of humor, which kept her from being too sticky-sweet.
They’d met at a wine tasting in New York City at a noisy, swanky restaurant near Wall Street populated by lean, fiercely fashionable women and loud, confident men, all aggressively eating hors d’oeuvres and trying to top each other’s stories of that week’s ballsy successes. But the restaurant was one of Blue Heron’s best accounts in Manhattan, and the owners were quite nice.
Honor usually handled these things, but she’d asked him to go, and he was happy to. Tastings (and schmoozing restaurant owners) were part of the family business, and Jack wanted to do his part. He’d joined the navy’s Reserve Officers Training Corps in college, and after he’d gotten his master’s in chemistry (because wine making was all about chemistry), he spent his time in the navy in a lab outside D.C., studying the potential effects and treatment of chemical contamination in large bodies of water. Then he came back to Manningsport and assumed the position of winemaker alongside his father and grandfather.
That had always been the plan: education, military service and a return home, and the plan had been working just fine. He loved his family, loved making wine, loved western New York. While he was exceedingly popular with the fairer sex, he was getting a little tired of dating. He wanted to settle down, have a couple of kids.
He just had to meet the right woman, and given that he knew virtually everyone in Manningsport, he was fairly sure she wasn’t there. He’d had his heart broken twice, once in college, once by a congressional aide, but since then, he hadn’t had a relationship with staying power.
So that night, he poured wine and described what people were tasting (if they were interested). In the eyes of the Wall Street men, Jack was just a bartender, and if they were threatened by the way some of the women were eyeing him, they countered by ignoring him. Which was fine. He was only there to represent Blue Heron.
The women weren’t his type, anyway—they all seemed to be dressed in stark, narrow black dresses and wore twisted pieces of wire for jewelry. Must be the trend that year, because they could’ve passed for clones, aside from variations in skin, hair and eye color.
“So what am I drinking?” one such clone asked, leaning forward to make sure he could admire the view (not that it was hard; her bra was an architectural wonder that presented her breasts as if on a platter).
“This is a sauvignon blanc,” he said, “with notes of tangerine and apricot and some great limestone elements.”
“Mmm,” she said, letting her eyes trail down his torso.
“It’s got a firm acidity and a long, clean finish. Great with any kind of fish or poultry.”
“Want to come to my place after this?” she asked. “I’m Renee, by the way. Associate over at Goldman.”
“Unfortunately, it’s against company policy,” he lied.
Another Wall Street clone sidled up to the bar and gave Jack the same speculative look as the first woman. He suppressed a sigh and forced a smile, poured some wine and delivered the shtick.
A male Wall Streeter stuck out his glass without even looking at Jack, and Jack poured obediently.
“Not that one! The cabernet!” the guy barked. Jack cocked an eyebrow and obeyed.
Then Jack saw her.
She was the only woman in the place not dressed in dark colors, which made her seem as if she’d just wandered off a Disney set. Her dress was bright pink, her blond hair was caught up in a twist with a few loose tendrils escaping and she looked a little lost.
A lot lost, actually. She glanced around, standing on tiptoe. Then, taking pains to say “excuse me” to the loud stockbrokers (who ignored her as if judging her to be inferior to their female counterparts), she made her way to the bar.
“Hello,” he said. “How are you tonight?” He could smell her perfume.
“Hi there,” she said. “I’m a little...overwhelmed, it seems. I’m supposed to meet my old college roommate, but she’s not here just yet. Guess I feel like a fish outta water.”
She had a Southern accent and a husky voice. It worked. Hell yes.
“Jack Holland,” he said, extending his hand.
“Hadley Boudreau.” Her hand was smooth and soft. “It’s awfully nice to meet you. You’re the first person who’s smiled at me all day, I swear. I’ve never been to New York before, and my goodness, it’s a whole different country, isn’t it?”
Before she’d finished speaking, he was in love. She didn’t fit into this loud, overconfident crowd, and Jack had the sense that if someone bumped into her or stepped on her foot, she’d burst into tears. You didn’t grow up with three sisters and not know how women thought.
And Jack’s sisters had always told him he had a thing for a woman in distress.
“Where are you from?” Jack asked.
“Savannah.”
“Beautiful city,” he said, smiling.
“Have you been there?” she exclaimed. “It is beautiful, isn’t it?”
He told her how he’d presented a paper down there a few years ago, and her eyes grew wide with the mention of the U.S. Navy (the hottest branch, Jack always thought). She actually squealed when he mentioned a restaurant she knew, and she was so sweet and energetic and easy to please, she stuck out like a flower growing in an abandoned parking lot.
She kept sipping wine and seemed to get a little tipsy, which was cute, given that she’d had maybe a half a glass. Then again, she couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds.
She was beautiful. Flawless skin, perfect nose, full, pink lips and a dimple in one cheek. She had a husky laugh that Jack found himself getting a little drunk on. Whenever he had to pour for someone else, he found himself looking back at her with a little wink or smile, and, each time, she blushed and smiled back.
When her friend came in (dressed in black, of course), Hadley introduced him, said how pleased she was to have met him and how grateful she was for the conversation. She extended her hand, and he took it, and held on to it for a long minute.
“I’m staying in the city for a few days,” he said. “Would you like to have dinner with me?”
Hadley smiled. “I think I’d love that, Jack Holland.”
They had dinner the next night at a gorgeous, expensive restaurant in South Street Seaport with a killer view of the Brooklyn Bridge. Was he trying to impress her? Absolutely. He walked her back to her friend’s apartment, and when he went to kiss her, she blushed and offered her cheek. “I guess I’m old-fashioned,” she said. “Hope you don’t mind, but I don’t kiss on the first date.”
Somehow, that kiss on the cheek was more special than anything he’d experienced to date.
The next day, Jack called his dad and said he’d be staying in the city for a few extra days. He called on some accounts, but mostly he saw Hadley. Her friend was working; Hadley had been planning to do some sightseeing before their girls’ weekend officially started. So Jack took her around and showed her the city—New York’s most famous places—Greenwich Village, the Metropolitan, the Empire State Building and Times Square, but also the High Line, the Cloisters and a bike tour of Governors Island.
They shared a pretzel in Bryant Park, rode the Staten Island Ferry, bought a cupcake from a street vendor in SoHo. In Central Park, Jack hired one of those hokey carriages, and Hadley was over the moon. She let him kiss her on the lips, and she was sweet and soft and lovely. But she also had a quick sense of humor and an earthiness to her that Jack found incredibly hot. The sight of her eating a hot dog had almost brought him to his knees, and she grinned as she chewed, well aware of the effect she had.
She was an interior decorator and loved popping into hotels to see the lobbies. On their way out of one building, a man held the door for them,