Chapter 13
DROOL INTENTIONS
Declan
I sleep like shit in my new accommodations.
It’s not the bed.
It’s not the occasional sounds of footsteps overhead.
It’s Ginny.
It’s Ginny and her bluntness and the way her skin felt beneath my fingers when I grabbed her wrist after I spotted a shooting star.
It’s the way I wanted her to stay out there with me for hours while knowing that Alex would be beyond pissed if I ever confessed this to him.
Especially now.
But despite sleeping like shit, I roll out of bed and take a long jog around the vineyard, text my family and Alex to catch up, then shower and take Flow with me to meet Shade in the banquet hall.
The stone building where the wedding was hosted the other day smells like baking bread, and to my utter surprise, Ginny and the flower girl from the wedding are there.
“—take you back to your dad so he can get you to school,” Ginny’s saying to the little girl as she squats at her level.
Flow barks once, making Ginny’s head whip around toward us, and then my fluffy, seventy-pound dog bolts.
It’s not a soft gallop or a leisurely trot.
It’s a full-on lightning bolt, zero to sixty, jerking her leash out of my hand because she’s caught me so off-guard.
She leaps onto Ginny, who falls over sideways, Flow all over her, tail wagging, paws prancing in place as she licks Ginny’s face, and the little girl she was talking to backs away, pulling a face like she doesn’t like dogs.
“Flow. Off.” I dart across the room too, the muffled noises coming from Ginny making my heart race.
My dog ignores me.
I’m reaching for her collar when I realize Ginny isn’t freaking out—she’s laughing.
Laughing and taking kisses and rubbing her hands all over my dog’s fluffy black and tan and white fur.
Flow’s all over Ginny like she’s a plate of lemon cookies.
“Oh, I missed you, you sweet thing,” she says.
I have to clear my throat and look away.
My dick does too.
Shade slides me a look that I actively ignore.
I might like the guy, but he sees too much.
Joke’s on him. Joke’s on Mabel too.
I bared my soul last night.
Ginny knows now.
She knows the biggest secret of my life.
We aired things out.
And now we’re—fuck.
I don’t know what we are.
But I don’t hate watching her love all over my dog.
“Who’s the prettiest girl?” Ginny says. “Flow’s the prettiest girl. Look at you! Did you just get a haircut? Are you still afraid of the garbage truck? And do you still know how to do a celly?”
Flow leaps off Ginny, going up on her back legs and dancing around like she’s trying to grab a treat off of a string being dangled over her head just out of reach.
Ginny’s still laughing as she sits up, rubbing her elbow. “You do! Such a good girl.”
“Dogs are dumb,” Lavender, the brown-and-green-haired, hazel-eyed little girl who’s been watching us like we’re all nuts, says. I met her when she was the flower girl at the wedding. “Cats are better.”
“Some people like dogs, and some people like cats, and some people like all of them,” Ginny replies. “It’s okay to like cats, but that doesn’t make all dogs dumb.”
“Yes, it does” Lavender says.
“Even dogs who are the same colors as your cat? Look. She has black and white and orange fur just like Fluffy does.”
“That dog’s a poser.” Lavender slides a sneaky grin at Ginny.
Shade snickers.
“Flow, be a cat,” I say.
My dog drops to the ground again, rolls onto her back, and whine-howls a whine-howl that almost sounds like a cat yowling.
Ginny clears her throat and sucks her lips into her mouth as she pulls herself to her feet, half turned away from me.
Fuck.
I shouldn’t have told her.
I should’ve just done my thing here and left and not told her how I feel.
Felt.
How I felt.
How I can’t let myself feel again.
“That doesn’t sound like a cat,” Lavender says, clearly enjoying this game. “It sounds like a dragon with a stomachache after I slay it.”
Ginny keeps fighting her smile. “Lav, want to go get these gentlemen some breakfast before I take you back to your dad?”
“No.”
“Okay. Then it’s time to go back to your dad right now.”
“Fine. I’ll do something useful so I can be late to school.”
She lumbers to the kitchen, clearly taking her time.
Ginny bends over and rubs Flow’s belly. “Such a good girl.”
“You okay?” I ask her. “I imagine you weren’t expecting that greeting.”
She still doesn’t look me in the eye. “Every day’s better with doggy kisses. Are…you okay?”
No, I’m a pathetic chickenshit who can’t stop thinking about how I didn’t get to enjoy the feel of her on top of me last night. “All good.”
“Good. That’s good.”
An awkward silence falls between us.
Shade shifts a glance between me and Ginny, not asking why I wouldn’t be okay.
I don’t offer.
“You ever have a dog?” he asks Ginny.
“Not exactly.”
My jaw tightens.
Her mother adopted a dog for one season of their show, but rehomed it before the next season because Ginny just isn’t mature enough to care for an animal.
I thought it was bullshit at the time, and I’m even more convinced it was bullshit now.
Lavender returns, shuffling at a snail’s pace.
All of us watch her progress until she plops two bowls of oatmeal on the lone table in here that someone must’ve put back up after I tore everything down the other day.
“Eat up, dudes. You’re gonna need your strength to keep up with all of these ladies around here. ”
“Maybe they need their strength to keep up with me,” I say.
She snorts. “My dad says you’re retired. And a TV star now. Your muscles are just for show.”
“How old is she?” I ask Ginny, who’s still stroking my dog in ways that are making me inappropriately jealous.
“Hello, I’m right here, and I’m seven,” Lavender says.
“She’s grown up around adults,” Ginny tells Flow.
“Do you know how to fight dragons?” Lavender asks me.
“I do not.”
She sighs and shakes her head the way my grandma used to when I’d tell her I didn’t know how to play her favorite card game. “Yep. Useless. And terrible taste in pets. Ginny, can I go help Olivia and Samantha?”
“We have to get you to school, kiddo,” Ginny replies.
“You’re leaving the winery?” I ask her.
“No,” is all I get in response.
Her sundress today hugs her waist and breasts and has one of those full skirts that would flare out if she spun in a circle. It’s the same blue as her eyes, and now it’s covered in dog fur.
Not that I expect her to mind.
She never minded the small stuff.
I clear my throat. “We’re working on the barrel lift today,” I tell Ginny.
“I know.”
“Is it loud?”
She squints at me. “Loud?”
“Flow’s still afraid of garbage trucks. And any loud trucks, actually. I was going to put her in her crate in the apartment, but if you wanted to hang out with her—”
I cut myself off as Ginny makes real eye contact with me. “If you need me to watch your dog, you can just ask.”
“I just thought, since you two seemed to miss each other, you might like that.”
She folds her arms and keeps looking at me, giving me the same bland expression I’ve seen her use on her mother.
My heart sinks.
It shouldn’t.
I shouldn’t care. Her life is here. My life will take me elsewhere soon enough. I’ll think about her when the documentary airs, and otherwise—otherwise, I need to get over this crush.
It’s going nowhere.
I clear my throat again. “She’ll be fine in the apartment.”
Shade’s in the small cottage that they call the mother-in-law house, near the Victorian mansion, and I’m across the fields in the basement of the caretaker cottage where Heath and Cricket and Lavender live.
Giving Ginny plenty of space from me if she wants it.
And she clearly does.
Very, very clearly.
This crush?
It’s not reciprocal. I need to leave her alone.
Flow drops to her belly and whines a whine that turns into a howl.
Ginny cocks a brow at her. “Oh, you would prefer to stay with me today?”
Flow whimpers three times with a huff between each.
“Okay,” Ginny says. “Since you asked politely. You can come with me to the house.”
Flow leaps to her feet, tongue hanging out, entire back end wagging as she rubs her body all over Ginny’s legs.
Ginny smiles at her, and my heart melts into a puddle of broken dreams.
“C’mon, then,” Ginny says to Flow. “We need to take Lav back to her house, and then you can come with me to mine.” She glances at me. “Has she been fed?”
“Yes.”
“Any treats?”
Flow barks and wags harder.
“They’re in her bag.” I pull her doggy backpack off my shoulder and hand it over.
“Leash?”
I pass that over too.
Ginny nods to me, then smiles at Shade. “Have a nice time today.”
“Be good,” I tell Flow.
She grins, then trots to the door with Ginny and Lavender, who rubs my dog’s fur and whispers something to her as they leave.
When I stop watching the door shut behind them, Shade’s watching me again.
“Dude,” he says.
“What?”
He shakes his head. “Be a little less obvious.”
I’d love to. “Eat. We have work to do.”
Before long, we’re done with breakfast and headed to the barn, where we meet Cricket to tackle the barrel lift.
“Guess what?” Cricket says to me. “It started already. So we get to learn to drive the forklift.”
Pip’s here today, dressed in teeny jean shorts and a neon green tube top that covers her nipple areas but not much else. Her platinum hair is short, but wavy, and she has mischief in her eyes.
“Gonna start my engine for me today?” she asks me.
“Hey, Pip, do you know what this forklift needs?” Cricket says from the cab. “It needs a bumper sticker.”
“Like one that says Fuck Dean?” Pip says.
“I mean, if you still want his name on things. I was thinking something more like Pip’s Big Equipment.”
Pip pats her jeans. “Dammit, ladybug, why do you always have good ideas when I don’t have my phone on me? Don’t start that thing without me. I’ll be back.”
I glance up at Cricket as Pip hustles out of the barn.
She’s good.
She’s really good.
I’d bet half my bank account Pip doesn’t know she just got tricked into leaving the barn.
After convincing Freida to leave yesterday too.
“Don’t say it,” Cricket says to me. “Don’t even think it. Pip’s nothing like Freida, no matter what kind of show she puts on for you here.”
Confirmed.
Cricket played her.
I shrug. “People are complicated.”
“I hear you ambushed Ginny last night.”
Should’ve seen it coming.
Of course the women talk about everything.
Shade swings his camera to focus it on me.
“Put it down,” I tell him.
He grins. “Maybe it’s for posterity.”
“I didn’t ambush her. She tripped over me,” I tell Cricket.
“I meant with telling her you like her.”
“Liked. Past tense.”
Shade coughs one of those liar coughs.
“Freida figured out we’re filming a documentary, so she canceled her spa trip and we need to figure out how to work this fork truck and then hide it before she shows up,” Cricket says.
“Motherfucker.” I turn toward the door. “Does Ginny—”
And then I stop.
Stop hard.
Turn back around.
Cricket grins at me. “Oh, wait, I’m confused.
Caro was going to go to a spa today, but she decided she didn’t want to waste a minute of her honeymoon away from Mike.
She canceled her spa day. Not Freida. My bad.
Oh, and it was Rachelle in town who found out about the documentary.
They’re all girls. That must be why I’m confused. ”
I stare at her.
She grins bigger. “If you think that’s gonna work on me, you’ve never gone viral for flashing your hooha to the whole universe, watched some dickwad feed the video into AI to make your labia sing and dance to seventies’ disco hits, which he sold for subscription fees on , and then found out that said dickwad was actually your brother-in-law who used all of the money he made to try to pay off credit card bills that he racked up playing internet poker games he didn’t want my sister to know about. ”
“Got it,” Shade says. “Can we use that?”
“Absolutely,” Cricket replies cheerfully.
“You’ll have to do some splicing so it looks like Declan’s mad at me for not letting him drive the fork truck first, but my story is my story, and I’m not afraid of it.
” She drops her voice. “I’ve called naming the chardonnay when we rebrand.
It’s gonna be Cheeky Beaver Chardonnay. How awesome is that? ”
“You know you’re a natural on camera?” Shade says to her.
“Aw, thank you. I do have a little training. Now. Let’s get this thing fired up before Pip’s back. C’mon, Declan. Let me show you how it’s done.”
The old fork truck starts like it’s been waiting for this moment its entire life, and we spend the morning taking turns driving it and learning the controls so that we can use it to lift barrels without damaging them, then show Dori how it’s done as well.
Weather’s supposed to move in by the weekend, so there’s tension in the air when Winona—apparently a neighbor who’s providing experience and advice—arrives to discuss with Dori and Cricket if they’re starting harvest today, or if they’re waiting to see if the forecast changes.
And meanwhile, half my brain is occupied with wondering what Ginny’s doing today.
How much love my dog’s getting.
If Flow will want to leave me for Ginny.
Couldn’t blame her.
I’d leave me for Ginny.
Any guardrails and fences I’ve put around my heart—they disintegrated the minute Ginny smiled at Flow this morning.
Not that it matters.
Be outwardly friendly? Yeah. Ginny will do that.
But feel the same about me as I feel about her?
Not a chance.
This documentary was the worst idea of my life.