by Trish Morey
The deal might have already been done and dusted and Franco long gone.
And now all she had to hope for was another Chatsfield scandal.
Not too much to ask for, certainly not too much to expect, but the way her luck seemed to be running lately …
‘What’s wrong with your grandfather?’ asked Franco, interrupting her thoughts as he took a bite from a slab of cake after Josh had disappeared.
She blinked and looked over at him. ‘Pardon?’
‘The wheelchair,’ he said. ‘Why does he need it?’
‘Pop had an accident on an all-terrain bike,’ she said, ‘a four-wheeler. He hit a depression and it flipped and pinned him by the hip. He was lucky, as it happens.’
Hesitation. ‘And he’ll be okay?’
She looked at him suspiciously. ‘What are you worried about? That your precious contract could blow up in your face if something happened to Pop?’
‘Maybe I was just asking after his welfare.’
And she felt shamed that she had jumped down his throat and wondered what it was about this man that put her hackles up. She nursed her coffee in her hands and blew on the surface. ‘He’ll be as good as new, so long as he does his exercises. He’ll be walking before harvest.’
‘Why isn’t Josh helping with the pruning?’
‘He doesn’t like to. Reckons he’s all thumbs.’ She shrugged. ‘Lost the tips of a couple of fingers once so I can understand he’s not keen. But he’s a whiz in the cellar door, as well as managing the sheep we use to keep the grass down in winter.’
‘So, how am I doing. Am I a “whiz” in the vines?’
She poured more coffee from the thermos and surveyed him under her lashes. He was propped up on one elbow on the waterproof rug like he owned it, long and lean in his moleskins and oh-so-relaxed. He knew damned well how he was doing. ‘I’ve seen worse,’ she conceded, and curse him to hell and back, he chuckled as she handed him his mug.
Curse him to hell and back, she liked the sound, even if she knew he was laughing at her.
‘High praise,’ he said as he took off his new Akubra with his free hand and dropped it on the ground, raking through his hair with his fingers.
Her own scalp tingled at the sight. She knew how those fingers felt in her hair—like a caress against her scalp. She sipped her coffee, wondering again how good they would feel against her skin. Hating herself for going there.
‘Holly?’
Her coffee cup lingered at her lips. ‘Hmm?’
‘I asked you a question.’
‘Oh. Sorry,’ she said, hoping the heat in her cheeks didn’t betray just what she’d been so absorbed thinking about. This man would just love to know that. Not. It was hardly the kind of thing she wanted to admit even to herself. She didn’t even like the man and now she was fantasising about how his fingers would feel on her skin.
Madness!
‘I couldn’t help but notice …’ He hesitated. ‘You talk to yourself a lot as you work.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘I heard you. You talk. A lot.’
‘I’m not talking to myself.’
‘No?’
‘No. I’m talking to the vines.’
‘You talk to the vines?’
She shrugged, her blue eyes intent on him, flashing out a challenge. Was he calling her weird? ‘Sure I do. Something wrong with that?’
‘What do you talk about?’ he said, the corners of his lips twitching like he thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard but he was too polite to laugh out loud. ‘The weather?’
‘Sometimes,’ she said, deadpan. She was good at what she did. She didn’t have to defend herself or her methods, however unconventional, to anyone. ‘I’ve known these vines all my life. They’re like old friends. And like old friends, they like to hear if they’re looking good, and at other times they need a word of encouragement or two.’ She raised her chin. ‘What’s so hard to understand about that?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘So is that why they call you the wine whisperer, because you actually talk to the vines?’
She pulled a face as she tossed the dregs of her coffee onto the grass and stacked the empty cup in the basket.
She didn’t have to explain anything to him.
She was still cranky about him proving to be such an excellent pruner.
She was even more cranky thinking that the way he was going, sooner or later he might even beat her up a row, and wasn’t that going to sting!
She didn’t want to think about how cranky it made her that she’d actually enjoyed this break.
‘Isn’t that just the dumbest name?’ she said, standing up and brushing imaginary grass from her trousers and putting a full stop on the conversation. ‘We should get back to work.’
CHAPTER SIX
THEY’D PRUNED FOR two and a half days straight and her back knew it and her neck knew it. At the end of a row she straightened to stretch the kinks out of her spine while she rubbed her neck and looked at her watch. Good timing. If she stopped now she’d have just enough time to get showered and grab a bite to eat before she needed to head off to her appointment down at Port MacDonnell. She was looking forward to the trip. If nothing else, it would give her a few welcome daylight hours’ respite from the man who’d been shadowing her along the rows.
Two and a half straight days and she felt like she’d been through the emotional wringer. First had come the anger that Franco had arrived expecting to waltz in and waltz out on the next plane with the rights to their next vintage tied in a big red bow. How many times that day had she thought she’d prevailed and that Franco would soon be on his way?
Wrongly, as it turned out. Because she’d been cornered—blackmailed, really—into a deal at the last moment, with only the glimmer of hope that his claims to pruning were overblown to buoy her.
That glimmer had been extinguished the first morning, so then had followed the dull grey blanket of resignation, the knowledge that any hopes of an early escape from this deal were gone.
She felt like a woman who’d fallen overboard and was waiting for a lifeline.
That lifeline now rested with someone in his family tripping up on the world stage in the next few weeks.
It shouldn’t be a big ask. It really shouldn’t. They were Chatsfields after all. It was in their DNA to mess up. Hadn’t the youngest one, Cara, been in the news lately—something about a card game in Las Vegas? Surely she couldn’t stay out of trouble for too long?
And yet the knowledge that she was going to be scouring the web every night looking for a story—a scandal—that would save Purman Wines from the clutches of Chatsfield Hotels seemed a pretty shabby kind of lifeline.
But it was all she had.
That and the promise of a few hours away from the man who had caused all this trouble in the first place.
And right now the promise of those few hours was like a beacon.
‘Lunchtime!’ she called, wondering where the hell Franco had got to, given they’d started at the same time. She caught a glimpse of movement but it was a couple of rows on and finally she found reason for a smile. They’d agreed to do alternate rows and clearly he’d started on the wrong one.
Not such an expert after all.
‘You missed a row,’ she called when he looked up, and he scowled and shook his head and for a second she assumed he hadn’t heard her, until she took a few steps closer and realised that the row she was accusing him of missing was pruned as neatly as one of her own.
‘How did you do that?’ she asked, not a little bit peeved, as he came closer, pulling off his gloves.
‘Simple. I don’t waste time communing with the assets.’
‘I’ll have you know it’s not wasting time, Mr Chatsfield.’
‘And I’ll have you know I was teasing, Ms Purman. I told you I’d done this before. I just took some time getting into my stride.’
And she could see he was laughing because his grey eyes were creased at the
corners and his lips were twitching, but before she could tell him she didn’t think it was very funny—and how could she? She was still stinging from discovering her student was truly a gun pruner—her mobile buzzed in her pocket. ‘Pop,’ she said turning away, ‘I was just about to head back—
‘You’re kidding,’ she said a moment later, glancing again quickly at her watch. ‘Okay, let them know I’ll be there in an hour.’
‘That’s it for the day,’ she said as she swung around, gathering up snips and gloves in a bucket.
‘Already? It’s still early.’
‘I’ve got an appointment down at Port MacDonnell. A wine order to finesse for a wedding happening next weekend. Only they’ve brought it forward to lunchtime so both bride and groom can be there.’
‘They couldn’t just phone an order in?’
‘They want at least ten dozen of our best sparkling, recently disgorged, and that’s just for the toasts. No, Franco, they could not just call it in. That’s not the way we operate.’
‘Fine. You go then. But I can’t see any need for me to stop.’
Did he really think she was going to let him loose on her vines without her being around? Besides, what was wrong with him? The man had arrived after twenty-four-plus hours in the air and been thrown the very next day into laborious physical work. What was he trying to prove?
Rhetorical question. She knew exactly what he was trying to prove.
‘You really don’t have to try to prove that you’re better than your average Chatsfield, you know. You’re not going to impress anybody with those tactics, least of all me, so there’s no point. And anyway, you’ve got the deal you wanted, so why not just take the afternoon off and celebrate?’
His eyes narrowed and she wondered what nerve she’d hit. Then again, with a family like his, he’d probably have a few raw ends rattling around. She was bound to hit one sooner or later.
‘The deal was six weeks’ work. I’m here to work.’
‘So go help Josh in the cellar door if you like. Friday afternoons can be busy with early weekend traffic. But maybe Gus has a better idea.’
Gus didn’t. His idea was much, much worse. ‘Why not take Franco with you to the Port?’ he said. ‘You can show him Mount Gambier’s Blue Lake on the way.’
‘We won’t have time on the way.’
‘So show him on the way back.’
‘I thought Franco could help Josh in the cellar door.’
‘Josh’ll be just fine.’
‘But Franco could learn the ropes. He is here to work. No passengers, remember?’
Gus raised his hands in the air in question. ‘Since when has visiting clients not been work?’
And it would have been churlish for Holly to keep arguing even if she could think of another argument, but suddenly she could see her Franco-free afternoon evaporating as completely as the morning mist hanging between the trees had done.
‘Fine,’ she huffed as she headed for her bedroom for a quick freshen up. ‘He can come.’
‘I’ll drive,’ Franco offered.
She regarded him suspiciously, remembering the last time she’d driven him. ‘I don’t always kangaroo hop at the start, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
He smiled and she found herself wishing he wouldn’t do that. It was much easier to remember not to like him when he didn’t smile. It was much easier to be at war when there could be no peace. ‘I like driving. It’ll be a change to drive on the right side of the road.’
‘We drive on the left side here,’ she warned before she let go of the keys into his hand, wondering afresh if she was doing the right thing.
His smile widened. ‘Like I said, the right side.’
And too late she realised what he’d meant all along and what she should have clicked to straightaway except that it was him and that he tied her so far up in knots that she couldn’t think straight. She clambered up into the high passenger seat feeling a beat behind, and not just because he’d been burning up the rows faster than she had.
The highway to Penola was long and straight and lined either side with vines and she’d seen it all before many times anyway. So was it any wonder that her eyes were drawn to the way his hands worked the steering wheel and gearstick instead?
Good hands, she decided, long-fingered hands that could wield a mean pair of snips one minute and caress a cranky old four-wheel drive into submission the next.
She looked out of her window as they passed block after block of vines and sighed and wished those hands belonged to somebody else.
Anybody else.
‘It’s flat here,’ he said as they drove down the highway.
It was the first thing he’d said and Holly swung her head around. ‘It is around here. What’s it like in Italy?’
He shrugged. ‘Different.’
‘Like, it has hills?’
‘Yes.’
Great, she thought, so much for conversation. And she wondered if she’d imagined it. She looked out the window again. Looked back. ‘So what made you go to Italy when all your family are in England?’
‘My mother is Italian,’ he answered with a shrug.
‘Do you live near her?’
There was a pause that she sensed was weighted with meaning. And then he asked, ‘How far is it to Port MacDonnell again?’
The township of Penola was long behind them, the road more windy. She could have sat there enjoying the scenery, but while the view was pretty, it gave her time to think about other things, and the one thing that dominated her mind was Franco.
His scent filled her every breath. His proximity alerted her every moment. Silence was no respite. He didn’t have to talk for her to know he was right there, alongside her, no matter how hard she studied the view.
In which case there was no reason she shouldn’t ask the questions she wanted to ask. ‘So why did you move to Italy?’
He spared her but a glance before checking his mirrors. ‘It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.’
‘And,’ she ventured warily, ‘was it?’
‘It was,’ he said, indicating to overtake a car towing a horse float. ‘The absolute right thing.’
‘Do you see much of your family?’
‘Not much.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘Is it? I thought you were the one who believed my family was good for nothing more than magazine fodder.’
And it shamed her into silence that he was right.
The road was quiet and they made good time, so good that they did have time to check out the Blue Lake on the way.
‘Do you want to stop?’ she asked.
‘I thought we didn’t have time,’ he said, and she knew he’d known she hadn’t wanted him along.
‘There was less traffic than I expected.’
Franco just smiled that knowing smile again and she hated that he seemed able to peel away her words and see into her mind. They walked to the lookout at the crater’s edge, where the bush-covered walls of the crater fell steeply away to the lake below.
‘It doesn’t look very blue,’ he said, peering down at the steel-grey waters.
‘It never does this time of year. It’s this steel-grey colour from about April to November. But if you were here in December you’d see it turn a vivid blue, almost overnight it seems to happen.’
He looked down at the cold grey lake below them and then over at her. ‘As blue as your eyes?’
She blinked, clamping down on a zipper line of sensation that shimmied down her spine and left her tingling in all sorts of places she didn’t realise could tingle. Strange, she thought, when all he’d done was notice her eyes were blue. ‘Much deeper,’ she said, unimpressed with the little tremor that rattled through her words. She licked her lips and tried for steadier this time. ‘More a cobalt or a sapphire-blue.’
‘Whereas yours are what?’ He took his own good time studying them, although if she wasn’t mistaken, those eyes had also spent a goodly amou
nt of time examining her mouth. ‘What would you call them? Turquoise?’
She shrugged and turned away, feeling a little bit thrown, a little bit off balance. ‘I guess.’ She pointed out an old stone building, eager to happen upon a diversion, eager to change the subject. ‘Over there is the old pumping station. It’s not in operation any more,’ she babbled, ‘even though Mount Gambier still takes its water from the lake.’
He nodded and for a moment she imagined she was home free. ‘And what’s that?’ he said, referring to the abandoned ruins across from the lookout on the crater edge.
‘Ah,’ she answered a little wistfully, sad to be reminded of the wreck it had been allowed to become, a connection to her earliest days now just a derelict eyesore surrounded by chain-link fence. ‘That’s the old hospital.’
Although it could never just be the ‘old hospital’ to her, because she knew her father had once walked those hallways treating his patients and her mother had given birth to her in a room overlooking the lake. And in the end, that’s where they’d both been taken after the crash that had claimed their lives.
But now only the shell of that building remained in place of memories, and even across the crater’s rim, she could sense the wind whistle and moan through the shattered windows and up the empty stairwells, giving voice to the ghosts of the past.
She shivered.
He sensed her sadness, not just in the way she said the words, but in her utter stillness, her turquoise eyes fixed but unseeing across the crater, as if every part of her was holding something tightly bound inside.
And then she seemed to sense him watching her, sense him wondering, and she shivered and whatever spell she was under was broken. ‘I was born there,’ she said briskly. Then she shook her head and let the wind peel back the loose strands of her hair from her face as she turned towards the car. ‘We’d better get going if we’re going to get to this meeting on time.’
Thirty kilometres farther through green pastured land sat the coastal town of Port MacDonnell, a sleepy fishing and holiday village now, where a century ago it had been a bustling port.