“No dress-up today, kids,” he said.

The kids booed.

Ava and every mother chaperone in the firehouse—expect Regan DeLuca, who was bouncing a burrito wrapped Baby Sofie—stared, not even bothering to hide their interest. He got that a lot.

Adam had the Baudouin swagger and beefcake build and was the leader of an elite smoke-jumper team. Which meant he was an expert at parachuting out of planes to get behind fire lines and sweet talking his way behind panty lines. Even dressed in a pair of dark blue work pants and matching SHFD t-shirt and ball cap, he looked pretty impressive. And the women took notice. But even though he was three years older and five inches taller than her five-ten, she could still whoop him in darts.

“But if you make your way out front, one lucky Scout can run the siren,” he added and the kids cheered.

Arguing over who got to sit in the fire engine, the group followed Probie through the opened bay door toward the shiny red truck. It was as clean and charming as the rest of the station. Built in 1912, the only firehouse in the city limits was a historical brick-faced building with stone encasings framing the three massive arched doors. Situated at the end of Main Street, the St. Helena Garden Club took special care in tending to the rose-filled planter boxes and pansies filled wine barrels that lined the curb.

“Thanks for setting this up, Adam,” Regan said in a soothing singsong voice, most likely to keep the demon spawn from waking up.

“Yeah, and thanks for letting Ava and me join in,” Jordan said, offering up her best smile. “Now, if I could just ask one more favor.”

Adam gave her a weary once-over. “Last time you asked me for a favor, I ended up in nothing but a scarf and underwear.”

Jordan patted him on the arm. “And that calendar made my year as PTA President the largest grossing year ever. So thank you. Oh, and thanks in advance for this.” Without giving Adam a chance to see what was coming, Jordan reached up, wrapped one hand around his neck and planted a fat kiss on his lips.

“What the hell was that?” Adam asked, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

“Don’t worry, Smoky, I remember what your underwear looked like when they had the red Power Ranger plastered across the crotch,” Jordan said, not an ounce of interest in her eyes. “I was just making sure that you were so unappealing Ava wouldn’t be tempted to sneak out and see if your bell needs ringing.”

Adam frowned. “Ava is what, all of sixteen?”

Jordan looked over her shoulder at her daughter who, dressed in a strip of denim held together by a chain, glared back. Adam followed her gaze.

“Holy shit, when did she get so…” Adam trailed off, his hands making a Ba-dow! gesture.

“Do you know what I’d give to go back to the slobber and poop phase?” Jordan sent Baby Sofie a longing look, then stifled a yawn. Regan did the same and Frankie was pretty sure that both friends spent most of last night pacing outside their kids’ doors.

And here Frankie was complaining because Mittens had gnawed through the porch rail.

“Baudouin,” Captain Roman Brady hollered from the captain’s office. “Get in here.”

“Be right back.” Adam skulked off, but not before sending Jordan a hard glare. And Frankie knew that her friend’s kiss had a dual purpose: to gross out Ava and piss off Roman.

“And you wonder where Ava gets it,” Frankie said.

“The man has been sniffing around my skirt for months and won’t make a move. I was just giving him some inspiration.”

Adam stopped at the door to whisper something in Probie’s ear. Probie straightened, slack jawed, and took a ginormous step back. “Sixteen! I swear I thought she was a nanny or something.”

“Or something,” Adam said over his shoulder. He shut the captain’s door, cutting off the grumpy grumbles of his boss.

“Oh, look what I picked up this morning.” Jordan dug through her enormous purse and pulled out a card. It was black, glossy, professional, shaped like a wine label, and exactly what Frankie needed if she was going to sell her wine for top dollar.

“This is amazing.” She turned the promotional card for her winery over several times, swallowing back the weird urge to hug her friend with each flip.

Last week, after she’d discovered that Susan was going in a different, more DeLuca, direction, Frankie sucked it up and did something that normally gave her hives. She asked for help.

If she was going to sell her futures to an elite clientele, she needed to put on a polished front and give them a reason to feel comfortable saying yes to a risk. For a girl who considered competitive darts as an effective way of networking, Frankie sought out the two most polished people she knew to give her winery a professional makeover.

“I don’t know what to say,” Frankie admitted. Actually, she knew what she was supposed to say to her best friends who had gone out of their way to make Frankie’s dream that much more of a reality. But for some reason the words “Thank you” didn’t seem enough, and anything remotely close to “I love you” made her palms sweat. So she settled on, “You guys rock.”

“Well, the old logo promised a swift kick to the groin with every bottle,” Jordan said. “And I would love to take all the credit, but since Regan is the resident marketing goddess and standing right here, it’s probably best to admit that I had her do all the fancy stuff.”

“Not fancy,” Regan clarified, leaning in and pointing to the logo. She was so close that Frankie got a sniff of, well she didn’t know what, but it reminded her of Mr. Puffins when he was a kitten. “I polished it a bit, reworked your logo and made the t in Red Steel resemble the sword you wanted.”

“It’s in my family’s crest.” Frankie traced a finger over the logo. It was professional and classy, and still somehow her.

Charles had made it clear that Frankie couldn’t use the Baudouin name with connection to her wine. But he couldn’t stop her from using elements of her heritage.

“I changed the font, went with matted onyx for the background and glossy, deep red for the accent color. I think it looks elegant, sophisticated with the appropriate amount of bad-assery.”

There it was again. That powdery, fresh scent.

Frankie looked at Baby Sofie sleeping and leaned closer. “Do you Febreze her?” She inhaled deep through her nose. “The other kids smelled like a petting zoo and hot ketchup. And she smells like.” Sniff. Sniff. “New car.”

“It’s baby powder,” Regan said smiling. “Want to hold her?”

“Hell no.” Frankie stuffed her free hand in her pocket. “Just wondering if it works on alpacas. Or would it mess up his fur?”

“Why don’t you just get one of those pine-scented car fresheners and hang it around his neck,” Jordan offered. She took the card and turned it over. “I ordered a thousand but don’t worry. My supplier gave it to me at a huge discount and even threw in dual-sided for free, so I had them list your contact info, a little history about Sorrento Ranch, and some of the praise you’ve received over the years on the back.”

Frankie looked down the list of quotes, stunned at what industry people had said about her wine. “Where did you get these quotes?”

“I made a few calls.” Jordan shrugged as if it were no big deal. But to Frankie, it was huge. No one had ever done anything like this for her before. And suddenly she didn’t feel so alone.

“Speaking of calls, have you talked to Nate since the almost bed-sex?” Jordan asked.

“We were on the bed, but trust me it was nowhere near bed-sex.”

“If it wasn’t bed-sex, then how come when I showed up to the studio for my seven a.m. Buddha Baby Yoga class, you were half asleep on the stoop?”

“Because I missed my best friend.”

Jordan just looked at her.

“What?”

“Admit it, Nate gets to you. He always has and instead of talking about what happened, you got scared and hid.”

“I’m not scared and I don’t hide.” Which was why, after the DeLuca three had left, she had specifically told Nate she was sleeping when he knocked on her door. When she’d heard his loafers squeak down the hall and away from her room, she thought she was in the clear. Until her phone buzzed with a text. It was the same text she’d been re-reading all week. The reason why she had woken up on Get Bent’s stoop with yoga mat in hand:

SLEEPING HUH? I CAN SMELL YOUR SHORTS ON FIRE FROM DOWN THE HALL. I’LL GIVE YOU TONIGHT, BUT WE WILL TALK IN THE MORNING.

Closely followed by:

NIGHT, SWEET CHEEKS.

“Uh-huh. So why haven’t you called him yet?”

Frankie shrugged. “I figure he’s busy with their vineyard. Prepping it for the harvest.”

Between yoga, lunch with Luce, checking on her saplings, and doing a few practice runs for the Pick Till You Punt with Jordan, Frankie had managed to keep herself busy until well into Saturday evening, where she had no option but to go home and face the sexy Italian in the room.

Only, when she’d arrived at the ranch, she found it shy one DeLuca. In his place was a note, perfectly folded and addressed to her, sitting on the kitchen counter. It explained that he had to take a last minute trip south to check on their Santa Barbara property and that he would be back Friday at the latest.

A dry Indian Summer combined with a couple of stupid campers in Los Padres National Forest had ignited a wildfire. The strong winds had quickly spread the flames north through the Santa Ynez Mountains, a range that butted up to Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez Valley, threatening some of the top vineyards outside Napa Valley. Including Charles’s latest four-hundred acre noose.