It Was Only a Kiss - By Joss Wood Page 0,7

himself legally bound to a freedom-seeking, greedy, money-guzzling shrew. Over the next two years he’d come to the dawning realisation that he’d been well and truly screwed.

Again. And not in a good way. It still burned that he’d been stupid enough to be so comprehensively manipulated.

As a result he’d made the decision never to get involved in a serious relationship or to allow a woman to clean him out financially and emotionally again. While he’d been grateful to see the back of her, watching his lifelong dream of being part of a family fade had stung. A lot.

Luke narrowed his eyes at Kendall. ‘Do you want to hear about Jess Sherwood or not?’ he demanded. ‘She was as gorgeous as all hell and she knew it. Entitled, privileged, unbelievably annoying. I had barely been introduced to her and had only seen her around a time or two. Then she just barged into my office and proceeded to lecture me on my marketing department. She called them a herd of dinosaurs and threw all those marketing terms at my head. Told me what I was doing wrong and how to fix it.’

‘So you kicked her off the premises?’ Kendall grinned at Luke’s nod.

Owen grinned too. ‘She sounds like a pistol.’

‘Jess Sherwood is such a madam that she’ll gloat about being right, rub my face in the fact that St Sylve needs her—I need her. I just don’t want to have to cope with her.’

Especially if she’s still as sexy as she was. Luke didn’t tell them that he’d kissed her stupid and been kissed back.

‘So I don’t want to deal with her. Big personality clash.’

‘It was a long time ago,’ Owen pointed out. ‘You should at least have asked her to the briefing session to see what she says.’

‘No. I can’t work with her. So what’s the point of her quoting?’ Luke stated, knowing that he said it because if she was still anywhere as hot as she’d been when she was younger he’d have a hard time keeping his tongue from hitting the floor every time she walked into the room. His attraction to her memory was still, crazily, that strong.

It wasn’t like him. He had a calm, satisfying...arrangement with the owner of a wine store in the city. When either of them needed company, or sex, or a date to a function, the other was their ‘go-to’ person. No fuss, no expectation, no emotion—no imagining wild sex on his office desk in the afternoon sunlight...

Luke leaned forward and sent his friends a serious look. ‘Look, this isn’t about a business I’ve picked up and intend to flog. It’s about St Sylve—about getting it back to where it was as the premier vineyard in the country. It’s hard enough dealing with the situation my father left me, let alone her.’

Over the years he’d tried to distance himself emotionally from the estate and the winery, but he still couldn’t manage to treat the multi-generational enterprise he’d inherited like any other arbitrary business.

It was his birthright—both his joy and his burden. His pleasure and his pain. A source of pride and an even bigger source of resentment. He loved and hated it with equal fervour.

‘I think you’re making a big mistake,’ Kendall insisted. ‘She’s a professional...’

‘End of discussion,’ Luke said genially, but he made sure that his friends heard the finality in his voice. He valued their opinions, but the decision rested with him. Jess Sherwood was the type of woman who upset apple carts, turned things on their heads, inside out. While he reluctantly accepted that she was probably exactly what St Sylve the business needed, it would be detrimental to him, to his calm and ordered life.

Just this once he was putting himself first...surely at thirty-six he was entitled to do that once in a while?

TWO

Jess, with Ally at her side, walked into the tasting room adjoining the St Sylve cellars, looked at the chairs set up in two perfectly aligned rows and sighed in relief when she didn’t see Luke Savage. Kendall De Villers, Luke’s right-hand man, looked very surprised when she introduced herself, and she saw a momentary flash of panic flick over his face before he smiled slowly.

‘Well, this is going to be interesting,’ he told her, with a wicked glint in his fantastic brown-black eyes.

‘Did he honestly think I wouldn’t hear about this or doesn’t he care?’ Jess bluntly asked.

‘Uh...’

Jess waved her question away. ‘Anywhere I can hide where he won’t see me? At least until