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  I took it from his fingers (I had to give it a hard tug before he let go), grinned triumphantly up at him, and then went over to refill my glass. At first, I'd started by making a careful inspection of every label, but now I just stopped at the first glass that sounded tasty. Heck, all the different types sounded tasty.

  Glass refilled, I returned back to Sanford. Even though I'd only been gone for a minute at the most, another woman had already slipped into my spot, beaming up at Sanford with the kind of single-minded determination that would make my teeth ache. Didn't she realize that others could see her, could see how she was practically throwing herself at the man?

  "Do you remember me?" she asked him, still beaming. "We were only a year apart! I'm sure you can remember me - I certainly remember you from high school..."

  She said these last words with a fluttering of long lashes, pretending to demurely glance down before returning to staring soulfully into Sanford's eyes.

  I frowned at her. She did look vaguely familiar, I thought to myself. Something about the way she smiled pushed out her big front teeth, giving me the impression that I was looking at a very happy horse, possibly a horse that had discovered the miracle of makeup.

  "Carly," Sanford said, and the woman crowed with excitement, clapping her hands together like a little girl.

  "Yes! You do remember!" Carly somehow managed to lean in even closer to Sanford, as if attempting to inhale the man through her nostrils. "I bet you remember me from when I was on the cheer team - I still have the pom poms, you know." She shot him a suggestive look that left no doubt about any double meaning in those words.

  Sanford turned towards me, and I nearly burst out laughing at the imploring look in his eyes. I took pity on him and moved in to rescue him from Carly, as she twirled a strand of dyed blonde hair in her finger and watched him like a steak that just hadn't quite stopped mooing and moving about on her plate.

  "Sanford, you have to try this wine!" I announced, moving in towards him (and also slipping partly in between him and Carly - cut the predator off from her prey). I held the wine glass I'd just filled up to him, letting my other hand drop against his chest, feeling the heat of his body radiating out and into my fingers.

  Sanford took the glass from my hand and lifted it up to take a sip, simultaneously slipping his other hand around me to hold me close against him. I tried to ignore how wonderful that felt, but only succeeded in stifling the little moan of pleasure that erupted from somewhere in the back of my mouth. He really did smell so good...

  "That is good stuff," Sanford said, smacking his lips after lowering the glass. "Good pick, Elaine. I'm still surprised that you have such a good head for wine!"

  "Well, there's lots that you don't know about me," my mouth managed to reply, seemingly without any input from my brain. "You're in for lots of surprises!"

  Sanford's lips quirked up as he gazed down at me. "Good ones, I hope."

  I turned and gave Carly a satisfied smile, feeling a bit like Whiskers after he'd managed to catch and slaughter one of his toys, or pin down a fly that got into our house. "Oh yes. Very good ones."

  Good lord, a little part of my brain pointed out. We were flirting! This wasn't even just pretending to be friendly for the sake of avoiding unwanted attention; this was full-on, steamy, sexy flirting! I couldn't seem to stop!

  Carly, meanwhile, did not look happy that I'd interrupted her flirting - even if she had been attempting to steal my man in the first place. (My man? Sanford was definitely not my man!) Apparently, she'd been one of those catty bitches in high school who saw every man as hers for the taking if she so chose, and hadn't changed much since then. I slid my hands a little tighter around Sanford's chest, leaning in so that my chest rubbed against his side, just to drive the point home to her.

  Perhaps Della sensed that I was going a bit further with Sanford than I'd planned on doing, or maybe she just wanted to avoid having a fight break out in her bar and lose glassware to breakages. In any case, she popped up next to us, beaming and clapping her hands, all smiles and jiggles.

  "Say, Sanford, Elaine, weren't you two telling me that you've got a lot more work to tackle tomorrow morning?" she asked brightly. "I just wanted to let you know the time, in case you two little lovebirds had lost track!"

  "Not lovebirds, just good friends," Sanford interjected quickly, as if anyone bought that line of bullshit.

  For a moment, I nearly lashed out at Della, as if she was also trying to steal Sanford from me (what?? He didn't belong to me!), but I held back. Della did have my best interests at heart, I knew. So instead, I dug my phone out of my pocket - and gasped when I saw the time displayed on the screen.

  It really was late! I needed to get back home and check on Whiskers, get some sleep, so that I could take on some of my ever-growing backlog of pieces that needed to be researched. I looked up at Sanford, holding the screen out so that he could see the time as well.

  "We really should be going, yes," he said diplomatically. "Thank you, Della - we'd totally lost track of the hour."

  Sanford's hand tightened once again around my waist (ooh, that really did feel so good, having him gently dominating me, like he really wanted to feel me up), and he guided me towards the door. I barely had time to snag my purse off of where I'd hung it on a hook before we were outside Vini, out in the fresh, cooler night air.

  "My car's over here," I said, pointing off in the opposite direction, but Sanford didn't release his grip on me.

  "You're not driving home," he informed me, as if issuing a command. "You're still drunk, and I don't trust you on the road."

  I opened my mouth to argue, but a burp crept out instead. Great. He was right; I could feel the warmth of the wine still pervading my limbs. I hadn't taken enough time to sober up - I'd been too caught up in flirting with Sanford, in keeping other women away from my man (again, not mine, a little part of my brain insisted, and was promptly ignored).

  "Ugh, I don't wanna walk," I groaned. "Just leave me here so I can go back in and sober up a bit."

  He shook his head. "Nope. I called Winston to come pick us up. He dropped me off, and he can easily bring you back home, too. You do live right next door, after all."

  "I don't need a ride from you." A ride would be really nice, actually. I'd made the walk back from Vini to my little cottage before, and it was never fun, especially in the darkness.

  "You're getting one," he said firmly. "Consider it a thank-you for going along with that ruse, back in the bar."

  Ruse? "What do you mean? A ride isn't nearly a big enough thank you!" I sputtered to him, not sure what I wanted to address first.

  "I mean pretending that we were close, so that those other women weren't attempting to rip my pants off right there," he replied. "Good lord, and you lot think that men are pigs? I practically felt like a side of beef, about to be devoured!"

  "You were just faking all that flirting?" I asked him, feeling stupid. I must have drank more than I realized, and the wine had dulled my perception.

  "Weren't you?" he replied, which really wasn't an answer at all.

  Before I could say anything more, however, a pair of headlights came around the corner. Sanford stepped away from me (I immediately felt colder without him standing beside me) and out into the street, holding up his hand. The car slowed down and came to a stop beside him, and he tugged the handle of the rear door.

  "Come on," he called to me, holding the door open for me before he got in.

  Well, fine. But I wasn't considering this as repayment. I just didn't want to seem inhospitable. I calmly informed him of this fact as I slipped into the backseat of Sanford's car.

  "Of course," he replied without any surprise, sliding in smoothly beside me and closing the door.

  Without prompting, Winston pulled away from the curb, heading back towards the Winterhearst mansion, as I tried to convince myself that all of Sanford's flirting with me during the evening had just been fake, that the whole warmth act was only a performance p
ut on for the sake of the other women in the bar.

  Chapter Fifteen

  *

  INTERLUDE: SANFORD

  Dammit.

  Sanford very carefully did not look at the woman sitting in the backseat beside him. For a moment, however, he felt like a teenager out on a date with a girl, his head filled with thoughts of nervous potential and annoyance at his inexperience.

  Which was ridiculous, of course. He had plenty of experience with women - more than enough to last him a lifetime, and to teach him never to risk opening myself up to one again - and he hadn't been on dates as a teenager. He'd been out with girls, sure, but none of them had involved rides in the backseat of a car. He wouldn't have trusted his mother behind the wheel most days, much less with a potential date along for the ride.

  But now, feeling the residual warmth of the wine in his belly and carefully not looking over at Elaine, sitting quietly beside him, he couldn't shake that feeling that this was a date, that he might have to walk her to her front door, that he might even kiss her-

  Ridiculous, all of it. He'd only been flirting with her at the bar because he'd rather take the devil that he knew. All of those other women at the bar gave him the predatory looks that he'd come to expect from anyone who found out about his money, his social situation. They looked at him like a prize, something to capture and charm and wear on their arm when they sauntered into some overpriced boutique or country club.

  He glanced over at Elaine. She wouldn't do that, though. He couldn't see Elaine sauntering into anywhere, except maybe an animal shelter, intent on adopting every single animal and giving them all a loving home. If she married someone with millions of dollars in his bank account, she'd probably just want a second cat.

  Not that he was thinking about marriage at all, or doing anything else with her.

  Still, it had been different, getting to flirt with her and watch her as they tried different wines and talked with the other regulars at the bar. Since he'd been pretending to be close with her, no one minded if he watched her body move in that dress she wore, if he noticed how, when she reached up to lift her wine glass to her lips, the fabric pulled tight across very interesting places. When he'd slid his hand around her, she'd felt soft and warm, luscious and ripe, the kind of woman that someone could cuddle up with at night and feel content about everything...

  Sanford shook his head. He needed to get his mind off of this. He tried looking out the window, but the darkness and passing street lamps didn't do anything to distract him from the soft, curvy woman sitting in the backseat beside him.

  "Here we are, sir," Winston called from the front seat, as the car came to a smooth stop in my front driveway.

  Oh, thank goodness. He quickly pulled the door open, holding it for Elaine. Had to play the gentleman, keeping up a wall of honorable contact between us. Don't think of this as a date, Sanford reminded himself.

  "Thank you again," she said as she emerged. "Oh, we really were out late. It's quite dark, isn't it? You ought to get some more lights for your property."

  What an... Elaine thing to say, Sanford couldn't help thinking to himself. Some women would ask about property values, about how much the car cost, about whether they could come in for a nightcap. Elaine, meanwhile, didn't want anyone to fall as they left his property.

  "Let me walk you back to your house, then." What? The words slipped out of his mouth without thinking. Apparently, some part of his brain still remained in flirting mode, as if the two of them really were an item.

  In the dim light, Elaine looked as surprised as he felt, but she cautiously accepted. "Thank you," she said, her hand sliding through his arm as she looped her elbow around him.

  Well, he'd committed to it. Sanford led her down to the sidewalk and over to her little house. He saw a single lamp shining from the upper window, and a large, familiar, fuzzy shape sat on the windowsill and peered out at them.

  "Your guardian looks annoyed at me for keeping you out," he remarked, pointing up at where Whiskers looked down at them.

  Elaine laughed. It was a very nice laugh, part of Sanford's brain treacherously pointed out. Most women, when they laughed at something he said, were just exaggerating so that they could seem more interested in him. Elaine, however, laughed because she found something genuinely funny.

  "He's probably thrilled that he's gotten some peace and quiet," she answered him after that tinkling laugh. "If he's annoyed, it's because now I'm going to kick him off his favorite spot on my pillow, so that I can go to bed."

  Unbidden, images of Elaine's bed swam into Sanford's mind. A big, soft bed, soft like her, where she curled up and went to sleep, just waiting for someone to snuggle against her-

  She was saying something else. He dragged his thoughts away from this dangerous mental picture.

  "So, was tonight really so bad for you?" she asked him, looking up at him in the light from her upstairs window. Bedroom window, Sanford carefully did not think to himself.

  "No, not at all." They were the right words to say, of course, but he was surprised to find that they were also the truth. He hadn't minded going out, despite all the predatory eyes of those women at the bar. With Elaine beside him, deflecting all their hunger and acting as his shield, he'd quite enjoyed getting to talk with others. The wine had been good, too, and the owner, Della Ruthers, worked hard to keep a happy atmosphere. "I had fun."

  "Really? Even despite all the flirting and teasing? I'm sure that was so awful for Mister Hard and Stony."

  What? Sanford looked down at her, confused. "Mister Hard and Stony?" he repeated. "That's what you're calling me?"

  To his amazement, she blushed! It wasn't even a flirty little blush, either; her cheeks bloomed with red, and she looked away, as if embarrassed! "Not like that," she said quickly. "I just meant that you're usually so cold and withdrawn, but I kept on forcing you to open up-"

  "You weren't forcing anything," he said, frowning a little. Was that how she saw him? He didn't babble about all his thoughts, but hard and stony?

  "Ah, and the old Sanford starts to come out!" Elaine said.

  "What? What do you mean?"

  "I mean that you can't help but interrupt, can you?" Sanford started to say something, but realized that he'd be interrupting, and closed his mouth. Elaine moved in a little closer, the blush fading from her cheeks as she taunted him. "Even when we were out, you kept on interrupting everyone to say your own things. Of course, no one cares, because they were all hanging off of your every word, but I notice, and it's so annoying-"

  Standing there on her front step, listening to her talk and feeling her body just barely brushing against mine as she leaned up on her tiptoes to try and get closer to his height, that first date feeling washed over Sanford again, even stronger than before. Most of his high school dates ended with him and his date in some bushes, as he learned his way around the female body, but he just couldn't imagine Elaine ever climbing behind some shrubbery with him and letting him take off her panties. She'd demand a proper bed, real romance, the kind with lots of kissing and touching and petting of those curves of hers, driving him crazy before he ever got a chance to get to what he really wanted, to feel that soft body yield and swallow him up-

  Maybe he was more drunk than he'd realized, a little part of Sanford wondered belatedly. Elaine was back home - he'd fulfilled his obligation to walk her home. He'd have to see her tomorrow, when she came back over, when she got back to work on cataloguing the contents of his house. He ought to go, right now.

  But she was leaning in against him, warm and yielding, and he'd had his arm around her for most of the night, feeling her comforting presence next to him. Sanford could easily just slide an arm around her again, one more time, just for one last little taste of her pressed against him.

  There. Just like that. It feels nice, her weight against him like this.

  She wasn't talking any more, which was nice. Not that he disliked hearing her voice, but she'd just been teasing him. She wanted to se
e how far she could push him before he gave in and did something stupid.

  He shouldn't have thought about how she stopped teasing. "Sanford," she whispered up to him now, her eyes huge and luminous in the light streaming out from her upstairs window and painting the lawn around them as they stood on her front stoop. "There's no one else watching us here."

  "I know," he said. He didn't release his hand from around her. If he dropped it down a couple more inches, he could feel that round bottom, where his eyes had been drawn to all night, whenever she turned away from him...

  "You don't have to pretend out here," she said.

  "I'm not."

  "But then why-"

  Oh, the hell with it. No one else was watching, just as she said. She felt so warm, so soft as she leaned in against him, and he could feel that she was up on her tiptoes. She was still so short that the top of her head barely came up to Sanford's eyes, but he just had to lean down a little. It wasn't an uncomfortable stretch.

  As he leaned in, he realized that he was doing it again - interrupting her, mid-sentence. She probably would be angry at him for cutting her off before she could finish her inane question.

  But he'd deal with that afterwards.

  Sanford leaned down, and just before their lips met, he noted that she'd stopped talking. There - he hadn't cut her off. He'd leaned in, and she stopped talking.

  Totally not the same thing.

  Mmm. She tasted a little like cherries. He wondered in the back of his mind, as fireworks exploded in his frontal lobe, whether that was from the wine, or if she always tasted that way. This was just a one time thing, just because he'd been idly thinking about it for most of the night, so he wouldn't have a chance in the future to try again and confirm that it was how she always tasted.

  Sanford's hand tightened, tugging her warm softness in against him, and their lips tightened together. The moment felt frozen in time, a perfect little snowflake, preserved and unique and impossible to repeat.