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‘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 (#ulink_8ea03677-e0b1-5585-afdd-78ef26a47e05)
‘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.
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.
