Rancher's Wild Secret. Maisey Yates

that he was fascinating as well.

      “So today’s ride isn’t just a scouting mission for you,” he said. “If you’re worried about your aesthetic.”

      “No,” she said. “I want to start generating interest in this idea. You know, pictures of me on the horse. In fact, hang on a second.” She stopped, maneuvering her mount, turning so she was facing Holden, with the brilliant backdrop of the trail and the mountains behind them. Then she flipped her phone front facing and raised it up in the air, tilting it downward and grinning as she hit the button. She looked at the result, frowned, and then did it again. The second one would be fine once she put some filters on it.

      “What was that?”

      She maneuvered her horse back around in the other direction, stuffed her phone in her pocket and carried on.

      “It was me getting a photograph,” she said. “One that I can post. ‘Something new and exciting is coming to the Maxfield label.’”

      “Are you really going to put it like that?”

      “Yes. I mean, eventually we’ll do official press releases and other forms of media, but the way you use social media advertisements is a little different. I personally am part of that online brand. And my lifestyle—including my clothes—is part of what makes people interested in the vineyard.”

      “Right,” he said.

      “People want to be jealous,” she said. “If they didn’t, they wouldn’t spend hours scrolling through photos of other people’s lives. Or of houses they’ll never be able to live in. Exotic locations they’ll never be able to go. A little envy, that bit of aspiration, it drives some people.”

      “Do you really believe that?”

      “Yes. I think the success of my portion of the family empire suggests I know what I’m talking about.”

      He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “You know, I suppose you’re right. People choose to indulge in that feeling, but when you really don’t have anything, it’s not fun to see all that stuff you’ll never have. It cuts deep. It creates a hunger, rather than enjoyment. It can drive some people to the edge of destruction.”

      There was something about the way he said it that sent a ripple of disquiet through her. Because his words didn’t sound hypothetical.

      “That’s never my goal,” she said. “And I can’t control who consumes the media I put out there. At a certain point, people have to know themselves, don’t they?”

      “True enough,” he said. “But some people don’t. And it’s worse when there’s another person involved who sees weakness in them even when they don’t see it themselves. Someone who exploits that weakness. Plenty of sad, hungry girls have been lost along that envious road, when they took the wrong hand desperate for a hand up into satisfaction.”

      “Well, I’m not selling wild parties,” she said. “I’m selling an afternoon ride at a family winery, and a trip here is not that out of reach for most people. That’s the thing. There’s all this wild aspirational stuff out there online, and the vineyard is just a little more accessible. That’s what makes it advertising and not luxury porn.”

      “I see. Create a desire so big it can never be filled, and then offer a winery as the consolation prize.”

      “If the rest of our culture supports that, it’s hardly my fault.”

      “Have you ever had to want for anything in your entire life, Emerson?” The question was asked innocuously enough, but the way he asked it, in that dark, rough voice, made it buzz over her skin, crackling like electricity as it moved through her. “Or have you always been given everything you could ever desire?”

      “I’ve wanted things,” she said, maybe too quickly. Too defensively.

      “What?” he pressed.

      She desperately went through the catalog of her life, trying to come up with a moment when she had been denied something that she had wanted in a material sense. And there was only one word that burned in her brain.

       You.

      Yes, that was what she would say. I want you, and I can’t have you. Because I’m engaged to a man who’s not interested in kissing me, much less getting into bed with me. And I’m no more interested in doing that with him.

       But I can’t break off the engagement no matter how much I want to because I so desperately need…

      “Approval,” she said. “That’s…that’s something I want.”

      Her stomach twisted, and she kept her eyes fixed ahead, because she didn’t know why she had let the word escape out loud. She should have said nothing.

      He wasn’t interested in hearing about her emotional issues.

      “From your father?” he asked.

      “No,” she said. “I have his approval. My mother, on the other hand…”

      “You’re famous, successful, beautiful. And you don’t have your mother’s approval?”

      “Yeah, shockingly, my mother’s goal for me wasn’t to take pictures of myself and put them up on the internet.”

      “Unless you have a secret stash of pictures, I don’t see how your mother could disapprove of these sorts of photographs. Unless, of course, it’s your pants. Which I do think are questionable.”

      “These are wonderful pants. And actually deceptively practical. Because they allow me to sit on the horse comfortably. Whatever you might think.”

      “What doesn’t your mother approve of?”

      “She wanted me to do something more. Something that was my own. She doesn’t want me just running publicity for the family business. But I like it. I enjoy what I do, I enjoy this brand. Representing it is easy for me, because I care about it. I went to school for marketing, close to home. She felt like it was…limiting my potential.”

      He chuckled. “I’m sorry. Your mother felt like you limited your potential by going to get a degree in marketing and then going on to be an ambassador for a successful brand.”

      “Yes,” she said.

      She could still remember the brittle irritation in her mother’s voice when she had told her about the engagement to Donovan.

       “So you’re marrying a man more successful in advertising in the broader world even though you could have done that.”

       “You’re married to a successful man.”

       “I was never given the opportunities that you were given. You don’t have to hide behind a husband’s shadow. You could’ve done more.”

      “Yeah, that’s about the size of it,” she said. “Look, my mother is brilliant. And scrappy. And I respect her. But she’s never going to be overly impressed with me. As far as she’s concerned, I haven’t worked a day in my life for anything, and I took the path of least resistance into this version of success.”

      “What does she think of your sisters?”

      “Well, Wren works for the winery too, but the only thing that annoys my mother more than her daughters taking a free pass is the Cooper family, and since Wren makes it her life’s work to go toe-to-toe with them, my mother isn’t quite as irritated with everything Wren does. And Cricket… I don’t know that anyone knows what Cricket wants.”

      Poor Cricket was a later addition to the family. Eight years younger than Emerson, and six years younger than Wren. Their parents hadn’t planned on having another child, and they especially hadn’t planned on one like Cricket, who didn’t seem to have inherited the need to please…well, anyone.

      Cricket had run wild over