by Diana Palmer
She looked at him, clearly dumbfounded. There were very definite and obvious differences between the Cooper and Maxfield families. The Coopers might be wealthy, but they liked their winery to reflect their roots. Down-home. A Western flare.
In the early days, his father had been told that there was no way he would ever be successful unless he did something to class up his image. He had refused. Digging in deeper to the cowboy theme was ultimately why they had become so successful. There was no point in competing with fancy-pants places like the Maxfields’. It wasn’t the Coopers’ way.
Joining up with the Maxfields made even less sense than trying to emulate them, in his opinion.
“Come on,” she said. “You’re ambitious, Creed, don’t pretend otherwise.”
And that was where she might have him. Because he didn’t like to back down from a challenge. In fact, he quite liked a challenge in general. That she was issuing one now made him wonder if she was just baiting him. Taunting him.
He wasn’t even sure he cared. All he knew was that he instantly wanted to take her up on it.
There was something incredibly sexy about her commitment to knowing her enemy.
“What exactly are you proposing?”
“I want to have a large event featuring all of the wineries in the area. A wine festival. For Christmas.”
“That’s ambitious. And it’s too early to talk about Christmas.”
“All the stores would disagree, Creed. Twinkle lights are out and about.”
“Ask me if I care.”
“I’d like to do a soft launch, a large party at Maxfield in the next month,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “We’ll invite our best clients. Can you imagine? The buzz we’ll make joining forces?”
“Oh, you mean because everybody knows how profoundly our families dislike each other?” He paused for a moment. “How profoundly we dislike each other?”
It wasn’t a secret. They were never civil to each other.
They never tried to be.
“Yes,” she said. “That.”
“And how exactly do you think we’re going to get through this without killing each other?”
She looked all cheerful and innocent. “Look on the bright side. If I do kill you, you’ll get that dance you wanted so badly.”
“Well. A silver lining to every cloud, I guess.”
“I like to think so. Are you in?”
The only thing worse than giving in to the attraction he had for her would be hurting a business opportunity for it. He didn’t let other people control him. Not in any way.
Least of all Wren Maxfield.
And that meant he’d do it. No matter how much he’d rather roll in a pit of honey and lie down on an ant hill.
“How is this going to work? Logistically. I’m not going to roll up to your event in a suit.”
“I didn’t think you would. I thought you might be able to bring your rather…rustic charm.” The way she said rustic and charm implied that she felt the former did not go with the latter.
He smiled. “It goes with me wherever I go.”
“Do you have to wear a hat?” She wrinkled her nose.
“That is nonnegotiable,” he said, reaching up and flicking the cowboy hat’s brim with his forefinger.
“I figured as much.” She sniffed. “Well. I can accept that.”
“You have no choice. We’ll provide the food. Barbecue.”
“You really don’t have to do that.”
“I am not standing at a fancy party with nothing but raw fish on a cracker to eat. And anyway, if you want my clients, you better have meat.”
“With wine.”
“Hey. We work hard to break the stereotype that cowboys only like beer. I myself enjoy a nice red with my burger.”
“Unacceptable.”
His gaze flickered over her curves. That body. Damn what he’d like to do to that body. “Too repressed to handle a little change, Wren?”
Color flooded her cheeks. Rage. “I am not. I just don’t like terrible ideas.”
“It’s not a terrible idea. It’s on brand.” He said the last bit with no small amount of self-deprecation, and a smirk.
“Whatever. I don’t care what you like with what. Really. I just want to know if I can count on you to help me put this together.”
“You got it.”
“I look forward to this new venture,” she said. She smiled, which was strange, and then she extended her hand. He only looked at it for a moment. Then he reached his own out, clasped hers and shook it.
Her skin was soft, like he had known it would be. Wren was the kind of woman who had never done a day’s worth of manual labor in her whole life. Not that she didn’t work hard, she did. And he knew enough about the inner workings of a job like theirs to be well aware that it took a hell of a lot of mental energy. It was just that he also worked on his own ranch when he wasn’t working on the wine part of things, and he knew that his own hands were rough as hell.
She was too soft. Too cosseted. Snobby. Uppity. Repressed—unless she was giving him a dressing-down with that evil tongue of hers.
And damn he liked it all, as much as he hated it.
The thing was, even if he’d been a different man, a man who had the heart it took to be with someone forever, to do the whole marriage-and-kids thing, if he’d been a man who hadn’t been destroyed a long time ago, it wouldn’t be her.
Couldn’t be her.
A kick of lust shot through him, igniting at the point where their hands still touched. Wren dropped her hold on him quickly. “Well. Good. I guess we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other, then.”
“I guess we will. Looking forward to it.”
“Dear reader,” Wren muttered as she walked back into the family winery showroom. “She was not looking forward to seeing more of his arrogant, annoying, infuriating, ridiculous…”
“I’m sorry, what?”
Wren stopped muttering when her sister Emerson popped up from where she was sitting.
“I was muttering,” Wren replied.
“I know. What exactly were you muttering about?”
“I was muttering,” she restated. “Which means it wasn’t exactly meant to be understood.”
“Well. I’m nosy.”
“I just had my meeting with Creed.”
“Oh,” Emerson said, looking her over. “Huh.”
“What?”
“I’m checking you for burn marks.”
“Why? Because he’s Satan?”
“No. Because the two of you generate enough heat to leave scorched earth.”
She narrowed her eyes at her sister. “You’d better be talking about anger.”
Regrettably, anger was not the only thing that Creed Cooper made her feel.
Oh, Creed Cooper enraged her. She typically found herself wanting to punch him in the face within the first thirty seconds of his company.
He was an asshole. He was insufferable.
He was…without a doubt the sexiest man she had ever encountered in her entire life and when she woke up at night in a cold sweat with her pulse pounding between her thighs, it was always because she had been dreaming of him.
“Yeah,” Emerson said. “Anger.”
“What?” Wren snapped.
“It’s just… I don’t know. The two of you seem to be building up to some kind of hate-sex situation.”
Wren shifted, hating that she felt so seen in the moment. “No.”
“Why not?” Emerson asked.
“Several reasons. The first being that he disgusts me.” Her cheeks turned pink when the bold-faced lie slipped out of her mouth.
“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
“You would know. You’re…on fleek on the internet. Or whateve
r.”
“That is an incredibly passé bit of pop culture there, Wren. And I think we both know disgust is not what he makes you feel.”
She pulled a face. “Can we talk about business?”
“Sure, sure. So, what was your conclusion?”
“He’s a dick.”
“Yeah. I know. But what about the initiative?”
“Oh. He’s on board. So I guess we’ll be having a party. But he’s insisting on barbecuing.”
“Barbecuing?” Emerson asked, her sister’s hand rising upward, bent at the wrist, her fingers curled.
“Yes.” Wren lifted her nose. “Beef.”
“I guess that’s what we get for joining forces with cowboys.”
“Says the woman who’s married to one.”
Emerson shrugged. “Sure. But I don’t let him plan my parties. He has many uses, the primary one being that he allows me to do good works and save horses.”
“Save horses?”
She batted her lashed. “Ride a cowboy?”
“For the love of God, Emerson.”
“What? He’s hot.”
She was not here for her sister’s smug married-frequent-sex glow. Emerson had very narrowly escaped an arranged marriage with a man their father had chosen for her. The whole thing with her husband, Holden, had been dramatic, had involved no small amount of blackmail and subterfuge, and had somehow ended in true love.
Wren still didn’t quite understand it.
Wren also didn’t understand why she felt so beset by her Creed fantasies. Or why she was so jealous of Emerson’s glow.
Wren herself wasn’t overly sexual.
It wasn’t her thing. She’d had a few boyfriends, and she enjoyed the physical closeness that came with sex. That much was true. It had been a while since she’d dated anybody though, because she had been so consumed with her job at Maxfield Vineyards. She enjoyed what she did for work quite a lot more than she enjoyed sex, in point of fact.
Her dreams about illicit sex with Creed were better than any sex she’d ever had, and she found that completely disturbing.
Also, proof that her subconscious didn’t know anything. Nothing at all.
“Great.” Wren said. “Good for you and your libido. But I’m talking about wine, which is far more important than how hot your husband is.”
“To you,” Emerson said. “The hotness of my husband is an entirely consuming situation for me.”
“Anyway,” Wren said, her voice firm. “We get our joint party.”
“But with beef.”
“Yes,” Emerson said. “And then hopefully in a few months we’ll have the larger event, which we can presell tickets to. Hopefully we can bring a lot of people into town if we plan it right.”
“I do like the way you’re thinking,” Wren said. “It’s going to be great,” she added, trying to affirm it for herself.
“It will be,” Emerson agreed. “Have you talked to Cricket about it at all?”
Cricket was their youngest sister. She had been… She had been incredibly wounded about the entire scandal with their father.
The situation with their parents had gone from bad to worse. Or maybe it was just that they were all now aware of how bad it had always been.
The reason Holden had come to Maxfield Vineyards in the first place had been to get revenge on their father for seducing Holden’s younger sister and leaving her emotionally broken after a miscarriage.
After that, Wren and her sisters found out their father had carried on multiple affairs over the years, all with young women who were vulnerable, with so much less power than he had. It was a despicable situation. Holden had blackmailed Emerson into marriage in order to gain a piece of Maxfield Vineyards, but he and Emerson had ultimately fallen in love. They’d ousted their father, who was currently living out of the country. Their mother remained at the estate. Technically, the two of them were still married.
Wren hoped that wouldn’t be the case for much longer. Her poor mother had put up with so much. She deserved better.
They all did.
But while most of the changes that had occurred around the winery really were a good thing, their sister Cricket had taken the new situation hard. She had a different relationship with the place than the rest of them did. Cricket had been a late-in-life baby for their parents. An accident, Wren thought. And it had seemed like no one had the energy to deal with her. She’d been left to her own devices in a way that Emerson and Wren had not been.
As a result, Cricket was ever so slightly feral.
Wren found her mostly charming, but in the current situation, she didn’t know how to talk to her. Didn’t know what Cricket wanted or needed from them.
“She’s been… You know,” Emerson said. “Cricket. In that she’s not really talking about anything substantial, and she’s been quite scarce. She doesn’t seem to be interested in any of the winery’s new ventures.”
“It’s a lot of change.”
“True,” Emerson said. “But she’s not a child. She’s twenty-one.”
“No,” Wren said. “She’s not a child. But can you imagine how much more difficult this would have been for you ten years ago?”
“I know,” Emerson said softly. “It is different for us. It’s different to have a little bit more perspective on the world and on yourself. I think she feels very betrayed.”
“Hopefully she’ll eventually embrace the winery. She can have a role here. I know she’s smart. And I know she would do a good job, whatever Dad thought about her.”
Emerson shook her head. “I don’t think that Dad thought about her at all.”
“Well, we will,” Wren said.
The Maxfields had never been a close family in the way people might think of a close family. It wasn’t like there had been intimate family dinners and game nights and things like that. But they had been in each other’s pockets for their entire lives. Working together, deciding which direction to take their business. Their father was a difficult bastard, that was true. But he had entrusted his daughters with an extreme amount of responsibility when it came to the winery. It was weird now, to have the shape of things be so different. To have everything be up to them.
“Everything will be fine,” Wren said. “It’s already better, even if it is a little difficult.”
Emerson nodded. “You’re right. It’s better. And things will only get even better from here.”
“You agreed to do what?”
Creed looked at his older brother, Jackson, who had an expression on his face that suggested Creed might’ve said he planned to get out of the wine business and start raising corgis, rather than just coordinating an event with the Maxfield family.
“You heard me the first time,” Creed said.
“What’s the point of that? They’re a bunch of assholes.”
Normally, Creed would not have argued. Or even felt the inclination to argue. But for some reason, he thought back to Wren’s determined face, and the way her body had looked in that dress, and he felt a bit defensive.
“You know the girls are running it now,” he said. “James Maxfield absolutely was an asshole. I agree with you. But things are different now, and they’re running things differently.”
“Right. So you suddenly kissed and made up with Wren Maxfield?”
The idea of kissing Wren sent a lightning bolt of pleasure straight down to his cock. And the idea of…making up with her made his gut turn.
“Not a damn chance,” Creed responded.
“So, the two of you are going to do this, while at each other’s throats the entire time?”
“The logistics aren’t exactly your concern. The logistics are my concern, as always. You just…be a silent partner.” Creed narrowed his eyes. “You’re awfully loud for a silent partner.”
“I’m not technicall
y a full-on silent partner,” Jackson said. “It’s just that I would rather invest money than make decisions.”
“So then I’m letting you know what the plan is.” Creed thought back to the moment he had told Wren that he was going to barbecue. Now he had to barbecue. “We have to bring some grills.”
“I’m not even going to ask.”
“Fine with me.”
“I’m sorry, what are we planning?” Their younger sister, Honey, walked into the room. She was named by their mother, who had been so thrilled to have a daughter after having two sons that she had decided her daughter was sweet and needed a name that suggested so.
Honey had retaliated by growing into a snarky tomboy who had never seen the use for a dress and didn’t know which end of a tube of lipstick to use. He had always been particularly fond of his sister.
“An event. With the Maxfields,” Jackson said.
Her mouth dropped open. “Are you out of your mind?”
“I asked him that already,” Jackson grunted.
“Well, ask again. Then check him for brain damage.”
“No more brain damage than I had already,” Creed said.
“Then why are we doing this?” Honey asked.
“Because,” he said, taking a long moment to chew on the words that were about to come out next, because they hurt. “Wren had a point. She thinks we should join the wineries together. Make this area more of a tourist destination for wine. Wine trails, and things like that. There’s no point in being competitive when we can advertise for each other. People like to try all different kinds of wines, and experience all different atmospheres when they’re on vacation.”
“You sound like a brochure,” Jackson said.
He probably did. Mostly because Wren had sounded like one and he was basically repeating her. “Well. That’s a good thing,” Creed said. “Since we need some new brochures. And somebody has to write them. It isn’t going to be either of you.”
“True,” Honey said cheerfully.
“You do have to help me barbecue. And you have to help set up this party. I need you two there. If for no other reason than to be witnesses.”
“Witnesses to what?” Jackson asked.
“Just in case Wren decides to murder me.”