by Trish Morey
Didn’t she deserve a man who knew how to pleasure a woman?
And it wasn’t the same as Michele, surely. Wasn’t she taking advantage of him—or at least his presence—rather than the other way around?
And the more he thought about that conversation in the car, the more he thought maybe she was right. Maybe she was different. Sure she might be a virgin, but she was older. She was no Michele—he couldn’t imagine her clinging on to someone after the expiry of their relationship’s use-by date.
And Holly’s place was very firmly here whereas in a few short weeks he’d be back to work amongst the rolling hills and vineyards of Piacenza. She wouldn’t follow him. She couldn’t without giving up what she’d worked for here, and there was no way he could see that happening.
Maybe he could help her out, and put a damned stop to this ceaseless burning.
Maybe he should help her out.
Purman the virgin?
Not for much longer.
He growled.
Not if he had anything to do with it.
Mamma Angela’s place was buzzing, a huge crowd already gathered by the time Holly arrived with Gus. Everyone cheered when the guest of honour arrived, proud that one of their own was a finalist in such a prestigious award, and Holly beamed. It was a fun party. There was wine aplenty, as to be expected, freshly pickled local olives and cheeses all overlaid with the tantalising smell of a lamb slowly roasting on a spit.
And somewhere amongst the crowd was Franco.
She’d been avoiding him all week, keeping at arm’s length, determined not to look needy. If he truly didn’t want to help her out, he’d welcome the space. On the other hand, if he was having second thoughts …
Holly didn’t know much about seduction, but she hoped he was having second thoughts.
She found him with Angela overseeing the lamb, the two rapidly conversing in Italian. Angela wore a big apron over her button-through dress, her thick black hair curled back in a ring around her face.
Franco was wearing his sharp Italian threads, the ones he’d been wearing the first day he’d arrived, complete with those ridiculously inappropriate hand-stitched loafers. She’d forgotten how good he’d looked in that outfit—she’d got so used to seeing him in his bush outfitter gear—but tonight he was back to European elegance and he looked more exotic than ever.
He returned her breezy smile with a scowl, and waited for Angela to throw her arms around Holly and squeeze her tight before he greeted her. ‘Holly.’ He nodded, flicking his eyes over her and not looking happy about what he saw, and she wondered if she’d made a huge blunder by staying away.
‘Franco,’ she said uncertainly, ‘I’m glad you’re here.’
‘Of course he come,’ Angela said, her hands held out wide. ‘Who else out of this lot outside my family can speak Italiano. It is so good to speak like my mamma teach me back in Puglia.’
Holly smiled. Clearly Franco had won another fan and she wondered if she’d overblown this whole Chatsfield thing from the start. It wasn’t like there’d been anything in the papers for weeks. Maybe even longer …
‘And so lucky you are to get him to work in your vineyard. Franco is an expert with the wine.’
‘Not as expert as Holly, of course,’ he added.
Angela batted that away with one hand. ‘But almost as good. I know his family’s wines from Piacenza. They are good. You should marry him and start a dynasty.’
It was lucky Holly didn’t have a mouthful of wine, or she would have lost it.
Franco was still scowling. But at her, not Angela. What the hell was that about?
‘Franco’s going home to Italy soon,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you, Franco? So unfortunately it would be a very short-lived dynasty, Angela.’
She shrugged. ‘You can’t tell young people. Now, this is your party. You go and have fun. I have to see to this lamb.’
They could have headed inside, where the bulk of the partygoers were, but somehow, without a word uttered between them, they drifted instead to a covered pergola area strung with coloured lights, tall gas burners taking the edge off the cold. They stopped at the timber railing and Holly breathed in the air, taking a moment to reflect upon the land that she loved and that had been so good to her. Out there, under the crisp darkness of the night, lay the sleeping vineyards, waiting for spring to wake up and burst once more into life.
But the air she breathed held something more, for it also carried this man’s scent and it occurred to her that she would miss it when he was gone.
She sighed, her moment of reflection over, and looked up at him, and whatever was bothering him before must still be bothering him, because he still looked serious.
‘Well, you sure look like you’re having fun.’
‘I’ll never understand you, Holly.’
Whoa, was that a compliment or not? She guessed not. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You don’t know? How about the way you’re dressed?’
She looked down at herself. Clean shirt—reasonably pressed pants. She’d even washed her hair and treated herself to a lick of make-up. She thought she looked okay.
He gave a rough, rasping sigh. ‘This is a party for you, Holly. A party. All these people are here for you, to celebrate what you have achieved, and you look …’ He gazed down at her, a look of utter disbelief on his face. ‘You look like you’ve just come in from a day’s pruning in the vineyard. Couldn’t you have made an effort?’
Something in her jaw tightened. ‘I thought I had.’
‘You seem to work extraordinarily hard on making yourself look ordinary.’
She laughed, false. ‘Well, I guess it’s good to excel at something—’
‘That wasn’t a compliment, Holly.’
She leaned her elbows down on the railing and turned her gaze out over the dark vineyards. This wasn’t going at all the way she’d hoped. ‘You’re very good at not giving me compliments when it suits you.’
‘And I seem to remember you’re good at taking them as compliments all the same.’
She shrugged and tightened the grip on her glass of wine. She’d given him space this week, hoping he might come around. But was he still determined to punish her for what had almost happened between them? Was he trying to find fault with everything about her to make himself feel justified?
‘Does it really matter what I wear? These people—my friends—are here because I grow good wine. This is what I wear when I grow wine, so why should I pretend to be something I’m not?’
‘Because you’re a beautiful woman, Holly Purman, and you should stop pretending that you’re not. You don’t have to hide your beauty under a scraped-back ponytail and a serviceable uniform. What you wear working in the vineyard, for your work, is one thing. What you wear the rest of the time, for the other part of your life, is another. But don’t sell yourself short.’
She blinked. Had this man just called her beautiful?
‘Why are you so afraid to make something of yourself? What are you scared of—that someone might actually pay you attention? Because you sure do your best to look invisible.’
Did she? She shrugged. ‘I’ve always dressed this way. I grew up practically wearing a Purman’s logo somewhere or other. That or a school uniform.’
‘Always?’
She remembered the glass of wine in her hands and took a sip. ‘I guess Pop didn’t know what to do with a girl, especially after Nan died. But he did the best he could, and I guess I was bound to grow up more of a tomboy.’
He thought about what she must have looked like as a little girl, and maybe with pigtails instead of a ponytail, but no doubt much the same. So different from the way Nikki had looked, with her mother’s insatiable need to dress her up so she’d looked like a five-year-old going on fifteen, like she’d been her little sister rather than her daughter. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her in long pants that weren’t tights, come to think of it.
Now he never would.
> That old familiar ache stabbed at him again and he shook his head free of thoughts of Nikki. Dio, how often had he been reminded of her lately? And this wasn’t even about Nikki. This was about a woman who wouldn’t be dressed 24/7 in work gear if she was his woman.
‘A tomboy with a fetish for lingerie,’ he said. ‘How does that work exactly?’
And even in the dark he could see her blush. ‘I went to a lingerie party once. Reluctantly. And I only bought something because I felt I should buy something and it turned out I liked the feel against my skin. I mean, everyone expected me to look the way I did, and shoes and handbags and other girlie things didn’t suit the work, but lingerie was pretty and it was my little secret.’
‘You know,’ he said, his voice softening, ‘you wouldn’t have this little problem you have if men actually knew what you were wearing underneath.’
She looked up at him and blinked, one long delicious sweep of dark lashes against her cheek, her eyes bold and challenging when she opened them.
‘But you know, and I’ve still got “this little problem.”‘
Touché. But not for long.
He put his hand to her face and drew the back of his fingers down her cheek and felt her shuddering response. ‘I need to admit something to you, Holly. There’s another reason I want to see you dressed in silk. A selfish reason. And that’s because when I dream about making love to you, I dream about peeling a gown made from silk from your skin and letting it pool at your feet, rather than unbuttoning you out of your khaki armour plating and work boots.’
‘You dream about undressing me?’ Pink tongue moistened pink lips. Her breath caught.
He nodded. ‘But it looks like, in this case, I’ll just have to make an exception.’
Her heart skipped a beat.
‘Does that mean …?’ she whispered, hardly daring to hope. ‘Are you saying that …?’
‘I’m saying that I’ll make love to you, Holly. I’m volunteering to help you out with your little problem. I’ll show you how good it can be making love to a man. But that’s all I’m promising. Nothing more.’
She blinked up at him and whispered, ‘Yes,’ and he longed to pull her into his arms and show her just how much he wanted to, but they weren’t exactly alone and they didn’t need to make this arrangement public. She didn’t need the baggage of people whispering after he’d left that she’d been abandoned for the second time by someone who only wanted her for the vines. So instead he blocked her from view with his body, and allowed himself the sweet luxury of tracing the curve of her lip with one finger.
‘That was the right answer.’
She opened her mouth and caught the tip of it between her pink lips and brushed it with the tip of her tongue and he felt his groin tighten so hard it would take a solid ten minutes of walking in a cold vineyard before he could rejoin the party.
The party seemed interminable, and while Gus begged off relatively early after the speeches, the guest of honour could hardly leave before the end. And the party was wonderful, Mamma Angela’s lamb on the spit was sublime and people were genuinely excited for Holly, the entire community behind her, and not just because a win for Holly was a win for the entire region.
But while on the outside she smiled and accepted their congratulations, on the inside she burned.
Because Franco would make love to her.
Tonight.
She’d behaved herself all night, sitting on one glass of wine because this was her party and she was the guest of honour and she couldn’t let herself get messy.
Or that’s how it had started.
Then she’d been too wired to drink, too conscious that every passing minute took her one minute closer to the afterparty, the private party to come between her and Franco.
But being stone cold sober had its disadvantages too, when it meant you were tense and jumpy and your throat scratchy and dry, and as Franco held open the car door for her and she gave him a tight smile, Holly wished she’d had a couple more.
Never was a bottle of Purman’s Rubida on a back seat a more welcome sight.
‘I see you brought us something to drink,’ she said as he climbed into the driver’s seat, and he just smiled enigmatically.
‘You could say that.’
* * *
‘I thought it best to use the cottage,’ he said as he pulled up outside. ‘Less chance of you being recognised than if we turned up at a hotel anywhere around here.’
She nodded. Thank God one of them was thinking. She’d been too busy anticipating. ‘What about Josh?’
‘Josh is “otherwise engaged” with the girl from the bakery. He won’t be back before lunch tomorrow.’
‘Really?’ Josh and Rachel? God, was everyone in the world having sex but her?
Which reminded her …
‘I guess, you have … erm …’ Oh, God, she could feel herself going red.
‘Protection?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Of course.’
She felt so naive. So inexperienced. A man like Franco Chatsfield probably didn’t leave home without condoms. And that thought didn’t bear thinking about so she just smiled weakly and pushed the loose strands of hair back behind her ears while Franco rounded the car to open her door. Then her door was open and Franco offered his hand and his eyes were smouldering and there was no turning back.
Oh, boy.
Around them vines slumbered on their wires under an ink-blue night sky while gum leaves scarcely shivered on the soft breeze. It was like the whole world was holding its breath.
‘It was a great party, wasn’t it?’ Holly said, needing to fill the silence.
‘And everyone was so happy for me,’ she babbled as they made their way down the path. ‘It seemed like everyone from the district was there.’
He unlocked the door and she walked inside, still spilling words. ‘And that lamb! Oh, my God, how good was that lamb!’
‘Holly,’ he said, snapping on the heater and putting the wine in the fridge.
‘And did you get to try one of Angela’s olives? Only she does the best olives. Brought the recipe with her from Puglia. It was her grandmother’s and her grandmother’s before that.’
‘Holly,’ he said again, reaching for her hand.
‘Yes?’
He spun her hard against him. ‘Shut up.’ His mouth silenced hers with a kiss that started at her lips and went all the way down. His mouth was hot, his body hard, and she knew when to argue and when to take advice. And right now was no time to argue.
The man knew how to kiss. God knows how many women he’d practised his technique upon, or how many tutors he’d learned from along the way, but he was expert, very expert. And that tongue? That tongue was so wicked it should come with a government health warning.
It lured hers into the dance, of breath and mouth and lips and tongue, a dance between two, a dance with one purpose. One end.
She joined the dance, of breath and mouth and lips and tongue, and danced with him, craving that end. Needing it.
And his hands moulded her to him, one hand in the small of her back, the other on her behind, so they were connected chest to chest, thigh to thigh, length to length. And she ached, knowing that still it wasn’t close enough.
They wouldn’t be close enough until he was inside her.
And she needed more than anything for him to be inside her.
Now.
His mouth still making magic on hers, she splayed the fingers of one hand on his chest and moved them slowly south, over the hard-packed chest, to his well-formed abdomen, to the bulge that ridged his fine Italian trousers, and he growled into her mouth.
‘Please?’ she whimpered back, because she didn’t know how else to show her desperation. ‘Please?’
He blinked down at her, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. ‘Didn’t you ever hear, Holly, that patience is a virtue?’
‘Patience is overrated.’
His face grew serious as he drew circles
on her cheek with his thumb. ‘Fast isn’t good, Holly, not the first time.’
And Holly pressed her lips together because it was the wrong answer.
‘Why don’t you get into bed,’ he suggested, ‘while I get the wine?’
She nodded, teeth gnawing at her lip. It would be progress of sorts.
He put a finger to her lips to stop her teeth. ‘I’ll be right back.’
She wasted no time kicking off her shoes and peeling off her shirt and pants, sliding between sheets bearing delicious Franco’s scent, and anticipation ratcheted up yet another notch.
She sure needed that wine.
She heard the pop of the cork and the fizz of rushing wine and her nerves built to fever pitch and then he was there, bearing two flutes filled with the golden liquid. He sat down on the bed beside her and she scooted up as he handed her a glass.
‘Here’s to Holly Purman,’ he said, ‘soon to be ex-virgin.’ She laughed nervously and took a sip and then another. Perfect. And he took her glass away, put them both on the side table and leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. ‘Mmm,’ he murmured, ‘vintage Holly,’ and then, still kissing her, dispensed with shoes and trousers and his chest-hugging sweater.
He straightened only to peel down that band of black and she watched as he swung free, magnificent and proud, and she fizzed like that wine at the thought of him inside her. ‘You’re beautiful,’ she said, and he smiled as he peeled back the covers from her chest, his hungry eyes feasting on her breasts dressed in a soft pink-and-white-striped bra. His erection twitched.
‘That’s my line,’ he said, his thumb tracing the line where fabric met flesh. ‘I’m so glad you left these on,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s not a silk gown, but I’ll enjoy peeling these from your body.’ He eased the straps down, peeling down the cups of her bra until it was his hands around her breasts, his thumbs stroking her nipples until she mewled with pleasure. One hand circled under her back and a moment later the bra was gone. His hands skimmed down her sides, moulding to the curve of her waist and the flare of her hips, and as they travelled down, he caught his thumbs in the matching candy-striped underwear and groaned as he peeled it down her legs.