Bitter Rivals

  by

  J. Sterling

  BITTER RIVALS

  Copyright © 2019 by J. Sterling

  All Rights Reserved

  Please visit my website

  www.j-sterling.com

  to find out where additional versions may be purchased.

  Edited by:

  Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing

  Cover Design by:

  Michelle Preast, Indie Book Covers

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Please do not participate or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-945042-19-5

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  Other Books by J. Sterling

  Bitter Rivals

  In Dreams

  Chance Encounters

  10 Years Later- A Second Chance Romance

  Dear Heart, I Hate You

  The Game Series:

  The Perfect Game - Book One

  The Game Changer - Book Two

  The Sweetest Game - Book Three

  The Other Game (Dean Carter) – Book Four

  The Playboy Series:

  Avoiding the Playboy- Episode #1

  Resisting the Playboy- Episode #2

  Wanting the Playboy- Episode #3

  The Celebrity Series:

  Seeing Stars- Madison & Walker

  Breaking Stars- Paige & Tatum

  Losing Stars- Quinn & Ryson

  The Fisher Brothers Series:

  No Bad Days – a New Adult, Second Chance Romance

  Guy Hater – an Emotional Love Story

  Adios Pantalones – a Single Mom Romance

  Happy Ending

  Dedication

  For my Mom- who never hesitates to tell me how proud she is of me, understands how hard I work, and claims to love everything I write. Your support and belief in me is invaluable. Thank you.

  Table of Contents

  Other Books by J. Sterling

  Dedication

  MY NEMESIS

  DRUNK CONFESSIONS

  FIRST PLACE

  JEALOUSY FUELS THE FIRE

  IT’S ABOUT DAMN TIME

  GET THE GIRL

  LOVE OR LUST

  HEARTBREAKER

  NO LONGER A LA BELLA

  THE FIXER

  CHOOSE RIGHT

  THAT DAMN BET

  OVERDUE APOLOGIES

  SPREADING RUMORS

  COUPLE GOALS

  FEED YOUR GIRL

  EPILOGUE

  Excerpt from 10 Years Later: A Second Chance Romance

  Other Books by J. Sterling

  Thank Yous

  About the Author

  MY NEMESIS

  Julia

  “Look at the number of women standing there fawning all over him,” my assistant and best friend since grade school said, her head shaking, as she pointed a finger at my archnemesis across the room. “I’m actually embarrassed to be female right now.”

  I pushed her arm down before he noticed and did something mortifying in response, like inform the entire room that I was in love with him or something. I wouldn’t put it past him. James Russo loved to embarrass and humiliate me. He’d been doing it since high school.

  “Jeanine! Don’t draw his attention toward us. And I don’t want to look at him, or his fan club.” I groaned even though it was a lie, and she damn well knew it.

  James Russo had grown up to be one hell of a gorgeous man. And I absolutely wanted to check him out, maybe even lose myself in a dirty fantasy or two, but I couldn’t admit that part. At least, not out loud. I was supposed to loathe his very existence. Despising James was as much a part of my DNA as my dark hair and Italian heritage.

  “You totally want to look at him,” she teased. “Maybe then you’ll see how often he looks at you.”

  Pivoting on my brand-new high heel, I turned to face my soon-to-be-former best friend if she didn’t pull it together, “James Russo does not look at me any more than I look at him. We hate each other, and you know this. You’ve always known this. He is the world’s worst human. If there were an award for it, he’d win. Why are you being so weird? Are you drunk?” I glanced around her at our stash of wine bottles still firmly in place on the ground, checking to make sure none were empty.

  If anyone knew how much James and I couldn’t stand one another, it was Jeanine. She had grown up with the two of us, had been fully aware of our families’ mutual war, and had been caught in the middle of it on more than one occasion. While she sometimes placated me with subtle jabs and insults in James’s honor, she usually played the role of peacekeeper—or at least, she tried.

  “I just wonder when you two will bury the hatchet, is all,” she said for, like, the fourteen thousandth time since we’d been born.

  “Never,” I said, giving her the exact same response that I always had.

  Burying the hatchet wasn’t an option in my family. Even if I wanted to, which I didn’t, it wasn’t allowed. My dad would disown me completely and make me change my last name before he ever forgave a Russo.

  Glancing across the competition space, I spotted James, his dark hair framing his two-week-old stubble as he smiled at a group of women, who, instead of working their own wine booths, looked all too willing to leave and take him to bed if he asked. Not that I cared what James did in his bed or with whom, but damn that facial hair. It would be the death of me. I’d spent one too many nights dreaming of the way it would feel as he dived between my thighs or as he kissed me, brushing across my cheek. That man sure knew how to keep his beard in check—always perfectly trimmed, fading just right toward the top where it met his hairline. It annoyed me as much as it turned me on, which was saying a lot since he was the most annoying human in existence.

  “You’ve got a little drool right there.” Jeanine nudged me with her arm, pointing at the corner of her mouth, and I snarled.

  “I’m just wondering why he keeps coming to these things when he knows he’s going to lose. Do you think he comes to meet women?” I reached for a case of our wine and started pulling out the bottles one at a time, so Jeanine could uncork them and fill the waiting glasses.

  She laughed so hard at my question that she choked. “Like he needs to come here to meet women. Besides, the only woman he wants is you. Why do you think he’s never stayed in a long-term relationship before? Probably for the same reason all yours have failed.”

  My eyes felt like they bugged straight out of my head and rolled onto the floor
under the table. “What are you even talking about right now?” I looked at my best friend like she had grown two heads. “My relationships don’t fail,” I said a little too defensively. “I mean, it’s not my fault that every guy I’ve dated seems to be more interested in my winery than they are in me.”

  “You don’t even give them a chance. They’re out of the running before they even start the race. One wrong word, and you cut them off. Deem them unworthy. And we both know it’s because you want the one guy you can’t have. You’re just too stubborn or scared to admit it.”

  My mouth snapped shut in response, wanting to argue, to fight back, but unsure of what the hell to say in response to that. So, I maneuvered the subject away from me and back to him. “James has never had a serious relationship? What do you call Maria? And when he dated that one girl from Seattle last year?”

  I remembered when I’d learned about his long-distance girlfriend and how jealous I’d become, my stomach churning at the assumption that if James were dating someone out of state, it meant he was super serious about her. My imagination had soared as I braced myself for the news that they were engaged. I had been so relieved when I heard they’d broken up.

  “Maria lasted a whopping six months. That’s not long-term, sorry. Plus, I heard, the second she wanted more, started pressing him for a commitment and a future, he broke up with her and never looked back. And the girl from Seattle was just that—a girl so far away that he never had to fully commit to her. The man is waiting for you, the same way he’s always been.”

  It was my turn to choke on laughter. “The man probably just wants to steal my recipes and get into my head to see how I come up with ideas and to see which wine I’m entering this year so that he can copy it for next month’s competition.” It is a 2012 Chianti with hints of cinnamon, by the way. It has never been done before in our region, and I perfected the hell out of it. James Russo couldn’t copy my wine if he tried.

  “You’re insane,” Jeanine said. “But, back to the original question, we both know that James comes here because it’s his job and he has to. The same way you do,” she said a little too snarkily for my liking.

  I was the face of La Bella Wines. Not literally. I mean, my face wasn’t plastered on the company logo or the wine labels, thank God, but when it came to marketing, events, fundraisers and competitions, I was the person who came to mind when you thought of my family’s award-winning winery. The same way that James Russo was the face of his less-award-winning one.

  While I focused on bringing something different to La Bella Wines with each season, James seemed content to focus on coming in second place year after year. He should be used to it by now, but that man never quit or gave up. Whenever competition season rolled around, he assaulted me with verbal jabs, testing my patience and swearing that this would be the year his wine would outperform mine. It never was. And it never would be. Not as long as I was still breathing.

  “I don’t have to do this. I choose to,” I reminded Jeanine as I uncorked the various bottles since she hadn’t even started doing it yet.

  “Well, so does James. He doesn’t have to either. He wants to.”

  Was she actually defending him to me right now?

  “Since when do you know so much about James’s personal life, thoughts, and opinions?”

  Nerves shot through my body, and my core tensed up at the sudden thought that my best friend and my archnemesis might be hooking up behind my back. Why else would she argue with me about him of all people?

  “Are you two ...” I couldn’t even finish the question without wanting to throw up at the betrayal.

  “What? No! Like I would ever do that to you!” she exclaimed.

  I felt my entire body relax. “Right. You wouldn’t date my enemy because you know I’d have to fire you and never speak to you again.”

  She finally started doing her job, filling up the empty glasses with our latest wine before placing them in perfect display alignment on the table. “No, Julia. I’d never go after James because, no matter what you try to tell yourself—or me—I know that you have feelings for him. I’d never do that to you.”

  My face flamed, my cheeks heating with either righteous anger or embarrassment on being so blatantly called out—I wasn’t sure which. Jeanine knew that despite my family’s disapproval, I was attracted to James and had been since he hit puberty sometime during junior high school. I’d only allowed myself to admit it out loud to her one time, but that one time had apparently been all she needed since she liked to throw it in my face every now and then.

  “I don’t,” I stuttered, “have feelings for that jerk.”

  “Uh-huh.” She rolled her eyes at me, a glass of wine in one hand as she handed me a half-filled glass with the other.

  We each swirled the liquid twice before raising it to our noses and sipping slowly. The moan that escaped my lips was uncontrollable. It was good, really good, like going to win first place again good. At least, I hoped it would. Nothing was guaranteed in this business.

  “This is amazing. How do you do it?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Science,” I said with a smile because it was half-true.

  Making wine was a delicate science, but it was also instinct and the willingness to think outside the box and try new things. The majority of local wineries stuck to the old-fashioned, tried-and-true wine blends that practically guaranteed success. Very few had the capacity to risk attempting new flavor combinations without the fear of losing it all or at least taking a huge hit to their profit margin. I understood their concerns, especially when their entire livelihood depended on their wines not only being drinkable, but also profitable.

  A handful of years back, I’d convinced my parents to set aside a small portion of our fermenting wine barrels to me, strictly for my experiments. They only agreed because I told them that if I could create a new flavor blend, we could produce and market it as a limited edition, never to be re-created again in the same way. I informed them that it would make the wine fly off the shelves, that customers would flock to our tasting room to try it before it sold out, and that making anything a limited edition instantly added value. My only formal request had been that they had to let me use the grapes from our south side vines.

  The South side was the one part of our winery that frankly didn’t make any sense, and we never understood how the vines had even gotten planted in the first place. My great-grandfather must have been insane when he came up with the idea. La Bella land was made up of gentle, rolling hills, but there was one small section that had a steep drop-off, making it extremely hard to harvest. It was basically a cliff—minus the falling to your death part, but still a cliff nonetheless.

  That section of land produced our best grapes. For whatever reason, that steep hill got exposed to a different sort of weather climate than the rest. The sun seemed to shine a little longer there, and the rain tended to fall a little harder. In return, resulting in a slightly different soil content, and the grapes were unlike any of the other grapes on our land. As a matter of fact, the grapes there were unlike any other grapes in the entire valley. No one was able to replicate what we had created with the South side vines, and trust me, they tried. I always assumed that you couldn’t replicate what Mother Nature gave you, but I never blamed them for trying. Those vines were the ones that kept winning all the awards, long before I’d ever started experimenting with them. The South side vines had put La Bella winery on the map, but we’d still be a success without them.

  “I really like how you can smell the cinnamon before you can taste it. It’s like your nose knows it’s there way before your taste buds ever do.”

  I grinned because that was exactly my plan—making the scent known, but only recognized long after you swallowed. Food pairing was an integral part of running a winery, and it was something I respected and spent a lot of time researching for our customers and business. We had a menu in our tasting room, specifically designed for wine and food pairing—the most popula
r being what to drink with different types of chocolates and cheeses.

  During my research, I had come across an article about a winery in another country putting flavors inside of their wines, and I wondered why we weren’t doing that. That was when my desire to experiment had been born. But, instead of inserting multiple flavors into the wine like they were, I only wanted one—one perfectly infused flavor with a singular wine type. I believed that less was more, that we had enough in life to overwhelm our senses. Last year’s winner was a limited-edition rich dark chocolate port.

  “I’m glad you like it,” I said as Jeanine poured herself another glass.

  “I don’t like it. I love it,” she said, finishing it off. “Do you have any new war information?”

  “Okay, that’s enough for you.” I took the bottle from her greedy little hands, and she pouted. “You literally ask me this every single time we see James—which is a lot, you know,” I complained, annoyed that she insisted on questioning the decades-old feud instead of accepting it the way I had.

  Jeanine knew that if I had learned any new information about our rivalry, I would have told her by now.

  “I just think that if you’re supposed to hate someone based on their last name alone, you should at least know every single reason. You do realize that this all borders eerily close to Romeo and Juliet, right? I mean, you’re both even Italian.”

  “So, I’m what, Juliet in this scenario? And James is Romeo?” I spat out a sick laugh. “I suppose you’re my chambermaid? Thanks for letting me die, by the way,” I continued to tease.

  My parents refused to talk about whatever had happened between our two families in detail. And my dad practically exploded each time I even hinted about wanting to know more than what I’d been told.

  “Isn’t it enough that I tell you his family almost ruined ours? Why can’t you accept that they’re evil, and if they could, they would take over our vines the second we turned our back to them? Stay away from that Russo boy!”

  He always ended his tirade with a warning for me to stay away from James and made me promise that I would. He’d told me on more than one occasion that nothing in this world could disappoint him more than me befriending James Russo and that if it ever happened, he would disown me completely and I’d lose the winery.