Page 9 of Let It Breathe (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #1)

Reese nodded, remembering the call. Remembering the stupid, traitorous way her heart had leapt into her throat, fluttering like a drunken butterfly.

She and Eric had been divorced for a few years by then, but they’d still been best friends.

She’d never asked him if he heard from Clay, too.

If he got the same sort of phone call late on a winter evening with Clay’s voice rumbling down the line like it came from another planet.

Maybe she hadn’t wanted to know. Maybe she’d wanted to believe the call was something special, something only she and Clay shared.

Reese bit her lip. “You never told me what the fight at Finnigan’s was about.”

It wasn’t exactly a question, but she held her breath anyway as she waited for a response. On the other end of the line, Clay was quiet. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded a few octaves lower.

“Just another drunken bar fight. You know how it was. How I was.”

“That one seemed different.”

“It’s what finally landed me in rehab, if that’s what you meant.”

That wasn’t what she’d meant, but she wasn’t sure what she did mean. All she knew was that the night at Finnigan’s had been the final straw. The only time she hadn’t tried to bail him out of jail. The moment she’d really, truly given up on him.

She cleared her throat. “It’s okay, Clay. My nose healed up just fine. It’s not even crooked.”

“I noticed,” he said. “You’re still beautiful. Maybe more now than you were then.”

Reese felt tears sting the back of her eyes, and she balled her hand into a fist, willing herself not to cry. “Thank you,” she whispered. Her voice came out so quiet she wasn’t sure he heard her.

On the other end of the line, she could hear his breath in her ear, the scrape of his chin against the phone’s receiver. At last, he sighed.

“Goodnight, Reese.”

“Goodnight, Clay,” she repeated, and closed her eyes as fifteen years’ worth of stupid longing came surging back.

A few hours later, Clay stared at the glowing green numbers on the hotel clock radio and wondered how hard he’d have to squint to rearrange them in an order that would let him get more than a few hours of sleep.

Midnight.

Back in his drinking days, the party would just be getting started, even if there was no party. Even if it was just him sitting alone in his kitchen with a half rack of beer vanishing before it had a chance to grow warm and bitter on the table.

Not that he was bitter now. About anything. He’d made bad choices, and he was making better ones now.

If only you’d done that fifteen years ago, Reese might not have married Eric, and you might have ? —

“No.”

He startled himself by saying the word aloud, but it felt right, so he said it again. “No!”

He didn’t turn to drinking because he lost out on the girl of his dreams, though maybe he lost out on the girl of his dreams because of the drinking. He’d been aimed down that path long before college. Long before Reese came into his life.

Once upon a time, he might have had a shot at her. Back when he was young and hopeful and just a guy who liked to knock back a few beers after class. There was that tiny window of time when he’d first met her, a fleeting instant of new friendship and blossoming attraction. A week or two?

He hadn’t done anything to win her over. He didn’t blame Eric for making a move.

He blamed himself for not making one.

He rolled over again and closed his eyes, willing himself to go to sleep.

The sun wasn’t even up at five a.m. the next morning, but Reese had been out in the vineyard working on the tractor for thirty minutes already. She jumped down and nodded at one of the field hands.

“Okay, I just recalibrated the sprayer,” she said as she tucked the wrench in her back pocket. “You should get a little better coverage now.”

The field hand—a new guy she’d just hired from a vineyard in Washington—gave her a dubious look. “This organic stuff kills powdery mildew?”

Reese nodded and pulled off her work gloves. “Sonata and Serenade are both bacterial fermentations, plus a couple of potassium bicarbonates and a little pine resin extract to help it stick?—”

She stopped talking when she saw the man’s eyes glaze over. “Just spray,” she said. “Nice job so far.”

She headed back to the winery barn with her gloves tucked in her pocket and a peaceful feeling in her soul.

She wasn’t a morning person, but she loved mornings like this.

The soothing hum of tractors vibrated the low-slung clouds in the still and cool air, with the chirp of the birds rising above the background noise.

She pushed open the door to the winery barn and made a beeline for the coffeemaker.

She didn’t see Clay until she tripped over his legs.

“Clay?” she gasped, recovering her balance as she looked down to see him sprawled on the floor. “What are you doing?”

He looked up from where he was lying on the floor beside a wine barrel and gave her a funny smile. His eyes were too bright for so early in the morning and, oh, God —what was he drinking?

“Morning, Reese,” he said. He swayed a little as he sat up and grabbed an orange sippy cup. Reese watched his Adam’s apple move as he drank. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, he was still there, looking scruffy and wild in the same shirt he’d been wearing the day before.

He’s fallen off the wagon.

Again.

He smiled at her then, and Reese wanted to kick her traitorous libido for responding when he was obviously so—so?—

“Clay.” She stared at the sippy cup.

Seeing her eyes on it, he lifted it in a mock toast to her. “Couldn’t find any mugs, but I made coffee. You still like it black?”

“Coffee,” she repeated like a very dense toddler learning to talk. He was drinking coffee? On the floor? From a sippy cup? She tried to regroup. “What are you—Why are you?—”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, standing up slowly. He braced himself on the edge of the wine barrel and lifted himself to his full height—which, frankly, was pretty impressive. Reese took a step back, trying not to stare at his hands.

“There wasn’t anything good on TV,” Clay said. “I figured I might as well come here and take care of your wine bar before someone breaks an arm and sues you.”

He sipped from the cup again. He hadn’t shaved yet, and a faint sheen of sawdust and sweat clung to his arms.

Reese swallowed. When she finally found her voice, her words came out in a croak. “You fixed my wine bar?”

“Built a new one, actually,” he said, thumping a fist on the large wooden shape Reese had somehow failed to notice in her panic over finding him drunk on the floor. “I hope you don’t mind—I found some scrap wood out behind the barn, and I had my toolbox in the truck and?—”

“You built me a new wine bar?” Her voice came out shriller than she intended, but she suddenly had very little control over her vocal cords. Or any other parts, judging from the way her body was responding to the sight of his arms in that snug T-shirt.

“Thank you,” she finally stammered. “I can’t believe you did this. How long did it take?”

Clay shrugged and set his cup down on the rough-hewn plywood. “Couple hours, give or take.”

“You’ve been here since three a.m.?”

“More like two a.m., I guess. Took me awhile to find the wood in the dark.”

The old Clay would have made a joke about finding wood in the dark, but this Clay just pulled out a wrench and began tightening bolts. Then he gripped the edges of the bar and gave it a firm shake. Everything held steady, a vast improvement on the old bar.

He looked back up at her and smiled. “It’s a little rough, but it’s sturdy. You can throw that tablecloth thing over it like you did the other one.”

“I can’t believe you did this,” Reese stammered. “Let me get my checkbook—What do I owe you?”

Clay frowned. “Reese, cut it out. We’re still friends, right? You don’t have to pay me for work you didn’t ask me to do.”

“But—”

“I did it because I wanted to. And because I didn’t want you to maim anyone with that other bar.”

Reese pressed her lips together, unsure how to handle this. “At least let me give you something. Can I make you breakfast?”

“That depends. Do you still make scrambled eggs that taste like mortar paste?”

She smiled a little, not sure if it was the joke or the fact that she finally had evidence that she had changed at least a little in the past few years.

“For your information, I took a bunch of continuing ed classes last year—mostly on wine pairings, but I did a cooking one, too. I’m now a perfectly adequate cook. ”

“In that case, I’d love breakfast.”

“Good,” she said, moving toward the door. “My house is the little place right next door.”

“That tiny building? I didn’t know that was a house.”

“What did you think it was?”

He shrugged. “I saw all the signs that said it was private property and not open to the public. Figured it was Axl’s bomb shelter or something.”

Reese laughed. “No, this company called Idea Box makes these super-efficient prefab homes that are really environmentally friendly. Perfect for someone living alone.”

“Huh,” he said. “That’s not what I pictured you in.”

The thought that Clay had pictured her at all over the last few years was enough to make her pulse kick up a notch, and she wondered what he’d imagined, exactly.

“I’m reducing my carbon footprint. It’s eight hundred and fifty square feet, has bamboo flooring, energy-efficient appliances, contemporary cabinets, a built-in wine cooler, the whole package.

Why? Are you going to pick on the construction? ”

“Not at all. I might pick on you for putting your home forty feet from your job.”

Reese shrugged. “I like it. It’s a beautiful place, and it’s convenient.”

“That it is,” he agreed as she opened the door and led the way inside.

The home was designed to be tiny, but it looked even smaller with Clay planted in the center of her living room. Even her furniture looked miniscule.