Page 153 of Coach
“We should be drinking wine.”
“Tasting,” he corrected.
“Tasting with swallowing, a little like—”
Mateo coughed a laugh. “Let’s go taste some wine before you get us both into trouble.”
“Trouble was Plan B, but wine works.” I shrugged and checked my watch.
“Got somewhere else to be?” he asked through a smirk as we approached the door.
“With you and old grapes. Nowhere else.”
“A perfect afternoon.” Mateo grinned. “After you, good sir.”
We strode down the narrow halls of the bed-and-breakfast, a building likely erected in the early part of the twentieth century, to step into a sprawling room that was only separated from the rows of grapes outside by a massive window wall. It looked as though we could step directly off the living room floor onto the rich dirt of the vineyard.
“We need a window wall,” Mateo said.
“Nah. I’ll take a TV that size. You can have the window.”
Mateo shook his head but grinned. Already, his mood was lifting.
When Sisi stepped into the room, his grin fell into a curious gaze.
“Sierra?” he asked, using her full name, something he rarely did.
She beamed, running across the room andtumbling into him with open arms. “Hi, hi, hi! Aren’t you thrilled to see me?”
Mateo chuckled, glancing up at me, as though piecing a puzzle together.
“Always,” he said, “but why—”
“We’re here!” Mike and Elliot strode in, Matty and Jeremiah in tow. Each held one of those little bags people gave party gifts in. Matty’s looked like a glitter fairy had exploded and left her remains all over the paper.
“Dane, and Patrick send their love,” Matty said. “The two gorillas had to work, and Patrick wussed out. You know how he is without his man on his arm.”
Indeed, we did.
Mateo hugged each guy in turn before whirling and spearing a finger at me. “Shane Douglas, what have you done?”
I raised my hands in the international “don’t shoot” gesture. “We need wine. Sisi, can you—”
“On it,” Sisi snapped, a blur of motion toward the door where a staff member appeared.
Moments later, servers bearing trays of fruits, cheeses, and tiny triangles of buttery fried bread stepped through the doors. Two others followed, each carrying several bottles of wine or a handful of long-stemmed glasses. By the time they’d finishedsetting up their spread, it looked like a reception for twenty rather than the handful of us.
Sisi tore into the tiny rolls of prosciutto and mozzarella, while Matty grabbed a bottle and filled a wine glass to the rim.
“I don’t think that’s how you pour a tasting,” Sisi said.
Matty shrugged. “I want a good tasting. How can I do that if part of the glass isn’t filled?”
As usual, Matty made no sense—and all sorts of it.
Sisi nodded as though he’d just defined the Pythagorean theorem. “Try these. They’re heaven,” she said, shoving a roll into Matty’s mouth and earning an appreciative hum.
Silverware clinking against a glass drew everyone’s attention. Mateo turned, a wariness entering his gaze as he sipped wine.
