Seduce Me Sweetly (Heron's Landing Book 1) (9 page)

In the morning, he opened his eyes and groaned. His head pounded. How much had he drunk? He took a hot shower, trying to clear the cobwebs from his mind. When he checked his phone, he saw a text message from Jaime:
Don’t do anything stupid.

He replied,
Of course.

Going through his contacts, he pressed his thumb on Joy’s number. He listened to it ring, and ring, and ring, and then her voice saying, “Hello?”

“I need to see you. Are you available now?”

Silence. Then, “Uh, I guess so. I just woke up, though.”

“Good. I’ll be there in fifteen. See you at Trudy’s.”

Chapter Seven

Joy hadn’t expected Adam would be thrilled about her doing a story on the vineyard. But she hadn’t expected he’d be quite so steamed, either.

Sitting across from him in a booth at Trudy’s, twenty minutes after he’d called and mysteriously asked to see her, she sipped her coffee, waiting for him to say something. Instead, he seemed intent on having a staring contest with her. If she’d known he just wanted to glare at her, she would’ve stayed in bed, made her own coffee and maybe watched a movie.

Feeling peevish and tired, she asked, “You wanted to talk to me about something?”

He ripped open a sugar packet with more force than strictly necessary, and thus the majority of the granules ended up on the table. He swore. “Are you writing a story about the vineyard?” he asked in clipped tones.

Joy sipped her coffee. Grace wasn’t working today, and she could tell that Terry had made the coffee today because it tasted like bitter lukewarm water. She dumped more creamer in it, slowly stirring, watching Adam stew. She rather liked watching him stew.

How had the man sitting before her kissed her so tenderly not so long ago? It was like he’d been a completely different person that evening. One who didn’t look like he’d murder puppies from his scowl alone.

She took another sip of coffee. Sighed. And then replied, “I am writing a story, because it’s of interest to me and, I believe, to a lot of potential readers.”

“And yet you’re doing it without consulting me, which I expressly forbade you from doing?”

She burst out laughing. “‘Expressly forbade?’ Buddy, it’s way too early to be using words like that.”

He scowled, his expression rather thunderous. If Joy weren’t so tired and cranky, she might be freaked out. Then again, she knew how men liked to bluster and bitch. No woman could match a man going on an emotional rampage.

“I asked you not to write it without consulting me, yet here you are, doing just that? Can you explain that?” He sat back, watching her.

“Wellllllll,” she said slowly, “I realize I may have given the impression that I was doing what you wanted. But then I thought, ‘This guy isn’t my boss and it’s a free country.’ So, I decided to do the story regardless. First Amendment, you know.”

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

She shrugged. A little bit of guilt niggled at her for her white lie, but Adam had no right to dictate what she could or could not write and publish. She wasn’t writing anything negative. For God’s sake, it was a positive piece to bring in potential tourists, which meant money! Who turned down money?

“Look, you can be pissy and moan-y all you want. But you should know that this piece is completely positive and was meant to
help
you. It ain’t libel in the slightest. So calm your titties and drink your coffee.”

“Are you always this pleasant?”

“Only to jackasses who try to fuck me over.” She smiled widely. Now she was really cranky. Why did men continue to think they could mess with her and get away with it? The mascara didn’t equate to stupidity, but it was the story of her life that men underestimated her anyway.

“I’m not trying to fuck you over,” Adam said, leaning toward her, his voice low. “I just would like anything written about my business to have my eyes on it first. Surely you understand that.”

“Sure I do. But that’s also code for wanting to control a narrative entirely, and I’m wholly uninterested in playing that game. And if you thought about what I was doing for five seconds, you’d realize it would only help you in the end.”

He laughed, a little stunned. His initial scowl had faded, and he seemed to be looking at her with sheer incredulity. She could work with that, generally speaking, as she was used to it.

“Is that what you’re doing?” he asked. “You’re helping me by using my business for your own means?”

Joy threw her hands up in the air. “Oh my God! Yes, I’m writing a story to pay my bills! Call the police, Adam, and arrest me for being like everyone else in this damn country.” She rubbed her temples; stubborn men gave her the worst kinds of headaches.

“If you had any kind of integrity, you’d do as I asked and actually honor your promise.”

She stilled. “Now you’re just insulting me.” Anger began pulsing through her, and it took everything she had in her to restrain herself from tossing her coffee in his face.

He looked smug, the bastard. “No, I’m pointing out the obvious. Do the right thing and we can end this right here.”

Clenching her mug between her hands, Joy fell silent. She’d put up with a lot in her life—including receiving blame for things not entirely her fault—and she could hear Jeremy’s words to her:
If you’d loved me more, I wouldn’t have cheated.
If she’d tried harder, been nicer, put everyone else before her own needs at all times, been sweet and thoughtful and demure. If she’d had
integrity.

She wasn’t going to apologize for writing what she wanted. She wasn’t going to apologize for not asking permission to write what she wanted. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to back down because Adam Danvers was the biggest asshole this side of the Mississippi River.

“You know the funny thing about me?” She looked up at him, forcing her voice to be calm. Measured. Emotions were a woman’s worst enemy in these types of battles.

“What?”

“That when anyone tries to get me to do something simply because they’re a jackass, it gives me more of a reason to do it anyway.” Standing, she grabbed her purse and looked down at Adam, who was just staring at her. “Oh, and you know what else? I talked to people in Chicago about helping with the events at River’s Bend. Because that’s what friends do—help each other. But you’re so intent on seeing things as some master plot to screw you over, that you lose anyone who might actually be a friend.”

He said nothing, but she could see his fist clenching at his side. “What are you saying?” he ground out.

“I’m saying that I’m going to write whatever the hell I want, and you can eat a dick. Toodles.”

She stalked out of the café, leaving Adam with the measly coffee bill. She began walking back to her apartment, but the thought of sitting up there sounded so unbearable that she stalked off in the direction of the creek. She also didn’t want to talk to Mike, or anyone else in the general store. She waited to hear Adam come after her, but he didn’t.

Hurt filled her, and she could feel tears threatening. She swiped at them. She was an angry crier, and God above, she was angry. Angry at herself for thinking Adam was a good guy despite her first impression of him, angry at herself for kissing him! But mostly she was angry that he thought she was such a heartless jerk that she’d screw him over for her own gain. She was a fucking journalist, not some Wall Street big wig stealing money from the poor to line her own pockets. Hell, she barely made anything in the last few weeks because she’d been preoccupied with life and moving.

If you had any integrity
—the words bounced around in her mind until she was close to chucking her purse and stomping on it out of sheer rage. Instead, she kicked a tree, and then swore at the pain radiating up her foot from the attempt. Could her life be more of a mess?

She finally walked to a log overlooking the creek. She sat down with a plop, huffing out a breath. The tears had mostly disappeared, but she probably looked a sight: flushed and scowling and swearing underneath her breath. She wished she could be a subtle person when angry, but that had never been her style. But once she got it out of her system, she generally moved on.

Adam Danvers can suck a dick and I hope he falls off a cliff and dies.
To occupy herself, she imagined terrible, ridiculous fates for him—getting eaten alive by raccoons, choking on a sandwich, getting the plague—before she calmed down enough to think a little more clearly.

The wind whistled through the trees, and Joy watched as birds flitted about in the branches. She spotted a bright red cardinal in one of the shrubs. She smiled, watching it hop around. She soon spotted a female cardinal, more brown then red, and realized there was probably a nest in the shrub. She smiled a little sadly.

A small voice in her head told her she’d gotten herself into this bind by agreeing with Adam but then reneging, but she pushed that voice aside. She wasn’t in the mood to understand him. He had insulted her, and she didn’t have time to be nice to whiny man babies. Jeremy had been the whiniest of man babies at the end, crying about how she’d never loved him.

Was there anything worse in this world than whiny man babies? Joy didn’t think so.

She sat on the log for a few hours, just staring off into the distance. She probably should get back, work on a story, pay her bills. Figure out her life, ignore that she’d been falling for Adam and now she hated everything about him. Was that to be her fate with men? Fall for them and then when they showed their true colors, wish instead that they’d get hit by a tractor and be run over multiple times, very slowly?

“Joy?”

Turning, Joy saw Grace walking toward her. The girl had her hair in a braid down her back, and she looked rather like a fairy princess come to reunite with her woodland subjects. Joy’s heart clenched, though, seeing how much Grace looked like her brother. They had the same eyes, she realized.

She looked away.

“I heard what happened,” Grace said, sitting beside her. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

Grace fidgeted, pulling at random threads on her white dress. “I’m sorry about all of this. Adam can be such a jerk sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?”

“He’s a good guy,” Grace pressed. Joy looked over at her, and saw the seriousness in her expression. “He’s just…stubborn.”

“Stubborn enough to say that I have no integrity and am basically a terrible person?”

Wincing, Grace looked away. “I didn’t realize he’d said that, exactly. I just ran into him after he left Trudy’s, and he was so steamed that I couldn’t get much out of him.”

“Well, if anyone should be steamed, it’s me. I didn’t completely insult him and then make ridiculous demands.” Her anger rising again, she continued, “You know, I tried to like your brother. I did. We didn’t start off very well, but I wasn’t going to hold that against him. And then what happened down at the creek here—”

“What happened here?”

Joy blushed, remembering. She’d remember that kiss until her dying day. If she didn’t hate Adam so much right now, she’d go find him and kiss him again just to experience it again. It had been like no other kiss she’d ever had—and she’d had some good kisses in her lifetime. At the beginning of their relationship, she and Jeremy couldn’t keep their hands off of each other. But the kiss with Adam hadn’t just been about desire; if Joy thought about it too much, she’d freak herself out.

“Nothing happened,” Joy replied shortly. She could see Grace staring at her, and when she caught her gaze, the girl smiled.

“Nothing? Why are you blushing? Oh my God, did you guys sleep together?”

Joy squawked. “Jesus Christ! No! And why are you asking questions like that about your brother? And who would have sex in the dirt by a creek? That’s the most country thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You’re deflecting.”

“No, I’m telling you you’re losing your marbles. And besides, even if we’d pledged our undying love for each other, that doesn’t negate that your brother is, in fact, a complete jackass.”

The two women fell silent. Grace placed her hands in her lap, her fingernails still a bright red from their girls’ night manicure session. In a quiet voice, she said, “I didn’t come here to excuse my brother’s actions. But I also wanted you to know that there’s more to the story than you might realize.”