Some Like It Hotter. Isabel Sharpe

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      “GUY CHAUMONT PINOT Noir. Three cases? Four? Like last time. Okay, glad you enjoyed it.” Ames scribbled on his notepad. “He’s got an excellent Chardonnay, too. Twenty-ten, a classic dry Burgundy, with apple and melon notes, great with vegetarian and vegan dishes. Want me to bring a bottle when I see you Thursday? Okay, good. And the Chateau Moulin Bordeaux, too? Excellent. Nice talking with you and I’ll see you Thursday at two. Right. Bye.”

      Ames tossed his pen onto the desk in the office he’d set up in one of his condo’s extra bedrooms. Working from home was one of the greatest perks of his job and also one of its greatest challenges. Days like today, when he was restless and irritated, there was no one else around to bring him out of it except Jean, his Tuesdays-and-Thursdays cleaning woman, cook and sometimes assistant, who was convinced he couldn’t live without her. She might be right. But her way of bringing him out of a funk was to tell him exactly how he was living his life wrong.

      Didn’t seem to help.

      Finding out that Chris Meyer had left New York and flown about as far away over land as possible without telling him hurt more than Ames had expected. He’d been settling in for a slow and steady campaign to win her, and had thought he might be making some progress. To put it mildly, this didn’t look good.

      He pulled his laptop closer and brought up the file on Manhattan Vine, one of the biggest chains of liquor stores in the city, an account he’d singlehandedly landed for Boyce Wines, a coup that had been instrumental in getting him promoted in the venerable company. He’d spent the morning visiting retailers to check signage and point-of-purchase placement and probing managers for their openness to hosting wine-tasting events. He was thinking some of Manhattan Vine’s east-side stores might be a good place to push Boyce’s higher-priced wines now that the midlevel bottles had done pretty well.

      Funny, the second he’d laid eyes on Chris he’d felt a pull, as if she was familiar somehow, as if he already knew her and it was only a matter of getting through the formalities of preliminary dates before they’d be together in a way Ames felt certain would be significant. He’d felt that way only once before about a woman and had ended up dating Sarah for four years before they came to a mutual realization that it was time to commit or break up, and they’d both chosen the latter.

      In the intervening years, he’d dated casually here and there, but either he didn’t fit her ideal or she didn’t fit his. Until he saw Chris and felt so strongly that she had it all. Yes, she’d been reluctant, but he’d dealt with reluctance before and had overcome it with patience and low-key persistence.

      This time...not so much.

      Her crazy sister, though—man, that woman was...something else. Eva had looked at Ames as if he was her next meal. No, not quite that. More as if he was her favorite dessert. She’d made him uncomfortable, uneasy and also weirdly curious. Underneath all the look-at-me trappings she was attractive, and seemed spirited and funny. But definitely not his type the way her sister was. Beautiful, elegant, sophisticated, Chris was the kind of woman a guy could take anywhere and she’d fit right in, from a baseball game to one of the high-end restaurants and wine bars he frequented for business and pleasure. At the end of the month he’d hoped to take her to Boyce’s annual dinner at La Grenouille Laide, one of New York’s finest restaurants, and the company’s most formal and important event, to which all their best clients and top sales people СКАЧАТЬ