While Margaret admired and envied her sister, most days wishing that she had the strength to stand up to their father and walk out of Story Imports, she knew she couldn’t do it herself. She loved him too much. Since her mother’s death from a brain aneurysm several years ago, he was all she had, and if it was possible to please him, to meet his expectations, to impress him—and yes, to win his love—she had to try.
Of course she’d prefer to spend all of her time at the vineyard. Of course she’d prefer to be her own boss, not a lowly administrative assistant in a company she should be co-running. Of course she’d rather be spending her days and nights with her hair unbound, in rolled-up jeans and bare feet, babying her grapes and sleeping at the three-room cottage she’d renovated at The Five Sisters Vineyard.
But that would disappoint her father. And she couldn’t do that. She just . . . couldn’t. And maybe someday, he’d see her worth and promote her. Maybe someday they’d run Story Imports together, as her mother had always dreamed.
With a deep sigh Margaret took her wineglass to the kitchen and turned off the lights before heading back to her bedroom. Falling back onto the plush, comfortable bed, she thought about Shane Olson—his thinning blonde hair, long nose, and cool blue eyes. He wasn’t conventionally handsome, but he was appropriate and ambitious, well educated and from a good family. He could tell an off-color joke in a conference room and have the stuffiest of geezers in stitches, and he could wrap an arm around a grieving secretary and make her feel like he really cared that her cat died last night. Shane was a born schmoozer without the ooze, and walked away from deals with the upper hand while still smelling like a rose.
And for Margaret, whose biological clock had started ticking louder and louder in the past year, he was a possible candidate for a tepid forever.
The problem with Shane, however—besides the fact that Margaret felt very little attraction to him or chemistry with him—was that she would never be sure if Shane was dating her for her, or for her father, and regardless of how much she wanted a family of her own, she was determined not to let her heart be sacrificed until she knew for sure. She kept Shane at arm’s length, and though he had tried several times to coax her into more intimacy, he’d always been a gentleman when she firmly pushed his hands away.
Did she genuinely like Shane? She didn’t mind him. Her father had set them up on a date a few months before, and since then, whenever Shane asked her out, Margaret said yes. He was an appropriate person to date and would likely make an appropriate husband. She hadn’t really examined her true feelings for him.
But whatever they were, they paled in comparison to the butterflies that beat in her chest during a five-minute elevator ride with Cameron Winslow.
Holding up her phone, she tapped her contacts app and scrolled all the way down the alphabet to W. She touched Cameron Winslow’s name, and his number came up immediately. She opened up a text box.
I didn’t forget about you. Headed to bed. I’ll forward Geraldo’s information in the morning.
She pressed Send and rested the phone on her belly. She was surprised when it buzzed almost immediately, vibrating through her silk shirt, against her skin.
Sweet dreams, Meggie.
Her heart lurched into a gallop as she stared at the words. She debated writing back, but sensible Margaret took over, forcing her to put the phone in its charger and change into her pajamas.
But that night, while sensible Margaret slept deeply, Meggie dreamed of a life spent in a sunny vineyard, making beautiful wines and sweet black-haired babies with grass-green eyes, with all thoughts of Shane and Story Imports left far, far behind.
Chapter 2
Most mornings Cameron took an early morning run from Rittenhouse Square, across the Schuylkill River, through the campuses of the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel, and then back across the Schuylkill to home. At a little under four miles, it took Cameron about forty-five minutes, and meant he could avoid seeing Margaret Story’s tight ass in black spandex workout pants and a matching black T-shirt while she walked the treadmill in their building’s gym.
Sometimes, while he jogged, he fantasized about asking Margaret out and wondered if her brown eyes would soften with curiosity and surprise to find that he was actually interested in her. If she said yes, on the night of their date he’d reach for her hand and hold it as they strolled to his favorite café. She’d loosen up throughout the evening, enough so that when they returned to their building, she’d get off the elevator with him, get off on his tongue, his hand, his cock, in his bed, in his shower, on the kitchen counter . . . Christ! And that’s when he’d force himself to speed up, run faster until his muscles burned and his lungs wheezed, because he refused to give into the demons that would have him seduce Margaret when the timing made a meaningful relationship impossible.