Page 26 of Taken With You
The sudden dip of his voice shot a powerful ripple through her body. To argue was to reveal her unease, so she sank into the chair as he bid.
“Check this out.” He turned the laptop around so she could see the screen. “My inbox is overflowing.”
Forcing her attention away from that strong, cliff-climbing hand, she glimpsed the names of half a dozen wineries in the list of emails. “Are those all invitations?”
“Yes. They’ve all come since the CWA interview went live.”
“Wow.” She perused the invites to brunches, tastings, dinners, the kinds of industry networking events she’d always dreamed of attending. “Shelley mentioned you’d been getting invites, but there are more here than I expected. I guess it’s because you’re the new guy in town.”
“Or because I hired you.”
She pulled a face. Of course he’d read the CWA article. Shelley probably shoved it under his nose, crowing at her success in landing the free publicity. The reporter had focused on Garrick’s wealth and Cedar Ridge’s historic reputation, but he’d also wasted an inordinate amount of words speculating on Garrick’s choice of a young, inexperienced vintner.
She sank back against the chair. “I thought I’d made a better impression.”
“You did.” Garrick met her eye, his expression unreadable. “He’s just stirring things up.”
“It’ll take years to prove him wrong. You may come to rue your choice of a partner—”
“No chance.”
She stilled at his vehemence. He was just trying to shore her up. This was his business too, so it was his job to encourage the team. She’d be an idiot to read anything else into the intensity that flared up between them before he turned his attention back to the screen.
He said, “Shelley insists I accept every one of these invitations. And of course she insists you join me.”
“Impossible.” Why was her voice so raspy? “I told her that on the phone.”
“I backed you up.”
“I promised I would go to one event, and that’s it.”
“I’m glad you held strong.”
She frowned. “Even if it means forgoing some networking events?”
“I don’t want to wear out my master vintner.” He looked her over in a way that made her thighs squeeze. “And you’re looking pretty beat, Amanda.”
She couldn’t deny it. She hadn’t been sleeping much, and when she did she woke to sweaty, forbidden dreams. It was crush time, this was par for the course, especially when a fermentation tank went on the fritz in the middle of it all.
“Help me choose,” he said, drawing her attention back to the invites. “You know the industry, the players. Who can I refuse, and who do I have to accept?”
She perused each invitation, trying to ignore the muscled wonder of his forearm as he lightly drummed his fingers on the desk. He’d received a lot of invites, adding up to two a week, as far as she could tell. The interest was gratifying, but also daunting. Expectations for Cedar Ridge were rising at an exponential rate, and so was her anxiety.
“This,” she said as she tapped the screen to open the invite. “It’s an invite to the Georges Duchamp gala. That’s the biggest event of the season.”
Garrick frowned. “It’s this Saturday.”
“This is proof of the power of that CWA interview.” She looked the invite over, star-struck. “Invitations for this event go out months in advance, but they’re asking you to come at the last minute. You can’t say no.”
He tapped the table to draw her attention. “Wecan’t say no.”
She caught her breath and tried to imagine herself being driven up to the Duchamp Winery, legs stretched out in a limo, wrapped in a rent-a-designer dress, sitting beside the man she wasn’t supposed to be fantasizing about…but then the limo turned into a pumpkin and her into a scurrying mouse.
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t even think of refusing, Amanda.”
“I won’t refuse.” They’d be attending the gala together…as business partners. It most definitely, positively, absolutely wasn’t a date, not with this guy who’d gone all cool and efficient, unlike the leashed lion she’d faced that night basked by the light of the stars. “Of course we must go.”
“So,” he prompted, as if he got invited to glittering galas all the time. “Any others we can’t miss?”
