‘Be nice to him,’ Pop had told her, and she reined in on the resentment that bubbled up under her skin at him being here, at his film-star good looks and his entitled accent and his damned big feet and thumbs, but nowhere near enough to quell it completely. No. She could not find it in herself to be nice. But she supposed she could at least try for civil. He wasn’t going to be here long. She could do civil.
At least until he put his offer on the table.
‘We have around fifty hectares of prime Coonawarra land under vines,’ she started, and Franco tuned out, toying with a new and unexpected discovery. Because he’d seen her smile back in the mud room, maybe only because she’d been laughing at his shoes, but still she’d smiled. And it had been a revelation, because she was almost pretty when she smiled, when she let her frosty guard down and let the light play about her blue eyes and tweak her lips. They’d become startling blue eyes when she smiled, a burst of colour when she was otherwise clad in so much drabness. Who would have thought it?
She led him towards an old stone building nestled into a stand of enormous gum trees that served as their cellar door, smoke rising from its chimney, and all the while Holly talked and Franco only half listened, letting the details of the varieties and acreage and yields wash over him, details he didn’t need to know because soon he’d be gone and would never need to give Purman Wines or its cantankerous Miss Drab another thought.
Until then, he guessed, he would just have to endure it.
They stopped at a cutting in the soil, where the ground had been scooped away in a wedge shape to reveal the rich red soil lying atop its white limestone base, and she began to explain terra rossa soil, and Franco’s patience snapped.
‘Save me the lecture. I know what terra rossa means.’ Dio, if it wasn’t enough that his mother was Italian, he’d lived in Italy for the past decade.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I assumed you’d grown up in England.’
‘I did,’ he said tersely, glancing over the massive shed beyond that housed the winery proper, suspecting that she was headed there next and already impatient for it to be over. He’d only agreed to come along because he’d worried they might have thought it looked odd if he hadn’t shown an interest.
But now he looked back across the vineyards, in the direction of the homestead, thinking he’d played Mr Cooperative long enough. It was time to get down to business if he wanted this thing wrapped up today.
‘Thank you for the tour, Ms Purman. I think we should be heading back now.’
Holly blinked those blue eyes. ‘The tour isn’t actually finished yet.’
‘Gus is waiting for us.’
‘He knows we’ll be a while.’
‘I’d rather not keep him waiting.’
She drew in a short sharp breath, laced with frustration.
‘But you haven’t even tasted the wines or seen the winery yet.’
‘The wine is good. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here with a contract in my pocket. Don’t you understand? Chatsfield Hotels wants to buy your entire vintage, down to every lock, stock and French oak barrel. We’re not about to change our minds whatever you show me. We’d be better off using our time getting agreement over the contract.’
Her blue eyes flashed like sun on ice, as cold and sharp as the wind that needled around his ears. She swept one arm around in an arc over the vineyard. ‘I knew you weren’t interested in a tour. But then, you’re not actually interested in any of this, are you?’ She was staring right at him, right into him, shaking her head while those ice-blue eyes continued to try to slice him to pieces with laser precision.
‘Don’t take it personally. I’m here to do business, not play tourist.’
‘Have you ever tasted our wines?’
‘Is that relevant?’
‘You’re unbelievable! I bet you don’t even know the first thing about wine!’
The hackles on the back of his neck rose. If she only knew. But he wasn’t about to tell her. ‘I know a bit about wine, yes.’
She smiled then, if you could call it a smile, because there was no light dancing in those blue eyes. They were cold and glassy and filled with bad intentions. ‘You know “a bit” about wine then?’ she repeated, nodding. ‘An expert indeed. So I guess you know there are two kinds of wine, right? Red and white?’
He felt the skin pull taut over the bones of his cheeks, felt his lips draw back into a snarl, but his voice, when it came, was tight and purposeful and betrayed nothing of how close he was to losing his control. ‘I wouldn’t quite put it that way.’