Page 41 of Taken With You
Hell.
“Shelley will agree with you.” He gave himself an inward shake. “She’ll smooth over things with the caterer.”
“I know.” She pulled her phone out of her back pocket as she leaned forward to set her wineglass on the small table between them. “I’ll tell her—”
“Not now.” He reached across for her free hand, caught it in his. “Later.”
She tilted her head, curiosity rising.
“Shelley’s been calling me all day. I don’t want to work anymore.” An odd, unhinged sort of feeling, but he was running with it. “I’ve been in the office since six a.m., except for two memorable interludes.”
“Yes.” Her fair skin flushed. “I remember them.”
He squeezed her small, lovely hand. “Let’s talk about something other than business.”
Her cell phone dinged the arrival of a text. She twitched, glanced at the screen, and then shot him a plaintive look.
“It’s from Mags,” she said. “I can tell by all the wink emojis. She’s probably just checking to see if I’ve tasted the new wine.”
The outside world just wouldn’t remain outside. With a nod, he released his grip on her. She straightened on the lounge chair and scrolled through the full text.
“It’s not about the wine,” she said. “It looks like Cedar Ridge got some good publicity. Mags sent me a link.”
She clicked on the link and swiped up. Excitement drain from her face as she muttered, “Shit.”
He swung his legs off the chair and joined her. On the screen of her phone, she enlarged a picture of him and her together, caught in a moment on the dance floor at the Georges Duchamp gala. His hand was splayed at the base of her bare back. They danced respectably apart, but their attention was fixed on each other.
They looked unaware of the gala, the music, the photographer.
The world.
Aiming for neutrality, he said, “It’s a great picture.”
“Yeah.” She huffed and tossed the phone on the table. “But of all the photos to publish.”
He retrieved the phone to read the caption.Garrick Kane, new owner of Cedar Ridge Winery, keeping time with his lovely wine master, Amanda Karlson.
Seriously. They couldn’t leave out thelovely?
He said, “It could be a lot worse.”
“We were so careful.” She slid him a rueful look. “It was such a charged night.”
“I remember.” He looked at the picture more closely. He hardly recognized his own expression. He was usually better at keeping a public mask, but the cameraman had caught him in a moment.
What kind of moment…he wasn’t sure he could admit.
He slid the phone back onto the table. “For what it’s worth, the camera loves you, Amanda.”
She shifted away from him. Not physically. Not in anger. But he sensed her pulling into herself, a turtle retreating into its shell.
“I suppose there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” She pinched at the space between her thumb and finger, a sure sign of nerves. “Gossip holds people’s attention. Cedar Ridge can take advantage of that—”
“We’re not doing that. Let people read into it what they want, but I refuse to fuel that fire.”
“It’s weird to think people might be talking about us.”
“The situation can be managed.”
