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“You really don’t know?”
“If I knew, would I be asking?” she snapped.
“Strange, given that you’re his valued employee, and given—by your own admission—how close you are and how much you care about him, that he didn’t see the need to apprise you of his intentions.”
She didn’t like his unspoken insinuation that there was something unsavory between her and Charles. Sure, she loved him—like a father. But how could she explain that to Judd now? He’d never believe her.
Judd leaned back in his chair and fixed her with his intense gaze. “It seems that your esteemed employer wishes to offer me a controlling interest in the family business.”
“He what?”
A controlling interest? Just like that? Black spots swam before Anna’s eyes and she gulped at the air. How could Charles do that to Nicole? How could she have done that to Nicole? Anna knew her best friend had standards just as high as Charles’s when it came to loyalty and honesty. When she found out that Anna had been the messenger who had gone behind Nicole’s back to practically hand deliver Charles’s company to Judd, would Nicole ever forgive her?
“And that’s not all. Apparently, he wants to assign the family home to me, as well.” He casually waved the letter in the air. “All to do with whatever I please.”
Anna couldn’t believe her ears. “He wouldn’t do something like that. You have no loyalty to Charles, no loyalty to Wilson Wines. For all we know, you’d just sell off your share to someone who didn’t give a damn. Charles would never do something so rash.”
Would he? Had he become so desperate to mend the vast chasm between father and son that he was prepared to offer the world on a platter? This would destroy Nicole. She’d grown up in the New Zealand house—it was still her home. And she’d poured her heart and soul into the business—surely not to simply see half of it handed over to her brother? Charles couldn’t be so cruel.
But Anna knew full well that Charles was capable of doing such a thing. Single-minded to a fault, his aim was to return his son to his side before he died. When his doctors had confirmed that time might be running out, he’d gone after his goal to bring Judd back into his life with every weapon at his disposal. He’d do whatever it took, even if it meant hurting the daughter who loved him so very much.
Ever since the posthumous delivery of a letter from his former partner and biggest business rival, Thomas Jackson, he’d become obsessed with Judd, with somehow rebuilding a bond between them. Anna hadn’t been privy to the contents of the letter but she’d wager her very generous salary that it had to do with the rift between the business partners and Cynthia and Judd leaving New Zealand very shortly after. She’d often wondered if Thomas Jackson and Cynthia had been lovers.
Which begged the question—had Charles believed Judd was not his son?
Judd passed the letter across to her.
“Read it for yourself.”
The words blurred before her eyes and she blinked to clear them. It was true. There, in Charles’s scrawling black handwriting, was his desperate appeal to the son he’d turned his back on twenty-five years ago. She knew what it must have cost the older man to put his emotions in words like this. Never a demonstrative man, it shocked her to see him pour his heart out onto the page. Ever hedging his bets, though, he’d insisted on Judd undergoing DNA testing to prove he was, without a shadow of a doubt, Charles’s child. Ah, so there had been some doubt. Now everything began to make sense.
She finished scanning the letter and neatly folded it before handing it back to Judd.
“I had no idea he had planned this. Will you accept his offer?” she asked.
“He insults my mother, even after all this time, and you think I’m going to leap at his offer?”
“Insults Cynthia?” She didn’t follow his reasoning.
“The DNA test. He wants proof she didn’t cheat on him when I was conceived. It’s obvious, no matter what he says in that letter, he hasn’t changed a bit. He still expects to call all the shots. And then there’s you.”
“Me?”
“What’s your role in all this? Did he expect you to also sweeten the deal?”
Anna felt a flush rise in her cheeks. “I don’t think I like what you’re suggesting.”
“Well, you can’t blame me. You come to my family’s home, you fail to identify yourself or your reasons for being here and you show yourself to be very receptive to attention from me. You certainly didn’t object last night when I kissed you.”
“That was …”
Words failed her.
“It was what, Anna? Going over and above the call of duty?”
Anna bit back the retort that sprang so readily to her lips and forced herself to calm down.
“I did what I came to do, you have the letter, you’ve read it. Now the ball is in your court.”
And she’d failed Charles, she admitted to herself. The knowledge lodged like a heavy ball of painful regret knotted tight within her chest. The most important thing he’d ever asked of her and she’d screwed it up.
“Please, I beg of you, don’t let what I’ve done influence your decision in any way. Charles wanted me to be upfront with you. It was my choice to hold back my real reasons for being here.”
“Why?”
“I knew he wanted to extend an olive branch, but I was concerned about how you might feel about him and whether you would take advantage of him. He’s an old man, old before his time because of his illness. He doesn’t deserve any more misery in his life.”
“And that’s your considered opinion?”
“Of course it is. Look, you don’t know him. You probably barely remember him. Whatever happened in the past is past. It can’t be undone. Can’t you put it aside and consider what it would mean to him to make amends with you now?”
Judd stared at her for a moment, his expression not giving any sign of what he might be thinking. The knot of dread tightened even further.
Put the past behind him? Did she have even the faintest idea what she was asking? Of course she didn’t. She hadn’t been torn from the father who had adored him one minute and then refused to look at him the next. She hadn’t been transplanted into another family, another world, and been told to “man up” because his mother expected him to be strong. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d watched cars arrive at The Masters’ and hoped against hope that his father would alight from one of them. That he’d come to say it had all been a mistake.
But what his six-year-old heart had wished for had never happened and, in time, he’d learned not to scan the parents’ faces at school events for the man whose features he’d always been told were an older version of his own. He’d learned to inure himself from the hope that one day his life would return to what it had been before.
And it had made him a stronger man. A man who knew that the only person he could, or should, rely upon was himself.
His first instinct on reading his father’s entreaty was to ball it up and to tell Anna to take it back to Charles-bloody-Wilson and to tell the old man to put it where the sun doesn’t shine. But then rationality overrode the deviation into emotionalism.
Without realizing it, his long-estranged father had actually given Judd the opportunity he’d quietly dreamed of for many a year—payback. Not only for rejecting the son who’d so earnestly idolized him, but for what he’d done to Cynthia.
Judd had heard the story from his mother more times than he could count—after pulling her away from her home and her family, Charles had neglected her. Ignored her. Prioritized every concern over and above his relationship with his wife. And when Cynthia, in her loneliness and frustration, had started spending more time away from home, trying to find friends and activities to fill the void left by her husband’s absence, Charles had turned into a possessive monster, constantly jealous and utterly convinced she was cheating on him.
It had all culminated in the fight that had led Charles to kick Judd and his mother out of the house. And that was the last Judd had seen of his father. There had been no phone calls. No letters. No visits. Charles had clearly washed his hands of both of them for the past twenty-five years.
And now, this was Judd’s chance to pay him back in kind for all the pain he and his mother had suffered. With the controlling interest in the company, Charles was placing the weapons right into his hands. Everything his mother had told him about the past had shown Charles up for a man who’d always put his business before his family. Judd knew exactly where to strike to cause the most pain, to exact the deepest satisfaction.
He needed time to think, to consolidate the plans burgeoning in his mind, but he had no doubt that he’d shortly be accepting his father’s offer. No doubt at all.
He looked over at Anna—his eyes raking over her and taking in the lustrous length of her hair, her exquisite beauty, her enticing feminine curves. She was all woman from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Even now, as angry as he was, she still had the capacity to excite him, to incite within him the desire to possess her in every manner of the word.
A tug of regret pulled deep inside. His mother’s warning had done little to dim his attraction to Anna, but the letter had cast a whole new light on things. Maybe her reluctance to deliver it to him had its basis in something other than what she’d admitted. Maybe she was worried about what his entry back into his father’s life would do to affect her position there and what she stood to gain from Charles Wilson after his death. Charles had chosen her as his ambassador in his attempt at reunion, so he obviously trusted her implicitly. By her own admission she said she and the old man were close—that she cared for him deeply. How close, exactly? Were they lovers, as his mother suspected? If that was true, it would no doubt give him a double-edged sense of satisfaction when he eventually seduced her.
But as with everything else, it would wait until the time was perfectly right. For now, he wanted her away from The Masters’ and somewhere else, where she could do no harm.
He gestured to the food before them.
“Are you going to eat that?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t, not now.”
“Let’s go, then.”
“Back to the vineyard?”
“To get your things, yes, and then to take you into the city.”
“The city?”
“To a hotel. It may surprise you, but funnily enough, I don’t want you around my family right now. My mother’s been through quite enough over the years without adding the insult of your presence.”
She flinched beneath his words, her face paling even more.
“Fine,” she replied tightly. “When will you let me know your decision about Charles?”
“In good time. You aren’t due to return to Auckland for another few days, is that correct?”
“Yes, on Friday morning.”
“I’ll let you know by then.”
Anna paced the terrace of her hotel room, her cell phone to her ear.
“I’m sorry, Charles. I screwed up. I should have just done what you told me to do.”
Charles was surprisingly philosophical.
“What’s done is done. It’s certainly no worse or better than what’s gone on before this. Let’s just hope he comes to his senses and comes home before it’s too late.”
Before it’s too late. Her heart squeezed. It wasn’t like Charles to be melodramatic. She knew he was deteriorating, but had he kept something from her? Was his health worse than even she suspected?
“I still can’t believe you’re prepared to go to those lengths to bring him home.”
“It’s his birthright, Anna. You know that as much as I do.”
“But what about Nicole? Have you talked to her about this yet?”
“I wasn’t going to say anything to her until he’s back and we know for certain he’s mine. Until then, it’s a moot point. And you’re not to say a word, either. You promised me, Anna.”
She sighed. “Yes, I know. I won’t say a word, but keeping the truth away from her is only going to hurt all of us.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“And the house, Charles. Why the house, too? You’re talking about taking Nicole’s home right out from under her feet.”
“Yours, too,” he reminded her with a surprisingly curt note in his voice. “But I will have to trust him to do the right thing and to continue to provide the two of you with a roof over your heads. If I don’t do that, if I don’t prove to him that I’m prepared to accept him fully, it will never work. Besides, he grew up with the Masters—I know how they feel about the house. Judd is already running their company, so offering him mine might not be enough of a draw. But no one else can give him that house.”
“What makes you so sure you have to take such drastic steps?”
“Because that’s what it would take to lure me back if someone had done the same thing to me.”
If Nicole ever spoke to her again after this it would be a miracle. Anna felt a chill run the length of her spine. She stepped inside her hotel room and slid the glass door closed, but even so, she continued to feel cold. What Charles was doing was wrong, she knew it to the soles of her feet. But it was too late now. The offer had been made. She could only hope against hope that Judd would be man enough to turn it down. That he’d accept his father for who he was without the added enticement of half of Wilson Wines and the home that Charles had built for Cynthia all those years ago.
“So you’re not going to give her any prior warning. You’re just going to present her with a brother and say this is how it’s going to be from now on?”
“They are my children, it’s my company and my home, so this is my decision. Don’t overstep your boundaries, Anna.”
His words stung.
“Of course,” she said in reply, even as other more impassioned words filled her mind.
“He said he’ll give you his decision by Friday?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Let’s hope it’s the right one. Let me know as soon as you’ve spoken to him.”
“I will.”
“Good. I’ll look forward to it.”
His business done, the call was over, leaving Anna alone to stare at the darkening hills in the distance and to wonder just how all of this was going to end.
Five (#uc9ab4aae-680c-53b1-b0f7-ff35718ee751)
“I told you I was right.” Cynthia’s eyes gleamed triumphantly.
Judd merely nodded. He’d spent the latter part of the afternoon locked in his office, looking at his schedule and seeing where, and to whom, he could apportion his workload. It was one advantage of having several cousins all working within the same family business, he conceded. There were plenty of people just as invested as he was in making sure The Masters’ continued to run smoothly. Between his cousins and the well-trained staff they also employed, Judd felt confident he could leave the company in good hands.
Once he had everything worked out to his satisfaction, he asked his mother for a private meeting. Her delight at the enticement Charles was offering was palpable. He hadn’t seen her this animated, ever.
“When will you let them know your decision?” his mother pressed.
“On Friday morning. I’ll be too busy tomorrow bringing everyone up to speed with their additional duties to be talking to Anna Garrick.”
As soon as he said her name he felt the now-familiar tug of desire. He’d made some inquiries. She lived with Charles Wilson, which confirmed she was indeed far, far more than simply his father’s P.A. Stealing her away from him, right under the old man’s roof, was undeniably appealing but something he’d have to approach very carefully.
“Do you know how long the DNA testing will take?”
“I believe establishing paternity is a relatively simple process. A few days to a week for the results.”
“You know, I cannot believe he would stoop to that. He only needs to look at you to know I never betrayed him.”
She injected a note of pathos in her voice, but Judd had heard it all before. When she didn’t elicit the response from her son that she obviously wanted, she continued.
“We’ll finally have back what should have been ours all along,” she said, her voice now stronger, showing her true mettle.
