It had been three days since he’d first made love to her, and everything in her world had improved. Including the weather. Tori finally picked up her phone and blocked both Ali and Erin. She didn’t need to know if they changed their minds or tried to apologize again. She didn’t need them. That had been more liberating than expected.

At work, Penny announced that they had posted an opening for someone to run the farmer’s markets, so that Tori could focus on the social media portion of her job. Still no news about the grant, but at least now the stress of creating sales would be off her back.

She stretched and yawned and felt like the cat that got the canary. Les banged around and sang in her small bathroom. She loved waking up with him, loved having him sleep with her.

She didn’t know how their schedules would mesh, but for now having him curled up around her at night made everything perfect.

She heard the water cut off, and Les hummed his way into the kitchen. She took her turn in the shower.

“If we are going to be together, you can’t see anyone else,” Les announced as she stepped out of the bathroom.

“That’s not a problem, I haven’t had a boyfriend for a while.” Tori wiped water from her face and followed Les into the kitchen.

“Come on, Tori, don’t lie to me.” Les shook her phone in her face. “Just tell me the truth. Don’t tell me you you’re always on your phone for work. You’ve been texting some guy.”

“What are you upset about?” Genuinely confused, she tried to think who he could possibly be referring to. There hadn’t been anyone in particular she had been trading tweets with on behalf of PnK that he might misread as a boyfriend.

“I thought we were a couple now. You said you wanted me to stay. Not a ‘one and done,’ or an ‘in the mean time.’ That’s not how I feel about you. You’re having a long distance relationship with some guy, so what does that make me?” Les acted like he was going to hurl her phone, but he pulled his arms back and shook them over his head.

He stepped in a tight circle. “I can’t do this, not with you. I thought you were different.”

Tossing her phone on the couch, he walked out the door.

Tori’s not-quite-awake, water-logged brain was still not fully grasping what Les was going on about, so she picked up her phone to check it. He couldn’t get past her lock screen without her password, but he could see the last text she’d sent.

“I love you Sam.”

In bare feet, Tori ran out onto the balcony wrapped in a towel. Les was strapping on his helmet.

She waved the phone over her head, trying to get his attention. “She was my best friend!” When he didn’t look up, she scrambled down the stairs yelling. “Samantha’s a girl, not Sam a boy.”

But Les either didn’t hear her or he completely ignored her. His bike roared past her out of the lot and onto the street.

The lump in Tori’s throat felt like Gibraltar, and she couldn’t swallow. Her thumbs flew over the phone. Les had to read her text, he had to. She ran upstairs and got dressed.

Les wouldn’t be at work for another couple of hours, and she needed to be at the farm in thirty minutes. When she got things situated at work, she would hightail it over to the Napa Grand Hotel, delivery day or not. This was an easy fix.

Except Les didn’t show up for work.

“Wasn’t Karen here yesterday?” Chef asked.

Tori shrugged. “I’m looking for Les, but Jenny just let me know he called in.”

“Yeah, said he wasn’t feeling too good.”

“Chef, if you called him would he pick up?”

“What’s the matter, Tori?” Chef crossed his arms.

Tori had intended on giving Chef a brief, noncommittal answer, but the words rushed from her of their own accord. “He thinks my friend Samantha is a guy named Sam, and he’s mad at me, and he won’t answer my calls. I think he has me blocked. And I can’t lose him over something this stupid.”

“What do you mean by lose him?”

Tori looked at the floor, not sure exactly how to tell Chef. How did she ever tell anyone when she got a new boyfriend? But Les wasn’t just a new boyfriend, and she didn’t even know if he had told anyone about them yet. “Me and Les, we’re sort of dating. And it’s still all new and wonderful, except for this.” Tori’s heart tried to pound its way up her throat.

Chef nodded and pulled out his phone. “Get your ass in here now. Your girl is all freaked out. Sam is a Samantha. Now she’s here looking at me with big sad eyes.”

Chef lowered the phone and said, “He’ll be here in twenty minutes. You want something to eat while you wait?”

Tori sat on the back loading dock. Her feet swung bumping into the concrete retaining wall. Les skidded his motorcycle to a stop.

Tori stood up as Les got off the bike. They stood staring at each other.

“You have a friend named Samantha, and you call her Sam, and I’m an idiot.” Les spoke evenly.

“Pretty much. But I do have a special long distance relationship with her. Can I tell you about it?” Tori’s face scrunched up, and her vision blurred. Someday she would be able to talk about Sam without crying, but that wasn’t today.

Les’s arms were around Tori, and his thumb brushed a tear from her cheek. “Can I blame my hot Latino blood for jumping to the wrong conclusions and yelling at you like that?”

Tori nodded, her throat tight from the impact of the sadness that came when she talked about Sam. Today it was compounded with fear over Les’s misunderstanding.

Les lifted the hem of his shirt and blotted Tori’s cheeks.

“I’m going to need a lot of tissues, your shirt won’t be enough.”

“Let’s go somewhere quiet so you can tell me.” Les’s soft voice was soothing. He took her hand and led her back to his bike.

Tori leaned her head against his back for the short ride. She felt calmed pressed against him. It would be better as soon as he could wrap his arms around her.

Once off the bike, Les lead Tori to the gazebo in the middle of the rose garden. It was quiet and peaceful. Tori sat next to him and rested her head on his chest. She played with the fingers on his hand until she could talk with out dissolving into tears.

“I met Sam in college. I decided within ten minutes of knowing her that I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. She had leukemia, and in the end it had metastasized into a few other organs. It sucked. But she was a badass until the very end. You know, I had promised her that I would move here because we both loved this area so much. Had no idea what kind of job I would be able to get because I majored in communications, but she made me promise to pursue what I wanted and to figure how to make it all work.”

“And I went all stupid macho on you because you still text her, don’t you?”

Tori nodded, rubbing her cheek against his T-shirt. “I can’t stop telling her about my life. Things haven’t been too good for me lately, so I’ve been texting a lot more. It’s hard when you can’t talk to the person you need to talk to the most. She was the first person who really got me, my first real best friend since I was little. We were going to grow up and be neighbors, and our children would grow up being best friends. But now I just have a promise I made to a dying girl to not give up, and it’s been really, really tough.” Tori let out a shuddering sigh.

Les stroked her hair, the soothing caress helped to ease the throbbing headache she always got from crying.

“Te amo. I’m glad you didn’t give up.”

“But I did. I gave up on you. It wasn’t until I let you go that you came to me on your own.”

“Ironic?”

Tori nodded. She pushed up so that she could gaze into Les’s eyes. She had seen her children in those eyes the first time she’d met him, something she didn’t know if she could ever admit. “Te amo.” She pressed her lips to his.

Les chuckled. “I’ll make a Spanish speaker out of you yet.”

Tori’s phone pinged several times repeatedly. She looked at it with a groan. “I have to get back to work.”

“Me too now that Chef knows I’m not sick. Can I come over tonight? I have some making up to do.”

***

“Hernandez!” Chef bellowed as he walked out of his office.

“Yes, Chef?” Had he done something wrong? He felt on top of the world and on top of his game. Tori made him a superhero. He couldn’t have messed up.

“Did you request next Thursday off?” the man growled over the clank and bang of the line cooks preparing the lunch orders.

Apparently asking for a day off was a cardinal sin. Les had an ace up his sleeve if he needed to use it. Marc DeLuca had promised him a day off, and if this was when he needed to pull that string, he would. “Yes, Chef.”

“You had better have a good reason.”

He had the best. “I’d like to take my girl out.”

“Hernandez doesn’t have a girlfriend. He’s just blowing smoke up your ass.” Stevens had to contribute, even if the conversation had nothing to do with him.

The muscles around Les’s lips tightened. Stevens wasn’t worth his time, and he was not going to engage in an exchange of insults right now. He slid the large knife into the creamy cheesecake, rotated the cake, and made another slice.

“You never go out with the same girl twice. A second date does not make someone your girlfriend,” Stevens continued.

“Aren’t you funny? I have a girlfriend.” Les’s sneered in reply.

“You two worked it out?” Chef chuckled.

“I apologized profusely, so we’re good,” Les confessed with a smile.

“Oh, that sounds interesting.” O’Connell joined in the conversation.

A wolf whistle from one of the line cooks indicated everyone was now involved in this. “Is she hot? Hernandez always gets the hot babes.”

“She’s beautiful,” Les answered with a wistful sigh. Thinking about Tori made his gut tighten, in a good way.

“You sound smitten,” O’Connell said.

“I think Hernandez is in love,” Stevens said with a childish sneer.

“For once, Stevens, you are not wrong.”

“Sorry, Hernandez, being in love is not a good enough reason for me to give you a Thursday off on such short notice.”

“It’s her birthday. I wanted to do something special.”

“You mean a little uh uh uh”—Stevens thrust his hips against his work station—“from you isn’t special?” He always had to make the conversation crude.

“Can I punch him, Chef?”

“So its Tori’s birthday, huh? Where were you planning on taking her?” Chef asked.

“I was thinking keeping it low key, make her a picnic, and go up into the hills behind Ryo Winery. ChiChi said it’s a nice romantic spot, and I could go up there anytime I wanted. Since it’s not harvest time, this would be the perfect opportunity.”

He had only wanted to dance with Tori during their last open floor class. But, as she had pointed out, Hank and Miguel had stopped coming. Les was now one of three men in a room of five women. He needed to play nice and be sure to dance with each one.

Sharp as a tack, ChiChi had caught on there was something going on between him and Tori. Swirling ChiChi around the dance floor, Les confessed. He needed something spectacularly romantic for her upcoming birthday, and he was all out of ideas. That was when ChiChi made her suggestion. She said it was practically deserted and to make sure to take a good thick blanket.

Les couldn’t be certain, but it seemed to him ChiChi insinuated that making love among the grapevines improved the wine, something about Bacchus and rituals. And she was encouraging him to take full advantage of that while on their picnic.

“Bullshit.” Stevens fake coughed. “No way he’s on first name terms with ChiChi Ryo.”

“Stevens, you need to shut up,” O’Connell commented. “Chef, you have to give him the day off. I think that’s great you’re dating Tori. I like her. A picnic in the vineyards sounds so romantic.”

“Thanks, I’m trying.”

“You’re dating two-ton Tori?”

Les threw the knife in his hands down but grabbed the edge of his table so that he wouldn’t seize Stevens around the throat and start shaking. A growl left his lips. “Can I punch him, Chef?”

“O’Connell, I need you to take that prep over from Stevens. Stevens, come here,” Chef shouted.

“Yes, Chef?” Stevens strode over to where the big man stood.

“Never insult a man’s woman when he is holding a larger knife than you are. There’s a large tray of calamari in the walk-in. Go clean it.” Chef pointed. “Never talk about Tori, or women, like that again.”

“That’s not fair,” Stevens whined. “The calamari is on the menu tomorrow.”

“I’m adding it to the specials tonight,” Chef barked.

Stevens shot Les a dirty glare, as if this was all his fault.

“Hernandez!” Chef’s yell was even louder now that Stevens had tipped his mood into the foul zone.

“Yes, Chef?” Les stood straight, completely at attention.

“You can have the day off. Do something nice for Tori. She’s a good kid. And you are not allowed to punch Stevens in my kitchen or in my restaurant. Is that clear?” He cocked his head to the side, waiting for Les to answer.

“Yes, Chef. Thank you, Chef. Perfectly clear, Chef.”