Red Red Wine (Tastes of Seduction) (18 page)

Winslow apparently thought differently. He sat and pawed her leg until Tori kicked off her shoe, and with a laugh, rubbed his belly with her foot. “Silly dog.”

“For just a minute can we forget about your dogs and focus on the conversation at hand?” Neen complained.

“What else do you want to know? He phoned. We spoke. I hung up. End of story.”

“Don’t ‘end of story’ me. We both know there was more to it. Sheesh, Tor, it’s been three months since you saw him last. Tell me what he said.”

“It was no biggie. Declan called to see how I was doing. That’s all.”

“Gee, that’s nice of him. He waited, what? Twelve weeks, and now he wants to know. Too little, too late, don’t you think?”

Tori smiled patiently, knowing full well Janine wasn’t finished ranting about her ex.

“I should have gutted the bastard when I had the chance. Should have taken the knife and… Wait! Why are you looking at me like that?” She narrowed her eyes, staring into her sister’s. “Aw, Shit, Tor. Don’t tell me. This isn’t the first time he’s phoned, is it?”

“It’s not.” Declan had phoned her several times since their almost-wedding.

“Tell me you hung up on him. Every time he called.”

“I didn’t.”

“Tori.”

“It’s okay. I promise. Talking to him is fine. It doesn’t hurt anymore. I think he just feels really awful about what he did and about how it all went down.” She kind of understood his need to make contact. For a year they’d been close. Shared their lives. Not having him around was odd. There was a big empty space where he used to be.

“And what did you tell him about how you’re doing?”

“The truth. That I’m okay.” It was reassuring to know she could talk to him without a million red-hot pokers stabbing at her heart.

“Do you miss him?”

Tori stared down into the newborn’s sleeping face. “I miss having someone in my life. Miss the intimacy of a relationship. I miss having someone to talk to at the end of the every day. But do I miss Declan? No.” His actions had hurt her so fundamentally, something inside had died that night—her love for him. Now it was nothing more than a painful memory.

“Look me in the eye and say that,” her sister challenged.

Tori grinned and looked her sister in the eye. “I don’t miss him. Not anymore. Promise. Oh, and guess what?”

“What?”

“I sold the wedding dress.”

“The auction’s over?”

“Yep. Finished last night. I got a great price for it.” She’d watched two eBay bidders battle it out in the last few minutes, forcing the price up way higher than Tori had ever expected.

“Brand-new wedding dress, unused and absolutely stunning? Of course you got a great price for it.”

“I hope the woman who bought it gets to use it.”

“She will, Tor. The dress wasn’t jinxed.”

“Just the relationship.” Aaron opened his eyes and stared up at Tori. She stared back, bewitched, smiling as he kicked his tiny feet against the confines of the receiving blanket.

“At least it ended before you actually tied the knot. Otherwise you’d both be miserable now.”

“There’s that,” Tori agreed. Anything further she had to say was cut off by a loud squawk. “Uh, I think you have a hungry child…”

Janine held out her arms. “Hand him over.”

Tori nudged Winslow out of the way and carried her nephew to her sister. “You feed him. I’ll go make us some tea.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have any bikkies in the kitchen?”

“No biscuits, but Mum dropped off a chocolate cake last night.”

“Oooh.” Janine’s eyes lit up. “Iced?”

“Of course iced.”

“Brilliant.”

“I’ll bring you a slice with your tea.”

“Bring me two.”

Tori raised an eyebrow.

“Hey, don’t judge me. Aaron wants a piece too.”

Tori was still laughing as she filled the kettle and popped two teabags in a pot. While waiting for the water to boil, she browsed through the morning paper. She separated out the main section from the rest and pushed the bits she never read to the side.

But something caught her eye. A photograph on the front page of the business section, and she immediately pulled it back for a better look, her heart hammering like crazy.

Was that…? Could it be…?

God, yes! It was.

Tori pressed a hand to her mouth as a wave of longing washed through her, so powerful it shook her from head to toe.

She hadn’t lied when she’d told Janine she didn’t miss Declan. She didn’t. But she did miss the man in the picture. Missed him desperately. Had from the minute she’d driven away and left him leaning against his car outside the Rolling Hills Hotel.

Her every reason for driving away had been valid, and over the last three months Tori had not only come to terms with being single again, she’d also rediscovered Tori as a separate entity from Declan. And she quite liked the woman she was—just like Andrew had predicted.

However, the new-and-improved Tori thought about Andrew constantly. He hovered in the back of her mind at school while she worked with the kids. And at home, alone, she wondered what he was doing. Walking the dogs, she imagined him with a tiny dachshund/Maltese cross name Bruiser, and in bed at night, she fantasized about him naked beside her. She slept in his hoodie, the one he’d wrapped around her that first night. Yes, she’d stolen it, and had no qualms about her action. He’d taken five pairs of her panties. At least.

The case of wine he’d given her had long since been finished, but she kept one of the empty bottles on the windowsill in her kitchen. It was her symbol of triumph, a constant reminder that with the right attitude and the right people, she could overcome even the biggest obstacles.

It was also a constant reminder of the magical weekend she’d spent with Andrew. And the magic had come at a point in her life when she’d needed it the most.

The time they’d spent together in the Hunter had impacted her more than Tori had ever dreamed. Like she’d done with Declan, she’d assumed she’d be able to file Andrew away as a memory.

She hadn’t.

Her thoughts of him were so real, she constantly smelled his earthy, masculine scent, tasted the salt of his skin on her tongue. His laughter echoed through her ears, and the expression he’d worn when he’d watched her drive away haunted her. She’d watched him too, through her rearview mirror, until he’d disappeared from sight.

Tori ached for him. She had every day since she’d left him.

She hadn’t seen him or heard from him in three months, and now, here he was. In front of her, his gorgeous face captured on the front page of the newspaper beneath a headline stating,
Seymour-Stafford strikes gold again.

Andrew stood beside another man, shaking the hand of a third. Tori had no idea who the other two men were, nor did she waste her time looking. Her gaze was fixed on Andrew, on the serious expression he wore. On the suit jacket that covered his beautiful chest and shoulders.

She only knew him in jeans and tees. Or bare-assed naked. The man in the article was a veritable stranger. One who tugged at her heart and made her chest tighten with longing.

Software prodigies Blake Seymour and Andrew Stafford have done it again:
created a computer security program so essential to the IT industry, Onyx Solutions has paid over twenty million dollars to secure its part in the launch next week.

Criminey! Twenty million?

Andrew apparently played in the big leagues.

Seymour and Stafford
. She mulled the names over in her head, something striking a familiar chord, as though she should recognize the company.

The figure is nowhere close to the US$400 million the pair secured nine years ago when they sold their first software package, but Stafford has declared he’s more than satisfied with the agreement the two companies have struck.

Her jaw dropped open.

Four hundred how much?

“Neen,” she yelled as she stumbled through the house to her lounge room, Winslow following close behind. “Why are the names Seymour and Stafford so familiar?”

“Seymour-Stafford?” Janine asked.

Maurice had come back inside and lay at Janine’s feet.

“Yeah. Why do I think I’ve heard about them before?”

“Aren’t they those two hotshot uni students who sold some software program to a company in the States for an obscene amount of money? It happened years ago. Before Tom and I even started dating.”

“Would obscene be in the vicinity of four hundred million?”

“Yeah, that’s it exactly. It was all over the papers. And the telly. I think the guys who created it were, like, twenty or twenty-one at the time. Hey, why are you asking? And why do you look so shocked?”

“Because, sister of mine, I met the Stafford of Seymour-Stafford the same day Declan and I broke up, and if not for him, I would never have made it through the weekend.”

“You met him?”

“He was there. At the hotel.” His friend and partner’s hotel. Blake Seymour must own the Rolling Hills. “He, um, came across me in the gazebo that night, found me in tears, and…well, he comforted me.”

Janine stared at her for a very long time before lifting Aaron off her breast, laying him on her shoulder and rubbing his back. “Comforted you?”

“Okay. We had sex.”

Janine’s eyes almost popped out of her head. “I’m sorry. You had what?”

“Sex. A lot of it. The whole weekend.”

“You had sex with a multimillionaire? In the gazebo? The same day Declan broke your heart?”

“I had sex with a wonderful man who made me feel like a new woman. I had no idea he was a multimillionaire. And it wasn’t just in the gazebo.”

“Holy shit.”

“He’s in the paper.”

“The multimillionaire?”

“The wonderful man.”

“Why?”

“Apparently he just made a deal worth a lot of money.”

“You slept with a millionaire who’s just made more millions?”

“I never knew.”

“That he was about to make a lot more money than he already had?”

“That he had money. He never acted like it. He’s just so…normal. So nice.”

“Can we forget about the money for a minute and focus on the important stuff? You slept with him?”

“I did.”

Aaron let out a mighty burp.

“My thoughts on the matter exactly,” Janine agreed. She placed him back in her arms and offered him the other breast.

“Are you shocked?” Tori hadn’t mentioned him to anyone up until now. Hadn’t wanted to. But now she’d seen his picture, she couldn’t keep Andrew to herself any longer.

“That you went out and got lucky after finding out your fiancé wasn’t going to marry you? Hell, yeah. But shocked in a good way. Although maybe a little grouchy you never told me before now… Hey, can you pass me my phone?”

“Now? I’m confessing my biggest secret in, like, ever, and you want your phone?”

“I have to call Tom and tell him my baby sister slept with a multimillionaire—at her wedding.”

“Neen!”

“Okay, okay, forget the phone. I’ll tell him later.”

“Great. I’m having a crisis, and you want to gossip with your husband.”

“Crisis? What crisis? We’re talking about something that happened months ago.”

“It might have happened months ago, but I’m only realizing something right now.”

“And that is?”

“I love him.”

“Who? The multimillionaire?”

“No, the wonderful man I met in the gazebo after Declan broke my heart.”

“And you’re only realizing this now? After finding out he’s rich?” Janine frowned at her.

“God, no! I couldn’t care less about his money. I’m realizing it now because it’s the first time I’ve seen his face since I left the Hunter Valley, and looking at it makes me…makes me… It makes me…” Tori stumbled to the couch, winded and shaky.

Seeing his face made her lightheaded. And giddy. It made every memory of him and their time together spring to the surface. Andrew laughing, Andrew checking out her ass, Andrew pouring her wine, Andrew setting her down in the bath, telling her about his parents, dragging her bags along the path, kissing her, brushing away her tears, holding her, feeding her, feeding off her…

“Oh, God.” She clasped her hand to her breast, breathless. “I love him, Neen. I’ve loved him from the beginning, I just couldn’t see it because of Declan.”

Janine studied her for a long time. “You really do love this man.”

“I do. So much. I never realized it until now. Never let myself acknowledge the truth.” She’d been so determined to be on her own, find herself again, she hadn’t let herself consider the possibility of being in love with Andrew.

And yet it was so obvious now. All it had taken was one look at that face in the newspaper, and every one of her feelings that had tumbled around her subconscious and been banished to the back of her heart had crystallized into an emotion so strong, so powerful, Tori couldn’t hope to ignore it any longer.