Of course, just my luck, since Darius and I arrive at the grape-stomping event around the same time, we’re assigned to the same barrel. At least there are a couple of other people in the line along with us, awaiting their turn to climb up into the bucket and stomp to their hearts’ content. I do my best to distract myself by chatting to those people.

“So, you work at Warwick farms?” I ask the girl beside us, who looks about five years younger than either Darius or me, and is dressed in what look like sweatpants overalls.

“Just interning for the summer,” she says. “Woofing.”

“Sorry, what?” I ask, while Darius stifles a laugh over her shoulder.

“Working on an organic farm. Warwick is all organic. Anyway, they have this volunteer program, where if you help out with the summer work, you get free room and board… Not to mention all you can drink wine.” She flashes me a grin, and I laugh, mostly because if I’d had to guess, I’d have guessed this girl was not old enough to drink yet.

“Sounds cool,” I say, though in my mind I’m picturing the hell that must be the bunks the Warwicks put those kids up in. I’ve visited Warwick Vineyard and Farm before. There’s a single-story, one-bedroom house where Mr. and Mr. Warwick live, and a converted barn out back where their live-at-home son sleeps with the farm animals they’ve collected. Where would they even put woofers? Is that what you call someone who woofs?

So many questions.

“So the Warwicks sent you to this weekend?” I ask, a little surprised they didn’t come themselves.

“Oh, no.” The girl waves a hand dismissively. “They wouldn’t trust a volunteer for that. They’re here personally. I just got an invite because I have 200,000 followers on Instagram.” She flips her long ponytail over one shoulder and grins at me. “I’m an influencer.”

“Oh,” I reply, my eyebrows rising higher. “Sounds cool.” I’m aware I’m repeating myself. I’m even more aware that, considering I’m not ancient, I should probably know more about how Instagram influencers work. I understand the vague basics—they influence people to buy things?—but is that a job? Does it pay? How?

Even more questions.

I’m opening my mouth to ask one when Darius touches my elbow lightly. “Our turn,” he says, and while part of me hates that, the way he just looped me in with him like we belong together, I can’t deny that the sound of his voice low against my ear, and the way he says our so easily, makes my blood hum.

“Want me to take some photos of you guys up there?” asks the Woofing Influencer.

Darius and I answer at the same time. I blurt, “Hell no,” at the same moment he says, “We’d love that.” I elbow him in the side and step forward to accept the ladder from the volunteer holding it out to us.

“Really, no photos please,” I tell her again, already picturing in my mind the absolute shitstorm that would erupt if some social media-famous posted a picture of me and Darius Bantham getting cozy. My parents’ explosion alone would likely register on the Richter scale. “I’d rather not remember this moment.”

“Okay, but you look adorbs together,” the girl calls after us, and I stifle a grimace as I swing a leg over and into the tub full of grapes. The last person I want to look anything with, let alone adorbs, is Darius freaking Bantham.

Even if, I have to admit as I turn to watch him step gracefully into the tub after me, he does look stellar in his casual outfit, reaching up to run one hand through his hair, which raises an edge of his T-shirt just far enough to expose a hint of his washboard abs. I must stare a little too long, or a little too obviously, because as the volunteer steps to the top rung of the ladder herself to give us instructions—as if either of us haven’t tried doing this at least a few dozen times before, ever since we were kids really—Darius steps closer to me and leans in to whisper.

“If you’d let that nice Instagram model take our pictures, you could stare at me for longer, you know.”

“I was hardly staring,” I mutter under my breath as the volunteer smiles and waves for us to get started. To emphasize my point, I make it a priority to stomp away from Darius, toward the far wall of the grape tub. But it’s been a while since I’ve done this, and the moment I leave my previous spot close to the edge of the large, deep wooden barrel, which I was holding on to, I lose my footing on the soft, squishy, slippery grapes underfoot. Both of my arms windmill in midair as I stumble, but then warm, strong hands wrap around my waist and catch me, holding me upright.

Darius steps closer, until his whole body is pressed against my backside, holding me in place as the grape juice squishes between my toes and my feet sink farther into the pile. “Careful,” he whispers against the nape of my neck, in a warm breath that raises the hairs all along my skin. “It’s hard to keep your footing in here.”

“I was fine,” I shoot back, even though I would have face-planted into the grapes without his catch. Still, I step away from him again, and reach for the edge of the barrel for balance. He lets me go, though even after his hands fall away from my body, I can still feel the imprint of his fingertips on my skin, like his touch is seared there.

“My apologies.” His eyes flash dark in the bright sunlight overhead. “I’ll just let you fall next time.”

“Next time?” I arch a brow and glare at him.

“Well, you haven’t exactly always been the most coordinated person.” He shrugs one shoulder, and gets down to work stomping on his own section of grapes, naturally without once even so much as slightly losing his balance. “Or am I misremembering how often you showed up to those family winery events when we were younger sporting casts?”

“I only broke three bones in my lifetime,” I protest.

“That’s three times more than I ever have.” He laughs, but not unkindly, his eyes bright with amusement in the morning light.

It doesn’t escape my attention, either, how much he remembers about me. How much he’s been paying attention all this time. How did I never notice him doing that? “It’s still not a lot,” I mumble weakly, mostly to maintain my dignity.

“Three more bones than I’d ever let you break if I were around to keep you safe,” he replies, easily, as if he didn’t even have to think about it.

I swallow around a sudden, tense lump in my throat. “Keep dreaming, Darius.” But my eyes stay fixed on his as I say it, and I almost forget about the grapes under my feet, especially when that playful grin of his widens.

“Trust me, I do. Want to hear what I dreamt about last night?”

My cheeks burn at the sudden shift in subjects. At the same time, tightness in my belly migrates lower, and I have to clench my thighs together, suddenly grateful I’m wearing jeans. My fantasy this morning about him floats through my memory, and suddenly I feel just as hot as I did after that warm steamy shower. “Fantasies and dreams don’t mean anything,” I tell him, and continue to stomp on my section of grapes, enjoying the sound they make as they pop underfoot, and the feel of the cool juice as it splashes up my legs. I do miss this. This feeling of really connecting with the grapes, with the product we’re making.

When I look up again, Darius has stopped stomping to raise an eyebrow at me, considering. “Why, have you been having some fantasies of your own, Holly?”

“That’s not what I meant,” I protest, stammering a little.

He laughs and steps a little closer. “What did you mean, then?”

“That… I…” My cheeks, already bright red, could be mistaken for stop signs right now. I clamp my lips together and shake my head. “Exactly what I said. It doesn’t matter if either of us have dreams; they’re meaningless.”

“Now I really want to know what you were thinking about last night.” Darius reaches out, and for a moment, my whole body stills in anticipation of his hand brushing my skin again, leaving another searing hot imprint on me. But he lets it fall between us, and moves away to stomp on a new section of grapes.

As we raise and bring our feet down, crushing fruit back and forth across the barrel, he’s close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his skin under the warm morning sun, and catch the scent of his sweat, musky and a little salty, just barely noticeable over the scent of the grape juice we’re producing between our toes. It’s a potent mix, going straight to my head, as if the grapes have already magically turned to wine and the fumes alone are enough to make me tipsy.

I stumble again and reach out to grip his shoulder without even thinking about it. His shoulder muscles are firm and sculpted under my fingertips, and his heat is even more noticeable there, practically searing my palm. This close, I can’t help but catch my breath and glance up at him from beneath my eyelashes, startled by how much that one touch makes me want to do just what I told him I wouldn’t—ask him into my bedroom. Or better yet, demand he take me into his, push me up against the wall and—

“What were you saying about being coordinated again?” Darius asks, grinning, that single eyebrow still arched in a way that somehow accentuates both his dimple and his cut cheekbones.

I yank my hand back, but even no longer touching him, my palm and fingertips still tingle with feeling. “Grapes aren’t exactly the sturdiest surface to walk on, you know.”

His smile widens. “I do. You don’t think I grew up a Bantham and escaped having to personally crush at least a few thousand bottles’ worth of my family’s wine, do you?”

My eyebrows rise skyward. The Banthams have always been notoriously close-lipped about how they actually process their wines. The fact that he’s just casually dropping what could amount to trade secrets right now is huge. “You guys still manually crush your grapes?” I ask, tilting my head to one side, unable to contain my curiosity.

“Only for a few select vintages. We have some high-level clients who are very, ah… Shall we say, particular, about the production of the few lines they invest in. They don’t get distributed to the general public, though.”

It shouldn’t surprise me. Plenty of vintners produce special run products or reserve lines, or specific wines and vintages that they reserve for their favored clientele. Still, the fact that he’s telling me all this… “Why are you sharing all that?” I ask, looking down at my feet as I stomp in order to stop myself from holding his gaze for too long. Something that’s incredibly tempting, given how lovely his dark brown eyes look in this bright morning sunlight, like they’re rimmed in gold and touched with honey in the centers.

When I steal another peek at him, Darius shrugs one shoulder, the very picture of ease. “I told you earlier; I’m not sure I want to continue doing things the way my family does.”

“You mean you don’t want to keep up the family sabotage business?” I reply, before I can think better of it.

His brow lowers. “Business is business, Holly. I’m sure you of all people understand that.”

“What does that mean, me ‘of all people’?”

“Well it’s not as though your family doesn’t also practice, shall we say, alternative business techniques, when it comes to striving to get ahead.”

I roll my eyes. “Please. We play fair, which is more than I could say for your family.”

He shrugs one shoulder. “As I said. I don’t always agree with the way things have been done. All I’m suggesting is that you might want to take a look in the mirror before you go around pointing out everyone else’s flaws.”

My cheeks burn, and I turn away from him. For all his nice talk and flirtation, he’s still just like his father. Trying to get inside my head, mess with my thought process. He’s trying to make me second-guess my own family, my parents, our business. The business I’ve dedicated myself to helping. But he doesn’t know the first thing about us, not really. He’s wrong. We’re the good guys here.

“Next pair is up!” the volunteer manning this grape stomping event calls over the rim of the barrel in which we’re still standing stock-still. Probably kicking us out early because we’ve failed at being helpful. Instead we spent half our time in this barrel flirting and the other half fighting.

I stomp over toward the ladder, not bothering to cling to the wall the way I’ve been doing. Anger gives me better balance—or at least, so I think for a few steps. Until I reach the ladder I’m supposed to climb onto. Just then, as I reach for it, my right foot lands on a particularly slippery patch of already-squished grapes, and it goes flying out from under me. I trip forward, raising my arms to block my face, already picturing in my head that video I saw once of a news reporter flipping headfirst out of a wine stomping barrel just like this one.

Oh God. Instagram Woofer is going to film this, and it’s going to go viral, and I’m going to become the new laughing-stock of the wine world.

That’s the thought running through my mind as the edge of the barrel rushes up to meet me, just when a hand wraps around my wrist and draws me upright, back into the barrel and safety.

I wind up once more in Darius’s arms, and for a moment, neither of us move, my back pressed to his chest so tightly as he holds me that I can feel his pulse pounding against my shoulder blades, a second heartbeat racing in time with my own.

I draw in a slow breath and step away from him, pulse still pounding. “Thanks for that,” I murmur.

“You seem to need me to save you often,” he says, the amusement back in his tone, our fight all but forgotten in the rush of adrenaline from my near-fall.

“Twice is hardly often,” I reply, dusting myself off as though to try and regain some of my dignity.

“Three times,” he answers. Then he steps closer to me again, and I’m frozen, unable or perhaps just unwilling to back away from him when he smells so fucking good, and he just saved me from a humiliating near-disaster. He bends close, so close that his lips brush the shell of my ear as he murmurs, “Or are you forgetting what happened in France?”

My heart skips too close to the surface. A shiver runs along my spine, as my mind leaps immediately back to that sunny, cool spring day, both of us in the vineyard, our parents nowhere to be found…

I draw in a deep breath and force my legs to move. I reach for the ladder and swing myself onto it. “France was a lifetime ago,” I tell him. Then I’m descending the ladder as quickly as my legs will carry me, eager to put as much space as possible between Darius Bantham and the impossible to ignore, inconvenient as hell emotions he’s stirring up in me. Or, more specifically, between my thighs.

Fuck.

At the bottom of the ladder, Instagirl waves at me and calls out that I did great. I force a smile and a wave in return, and then I keep moving. I forget all about the networking I came here to do; about how I’d planned to use this event as an excuse to meet more people in my field and build new connections. I forget about everything but my annoyance at Darius, my embarrassment at what happened…

And underneath it all, the attraction I can’t deny is starting to build. This can’t happen. I cannot start lusting after my worst enemy.

But as I turn back around to watch him climb down the ladder after me, all I can think about are his words. I’m not sure I want to continue doing things the way my family does. And his parting reminder. Are you forgetting what happened in France?

I wasn’t lying when I told him France was a lifetime ago. It was. We were just kids. Teenagers. Hormonal and crazy and prone to doing stupid, crazy things.

As hormonal as you’re feeling right now? part of my mind speaks up. It’s not wrong. I was acting just like that hormonal, horny teenager I used to be all those years ago. One touch from Darius and I was sweating, picturing his bare hands roving over my skin; way too focused on how good his muscular body felt pressed up against mine.

Also, he’s not wrong, that same tiny, infuriating voice in my brain pipes up. He did save you all those years ago.

I force the memories from my mind. I am not going to allow myself to get distracted. I came here with a goal and a purpose. The last person I’m going to let derail me from that is Darius Bantham. So, with that new determination in mind, I plaster on a bright smile, and turn to talk to a few of the other event attendees who already finished their turn in the stomping bucket.