by Trish Morey
‘Do you treat all your potential customers like this, Ms Purman? Or are you singling me out for special treatment?’
The woman smiled, and now it was more than light that danced in her ice-blue, scathing eyes, there was cold, hard satisfaction. She was enjoying this. ‘I’m afraid I am singling you out. Does that make you feel special, Mr Chatsfield?’
Her brazen admission sent white-hot fury pumping through his veins and pounding at his temples, hammering at his skull like he wished he could hammer sense into her. He was here to bestow the biggest contract this woman was ever likely to see in her lifetime, and yet she couldn’t have been less welcoming were he the grim reaper come to harvest her grandfather’s soul.
Somehow he managed to force a smile to his features, although he had to work hard to move his lips beyond a tight thin line.
‘I think we’re wasting our time here. I think we should go and talk to your grandfather. At least he seems a little less averse to doing business with the Chatsfield Hotel Group.’
‘Fine, we’ll do what you want. We’ll go and see Pop.’ She smiled again and, unlike him, seemed to have no problem finding the necessary muscles to make it stick. ‘But you see, we’re a partnership, Pop and me, and you need both our signatures on that contract. So I warn you now, don’t go getting your hopes up.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘THIS IS RIDICULOUS!’
Franco Chatsfield was not a happy man.
They’d been talking all afternoon it seemed, Franco talking the deal up, dollar signs plastered thickly to every word, while Gus had listened eagerly, hanging on every gold-plated promise. Holly, meanwhile, had been busy hosing down Franco’s excess enthusiasm and finding flaws in the deal and still Franco’s signature was the only one so far on the contract.
It hadn’t been easy. Franco Chatsfield had made his offer sound better than good. He’d made it sound like it was the deal of a lifetime as he’d laid out figures and facts and promised an endless stream of dollars if only they would both sign on the dotted line.
To Gus it must have sounded like a dream come true, the culmination and validation of his life’s work.
Holly could understand why. She could see that in isolation, if the money was all that mattered, then the dollars looked amazing.
But that didn’t mean she was about to buckle. There was more to success than dollars, and she remembered a time when adverse publicity had almost ruined them. As long as the offer was coming from Chatsfield, a once-grand name now more synonymous with headlines and scandal, it was hard to see how they could ever do business.
Why didn’t her grandfather see it that way?
Half an hour ago the helicopter had departed, and Franco, stony-faced, had watched it take off and still the discussions wore on, and all the time she’d watched the skin of his face pull progressively tighter across his bones, until the tendons in his neck had become taut and corded and stained red with tension and he’d looked like a volcano about to erupt.
And then Gus had excused himself, promising to be back, and before Holly could wonder what he’d gone off in search of, Franco had erupted. He’d slammed his fist on the table and leapt from his chair, his eyes wild and jaw rigid as finally he gave in to the temptation to blow. ‘A complete and utter waste of time,’ he snarled as he prowled before the fire like a lion cheated of its kill. ‘We’re getting nowhere,’ he said, his back to her as he raked fingers through his long hair. He spun around and pinned his cold, winter-grey eyes on her, and she was struck anew by his height and power and his ability to eat up the space around him and shrink it down till there was just him and the fire and a hot lick of flame she could almost feel on her skin. ‘What is your problem?’ he growled. It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.
Vaguely she was aware of a phone ringing but then it stopped and she knew Gus must have picked it up in the study.
Franco was still staring at her, hostile eyes demanding an answer. Holly didn’t bother with a smile. While there was a certain satisfaction in knowing that she’d stymied this man’s smug expectations of walking out of here with exactly what he wanted, something told her that smiling would not go down well right now.
But that didn’t mean she had to cower.
‘Seems to me, I’m not the one with a problem.’
‘You think? Because you would have to be the most intransigent, uncooperative, stubborn woman I have ever met.’
‘Why, thank you.’
‘That wasn’t a compliment.’
She arched an eyebrow over one glacier-blue eye. ‘I take them where I can find them.’
He snorted and turned away. Little wonder. The way she looked in those oversize, drab work clothes, compliments were no doubt thin on the ground.
He strode past the fireplace. He needed this contract signed and he’d get it signed, come hell or high water, and he refused to be beaten by a woman who’d dug her heels in from the very start. But how to make her shift her position?
The old man was already in his pocket. He just had to sway her.
The old man …
And he spun back around, finding a new weapon in his arsenal, a new direction from which to attack now that the old man had left the room and they were alone. ‘Why are you so against this deal?’ he demanded. ‘Your grandfather is keen to do business. So why are you so adamantly opposed to doing a deal with Chatsfield?’
She crossed her arms over her chest, her body language confirming just how far closed was her mind, although the act of defiance also revealed something else—something as unexpected as the transformation in her features when she smiled. For there was shape under that shapeless Purman sweater. Curves. And the heat of his anger morphed into a different kind of heat as his body stirred in response. He willed the reaction away, as unlikely as it was unwanted, as she said, ‘We can do better.’
‘Financially?’ he challenged, his eyes back on hers, his focus back on track. ‘Not a chance.’
‘It may surprise you to learn that there’s more to life than money, Mr Chatsfield. We’re building up a prize-winning brand here at Purmans—a prestige brand. I don’t want to see that put at risk.’
‘So you’d turn down the best offer you’re ever likely to get, because you’re afraid?’
She was on her feet in an instant, her jaw rigid, her blue eyes defiant. ‘You say afraid. I say once bitten, twice shy. Do you think you’re the only one to see the value of our wines? Ten years ago someone else with big pockets tried to buy us out—he promised riches beyond our imagination too.’ He’d offered more besides that still made her ill to think about. ‘But when Gus finally turned him down, he did everything he could to ruin us. “Poorman’s Wines,” he labelled us, every chance he got, undermining all we’d built up, threatening relations with our best stockists and our most loyal clients alike.
‘It’s taken ten long years of rebuilding, Mr Chatsfield, and you blithely walk in here and expect us to get tangled up with a business that is more likely to feature in the gossip columns of the scandal sheets than the business pages? I don’t think so!’
She was flushed, her fists clenched tight at her sides and her eyes like braziers burning with cold blue flame and it was like he was seeing her for the first time.
She was magnificent.
And part of him wanted to goad her, to prod and needle her some more and see more of that passion that transformed this drab little mouse of a woman into a tigress that might have been fighting to protect her cubs.
Part of him wondered where else she might turn into a tigress and what it might be like to have that passion unleashed on him.
While the sane, logical part of him wondered if he’d gone mad. She was so very not his type of woman.
And he had a contract to get signed.
‘Don’t you think it strange that your grandfather doesn’t appear to share your concerns?’
She shook her head. ‘Gus is looking at the offer through a Vaseline lens. His view is distorted and bl
urred around the edges. He has this romantic notion of Chatsfield Hotels that was shaped some time last century when the chain had a reputation worth having. And as much as I respect my grandfather’s opinion, this time it’s proving not to be based on good business sense.’
‘The Chatsfield Hotel Group is hardly a “chain.” You make it sound like some two-star budget deal.’
‘Do I? Well, whatever you call it, unfortunately Pop’s missed just how far its reputation has slipped over the past few decades. He’s not quite up to speed on the latest trashy magazine gossip.’
‘Whereas you, on the other hand, are?’
Her eyes sparkled with ice-cold crystals. ‘I go to the dentist twice a year. Seems there isn’t an edition of the magazines published where one or more of the Chatsfield clan doesn’t feature front and centre.’
He shook his head, cursing the fact he belonged to a family that had, for as long as he could remember, insisted on playing out its sordid lives on the front page of every scandal sheet going. If his family was the issue, how the hell would he ever convince her to sign?
‘You treated this deal with contempt from the start. And by not being the slightest bit prepared to take heed of what your grandfather wants, you treat your grandfather and his wishes with contempt.’
‘Pop will get over the disappointment the moment he sees the next Chatsfield scandal unfold in all its gory, glossy details—I’ll make sure he does—and then he’ll be glad he never put pen to paper on this deal. Besides, it’s not like we have to sign. There are other offers on the table.’
‘Like ours? Like hell.’
‘No, they’re not like yours. They’re solid deals with reputable parties, parties we’ll be happy to pin the Purman name to. And even if the money doesn’t quite attain the same dizzy heights, at least we can be sure our name won’t end up in the gutter—unlike some of your famous siblings.’
A gust of wind rattled the windows and the fire crackled and spat fiery sparks that nowhere near rivalled the heated embers that flew at her from Franco’s cold grey eyes, and Holly marvelled at the contradiction of fire and ice as he glared across the room at her, the twitch of a muscle in his jaw his only movement.
Intransigent, he’d called her.
Maybe Franco was right.
But she had a damned good reason. And maybe she didn’t understand completely why Gus didn’t see it the same way, when he’d been there ten years ago and he knew how hard it had been to rebuild their name after they’d been so publicly trashed, but that didn’t mean she had to lower her standards.
‘I’m sorry, Franco,’ she said, suddenly tired of the fighting, and the tension this man added to the room by his mere presence and just wanting him gone, ‘but there’s no point discussing this any longer. I’m not going to change my mind. You’re simply not the kind of person I want to do business with. End of story.’
It might have been too, if Gus hadn’t wheeled himself back into the room a moment later, oblivious to the tension between the two warring parties, an old cardboard box perched on his lap. ‘That was Tom on the phone.’
He was frowning, Holly noticed, the worry lines on his face noticeably deeper, and for a moment she forgot about Franco. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Tom can’t make it.’
‘What? But he promised he’d be here tomorrow.’ A team of workers had been engaged to start in a couple of weeks when the younger vines would need work, but Tom was an expert who’d agreed to help her with their most precious low-yielding vines that she wouldn’t trust to anyone but family.
Gus shook his head. ‘Susie’s ill. Breast cancer. She starts chemo in Adelaide Monday. He’s sorry, but …’ He shook his head.
‘Oh, Pop.’ She crossed the room and knelt down beside him and enclosed one of his hands in hers. Gus had lost Esme to cancer twenty years ago when Holly was just a kid in primary school and Tom and Susie had been there, supporting him, at her funeral.
Losing Esme had almost killed him. He’d once told her that if he hadn’t had Holly to look after, it probably would have. And now, for it to happen to a friend … ‘That’s horrible news.’
‘I told him things have improved. That Susie’s chances were better now than they would have been twenty years ago.’
She blinked away tears. She wanted to hug her grandfather and squeeze him tight and she would have, if they didn’t have this wretched visitor, and so she simply said, ‘That’ll help, Pop. I know it will help.’
He nodded on a long sigh, rubbing his bristly jaw with one hand. ‘Yeah, but it’s gonna mess with our plans too, Holly. Where are we going to find someone else to help you prune at such short notice?’
‘Let’s talk about it later,’ she said, wanting to close down the conversation as she stole a glance at Franco, wishing that this stranger didn’t have to bear witness to everything that was going on in their lives right now. ‘Tom’s not the only one around here who can prune.’ Even though he would be nigh on impossible to replace at this time of year. ‘What’s in the box?’
‘Oh,’ he said, as if he’d forgotten it was sitting there in his lap. ‘I found it. Devil’s own thing to find. Come and see. Franco, I think you’ll find this interesting too.’
Holly followed her grandfather warily to the table, curiosity warring with frustration. She didn’t expect whatever was in that box to make any difference to anything, but she was curious what he’d found.
Gus peeled back the flaps of the box. ‘Photographs?’ What on earth was Gus thinking? For the box was full to the brim of old photos, sepia mixed in with black-and-white and some, more recent, in colour. He started spreading them out on the table, family photos going back decades and pictures taken at harvest or in the winery. Gus worked furiously, clearly searching for something.
But why did he think Franco might find it interesting?
‘It took me forever to find them,’ Gus continued. ‘I figured they were somewhere in the storeroom but I had no idea where. Your grandmother always planned to organise them into albums, but there was always something else to do. There never seemed to be enough time. Oh, look,’ he said, passing her one. ‘Here you are at the beach. You must have been all of three years old in that one.’
She blinked down at the photo in her hands. The photographic paper was thick and curled on the corners with age but there she was, sitting on her mother’s lap in the sand, the Holly of three chubby in her floral one-piece, grinning up at the camera with a spade in one hand, bucket in the other.
Her eye was drawn instinctively to the woman who was her mother.
Holly looked at her smiling face, touched a fingertip to a face she wished she could remember other than from seeing it in photographs.
‘Ah,’ announced Gus, delighted. ‘Here it is!’ Followed almost immediately by his handing it to her with a growl. ‘No, that’s not the one I’m looking for,’ and more fervent digging.
Holly took it anyway. It was a smaller version of one she knew well, a photo of her parents holding her as a newborn, one they’d had blown up and had sat framed on the mantelpiece until Holly at ten had decided it belonged on the dressing table in her bedroom and spirited it away one day.
If Gus had noticed, he’d never remarked on the move.
She looked at them now, the happy couple smiling at the camera, the baby in a long christening gown fringed with lace.
And she could even see the resemblance in her Dad’s smile to Pop’s. Oh, yeah, she thought as she studied the photo, that was definitely Pop’s smile her father was wearing. And those were her eyes her mother sported. Turquoise-blue eyes under blonde hair.
And not for the first time she wished she could remember more than what faded photographs could tell her, remember her mother’s scent as she hugged her tight, or the tickling rasp of her father’s cheek when he’d kissed her goodnight.
They’d been ripped from her when she was far too young to form any real memories. A tear squeezed from her eye and she fought it back as she rememb
ered their visitor. Now was hardly the time to be sniffling over old photographs.
‘Why did you bring them out now, Pop? What are you looking for?’
‘And why did you think I might be interested?’
He was standing behind her, Holly realised with a start, her skin prickling all over. Sometime while she’d been absorbed in the old photos, he’d left the fireplace and now he was standing right behind her. So close that she dare not turn her head. So close that it seemed like he’d brought the heat of the fire along with him until it infused her cheeks and seared the air in her lungs.
Did he have to stand so damned close?
It wasn’t like it was anything to do with him.
‘Because somewhere in here,’ Gus said, ‘I know there’s … Ah!’ His gaze focused as he pulled something from the pile and passed it to Holly. ‘I knew it! I just knew it. You see?’
Holly didn’t see. Not at first. It was a cutting from a newspaper, stained browned with the passage of years, with her mother and father standing outside a building, the bride’s hand to her head as her veil was lifted horizontally by the breeze, the photograph perfectly capturing the moment as the groom reached a hand out for the wayward veil too, laughing along with her, and so focused on each other that it took Holly for ever to shift her eyes and see the awning over their heads—and to recognise the name on that awning.
No!
She blinked but there was no denying it.
‘I … I don’t understand,’ she said, looking up at her grandfather.
‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘Your mother and father were married at the Chatsfield Hotel in Sydney, on their opening weekend.’
‘But how? Why?’ It was news to Holly. Unbelievable news. As far as she’d known, the vineyard and winery had provided no more than a modest income until recently, when their wines had really begun to find success and acclaim. It seemed unlikely that they could ever have afforded to get married in a Chatsfield Hotel and one all the way over in Sydney. ‘It must have cost a fortune.’