“Don’t let the label bully you,” she said. “It’s your music.”
Okay, yeah. He couldn’t wait another minute. Colton took the mug from her hands and set it back on the nightstand. “Take that shirt off,” he rasped.
“No. I’m still mad at you.”
“I like mad sex.” His hands crept beneath the hem of the shirt. “I like mad you.”
Her breathing caught as he palmed her breasts. “Well, I’m . . . I’m pretty mad.”
“Good. We just had our first official argument, and now we can have our first official makeup sex.” He tugged on her nipples. “Shirt. Now.”
She whipped it off.
He rolled her over.
And got down to official business.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Did you have an appointment with him? I don’t see you on his schedule.”
Gretchen’s smile felt brittle as she stood on the opposite side of Sarah’s desk late Monday afternoon. “I’m his sister and a member of the Winthrop family. That should be sufficient.”
“You know how busy he is this time of year.”
When Gretchen didn’t respond, Sarah rose with a pointed sigh at the impertinence. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”
As she waited for Sarah’s return, an image on top of the woman’s desk caught Gretchen’s eye. It was a conceptual design for what appeared to be a new whiskey, simply called Rock. Gretchen picked up the drawing and realized it wasn’t for a whiskey but for a hard cider.
“What are you doing?” Sarah marched up from behind and snatched the drawing from Gretchen’s hands. “That is proprietary and confidential.”
“It was open on your desk,” Gretchen said.
“That doesn’t give you the right to—”
“That’s enough, Sarah,” came a calm but stern voice behind her. Uncle Jack had emerged from his own rarely used office.
The secretary’s face burned red, and Gretchen regretted the confrontation. She didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. It wasn’t Sarah’s fault if her head had been filled with ugly things about Gretchen.
“It’s my fault,” Gretchen said, facing Jack. “I was reading something off her desk. It was inappropriate.”
“You’re allowed to read anything you want in this building,” Jack said, still glaring at Sarah to drive the point home.
Gretchen walked into his quick embrace. “What are you doing up here?”
He squeezed her and then let her go. “Sometimes I have to sign my name to shit.”
“So, since when are we in the hard cider business?” Gretchen asked.
A muscle jumped along Jack’s jaw. “We aren’t.”
“So what is that?” She gestured behind her toward Sarah’s desk.
“Just Evan refusing to take no for an answer.”
The door to Evan’s office opened, and he poked his head out. “I only have a few minutes, Gretchen.”
The urge to fire back with something equally terse flared but fizzled immediately. Fighting with Evan was as pointless as arguing with Sarah. They were going to think what they wanted about her no matter what she said or did, and she didn’t particularly care what they thought today. She glanced back at Jack. “Want to join us?”
He shrugged jovially because nothing amused him more than annoying Evan. “Why not?”
Jack followed her into Evan’s office and immediately crossed to the wet bar. Evan watched with lips pursed as Jack helped himself to a bottle of sparkling water and some ice cubes. They clinked in the glass as Jack poured.
“What’s this about?” Evan asked brusquely. He lifted his own ever-present glass of whiskey to his lips as he leaned against his desk.
“Little early for that, isn’t it?” Jack said, eyebrows lifted as he sat down next to Gretchen in front of Evan’s desk. She laid her hand on Jack’s arm to shush him. No point in poking the bear.
“I need to talk to you about Colton,” she said.
Evan’s face lifted. “And?”
“I’m sorry. He’s not interested.”
Evan’s eyes flashed. “Maybe you didn’t push hard enough.”
“I did what I could.”
Evan rose to his full height, jaw clenched. “I never should have trusted you with something this important. You’ve wasted my time. I’ll talk to him myself.”
One part of her brain told her to ignore the bait, to walk out now that she’d done what she came to do. But that part of her was a weak opponent against the one that refused to back down from a fight with her brothers.