Tasting Notes Read Online Free

few days off, though. I’d be more than happy to help you.”
    Rush seriously considered it for about half a second. Sebastian worked a lot. And he was undervalued and underpaid at the realty firm where he worked. He knew Roger, Sebastian’s boss, who had been a couple of years ahead of Rush in high school. The guy was a dick, even back then. Rush always thought he was greasy and underhanded. He didn’t much like that Sebastian was working for him, but he never said anything. Most days Sebastian seemed happy enough.
    “Naw, I got it. Shouldn’t take me too long. I want to get all the planting done before the roots dry out. Besides, doing a little physical labor is probably just what I needed. I’m starting to go soft.” He patted his belly beneath his T-shirt. Sebastian smirked at him, a flash of something in his eyes Rush couldn’t identify, but before he could wonder about it too long, it was gone again.
    Cherie appeared a moment later with their meals, and the two men tucked into their food, Rush shoveling stew into his mouth like a man who had spent a year on the grapefruit diet. He was not a small guy, and being perpetually hungry came with the territory. When he missed a meal, he got grouchy and surly, but missing two? Cherie was lucky he didn’t rampage his way through the kitchen, devouring everything in his path like a ravenous Tasmanian devil. He was in a constant state of cantankerousness while deployed, and meals made for guys his size were harder to come by.
    He moaned around a mouthful of beef dip, the au jus perfectly salty and rich. He could feel the emptiness in his gut filling as he ate, and he was suddenly more grateful than ever for Sebastian inviting him out for dinner. They’d been getting together a lot more in the last few months than in the past. Sure, they were sleeping together when Rush first met Sebastian, but it wasn’t until after they stopped fucking that they really became good friends.
    Rush didn’t have a lot of friends and even fewer he’d had sex with. Maintaining a platonic relationship after you’d been inside another person was not always the easiest thing for Rush to manage. Hell, friendships at all were difficult for Rush to manage. But Sebastian was persistent, and Rush was happy he was. He was one of the few people Rush could stand spending more than an hour at a time with.
    They finished their meals, keeping the conversation light. Rush was tired but reluctant to leave. It was nice being out in the world, spending time with someone other than his dog and his trees. He ordered another beer and sat back, listening to Sebastian tell him a story about him and his brother when they were kids.

Chapter Three
     
     
    WEST’S GPS thought he was nuts. And the woman with the fake-sounding British accent wasn’t the only one either. He had called Scarlet from the car, her voice sounding hollow over his Bluetooth, to confirm she had booked him off work.
    She answered the phone in the same courteous manner she always did, and her voice warmed when she realized it was him calling. They were always completely professional with each other—she still called him Mr. Weston despite years of protest on his part—but she was the first person he hired when he started the company. She held a special place in his heart, and he was reasonably certain she knew it.
    “I figured out where I’m going, if you could please book me a hotel,” West said, steering his car onto the open freeway. It only took a few minutes, toying around with Google Maps, before he decided on a location.
    “Of course.”
    “Eureka, California. The nav system says it’s going to take about forty hours give or take to drive there, so if you could, I’ll need a couple of rooms along the way as well.”
    “Eureka? Forty hours?” Scarlet repeated.
    “Yes.” West knew she thought he’d gone off the rails. Getting to the ocean would be a lot simpler if he went to the east coast, but he was tired of the cold