Page 93 of Getting Wrapped Up

“There’s something in a box behind the bar that they call wine,” Ben said.

Kate put her hand over her chest again with a gasp. “Boxed wine? I need to get my mother out here to educate you.” She leaned over, as if imparting some deep secret. “We actually put it in bottles, like beer, out in California.”

That got another round of laughter and Levi’s heart thumped in his chest. She was not just putting up with the men who had strangely, somehow, come to mean something to him, she was flirting with them and charming them.

Over B.S., fried tomatoes and their genuine interest in him, they’d made him feel as if he mattered. His whole life he’d been just another guy. There were a million guys who sat at the poker tables in Vegas, a million guys with too much money and too much free time, a million guys who were waking up next to gorgeous women they barely knew. It was part of what drove him to step in to help women who needed things—money, attention, help of all kinds—he didn’t want to be just another guy like a million others.

Sapphire Falls made him feel likehemattered.

Kate made him feel likehemattered.

And now Kate and Sapphire Falls were coming together.

Which was a huge problem. He couldn’t keep her here.

“So you’re going to have some adjusting to do if you’re going to stay here,” Ben said. “That white stuff outside? That sticks around for a few months each year.”

Kate gasped again. “You’re kidding. Even when it’s nice and warm in March?”

The men thought that was hilarious. They got more inches of snow in March than any other month.

“Honey, you just keep cuddling up to that guy there all the way through March. I don’t want your pretty parts to get cold,” Albert said.

“Looks to me like all of her parts are pretty,” Conrad said.

“I think I’m going to be cuddling up to this guy year round,” Kate said, cutting off the near-inappropriate comment…and any that might follow.

Damn right she would be.

“What do you do out there in California?” Ben asked.

“I’m a scientist,” she said simply. “I study the climate and the ocean.”

Alfred chuckled. “We don’t have much of an ocean here but we can tell you all about the climate.”

“That’s right,” Frank agreed. “You need to know anything about the weather around here, we can tell you. Those meteorologists on TV have nothing on Ben’s bum knee and my back.”

Kate smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“And you’d better cuddle that boy hard through April,” Larry added. “The caterpillars were mostly black this fall.”

Kate looked at Levi, clearly puzzled. He shrugged. He had no idea what that old farmer was talking about.

“I’m all for anything that gets me more cuddling with Kate,” he told the men. “But I don’t know much about caterpillars.”

“The wooly bear caterpillars predict the winter,” Larry said.

“Supposedlypredict the winter,” Albert inserted.

“Been true every year I’ve been alive,” Larry declared. “And that’s a lotta years.”

Albert couldn’t, apparently, argue with that because he just shook his head.

“The more black the wooly caterpillars have on them in the fall, the harder and longer the winter will be,” Ben explained to Levi and Kate. “This past fall we saw a bunch that were mostly black crossing the road.”

“They cross the road?” Kate repeated, her tone skeptical.

“Sure they do,” Larry said. “Looking for warm spots to hole up.”

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