the grapes and the wine. I’m so proud of you.’
She smiled, a soft smile she hoped told him just how much she loved him, before leaning over to add a kiss to his leathery cheek for good measure. ‘If it is true, it’s only because you taught me everything I know.’
He caught her hand within the iron grip of his bony fingers, blinking to clear watery eyes as he turned his impassioned expression up to hers. ‘Don’t you see, Holly? This Chatsfield deal could be the opportunity of a lifetime.’
She could see how he’d think it so. The dollars alone were enough to make anyone’s eyes water. But it could also turn out to be the biggest blunder of all time, given the parlous state of the Chatsfield family and its hotel chain.
But she didn’t say so, not when her grandfather seemed so set on making a deal with them. ‘I’ll talk to him, Pop,’ she said simply and even honestly with a smile for the man who had been the centre of her existence for so long she didn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been there for her. ‘I’ll give him a chance and I’ll listen to what he has to say.’
And then I’ll tell him to go to hell.
FRANCO CHATSFIELD DIDN’T appreciate having a gun held to his head, especially not by Christos Giatrakos—the man his father had hired in to bring his siblings into line… . Him into line.
He tossed away the business magazine he’d been attempting to read on the descent into Adelaide Airport, giving up all pretence of being able to focus on the words. Because the closer he got to landing, the more resentful he grew.
In normal circumstances he wouldn’t have given someone like Giatrakos five minutes of his time.
In normal circumstances he would have told Giatrakos where to well and truly get off.
Except that Giatrakos’s last email had stopped him in his tracks.
From: [email protected]
Subject: CONDITIONS OF TRUST CONTINUATION
Despite numerous attempts to make you see sense, be aware that failure to seal the deal with Purman Wines will leave me no choice but to use the power your father has given me and lock down your access to your trust funds.
This is your last warning.
C.G.
Jeopardising the income stream from the Chatsfield Family Trust was the one thing Franco couldn’t let happen.
So he’d play the game by Giatrakos’s rules. He’d even let Giatrakos think he’d won the day if it was that important to him. Because he’d spoken to Angus Purman and it was clear from his enthusiastic response to his offer that getting his signature was practically a done deal. No wonder, really, given he’d had one hell of a budget to play with and he’d teased Purman with that knowledge.
Getting the paperwork should be a mere formality, in which case, he’d be back in Milan with this deal sorted and signed and on that jerk CEO’s desk before the ink was even dry on the contract.
And if his father—his famous father, who hadn’t given him two minutes of consideration since he’d been born—had thought for a moment that he would be cowed by the prospect of sorting out a new wine contract for Chatsfield’s prestige hotel chain, he had another think coming.
He might have dropped out of school at sixteen and fled the Chatsfield media circus before it could consume him, but he’d still managed to learn a thing or two along the way. Maybe his father might finally realise that?
He snorted.
Not that he cared either way.
The plane bumped through clouds on its descent and he looked out the window, searching for his first glimpse of Adelaide, but there was still no sign of anything approaching a city. Instead below him spread an undulating carpet of green dotted with tiny towns connected by winding ribbons of bitumen. There were forests of pine and the dull grey of eucalypts, interspersed with open fields, and vineyards too, marching in regimented lines across the hillsides. Somewhere down there, he figured, must be Purman’s cool-climate pinot-chardonnay block that provided the fruit for their award-winning sparkling wine.
A burst of rain spattered against his window, obliterating the view, and Franco reclined back in his seat as the plane bumped its descent over the hills. Not that he had to know where exactly, because as soon as the plane landed and he cleared customs, he was heading straight to Purman’s Coonawarra head office, one more short flight away. He didn’t want or need to see anything else. His job was to fill in a few final details on the contract he had ready and get a signature. It wasn’t like he was here to have a holiday. In fact, the sooner he’d put Giatrakos—the jerk—back in his box and ensured the funds from the Chatsfield Family Trust kept flowing where he wanted them to, the better.
Right now, that was all he cared about.
It might be winter but the weather was worse than wintry, it was foul, and Holly had come in from the vineyard to escape it while she made them both a sandwich for lunch. Above the pounding of the rain on the roof she barely registered the noise at first. Even when she did make out the distinctive whump-whump of chopper blades, she didn’t pay it much attention. They weren’t that far from the airfield after all, and there was a steady trade in sightseer flights, although admittedly more common in the warmer months.
But the noise grew progressively louder and closer and Holly stopped slicing cheese as a shiver of premonition zipped down her spine. Could it be him?
She grabbed a tea towel to wipe her hands as she crossed to the glass doors that looked out over acres of vines, now mostly bare and stripped of their leaves, to see a helicopter hovering above the lawns that doubled as a rudimentary helipad when occasion demanded.
Her grandfather wheeled alongside her as the chopper descended slowly to the ground.
‘You reckon it’s him?’
‘Who else could it be? Clearly it’s somebody who likes to make an entrance. It figures it’d be a Chatsfield.’
‘You don’t know that, Holly.’
Her hackles did.
Her bones did.
‘It’s him,’ she said, before balling the tea towel in her hands and unceremoniously flinging it across the room to land in the sink with the same unerring certainty. She slid open the door to air that was so cold and crisp it might snap, the rain squalls moved on for now, and from the edge of the verandah they waited as the chopper’s motor wound down, the blades’ revolutions slowing.
And even though it was near-freezing outside, her blood simmered with resentment. Did he honestly imagine they’d be impressed at such a grand entrance?
Not likely.
The passenger door popped open and their
