Page 22 of How to Say I Do
“Fancy meeting you here.” Noël’s expression turned playful, both demure and diamond-strong at once. No wonder celebrities signed with him. I’d have followed him off the edge of the planet.
From ages five to eleven, I'd won the “Most Talkative” paper-plate award, always presented to me by an exasperated teacher before summer break. Even today, I could talk a gate off its hinges and keep up with Jason and all his little-kid babble. I could spin bullshit out of cotton, but in that moment, I couldn’t rustle up a single word.
Instead of speaking, I held out my golden plumeria, twirling the stem between my thumb and forefinger. “Howdy.”You’re beautiful.
My little flower won me another smile, and Noël breathed in the scent as I offered him my elbow. “That’s as close as I could get to a yellow rose on short notice,” I told him.
He laughed, and our eyes met and held, and then I almost walked us face-first into the wall.
Once inside the restaurant—with all our limbs and without bruises—we were led to a table reserved on the veranda with a sweeping view of the ocean. Of course, there was a bottle of champagne waiting for us. A vase with a single red rose sat in the center of our table, but Noël plucked out the rose and tossed it away before dropping my plumeria in its place.
I got to tick off another item from my Noël bucket list when I slid his chair out for him. He hit me with his dazzling smile again. I wanted to do a thousand ridiculous things to keep him looking at me like that.
When the wine menu arrived, Noël asked me to pick something and teach me everything about the bottle. I pored over the book, discarding whites and California reds, sweet wines and table wines and bubbles. I settled on a Central Mexican Nebbiolo, one-hundred-percent Mexican grown. It was as close a comparison to my hot-weather vines and Texas grapes as I could find.
Oh, the sight of him—effortlessly elegant as he lifted the red wine goblet, poise strumming from each and every line of him, and the way his eyes seized mine when he took his first sip. I was sixteen and spellbound, scrubbing my sweaty palms against my khakis beneath the table.
“Mmm.”His eyes widened as he twirled his goblet in a loose circle. The Nebbiolo’s legs made ladders on the inside of the glass. “My first impression would bepowerful.”
I downed a hearty swallow to get my brain firing. One giant secret gulp, then a classy taste. “Oh, definitely. This is a full-bodied and forward wine. But it’s complex, too. Every sip you take will taste a little bit different. Try and draw out the spice flavors with your next sip. Then the underlying sweetness with your next. See if you can pick out smoke or fruit with your fourth.”
He took it slowly, savoring each mouthful the way a good wine is meant to be enjoyed. Every time his glass touched his lips, something inside me sighed. By the time he got to describing hints of chocolate and honey, I was nothing more than vapor. Effervescent, from my toes to my hat and everywhere in between.
We finished half the bottle before we ordered dinner, and we got pleasantly tipsy, sharing a single wine glass back and forth instead of pouring our own. It seemed to be a rule that couples shared a corner to cuddle over at tables here, so it was all too easy to press my leg against his and forget it was there, or leave my forearm and my wrist twined with his while we both had our fingers on the foot of our wine glass.
He told me a story about the last time he’d tried red wine at a college party when he was twenty. That hadn’t been real wine, though; it was that boxed-juice-mixed-with-ethanol crap that lured in desperate housewives and unsuspecting college kids. He’d been smack in the middle of the second target population, and that ethanol juice had gone down like nails. Being a college boy experienced in the art of getting absolutely hammered, he’d persevered, and in the morning, he said he wanted to rip off his head. “Never again,” he told me as I chuckled. “I swore, never again with wine.”
“Yet here you are.”
His smile was prim, the tilt to his head flirtatious. “I’ve been shown the error of my ways. An expert told me that wasn’trealwine, anyway.”
“An expert, huh?” His job was to butter and soothe the biggest egos in the world. He was paid to flatter. I knew that, of course, but it didn’t mean his charm wasn’t working on all of me.
He looked me dead in my eyes and said, “The best wine expert I’ve ever met. He taught me that you plant grapes on the upward slopes of hills so any cold air that might harm the fruit will fall down and collect at the low points of the valleys. Great vintners use the land’s natural thermoclines to their advantage.”
That wasword for wordwhat I’d told him the night before in the middle of finger painting my vineyards on the table between us. Lord, I wasgonefor this man. Pure gone, and you couldn’t have beaten my soul back into my body with a baseball bat, or nailed my heart down when it started to run.
We sharedcarne guisadaandtacos al pastor, then split a prickly pear sorbet as we polished off the Nebbiolo. We kept scooting closer, supposedly to share each other’s food, until eventually we were all tucked up together. I’d rested my arm around the back of his chair at some point during our last glass of wine. I couldn’t remember doing it. It just seemed like holding on to Noël was the most natural thing in the world. He was loose and relaxed, one leg crossed as he slanted into me.
“This is so wonderful,” Noël breathed. “I’m actually having thebesthoneymoon.”
Him in my arms, his cheek brushing my collarbone. The night smelled like secret gardens, sun-ripened grapes, and bubbles bursting like fireworks. “I’m having a pretty good time on our honeymoon, too.”
He laughed. His whole body went into it, and his hand stretched toward mine as his fingers brushed my wrist. Electric zings danced through my veins.Never end. Never, ever end.
“So, tomorrow,” he said. “The itinerary is all-day pampering. In-room massages and then a lazy afternoon on the sand, with a catered lunch brought to the surf. Would you be up for a day of total relaxation?”
“I am, and I want to be with you, doing all that, but…” I hesitated. “But Liam and Savannah and Jason are flying in tomorrow morning.”
“Oh. Right. Their wedding.” He slid his hand off my wrist and reached for his glass of champagne, slipping away from my hold. “Shit, I’m sorry. You said they were coming in. I’m sorry, I—”
“We can still hang out. I still want to see you.”
“I can’t intrude on your family’s time. You’re here for your brother, not for me.”
“It’s not an intrusion.”
“This is your brother’s wedding—"
