Luke leaned forward and sent his friends a serious look. ‘Look, this isn’t about a business I’ve picked up and intend to flog. It’s about St Sylve—about getting it back to where it was as the premier vineyard in the country. It’s hard enough dealing with the situation my father left me, let alone her.’
Over the years he’d tried to distance himself emotionally from the estate and the winery, but he still couldn’t manage to treat the multi-generational enterprise he’d inherited like any other arbitrary business.
It was his birthright—both his joy and his burden. His pleasure and his pain. A source of pride and an even bigger source of resentment. He loved and hated it with equal fervour.
‘I think you’re making a big mistake,’ Kendall insisted. ‘She’s a professional...’
‘End of discussion,’ Luke said genially, but he made sure that his friends heard the finality in his voice. He valued their opinions, but the decision rested with him. Jess Sherwood was the type of woman who upset apple carts, turned things on their heads, inside out. While he reluctantly accepted that she was probably exactly what St Sylve the business needed, it would be detrimental to him, to his calm and ordered life.
Just this once he was putting himself first...surely at thirty-six he was entitled to do that once in a while?
TWO
Jess, with Ally at her side, walked into the tasting room adjoining the St Sylve cellars, looked at the chairs set up in two perfectly aligned rows and sighed in relief when she didn’t see Luke Savage. Kendall De Villers, Luke’s right-hand man, looked very surprised when she introduced herself, and she saw a momentary flash of panic flick over his face before he smiled slowly.
‘Well, this is going to be interesting,’ he told her, with a wicked glint in his fantastic brown-black eyes.
‘Did he honestly think I wouldn’t hear about this or doesn’t he care?’ Jess bluntly asked.
‘Uh...’
Jess waved her question away. ‘Anywhere I can hide where he won’t see me? At least until he’s finished the briefing?’
Kendall lifted his eyebrows. ‘In that outfit? Not a chance in hell.’
Jess didn’t bother to look down. She was wearing a black, body-hugging wraparound dress, black suede heels that made her calves look fabulous and a long string of fake pearls. With her bright blonde hair and bold lipstick, she was as inconspicuous as a house on fire.
‘Where is he?’ Jess asked, looking around the room.
‘Probably doing something farmy...’ Kendall pushed back the sleeve on his immaculately tailored suit and glanced at his watch. ‘Take a seat. We should be starting soon.’
‘Rescue me if it looks like he’s about to kill me?’ she asked, only half joking.
Kendall grinned. ‘I’m not that brave. Sorry, sister, but you’re on your own.’
Jess took her seat next to the wall of the cellar, behind the broad shoulders of the creative director of Cooper & Co, and hoped Luke wouldn’t recognise her.
She leaned her shoulder into Ally’s and spoke in a low voice. ‘Have I lost my marbles?’
‘It’s a question that keeps me awake at night,’ Ally responded. ‘Why?’
‘We’re across the country, in a briefing session we haven’t been invited to, to listen to a briefing by a man who, I suspect, doesn’t forgive and doesn’t forget.’
What was she thinking?
‘Mmm, if one of your staff did this you’d drop-kick them off a cliff.’
She loved Ally, but frequently wished she could be a little less honest, not quite so forthright.
‘Why are we here, then?’
‘Because this is still my campaign!’ Jess hissed. It had been her campaign eight years ago and nobody else was going to get their grubby little hands on it.
She just had one little problem: convincing Luke to see it her way.
And there he was, striding in from a side door to the podium, tucking his cap into the back pocket of his jeans. Such an attractive man, she thought, in a hunter-green long-sleeved T-shirt that skimmed his broad shoulders and wide chest and fell untucked over the waist of over-laundered faded jeans. His dark brown hair brushed his collar and fell in shaggy waves over his ears; he desperately needed a haircut, and he could do with a shave... There was designer stubble and there was three-day-old beard.
And then there was that spectacular butt, hugged by the thin fabric of his jeans as he turned his back on his audience to talk to Kendall. Jess caught Kendall’s wince at his lack of formal attire and thought that only Luke would walk into a room full of Italian suits and designer ties in his farm clothes and not give a damn. Jess leaned forward. Was that a greasy palm print on the pocket of his jeans? Then Luke crouched to tie the lace in his boot and his shirt rode up his back. She could see the line between his tanned back and his white hips above the soft leather belt. Jess swallowed the saliva that pooled in her mouth and wondered how warm that strip of skin would feel, how it would taste...