Page 3 of Bitter Rival

“I suppose it was too much to hope that you’d be nothing like your mother.”

I hear the disdain in his voice tinged with disappointment and maybe I should set him straight, but I don’t appreciate the way he jumped to his own conclusions and made assumptions about me long before I ever stepped off that plane.

He doesn’t deserve an explanation.

“How convenient that you have me all figured out. Saves us from having to go through that whole getting to know you phase.”

“I already know as much as I need to,” he retorts. “Congratulations on exceeding my low expectations.”

“Then I guess that makes us both overachievers,” I volley. “You’ve exceeded mine as well.”

With a snort of derision, he reaches into the side pocket and tosses a leather binder onto my lap.

From what I can gather as I flip through the pages, it’s a list of repairs and improvements that need to be made to the house and the winery.

For all I know he’s massively inflated the cost and invented half the stuff on this list.

There are rows and rows of numbers and calculations, but the gist of it is that he’ll pay for everything up-front and deduct it from my share after we sell.

“Someone had a little too much fun making spreadsheets.”

“Someone has to be organized.”

“You could have at least color coordinated it and used some pretty tabs,” I say with a mock pout. “A few illustrations would have been a nice touch.”

“This isn’t nursery school. My office doesn’t come equipped with crayons and magic markers.”

“And you wonder why you’re not a successful businessman,” I scoff.

He doesn’t even deign to respond. Judging by the Patek Philippe on his wrist and his air of condescension and superiority, I suspect he’s wildly successful in the business world. Guys like him usually are.

When I met his father for lunch in New York last year, he told me his son is a CEO—something finance, or technology-related, dreadfully dull by the sounds of it.

“I know my son,” Robert said. “And what he’s doing now won’t make him happy in the long run.”

I’d questioned what gave him the authority to make that assumption when he hadn’t spoken to his son in years. Robert’s reply, “You owe me, Daisy.”

I should have kept my big mouth shut.

While I could argue that my mother owed him, not me, I’d become so accustomed to shouldering the blame that I acknowledged that, yeah, maybe I did owe him something.

But that was before he died, when I was still blissfully unaware that he would be using me as a pawn in his twisted game.

As I flip through pages with a detailed itinerary of jobs to be done around the vineyard and winery, I wish that I had told Robert Heyward to take a fucking hike.

Every week is accounted for, beginning with tomorrow right up until the third week of September. And there’s only one name at the top of the column. Mine.

“What will you be doing while I’m cleaning out tanks and tending to the vines?”

“Supervising. Obviously.”

“Oh gosh, this is not at all the holiday I had in mind.” I let out an exaggerated sigh. “I envisioned myself sunning on the terrace with a glass of wine while I watched you getting your hands dirty. In my fantasy you were shirtless and sweaty riding a tractor.” I lick my lips and bat my lashes, but my acting skills are lost on him.

He’s wearing a mask of indifference, and my comment is met with utter silence.

“We’re supposed to be in this together.” I slam the binder shut and toss it into the back seat. “This isn’t what your father wanted.”

“Then he should have thought about that before leaving half of his estate to a spoiled princess with a sense of entitlement,” he says. “You probably haven’t done a hard day’s work in your life. This will be good for you.”

---