Crush - Alan Jacobson [4]
Robby stood a few feet away, hands on his hips, grinning widely. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Nothing but fun from here on out, right? Not a worry in the world? No serial killers dancing around in our heads, no ASACs or lieutenants ordering us around. No job decisions. And no excess testosterone floating on the air.”
“The name of this room is The Hot Date, right? That should be our theme for the week.”
“Count me in.”
“That’s good,” Robby said. “Because a hot date for one isn’t much fun.”
Vail hopped to the side of the bed, stood up precariously on the edge, and grabbed Robby’s collar with both hands. She fell forward into him, but at six foot seven, he easily swept her off the bed and onto the floor, then kissed her hard.
He leaned back and she looked up at his face. “You know,” Vail said, “I flew cross-country to Napa for the fine wine and truffles, but that was pretty freaking good, Hernandez.”
“Oh, yeah? That’s just a tasting. If you want the whole bottle, it’ll cost you.”
As he leaned in for another kiss, her gaze caught sight of the wall clock. “Oh—” The word rode on his lips and made him pull away. “Our tour.”
“Our what?”
“I told you. Don’t you ever listen to me?”
“Uh, yeah, I, uh—”
“The wine cave thing, that tour we booked through your friend—”
“The tasting, the dinner in the cave.” He smiled and raised his brow. “See, I do listen to you.”
“We’ve gotta leave now. It’s about twenty minutes away.”
“You sure?” He nodded behind her. “Bed, Cabernet, chocolate, sex . . .”
She pushed him away in mock anger. “That’s not fair, Robby. You know that? We’ve got this appointment, it’s expensive, like two hundred bucks each, and you just want to blow it off?”
“I can think of something else to blow off.”
Vail twisted her lips into a mock frown. “I guess five minutes won’t hurt.”
“We’ll speed to make up the time. We’re cops, right? If we’re pulled over, we’ll badge the officer—”
Vail placed a finger over his lips. “You’re wasting time.”
THEY ARRIVED FIVE MINUTES LATE. The California Highway Patrol was not on duty—at least along the strip of Route 29 they traversed quite a few miles per hour over the limit—and they pulled into the parking lot smelling of chocolate and, well, the perfume of intimacy.
They sat in the Silver Ridge Estates private tasting room around a table with a dozen others, listening to a sommelier expound the virtues of the wines they were about to taste. They learned about the different climates where the grapes were grown, why the region’s wind patterns and mix of daytime heat and chilly evenings provided optimum conditions for growing premium grapes. Vail played footsie with Robby beneath the table, but Robby kept a stoic face, refusing to give in to her childish playfulness.
That is, until she realized she was reaching too far and had been stroking the leg of the graying fifty-something man beside Robby, whose name tag read “Bill (Oklahoma).” When Bill from Oklahoma turned to face her with a surprised look on his face, Vail realized her error and shaded the same red as the Pinot Noir on the table in front of them.
“Okay,” the sommelier said. “We’re going to go across the way into our wine cave, where we’ll talk about the best temperatures for storing our wine. Then we’ll do a tasting in a special room of the cave and discuss pairings, what we’re about to eat, with which wine—and why—before dinner is served.”
As they rose from the table, Robby leaned forward to ask the sommelier a question about the delicate color of the Pinot. Oklahoma Bill slid beside Vail, but before he could speak, she said, “My mistake, buddy. Not gonna happen.”
Bill seemed to be mulling his options, planning a counterattack. But Vail put an end to any further pursuit by cutting him off with a slow, firm, “Don’t even think about it.”
Bill obviously sensed the tightness in her voice and backed away as if she had threatened him