns into him whooping and cheering.
Ginny’s brother is the funniest kind of trouble.
Especially from a distance.
The taller of the two women pins me with a look, and I get a sensation like I know her from somewhere.
She has dark brown eyes, black hair, and she’s wearing a pink tracksuit.
She doesn’t ask who I am or why I’m here, but instead points to a row of white folding chairs.
“Yes. We need a hand. Carry these chairs inside, and take him with you.”
We’ve met a few times, including last night in the midst of clearing out the barn fire and talking to the fire officials, but I still extend a hand to Ten. “Declan Fox. Good to meet you. Officially.”
He’s in sunglasses and yesterday’s suit pants and he smells like he spent the night bathing in whiskey, but he still grins broadly at me as he grips my hand back and shakes. “Sure. I’ll play. Hello. I’m King Biggadick of Ladiesluffme.”
“He’s usually funnier,” the shorter of the two caterers says to the first woman. The shorter lady has green spiky hair and is wearing sweatpants and a Metallica T-shirt. I’d peg both of them in their mid- to late-fifties.
They’re both familiar.
And not because I saw them yesterday.
“Deny it all you want,” Ten says to her. “I know you love me too.”
She shakes her head. “I’m too tired for you today. Get to work or go home.”
He puts a hand to his heart and staggers. “Et tu, my green-haired beauty?”
It’s almost hard to believe this is the same guy who grabbed Ginny in the barn last night and then kept their mother away from her every time Freida tried to approach her when she was talking to the firefighters and medics.
Almost.
I grab the nearest white chair and fold it. “Bet you a hundred bucks I can put away more chairs than you can,” I say to Ten.
He straightens, then dives for the row of chairs across from me.
I wanted to watch the caterers, but working with Ten—this is even better.
He’s more likely to slip and tell me what I want to know.
What I shouldn’t want to know.
But what I still want to know.
We finish the job in twenty minutes, and despite both of us panting and sweating, we take the next task from the caterers too, this one putting away the chairs and tables inside the banquet hall.
I pause to set up my phone and record myself though.
Foxy’s going there with being a cleanup crew. Might as well get some footage out of it for my channels.
Or so I tell Ten.
I also want to see if I can trick him into telling me something.
Then watch the replay later for anything I miss.
“Dude, I saw that video you did where you were in the mascot suit at that baseball game and the kid puked all over you,” Ten says as we race each other with taking down the tables inside.
If he knows Ginny hates me and I’ve never gotten over her, he’s not showing it.
And if he notices me craning to listen to the two women anytime they’re within earshot—Olivia and Samantha, Ten called them—he doesn’t show that either.
“You and seven million other people,” I say.
“Know what you should do next?”
Can’t wait to hear this. “What?”
“You should get a role in a horror flick.”
“Studly hero type?”
“Nah. Being the bad guy’s always more fun.”
“Less talking, more working,” Olivia says from the doorway.
I haven’t figured out how I know her yet, but she clearly knows who I am, and she’s pegged me as someone who’s willing to take orders around here.
But why would the caterers know who I am?
And why would a professional crew on a private winery be taking help from the wedding party’s family when the groom is a celebrity?
Or is this a small-town thing and I need to get over myself?
“Just about done, Livs,” Ten says.
“I know where you couch surf,” she replies. “Call me that again and you’ll never have another booty call in your life. When you’re done putting the tables away, go see Samantha. She’ll tell you where to put the clean plates.”
I glance at Ten after she’s left. “The people who live here are bossy.”
“Shit, yeah.” He jerks his head at me, eyes still hidden behind his sunglasses, then drops his attention back to the table he’s taking down.
“So what’re you doing here?” I ask.
“Eh?”
“Best man for Hollywood’s hottest actor and brother of the bride—if I were you, I’d be crashed out in a hotel still sleeping after yesterday. Not working on cleanup patrol.”
“Sometimes it’s about the appearance and not about the work.” The table he’s folding clatters to the ground with a crash. “Ow. Shit. Dude. Don’t close the table on your fingers. That hurts.”
He bounces in place, sucking on his finger, then grunts a long, slow grunt as he grabs his head.
I grin. “Haven’t learned your lesson yet?”
“Shut up or you’ll be doing this solo. And if you hurt my sister, I’ll find out where you sleep.”
His words are quiet and uncharacteristically serious, and my smile drops away.
I look him in the sunglasses. “Here to help, dude.”
“Better be all you’re here for.”
Wish it was.
And he has a point.
I should let it go.
I’m not Ginny’s brother.
I’m not even her friend.
I’m making up a story in my own head that she’s in trouble to justify taking care of her the way I didn’t at Alex’s wedding.
Move on, Foxy.
My brain is right.
I need to move on.
Forget about Ginny.
Let her handle her own problems.
Do my job here and leave.
My heart is still working on believing the message though.
Ten grunts to himself. “I’m done. You finish.”
He’s shaking his hand out as he strolls out of the building.
Samantha pokes her head in from the kitchen area. “When you’ve finished setting all the tables against the wall, throw the linens in the laundry room. It’s off the storage room. And then I need someone to wash all of the pots and pans on the counter.”
I don’t have to.
It’s not my job either.
But my job is to film a documentary here, so being helpful and learning everything I can about this place before my director gets here tonight is in my best interest.
I keep working, forcing myself to barely think about Ginny.
Only a time here or there when I spot Ten outside a window, talking to Olivia and scratching his head, making me think of Ginny and her identical, though longer, curls.
Or when his snort-laugh drifts in through the cracked window, which is something I’ve heard Ginny do in my dreams.
Same snort-laugh as her brother.
It’s annoying when Ten does it, but when Ginny does it, it’s just—
Ahem.
I’m not thinking about Ginny.
So much so that I ignore her when she appears in the kitchen doorway as I’m scrubbing a large stockpot after finishing with my other tasks from Samantha.
Ginny’s a figment of my imagination, and I need to stop hallucinating about her, especially about her wearing dark sunglasses inside, her hair going wild, her sundress on backward and inside out—I can see the tag—a knit shawl over her shoulders, and an insulated mug of coffee so strong that I can smell it.
“Turn that off, please,” she says to me, nodding to my phone as it records me washing dishes—I record half my life now for socials—and startling me out of my alternate reality where she’s not real.
Her voice is less raspy than it was first thing this morning, but it still makes my cock twitch.
I wonder if she’s dating any—no.
Stop it, Fox.
I dry my hands and hit the button to stop my phone from recording.
She tilts her head.
I pull it off the stand, show her that I’m powering it off, then shove it in my pocket.
“Thank you,” she says.
“Sure.”
“I didn’t know you did dishes.”
“I’m a man of many surprises.”
She takes small steps as she enters the kitchen, then pulls up a stool at the stainless steel worktable behind me, wincing as the legs squeak on the tile floor.
I go back to the pot. “I assume you’re here to kick me out?”
“Shocking that that’s your instant assumption.”
My shoulders tighten, but I make them relax.
I get it.
I didn’t go out of my way to be nice to her when Alex was dating her. I didn’t want either of them to know how much I liked her.
Didn’t want to wreck my friendship with Alex.
Didn’t want to put Ginny in an awkward spot.
So I tried to stay neutral.
And my neutral—it wasn’t neutral.
It was rude and dismissive and full-on asshat.
I blow out a slow breath. “Apologies. Didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
She doesn’t answer.
“You live here?” I ask her.
“Does it matter?”
Seeing her every day while I’m filming? Yes. Yes, it matters. “Suppose not. Just curious.”
“Say I do live here. Would you still want to do this? Stay here and do your filming thing?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Because you’re here.
I shouldn’t be happy that she’s here. I shouldn’t be worried that she’s here. I shouldn’t still want her to see me the way I want her to see me.
And I shouldn’t want to still do this more because she’s here.
But I do. “Only winery I know that’s starting almost from scratch at the exact minute that I need a bigger project.”
When she doesn’t say anything else, I glance back at her.
Lips pursed, travel mug held close to her face, twin lines between her brows above the bridge of her sunglasses.
The nail polish on her middle finger is chipped and she still has some of yesterday’s lipstick on.
She’s either breathing through a wave of nausea, or she’s thinking about what other wineries she might know that would be more interesting for me to film.
Or she’s thinking that I’m an annoyance and she wants me to leave.
I’m more convinced by the minute that she lives here.
I shake my hands off, dry them, then grab a bag of rolls sitting on a cookie sheet on one of the wheeled racks and set it in front of her. “Here. They’ll help.”
I can’t see her blue eyes, but the rest of her face is telegraphing a wariness that socks me in the gut.
Take out the crush factor, and Ginny was always—well, far nicer than I would’ve been in her shoes.