Anna chewed her lip. She’d missed Nicole terribly, but the choice her friend had made to join Jackson Importers put them on opposite sides, yet how could she refuse her longtime best friend’s request?
The accusations Nicole had flung at her before leaving that awful night had hurt—mostly because she knew she’d deserved them. Loyalty to Charles aside, it had always been her and Nicole. She should have found some way to have given her friend prior warning of the bombshell that was about to be dropped on her life. No doubt Charles would be dead set against her seeing Nicole, but bolstered by Judd’s clear support of his sister earlier, Anna reached her decision and fired a response back—I’ll be there.
Judd sat in his office and realized that the feeling he’d been carrying around with him for the past several days was happiness. Assuming control of Wilson Wines had turned out to be just the kind of challenge he needed. The pressure being put on them by Jackson Importers gave him an appetite to succeed where his father had failed. Strangely, though, handing Wilson Wines to Nate Hunter on a platter didn’t hold quite the appeal he had thought it would anymore. He shook his head slightly. Where was that inner fire that had burned deep down inside all these years? Where was the urge to inflict upon his father a measure of the pain the older man had inflicted upon him? He must be going soft.
Of course, there was still the matter of the house. His mother had emailed him, asking when she could visit and put her redecorating schemes into action. He’d put her off for now, but he knew she wouldn’t be held back for long. How Charles would handle being under the same roof as his ex-wife was another matter. Judd had noticed his father tiring in the past week. The half days he was spending in the office were taking a toll but, in typical Charles-like manner, the older man had waved aside Judd’s concerns and had flat-out laughed at Judd’s suggestion that his father cut back to perhaps only three, or maybe four, half days a week until he was feeling stronger. His father was nothing but stubborn—a trait, he acknowledged, he also shared.
He glanced over the report Anna had left on his desk earlier this morning, barely even seeing the words. Stubbornness didn’t just run in the Wilson family. Anna Garrick had her fair share of it, as well. While it had given him no small amount of pleasure to know she wasn’t his father’s mistress, she still refused to sleep with him under his father’s roof. She was nothing if not principled, but it was enough to drive a man to rent a hotel room.
Judd flicked back through the report again. Something didn’t make sense. Ah, there it was, it was missing a page. It wasn’t like Anna to make a mistake like this. Maybe frustration was eating her up inside, too. And maybe he could persuade her that a hotel room at lunchtime was a good idea.
With a smile on his face, he went through to Anna’s office. He cursed softly under his breath—it looked like he’d just missed her. Through her office window he caught a glimpse of a flash of red as her car headed out the office car park and down toward The Strand. He’d have to find the page of the report in her computer himself.
He reached for her mouse and brought her flying-asteroid-ridden screen back to life. Uncharacteristically, she’d left her email account open. Judd went to minimize the window but his sister’s name caught his eye. What on earth?
He double clicked on the email and read its contents before flicking to the sent-items folder and seeing what Anna had said in return. Without stopping to get the page he needed from the report, he went and grabbed his car keys before heading out the office. They’d suspected Nicole of following up on her earlier contacts in the Nelson wineries debacle, but what if it had been something else entirely? What if it had been Anna who’d fed his sister the information she’d needed to usurp Wilson Wines all along?
A part of him didn’t want to believe it could be true. She was doggedly loyal to Charles—but she’d been vociferous in her support of Nicole, too. Wasn’t that what she’d been trying to do the night he’d seen her leaving Charles’s rooms? Attempting to defend his sister? A sister she was closer to than he probably ever would be, he acknowledged with an unexpected pang of regret. He had to see for himself what they were up to.
The drive to Mission Bay didn’t take long and Judd luckily had no trouble finding a parking spot in the first car park area at the city end of the beach. As he strolled toward the old stone building that housed the restaurant mentioned in Nicole’s email, he saw Anna’s car also parked nearby. He could just wait here in the sunshine, he thought, and ask her when she returned to her car, but a piece of him wanted to watch the two women together.
He stepped inside the restaurant, his eyes taking a moment to adjust to the darker interior from the autumn sunshine outside. He spied Nicole and Anna immediately in the corner near the back of the restaurant and allowed the maître d’ to guide him to a table not in their immediate line of sight but from where he could still observe the two women.
“I ordered for us already,” Nicole said, as Anna settled in the chair opposite.
“Thank you, I think.”
“Oh, Anna, don’t look at me like that, please.”
“Like what?”
“Like you don’t know whether I’m going to hit you or hug you.”
“Well, you weren’t exactly happy with me the last time we talked to each other,” Anna said with a weak smile.
Nicole smiled back, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand. Anna began to relax. There was the friend she’d known and loved since she was five years old. Somehow they’d sort everything out, it would all be okay. The waiter arrived with chicken Caesar salads for them both, and after he’d gone, Anna gave her friend a good hard look.
“How are you, really?” Anna asked.
Nicole was a little thinner than before, and her face was taut with tension.
“I’m doing okay. Things are … complicated right now.”
“You’re telling me. Why on earth did you go to work for Nate Hunter? Your father is beside himself.”
“Pissed him off, huh?” Nicole said, with her characteristic cheek, before a look of regret shadowed her expressive eyes.
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“How is he? Someone told me they’d seen him the other day but that he wasn’t looking so good. It made me worry about him and it’s not like I can just pick up the phone and call him to ask how he is.”
“He’s doing okay. This whole upset has slowed him down a bit, but—and I’m sure you probably don’t want to hear this—Judd is picking up the reins pretty capably.”
“Figures. The golden child. Even though I was always there, and he wasn’t, I could never measure up to him, you know.” Nicole’s mouth twisted into a bitter line.
“Your father loves you, Nicole.”
“I know, but it’s not the same. I could never fill the hole that Judd left, and now he’s back.”
Anna’s heart twisted. She was sure that that wasn’t the case. Charles loved both of his children—he’d just gotten in such a habit of being strict with Nicole that he didn’t know how to show it. Still, she knew how much it had to hurt to see Charles lavish the affection on Judd that Nicole had always craved for herself.
“So you won’t be coming back to us anytime soon?”
Nicole gave her a haunted look and shook her head. “I … I can’t.”
“What