Page 17 of Bitter Rival

“Rich assholes, I’ll bet.”

I stab my finger at him. “But you, my dear sir, are by far the worst.”

“Off to Pemberley you go.” He shoos me out the door with his hand like I’m a pesky fly. “Good luck finding a wealthy suitor.”

I roll my eyes as the door slams shut behind me. But if he actually believes I’m going to plan this party for him with only a week’s notice, he must be on crack.

If Beckett had taken the time to get to know the employees, he would have figured out that he already has people on the payroll to do the job he’s assigned to me.

When lunchtime rolls around, I track down Georgia who is flirting with two men in the tasting room. Her job title is Hospitality Director & Event Coordinator, but from what I’ve seen, she’s only hospitable toward men, and I have yet to see her coordinate a single event.

She reminds me a little bit of my mother—blonde and botoxed—but not nearly as beautiful.

My mother is one of those women who can walk into a room and command the attention of every person in it. She turns heads and when she speaks, people listen because she’s not only a pretty face, she’s also clever and entertaining.

Her superpower is making a man feel like he’s the most charming, interesting human on the planet, and she does it in a way that never looks forced or like she’s trying too hard.

Georgia is the opposite. There’s a lot of hair flipping, arm touching and overly loud laughter.

When I finally manage to get her attention, she shoots me the evil eye.

“May I help you?” she asks with a saccharine smile that is so fake she’s not fooling anyone. The men quickly excuse themselves and Georgia crosses her arms over her chest, glaring at me like I’ve ruined all her fun. “What do you want?” she snaps.

Out of all the people working on the vineyard, she is the only one who has been openly hostile toward me. My mother always said women only act like that when they feel threatened. She didn’t have a lot of female friends. She didn’t really have any friends. And by the time I was a teenager, she’d treated me like I was her biggest threat, so Georgia’s open hostility doesn’t faze me a bit.

“Why didn’t he ask me himself?” Georgia asks after I tell her about the party Beckett wants to host.

She looks a little hurt and honestly, I have no idea why he didn’t ask her directly, but I suspect it’s another one of his ridiculous power plays. “I don’t know. Are you okay with it?”

“It’s short notice and you haven’t given me much to go on,” she huffs. “I’ll have to discuss this with Beckett.”

I would love to see how that goes down, but I’ve done my part, and I’m out.

This seems like a Beckett problem now.

But later, when I’m washing out tanks with Callie in the winery, it occurs to me that Beckett probably knew I’d go to Georgia. He’s smart, and nothing much gets past him, so he probably also knows that she doesn’t do her job.

What are you up to, evil mastermind?

I’m so curious to find out that I don’t even care that he got me involved.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Beckett

“Hi, Beckett.” Georgia gives me a little wave and a Colgate smile as she struts across the terrace in her sky-high heels and a form-fitted dress that shows just the right amount of cleavage to pass as tasteful. She looks like an aging beauty pageant contestant.

My father was so predictable. The only outlier was my mother.

“I heard you want to throw a party.” She sits on the edge of a cushioned chair opposite me and crosses her legs, tablet in hand. “I’ll need a bit more information than what Dahlia gave me.”

“Daisy. Her name is Daisy.”

“Oh, right. Daisy. Gosh. I’m so bad with names. So the party…” She takes my silence as a cue to continue talking. Her lips are moving, and words are coming out, but she’s saying nothing of substance.

It’s funny. I expected Daisy to be a younger version of Georgia but they’re nothing alike. Georgia is the bargain basement version of Astrid, and Daisy is in a league of her own. I’m not entirely sure who Daisy is yet but at least she keeps things interesting.

“… so I thought we could do a theme. Since it’s the Fourth of July, we can do red, white and blue decorations and we can ask the caterers to serve American food, but they could use wagyu beef for the burgers and make them bite-sized…”

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