Page 75 of Bitter Rival

“Stop lying. You were weeping like a baby.”

“Tears of frustration, maybe. I’d just had the best sex of my life and had no way of tracking her down.” Grayson sighs and shakes his head. “If you’d been a decent wingman, you would have gotten her full name and address. Or at the very least, her friend’s name.”

I wish I hadn’t brought it up. He’s been trying to remember that night for five years. Most likely, his one-night-stand stole his phone and his wallet full of cash before she took off, leaving him high and dry.

And as for “the best sex of his life”, that’s debatable.

If he can’t even remember that night, how great could it have been?

I finish my iced coffee and stand. “I need a shower. You need a life.”

“I have a life and I have a plan so hurry up and get ready. We’ve got shit to do.”

“I have a vineyard to run.” But since I’ve given myself weekends off, I text Hunter a list of instructions and message Caiden before pocketing my phone and heading to the shower.

I’ve been doing double the work for the past two weeks, picking up the slack for Daisy, who is of absolutely no help on the vineyard because of her wrist.

In addition to running this place, I’ve been working overtime to ensure the sale of our startup goes smoothly. It hasn’t gone through yet, but in two weeks’ time it will. In the end, we didn’t really have a choice. The board and our investors were so eager to make a quick sale that they would have ousted us if we hadn’t agreed.

I could use a change of scenery. Which is why I go along with Grayson’s plan.

Although I insist on driving.

“Boutique hotels, baby. That’s where it’s at,” Grayson says, rubbing his hands together as we drive past a field of sunflowers and a farmstand along the side of the road selling lavender-infused honey.

“Since when?”

“Since I sat on the terrace of your crumbling mansion and looked out at the rolling hills of the vineyard. I want a legacy of my own.”

How ironic that I’m intent on shitting all over my father’s legacy while Grayson is trying to create one.

After taking a scenic tour of Sutton Ridge wine country and the historic downtown, we head to Ledger’s bar for lunch on the deck.

“So this was your old man’s place?” Grayson asks when Ledger returns to our table, straddling the chair across from me, after settling a dispute with a customer.

Ledger nods and runs his fingers through his hair, squinting against the sun streaming through the redwoods.

“Yeah. He ran it into the ground before he took off. A while back, I bought it from the sleazeball he sold it to. Got it pretty cheap because the guy needed some quick cash but I had to put a lot of money into it before I started running at a profit.”

Ledger’s old man was a shitty father but in a different way than mine. Ledger never really talked about it much, but everyone in Sutton Ridge knew that Virgil Hale was trouble.

I’m surprised he’d want anything to do with this bar but I guess he made it his own and removed all traces of Virgil. Still. Why hang on to it at all? I doubt that Ledger is any more sentimental than I am. I want to get rid of the vineyard as quickly as possible. The fewer reminders of my father, the better.

“Cool place. Great location,” Grayson says, glancing around the deck like he’s thinking about buying a bar to go with this boutique hotel he wants to open. “Where’s Caiden anyway?”

Now that we’ve finished our lunch, he’s chomping at the bit to check out his “new hotel.”

“Should be here soon,” Ledger says. “He got tied up doing some work for his hot neighbor.”

I take a pull of my beer. “The single mom he claimed nothing was going on with?”

Ledger grins. “That’s the one.” His gaze drifts to the doorway. “Allegedly, Caiden and Mia are ‘just friends’ but he’s always over there playing handyman. Isn’t that right, Donnelly?”

“Fuck off,” Caiden says, dropping into the empty chair at our table. “We are just friends. No need for the air quotes,” he grumbles.

“I don’t use air quotes.”

“They were heavily implied.” Caiden looks at Grayson. “So you must be the guy who wants to buy the old Riverside Inn?”

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