Page 49 of Bitter Rival

If utilized effectively, this software will promote growth and save money without sacrificing quality!

Big promises from the man himself, delivered to the entire team when we were forced to sit through a dull presentation on how to use the software.

Just the fact that she calls him my boss makes me seethe. “Why would you even ask that?”

“Because the sexual tension between you two is thick,” Callie says. “Anyone can see that.”

“That’s not sexual tension. That’s barely disguised animosity. It’s taking everything in me not to wrap my hands around his throat and wring his neck.”

Callie laughs. “Yeah, okay. Then how do you explain why he got so jealous the other day?”

“If you’re talking about lunch, that wasn’t jealousy.”

“He made Hunter change seats,” she points out.

All because I was having too much fun and had the audacity to laugh at something Hunter said. “He just loves to suck the joy out of life. He’s a control freak who needs to be in charge of everything, including who I sit next to at lunch and who I talk to.” I gesture to her laptop. “And just look at all the extra work he’s created for you.”

“I mean…it is an improvement,” Callie says, looking over at me. “But you know what you need?”

I lean against the counter and stare at the test tubes and glass beakers. “A shovel and an alibi?”

She laughs. “Is he really that bad?”

I give her a look. “Yesterday I questioned his authority and he said, ‘Daisy, some of us are born to lead and others to follow.’ He made it very clear which camp I was in.”

Callie laughs again. “I’m sorry. It’s just…” She shakes her head, laughing. “Okay, I have a theory so just hear me out. What if his father forced you together because he thought you’d be perfect for each other?”

I stare at her like she’s suddenly grown three heads and eight arms. “You can’t be serious. You think Robert was playing matchmaker?” I laugh at how ludicrous that sounds. “No.” I shake my head. “Definitely not.”

“Why not? Like, what if Robert figured out that Beckett had given up on love, and then he saw you and thought…aha! Daisy would be perfect for my son.”

I snort. “I think you’ve been reading too many romance novels.”

“I don’t know. I think it makes perfect sense. Robert was a romantic. And vineyards epitomize romance. The people who run them are passionate about the grapes and the origin and the land. Robert loved this place so he obviously loved both of you.”

I give her a skeptical look. “I’m not so sure that Robert did any of this out of the goodness of his heart.”

I wish I knew why he set it up this way, but I guess it was too much to ask that he would have actually shared his plans with his estranged son and stepdaughter.

“Okay, I don’t know the whole story so I could be way off base but maybe he sensed that something was missing in both of your lives and that you’d find it here.”

“Do you watch a lot of Hallmark movies, Callie?”

She laughs. “I mean…everyone loves a happy ending, right?”

She’s wrong about me and Beckett. But not entirely wrong about Robert.

He was a bigger than life character. Outspoken. Passionate. Flawed. Human.

When I lived here, he treated me like an adult, not a child, and introduced me to art and literature and films that weren’t PG. I’ve always been drawn to the subversive, so I loved it.

He took me to art exhibits of emerging artists. We listened to The Velvet Underground. Watched Godard films. He read Ginsberg’s “Howl” to me when I was eleven. Who would ever read a poem like that to a young girl? Robert. That’s who.

He introduced me to the work of Annie Leibovitz and Nan Goldin who became my biggest inspirations, and they still are to this day.

And Robert would always ask, “How does that make you feel, Daisy?”

Because art is supposed to make you feel something.

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