to murder me.”
“You could take her,” Honey said.
Yeah. He could take her. That was for damn sure. But not in the way his sister meant. “You know I would never hurt a lady.”
“That’s far too gallant if the lady is willing to murder you,” Honey said pragmatically.
“You could try to be less annoying,” Jackson said.
“Look,” Creed said. “She came to me. So, it’s up to her to behave herself. I didn’t go to her, and I wouldn’t have.”
Though, truth be told, he would have to behave himself, too. The prospect of spending extra time with Wren Maxfield was definitely problematic. But he’d spent the last five years not touching her. A few weeks of working in close proximity shouldn’t be an issue.
Hell. They wouldn’t be.
Because when Creed Cooper decided something, he stuck to it. Control was what he was all about. He might be a rich cowboy who could have everything he wanted, but that didn’t mean he did have everything he wanted. Not anymore. Not after he had experienced the disastrous consequences of that kind of behavior.
He had learned his lesson.
And he would never again make the mistakes he’d made as a kid.
That was for damn sure.
Two
Sometimes it still felt strange and disorienting to walk through the large Italian villa-style home, knowing their father would likely never return. That everything here had been previously certain but now...wasn’t.
For as long as Wren could remember, her life had been on a steady course. Everything had been the same. From the time she was a child she had known she would work for Maxfield Vineyards. And the only real question had been in what capacity. Emerson’s contribution had been based on her strengths. She was a social media wizard, but that was not something anyone could have anticipated, considering the medium hadn’t existed in the same form when they were younger.
But Wren... Wren had always had a talent for hospitality. She had always been able to make people feel at ease. Even when everything had been going well in her parents’ marriage, from the outside looking in, there had been an invisible band of tension in the house. The tension had only ever been worse when they were dealing with the Coopers. Whatever the reason, her father hated that family. And he had instilled a hefty dose of that dislike in her. Though, Creed had taken that dislike to a personal level.
Even so, Wren was an expert at managing tension. And making everything seem like it was okay. Delightful, even when it was decidedly less so.
Even when she and Creed wanted to dismember each other, they could both do their jobs. She imagined that was why he was in his position in his family company. The same as she was in hers.
Event planning and liaising with other companies in a personal way to create heightened brand recognition was something she excelled at. But, it had also been the only real surprise in her entire life. Apart from when James Maxfield had been utterly and completely disgraced.
Yes. That was really the first time her life had taken an unexpected turn.
She still wasn’t sure how she felt about it. On the one hand, her father was clearly a monster. And, having never been...emotionally close with him—not in the way Emerson had been—it didn’t devastate Wren. But it did leave her feeling adrift.
Now she was drifting into uncharted territory with this Cowboy Wines partnership, and she truly did not know how she felt about that either. But it was happening. So, there wasn’t much to be done about it.
In fact, she was meeting with Creed this morning. The two of them were going to be talking logistics and deciding which wines to feature. They wanted to showcase the broad spectrum of what each wine label did best, while not stepping on each other’s toes. Unusual, since generally they were deliberately going head-to-head.
But now they weren’t. Another unusual thing in a slew of unusual things.
She got into her shiny little sports car and pulled out of the grand circular drive that led to the top of the mountain where the family home sat. She took the drive all the way down to the road, and as she put distance between herself and the villa, she was surprised to realize the pressure she hadn’t noticed building in her chest began to get lighter and lighter.
And that shouldn’t be what was happening. She should be feeling more and more stressed the closer she got to Creed. It didn’t