She was now wholly convinced that any woman who handed over emotional control to another person in the name of love had to be fiercely brave or terminally nuts.
She was neither.
‘Well?’ When Jess didn’t speak, Ally shook her head. ‘We’ve shared everything from pregnancy scares—yours—to one-night stands—mine—and everything in between, so talk to me, Jessica Rabbit.’
Jess managed a smile at her old nickname. ‘I’m angry, sure, but at myself as well as him. I’m livid that he managed to slip his affair under my radar—that I wasn’t astute enough to realise that he was parking his shoes under someone else’s bed.’
Ally stood up, walked over to the credenza and shoved two cups under the spout of Jess’s beloved coffee machine. After doctoring them both, Ally handed Jess her cup, put her back to the window and perched her bottom on the sill.
‘I spoke to Nick on my way to work.’ Jess couldn’t help the smile that drifted across her face. It was wonderfully good to have an open, relaxed relationship with her brother again, after years of him operating on the periphery of her life. ‘He’s so damn happy with Clem, and I know that they have something special. The last of my brothers—all of whom sowed enough wild oats to cover Africa—has settled down.’
‘And you’re wafting in the wind?’ Ally placed her hands on the windowsill behind her. ‘And that bothers you because it’s something your brothers have got right and you haven’t. Love is not a contest, Jess. Do you know what your problem is?’ Ally continued.
‘No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me,’ Jess grumbled. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what she had to say...Ally seldom pulled her punches.
‘You raised the topic,’ Ally pointed out. ‘Do you want me to tell you what you want to hear or the truth?’
‘That’s a rhetorical question, right?’ Jess took a deep breath. ‘Okay, I’ll take a brave-girl pill...hit me.’
‘One sentence: you’re so damned scared of being vulnerable that you try to control everything in a relationship.’
Hearing her earlier thought about control so eloquently explained floored Jess. Did her best friend know her or what?
‘Being single suits you and not being in love suits you even better.’
‘Can I change my mind and ask you to tell me what I want to hear?’ Jess protested. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to hear any more about her romantic failings.
‘To you, being in love means losing control—and to a control freak that is the scariest thing in the world.’
‘I am not a control freak!’ Jess retorted, heat in her voice.
Ally’s mouth dropped open. ‘You big, fat liar! You are all about control. That’s why you choose men you can control.’
‘You are so full of it.’ Jess sulked.
‘You know I’m right,’ Ally retorted.
This was the problem with good friends. They knew you better than you knew yourself, Jess grumbled silently. Deciding that Ally was looking far too smug, she decided to change the subject, vowing to give their conversation some more thought later.
Maybe.
If she felt like digging into her own psyche with a hand drill.
Right now they needed to work. She nodded to the iPad and listened and made notes as Ally updated her on the projects she wasn’t personally involved with. Jess gave her input and instructions and ran through some office-related queries.
They were concentrating on interpreting some tricky data from a survey when Jess’s PA put through a call from Joel Andersen, a much larger competitor whose company owned branches throughout Africa.
He was also one of the few people in the industry she liked and trusted.
Ally started to rise, but Jess shook her head and hit the speaker button. She would tell Ally about the call anyway, so she’d save herself the hassle. She and Joel traded greetings and Jess waited for him to get to the point. Joel, not one to beat around the bush, jumped right in.
‘I was wondering...what did you think about Luke Savage’s e-mail? I presume you’re going to his briefing session for the new marketing strategy he wants to implement for his winery? I thought that if we catch the same flight to Cape Town we could share a car to St Sylve.’
Jess’s heart did a quickstep as she tried to keep up with Joel. She sent a glance at her monitor; she most definitely had not received an e-mail from Luke Savage...
Not knowing what to think, she decided that the only thing she could do was to pump Joel for information. ‘So, what do you think?’
‘About St Sylve? He needs it... I heard that he commissioned market research with Lew Jones and is open to something new and hip. But with two hundred years of Savage wine-making history and tradition, that could backfire.’