Chapter 23
(Aria POV)
By the next morning, Marcus was icy again.
In the office, his sleeves were rolled neat, his glasses perched low, his tone clipped as he went over invoices with the assistant. No one would have guessed that only hours ago he’d had me bent across that same desk, whispering that I was his.
He didn’t look at me when I came in with event schedules. He didn’t smile. Not even the ghost of one.
“Leave them there,” he said, nodding to the corner of the desk. Professional. Detached. Like my body wasn’t still humming with the memory of his hands.
I set the folder down and left before my face betrayed me.
But the thing about vineyards in the harvest season is there are always eyes. Workers, interns, distributors, neighbors. Whispers travel faster than the forklifts.
By lunchtime, I caught the tail end of a conversation on the crush pad, two guys hosing down bins, smirking. Boss man’s got himself a new girl. Young one too.
Heat flooded my cheeks. This is what the cool detachment from Marcus was about. It was all making sense now.
By early afternoon, my father had heard.
I was bent down organizing event menus in the lobby when I saw my dad rush into Marcus’s office. The door was a jar and I heard everything.
“Marcus.” My dad said firm, low, carrying the weight of their partnership.
I froze, half-hidden by the file cabinet
“What’s this I’m hearing?” Dad asked. “Rumors. About you and my daughter.”
Silence. A long one. My chest tightened.
When Marcus finally spoke, his voice was cool. “You know how crews talk this time of year.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Another silence. I pressed my back to the cabinet, my heart slamming against my ribs.
Finally, Marcus’s tone shifted, quieter, harder. “Tom, I respect you. And I would never intentionally do anything to hurt you. Or her.”
Her. Me. The world tilted.
Dad sighed, heavily and tired. “Make sure of it, Marcus. Because she’s my kid. And I won’t have her reputation or this business torn apart by gossip.” His footsteps faded, the door clicking shut behind him.
I stood frozen, throat dry, pulse racing. Marcus hadn’t denied it. Not really. I watched my dad storm out of there. I knew that posture and step, he was fuming.
And that terrified me.
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(Marcus POV)
I can’t believe I lied to Tom. He didn’t deserve that. But what choice did I have? I left the office and ran right into Aria. She was practically on top of me.
“Barrel room, now. I need to check temperatures.”
The barrel room smelled like oak, fermenting grapes and guilt.
Aria followed behind me, boots crunching softly against the concrete floor, and I couldn’t look at her right away.
Not after Tom. Not after standing in that office and lying straight to the face of the only man who’d stood beside me through twenty years of harvests, bad contracts, divorce papers, funerals, and damn near bankruptcy.
“You’re hurting him,” Aria said quietly behind me.
The words landed clean and sharp. I turned slowly. “You weren’t supposed to hear any of that.”
“Well, I did.”
Sunlight filtered through the high windows, striping her in gold and shadow. She looked too young and too beautiful standing in the middle of my barrel room after what we’d done on my desk only yesterday.
Mine. Christ. That word had become a disease in my head.
I scrubbed my hand along my jaw. “Tom trusts me.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” My voice roughened. “You don’t understand what that means to a man like me.”
Her chin lifted. Defensive already. “So what, I’m supposed to feel guilty because you fell in love with me?”
The air left my lungs. Not lust. Not obsession. Not temptation.
Love.
Hearing her say it out loud made something inside me crack wide open. What’s that saying? Out of the mouth of babes…because she was right.
I stared at her for a long moment, then laughed once under my breath, bitter as hell. “That’s the problem, sweetheart.”
She went still.
I stepped closer, lowering my voice. “If this was just sex, I could stop.”
That hit her. I saw it in the way her breath caught.
“But it’s not,” I admitted. “And every day this keeps going… I betray him a little more.”
The silence settled heavily between us. Then softer, almost angry at myself, I said, “I look at you and I forget who I’m supposed to be.”
Her eyes glistened slightly, but she tried to hide it with attitude. “Maybe who you’re supposed to be isn’t making you happy.”
Jesus Christ.
That nearly undid me more than her body ever had.
I reached for her before I could stop myself, dragging her against my chest, burying my face in her hair for one selfish second.
“You are going to destroy me,” I whispered.
And the worst part? I wasn’t sure anymore if I wanted to survive it.
Aria looked at me slowly, her hands still fisted on the front of my shirt. I could feel her heartbeat against my chest, quick and uneven, matching mine.
“Marcus…” she whispered.
The way she said my name nearly broke what little restraint I had left. I closed my eyes for one second. Just one. Breathing her in like a man trying to memorize the last clean breath before drowning.
Then I forced myself to step back. Her expression shifted. Confusion first. Then hurt.
“What are you doing?”
“I need you to leave.” The words came out rougher than I intended.
Her brows furrowed. “Leave?”
“Yes.” I dragged a hand through my hair, pacing once before turning back toward her. “Because if you stay in this room for another five minutes, I’m going to forget every reason that this is a bad idea.”
Silence. I laughed once under my breath, exhausted and bitter. “Christ, Aria, I already barely remember them now.”
That softened her anger a little, but not enough.
“So that’s it?” she asked quietly. “You tell me you love me and then throw me out of the barrel room?”
Love. There it was again. No taking it back anymore.
My chest tightened hard enough to ache. “I’m trying to think,” I admitted. “And I can’t think when you’re near me.”
She crossed her arms defensively, though her eyes still glistened. “About what?”
I held her gaze for a long moment before answering. “How to look your father in the eye tomorrow.”
That landed. The air changed instantly between us. Because suddenly this wasn’t fantasy anymore. It was consequences.
I stepped closer again, gentler this time, brushing my knuckles against her cheek. “You need to go home, sweetheart.”
Her breath trembled slightly. “And you?” she asked.
I looked past her toward the rows of barrels, the legacy Tom and I built together, the life I was seconds away from detonating. “I’m going to decide what kind of man I still am.”