by Trish Morey
She turned towards him. ‘That’s mad, isn’t it?’
And she looked up at him, appealing to him with those turquoise eyes and with flushed lips parted in question and the loose ends of her hair flying free around her face and he did the only possible thing he could.
He leaned down and kissed her. No more than a brush of lips against lips, no more than a tasting, a sampling, feather-light and barely there.
But enough to learn she tasted salty and womanly, like he imagined a mermaid would taste, plucked fresh from the sea.
Enough to have her go perfectly rigid at his side. Her tongue flicked at her lips, almost as if checking for evidence. ‘Why did you do that?’ she asked, her voice husky and raw, her cheeks sucking the heat from her eyes.
He wasn’t entirely sure he knew. How did you explain away an impulse? ‘Because you looked like a woman who needed a kiss.’
‘I don’t even know why I told you all that,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking, but I do know this. I do not want you to do that again! ‘
‘Holly, I—’
‘I don’t want your pity. And I do not want your kisses!’
‘Holly!’
‘It’s time we went home.’
She headed for the shore as quickly as she could, allowing for the safest placement of her feet and the least risk, and she knew she probably looked ridiculous sidestepping and dancing down the jetty, while all the time her heart thudded in her chest and her stomach flipped and flopped with every creak and groan of the timbers.
She hated jetties with a vengeance. Hated the movement and the creaking and the ever-present risk of being plunged into the sea at any moment.
But she hated men who thought she was part of the package deal even more.
Ten years. Ten years since Gus had turned down Mark Turner’s offer and he’d walked out of her life with not even a goodbye and still the only man she could find who was interested in kissing her was far more interested in the vines and the wines.
Nothing had changed in ten long years.
God!
Franco had kissed her.
Why? He didn’t even like her. She sure as hell didn’t like him.
Especially now.
‘Holly,’ he said alongside her, because of course she was never going to outrun his irritatingly long legs. ‘What is your problem? It’s not such a big deal.’
Maybe not to him.
‘Holly, it meant nothing.’
No, it never did apparently.
‘Holly!’ He hooked his fingers around one elbow and swung her around to face him. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m not stupid, you know.’
‘I know that.’
‘I’m not part of this deal and you better remember that.’
‘I never thought you were.’
‘And I certainly won’t be signing that contract any sooner just because you think I’m so naive I might be flattered that a Chatsfield pays me a little attention.’
‘I do not think that!’
‘Good. Keep on not thinking that and there’s a chance we might even survive this six weeks of hell you’re putting us through. Now, let me go and get out of my way.’
‘With pleasure,’ he snarled, dropping her arm and stepping clear and watching her pick her way as quickly as she could down the jetty.
Why had he kissed her? He asked himself the same question, examined it from every angle and from back to front, and still he could come up with no logical explanation. A mere impulse didn’t cut it. He’d heard sad stories before and not been moved to kiss the person telling them, so why today? Why with this woman, someone who already had reason to hate him? And while he didn’t care what she thought of him personally, why would he risk getting her back up? What the hell was wrong with him?
An impulse. A stupid impulse. But it didn’t make him any happier knowing that this time he couldn’t blame it on jet lag.
She stumbled her way along the timbers, hating jetties and creaking timbers and men who only wanted to take advantage. But the thing that she hated most of all was a man who tasted so good that she hadn’t wanted to stop.
Where had that come from?
He was a Chatsfield, for heaven’s sake!
The worst kind of man.
And he had some kind of nerve to think she was going to fall at his feet.
They barely spoke on the way back, an hour of excruciating tension, where thoughts seemed louder than words and where every breath reminded her of how good this man had tasted.
God, but she was a fool. She’d watched his face descend. She’d known without a shadow of a doubt he was going to kiss her, and like a rabbit stuck in headlights, she’d stood there transfixed, waiting for it to happen.
Willing it to happen.
What the hell was wrong with her?
Finally came the turn-off for the driveway into Purman Wines and then the house came into sight, and never had she been happier to escape from a car. Never had she been happier to escape from any man and her own stupidity. She slammed the heavy door behind her and crunched up the gravel driveway when she heard another door bang shut, and she was about to swing around and tell Franco he could take the car to the cottage and save walking if he wanted—either way, she just wanted him gone—when the door swung open and a ruddy-faced Gus called out, ‘Holly, there you are. Hurry up, there’s a phone call for you!’
‘Who is it?’ she called, more concerned about whether Franco was taking her advice and making himself scarce than whoever was on the phone.
‘Hurry!’
Whatever it was, he was bursting with it.
‘Franco, don’t go. Not yet. I think you’ll want to hear this too.’
Hear what? thought Holly as Gus handed her the receiver. ‘Holly Purman speaking.’
Holly listened. Made an appropriate noise every now and then to show she was still paying attention, but given the way her blood was whooshing past her ears, really she’d stopped taking anything in after the first sentence.
‘Thank you,’ she said at last, severing the call as Gus beamed at her and Franco stood behind, looked bemused.
‘Well?’ asked Gus, who looked fit to burst.
‘That was Russell Armitage from the Australian Wine Federation,’ she said, feeling more than a little dazed.
‘And?’
She looked at Pop, the man who had raised her since she was a toddler, the man who had taught her everything she knew, and she knew this was as much for him as it was for her.
She let go a smile so wide it brought tears to her eyes. ‘And I’ve just been nominated for winemaker of the year!’ She jumped into the air squealing, fists punching the air, before she threw herself down alongside his wheelchair and planted her arms around her grandfather’s neck.
‘I knew it!’ Gus said, laughing, clapping her on the back. ‘I knew it when he rang but he wouldn’t tell me why, he insisted on talking to you. I was so glad when I heard the car. Oh, Holly, I’m so proud of you! You should have been nominated last year. I always said you were robbed. This is your year!’
She sniffed and rubbed cheeks damp from tears of joy as she rose. ‘This is only a nomination, Pop. There are six nominees, remember. I’m up against some pretty stiff competition.’
‘But you deserve it the most, my girl,’ he said. ‘But what am I thinking? This calls for a celebration!’ Gus wheeled off to the fridge in search of a bottle of bubbles, leaving her standing, still wiping tears from her face.
‘Well done,’ Franco said stiffly, holding out his hand to shake hers. ‘That’s quite an achievement.’
Gus growled from over at the fridge. ‘That’s hardly a way to congratulate someone who’s just been nominated for winemaker of the year. Can’t you do better than that, Franco?’
And he would have shaken his head and excused himself, so fresh were his memories of that kiss at the jetty, and so raw his psyche after scratching away at it for an explanation, that he just
wanted to remove himself and let it crust over and heal—he would have, except that instead of hostility in her eyes, he saw them flare with something like panic, something that told him all was not what it seemed.
He forced a smile then, curious as to what she might be so scared of. Besides, he was never one to turn away from a challenge. ‘Of course I can.’
Turquoise eyes widened. Pink lips pursed.
‘Congratulations, Holly,’ he said. She was like a board when he pulled her against him, as tight and stiff as some of the timbers on the jetty where they’d walked this day. But like other timbers, there was give in her too. He could feel it now as he pressed his lips chastely to her cheek, feel the give in her resolve, the wavering, the weakness under the rigid cladding while the tide swirled and eddied below.
Just as he could feel the firm breasts under that drab polo jumper brush against his chest, the promise of wonders, and he knew there was a lot more to this woman than met the eye.
Oh, yes, Holly Purman was all kinds of surprise package.
He released her then, and Gus laughed. ‘That’s more like it.’
Holly didn’t think so.
Holly didn’t think so one little bit.
She busied herself collecting glasses, feeling her cheeks burn and her breasts tingle and the rush of being announced a finalist swamped by a rush of an entirely different sort. And she realised that the reaction she’d had to his oh-so-brief kiss on the end of a windswept jetty hadn’t been an aberration.
Damn.
‘So how long before the winner is announced?’ Gus asked as he popped the cork.
Holly dragged her mind back over the blurred conversation. ‘Three weeks, I think he mentioned. He apologised because it was such short notice this year but one of the judges was overseas.’
‘And the announcement will be made in Sydney as usual?’
‘The Opera House. They’ll fly us over.’
Gus frowned as he poured the straw-coloured wine into the three flutes. ‘I hope I’ll be fit enough to travel.’
‘Of course you will, Pop. You have to be there for the big announcement.’
‘Then I guess I’d just better be there, hadn’t I.’ He raised his glass to his granddaughter. ‘To Holly Purman, wine whisperer, Dionysus’s handmaiden and soon-to-be Australian Winemaker of the Year!’
‘Pop,’ she warned, holding up one hand, but he shooshed her with another toast, louder this time, laden with pride.
‘To Holly Purman, Angus Purman’s brilliant granddaughter!’
‘To Holly,’ said Franco, and Holly buzzed on so many different levels. She’d been nominated for the industry’s highest accolade, not just an acknowledgement of everything she and Pop had worked towards, but a recognition by her industry peers of her talent as a winemaker. And she buzzed because of the pride she saw in her grandfather’s smiling face—she knew she’d made up for the grief she’d given him over the years, just like she’d promised to do.
And then, over the flute of sparkling wine she was tipping against her bottom lip, grey eyes met hers—grey eyes that said her secret rush had been no secret and that he knew—and she buzzed anew.
It was harder working in the days that followed. It was impossible to ignore him. It was impossible to forget about him. It was impossible not to look and follow his progress whenever he moved past her field of vision. Impossible not to be caught watching and to look away too late.
Quite simply she was fascinated by everything about him, by the way he moved in those moleskin jeans, by the way he held on to a pair of snips with those long-fingered hands, and by that velvet voice with its continental notes. He was a Chatsfield and yet he wasn’t, at least not the way she’d expected a Chatsfield to be. He worked as hard in the vineyard as anybody she knew. He lived quietly in the cottage or went into town with Josh in the evenings from what she could tell.
And he curled her stomach into knots every time she caught him looking at her or when their hands brushed while reaching for the snips.
And it was a kind of hell.
* * *
One week down, Franco figured as he sipped on a mug of steaming coffee during break, which left five or thereabouts to go, and the pruning would be done and he’d have that contract signed and be on his way home.
Once upon a time he would have said he could hardly wait but he was enjoying working in a vineyard again after being part of management for so long, especially in such a different part of the world, and five weeks would soon pass quickly enough.
Besides, the job had just got more interesting. Holly Purman was the prickliest woman he’d met—on the outside. On the inside? Well, she’d told him she didn’t want him to kiss her but he’d felt something there. She’d told him she didn’t like him but those turquoise eyes that followed him around the vineyard weren’t exactly sending a hail of razor blades his way. Not any more.
But as to how much more interesting it would get? Who could say, but maybe those five weeks wouldn’t be a complete waste of time.
‘More coffee?’ offered Josh, and Franco nodded. The hot brew sent curls of steam rising into the damp air. ‘So Holly left you out here on your own?’
‘Just while she handles another of those radio interviews.’ There’d been at least a dozen of them since the announcement of the finalists. ‘She’ll be here any minute.’
‘Still,’ the other man said, pouring himself a mug and helping himself to a piece of fruitcake, ‘that’s quite something. Holly doesn’t trust just anybody with her vines.’
‘I had noticed.’
‘She must think you’re pretty damned good.’
Were they talking about the same Holly Purman? Who knew how her mind worked? Not him. ‘I’m not so sure about that.’
The pair drank their coffee in silence for a while before Josh said, ‘Did you hear about the party?’
‘What party?’
‘Mamma Angela, Angela Ciavaro, from next door is throwing a party for Holly Friday night, to celebrate her nomination. Everyone in the district is invited.’
‘Well, if everyone’s invited, I guess that means I’ll be there too.’
Josh just nodded, munching on his cake, sipping on his coffee. ‘You like her, don’t you?’
Where the hell was this going? Was Josh still fretting about that stupid hair tie? ‘Who, Angela?’ he said, being deliberately obtuse. ‘I’ve never met her.’
‘No. Holly. You like Holly.’
And if Franco had ever had a twitch in his eye, it would have been twitching like mad now. ‘She’s all right,’ he said, choosing his words ultracarefully. ‘She and Gus clearly make a great team—with your help, of course.’
‘Only we all like her around here.’
He nodded. ‘Ri-ight.’ And swirled the coffee in his cup and drank some more.
‘But she got burned once. By this rich guy who promised her the world. Only what he really wanted was the vines.’
Somewhere in a gum tree nearby a kookaburra laughed and Franco found himself half wondering whether that was entirely coincidental.
He guessed enough to know whatever had happened back then hadn’t ended well. And now he was being warned.
‘I have no intention of hurting Holly, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
The other man stood, looked abashed, not expecting a direct answer to his indirect line of enquiry. ‘Good. Well, I better be getting back.’
Franco just swallowed the dregs of his coffee, bitter and cold, with the chorus of the kookaburra playing in his head.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE FORECAST WAS for wall-to-wall rain, a huge low stuck over the southeast region of the state, and Holly decided they’d be better off getting the sparkling wine order for the Port MacDonnell wedding settled and come back to the pruning when there was a break in the weather.
They left at six in the morning, the rain already pelting down, the wipers going overtime. With a good run they should be at Purman’s Adelaide Hills
vineyard by lunchtime.
Except there was a truck rollover on the highway and the backtracking and the diversion cost them another two hours, so it was mid-afternoon by the time Franco took the Crafers exit from the South Eastern Freeway and followed Holly’s directions through the picturesque Adelaide Hills towns of Piccadilly and Summertown.
Travel weary, Holly was wondering how they were going to make it back the same day. It was always going to be a long day without the delays and now they faced the prospect of not getting home before midnight, hard going on the rain-slick roads.
The sensible thing to do would be to stay overnight and drive back tomorrow fresh. The key to the guest suite they’d built for just such overnight stops was on the car keys. Then she glanced at the man alongside her, at his long-fingered hands on the wheel, at his strong too-perfect profile, and felt that strange clenching inside and looked away.
Then again, maybe that wouldn’t be quite so sensible, and if Holly Purman could be summed up in just one word, sensible was probably the one. Maybe it was because she didn’t have brothers or sisters or maybe it was because she’d grown up with Pop and was used to adult company, but she’d been that way as long as she could remember.
And staying overnight would definitely not be sensible.
She stole another glance at him and gazed at his lips and thought about the feel of his kiss and felt a shivery tingle blossom inside her. Then again, sensible had never felt like this.
Maybe sensible was overrated.
And maybe it was time to throw caution to the wind.
She sucked down air and gazed out her window, her cheeks burning, wondering if it was a kind of madness to be thinking what she was thinking. To be contemplating sleeping with a man she’d once considered her enemy.
It must be some kind of madness. But then it made a kind of sense too. He was no longer the enemy. He was … Franco—the man who worked the vines with her, the man who stirred her slumbering femininity as nobody ever had.
But best of all, he’d be gone soon, and nobody need ever know.
But would he even want to?