Page 31 of Tangled in Vines

I had never thought he would like me, much less envision how his nimble fingers would stroke me with such tender reverence, but it had happened, and now I had all the time to think over it.

Parking at the front of our house, I slipped forward and caged my head in my arms, circling the steering wheel.

“God, I fucked up, didn’t I.”

It was more of a statement than a question.

I was more confused than I had ever been in my life, but I still had to figure out a way to deal with this. Ethan and I were bound to cross paths in the next few days, even weeks until the men from Texas made their decision.

Not to mention the pests on both farms.

A rapid knock on my window had me jerking upright, and I found a frowning Ryan outside the window. He did the ‘roll-down’ motion, and I got the window down.

“Are you drunk?” he asked.

My brows shot up. “That’s the first question that comes to your mind?”

He shrugged. “It’s reasonable.”

“It’s ridiculous,” I replied. “Why would I havedrivenhome if I was drunk? How could I without wrapping my car around a tree?”

Ryan laughed and stepped aside. “Point taken.”

I grabbed my purse and left the car, trailing Ryan into the house and beelined it to the kitchen to get a drink. I poured a glass of juice and sipped it while asking Ryan. “Were you with Dad today?”

“For some of it,” my brother shrugged. “I left when Dad started to get snippy with his nurse. My friends and I went to the mall and the arcade. Josh wanted a few hoodies, and Ian wanted something to make sure his girlfriend didn’t kill him with a cleaver because he came back at one o’clock the night of the bonfire.”

I snorted. “Good luck to him with that.”

“So, I hear that the vineyard is infested,” Ryan got a drink too. “What’s up with that?”

“It’s not the vines. It’s Vega’s orchard, too,” I replied. “Mealybugs from rain and the windstorms latterly. Even with our rivalry, it wouldn’t make sense to work on each separately when it made sense and was cheaper to do it jointly. Just make one swoop and done.”

“Ah, I see,” Ryan replied, and his expression turned devilish. “So…what’s this about you and Ethan kicking it at Mix’D?”

“Kicking it?” I frowned. “What the heck does that mean?”

“Dating, hooking up, knocking boots, make the beast with two backs, getting down and dir—”

“I went there to apologize to Eth—Mister Vega,” I said, barely catching myself. “Dad told me some very suspect things about what happened between him and older Mister Vega—” briefly, I told him about what Ethan had told me, what Dad had said, and why I felt like a Benedict Arnold in the situation. “But then Vega tells me tonight that he found out his dad has screwed over our dad first, and I don’t—I don’t know what to feel about it.”

Ryan blinked, then blinked again. “Whoa. That’s… a lot.”

“Tell me about it,” I sighed.

“But you probably knew that was not all of it, right,” Ryan replied. “I’ll bet there were dozens, if not hundreds, of reprisals before that.”

“Don’t I know it? I’ve got to grab a shower, and I know Mom left food in the warmer for both of us. If you eat mine, I will skin you in your sleep,” I warned him as I turned to the stairs.

He laughed. “I promise to keep my hands to my plate.”

Upstairs, I got into the shower but took my time washing. I needed some time to think as well. Now that we knew there was something there, an attraction, a pull—as doomed as it was to be— could we keep our relationship professional without letting the personal threads slip in?

“We are all grown here,” I told myself, “We can get through this without mixing business and pleasure. Not to mention the possibility of getting exiled from either family if they find out about this.”

But as I tried to reassure myself…why did the words ring hollow and so untrue?

ChapterEleven

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