What the hell was wrong with her?
Finally came the turn-off for the driveway into Purman Wines and then the house came into sight, and never had she been happier to escape from a car. Never had she been happier to escape from any man and her own stupidity. She slammed the heavy door behind her and crunched up the gravel driveway when she heard another door bang shut, and she was about to swing around and tell Franco he could take the car to the cottage and save walking if he wanted—either way, she just wanted him gone—when the door swung open and a ruddy-faced Gus called out, ‘Holly, there you are. Hurry up, there’s a phone call for you!’
‘Who is it?’ she called, more concerned about whether Franco was taking her advice and making himself scarce than whoever was on the phone.
‘Hurry!’
Whatever it was, he was bursting with it.
‘Franco, don’t go. Not yet. I think you’ll want to hear this too.’
Hear what? thought Holly as Gus handed her the receiver. ‘Holly Purman speaking.’
Holly listened. Made an appropriate noise every now and then to show she was still paying attention, but given the way her blood was whooshing past her ears, really she’d stopped taking anything in after the first sentence.
‘Thank you,’ she said at last, severing the call as Gus beamed at her and Franco stood behind, looked bemused.
‘Well?’ asked Gus, who looked fit to burst.
‘That was Russell Armitage from the Australian Wine Federation,’ she said, feeling more than a little dazed.
‘And?’
She looked at Pop, the man who had raised her since she was a toddler, the man who had taught her everything she knew, and she knew this was as much for him as it was for her.
She let go a smile so wide it brought tears to her eyes. ‘And I’ve just been nominated for winemaker of the year!’ She jumped into the air squealing, fists punching the air, before she threw herself down alongside his wheelchair and planted her arms around her grandfather’s neck.
‘I knew it!’ Gus said, laughing, clapping her on the back. ‘I knew it when he rang but he wouldn’t tell me why, he insisted on talking to you. I was so glad when I heard the car. Oh, Holly, I’m so proud of you! You should have been nominated last year. I always said you were robbed. This is your year!’
She sniffed and rubbed cheeks damp from tears of joy as she rose. ‘This is only a nomination, Pop. There are six nominees, remember. I’m up against some pretty stiff competition.’
‘But you deserve it the most, my girl,’ he said. ‘But what am I thinking? This calls for a celebration!’ Gus wheeled off to the fridge in search of a bottle of bubbles, leaving her standing, still wiping tears from her face.
‘Well done,’ Franco said stiffly, holding out his hand to shake hers. ‘That’s quite an achievement.’
Gus growled from over at the fridge. ‘That’s hardly a way to congratulate someone who’s just been nominated for winemaker of the year. Can’t you do better than that, Franco?’
And he would have shaken his head and excused himself, so fresh were his memories of that kiss at the jetty, and so raw his psyche after scratching away at it for an explanation, that he just wanted to remove himself and let it crust over and heal—he would have, except that instead of hostility in her eyes, he saw them flare with something like panic, something that told him all was not what it seemed.
He forced a smile then, curious as to what she might be so scared of. Besides, he was never one to turn away from a challenge. ‘Of course I can.’
Turquoise eyes widened. Pink lips pursed.
‘Congratulations, Holly,’ he said. She was like a board when he pulled her against him, as tight and stiff as some of the timbers on the jetty where they’d walked this day. But like other timbers, there was give in her too. He could feel it now as he pressed his lips chastely to her cheek, feel the give in her resolve, the wavering, the weakness under the rigid cladding while the tide swirled and eddied below.
Just as he could feel the firm breasts under that drab polo jumper brush against his chest, the promise of wonders, and he knew there was a lot more to this woman than met the eye.
Oh, yes, Holly Purman was all kinds of surprise package.
He released her then, and Gus laughed. ‘That’s more like it.’
Holly didn’t think so.
Holly didn’t think so one little bit.
She busied herself collecting glasses, feeling her cheeks burn and her breasts tingle and the rush of being announced a finalist swamped by a rush of an entirely different sort. And she realised that the reaction she’d had to his oh-so-brief kiss on the end of a windswept jetty hadn’t been an aberration.