Claiming The Rancher's Heir (Gold Valley Vineyards #2) - Maisey Yates Page 0,2
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 whatever.”
“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