WRIGHT RIVAL (Wright Vineyard #3)

3. Piper

3

PIPER

Hollin’s stupid smirk dropped for an entire second as my words registered. His brows furrowed, and he tilted his head slightly, the soft strands of his blond hair falling across his forehead before he pushed it out of the way. It was like a victory. Until it disappeared and he smiled again, bigger and brighter than before.

“We’re competitors, Medina.”

“I guess we are.”

“I’ll be your Wright rival,” he crooned.

He held his hand out. I warily looked at it before putting mine in his. I stared him down. Heat bloomed between us. Something potent and commanding. A binding spell cast over this handshake. Magic of old sealing our words.

The contact made my hand tingle. As if magic had really been flung over us. Ribbon tied around our wrists to connect us. And I didn’t know how I felt about that. How I felt about having any connection to Hollin Abbey.

I jerked my hand back first. “I’m going to win.”

“We’ll see,” he said with a smirk.

Julian clapped a hand on Hollin’s back, and everything crashed down all at once. As if a bubble had been burst and the last stray traces of glitter fluttered to the ground, forgotten. Noise returned to our reality. Our friends huddled around us to congratulate us both for even entering. And somehow, I was still trapped in that in-between place. Not quite ready to give up whatever had come over us.

I made the mistake of looking up into his endless blue eyes. He was still Hollin, of course. Still a hundred and ten percent arrogance, wrapped up in a towering, tatted bow. But for a second, I thought he felt it, too. That nowhere in which nothing else existed but our rivalry.

He raised one eyebrow. A question and an invitation. Not that I could ever answer that particular question or RSVP to whatever he was inviting me to. Not with Hollin. Not ever. I knew what he did to girls who showed an ounce of interest. Just one ounce. I wouldn’t be one of those girls. No matter what had happened between us.

“Good luck,” I said without a touch of goodwill in my voice.

He laughed. The sunshine to my grumpy brooding. “I don’t need it. But you might.”

Then, Julian and Jordan pulled him away to get champagne for a toast. My friends bombarded me a second later. Thankfully, Bradley was shoved out of the way as the girls each drew me into an excited hug.

“When did you decide to do this?” Annie asked. “And why weren’t we informed?”

Annie was the bossiest one of the bunch. She was in residency as an ER doctor and radiated confident energy. She somehow exuded enough of that for all the rest of us.

“Yeah,” Blaire said. “I’m your bestie.”

I shrugged. “We enter competitions every year. Usually smaller regional competitions. Our wines do all right, but I wanted to go bigger this year.”

Jennifer tucked a strand of her light-brown hair behind her hair and smiled. “We want to celebrate every achievement. You know that.”

I should have known that. But sometimes, I didn’t think that applied to me. Jennifer was a wedding photographer for Wright Vineyard, but she had also recently started working with Hollin’s rockstar brother, Campbell. After her photo of him had gone viral last year, their record label had hired her to do the photography for the cover of their latest album. They were now on an international tour for said album, and her photography was everywhere.

That felt like something to celebrate. Entering an award competition felt like nothing.

“A toast,” Jordan interrupted the conversation.

The guys passed out champagne, and we all held our glasses aloft. Bradley returned to my side, sliding a hand across my hips. I was self-conscious about it, knowing what I now knew awaited me in his gym bag. He wasn’t happy about me wearing Hollin’s shirt after I came back—what guy would?—but he’d shrugged it off quickly. As if me wearing another guy’s shirt didn’t even matter. Was he that secure in us?

“To one year at Wright Vineyard,” Jordan said.

“One phenomenal year,” Julian added.

“And friendly competition to follow,” Hollin said.

He tipped his head at me, and I just stared back blankly. What part of this made him think it would be friendly?

Still, I held my glass aloft and clinked it with my friends’ glasses. I took a sip of my champagne. The Wrights had splurged on a vintage Veuve Clicquot, and I could appreciate every single delicious note of the champagne. Wright Vineyard didn’t make a sparkling yet, but few could compare to the historical French wineries anyway.

We settled back into our seats. Bradley scooted his chair even closer to mine, draping his arm across the back of it. I was ready to leave. I needed to get this over with. But Jordan was still standing and speaking, and I should focus. I couldn’t leave yet. Even if I wanted to.

“While I have your attention,” Jordan said with a wide grin, “I’d thank everyone for joining us on this adventure. It’s had its highs and lows. I never believed I’d move out of Vancouver, but now, I’m here, and I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.”

A few, “Hear, hear!” were chorused as others listened in on his speech.

Other Wrights were in attendance. Jordan and Julian’s cousins—Jensen, Austin, Landon, Morgan, and Sutton Wright—ran Wright Construction in town and were the reason that the Wright name was associated with Texas royalty. Jensen’s wife, Emery, was hugely pregnant while their one-year-old tottered around their feet. Landon had his three-year-old, Holden, with him, who was happily playing with Sutton’s seven-year-old, Jason, and two-year-old, Madison. Landon’s wife, Heidi, wasn’t in attendance since she had recently had twin boys—Hudson and Harrison. The number of Wrights in this town was growing exponentially.

Morgan and Patrick had set a date for their wedding for this fall. Everyone kept looking to Austin and Julia, wondering when they were going to tie the knot. But they had always done their own thing, and I appreciated that.

My twin brother, Peter, was in attendance with his boyfriend, Chester. He looked up, as if sensing my eyes on him across the room. Twin thing. He flipped me off, and my hardened veneer dropped. I laughed and covered it by taking another sip of my wine. Bradley glanced at me in confusion.

Jordan had been talking all this time. Giving the fancy Wright speech the family was known for. It was a good one. I was sure it was. I hadn’t been paying attention, but still…

The crowd gasped all at once.

My eyes snapped back to Jordan Wright, who had gotten down onto one knee. My jaw dropped as he removed a red ring box from his pocket.

Time slowed as he faced Annie Donoghue with a stunning Cartier ring. Her hands flew to her mouth. Tears came to her eyes. Shock rippled through the crowd. They’d only been together for a year. But when you knew, you knew.

Didn’t you?

Bradley’s eyes were on me. I looked over at him, and he was giving me giant puppy-dog eyes. Ones full of hope and awe. As if he saw us in what was happening right now.

My eyes didn’t mirror his. I felt…horror. Riotous, dawning, gaping horror in the pit of my stomach. This couldn’t be happening. Bradley couldn’t propose to me. I imagined myself in Annie’s shoes for a minute and thought I might be physically ill. I’d say no.

No.

It was so final. The end of everything we had. And yet I knew it without a shadow of a doubt.

I’d touched that ring box in his gym bag and tossed it aside like it didn’t matter. But now, it was an immediate visceral reaction. I had to do something about this. I couldn’t sit here and pretend things were okay.

“Yes!” Annie cried.

Everyone was up and applauding as Jordan slid the diamond onto her finger. They embraced as if this were the best day of their entire lives. A year ago, everything had started in this very room for them. It was magical.

If only there wasn’t a distress signal in my head. A loud beeping, telling me to escape.

I stepped out of Bradley’s arm when I got to my feet, and as I stumbled forward to congratulate Annie, my foot caught on something imaginary. I tripped, barely catching myself before face-planting on the hardwood floor of the recently renovated barn.

Then, there was a strong pair of arms on my hips, steadying me. I was hardly the clumsy damsel in distress.

So, my first instinct was to push the person away. “I’m fine.”

I looked up to find Hollin arching a pointed eyebrow at me. “Medina,” he said, rolling my surname across his tongue.

“Don’t touch me,” I said.

Every inch he touched was on fire.

“You’re welcome,” he said cheekily. “You almost fell on your face.”

“I had it.”

He finally released me. “Seem flustered.”

“Hollin,” I growled. “Shut your face.”

“Just saying,” he purred under his breath. “You went into straight panic mode at the sight of that ring.”

Had it been that obvious? “I did not.”

“Okay, fine. Only I saw it.”

“You can’t read me that well.”

“You almost fell on your face,” he repeated.

“I’m happy for Jordan and Annie.”

“Of course. How could you not be? They were made for each other.”

“Exactly.”

“Are you agreeing with me?”

“No,” I said automatically.

He chuckled. His hand slid to the sleeve of my shirt. I looked up at him as he fixed where the sleeve had come undone.

“Abbey,” Bradley said, suddenly appearing at my side.

Hollin dropped the shirt and smiled at my boyfriend. “Had to fix my shirt. Looks good on her, doesn’t it?”

Bradley looked between me and Hollin, as if he couldn’t figure out whether or not he should punch him. Of course, that would be a real problem. Since Hollin probably had a hundred pounds of muscle on Bradley. Frankly, it was obscene.

“Shut up, Hollin,” I growled and turned back to my boyfriend. “Come on. Let’s congratulate the happy couple.”

Bradley followed me away. “Is…something happening with y’all?”

I blinked at him. “With Hollin?”

He laughed softly at my incredulity. “I know you say you hate him, but…”

“But I’m wearing his shirt?”

“Yeah. And he riles you so easily.”

“You know why that is.”

Bradley nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I know what you told me. It just felt different.”

It had, hadn’t it? f**k.

“Don’t worry about it. He’s the same Hollin.”

I glanced back at Hollin Abbey. A flash of possessiveness came into Hollin’s eyes, and my cheeks heated from the one look. It didn’t matter how attractive he was or that he looked at me like every book boyfriend I’d ever read about. He was still Hollin Abbey, and I wouldn’t ever go there.