Charles had often been strict with his daughter. He had sheltered her, yes—in that respect he’d taken his responsibilities as a father most seriously. But Anna had seen how being the older, single parent of a beautiful, headstrong daughter had left him feeling that he had to be firm, set high expectations and offer limited praise in order to keep her from running wild.
It probably hadn’t helped that he had been so busy with business concerns. Anna knew that Nicole had devoted herself so completely to Wilson Wines in the hopes of winning her father’s approval, but it had seemed to add even more tension to their relationship. Charles never grew comfortable straddling the line between boss and father, and had been rather too hard on Nicole in his attempts to avoid showing favoritism. Plus, his old-fashioned attitudes about women in the workplace had been a constant source of irritation between them.
The end result was that Charles had stifled Nicole’s adventurous spirit to a point where Anna’s friend had often complained to her that she felt her opinions meant nothing to him. Charles did love Nicole, but Anna had always felt as if he struggled with how to show it—and frequently made things worse by saying the wrong thing. In fact, as she’d grown older, it had occurred to her that he may even have actively fostered their friendship so that he could use her as something of a go-between with him and Nicole—someone who could understand both of them and carry messages back and forth without causing offense.
“Well, you’ll just have to do it better, my boy. I know you can do it. Let’s show Jackson Importers that we’re made of sterner stuff. Forget about mounting this New Zealand–based initiative.”
“And the wineries who have decided to contract with us, what about them?”
“We’ll use them as a test on the market. Could be a flash in the pan—who knows. If it’s worth developing further, we’ll look into it when the figures start coming in. In the meantime, what about expanding our range of Californian wines?”
After their meeting, Anna went back to her office to create a list of potential contacts for Judd to follow up on based on Charles’s directives. She was just checking her email when a message came in that she wasn’t expecting to see. Nicole. The subject header was blank, giving her no insight into what the other woman wanted. Feeling as if a thousand eyes watched her, Anna opened the message, her eyes scanning the contents quickly. Her friend wanted to see her, was begging her, in fact. She said she’d meet Anna at a waterfront restaurant in Mission Bay at one o’clock. That was in about ten minutes’ time. She could make it from their Parnell offices if she left right now.
Anna chewed her lip. She’d missed Nicole terribly, but the choice her friend had made to join Jackson Importers put them on opposite sides, yet how could she refuse her longtime best friend’s request?
The accusations Nicole had flung at her before leaving that awful night had hurt—mostly because she knew she’d deserved them. Loyalty to Charles aside, it had always been her and Nicole. She should have found some way to have given her friend prior warning of the bombshell that was about to be dropped on her life. No doubt Charles would be dead set against her seeing Nicole, but bolstered by Judd’s clear support of his sister earlier, Anna reached her decision and fired a response back—I’ll be there.
Judd sat in his office and realized that the feeling he’d been carrying around with him for the past several days was happiness. Assuming control of Wilson Wines had turned out to be just the kind of challenge he needed. The pressure being put on them by Jackson Importers gave him an appetite to succeed where his father had failed. Strangely, though, handing Wilson Wines to Nate Hunter on a platter didn’t hold quite the appeal he had thought it would anymore. He shook his head slightly. Where was that inner fire that had burned deep down inside all these years? Where was the urge to inflict upon his father a measure of the pain the older man had inflicted upon him? He must be going soft.
Of course, there was still the matter of the house. His mother had emailed him, asking when she could visit and put her redecorating schemes into action. He’d put her off for now, but he knew she wouldn’t be held back for long. How Charles would handle being under the same roof as his ex-wife was another matter. Judd had noticed his father tiring in the past week. The half days he was spending in the office were taking a toll but, in typical Charles-like manner, the older man had waved aside Judd’s concerns and had flat-out laughed at Judd’s suggestion that his father cut back to perhaps only three, or maybe four, half days a week until he was feeling stronger. His father was nothing but stubborn—a trait, he acknowledged, he also shared.
He glanced over the report Anna had left on his desk earlier this morning, barely even seeing the words. Stubbornness didn’t just run in the Wilson family. Anna Garrick had her fair share of it, as well. While it had given him no small amount of pleasure to know she wasn’t his father’s mistress, she still refused to sleep with him under his father’s roof. She was nothing if not principled, but it was enough to drive a man to rent a hotel room.
Judd flicked back through the report again. Something didn’t make sense. Ah, there it was, it was missing a page. It wasn’t like Anna to make a mistake like this. Maybe frustration was eating her up inside, too. And maybe he could persuade her that a hotel room at lunchtime was a good idea.
With a smile on his face, he went through to Anna’s office. He cursed softly under his breath—it looked like he’d just missed her. Through her office window he caught a glimpse of a flash of red as her car headed out the office car park and down toward The Strand. He’d have to find the page of the report in her computer himself.
He reached for her mouse and brought her flying-asteroid-ridden screen back to life. Uncharacteristically, she’d left her email account open. Judd went to minimize the window but his sister’s name caught his eye. What on earth?
He double clicked on the email and read its contents before flicking to the sent-items folder and seeing what Anna had said in return. Without stopping to get the page he needed from the report, he went and grabbed his car keys before heading out the office. They’d suspected Nicole of following up on her earlier contacts in the Nelson wineries debacle, but what if it had been something else entirely? What if it had been Anna who’d fed his sister the information she’d needed to usurp Wilson Wines all along?
A part of him didn’t want to believe it could be true. She was doggedly loyal to Charles—but she’d been vociferous in her support of Nicole, too. Wasn’t that what she’d been trying to do the night he’d seen her leaving Charles’s rooms? Attempting to defend his sister? A sister she was closer to than he probably ever would be, he acknowledged with an unexpected pang of regret. He had to see for himself what they were up to.
The drive to Mission Bay didn’t take long and Judd luckily had no trouble finding a parking spot in the first car park area at the city end of the beach. As he strolled toward the old stone building that housed the restaurant mentioned in Nicole’s email, he saw Anna’s car also parked nearby. He could just wait here in the sunshine, he thought, and ask her when she returned to her car, but a piece of him wanted to watch the two women together.
He stepped inside the restaurant, his eyes taking a moment to adjust to the darker interior from the autumn sunshine outside. He spied Nicole and Anna immediately in the corner near the back of the restaurant and allowed the maître d’ to guide him to a table not in their immediate line of sight but from where he could still observe the two women.
“I ordered for us already,” Nicole said, as Anna settled in the chair opposite.
“Thank
