Stirred: A Love Story (11 page)

“You dance?” Travis laughed.

Garrett flipped him off, eyes still on her.

“She doesn’t like to be watched. At least not when she’s at the bar.”

“What’s with the country music?” he asked quietly.

“Huh?”

“I heard her tell someone you can tell a lot about a person’s mood by the music they listen to. What does this music say?”

Travis leaned in to get a better listen. “She’s inspired by being here and working on something new for the farm dinner. Country music speaks to that, I guess. She needs to come up with things that touch the elements. Sound is one of the senses that heightens all the other creative elements.”

Garrett turned, brow furrowed. “Where do you come up with this shit?”

“You asked.”

“Yeah, I was looking for happy, sad, pissed. I didn’t want to dance around in a field with you.”

“But you do with her, don’t you?”

Garrett glared at him again. It was his best back-the-fuck-off look, but Travis only nodded.

“Yeah, you do, man. You’re watching that like it’s the last five of the Stanley Cup.”

The song was almost over, so Garrett moved away from the door. “How does someone not watch that? She makes no sense. Right when I think I know where to put her, she changes,” he thought, but said out loud.

Travis said nothing and only watched him like a guy who had already been down the path he was barely starting to navigate.

“Anyway, that made my day,” he said, and then caught himself a few beats too late.

Travis grinned from ear to ear, like a kid with a secret.
Pain in the ass.

“Yeah? Did you want me to let her know?”

Garrett shook his head. “It’ll wait.”

“I always hate window shopping. Seems like shit’s always gone when you go back to actually buy, ya know?”

Garrett pulled his eyes off of Sage. “Are you like. . . a poet? That was some kind of metaphor?”

Travis nodded, still with the stupid grin.

“Well, thanks for that. Now get in there and do your job,” he said, stomping down the back steps. “Oh”—he turned back—“and remember. . .”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll never be good enough for your sister.”

“That’s right,” Garrett said, trying his best to look like the badass big brother as Travis walked into the house. Steps away from the house, he glanced back and saw her through the kitchen window. She was now talking with Travis, laughing.

When Garrett was a kid, his bedroom was on the east side of the house. He’d always loved being the first to get the early morning light. During the summer months, when sunrise was early, he would lie on his bed for a few extra minutes after his alarm went off and watch the morning slide across his room, lighting up his posters, action figures, and stuffed animals. He’d never been able to put it into words as a kid, but it was as if each morning, the dark was washed away and his room came to life. His childhood hadn’t been filled with very many moments of pause. There was always work to do, but those few minutes of twilight were a sweet memory. He wasn’t sure why watching her felt like that, but it did.

Garrett bowed his head and went back to work.

Chapter Nine

S
age had finished the book before bed that night and felt much the same way she did when she left the makeup counter at Nordstrom—scary clown face and a whole lot overwhelmed. She thought, like the makeup counter trip, that many of the steps she’d learned would be tossed in the bathroom drawer because they were either too time-consuming or the wrong color. The “Boss Lady” chapter, for example, was never going to happen, Sage thought before clicking off her light. There was something about tying a man to the bed that went against her nature. “Talk Dirty to Me” probably wasn’t going to happen either unless she was drunk again. She couldn’t explain it, but after being on the farm for the run-through, the book was even sillier than before. With that much life, that much genuine swirling around, which thong to wear or creative things to do with honey rang absurd.

Sage had read a number of self-improvement books in her life and could usually garner a few kernels here and there to improve either her outlook or the way she conducted her life. That was why she read them. She believed people were works in progress and that if she was going to live her life to the fullest, she needed to work on things.
Nice to Naughty
was mostly about being hot in bed or turning on a man, but there were bits in there about empowerment and making things happen and feeling sexy. That was all good advice, but most of it, Sage had resolved, would never work in her world. The last chapter had been on fantasy, which she knew a whole lot about, but she wasn’t sure how to fantasize about anyone other than Garrett.

The following evening, after deciding to wear the black skirt with the white stripe along the bottom and to also bring three mixing glasses instead of two, Sage arrived at the farm a few minutes early. The path from the parking lot to the barn was now lined with tiny lights threaded through branches. Kenna had been there since the early morning, and it looked like something out of a movie or a magazine. They’d been sold out for months and, as she wheeled her supply cart toward the faded red barn positioned off the rows of rainbow kale, she had to admit she was nervous. Things like this were always a show, a coming together of all the elements that made for an “experience,” as their website had touted. She supposed it was similar to her cocktails, mixing things, but on a much larger scale.

A breeze brushed through the silk of her blouse and she was surrounded by the smell of soil, smoked wood, and spices. The barn itself, Sage learned from Kenna a few weeks ago, was old and had been moved from another property up near Temecula. Garrett bought it at auction and had it driven down and reassembled on their property.

There would be twenty-two guests, seated at a massive table that was positioned in the center of the barn. Bunches of local flowers, winter wheat, and candles lit the dining area with a glow that stopped Sage in her tracks on her way to the far end of the barn. It was breathtaking. There were a few overstuffed chairs around the bar, complete with blankets and pillows. Sage looked again at the high, vaulted lofts. It was official, she thought, the barn was nicer than her house.

The sun was setting, their guests hadn’t arrived yet, and she already knew the evening was going to be unbelievable. It was in the air, energy so fresh and rooted in simplicity, it was impossible for it to go wrong. Everything looked like a scene in the lifestyle magazines Sage saw at Fisher’s bookstore. She liked stopping by Fisher’s on her way home after her coffee dates with Kenna and Paige. Sage liked magazines, sometimes thumbing through them for hours, but she often wondered why anyone would pay twelve dollars for a magazine filled with pictures. Now she understood. Twelve dollars was a small price to pay for a frozen glimpse of the magic that was presently all around her.

Taking out her mixing glasses and spoons, Sage opened the cooler that held her fruit and herbs. Jeremy approached, and she decided he was attractive in a clean refrigerator sort of way. She could appreciate it, but she preferred hers packed with food and a little messy.

“Hey, beautiful.”

And that greeting, the same one every time, was rehearsed and obnoxious, she thought, but smiled.

He looked over her spread and picked up a bottle of gin before setting it back down. “So what are you shaking up to compete with our wines?”

“Not exactly competing, more like complementing. I’ve created two drink variations that I think go well with the pork ribs, I’m sure people will love—”

“Sage”—he touched her arm—“I was joking, and I don’t need the details.”

“Oh, right.” No need to clutter things up with the details. Sure. “Sorry, I’m a little wound up.” A buzz of energy that had nothing to do with Jeremy coursed through her body. “Maybe it’s the night air or this spot. I mean, look at this place, it’s gorgeous.”

As if he had been cued from some back door, Garrett joined Travis and Logan while they tended to the short ribs smoking at the front food station on the other side of the barn. Another breeze kissed the back of her neck, and she shivered. Sage had brought a sweater but didn’t want to put it on.

He wore jeans and a button-down shirt with patches on the elbows. The shirt was out, his hair still wet from a shower Sage refused to allow herself to imagine. Everything about him, about his look, was unstudied, practical, and yet rather extraordinary. Or maybe it wasn’t him at all, she thought, looking back to her bar. Maybe it was the environment, sort of like a mirage or a lifestyle magazine.

As Jeremy continued to ramble about Twisted Tree’s new fume blanc that Sage had already tasted and thought too heavy on the lemongrass, she peppered in the occasional “oh” or “that is so interesting,” all while watching Garrett. Setting out her bitters and laying napkins across one corner of the bar, she recalled a bowl she bought last year from The Fig and Frog, a downtown resale boutique. The bowl was cobalt blue, oversized, and had a red dot of glass in the center. She’d seen it one Saturday and decided she had to have it. It sat front and center in a room the boutique had staged as if it was in the kitschiest house right on the beach. Sage remembered wanting the whole picture. It didn’t matter what the bowl cost that day.

When she’d arrived home and set the bowl on her own table, it wasn’t quite the same. Still beautiful, but not as enchanting as it had been back at the store, in a space she saw as more exciting than her own. Sage knew she tended to project like that; that was all part of why she’d moved to LA. She wanted to start over, change rooms. She remade herself, but as she took in her fill of Garrett Rye, her mind pleaded with her heart to consider he might be like that bowl. Beautiful in his space, but a fantasy that only existed in twelve-dollar magazines.

“Sage? What did you think?”

“Huh? Oh, sorry. Yes, your selections sound perfect.”

Jeremy forced a chuckle as he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek before fading out of view.

Garrett looked over, his clean-shaven jaw and guarded eyes lit by the fire of the grill, and her heart told her mind it didn’t care. She would pay the twelve dollars like all those other suckers to stay right there with him. Taking a pull of his beer, Garrett nodded and tilted the bottle in a toast to her. Eyes still on him, she reached for the closest glass on her bar and gestured back at him. He laughed, so she glanced down and realized she’d toasted him with a jar of olives. Sage was happy for the distance because once again, her cheeks warmed as the first guests arrived and made their way over to her. Showtime. She greeted the guests, handed out drink cards, and was happy to be doing something she was pretty sure she wouldn’t screw up.

Garrett watched as a crowd began to gather around her bar. Her smile was different. Maybe it was the candles, or the evening breeze that mussed with her hair and she had to keep tucking it out of her face. She was even more beautiful in his barn, stirring and mixing in his world. Sage had never spent much time at the farm. She and Kenna were friends, but he always associated her with being in town, behind the bar. She’d been out to his “neck of the woods,” as his father loved to say, two days in a row, and it was messing with his head, or his heart, he wasn’t sure which as he finished off his beer.

Sage moved with that same rhythm she did at The Yard, only this bar was smaller and the laughter, the conversation as she stirred and poured, felt more personal. Kind of like the difference between an intimate acoustic set and a huge arena concert. Garrett moved closer and wondered if she brought that same rhythm to the bedroom.

Whoa, let’s rein that shit in right now.

She was “in love with every piece of him.” That’s what she’d said. They had both dismissed it, agreed that she’d had too much to drink and couldn’t be held responsible, but the words kept playing through his mind along with her legs and her most recent naughty slide up the bar. Her words were so simple, so honest that now, days later, he couldn’t seem to shake them. He remembered vaguely reading Shakespeare in high school, something about the truth being in the wine. She wanted him.
Want
Garrett could deal with, that was what, sex, right? He liked sex. Probably not a good idea to have it with his sister’s friend, but if she wanted him, who was he to argue? The
love
aspect of her speech was a little harder to get his head around. No way she loved him. Love took time, not that he’d ever bothered, but watching his brother and sister, it seemed like work. He already had enough work.