“Dude, what are you gonna do?” Nick chokes on his beer.
“She thinks I’m just some dumb farmhand, so my plan is to prove her wrong.” Popping a pretzel in my mouth, a villainous smile curls at my lips. “And, you know, maybe take the company away from her in the process.”
“Yeah, but you can’t try to push her out. The place is half hers as well.” Nick eyes me from across the table. He’s known me too long to think I’d ever do anything but the right thing, but this is my breaking point. Knowing that every struggle my mom and I have ever faced could have been avoided if he’d ever once stepped up to do the right thing burns like a bonfire in my gut. He could have done the right thing, but he didn’t, and now it’s my turn to take what’s mine.
“Since when did you grow a conscience?” Leaning back in my seat, I cross my arms over my chest, shooting Nick a cynical looking. He simply rolls his shoulders as some chick in a too-short skirt walks past us.
“She hot?” His question is difficult to hear because he’s still tracking the ass of the woman walking by. Facing me is obviously not a priority.
Replaying the proceedings from this afternoon in my head, I can’t say she wasn’t hot. Uptight maybe, but she did have that whole hot-librarian look going for her. Her attitude, however, made her completely unattractive. Calling me “some bastard farm hand” is not something I’ll easily forgive and forget, no matter how much I fantasized about the lacy tops of her stockings. I can’t say whether she was even wearing any, but my fingertips actually itched at the thought of grazing under her slate-grey pencil skirt just to find out.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Nick’s voice totally ruins my little erotic fantasy.
“She’s not totally unfortunate, why?”
“Seduce her,” he mutters around the lip of his beer. “Make her putty in your hands and she’ll do whatever you want. Simplest plan ever and,” his eyes light up and the tone of his voice becomes more playful, “as an added bonus, you might get laid, too.”
My dick twitches behind my zipper as thoughts of Elle’s black, patent leather, five-inch heels around my neck play out in my sex-deprived brain.
Taking a final sip of my beer, I mumble, “You might not have a bad idea there.”
It’s definitely one I’m willing to experiment with later tonight in the shower.
Chapter 4
Elle
Each tick of the clock reverberates through the room, through my skin and bones, settling in my consciousness like the heaviest of blankets on the coldest of winter nights. Knowing I would see Owen today, I opted for something classy and sophisticated. A black tulip skirt skims the top of my knees. The playful, frilly ruffle makes me feel feminine without risking any of my business-like assertiveness. A plunging neckline on the deep merlot-colored top is artfully hidden by the suit jacket securely wrapped around my chest.
He’s supposed to be here at nine. Five minutes. I find myself fidgeting, even though I know I shouldn’t care. There’s something about him that throws me off guard. Maybe it was just the small confines of the room from the other day, but who the hells knows. There was something passionate and searing, hard and angry in his deep blue eyes that burned through me.
Rather than sitting here watching the minutes go by, I busy myself with my email. Same as usual, business meetings and bank statements peppered with a few random condolences for Vincent’s sudden passing. Just at reading his name, my head turns instinctually to the picture of him and me on the day of my college graduation.
“I’m real proud of you, Elle.” His face shone with the brightest of smiles. I’d never been able to understand why he took me under his wing, let me intern with his company, showed me every trick of the trade at the young age of twenty-two, but in that moment, I didn’t care. The words that had so effortlessly fallen from his lips were words of parental praise – not those of a business associate. They were words I had been dying to hear my entire life.
My drunk of a mother snapped pictures from behind a busted-up old camera and I was immediately ashamed of her. I hated that I wanted more than she ever gave me, than she would ever be capable of giving me. So when Vincent had offered me a full-time, walk-on position in operations at his winery, I took it without even thinking about it. Considering Mom’s alcoholic past, maybe I should have given it a touch more consideration, but it was time for me to think about my own future. Her well-being was no longer my concern.
God, that made me a shitty daughter, but isn’t that what I’d been all these years? Anyway. , I was if I believed everything she’d ever told me.
With promises of a brighter tomorrow, and a huge opportunity knocking at my doorstep in the form of a full-time job at Bella Luna’s Winery and Estate, I no longer had to listen to those voices of uncertainty.
“Ms. Blackwell,” Rosie, Vincent’s secretary, who I now assume is mine, announces as she enters the office space I used to share with Vincent. She looks around the space and crosses her arms over her chest. “The room seems bigger, emptier somehow now that he’s gone.” Her voice isn’t much louder than a whisper and I can see the pain of his loss in her eyes. She was his secretary for fifteen years. His death may have hit her the hardest.
“He had a way of making everything feel cozier and warmer. It was that personality of his.” Sitting in the chair next to her, I wrap an arm around her shoulders and we share a quick hug. Though my own parents may
have been anything but stellar, Vincent and Rosie were the perfect surrogate parents.
“Do you remember that time at the company picnic?” Rosie’s question is nostalgic and wistful.
My brows crinkle together for a moment as I place the memory. “Oh, my goodness, do you mean the one with the dunk tank?” A soft peal of laughter rolls from my chest. “He must have taken a hit from every kid there that year.”
Rosie’s face lights up thinking about that day. “He had just as much fun as they did. Oh, the older he got, the more he loved children. To be honest, I think he threw that yearly picnic just so he could see everyone’s kids.”
On her last word, a gruff voice calls out, “Hello,” from behind us. It sends tingles down my spine and puts my other sense on high alert. As Owen walks into the room, we stand to greet him. The combination of his soap, clean and crisp, and his cologne, masculine and woodsy, makes me feels as if I’m drunk. So much so that my knees actually wobble a little as I walk toward him.
“Owen, this is Rosie.” She extends her hand and I swear her cheeks turn pink. “Rosie, meet Mr. Carmichael.”
“Good morning,” her voice takes on the quality of some bubbly teenager, which is really unbecoming considering she’s in her early fifties and is probably old enough to be his mom.