The prearranged cars showed up to shuttle everyone home, grouped by the city they lived in. Taylor and Finn were both in St. Helena, Daisy and Marisol were down in Vallejo, and . . . oh no. She should have thought of this.
“Margot, you and Luke are both in Napa,” Taylor said. Damn damn damn. She should have said she was staying at the winery to do more work and would get a ride home later, but it was too late now. If she tried to make up an excuse not to share a ride with Luke back down to Napa, it would too obviously look like she was avoiding him, especially since she’d had no time to plan this.
“Great,” she said. She glanced over at Luke and tried to make the look on her face as benevolent boss as she could manage. “Let me just make sure everyone else gets off okay and then we can go.”
He nodded as she turned away, wishing she could go hide in the basement. Gets off? Really, Margot? Did you really need to imply that you get all of your employees off? If her cheeks were red, she hoped everyone blamed all the wine, even though she’d been careful to drink no more than a sip or two from each glass. She couldn’t be the drunk boss, or even the tipsy boss. She was already the boss who’d accidentally fucked one of her employees—she couldn’t take it further than that.
She made sure everyone was in their cars, texted Elliot that she was leaving—he’d already disappeared back into the barn; see, he had the right idea—and then gave Luke a bright smile.
“Ready?”
Luke opened the back door of the car as an answer, and she got inside. He walked around the car and got in the other door, and the driver looked back at Margot.
“Going to the same place?”
“No!” she blurted out. She took a deep breath. “Um, I mean, I’m on Washington Street, and— Luke?”
She could see Luke’s grin in the dark, but he didn’t let the amusement show in his voice when he gave the driver his address. The car pulled out onto the road, and they drove in silence for a few minutes.
“I could easily have been insulted by that ‘NO,’？” Luke murmured.
Margot couldn’t help but smile, but she didn’t let herself look at him.
“But you weren’t,” she said.
“No,” he said. “I wasn’t.”
* * *
THEY WERE SILENT FOR a few minutes, but it wasn’t the awkward silence from when they’d first gotten in the car. He tried not to look at her, like he’d been trying all night. But like he’d done all night, he failed.
This would all be easier if he weren’t more and more attracted to her every day. Their night together kept coming back to him at odd moments—the look on her face when he’d kissed her against the door of his apartment; the way they’d laughed together at the bar; that low, almost guttural moan she’d made when he’d brushed his thumb over her nipples in the morning; that soft, clinging kiss goodbye when he’d driven her home; that kiss that had made him want so much more.
Damn it. And now he wanted her even more. The way she’d made those speeches to the staff tonight that got everyone laughing; when she’d had that long conversation with Elliot’s assistant, Finn, who Luke had thought didn’t actually speak to anyone; the way she’d ordered everyone at the winery around, sometimes directly, sometimes in a way they didn’t quite notice. He always did, though. And the contrast between how soft and pliable she’d been in his arms that night, and how firm and steely she could be at work . . . God, it made him want her so much it was all he could do not to reach for her right now, while they were alone, in the back seat of this dark car.
“I understood what you meant,” she said, startling him. “About your old job, I mean. Being sick of all the bullshit. And being sick of being one of the only ones. My last job—before I came to Noble, I mean—was like that. I felt . . . Well, I know how it feels, to get out of a place like that.”
He could tell she really did understand.
“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t realize it was bullshit at first. When I started, I bought into all of it, you know. I went there straight from Stanford, I felt like one of the chosen ones, I absorbed the whole mindset, not just of the company, but that whole Silicon Valley ethos. About, like, grit and whatever, how tech was better than anything else, how we were changing the world.” He rolled his eyes. “Do you know the number of times I’ve seen some pasty dude in a hoodie—or sometimes a fleece—declare he was changing the world? Thousands, I’m sure.”