Free Stirred: A Love Story by Tracy Ewens Page A

red, that she was now entertainment for Jeremy and probably Garrett too, although she hadn’t heard a word from him. All the same, she vowed to take it like a big girl. Her mind raced for a response, a way to turn the tables. Glancing back at her crossword, Sage’s eyes landed on forty-one down: L-U-S-C-I-O-U-S.
    “Go for it, girl,” Chapter Eight whispered.
    Dragging her tongue across her bottom lip and following it with a tiny bite, Sage looked back up at Jeremy through her lashes and slowly dragged her hands over the smooth wood of the bar to push herself up to standing. Her eyes met his and she held.
    “Sometimes.” That was all she said. It was well played. She let out a slow breath and folded her paper.
    Jeremy, who had clearly committed Chapter Eight to memory, didn’t even flinch. His smile broadened, and Sage could see a faint outline of where his sunglasses sat across his nose as he slowly leaned over the bar toward her. Faking a little to the left, he took an olive out of her jar and popped it into his mouth, eyes never leaving hers.
    “Huh, let me know if you ever need any help with that.”
    He smiled and Sage couldn’t be sure, but she may have let out a squeak. Jeremy made his well-earned cool-guy exit, and when Sage looked over, Garrett was gone.
    Crap, crap, crap.
    Fail. Jeffries, complete and total fail.

    What the hell is going on? Garrett returned to his office after lunch and wondered when watching a bartender and some wine guy flirt with each other had turned into soft porn. The guy, who looked like he hadn’t seen dirt or a shovel in a while, was irrelevant. He’d barely heard that joker, but when Sage stood, her hands sliding across all that polished wood, Garrett felt like he should almost be embarrassed to watch her in broad daylight. The wine guy was clearly into her with his stupid question about her frustration. It was kind of a cheap shot when Sage was obviously talking about her music, and Garrett fully expected her to go all pink in the face and pull the nervous act she did with him. That was not what happened, oh no. She looked up at the guy with those take-me-right-here-on-this-bar eyes, and Garrett had almost dropped his phone. Where the hell did that look even come from? He’d picked her up when she was drunk, driven her home. Shit, she’d said she loved him, but he had never gotten that look, had never seen her bat her lashes and pout like that.
    Garrett wasn’t sure which pissed him off more: that he’d been deprived of the look in all the years he’d known Sage, or that she was flashing it at the wine guy. He stopped reading and rereading the same e-mail and stepped outside for some air. Let it go. Who cares?
    It was unexpected, he told himself as he walked toward the fields. Garrett stopped at the edge of the first dirt road and rubbed his hands across his face. Until a couple of weeks ago, he could count on one hand how many times he’d noticed Sage Jeffries, let alone thought about her. Now, here he was up to his ass in maintenance reports and pricing structures and his mind kept tripping over shit like— If she loves you so much, why the hell is she getting naughty with the wine guy?
    That didn’t even make any damn sense. They’d talked it out and brushed it off, hadn’t they? She’d had too much to drink, plain and simple. Sure, she said that he still had great eyes and she’d meant what she’d said, but who knew with women? Clearly it was good he hadn’t listened to her because only a couple of weeks later, there she was burning up the bar with her. . . frustration.
    He’d wanted to punch the guy when he leaned toward her. Garrett hadn’t wanted to punch someone since. . . shit, he couldn’t remember. He didn’t do that stuff anymore. There were other priorities, decisions to be made requiring his full attention so he didn’t fuck something up. Punching a guy, or even the urge to punch him, was so far out of his wheelhouse Garrett wasn’t sure