With a groan, he dropped his head to her shoulder and squeezed his eyes shut tight. Then he rolled them so that she had the top all to herself. His hands went to her hips and rocked her against a most impressive erection and she started to lift up to take him inside her when he stopped her.

“I don’t have a condom with me,” he said, voice strained.

“Oh. Oh . . .” she murmured as understanding finally dawned. Looking down into his heated, hungry eyes, she realized that though she’d nearly forgotten to protect herself, he hadn’t, and some of the cold deep inside her warmed. “It’s okay,” she whispered and bent low to kiss his chest, stopping to lave first one nipple and then his other like he’d done to her.

He groaned and tightened his grip on her, but she wriggled free to kiss his ridged ab muscles one by one as she too headed south.

“Lanie, you don’t have to—”

She drew him into her mouth and he stopped talking, switching to muttered oaths and groans and fractured gasped phrases that made her feel like the sexiest woman alive as she took him to the same place he’d taken her . . .

THE NEXT MORNING, Lanie lay in her bed for a few extra moments, trying to decipher through her emotions to see how she felt about the incredible, erotically charged events of the night before.

She smiled a little smugly and decided she felt good. Very good.

An hour later she was at work, absolutely not reliving it all in her mind, like when he’d had his mouth on her—

“Good morning,” Cora said and put a cup of coffee and a muffin on Lanie’s desk. “You busy? You look like you’re thinking very hard.”

She felt herself blush and went with a distraction. “You’re bearing bribes. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Just the day before she’d sent Cora the draft design for the new wine labels she’d been working on, and now she felt the anxiety grip her. Mark’s mouth forgotten—mostly—she stood up. “You hate them.”

“What?” Cora looked baffled and then horrified. “No, oh my God, Lanie. I love the designs. I buried my lede, I’m sorry. I’ve passed all of it on to Owen and the others to see what they think, but you’re onto something, they’re gorgeous.” Then she hesitated. “But I guess I am trying to bribe you in some way.”

“How?” she asked warily.

“It’s been a week and I’m wondering if you’ve given any thought to staying longer and extending your contract.”

Lanie inhaled a deep breath. “I don’t think I can.”

“Are you . . . unhappy here?”

“Actually, I love it here.” That also escaped before she could think. Dammit. She shut her mouth and drew in a careful, deep breath. “I mean, thank you. It’s incredibly kind that you’d offer me more work, but I need to get back eventually.”

“To Santa Barbara.”

“Yes,” Lanie said. “To Santa Barbara.” Where her life was. Well, her old life. The one she needed to work on.

“You know what?” Cora said. “Let’s pretend this conversation didn’t happen, okay? So don’t say no now. You can keep thinking about it.”

Lanie nodded, grateful. Because she did need to think. Santa Barbara was her home, it was where her life was, her friends. The friends she’d made with Kyle, which meant in the end they’d been no friends at all, disappearing almost as fast as everything else had. It was as if her life had been a fresh painting and then it’d rained, smearing that old life away to nothing but a soggy canvas.

A soggy blank canvas.

Cora left and Lanie returned to work. But several hours later, Cora was back.

“Ready?” she asked Lanie.

How was it noon already? But if she’d learned one thing at Capriotti Winery, it was that everyone, from the winemaker down to the last ranch hand in the fields, took lunch incredibly seriously. “I’ve got a lot I’m working on—”

“I know. I also know by how you’re holding yourself that your neck and shoulders are sore, and I’d bet you my very last cork that you haven’t budged since you first sat down at your desk this morning.”

Lanie sighed. “No, but—”

“Come on. I’m not going to have you die of starvation on my watch. Besides, today’s Anna’s birthday and there will be extra family members to introduce you to.”

Lanie had no idea who Anna was. For all she knew, Anna was the housekeeper. It didn’t matter. To Cora, everyone was family, and that word held a whole different definition here than it ever had to Lanie. She thought about resistance but knew it was futile. Cora, she’d learned, was soft and sweet on the outside, but tough as nails on the inside. She was a mom, a grandma, and a CEO of a multimillion-dollar corporation, and she had the spine and spark to prove it.

Lanie stood up from her desk and stretched her aching bones. Cora was right—she’d been hyper-focused and hadn’t budged.

Cora’s cell phone buzzed on her hip. She took the call and Lanie watched the good mood vanish from her face. “No can do,” she said. “But we can offer something else in Marcus’s place—” She listened politely, her eyes ice. “No, I realize that he’s quite the prize, believe me. I made him. He’s the king of all prizes and I’ll not see him auctioned off like a prime piece of USDA Choice. I will come up with something else and you won’t be disappointed.” She disconnected.

“Problem?” Lanie asked.

“That was the Wildstone Summer Festival chairwoman. It’s an annual event that raises money for the local women’s shelter, and we hold it out here on our property, donating the space, the wine, and the serving staff.”

“That’s generous.”

Cora shrugged. “It’s a good cause and it’s good publicity. It’s also on your list of things to do. We need logos for that as well. The problem is the auction. It raises a lot of money every year and I usually donate a few prizes. Last year I auctioned off a weekend working here at the winery.” She smiled. “Made a mint and got some extra labor for the weekend.”

“Nice. And not seeing the problem,” Lanie said.

“This year they want me to put Marcus up on the auction block, said he’d make another mint.”

Lanie had a flash of Mark towering over her, his mouth at her ear whispering all the wickedly naughty things he planned to do to her. He’d kept his word too. Hell yeah, he’d bring in a mint.

“You don’t agree?” asked a deep, unbearably familiar voice.

She turned and yep, Mark stood in the doorway, propping up the jamb with a broad shoulder. He was smiling and her gaze went straight to his mouth, remembering exactly what it could do, and she felt heat rush to her face.

And her good parts.

His smile said he knew what she was thinking about, which didn’t help.

“It doesn’t matter,” Cora said. “Because you’re not doing it. I won’t have it. We don’t abuse our own here.”

“And yet you have your grandnieces working in the barn with their hands tied together.”

Cora didn’t smile. “That’s different. You . . .”

“What?” he asked.