Page 46 of Lighting Up Christmas

“For the website, yes.” Her heart rate kicked up when he straightened and all but stalked toward her.

“So let’s taste.”

“Me? I’m not a wine expert. I wouldn’t know how to describe your wines.”

“So you say,” he mused, hands on his hips, the power of his attention fully on her so that Riley felt like she was trying to make a prison break and he’d shone the spotlight on her trying to scale a ten-foot wall. She was pinned in place. “But you could act as a novice consumer.”

“Ahhhhh.”

“Riley.” He placed his hands on either side of her. “You told me you liked to learn new things.”

“I do.”

“You can taste my unironic ice wine, the late harvest Riesling, and a few others and tell me what you think.”

“Unironic?”

“My friends in college used to call me Ice. It stuck since quite a few of them are now my employees and colleagues.”

His voice held no expression.

“You need new friends,” she informed him.

“I’ll work on that.”

Riley’s competitive nature rose up, and before she could question her sanity, she dared him. “If I’m trying something new, then you are too.”

One thick, dark brow rose in challenge. “What do you have in mind?”

“I’ll let you know after the wine tasting.” She smiled. “So you don’t decide to poison me and stash my body in the woods when you hear my challenge.”

“A challenge, is it?”

“Definitely.”

His eyes glimmered although he still had his deceptively cool and lazy pose. “You, Riley Flanagan, are on.”

Chapter Nine

“Ready?” Riley asked,fingers poised on her computer.

“You make it sound like a performance.” Zhang paused, hand on the bottle of one of his wines.

Riley liked the long, slender shape of the bottle. It was elegant, and the way he cradled the body was sexy.

“It is, isn’t it?” She dragged her mind out of the gutter. “In tasting rooms, the tasting staff has a script. It’s a show. Entertainment.”

“You want me to entertain you.”

“Not a problem.” Riley just put it out there.

He paused as he deftly twisted in the corkscrew. She was in some trouble deep with this man, but she was more excited than terrified—definite bonus.

Riley pushed record on her phone as he poured a taste into her glass.

“This is a Riesling from the Spirit block.”

“How did you come up with the name for that block?”

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