Page 24 of Flake It Til You Make It

He shouldn’t need to spell it out. Anyone who looked at Rocco Moretti had to understand exactly why Taylor had gone out of his way to take him out.

“Yep,” Taylor said and gazed down at Rocco with what he hoped was a lovestruck expression.

Frankly it didn’t feel that much different than it had when he’d turned a minute ago and seen Rocco walking up to him.

“Oh lovely,” Elaine said. “Let me tell you how it works. Taylor’s paid for your registration, which gets you each six tastes, which you can mark off on this card here—along with your impression and a score of each wine.”

“Makes sense,” Rocco said, picking up their two glasses and the cards Elaine had indicated. He handed one to Taylor, and if the deliberate way their fingers brushed when he passed the glass over was any indication, he was going to be a lot better at this than Taylor was.

Not very surprising.

“You can hang your coats over there,” Elaine said, gesturing towards the rack they’d set up in the corner. “And feel free to start wherever, though the tables are arranged from light whites to medium whites to more light-bodied reds and finally, at the end there, the more full-bodied reds.”

Taylor plucked the second glass from Rocco’s hand and then set them both on the table, setting his fingers on the collar of Rocco’s coat, helping him out of it.

Underneath, he wore a silvery gray button-up, open at the throat, showcasing a wedge of olive-toned skin and a thin gold chain around his neck.

Taylor’s hand trembled as he hung up the coat and divested himself of his own.

“So polite,” Rocco said, and there was another one of those eyelash flutters of his, the one that seemed unfairly designed to make Taylor’s pulse stutter.

It would be both a lot easier and a lot harder to do this whole fake dating thing if he found Rocco less appealing.

“I . . .I’m trying,” he said, settling on the least difficult response.

“You’re doing better than that,” Rocco said, patting him on the arm and shooting him a brilliant smile. His heart rate, not quite settled back to normal from the eyelash flutter, accelerated again.

If they kept this up for months, he was either going to have to get used to the potency of Rocco Moretti or go on blood pressure medication.

“Thanks,” Taylor said.

“And for the record,” Rocco said, his gaze sweeping from Taylor’s feet to the top of his head, “you clean up real good, too.”

Taylor flushed. He’d taken extra care with his appearance tonight, justifying it with the reasoning that if he wasactuallytaking Rocco out on a date, he’d have approached it with not only some careful planning, but optimizing all his advantages.

His knit polo was a little clingier—sluttier, Joey would have called it—than he’d normally have worn to work, calling attention to his biceps and pecs and chest, and he’d worn it with hisbest pair of dark jeans. Maybe he wasn’t a freaking smoke show, not like Rocco, but he wasn’t hopeless, either.

From the way Rocco was looking at him, real or fake, he was pretty damn far from hopeless.

Well, the good news was everything was going to plan. Nobody would see the two of them and think they weren’t definitely into each other.

“You good?” Rocco asked, leaning in closer. He still smelled like coffee—the best part of it, the rich deep scent of it—but like something woodsy and faintly floral too. Taylor had to remind himself that he was supposed to be doing the opposite ofhands off.

He was supposed to be freaking handson.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Taylor said.

Maybe he should begoat cheesingall over the place, but he wasn’t even tempted.

The truth was, it was easier than it should have been to put his hand on the small of Rocco’s back, feeling the warmth of his body through the thin fabric of his shirt, and guide him towards the first table.

Rocco picked up their glasses and they approached the first station.

“Oh, this looks good,” Rocco said, gesturing towards the bottles. “They’ve got acremant,a prosecco, and a cava.”

“You’re speaking Greek,” Taylor admitted.

Rocco raised an eyebrow. “You don’t drink wine.” He stated it, rather than asked.

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