Page 13 of Against All Odds

“Come on, Sable,” he coaxed. “I’m here to help.”

“You are?” I was surprised.

“Yes,” he chuckled. “So, let me.”

“Ah…but you’re a guest and….”I don’t want you around me because it’s distracting as hell.

“Now, you’re just being stubborn on principle,” he teased.

“And what would you know about stubbornness?”

“A lot, actually.” He grinned cheekily…charmingly. “I’ve got a fifteen-year-old daughter. Stubbornness is our love language.”

I couldn’t help it—I laughed. “Your daughter is adorable.”

“She is, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s fifteen and obstinate.”

He looked like an eager schoolboy, hoping thathis crush would pay attention to him. And he looked damn good doing that.

“Fine,” I relented. “You can unpack glasses. We need to get them into the sanitizer and wiped down.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He gave me a mock salute before getting to work.

We comfortably labored side by side for a while.

Heath unpacked the glasses with careful precision and then got them into the sanitizer. I ran the machine, pulled them out, and wiped them down, which he also helped with.

“Are you planning to serve wine?” He asked about the wine glasses I’d ordered, as well as replacements for the cocktail, beer, and water glasses.

The Wildflower didn’t have an extensive wine menu; in fact, four kinds were served: bubbly, rosé, red, and white, the grape be damned.

“I don’t know a lot about wine,” I confessed. “ButBen said that it’s good for business, and he’d been meaning to do it but never got around to it. I have to learn about wine.”

“I can help you,” he offered.

“You can?”

“Yeah. I’m a trained sommelier.”

My eyes widened. “Like a master sommelier?”

“Yeah.” He wasn’t showing off, just stating facts. “My first job was in the hotels’ F&B—food and beverage. I wanted to build the wine program for the hotel, and our floor sommelier was a miserable jerk. So, I did it then togive him the finger. Took me a whole fucking year. I had to work so damn hard.”

“I hear it’s tough to pass the exams and most people don’t even do it in the first go.”

He didn’t answer, just wiped glasses that came out of the sanitizer.

“Let me guess,” I said with certainty, “you did pass the first time, didn’t you?”

“The thing is, I can help you build a wine program, get you in touch with the right distributors, and all that. For a place like this, you want affordable and eclectic wine. Maybe do the natural wine thing that’s seeing a lot of popularity these days.”

I’d be a fool to turn down the help of a master sommelier, and I was definitely not one of those.

“I will absolutely take you up on it.”

“Good.” He sounded satisfied.

After a while, I blurted out, “You’re not what I expected.”

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