Chapter 8 - Mikhail
Was it so bad that I loved how feisty Laurel got when I pretended to reject her favorite wine?
In fact, I ordered several cases, but she wouldn’t know that until they showed up.
This trip was supposed to be a fact-finding mission, in and out, and back to LA, where my family needed me with the way the attacks on their businesses were happening almost nightly now.
But now I needed more time with Laurel. It was pretty clear that finding her name on the vineyard’s old website page was either a mistake or referring to someone else. An odd coincidence, made stranger by her behavior that morning, but things happened.
Instead of considering it a treat, as soon as we pulled into one of the top-rated resorts in the area, she was back to stressing out, hard.
How did I manage to become obsessed with a woman who was seemingly impossible to please? She dawdled out by the car, and when she caught up, I had already booked us in.
“Just charge whatever you need to your room,” I said, then suggested she get a massage before dinner.
I wanted to take her to the best place in town, and after a shower, settled in to do my own research so I could surprise her. My brother would have been having a blast taunting me for acting this way, especially for a woman who viewed me as an enemy.
That was half the fun. It was impossible to understand it myself, let alone explain to my brother why someone who infuriated me as much as Laurel did also had my heart racing for reasons other than anger every time I looked at her.
It wasn’t just her beauty. It went so much deeper than that. I could have named twenty things I found exciting or attractive about Laurel, and none of them would have been what was driving me to need more of her. All of her.
I had a feeling my father would get it, though. He was almost like a different person since getting together with Tati. Not that I was ready to settle down with one woman, even one as exquisite as Laurel.
Or was I?
The very thought of letting her slip away had me feeling just about the same way she looked when we met up for dinner. Pale, visibly nervous, but still gorgeous, though I wasn’t too pleased to see that her stubbornness kept her in the same jeans and blouse I left her in.
“You were supposed to do some shopping,” I said.
“Not really part of my job description,” she answered without much bite.
“Well, you’re going to feel silly when I tell you where we’re going.”
I announced the name of the restaurant, bragging how it normally took months to get reservations, but we’d have the best table in the house. We still had time if she wanted to hurry up and buy a nice dress from one of the resort boutiques.
Here I was jumping through hoops yet again, and once more she was completely unimpressed, shrugging off the suggestion to shop. She was almost violently opposed to my restaurant choice, even when I showed her the irresistible menu.
She shook her head. “It’s ridiculous to eat a two-hundred-dollar piece of meat.”
“Since when were you paying?” I asked, firmly steering her toward the front where the limo waited.
“How about we eat here?” she asked. “They’re supposed to have delicious sea bass.”
I pulled up the resort’s menu and showed her the prices, which were just as eye-watering as the steakhouse I chose. “Try again,” I said.
“Well, since you did tell me to research where to go tonight,” she started, giving me a side eye like I was trying to do her job instead of surprising her with an extravagant night out. “I found a local brewery called the Dog and Kettle.”
Her hand trembled slightly as she showed it to me on her phone.
I could barely see past the sudden flash of anger.
Not exactly new where Laurel was concerned, but I thought we found some common ground when we were joking around at the vineyard.
Now she was back to making subtle jabs that I couldn’t possibly know anything about fine dining and relegating us to some dumpy local brewhouse.
I’d traveled all over the world, damn it. Oh, right, she also thought everything in my life was handed to me, and I didn’t appreciate any of it. She didn’t have to say the words. I could read her face like a book. Yes, I was born rich, but I worked for the most important things in my life.
“Just please take a look at it,” she said, her voice trembling as much as her hand.
There was something about that desperate plea that made me take her phone and scroll through the pictures of the Dog and Kettle. Not actually dumpy at all, it looked like a respectable setup, with several good-sized fermentation vessels and a row of taps that made my mouth water.
Yeah, I could use a good beer, and the hundreds of reviews assured me that’s what I would get there.
When I agreed, she relaxed a little bit, and by the time we arrived, she was once again back to normal, with only a few darted glances around as soon as we got inside.
It wasn’t like I had never been around someone who was being followed, and I’d been tailed plenty of times myself.
I knew what it looked like, and that was exactly how she was acting.
“You got enemies?” I asked in a joking tone after a burly guy told us to sit wherever we wanted.
“Just you,” she answered snappily enough that I figured I was imagining things.
I was in too deep with her, too invested. Making things up because I was used to being around a totally different kind of person from Laurel. She wasn’t going to stab me in the back, figuratively or literally. She was just a woman with a job to do, and fighting to do her best.
I grabbed my chest, feigning shock and horror at her quip. “Not in a million years,” I said, putting my hand on the small of her back and guiding her toward the bar. “Now it’s my turn to show off my expertise.”
“I’ll do my best to appreciate it,” she said, sickly sweet, letting me know she didn’t think I had done the same while we were at the winery.
God, she was infuriating, so why the hell was I smiling? Especially since there were still unanswered questions because I didn’t buy that there was no history here for her, even if it wasn’t at Canyon Vines.
I was going to dig deeper, because I had to know everything about her, but right now, I only wanted to relax and enjoy her company, even if she kept needling me. Which she would. And I’d continue to love it.