in those words rankled. He tipped his too handsome face backward and took another sip of wine. “You know, this event might also need a bouncy castle.”
“No,” she said.
He wasn’t serious. She knew that. That was ridiculous. This was not going to be some family Sunday picnic. He knew her well enough to know that, whether he agreed or not.
“A dunk tank.”
“Absolutely not,” she responded. “It’s happening in October.”
“This is your problem, Wren. You can’t think outside the box. You want to bring two labels together that historically have never had anything to do with each other. You want to bring together two very different types of people.”
“The kinds of people that are at my winery do not want bouncy castles. Or children running around anywhere.”
“Oh, they want perfect little Stepford children just like all of you were?”
Irritation twisted in her stomach. “You don’t know me. You don’t know us.”
“Don’t I? You’re proving that I do. You’re all worried about appearances here, like you always have been, when this whole thing with your daddy should have taught you appearances don’t mean much of anything.”
“How dare you?” She was trembling now, irritation turning to total outrage. “How dare you bring my father into this?”
“It was too easy.”
“I’ve been through enough. We’ve been through enough. I don’t need you flinging things at me about my family that I can’t control. You want to talk about living in a box... You’ve never even left here, have you?”
“We both know that’s not true. A fair amount of travel is required to do this job.”
“Did you even go to college?” she asked.
“No,” he responded. “I was too busy working to build the family label. I guess you think attending college makes you smarter than me, but all it means is you were from a different sort of family. You see, we are not from money. Not like you. You think that makes you better, but it doesn’t. Because you know what else? My dad never sexually harassed a woman either. Unlike yours.”
Raged poured through her and she fought to keep from showing just how mad he’d made her. He was doing it on purpose. He didn’t deserve the satisfaction of knowing he’d succeeded in getting to her.
“Where is your damn wine cellar?” she asked. “I want to go look at what else you have.”
“You don’t want to keep having this conversation?”
“I never wanted to start having it,” she said, each word coming out in a monotone. Because if she allowed her voice to amp up, she was going to say something she would regret.
Not that there was much she could say in anger that she would regret having spat out at Creed. It wasn’t the anger that scared her. It was everything that hummed underneath it. That it could still hum underneath when she was so infuriated with him. When he was being such a...such an unrepentant asshole.
“Wine cellar’s this way,” he said.
He led the way to the back of the barn, where there was a staircase that led straight down.
She was reluctantly charmed by it. By the uneven rock walls that gave it the vague feel of a French country home. The thick, uneven slabs of wood that made up the staircase, making it feel old-world and resonant.
She was irritated she didn’t hate it. She was irritated that he had homed in on the exact thing about herself that was bothering her at the moment.
That he had managed to poke at her exact point of insecurity. All the things she had been thinking of when she had driven into town. About how there was this whole other life here—a whole other life in general—that she had never even considered living because she was a...a Stepford child. It was exactly what she had been.
Going where her father had chosen for her to go, growing into exactly what he had wanted her to grow into. Taking the job he had given her. And she was still doing it all. All of the exact same things she had done before her father had gone away. Before he had stepped down from the company in disgrace.
And it did make her wonder... What creature had she been fashioned into?
And for whom?
She didn’t think there was an alternative reality where she would be in favor of a bouncy castle at her event, but she truly didn’t know. She could only speculate.
Everyone is a product of their circumstances. Don’t be so hard on yourself.
She nearly nodded at the affirmation she gave