 by Tessa Bailey.jpg)
Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 107710 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107710 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
After losing her job and her fiancé in one fell swoop, Natalie Vos returned home to lick her wounds. A few months later, she's sufficiently drowned her sorrows in cabernet and she's ready to get back on her feet. She just needs her trust fund to finance her new business venture. Unfortunately, the terms require she marry before she can have the money. And well, dumped, remember? But Natalie is desperate enough to propose to a man who makes her want to kill him--and kiss him, in equal measure.
August Cates may own a vineyard, but he doesn't know jack about making wine. He's determined to do his late best friend proud, no matter what it takes. Except his tasting room is empty, his wine is disgusting (seriously, he once saw someone gag), and his buddy's legacy is circling the drain. No bank will give him the loan he needs to turn the business around... and then the gorgeous, feisty heiress knocks on his door. Natalie has haunted his dreams since the moment they met, but their sizzling chemistry immediately morphed into simmering insults.
Now, a quickie marriage could help them both. A sham wedding, a few weeks living under the same roof, and then they can go their separate ways--assuming they make it out alive. How hard could it be? There's just one thing they didn't account for: their unfortunate, unbearable, undeniable attraction.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter One
For as long as August Cates could remember, his dick had ruined everything.
In seventh grade, he’d gotten a hard-on during a pep rally while standing in front of the entire school in football pants. Since his classmates couldn’t openly call him Woody in the presence of their teachers, they’d called him Tom Hanks, instead. It stuck all through high school. To this day, he cringed at the very mention of Toy Story.
Trust your gut, son.
His navy commander father had always said that to him. In fact, that was pretty much all he’d ever said, by way of advice. Everything else constituted a direct order. Problem was, August tended to need a little more instruction. A diagram, if possible. He wasn’t a get-it-right-on-the-first-try type of man. Which was probably why he’d mistaken his “gut” for his dick.
Meaning, he’d translated his father’s advice into . . .
Trust your dick, son.
August straightened the wineglass in front of him in order to forgo adjusting the appendage in question. The glass sat on a silver tray, seconds from being carried to the panel of judges. Currently, the three smug elitists were sipping a Cabernet offering that had been entered into the Bouquets and Beginners competition by another local vintner. The crowd of Napa Valley wine snobs leaned forward in their folding chairs to hear the critique from one judge in particular.
Natalie Vos.
The daughter of a legendary winemaker.
Vos Vineyard heiress and all-around plague on his fucking sanity.
August watched her full lips perch on the edge of the glass. They were painted a kind of lush plum color today. They matched the silk blouse she wore tucked into a leather skirt and he swore to God, he could feel the crush of that leather in his palms. Could feel his fingertips raking down her bare legs to remove those high heels with spikes on the toes. Not for the first time—no, incredibly far from the first time—he mentally kicked himself in the ass for sabotaging his chances of taking Natalie Vos to bed. She wouldn’t touch him through a hazmat suit now, and she’d told him as much umpteen times.
His chances of winning this contest didn’t bode well.
Not only because he and Natalie Vos were enemies, but because his wine sucked big sweaty donkey balls. Everyone knew it. Hell, August knew it. The only one to call him out on it, however, was preparing to deliver her verdict to the audience.
“Color is rich, if a bit light. Notes of tobacco in front. Citrus aftertaste. Veering toward acidic, but . . .” She held the wine up to the sun and studied it through the glass. “Overall very enjoyable. Admirable for a two-year-old winery.”
Murmurs and golf claps all around from the audience.
The winemaker thanked the judges. He actually bowed to Natalie while retrieving his glass and August couldn’t stifle an eye roll to save his life. Unfortunately, Natalie caught the action and raised a perfect black brow, signaling August forward for his turn at the judging table, like a princess summoning a commoner—and didn’t that fit their roles to a T?
August didn’t belong in this sunny five-star resort and spa courtyard on a Saturday afternoon ferrying wine on a silver tray to these wealthy birdbrains who overinflated the importance of wine so much it felt like satire. He didn’t belong in sophisticated St. Helena. Wasn’t cut out to select the best bunch of grapes at the grocery store, let alone cultivate soil and grow them from scratch to make his very own brand of wine.
I tried, Sammy.
He’d really fucking tried. This contest had a grand prize of ten thousand dollars and that money was August’s last hope to keep the operation alive. If given another chance, he would be more hands-on during the fermentation process. He’d learned the hard way that “set it and forget it” didn’t work for shit with wine. It required constant tasting, correcting, and rebalancing to prevent spoilage. He might do better if given another season to prove himself.
For that, he needed money. And he had a better chance of getting Natalie in the sack than winning this competition, which was to say, he had no chance whatsoever—because, yeah. His wine blew chunks. He’d be lucky if they managed to let it rest on their taste buds for three seconds, let alone declare him the winner. But August would try to the bitter end, so he would never look back and wonder if he could have done more to bring this secondhand dream to life.
August strode to the judge’s table and set the glasses of wine in front of Natalie with a lot less ceremony than his competitors had, sniffed, and stepped back, crossing his arms. Disdain stared back at him in the form of the two most annoyingly beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. Sort of a whiskey gold, ringed in a darker brown. He could still remember the moment the expression in those eyes had gone from take-me-to-bed-daddy to please-drink-poison.