Drunk on Love(44)

“Fine, just throw my present away like that. But haven’t you been saying that this is what you need to get over the last time?”

Sydney walked away without giving Margot a chance to answer.

“I’m not under the last time,” she muttered. At least Sydney hadn’t been able to call her on that lie.

“What was that?”

The man next to her turned to her, a curious, friendly expression on his face.

“Oh.” Shit. “I was just . . . chatting with the bartender.” She sighed. “She’s a friend of mine—she likes to push my buttons in the way that friends do.”

He laughed.

“I get that.” He hesitated, then turned to her all the way. “I’m Matt.”

She swore she could hear Sydney cackle. She held back a sigh. Fine.

“I’m Margot.” She’d at least ask this question right off the bat. “What do you do, Matt?”

He smiled at her.

“I’m a lawyer. I live in San Francisco, but I’m in town for a conference. I had to escape the conference hotel, you know how it is.”

A lawyer. Thank goodness. And he was definitely not the lawyer who occasionally did work for Noble—that lawyer was a woman.

“Oh, I know how it is,” she said. “Sometimes you need to get away.”

He laughed.

“Yeah—when you’re at these things, if you go to the hotel bar, you invariably run into a million people from the conference, and it’s just more hours of work. And the networking would probably be better for my career, but tonight I wanted a break from all of that, if you know what I mean.”

Oh, did she.

“I definitely do. I live up here, and almost everyone who lives here is more or less in the industry—we don’t quite all know each other, but there are a lot fewer than six degrees of separation, let’s put it that way.” She nodded in Sydney’s direction. “As you saw. If I want to take a break from work, I have to leave the state.”

He laughed. She did like a man who laughed at her jokes.

“Surely, not the whole state? Can’t you just go down to San Francisco?”

She took a sip of her cocktail and shook her head.

“I love the Bay Area, don’t get me wrong, but that’s work, too—I own a winery up here, so I spend a lot of time down there or in L.A. marketing our wines. Which is great, and we’ve been successful at that. But that’s why I have to get out of California for a true break. No restaurant is safe.”

His eyes opened wide when she said she owned a winery. She used to lie about that, or sort of minimize her role there to men. Say she was an executive at a winery, or she worked in sales at a winery, or sometimes just she worked at a winery. All of those things were true, but not the truth. And eventually, she’d gotten sick of it. If men were scared off by that, so be it.

They usually were.

Would Luke have been? If she weren’t his boss?

She didn’t think so.

“Oh wow, you own a winery?” Matt asked, and leaned in a little closer. Hmmm, apparently he wasn’t scared off. “Which one? That sounds amazing.”

She tossed her hair back, more for the benefit of Sydney, who she was sure was watching.

“Noble Family Vineyards,” she said. “It’s a lot of fun, and also a lot of hard work. I don’t do it by myself, of course—my brother and I are the co-owners.”

“How does that work, to own it with your brother? I can’t imagine being in business with any of my siblings,” Matt said.

It would be easier if Elliot didn’t hate that she was the co-owner. And if he respected what she did. And if he stopped doing things like hiring people without talking to her about it first. God, why did she keep thinking about Luke?

“We have a pretty good division of labor,” she said.

She and Matt talked for the next hour, as food kept appearing in front of Margot. Matt seemed like he’d finished eating, but made no motion to leave.

Finally, Margot asked for, and paid, her tiny bill, and Matt did the same.

“I should be getting home,” she said.

He stood up when she did.

“So should I,” he said, like she’d known he would. “Breakfast session tomorrow morning, unfortunately.”

They walked out of the bar together. Margot refused to even look in Sydney’s direction, but she knew her eyes were on them.

Matt stopped her on the sidewalk.

“My hotel is this way, if you’d like to walk with me? Maybe have a nightcap?” He took a step closer to her. When she didn’t move away, he took another.

“I . . . That sounds . . .”

Before she could finish, he bent down to kiss her.

The kiss was very nice, just like Matt. But after a little while, Margot took a step back.

“I’m sorry, Matt. I should get home. It was lovely to meet you, though. Really.”

Matt stepped back and smiled at her.

“It was lovely to meet you, too.” He pulled a card out of his pocket. “Just . . . just in case you change your mind.”

She smiled at him.

“Thanks. Have a good day tomorrow.”

He nodded.

“You, too. Maybe I’ll stop by that winery of yours sometime.” She knew that was her cue to give him her card.