‘Phone the guy and ask him!’ Ally demanded, and Jess managed a smile.
‘Not an option. We didn’t get off on the right foot.’ Jess held up her hand at Ally’s protest.
Why did her stomach feel all fluttery, thinking about him? It had been so long ago...but the thought of seeing him again made her jittery and...hot.
She didn’t want to get involved. She liked being single. She wanted to play on the edges of the circle and keep it all on the surface.
Why did even the thought of Luke feel like a threat to that?
Jess shook her head, utterly bewildered. Where on earth had that left-of-centre thought barrelled in from? Sometimes she worried herself, she really did...
* * *
Luke Savage sat on one of the shabby couches on the wide veranda of his home, propped his battered boots on an equally battered oak table and heaved a sigh. He lifted his beer bottle to his lips and let the icy liquid slide down his dusty throat.
He opened his eyes and watched as the sun dipped behind the imposing Simonsberg Mountain—one of a couple of peaks that loomed over the farm. As the sun dropped, so did the temperature, so he pulled on his leather-and-wool bomber jacket.
‘I take it you saw the monthly financials for St Sylve?’ Kendall said eventually.
‘We’re still not breaking even.’ Luke sat up and placed his forearms on his thighs, let his beer bottle dangle from his fingers. ‘I can’t keep ploughing money into this vineyard. At some stage it has got to become self-sustaining,’ Luke added when his two closest friends said nothing.
Kendall de Villiers shook a head covered in tight black curls. His dark eyes flashed and his normally merry creme-caramel face tightened. ‘We know that your father sucked every bit of operating capital out of this business before he died and left you with a massive overdraft and huge loans. You’ve paid off the lion’s share of those loans—’
‘With money I made on other deals—not from the vineyard bank accounts,’ Luke countered. Kendall knew his businesses inside and out; he was not only his accountant and financial analyst, but a junior partner in his venture capitalist business.
‘The wines we produce are good,’ Owen Black said in his laid-back way.
Luke wasn’t fooled by his dozy, drawling voice. Owen was one of the hardest-working men he’d ever come across. As farm manager, responsible for the vines and the olives, the orchards and the dairy, he got up early and went to bed late. Just as he did.
‘You’ve won some top awards over the last few years, including Wine Maker of the Year,’ Owen continued.
‘It means nothing if we’re not selling the bottles,’ Luke retorted. ‘Our wines aren’t moving—not from the cellar here, and not from the wine shops.’
When both his friends didn’t reply, Luke twisted his lips and said what they were obviously thinking. ‘Because our marketing strategy sucks. It’s boring and old-fashioned and aimed at anyone standing in God’s waiting room.’ Luke leaned back and popped a cushion behind his head. ‘Why didn’t I see it before?’
Because a smart-mouthed girl once told me it was so and I was too full of offended pride to listen to her. And because I had so much else on my plate. I figured I could let it slide for a while... Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The Savage tradition of ‘letting the wine speak for itself’ was being drowned out by the splashy campaigns and eye-catching labels of their competitors. But Luke hadn’t changed it because tradition was everything at St Sylve.
Hadn’t his grandfather and father drummed that into him? Excellence and tradition—that was what Savage men strove for, what St Sylve stood for.
He got the reference to excellence, but tradition was killing him. He had to change something and quickly. Of course, he knew that both his father and his grandfather and every other type of forefather he had would do a collective roll in their graves...but if he didn’t do something drastic to increase sales he’d either have to sell St Sylve or resign himself to using whatever profits he made on other deals to subsidise the estate. At some point he’d like to have a life, instead of working two full-time jobs.
Kendall had returned to the subject of the marketing strategy and Luke tuned in, idly remembering that somewhere he had a copy of the plan Miss Smarty Pants had tossed onto his desk so many years ago. He wondered what he’d done with it. It would be interesting to see what she had to say...
‘Remind me—who is attending?’ Luke asked Kendall.
His friend didn’t need to consult his computer and quickly ran through the names.