Intoxicating Read Online Free Page B

had been her favorite place to play. She’d learned to read down here at age four, spelling out the letters on the wine labels. In the cellar, she felt especially linked to her family, to the past, to the entire history of winemaking. It was an ancient, provocative lure.
    Rows and rows of wine racks provided an intriguing honeycomb of product. Most of it, of course, was Bella Notte harvest, but they did keep competitors’ wines on hand as well. Kiara visited that section of the cellar and stood studying the options—Mondavi, Gallo, DeSalme.
    Hmm. DeSalme made a red dessert muscat in the vein of—but certainly not in the league of—Decadent Midnight. She’d use it for the comparison.
    She took a bottle of the DeSalme wine, along with a bottle of Decadent Midnight, went up the back stairs and into the family kitchen. Once there, she poured the DeSalme wine into a glass pitcher, filled the empty bottle of DeSalme muscat with Decadent Midnight and then transferred the DeSalme wine from the glass pitcher into the Bella Notte bottle. She replaced the corks in each bottle and then hurried back to the lab. If the man waiting in her lab could tell the difference between the DeSalme muscat and Decadent Midnight, then he truly was the person she’d been searching for.
    If not, she would dispatch him to the vineyards with the other interns, never to darken the door of her lab again.
    Â 
    T HE INSTANT K IARA returned into the lab carrying the bottle of DeSalme wine fear seized Wyatt.
    Uh-oh. This wasn’t good. Not good at all.
    Busted.
    The determined expression on her face made his heart cringe. What to say? His tongue curled around a lie.
    How had Kiara figured out who he was? Had he somehow tipped his hand? Had he inadvertently revealed too much knowledge of wine? Eric and Scottwould razz the hell out of him for getting bounced from Bella Notte this quickly. And he would deserve it. God, he hated being a bumbler in his brothers’ eyes.
    Bluff. Just bluff your way through this. Bluff and deny, deny, deny.
    Her gaze met his and the strangest sensation swept over him. As if he were being led to his doom and he couldn’t wait to get there.
    Wyatt’s pulse rate quickened. What was up? What game was she playing? Why not just confront him? He moistened his lips.
    C’mon, think of a line. Something brilliant to deflect her anger, but hell if he didn’t come up empty, his eyes too full of Kiara to process anything else. Anything beyond the sight of her oval face and abundance of corkscrew auburn curls escaping madly from her loose ponytail.
    He started working on an excuse in his head, planning how he’d charm and disarm her when she confronted him as a spy. He would cock his head, let his famous grin slowly steal across his face and peer deep into her eyes as if she were the only woman on the face of the earth. The technique never failed to buckle the knees of women both young and old.
    â€œHand me those two glasses.” She nodded at two wineglasses perched on a shelf to his right.
    Was he being led into a trap? Congenially, he reached for the glasses, and then set them down on the lab table in front of her.
    Kiara pulled the corkscrew from her pocket, uncorked both bottles of wine. One DeSalme’s. The other Decadent Midnight.
    Corks popped, smooth and cool, and the air carrieda musty, yeasty smell of fermented grapes. She tipped two ounces of DeSalme into one glass, two ounces of Decadent Midnight in the other.
    â€œAnother taste test,” she told him. “Comparison.”
    He caressed her gaze. More from instinct than ploy. What was going on here? If she knew he was a fraud, why not just toss him out on his ass? Why the games? And why did he feel like a skiff adrift in an ocean squall?
    â€œSure,” he said, nice and easy. Gave her that awshucks shrug he’d perfected. Cool as ice on a summer’s day.
    â€œWhy are you looking at me like that?” she