Chapter 1
“OH NO, YOU DON’T,” Skye muttered to herself, dashing a clump of dark brown hair from her brow and out of her eyes at the same time she inadvertently wiped a smudge of soil across her cheekbones. Her eyes followed the man’s progress as he cut through the vines. It was unseasonably warm for late October, the sun beating down, hard and determined, basking her in the kind of warmth she welcomed, for how much it reminded her of home. “Another bloody tourist.”
Her contract with the prestigious French winery, famous the world over for their delightful—but almost prohibitively-expensive—champagne, covered basic vineyard work after the harvest. Trimming back vines, checking for rot or mold. Physical labour. And yet, Skye’s day had been full of interruptions—people trying to get the perfect, instagrammable selfie amongst the ancient vines.
The vineyard manager’s instruction had been firm: she had to send away any such tourists, so, with a small sigh, she slid her secateurs into the back pocket of her khaki shorts and began to make her way to the man. He didn’t look like the usual wannabe influencer. Oh, he was handsome enough to be. Or an Oscar winning actor or world-famous singer. She watched him covertly through the cover of the grape leaves as she approached, realizing as she grew near that he was on his cell phone. It gave her the opportunity to study him without his realizing.
He wore navy blue pants, so dark they were almost black, and a crisp white shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to expose his tanned, muscled forearms. His face, in profile, was autocratic and commanding. And, Skye acknowledged with a little rush of awareness, incredibly fascinating, from the firmness of his jaw to the cut of his cheekbones. His hair was thick and brown, with a bit of a curl at the top. She wondered if he’d spent time styling it like that or if it was natural? Somehow, she suspected the latter.
A sea of French words rained down on her, and though she spoke the language almost fluently, there was a strange humming in her ears that made it impossible to discern what he was saying.
You must not allow tourists onto the vineyard. Their shoes can carry bacteria that destroys the vines—not to mention the liability issues, the manager had insisted, before enumerating the cases before the courts at the moment: tourists who’d allegedly ‘tripped’ or ‘stumbled’ while trespassing, all seeking a piece of the famous de Garmeaux billions.
She moved into the man’s line of sight, so his face was no longer in profile but rather directly towards her, the features she’d found fascinating from the side perspective now overwhelming for their absolute perfection. She’d never seen anyone like this in real life. His brow was high, his nose straight, his cheekbones chiselled into his face. His lips were wide and just the perfect shape for a man—not too full, but not thin either—bracketed on either side by deep grooves, punctuated by dimples. His angular jaw was covered in stubble and his eyes were flecked with green and brown and lined with thick, black lashes so that it almost looked as though he was wearing eyeliner. He was also taller and bigger than she’d first appreciated. At five and a half feet, Skye was used to looking up at people, but this was different. It wasn’t just his height, nor his broad shoulders and obvious charisma. There was something indefinable about the man that made him seem to take up way more than his fair share of space.
She swallowed, nervous suddenly, despite the fact she’d already dispatched at least a dozen tourists from this part of the expansive winery.
“I have to call you back,” he said in French, slowly enough for her to understand, before disconnecting the call. “What do you want?”
Great question. Her mind was at sixes and sevens. “Oh, um,” she nodded, waiting for her brain to kick back into gear.
“Um?” He responded, his eyes dropping lower to the t-shirt she wore, specifically, to the logo, which boasted the winery crest. Unfortunately, the logo was placed right at the top of her left breast, and the way his eyes hovered made her body catch fire. She felt lava in her bloodstream and tingles in her skin, her nipples strained against the soft cotton of her bra, and she knew that his eyes must surely see the points revealed by her shirt.
Blood pounded in her ears, making it impossible to think straight. Was she having a heat stroke attack? It had been very warm today and she’d been working since sunrise.
“You aren’t allowed here,” she managed to get out, her voice a husk. “You have to leave.”
He continued to stare at her, though thankfully his attention was now on her face, his eyes boring into hers, so she felt like a laser was burning holes into her brain. There was such intensity to his inspection! She’d never known this kind of scrutiny before.
“Why?”
Of all the people she’d shepherded from the vines, not one had questioned her. They’d all known they were trespassing—after all, there were signs everywhere warning tourists not to stray into the rows and rows of grapes.
“Oh,” she pushed her hair back from her eyes again, the action revealing an inch of midriff, toned courtesy of a love of physical work and tanned thanks to the last job she’d had—working on a luxury yacht as a deckhand through the summer. His eyes flickered lower, so quickly she almost wondered if she’d imagined it, then returned to her face. “Umm, tourists aren’t allowed here.”
He nodded thoughtfully and then, when his eyes swept her figure, it was deliberate and slow, his casual analysis sending little darts of awareness firing through her. “And you are going to make me leave?” He prompted, a dubious smile curving those beautiful lips.
True, she was not a physical match for him. “I’m stronger than I look,” she promised.
“Is that so?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Yep. I’m a black belt, you know.”
Speculation flickered in his eyes, unmistakable. “I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.” Her stepfather had made her—and her two stepsisters—do martial arts. Initially, it had only been for self-defense, but Skye had loved everything about it—the discipline, control, the quiet confidence that came from acquiring the ancient skill—so had continued beyond the short course, completing all of her grading, right up until black belt. “But I don’t think I should prove it.”
“Why not?”
“Well, because the reason you need to leave is so you don’t accidentally fall and hurt yourself then decide to sue the winery,” she waved a hand towards the horizon, where an ancient stone building was silhouetted against a dusk sky. “If I knocked you flat to your back, you’d definitely have cause to sue and I would lose my job, for sure.”
“I see.” His grin was the last word in sexy. Did he have any idea what kind of effect he had on her? “What if I signed a liability waver?”
She was mesmerized by him. “Why would you want to do that?”
“I’ve just never had a tiny woman threaten to attack me before.”
“I’m not that small,” she responded with an angry tilt of her chin. “It’s just that you’re huge.”