Tycoon's Temptation

‘But of course,’ he said, and not for the first time, Holly wondered at his accent. She’d expected him to sound upper crust and privileged, and he did—for the most part. But every now and then there was an unexpected texture to his accent that curled the edges away from Sloane Square and headed for somewhere entirely more earthy.

Maybe because of his Italian mother? Not that it mattered. Not that she cared.

‘That’s the spirit,’ her grandfather said. ‘Holly not only makes the best wine in the district, it’s a little-known fact she also makes the best sandwiches. She makes the relish herself, you know.’

‘Then I am indeed fortunate. It appears I couldn’t have timed my arrival better.’

A charmer, she thought as she put together a platter of doorstop sandwiches, adding this latest discovery to his list of crimes, a list that was growing longer by the minute. A Chatsfield and a charmer with a posh accent, who wore handmade shoes and gold watches and who hired helicopters when mere mortals hired cars—and usually the budget model at that.

She didn’t care for charmers with fat pockets.

She didn’t trust them.

She glanced over her shoulder at their guest, her father and Franco engaged in conversation. Another squall had hit, the rain coming in fat drops that belted onto the tin roof and splattered over the windows when the wind blew it horizontally under the wide verandah, and over the din, she could barely hear what they were saying. It was just a shame the noise didn’t dull her vision. He’d shrugged off his jacket while her back had been turned, revealing a fine-knitted sweater that skimmed his powerful shoulders and chest like a second skin. Some tall people looked like weeds. Not Franco. He looked hard packed. Built. He seemed to own the space around him. Not an easy thing in this room when he was surrounded by so much of it.

All the more reason to resent him, she told herself as she set the plate of sandwiches on the table and retreated to the safety of the kitchen to snap on the kettle, watching him take a sandwich in his hands.

Long-fingered hands.

Long-fingered hands with big thumbs.

He’d taken her hand in his and she could still feel the tingle under her skin, the zap that had reminded her of science class where they’d scuffed shoes on the carpet and reached out a hand. It had been fun then.

It wasn’t fun now.

She lifted her eyes and caught him watching her and sensation skittered down her spine. She spun, looking out the window, looking anywhere but at him, wondering what was wrong with her.

‘You’re not eating,’ he said.

She shook her head, wondering what had happened to her appetite. She’d felt hungry when she’d first come in from outside, but she was too wound up now to eat, too busy thinking he should never have come. Wishing she’d taken the call and told him not to. Thinking there was no point to all of this …

‘You must take Franco out to the vineyard,’ Gus said, ‘when this latest shower has passed. You should show him our terra rossa soil, and why our grapes do so well.’

‘Pop, have you looked out the window? I’m not sure it’s a good day to take anyone outside.’ Especially if it meant being alone with him.

‘Nonsense!’ He looked at their guest. ‘Franco would never have come all this way without wanting to see everything there is to know about the vineyard and the winery.’

‘Of course,’ he conceded, his words and smile both tighter than a trellis wire. ‘Naturally, I would appreciate seeing as much as I can while I am here.’

‘Excellent,’ said Gus, slapping the palms of his hands on his legs, triumphant. Holly wasn’t so convinced. Their guest hadn’t exactly jumped at the chance. Maybe he was afraid of getting his pretty shoes wet. ‘Now, you’d better get going before the next squall hits. Holly will find you a coat.’

Franco rose to his feet.

‘Oh, and, Gus, after the tour, perhaps we could sit down together and go over the details of Chatsfield Hotel’s offer?’

Holly’s head snapped around. So here it was. ‘You sure don’t waste any time, do you, Mr Chatsfield?’

‘Please call me Franco. And no, I don’t like wasting time, neither yours nor mine. In fact, I have a contract with me all ready to be signed. I told your grandfather on the phone the terms were generous and I can guarantee we’ll better any other offer on the table. I’d appreciate the opportunity to discuss the proposal with you in more detail.’

‘I look forward to it,’ said a bright-eyed Gus, who was looking like a kid itching to unwrap the biggest present under the Christmas tree. ‘I’m sorry I can’t come out myself while I’m confined to this infernal thing. Holly, I’ll be in the study doing some paperwork. Let me know when you get back and we’ll all sit down together and see if we can’t do business.’

The sky outside offered a rare patch of blue and Holly reckoned they had ten minutes before the next bank of dark cloud rumbled overhead and dropped its load.

‘This is going to ruin your snazzy shoes,’ Holly warned as she climbed into her creaky-with-age Driza-Bone oilskin. No way would his feet fit into Gus’s boots.

‘It’s no problem, really,’ he said. ‘They’re only shoes.’

She smiled at that as she pulled on her knee-high gumboots.

Only someone used to buying hand-crafted shoes would think they were only shoes. Clearly the Chatsfields had more money than sense.

Another crime added to the list.

She strode before him across the sodden lawn in her work boots, hands wedged deeply in the pockets of her coat. She didn’t need to look over her shoulder to know Franco was right behind her. She could feel him in the prickling heat of her skin. She could sense him in the swirling air of her wake—thick, smug air—just one more dark cloud on a stormy day. At least this cloud would soon blow away. Back to his privileged world and his scandal-ridden existence.

‘Be nice to him,’ Pop had told her, and she reined in on the resentment that bubbled up under her skin at him being here, at his film-star good looks and his entitled accent and his damned big feet and thumbs, but nowhere near enough to quell it completely. No. She could not find it in herself to be nice. But she supposed she could at least try for civil. He wasn’t going to be here long. She could do civil.

At least until he put his offer on the table.

‘We have around fifty hectares of prime Coonawarra land under vines,’ she started, and Franco tuned out, toying with a new and unexpected discovery. Because he’d seen her smile back in the mud room, maybe only because she’d been laughing at his shoes, but still she’d smiled. And it had been a revelation, because she was almost pretty when she smiled, when she let her frosty guard down and let the light play about her blue eyes and tweak her lips. They’d become startling blue eyes when she smiled, a burst of colour when she was otherwise clad in so much drabness. Who would have thought it?

She led him towards an old stone building nestled into a stand of enormous gum trees that served as their cellar door, smoke rising from its chimney, and all the while Holly talked and Franco only half listened, letting the details of the varieties and acreage and yields wash over him, details he didn’t need to know because soon he’d be gone and would never need to give Purman Wines or its cantankerous Miss Drab another thought.

Until then, he guessed, he would just have to endure it.

They stopped at a cutting in the soil, where the ground had been scooped away in a wedge shape to reveal the rich red soil lying atop its white limestone base, and she began to explain terra rossa soil, and Franco’s patience snapped.

‘Save me the lecture. I know what terra rossa means.’ Dio, if it wasn’t enough that his mother was Italian, he’d lived in Italy for the past decade.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I assumed you’d grown up in England.’

‘I did,’ he said tersely, glancing over the massive shed beyond that housed the winery proper, suspecting that she was headed there next and already impatient for it to be over. He’d only agreed to come along because he’d worried they might have thought it looked odd if he hadn’t shown an interest.

But now he looked back across the vineyards, in the direction of the homestead, thinking he’d played Mr Cooperative long enough. It was time to get down to business if he wanted this thing wrapped up today.

‘Thank you for the tour, Ms Purman. I think we should be heading back now.’

Holly blinked those blue eyes. ‘The tour isn’t actually finished yet.’

‘Gus is waiting for us.’

‘He knows we’ll be a while.’

‘I’d rather not keep him waiting.’

She drew in a short sharp breath, laced with frustration.

‘But you haven’t even tasted the wines or seen the winery yet.’

‘The wine is good. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here with a contract in my pocket. Don’t you understand? Chatsfield Hotels wants to buy your entire vintage, down to every lock, stock and French oak barrel. We’re not about to change our minds whatever you show me. We’d be better off using our time getting agreement over the contract.’

Her blue eyes flashed like sun on ice, as cold and sharp as the wind that needled around his ears. She swept one arm around in an arc over the vineyard. ‘I knew you weren’t interested in a tour. But then, you’re not actually interested in any of this, are you?’ She was staring right at him, right into him, shaking her head while those ice-blue eyes continued to try to slice him to pieces with laser precision.

‘Don’t take it personally. I’m here to do business, not play tourist.’

‘Have you ever tasted our wines?’

‘Is that relevant?’

‘You’re unbelievable! I bet you don’t even know the first thing about wine!’

The hackles on the back of his neck rose. If she only knew. But he wasn’t about to tell her. ‘I know a bit about wine, yes.’

She smiled then, if you could call it a smile, because there was no light dancing in those blue eyes. They were cold and glassy and filled with bad intentions. ‘You know “a bit” about wine then?’ she repeated, nodding. ‘An expert indeed. So I guess you know there are two kinds of wine, right? Red and white?’

He felt the skin pull taut over the bones of his cheeks, felt his lips draw back into a snarl, but his voice, when it came, was tight and purposeful and betrayed nothing of how close he was to losing his control. ‘I wouldn’t quite put it that way.’

‘Oh, of course not,’ she said, any pretence at civility abandoned and left smoking in the heat of her delivery. ‘I was forgetting. Because there are actually three kinds of wine. You are a Chatsfield after all. You weren’t just born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you were born clutching a champagne flute in your hand.’

His hands formed fists, and if there’d been a champagne flute in either of them, it would have shattered, like his control, into tiny pieces.

Nobody judged him.

Not since his father had made it clear he didn’t need a son and Franco had subsequently dropped out of Eton and stormed off to Italy in rebellion had he been judged and found guilty by anyone other than himself.

And he was his own harshest critic.

So he was hardly likely to sit back and be found guilty by the likes of this woman.

She knew nothing of him.

Nothing!

The scar in his side ached as a familiar guilt assailed him—guilt for when he’d discovered what he’d unwittingly left behind in England—guilt for the years he’d lost and the pain he’d caused. Guilt that he’d been unable to save his child’s life just twelve short months later.

Nikki.

And pain lanced him as sharp and deep as it had that day, ten years before, when he’d learned that everything he’d done—everything he’d given—had come to nothing.

Curse the woman!

She knew nothing. But nothing in his agreement with Christos Giatrakos said he had to educate her, to explain. Nothing in his agreement said he had to apologise. He didn’t want her understanding or her forgiveness. All he needed was her damned signature on the dotted line.

‘Chatsfield Hotels want to buy your wines and we’re prepared to pay top dollar for the privilege.’ His voice was as calm and reasonable as he could manage under the circumstances, a thin veneer of civility over a mountain of reason and he’d make her appreciate just how much reason if it killed him. ‘We’ll not only purchase the entire vintage, but your precious wines will be showcased exclusively in the executive lounges of our hotels all over the world. You will never get a better deal. So why the hell won’t you even attempt to listen to what I have to say?’

Her chin kicked up. ‘Maybe because I’m not interested in what you have to say. If Chatsfield Hotels were actually serious about buying Purman Wines, they should have sent someone who knows something about wine and winemaking—not some messenger boy!’

If she’d slapped his cold cheek with the palm of her hand it couldn’t have stung as much as her ice-cold words, and far from the first time he cursed Christos Giatrakos for putting him in this position.

If he didn’t need to seal this deal—didn’t need this woman’s cooperation—Franco could have climbed back in the helicopter and left then and there.

But he couldn’t leave. He wouldn’t give frosty Ms Purman and her ice-blue eyes the satisfaction. She might be standing in his way now, frustrating his efforts to get a quick closure, but he’d get what he’d come for.

He had to. He could not risk losing his distribution from the Chatsfield Family Trust. He would do a deal with the devil himself to save it.

So he swallowed down cold air smelling of damp earth and wet grass. He could not afford to antagonise this woman any more than he clearly already had, so he would not rise to her bait, but that didn’t mean he must take her barbs and insults lying down. He might at least call her on it.

‘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 blurred 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.