Tycoon's Temptation

Intransigent, he’d called her.

Maybe Franco was right.

But she had a damned good reason. And maybe she didn’t understand completely why Gus didn’t see it the same way, when he’d been there ten years ago and he knew how hard it had been to rebuild their name after they’d been so publicly trashed, but that didn’t mean she had to lower her standards.

‘I’m sorry, Franco,’ she said, suddenly tired of the fighting, and the tension this man added to the room by his mere presence and just wanting him gone, ‘but there’s no point discussing this any longer. I’m not going to change my mind. You’re simply not the kind of person I want to do business with. End of story.’

It might have been too, if Gus hadn’t wheeled himself back into the room a moment later, oblivious to the tension between the two warring parties, an old cardboard box perched on his lap. ‘That was Tom on the phone.’

He was frowning, Holly noticed, the worry lines on his face noticeably deeper, and for a moment she forgot about Franco. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Tom can’t make it.’

‘What? But he promised he’d be here tomorrow.’ A team of workers had been engaged to start in a couple of weeks when the younger vines would need work, but Tom was an expert who’d agreed to help her with their most precious low-yielding vines that she wouldn’t trust to anyone but family.

Gus shook his head. ‘Susie’s ill. Breast cancer. She starts chemo in Adelaide Monday. He’s sorry, but …’ He shook his head.

‘Oh, Pop.’ She crossed the room and knelt down beside him and enclosed one of his hands in hers. Gus had lost Esme to cancer twenty years ago when Holly was just a kid in primary school and Tom and Susie had been there, supporting him, at her funeral.

Losing Esme had almost killed him. He’d once told her that if he hadn’t had Holly to look after, it probably would have. And now, for it to happen to a friend … ‘That’s horrible news.’

‘I told him things have improved. That Susie’s chances were better now than they would have been twenty years ago.’

She blinked away tears. She wanted to hug her grandfather and squeeze him tight and she would have, if they didn’t have this wretched visitor, and so she simply said, ‘That’ll help, Pop. I know it will help.’

He nodded on a long sigh, rubbing his bristly jaw with one hand. ‘Yeah, but it’s gonna mess with our plans too, Holly. Where are we going to find someone else to help you prune at such short notice?’

‘Let’s talk about it later,’ she said, wanting to close down the conversation as she stole a glance at Franco, wishing that this stranger didn’t have to bear witness to everything that was going on in their lives right now. ‘Tom’s not the only one around here who can prune.’ Even though he would be nigh on impossible to replace at this time of year. ‘What’s in the box?’

‘Oh,’ he said, as if he’d forgotten it was sitting there in his lap. ‘I found it. Devil’s own thing to find. Come and see. Franco, I think you’ll find this interesting too.’

Holly followed her grandfather warily to the table, curiosity warring with frustration. She didn’t expect whatever was in that box to make any difference to anything, but she was curious what he’d found.

Gus peeled back the flaps of the box. ‘Photographs?’ What on earth was Gus thinking? For the box was full to the brim of old photos, sepia mixed in with black-and-white and some, more recent, in colour. He started spreading them out on the table, family photos going back decades and pictures taken at harvest or in the winery. Gus worked furiously, clearly searching for something.

But why did he think Franco might find it interesting?

‘It took me forever to find them,’ Gus continued. ‘I figured they were somewhere in the storeroom but I had no idea where. Your grandmother always planned to organise them into albums, but there was always something else to do. There never seemed to be enough time. Oh, look,’ he said, passing her one. ‘Here you are at the beach. You must have been all of three years old in that one.’

She blinked down at the photo in her hands. The photographic paper was thick and curled on the corners with age but there she was, sitting on her mother’s lap in the sand, the Holly of three chubby in her floral one-piece, grinning up at the camera with a spade in one hand, bucket in the other.

Her eye was drawn instinctively to the woman who was her mother.

Holly looked at her smiling face, touched a fingertip to a face she wished she could remember other than from seeing it in photographs.

‘Ah,’ announced Gus, delighted. ‘Here it is!’ Followed almost immediately by his handing it to her with a growl. ‘No, that’s not the one I’m looking for,’ and more fervent digging.

Holly took it anyway. It was a smaller version of one she knew well, a photo of her parents holding her as a newborn, one they’d had blown up and had sat framed on the mantelpiece until Holly at ten had decided it belonged on the dressing table in her bedroom and spirited it away one day.

If Gus had noticed, he’d never remarked on the move.

She looked at them now, the happy couple smiling at the camera, the baby in a long christening gown fringed with lace.

And she could even see the resemblance in her Dad’s smile to Pop’s. Oh, yeah, she thought as she studied the photo, that was definitely Pop’s smile her father was wearing. And those were her eyes her mother sported. Turquoise-blue eyes under blonde hair.

And not for the first time she wished she could remember more than what faded photographs could tell her, remember her mother’s scent as she hugged her tight, or the tickling rasp of her father’s cheek when he’d kissed her goodnight.

They’d been ripped from her when she was far too young to form any real memories. A tear squeezed from her eye and she fought it back as she remembered their visitor. Now was hardly the time to be sniffling over old photographs.

‘Why did you bring them out now, Pop? What are you looking for?’

‘And why did you think I might be interested?’

He was standing behind her, Holly realised with a start, her skin prickling all over. Sometime while she’d been absorbed in the old photos, he’d left the fireplace and now he was standing right behind her. So close that she dare not turn her head. So close that it seemed like he’d brought the heat of the fire along with him until it infused her cheeks and seared the air in her lungs.

Did he have to stand so damned close?

It wasn’t like it was anything to do with him.

‘Because somewhere in here,’ Gus said, ‘I know there’s … Ah!’ His gaze focused as he pulled something from the pile and passed it to Holly. ‘I knew it! I just knew it. You see?’

Holly didn’t see. Not at first. It was a cutting from a newspaper, stained browned with the passage of years, with her mother and father standing outside a building, the bride’s hand to her head as her veil was lifted horizontally by the breeze, the photograph perfectly capturing the moment as the groom reached a hand out for the wayward veil too, laughing along with her, and so focused on each other that it took Holly for ever to shift her eyes and see the awning over their heads—and to recognise the name on that awning.

No!

She blinked but there was no denying it.

‘I … I don’t understand,’ she said, looking up at her grandfather.

‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘Your mother and father were married at the Chatsfield Hotel in Sydney, on their opening weekend.’

‘But how? Why?’ It was news to Holly. Unbelievable news. As far as she’d known, the vineyard and winery had provided no more than a modest income until recently, when their wines had really begun to find success and acclaim. It seemed unlikely that they could ever have afforded to get married in a Chatsfield Hotel and one all the way over in Sydney. ‘It must have cost a fortune.’

‘It cost them nothing. One of those big women’s magazines ran a nationwide contest to celebrate the opening. They asked people to write in saying why they deserved to hold their wedding celebration there.

‘Your mother entered. She never thought she’d win, but there you go.’

‘May I?’ asked Franco, leaning over her, his long-fingered hand reaching for the photograph, and she caught his scent, of damp leather and red soil and fire-warmed masculine skin. She let him take the cutting, if only because she’d expected it meant he’d move back then, out of her sphere, away from her too-acute senses and heated blood. And when he failed to move anywhere near enough away, she took matters into her own hands, sliding from her chair, finding sanctuary in the straight lines and practical functionality of the kitchen. The bench at her back felt reassuringly solid and real in a world rapidly going off kilter, the air untainted by the evocative scent of a man she couldn’t afford to like.

‘And Mum won it.’ She wasn’t just dispirited. She was blindsided.

‘She did indeed. She won the wedding, the reception—they flew us all over and back for the wedding and put us up. And Tanya and Richard got to enjoy the weekend in the honeymoon suite. All on the house.’

He looked down at the cutting with a shake of his head. ‘I wish we had more of the wedding photos, but something happened to the film and they were ruined. Your mother was so disappointed.’

‘And so it seems,’ Franco said with a smile that said he knew the scales had just come down in his favour, ‘that we have something in common. There is history between our respective families. Marketing will love it.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me, Pop?’ she said, ignoring their suddenly smug visitor. She didn’t want to hear they had something in common. She didn’t want to think about their shared history or to have him witness hers—to see her as a three-year-old at the beach. To see her parents’ wedding photos, regardless of where they were married.

She didn’t want him here, period. ‘Why did you wait until now to tell me?’

Her grandfather shrugged, sagging into his wheelchair and suddenly looking ten years older. ‘It never came up, lovey, not when you were small. It was a detail that didn’t seem important back then, not when we had more important things on our minds. And I guess, in time, it was a detail that just got missed.’

‘But you must have remembered, after Franco called. You must have realised. But you said nothing.’

Moisture sheened her grandfather’s eyes and she could feel an answering dampness welling up in her own. ‘I wanted you to make up your own mind. This is your business as much as it is mine, Holly. In fact, you’re the future of Purman Wines and I should probably butt out.’

‘No!’

He put a hand up to stop her. ‘Just hear me out. I should probably butt out, but I can’t. I think this deal is a good one for not only the money but for the prestige it could bring, and I know we disagree on that. But before you make your final decision, I wanted you to know why I am so in favour of this deal. Your mum and dad were married in the Chatsfield Sydney, Holly. It was a perfect day, and they were so, so happy. And they’d be so proud knowing Chatsfield had singled Purman Wines out for this honour. They’d be so proud of you and what you’ve achieved.’

Unfair.

‘Oh, Pop.’ She bit her lips tight between her teeth, trying to hold herself together. No wonder he’d been so keen all along. No wonder he’d seen the Chatsfield name as some kind of Holy Grail when her parents’ wedding there must have seemed like a fairytale. But he was holding on to some kind of vision of Chatsfield’s as it was, back in the glory days.

‘I’m sorry, Holly. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything at all.’

She dragged in a breath before she could speak as she shook her head. ‘No. It’s okay.’ But it wasn’t okay. Because while her reasons for denying Chatsfield a deal with Purman Wines hadn’t changed, what she knew it meant to Gus had.

It wasn’t just the deal of a lifetime to him. It was a link to a time when his son—and her father—was alive. It was a name he associated with one of the happiest times in his life.

Was it any wonder he wanted to go with the deal?

But where did that leave her?

Across the table, Franco saw his opportunity. It had been there, hovering in the back of his mind ever since the old man had returned, but it had been only a shadow of an idea then, a mere wisp of ‘what if?’ But now that shadow of an idea had grown and found form and substance and, best of all, weight.

The old man was already in his pocket courtesy of an emotional attachment to the hotels. Here was a gold-plated opportunity to screw the granddaughter down and lock this contract well and truly up.

It would take time, of course, more time than he’d initially allowed. But it would be time well spent if it guaranteed the funding to Nikki’s Ward.

‘I thank you for sharing that, Gus, and I appreciate the fact you’ve given me a good hearing today. But your granddaughter has good reason for being wary of this deal.’ Gus looked up, surprised. Holly looked suspicious. ‘She wants what’s best for Purman Wines, I understand that. I respect her for it.’

‘What are you saying?’ Gus said, looking crestfallen. ‘You’re not withdrawing your offer?’

He smiled. ‘No. I’m offering you a better one.’

‘It’s not just about the money,’ Holly said. ‘I told you that.’

He nodded. ‘You did. You also told me that I wasn’t the kind of person you wanted to do business with.’ He paused, letting that sink in. ‘Let me prove to you that I am.’

Gus seemed intrigued as he looked from their visitor to his granddaughter, a frown tugging his shaggy brows together. He’d missed that part of the conversation. ‘And how do you intend to do that?’

‘You’re down a worker. You need someone to help you prune. I’m volunteering for the job.’

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