A Vine Mess (Love on the Vine #4)

7. Ella

I spent the night before we left with my sisters, who came over to help me pack.

By help , I really just meant they sat around my living room while I anxiously shoved as much as I could fit into my duffels. I’d spent all day Sunday driving around Traverse City, picking up the essentials , according to the list Liam had given me.

I’d managed to hit the jackpot at an Army surplus store, where I found these dark green canvas bags, a dark green sleeping bag, and some heavier sweats for the colder nights. I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d need since Liam wasn’t the most helpful in that arena, so I bought several thermal pajama sets, figuring I could wear them under baggier joggers and sweaters if it was particularly cold, and activewear sets for the warmer days exploring nature. This late in the spring, it was difficult to predict the weather, so I was erring on the side of caution. I’d thrown in some sundresses, shorts, jeans, my favorite little black dress, and some nicer tank tops. I’d also purchased three pairs of hiking boots that I’d taken to wearing around so I could break them in before we left.

The duffels were stuffed full, the seams damn near bursting, and I silently thanked the Army for taking the construction of their gear so seriously.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Amara asked skeptically, glancing at my stuff scattered around my apartment.

I stood in the center of it all, hands on my hips, glaring down at her. “It’s not like I’m going off to war.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Delia quipped.

I threw a balled up pair of socks at her head. “Oh, fuck off.”

“I just mean…emotionally,” Amara clarified.

My eyebrows pinched together in confusion. “Yeah? Why wouldn’t I be?”

Amara sighed deeply, as though preparing to impart some deep wisdom upon me. “I just mean…you and Alfie—”

“Don’t say his name,” Brie said before I could.

“Sorry,” Amara apologized. “You and fuckface were together for a long time. And I know it ended a while before it was truly over, but…are you truly over it?”

Instead of answering right away, I flopped onto my small couch next to her. Cora, who was sleeping soundly against my sister’s chest, let out a small whimper of protest before setting again. I reached out and ran my hand over her soft little head.

While it annoyed me to no end that my sisters continued to ask me such questions four months after the breakup, she wasn’t entirely off base.

I thought I was over it, but there were days when the crushing weight of the realization that I was alone yet again—that I had to start from scratch with someone new—suffocated me. It wasn’t that I wanted to be with Alfie. Far from it, in fact. It was just that, despite the pitfalls of our relationship, we’d found a rhythm together. Maybe not an ease, but some weird, twisted sort of comfort in knowing we had each other at the end of the day.

Although…that hadn’t been enough for Alfie.

Maybe that was the worst part, the hardest hurdle for me to jump over. Not the fact that we’d ended, but the fact that he hadn’t ended it before he stepped out on me. Had I been the perfect girlfriend? Of course not. But I’d tried . I’d tried so fucking hard, had let him strip me down to my bones and rebuild me the way he wanted.

I supposed that made me young and na?ve, to let a man control so much of who I was.

“Maybe I’m not,” I whispered to my sisters at last. “And I can’t explain it, but…I need this. Alfie took so much from me. I need to find myself again, and what better way to do that than a cross-country adventure?”

“Doesn’t hurt that your tour guide is hot as fuck,” Chloe added.

Though we all broke into fits of laughter, I couldn’t disagree.

No, that certainly didn’t hurt at all.

Liam pulled up behind my building the following morning, and I let out a delighted squeal of surprise.

“Oh. My. God,” I gasped, rushing forward and running my hands all over the exterior. “We’re really taking this?”

Liam only nodded, his normally composed expression breaking into a toothy smile at my excitement. “What do you think? This a chariot fit for a winery heiress?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not an heiress.” Then I glanced over my shoulder at him and grinned. “But it’s perfect. You’re cool with driving a purple vehicle?”

And it was . The van wasn’t just any vehicle—it was an old-school Volkswagen Crafter van, painted a beautiful pastel purple that inexplicably matched my hair. The top half was white, the accents chrome that shone brightly in the early morning sunlight. The seats were a sumptuous-looking dark purple cloth, the back windows tinted and covered by what appeared to be Roman blinds.

“My masculinity isn’t threatened by the color of this van, Wildflower,” he said, puffing out his chest for show. “I’m glad you like it. I would’ve gotten something different if you didn’t, though.”

“What’d I tell you the other day? This is your adventure. I’m just along for the ride,” I said as we both strode toward the side of my building, where everything I’d need for this road trip waited.

Liam had told me to pack as light as possible, and I swear I’d tried. But from the way he glanced skeptically between me and my duffels, the sleeping bag, and the two canvas reusable grocery bags I’d stuffed full of nonperishable food items—and, okay, the bottoms of both were lined with extra clothes, plus a medium-sized paper grocery bag full of a special project I’d been curating for ages—I’d done the best I could under the circumstances.

We returned to the van and Liam popped open the back door, revealing the surprisingly spacious cargo space. Along one side was Liam’s luggage, which filled all of one bag. Men , I thought wryly as we loaded my duffels. The other side was overtaken by some folded up mechanism.

“What is that?” I asked, gesturing to it.

“The bed.”

“The bed ?” I asked, incredulous. “This thing is outfitted with a mattress?”

Liam shrugged. “I mean, yeah. It can only sleep one, so on nights when we’re really roughing it, I’ll take the tent and you can sleep in here. I told you that the other day.”

I tossed the duffel I carried unceremoniously in after the one he’d carefully placed and folded my arms over my chest, turning a glare on him. “Why can’t I sleep in the tent too?”

My annoyance evaporated almost immediately as Liam gaped like a fish, grasping for something to say. “I just figured…” he finally settled on.

“Well, you figured wrong. You know—” I started then cut myself off with a rough shake of my head. “Nevermind.”

He stepped closer and pushed a lock of purple hair that had clung to my lip balm off my face. His calloused fingertip scratched against the skin of my cheek, and a shiver raced down my spine. “No, tell me. If we’re going to be stuck together for the next two weeks, we need to be honest with each other. Right?”

I nodded, swallowing hard. The poor guy kept stepping on landmines he didn’t even know existed. I shuffled backward, dropping my gaze and scuffing my shoe through the gravel at my feet. “First, please don’t say things like ‘stuck together,’” I pleaded. “If you didn’t want me to come with you, you could’ve just said so. And if you’ve changed your mind, you better let me know now so I can haul my stuff back upstairs.”

“No, no,” he said, holding his hands up placatingly. “I’m sorry. That was a poor choice of words. I just mean we’re going to be spending basically every waking second for the next fourteen days together. It’ll only make things uncomfortable if one of us does something that pisses the other one off. This”—he gestured between us—“is a good start.”

I softened at that, at his willingness to make sure I was as relaxed as possible on this trip. And having an open line of communication with a man who wasn’t my dad for the first time in my life felt…nice. Foreign, but nice.

“He—Alfie made a lot of comments like that. About being ‘stuck’ at family functions with me.”

“He didn’t like them, did he?”

I shook my head. “Not even a little bit. And that right there should’ve been reason enough to cut him loose but…it was all so fun and exciting in the beginning, you know? When everything was shiny and new and we were still discovering things about each other. Things lost their luster quickly. Thankfully, my family stuck with me, though I knew they cared for him even less than he did them. So that’s just…kind of triggering for me.”

Liam jerked his head in the approximation of a nod, gripping the back of his neck. “Understood. Now what’s the other thing?”

“Other thing?”

“You said ‘first’ earlier, meaning there was more coming.”

“Right,” I said, snapping my fingers as I came back to myself. “I’ve already told you this, but…I need this, Liam. Need this adventure. Need this time away from the Apple Blossom Bay and Chateau Delatou bubble. All I’m asking from you is to not coddle me. I can handle sleeping in a tent, or on the ground, or in a fucking tree, okay? Just let me be the one to decide whether or not I want to.”

Another nod. “Got it. Anything else?”

“No, I think that about covers it,” I said, shooting him a cheeky grin.

Liam’s own mouth spread into a smile, and I stilled, mesmerized by its appearance. Such a rarity, but with increasing frequency around me. Or maybe that was wishful thinking.

God, he was beautiful. Suddenly, I was gripped by a wave of anxiety so fierce I nearly stumbled as I moved to grab my backpack. Was I making a mistake? Was this about to be the worst idea I’d ever had—even worse than the three years I’d given Alfie?

Liam…he wasn’t the kind of man you took for a ride one night and never thought about again. Liam Danvers was the kind of man who reeled you in slowly with those sexy tattooed forearms, wrapped you against that broad chest of his, and never let you go.

When I turned and faced him again, that smile still graced his lips, and I knew I was a goner.

Nothing could stop me as I closed the distance between us and flung my arms around him.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

He stiffened almost imperceptibly before relaxing into my touch, his arms coming tentatively around my shoulders. “Anytime,” he breathed.

Though I was reluctant to do so for reasons best not examined too closely, I let him go and moved around to the passenger side while he shut the back door and got behind the wheel.

Liam beamed at me as he inserted the key into the ignition and turned it over. The deep rumble vibrated the entire cab, settling along my bones in an exciting hum.

“You ready, Wildflower?”

“Take me away, Danvers.”

“Wait wait wait,” I said, sitting up straighter in my seat as we rounded a corner on the freeway and the Mackinac Bridge came into view in the distance. “You mean to tell me we have to cross that ?”

Liam glanced quickly at me out of the corner of his eye before returning his attention to the road. Without his gaze focused on me, I couldn’t help but admire him—which I’d been unabashedly doing the entire drive so far. The stupid, sexy forearms, the flannel pushed to his elbows, the loose grip of his long, thick fingers of one hand wrapped around the leather of the wheel. He had to feel my gaze like a brand on his skin, but he never called me out on it. Secretly, I thought he enjoyed the attention.

And I enjoyed giving it.

Mentally, I shook my head. We were far too early into this road trip for me to be salivating over him. Actually, I wasn’t sure that was appropriate behavior ever . I liked having him as a friend, and I’d hate to jeopardize that.

“It’s really not as bad as it looks,” Liam said with a chuckle .

“There’s really no way around crossing it?”

He shook his head. “Sorry but no. I mean, short of driving all the way around Lake Michigan, which would take about three times as long as going this way. There’s also a crossing over Lake Michigan from Ludington to Green Bay, or…”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I get the idea. This is the fastest way to get there.” I shifted in my seat so I faced him. “Have you ever crossed the Bridge?”

“Loads of times.”

“But you’ve only lived here for…”

“Five years,” he supplied.

“Holy shit,” I breathed. “That long already? Aren’t you only like…”

“Thirty-four.”

I whistled low. “Can’t believe Dad hired someone so young for such an important role.”

Liam snorted. “To be fair, I was under Vic’s wing for a while. But the last year and a half or so, basically since Amara took over, it’s really just been me running the show.”

“And you’re doing an amazing job,” I assured him. “You’re kind of a jack of all trades around the winery.”

Color rose high on Liam’s cheeks, and I bit back a grin. “Just doing my job.”

“Right. Taking full responsibility for the grape yield and quality of each new vintage, helping Amara with the canned wine-based cocktail line, helping Delia and Owen craft the drink menu for the distillery, helping Brie and Ezra get the community garden up and running…” I theatrically sucked in a breath, blowing it out with a whew , even going so far as to pretend to wipe sweat off my forehead. “Yeah, sounds like you’re ’just doing your job.’”

“Well, when you put it like that…”

I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but before I could stop myself, I was reaching across the narrow center console and settled my palm on his arm. A jolt shot up mine at the contact, his skin throwing off massive amounts of heat.

What an interesting man Liam was proving to be, and more interesting still was my reaction to him. I found myself thrilled by the realization, enticed by the idea of continuing to peel back the layers, to learn who he was beneath the beard and the brawn and the obvious brains. To learn who he could be to me.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” I said at last, voice hoarse.

The air in the van had thickened, energized in a way I’d never experienced in Liam’s presence before, but it wasn’t entirely unwelcome.

“Your dad gave me a shot when probably no one else in the world would have…except maybe my old boss. But I definitely wasn’t going back there .”

His jaw was clenched so tightly, muscle fluttering so wildly, that I knew pressing the issue was a bad idea. So I let it drop.

And not a moment too soon because when I returned my attention out the windshield, I found we were rounding a final corner—and then the Mackinac Bridge stretched out before us.

“Oh fuck,” I breathed, reaching for the oh shit handle and squeezing my eyes shut. “Just tell me when it’s over.”

“Absolutely not,” Liam said, reaching out and pinching my thigh. My eyes and mouth popped open in protest, leveling him with a death glare. “It’s really not that bad. The view is incredible. ”

I hazarded a glance around me. “It’s literally just water.”

“It’s the Straits of Mackinac,” he corrected, then pointed to our right. “Out there is Lake Huron.” Gesturing to the left, he added, “And that’s Lake Michigan. This is the spot where the two bodies of water collide.”

“Thanks for the little geography lesson,” I quipped. “But this thing still freaks me out.”

Liam held his hand out, palm up. “Take my hand.”

“What? No! You need both hands to drive.”

“It’s a clear day with absolutely no wind to speak of, Wildflower.” He gripped the wheel with his left hand so the leather creaked. “I’ve got it under control. Now take my hand.”

My fingers shook as I reached for him, but Liam didn’t give me a chance to second guess myself before his warmth was enveloping me. He easily threaded our fingers together, as though this was something we did all the time and not the first time. With a light but reassuring squeeze, he asked, “You good?”

No , I thought. I fear I’m worse off with us skin to skin than I was simply crossing this death trap of a bridge.

But despite my nerve endings going haywire over this single, chaste point of contact, when I managed to tear my gaze away from Liam—this man who was becoming a bigger enigma by the minute—I realized we’d passed the halfway point, the highest part of the bridge, and were now making our way down to solid ground once again.

Liam swore quietly and suddenly. Without removing his hand from mine, he began glancing furtively around the front seat, grumbling, “Where the fuck is my wallet? ”

I joined in on the search, finding it wedged between the center console and my seat. Extracting my hand from his grip, I reached for it and tried to hand it over, but he waved me off.

“Can you just get out four dollars?”

“For what?”

“Bridge toll,” he said, indicating the line of booths ahead blocking our entrance into the Upper Peninsula.

Flipping the faded brown leather open, I rifled through until I found the compartment where he kept his cash. I withdrew four ones and handed them over as he pulled up to the toll booth, but his conversation with the attendant faded away as my curiosity got the better of me in the form of studying his driver’s license.

“Oh my god,” I yelped as the gate opened and we passed through.

I startled Liam, who accidentally jerked the van to the side, eliciting a honked horn and a few choice hand gestures from the driver of a nearby vehicle. “What the fuck?” he breathed.

“Sorry,” I offered with a sheepish grin. “It’s just…your name is William.”

Liam released a deep sigh and shook his head disbelievingly. “I’m aware.”

“But you go by Liam.”

He cut his eyes to me then back to the road, navigating us onto an exit toward a town called St. Ignace. “Are you okay? Why are you stating the obvious?”

I let out a nervous giggle, surprised he wasn’t mad I’d been rifling through his shit. “I’ve just never heard anyone named William go by Liam as a nickname before. It’s always Will or Bill. ”

Liam shrugged but didn’t respond as he turned into a gas station and pulled up to a pump. He got out, then turned to me.

“Are you done holding my wallet hostage, or can I have my credit card?”

Instead of answering, I withdrew my own credit card and handed it over.

“No,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. God, the stance should be illegal for him, all bulging biceps, black shirt clinging to his abs, chest puffed out and really testing the limits of that tee.

Secretly, I hoped one of our adventures on this trip would have an opportunity for swimming, because I needed to see this man shirtless like I needed to breathe, if only to add it to my mental spank bank.

“What do you mean, no ?” I asked.

“I mean, no , you’re not paying.”

“What did I tell you about letting me make my own choices on this trip?”

“That was about fucking sleeping arrangements, not putting gas in the car.”

“As far as I’m concerned, the two are one and the same.”

“Ella.”

“William.”

A grumble emanated from his chest, and he uncrossed his arms to rest them in the upper door frame, leaning forward and staring me down.

I had to hand it to him, the man could be menacing when he wanted to be. His size alone was intimidating enough. But he was fucking with the wrong girl if he thought I’d fold that easily .

Delatou women were a stubborn breed; he should’ve known that by now.

Ultimately, I settled the stalemate—that Liam would have lost, obviously—by getting out of the car, rushing around to the pump, and sliding my card into the slot before Liam had time to react.

“You little shit.”

I did the mature thing and stuck my tongue out before turning my attention to the prompts on the dirty screen. Once my card was safely back in my possession, I lifted the nozzle and put it in the tank.

“You’re welcome,” I said, giving him my most winning smile.

“That’s the last time you’re paying to gas this thing up,” he replied. “Don’t get used to it.”

“How come you don’t go by Will or Bill?” I asked, ignoring his comments altogether.

Liam’s brow furrowed as he navigated my mental leap, then cleared as he once again shrugged. “My dad is Will Danvers. And honestly, Wildflower. Do I look like a ‘Bill’ to you?”

I giggled. “Absolutely not. The first Bill that comes to mind is Clinton, and you, my friend”—I scanned him from head to toe—“look nothing like him.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You definitely should. Bill Clinton is a dog, and not in a cute way.”

Liam chuckled. “I think Monica Lewinsky would agree with you.”

“I’m sure,” I said, returning my attention to his ID. Even in that photo, he wore one of his signature flannels—this one white with alternating varying shades of grey squares. “So your birthday is March eighth. That makes you a Pisces.”

“I guess?” Liam said, phrasing it more like a question as the car’s automatic fuel valve thunk ed to let us know the tank was full. He reached for the nozzle and replaced it, and our conversation paused while we got back in the vehicle.

While my attention was elsewhere, Liam plucked his wallet from my hand and lifted his hips to put it in his back pocket.

“Says here that Pisces men are flirtatious, charming, and romantic, but they can also be introverted and highly emotional.”

Liam snorted a laugh. “There’s not a woman in the world that would call me charming or romantic .”

“I would.”

Fuck .

I regretted the words immediately, wishing I could suck them back in and pretend they weren’t awkwardly hanging in the air between us like a giant elephant taking up space.

“You barely know me.”

I scoffed. “I know enough. I know you came into the flower shop every week for years picking up a bouquet for someone special.” I waggled my eyebrows at him, loving the way his cheeks flushed.

“That wasn’t what you think.”

“Then enlighten me.”

“They…” He trailed off, eyes cutting furtively toward me before he blew out a breath. “Okay, fine. They were for someone special.”

“Ha!” I shouted, pointing a finger at him. “I knew you had someone. I also told Fanny that. So who is she? Anyone I know?”