‘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...
Ally let out a low whistle. ‘Oh, my giddy aunt.’
‘Gorgeous, isn’t he?’ Jess asked. This would be so much easier if he’d picked up a beer gut, lost his hair...
‘Not him! Well, he is—but the redhead! I wouldn’t mind it if he parked his shoes under my bed!’ Ally muttered back, waving her hand in front of her face. ‘Yum!’
He did have attractive friends, Jess admitted, but for her they were missing that X factor. The one that screamed power and control and sheer masculine presence. Some would say it was testosterone, some supreme self-confidence, but it was more than that. Whatever the mystery ingredient that made Luke more of a man, he’d been given an overdose of it at birth...
It was a good thing she was sitting down because seeing him, so tall and strong, cut her legs out from under her. He was all chemistry and potency and lust and pheromones and... Why was he still the only man she’d ever met who had the ability to vacuum every thought from her brain? Who was able to send her blood to pool in her womb, flush her face and body with pleasure, with nothing more than a look from those fabulous eyes?
Good grief, she thought as their eyes connected and held, if he kept looking at her like that—with barely concealed heat and open hostility—she would dissolve into a puddle on the floor.
Hot, hot, hot.
‘He’s clocked you,’ Ally told her, very unnecessarily.
‘Yeah, I noticed.’
‘You’re in trouble,’ Ally sang, sotto voce. ‘He looks like he wants to gobble you up in one big bite.’
Jess kicked her ankle to get her to shut up.
‘If I’m really, really lucky,’ Jess countered as those green eyes swept over her again, ‘he’ll just ignore me.’
She heard Ally’s sarcastic snort. ‘And maybe pigs will grow glittery fairy wings and fly.’
* * *
‘You could, at the very least, have changed into a clean pair of pants!’ Kendall muttered, looking exceptionally irritated.
‘I intended to but I ran out of time,’ Luke countered, jamming his hands into his pockets. On good days he never had time to spare, and even in July, the heart of winter in the Cape, there was work to be done. He and Owen were overseeing the pruning of the vines, and in the winery the wines needed to be analysed for pH, acidity, alcohol content and a handful of other tests that needed to be done.
‘If you’d let me hand this marketing stuff over to you then you wouldn’t have to nag me about my clothes. And you can nag for Africa, Ken.’
‘Get stuffed,’ Kendall retorted. ‘And they want to see the Savage of St Sylve.’
‘This isn’t an estate in England! The Savage of St Sylve, my ass!’ Luke grumbled.
‘It’s as close as it gets. Now, will you please get on with it?’
Kendall nodded to the podium and Luke sighed. The Savage of St Sylve? Today he would happily be anyone else, he thought as he turned to face his audience. His gaze skimmed over the self-satisfied suits to a slim, streaky-haired blonde sitting