Thump, thump, thump. Boom, boom, boom. Noah stared at the ceiling of his bedroom, the full moon illuminating a slanted path across the wall, as the sound of an unidentifiable pop song’s pulsating base line echoed through the crisp night air. For twenty minutes he lay still, willing the music to quiet, until he couldn’t take another second of it.

Noah knew he had what many would consider questionable taste in music—preferring songs from his college days over anything current—but this was ridiculous. As he sat upright in his bed and ran a frustrated hand through his hair, he heard the faint whisperings of a female voice singing longingly about temptation over a man’s body.

“Goddamnit,” Noah groaned, throwing the covers aside and swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress. He glanced briefly at the digital clock on his bedside table, glowing green in the dark, and groaned again. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock at night but he was about to be that guy—the one who was old before his time—the one who warned his new, gorgeous and exasperating neighbor about people needing to wake up early in the morning … even on the weekend. She’d been living next door for six weeks, and he’d seen her around town several times, but this was the first time she’d intruded on his sleep. Well, other than in his dreams, anyway. She was frequently naked in those. He hadn’t expected her to be a noisy neighbor, but he sure as hell wasn’t putting up with it. Angelica might not understand, but a farmer’s life—because farming was essentially what Noah did—was about early mornings and even earlier nights.

Even as he pulled his well-worn jeans up over his naked skin and buttoned his soft, threadbare flannel over his chest and then shoved his feet into a pair of flip-flops, Noah could predict he was about to embark on a fool’s errand. Alas, he’d already set himself upon the course, and if anything, he was a man who saw things through.

Exiting the house, his trusty pooch Molly raised her head and peered at him, one eye open. “Hey here, girl,” Noah whispered. “It’s just me.”

Hearing her master’s voice, Molly dropped her head back onto her paws and closed her eyes. For as pampered as she could be, once the temperatures soared above 70 degrees, his dog preferred to sleep outside under the stars, instead of inside with Noah. He couldn’t begrudge the desire—if Noah could get away with sleeping outside every night from April to October, he might too. Then again, he thought, I do love my thousand thread count sheets. Noah might have eschewed his privileged, San Francisco upbringing, but he’d been unable to let go of a few of life’s most basic luxuries: a downy feather mattress topper and Frette bed linens among them. Good wine and whiskey were two others.

Hopping into his beat up pickup truck—see, he didn’t need everything to be fancy— Noah inched down the long, winding drive that separated his property from the Winthrop estate. Scratch that—Angelica’s place. He still didn’t know if she had what it took to remodel that old ramshackle house into something people would pay good money to spend a weekend in, so he cautioned himself not to get too used to thinking of it as hers. Didn’t allow himself to think too hard about the possibilities of the hillside vineyard he’d already planned in his head over the last few weeks.

Zinfandel wasn’t what Noah was known for—after all, people flocked to Stonewell Vineyards for his award-winning Pinot Noir and Bordeaux blends—but that rocky soil with several hours of hot, direct sunshine a day were just itching for the types of vines that could withstand such harsh elements. Noah knew in his heart that with the contract Angelica had signed giving him access to her land, he could do something extraordinary. It might not make up for the loss of his vines in the near term, but in the long term, it could prove a watershed moment in his career.

His father had never bothered with Zinfandel; a shame really, since the climate in this revered valley was perfect for it. Hell, the old Italian families who’d come to River Hill in the 1880s from Piemonte, Tuscany, and Campania had recognized those grapes—cousin to their homeland’s beloved Sangiovese—would flourish on the slopes leading down to the river. And now, if everything went according to plan, it was Noah’s turn to put his stamp on the varietal.

Alas, he didn’t want to get too ahead of himself. Noah still didn’t know much about Angelica, but he knew people and if she stuck it out here for even a year, he’d eat his flannel. That pink tool belt she’d worn during their first meeting had told him all he needed to know about his new neighbor, and nothing he’d learned of her in the weeks since had changed his mind about her skillset. Or lack thereof. And when you considered what Sean had told him about her former career in Hollywood, Noah would bet good money this venture was a hobby for her and nothing more.

So he was trying not to dream the dream.

Trying and failing.

As Noah’s Ford inched its way down the long drive, going slow so as not to kick up too much dry dirt, he cast his eyes over the hillside in question and tried not to let his imagination run wild. But it wasn’t too hard to put the brakes on his plans when his headlights flashed over the source of the noise that had kept him up well past his bedtime: Angelica, sitting in front of a blazing fire on the weathered patio in front of the west wing of her house, surrounded by five—no, make that six—men.

Hopping out of the cab of his truck, Noah stalked across the yard to stand across from her, hands on his hips. “Seriously?” he asked, his voice rising with annoyance.

Noah liked to consider himself a self-possessed sort of person, and so he knew exactly why he was irritated. Sure, initially it’d been the music that had pulled him from his bed, but now? The spike of displeasure he felt was entirely down to Angelica’s cohorts. If it had been, say … he and his lifelong friends sitting around the fire with her, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But he didn’t know these men—didn’t like the look of them—so he was irritated Angelica was out here surrounded by a pack of red-blooded American males. And if the empty beer bottles were anything to go by, they were drunk males to boot.

“Hello, Noah,” Angelica responded dryly, her eyebrow raised as she tipped a bottle back, her throat constricting with each swallow. “Can I help you with something?”

“Do you know what time it is?”

Angelica chuckled. “Actually, I do. Not even midnight yet on a Friday night, if the clock in my kitchen is to be believed.” She set the empty bottle down next to her feet as one of the guys popped the cap on a new one and passed it her way.

“Right,” Noah clipped, scrubbing a rough hand over his lightly bristled jaw. “The thing is, I have to be up at dawn tomorrow morning and I can hear this damn music all the way over there.” He pointed into the distance, toward his home.

Angelica threw back a sip of her newly opened beer, and Noah had to force himself not to watch, to not think about what her throat would look like swallowing down something else. “Have to or want to?” she asked archly.

Noah clenched his jaw and bit back a nasty retort. He didn’t know what it was about this woman, but she got under his skin in a way no one ever had before. She’d been in River Hill for going on six weeks now and each interaction they’d had—save a few—had been an exercise in extreme patience.

“I like waking up at dawn. And I don’t like the idea of having to switch up my routine to accommodate your loud parties.”

One of the guys snickered, but when Noah shot him a glare, he immediately dropped his eyes to the fire and poked at it with a long stick. Meanwhile, Angelica glanced around the circle, taking in her companions before letting out a throaty laugh. “He thinks this is a party, gentlemen.”

The guy closest to Angelica smirked and, with his eyes trained on Noah in a challenging stare, shook his head slowly. He knew that look. This guy thought Noah, with his flannel and his truck, was a stupid country yokel who he could talk down to. The mistaken impression didn’t bother Noah. He loved River Hill and wasn’t ashamed to call this place home. What he disliked, however, was the automatic dismissal, the snide, judgmental sneer the man had adopted. It was a sneer he knew well, having grown up surrounded by men and women who were equally as disapproving as this guy.

Noah raised his chin in defiance. “You got a problem?”

The two men stared at each other for several long, tense seconds before Angelica’s tinkling laughter brought Noah back to himself. He didn’t consider himself one of those aggressive alpha males that had to prove his manhood and virility in some ingrained evolutionary stand-off when he encountered another male skulking around his woman—

Wait, what? His woman?

In the blink of an eye, Noah understood exactly why he was standing there, his chest puffed out like some kind of avenging peacock. Sure, he and Angelica had gotten off on the wrong foot, but since she’d taken possession of the house, she’d been perfectly pleasant—exasperating, but charming. And he’d always, from the very second they’d met, thought she was the most stunning woman he’d ever laid eyes on. Noah was any number of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. As a winemaker, he knew a little something about chemistry … and right now he felt like an absolute fool for not having put two and two together sooner. This wasn’t hate; it was chemistry. He didn’t dislike Angelica. He might even like her—a lot. Unfortunately, what he didn’t like was the idea that she might not like him back—that she might be fucking one of these guys instead of him.

Calm your goddamned horses, Noah thought. No one said anything about fucking her.

Chemistry wasn’t the only subject Noah had studied in college. He also knew a thing or two about biology, and he recognized these primal urges were something that had been hardwired into his DNA eons ago. He could give in to them and act like an asshole caveman by dragging Angelica off by her hair, or he could let all his culture and breeding and years of etiquette classes and social charm do the job for him.

Blinking away from the other man, Noah’s eyes darted to Angelica and found her staring at him with an amused gleam.

“You were saying?” she asked, taking another swallow of her beer.

Noah cleared his throat. “I was saying the music was loud and I was trying to sleep. Can I convince you to turn it down a few notches? I don’t have to get up early in the morning, but I like to.” Casting bait he knew Angelica couldn’t ignore, Noah added, “And Molly will be expecting her morning tromp through the woods.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked, her interest mounting.

“Yup,” he answered, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. She might not have demonstrated much interest in him over the last several weeks, but Angelica was engaged in a full-fledged love affair with his dog. “Three mornings a week we head out to Armstrong Redwoods State Park before the day-trippers descend on the trails. You been?”

Angelica shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Oh yeah? You’ve seen The Empire Strikes Back though, right?”

One of the guys snorted. “Dude, we work in Hollywood. Of course we’ve seen it.”

Ignoring the interloper, Noah’s eyes stayed trained on Angelica. “That’s Endor.”

Angelica’s face lit with recognition and she let out another tinkling laugh. “Oh my god! I know everyone hates the ewoks—”

“—Not as much as Jar Jar Binks,” Noah reminded her.

She shook her head and chuckled. “No, not as much as Jar Jar Binks. But I love the ewoks; they’re my favorite. They’re so cute and cuddly and … diabolical.” She leaned forward, her eyes gleaming with mischief.

Cute, cuddly, and diabolical—three words Noah might use to describe Angelica too. He laughed, and she raised an eyebrow at him, almost as if she could tell exactly what he’d been thinking.

Then she tilted her bottle to an empty stump next to her. “Why don’t you sit for a few minutes and we can debate the sheer idiocy of Padmé falling for Anakin.”

Noah hadn’t been lying. He really wanted to get some sleep, but now that he’d given a name to these confusing feelings for Angelica, he also really wanted to explore them … so he sat. For the next several minutes, they chatted about their favorite moments from the Star Wars franchise, with Angelica’s friends butting in left and right to offer their take on something Noah couldn’t have cared less about. They were having an A and B conversation, and he really wished the others would C their fucking way out of it … but of course he wasn’t about to say that. No, Noah hoped when he and Angelica continued to talk animatedly amongst themselves her guests would get a fucking clue and leave. They’d monopolized her conversation enough for one night—it was Noah’s turn to have her attention, and he wanted it all for himself.

Eventually, Roger—a cameraman, Noah had learned, and obviously the smartest of the bunch—slapped his palms down onto his knees and stood. Stretching his back, he said, “We’ve got an early morning so we’re going to head back to the hotel.” One by one his companions rose and tossed their empty bottles into the garbage. Before they left, he turned to Angelica. “See you at nine then?”

She set her beer on the ground and shook Roger’s hand. “Looking forward to it. I can’t wait to start filming.”

The six men climbed into three cars and pulled away, their brake lights flashing in the dark. And then it was just Noah and Angelica, alone, with nothing but the night sky twinkling overhead and the fire casting a warm glow over her face. A face Noah couldn’t stop staring at. And because of that, he realized she suddenly looked guilty.

“Filming?” he asked.

She fidgeted, wiping her hands back and forth along her thighs, as she stared down into the flames. Eventually, her eyes flicked to his. “I didn’t mention it?”

“Since I don’t know what ‘it’ is, I couldn’t say. Are you doing another movie?” He poked at the fire with a long, coal-tipped branch.

Noah found the idea surprising. Over the last several weeks, they’d chatted here and there about the movies she’d been in and he’d always gotten the sense that Angelica hated Hollywood. He could tell she loved acting—the craft of it, inhabiting the characters she portrayed and becoming them, plus the sheer mechanical work of being on camera—but he was sure she could definitely do without the ass kissing and politics that went with it.

“Not exactly.” She stood and grabbed a nearby pitcher, tossing water over the flames to put them out.

Noah jumped back in surprise when the wood hissed, and ash erupted in a steaming volcano. “Shit.” With Angelica’s retreating form several feet away now, he jogged to catch up, swiping white flecks from his torso and thighs.

With a tug on the weathered screen door, Angelica stepped into the mudroom and Noah followed. She hadn’t invited him inside, but she hadn’t said “goodnight” yet either, so Noah assumed her sudden departure smack in the middle of their conversation came with an open invitation for him to join her.

“Wait up.” A few seconds later, he found her standing at the old, chipped farmhouse sink, idly rubbing her thumb over one of the black grooves in the porcelain, her eyes staring at the blackness outside. Stepping to her side, Noah asked, “Hey, what was that all about?”

Angelica flinched, and he wondered if she’d even heard him come in, heard him calling after her. He’d only known her a short while, but Noah had never seen her like this. Had he said or done something wrong? He wracked his brain to try and remember what it could have been and came up blank. They’d discussed Star Wars, her favorite films, his favorite TV shows, and then her friends had called it a night. Had it been something one of them had said? Admittedly, Noah hadn’t been paying too much attention to the other men—he only had eyes and ears for Angelica now that he’d realized his annoyance with her stemmed not from hatred, but instead an intense, combustible attraction—but he didn’t think that was it either.

“Hey, what happened back there?” he asked, laying a tentative hand on the soft, warm skin of her forearm.

Angelica dragged her eyes to his. Their gazes held for a few expectant heartbeats and then she sighed and turned to rest her hip against the counter. “I’ve been dreading this conversation all week,” she said. “And especially with you being so nice all of a sudden.”

“Hey,” Noah replied with mock surprise and a cheeky grin. “I can be nice.”

Angelica smiled back, her heart-shaped lips hitching up, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Not to me. You merely tolerate me.”

Noah gripped the back of his neck and dropped his eyes. Flicking them back up, he said, “I think we can both agree we didn’t meet under the most auspicious of situations.”

“No, I know that, but I also apologized profusely and tried to do what I could to make it right. I thought you were excited about the land back there.” She nodded toward the back of the house.

Noah dropped his hand and shoved them both in the pocket of his jeans. “I am. Really.”

“Then why the sour face and bad attitude whenever our paths cross? One time I actually smelled my armpits because I was sure that I stunk.” She cracked another small smile and Noah looked away guiltily.

He’d known he was being a dick to her but had felt justified in his behavior, even after they’d signed their contract. After all, it hadn’t contained a provision that said he had to make nice with his nemesis. Except … Angelica wasn’t his nemesis. She was a beautiful woman who he found mildly exasperating and one he very much wanted to kiss. All the damn time. Noah wasn’t a player—he left the womanizing to Sean—but he’d never been dumbfounded by a woman either, not the way he was with Angelica. It was like she’d twisted him inside out and everything he’d thought he’d ever known about the fairer sex had been turned on its head.

Which was why he dragged his hands from his pockets and took a step closer, bringing him within inches of that delectable body of hers. Why he stroked the pad of his finger softly down the side of her face until he reached her jaw. He raised her chin until their eyes met … and held, the black of Angelica’s pupils bleeding into the deep blue of her irises as her chest rose and fell with labored breaths.

“You don’t stink,” Noah whispered as his head fell forward, his lips hovering over Angelica’s. “But I’d very much like to find out what you taste like.”