“Nate,” she whispered.

It was hard, but he managed to drag his eyes north to meet hers. “You want to stop?” he asked.

She shook her head and he realized that her hair was down. He was one lucky SOB.

“I want to look at you too. It’s only fair.”

“I like fair,” he teased, reaching behind with one arm and dragging his shirt off. Her eyes were glued to his chest and she bit that plump bottom lip. Yeah, he liked fair.

He cupped her by the neck and was about to drag her mouth to his when there was a loud slamming of the bedroom door, followed by Marc hollering, “For the record, I did knock!”

To Nate’s surprise, Frankie didn’t jerk away like she had the other night. Instead she buried her face in his neck and laughed. That laugh slid right through him, taking up residence in every cell of his body. Every muscle in his body shifted and goddamn it, the realization hit hard: Frankie didn’t hide, because like him, there was no denying the truth.

“Thing about Italians is they never knock.” The sound of the fridge closing and a beer popping came through the closed door. “They also don’t know when to leave.”

She pulled back and man, was she beautiful when she smiled. “I should probably shower anyway. I smell like Mittens.”

Nate looked at her breasts one last time, imagined them wet and covered in suds and groaned. “I hate my brothers right now.”

She climbed off him and tugged on her top. “I think it’s sweet they’re here to see your new place.”

Something about the way she said it had him pausing. “Have your brothers been by?”

“Jonah saw it that day you were here. And Luce, Pricilla, and ChiChi brought me dinner last week.” With a shrug, she crossed the hall and closed the bathroom door.

Message received loud and clear, talking about her family was off limits.

His family, however, was not off limits. And they were about to receive a message of their own with coordinating hand gestures.

* * *

They were still arguing.

Frankie lay on her kid-sized bed, in her kid-sized room. The one that she begrudgingly moved into last week when she’d come out of the shower to find Nate sprawled out across the master bed. His hands folded behind his head, sexy-man smile dialed to high—his underwear neatly folded and tucked in the dresser drawer.

With her feet propped up against the wall, head hanging off the end of the mattress, Frankie let out a frustrated sigh. She’d been there for a good fifteen minutes, staring at a dust bunny tumble back and forth across the floor as the breeze brushed through the open window.

After her shower, a cold one, which she had deliberately drawn out by washing her hair twice and meticulously shaving her legs, she heard heated words being thrown in the kitchen so she’d barricaded herself in her bedroom.

Not that it mattered. She was still so turned on that her breasts felt heavy against the cotton of her t-shirt and she could still taste him on her lips. To make matters worse, even through the closed door and hallway separating them, she could sense Nate, and hear every single word spoken.

“I was just about to hand Tanner his ass,” Trey said. The youngest DeLuca was equal parts playboy and hothead, the worst combination in Frankie’s book, which was why she usually wanted to punch him. “Then your girlfriend walked in—”

“Frankie’s not my girlfriend, we’re just living together. As friends,” Nate clarified. In case anyone in the room still had concerns about their relationship, he added, “As in we’re not sleeping together.”

Someone cleared their throat.

“You know what I mean.”

Frankie mentally shrugged.

He was right, they weren’t dating. They hadn’t even made it to the touching portion of the evening, but for some reason her stomach pinched a little at his dismissal. She gave it a rub and decided that she was only hungry.

“From what I saw, I can attest that there was no sleeping going on.” Frankie strained her ears and then decided that it was Marc talking. Some sort of scuffle followed, glasses sliding, chairs scraping against the floor, a loud clank and then, “I wasn’t done with that.”

“Then learn how to use a coaster. Or better yet, go home and destroy your own house.”

Frankie smothered a laugh. Nate, she’d come to realize over the past week, was as anal about his living space as he was about his loafers. She would find her books, receipts, dirty dishes, all magically organized and in their correct place. He’d even taken to folding her clothes. She was more of a toss the clean clothes in the basket and dig through as needed kind of girl. But yesterday she’d come home to find her basket not in its usual spot—the floor of the guest bathroom—but perched on the foot of her bed, her clothes neatly folded. Even her underwear had been organized by color.

Never one to turn her back on a friend in need, Frankie had made a habit of dropping her things at random just to give him something to do. So far, her dirty work boots on the hardwood floor seemed to get the biggest reaction.

“Well, welcome to it, bro,” Gabe said. “This is why I stopped having you guys over all the time. You come, you eat, you leave a mess.”

“Keep telling yourself that, Gabe,” Trey said. “Because I give it one more week before you dig yourself out from the piles of diapers you’re living in and start begging us to come over, smoke stogies, and throw back a few.”

“Can you just get back to what happened at Walt’s with Frankie?” Nate sounded frustrated and tired. “I thought he was strict on the ‘men’s only’ policy.”

“Yeah, tell that to the woman you’re ‘just living with’.” Frankie could almost hear Trey’s air quotes cutting through the air. “She walked in like some leather-clad hottie in her black jacket and boots. Man, those boots give a guy—ow! What the hell?”

“Get to the point,” Nate bit off.

“Sorry, I thought she wasn’t your girlfriend,” Trey challenged.

“She’s not.”

“So then it wouldn’t bother you that when I think about her in all that leather, I get—ow!”

“Bottom line,” Gabe said.

She heard a huff and assumed it came from Trey. “Frankie told Charles that she’s competing under Ryo and entering her wine in the Cork Crawl.”

“Which explains the alpaca fur,” Nate said so low that Frankie almost missed it.

“Fur, what are you talking about?” Marc asked.

Yeah, Frankie thought, what was he talking about?

She sat up, felt all the blood rush to her feet, which was how she explained away the lightheadedness she felt when Nate said, “When she’s upset she brushes Mittens and… What?”

“I just told you that Abby is sponsoring Frankie, with a wine that ChiChi claims is groundbreaking and you’re babbling about an alpaca?” Even down the hallway Frankie could hear the low, lethal drawl in Trey’s voice that time.

“Groundbreaking?” Nate asked. “She used the word groundbreaking?”

“We might lose everything we’ve worked for and you don’t seem to give a damn,” Trey said. “Do you not remember what happened to DeLuca Vineyards the first year we won?”

Frankie knew. It was why she wanted to enter. DeLuca Vineyards had been on the verge of bankruptcy when the brothers won their first Cork Crawl, and the win resurrected the DeLucas’ reputation as the best wine in the Valley. Their next win gave them the title as the most respected name in wine. Period. And Frankie wanted that same chance to prove herself like Nate and Gabe had. And this was her year.

The DeLucas just didn’t know it yet.

“I understand exactly what is at stake,” Nate defended. “And we are not going to lose anything. Abby agreed to sponsor Frankie because she is still pissed over Tanner. And since when do we care who the hell else competes? Our wine is incredible, and it will win. Like it does every year. So how about you focus on your job—selling what I make.”

There was a heavy silence. It stretched on for so long that Frankie stood. Even through the closed door she could feel the tension turn combustible, which explained her pacing. The funny ache in her chest, however, came from Nate implying that Frankie was a non-threat. That Abby was just extending the pity branch, but in the end it wouldn’t matter, Frankie’s wine would matter.

“Like the sale we had with Susan?” Trey accused, his tone growing harsher by the syllable. The frat boy persona was gone and in his place reared the hotheaded youngest brother who blasted through life with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. “Christ, Nate do you know how hard I worked on that deal?”

“Yeah, I do because I was right there beside you,” Nate said low and lethal. “I looked Susan in the eye and promised her grapes we don’t happen to own. It was only right to come clean to both her and Frankie.”

“But it was my deal and my reputation. I don’t fly around the world selling 350 days a year for you to cut me out. You had no right to talk to either of them without me,” Trey barked back. “What were you thinking?”

“That keeping secrets from stubborn women hasn’t worked out so well for us in the past,” Marc said, speaking from experience.

Last summer the DeLucas were involved in a distribution deal that centered around Lexi’s grandmother’s recipes. Lexi almost lost her grandmother’s bakery, and Marc had almost lost Lexi—for good.

“Look, I get why you’re upset, but this isn’t a big deal,” Nate said and Frankie knew he was lying. This was a big deal. He did the right thing even though it might have cost him a huge contract. “I called Susan earlier, explained the situation with the land and offered her client 400 cases of our Santa Barbara reserve at a discounted price.”