overdraft and huge loans. You’ve paid off the lion’s share of those loans—’
‘With money I made on other deals—not from the vineyard bank accounts,’ Luke countered. Kendall knew his businesses inside and out; he was not only his accountant and financial analyst, but a junior partner in his venture capitalist business.
‘The wines we produce are good,’ Owen Black said in his laid-back way.
Luke wasn’t fooled by his dozy, drawling voice. Owen was one of the hardest-working men he’d ever come across. As farm manager, responsible for the vines and the olives, the orchards and the dairy, he got up early and went to bed late. Just as he did.
‘You’ve won some top awards over the last few years, including Wine Maker of the Year,’ Owen continued.
‘It means nothing if we’re not selling the bottles,’ Luke retorted. ‘Our wines aren’t moving—not from the cellar here, and not from the wine shops.’
When both his friends didn’t reply, Luke twisted his lips and said what they were obviously thinking. ‘Because our marketing strategy sucks. It’s boring and old-fashioned and aimed at anyone standing in God’s waiting room.’ Luke leaned back and popped a cushion behind his head. ‘Why didn’t I see it before?’
Because a smart-mouthed girl once told me it was so and I was too full of offended pride to listen to her. And because I had so much else on my plate. I figured I could let it slide for a while... Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The Savage tradition of ‘letting the wine speak for itself’ was being drowned out by the splashy campaigns and eye-catching labels of their competitors. But Luke hadn’t changed it because tradition was everything at St Sylve.
Hadn’t his grandfather and father drummed that into him? Excellence and tradition—that was what Savage men strove for, what St Sylve stood for.
He got the reference to excellence, but tradition was killing him. He had to change something and quickly. Of course, he knew that both his father and his grandfather and every other type of forefather he had would do a collective roll in their graves...but if he didn’t do something drastic to increase sales he’d either have to sell St Sylve or resign himself to using whatever profits he made on other deals to subsidise the estate. At some point he’d like to have a life, instead of working two full-time jobs.
Kendall had returned to the subject of the marketing strategy and Luke tuned in, idly remembering that somewhere he had a copy of the plan Miss Smarty Pants had tossed onto his desk so many years ago. He wondered what he’d done with it. It would be interesting to see what she had to say...
‘Remind me—who is attending?’ Luke asked Kendall.
His friend didn’t need to consult his computer and quickly ran through the names.
‘Not Jess Sherwood Concepts?’ Luke asked.
‘You specifically told me not to,’ Kendall protested.
Luke raised his hand. ‘Just checking.’
Kendall narrowed his eyes and shook his head. ‘Why, I have no idea. Despite being a young company, Jess Sherwood has had some impressive campaigns over the last couple of years.’
‘And you don’t want her?’ Owen asked Luke, puzzled. ‘What’s the problem? Why wouldn’t you invite her to the briefing session?’
Jess Sherwood. He could still recall her big brown eyes and those honey-blonde curls, that gangly body and smooth, creamy skin. The way she’d tasted...strawberry lip gloss and spearmint gum. He could barely remember what his ex-wife looked like, yet he could remember that Jess had three freckles in a triangular cluster just below her right ear.
He would rather eat nails than approach Jess for a new marketing strategy—as good as she was reputed to be. Call him proud, call him stubborn, but she was a sharp thorn in his memory...the hottest and yet strangest sexual encounter of his life.
And, despite being so young, she’d seen the writing on the wall. With all his degrees and experience, his ability to look into the heart of a business and pinpoint the bottlenecks and constraints, he’d been unable to do it for his own vineyard.
Talk about not being able to see the wood for the trees. Or, in his case, the grapes for the vines.
Owen placed his bottle on the coffee table and frowned. ‘What’s your beef with Jess Sherwood?’
‘Jess interned at St Sylve the summer I inherited this place. I was in the midst of getting divorced from Satan’s sister and I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want the responsibility of the vineyard, I was working all hours, and I was...’
‘Miserable?’ Kendall supplied when he hesitated. ‘Depressed, angry, shirty, despondent?’
Hell, he’d been entitled to lick his wounds. He’d always wanted to be part of a family, and had thought that Mercia was what he needed to realise that dream. And she’d promised exactly what he’d wanted to hear...family, roots, stability... What was important to him had seemed to be what was important to her. She’d done an excellent job of camouflaging her true agenda until they were hitched, and when he’d woken up three months later he’d found 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