The Wayward Son (11 page)

Judd began to put two and two together. “So you grew up with Nicole?”

“Pretty much like sisters, really. Charles even sent me to the same school as her. He did far more for my mother and me than was due. I owe him a lot.”

“So, he and your mother. Were they…close?”

“Were they lovers do you mean?” she asked bluntly. “Only very occasionally, from what I understand. Once, after a particularly nasty bout of bullying at school, I confronted Mum about their relationship. She tried her hardest to be honest with me and said that theirs was more a relationship based on companionship. Perhaps she was a bit too honest, but she wanted me to understand. Apparently, one of the long-term side effects of Charles’s diabetes was a constant struggle with impotence. It had affected him for years, probably since before you and your mother went to Australia. But you know, even despite their closeness, Mum was always still very much an employee. When I was younger I used to hate that she allowed herself to be taken advantage of that way—now I see it was a choice she made to keep us both secure.”

“So you and he—”

“Charles and I what?”

“Were never lovers?”

A look of horror passed across Anna’s face. “No! Never. How could you even think that? He’s always been a father figure to me, nothing more, nothing less.”

“So that night I saw you coming from his rooms, half undressed—”

“I’d been waiting to talk to him about Nicole. I fell asleep—on his sofa, in his sitting room. And then when I woke up and realized how late it was, I was in a hurry to get back to my room and hop in the shower so I could get ready for dinner. I can’t believe you’d have thought that of me.” She crossed her way to the office door and pointedly unlocked it. “I’m going to the ladies’ room to get rid of this, and then for the rest of the afternoon I’ll be in my office if you need me.”

Judd felt momentarily giddy from the swell of relief that coursed through him. She wasn’t Charles’s lover. Her devotion to the old man was merely like that of a daughter. Hard on the heels of that thought, he realized just how much he’d hurt her with his assumption, and discovered that he was genuinely sorry to have upset her so deeply. He needed to make amends.

“Anna?”

She hesitated. “Yes?”

“Look, I’m sorry. I jumped to the wrong conclusions. Let me make it up to you. Stay with me tonight and I’ll show you just how much.”

She shook her head emphatically. “No, whatever you might think of
me
, I won’t disrespect Charles that way.”

Without saying another word she swung open the door and stalked off. Judd watched her until she was out of his line of sight before crossing around to the other side of his desk and realigning his paperwork. She hadn’t exactly embraced his apology, but at least she hadn’t closed the door on them both completely, either. It was time to rethink his strategies with respect to his father and to Anna. One thing he remained certain of—he wanted Anna Garrick for himself—no matter the consequences.

Anna spent the rest of the day at work in a state of total turmoil. Was she destined to be her mother’s daughter after all? Was this what it had been like for Donna with Charles? That all he had to do, when he wanted to, was beckon his finger and Donna had been his for the taking, just as Anna just had been with Judd? She’d told herself that their interludes during their trip had been a fluke, that once they got back to Auckland, it would be back to business as usual, but when he’d touched her in the office, she hadn’t been able to resist.

Her body still thrummed with the aftereffects of her orgasm, making it difficult to concentrate. That, along with the disbelief and shock that she’d allowed herself to be coerced into making love with Judd in his office, and on his desk no less. She’d have a few bruises tomorrow, no doubt. Her own participation in the event had hardly been that of a submissive.

She’d never been incapable of refusing a man before. She’d been selective with her sexual partners—civilized. This thing with Judd was most definitely not civilized. It was earthy sensuality at its most basic level and it had been, oh, so very good. Even now she wanted him again—but at least this time rationality prevailed. Saying no to him had been driven by her respect for Charles. She smiled at herself. Ironic, it was her respect for the very man who’d made her lose a measure of respect for her mother that now governed her choices and decisions. A psychologist could no doubt have a field day with that.

But there it was. It was how she felt. Charles hadn’t had to be a mentor for her in her youth, nor had he been obliged to continue to provide a home for her after Donna had died. Yet he’d been a rock for her. Now she owed it to him to be that rock for him, which—for her, at least—meant not sleeping with his son under his own roof.

It stung that Judd could have thought that she and Charles were having an affair. She shuddered. Nothing could have been further from her mind, or Charles’s, she had no doubt. But what would have made him think that?

What, or who?

A niggle of doubt emerged from the back of her mind. Something just wasn’t right and she couldn’t figure out what or why. But there were so many other things on her mind just now that it was easy to dismiss it.

The next few days kept her very busy in the office. Following up with the wineries they’d visited and processing exclusivity contracts with them, making sure every
i
was dotted and every
t
crossed, was the kind of work she welcomed. Right up until four out of the six wineries they’d sent contracts to sent them back with a note saying they’d received another offer of distribution that they had decided to accept.

Four phone calls later and Anna was feeling sick to her stomach. Jackson Importers had apparently aggressively wooed away the business that she and Judd had thought was in the bag. She wasn’t looking forward to sharing the news with Judd or Charles.

As expected, Charles was apoplectic.

“How dare she? I can’t believe a daughter of mine would stoop so low as to steal business from her father.”

“I hate to point this out,” Judd said, “but it was her idea all along. By the looks of things, these people’s loyalty sat with Nicole rather than with Wilson Wines. It’s my fault for not anticipating this might happen.”

“Your fault? Rubbish. She’s doing this to spite me.”

“Maybe,” Judd agreed, “but maybe she just followed through with her new boss on an idea she felt had merit. Did you ever give her credit for coming up with this?”

Anna sat back in her chair, stunned into silence. What was this? Judd championing Nicole? Up until now they’d barely discussed Nicole at all. Anna had assumed that Judd felt the same animosity toward her that Charles did, and had been careful not to bring her up. But to hear him supporting her ideas and giving her props for following them through, that was something Anna had never anticipated from him.

“Of course not, it was her job. She did it competently.”

“A little more than competently, I would say,” Judd observed, a note of censure in his voice that Anna found herself in total agreement with.

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.

Ten

J
udd 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 you, I think.”

“Oh, Anna, don’t look at me like that, please.”

“Like what?”

“Like you don’t know whether I’m going to hit you or hug you.”

“Well, you weren’t exactly happy with me the last time we talked to each other,” Anna said with a weak smile.

Nicole smiled back, reaching across the table to squeeze her hand. Anna began to relax. There was the friend she’d known and loved since she was five years old. Somehow they’d sort everything out, it would all be okay. The waiter arrived with chicken Caesar salads for them both, and after he’d gone, Anna gave her friend a good hard look.

“How are you, really?” Anna asked.

Nicole was a little thinner than before, and her face was taut with tension.

“I’m doing okay. Things are…complicated right now.”

“You’re telling me. Why on earth did you go to work for Nate Hunter? Your father is beside himself.”

“Pissed him off, huh?” Nicole said, with her characteristic cheek, before a look of regret shadowed her expressive eyes.

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“How is he? Someone told me they’d seen him the other day but that he wasn’t looking so good. It made me worry about him and it’s not like I can just pick up the phone and call him to ask how he is.”

“He’s doing okay. This whole upset has slowed him down a bit, but—and I’m sure you probably don’t want to hear this—Judd is picking up the reins pretty capably.”

“Figures. The golden child. Even though I was always there, and he wasn’t, I could never measure up to him, you know.” Nicole’s mouth twisted into a bitter line.

“Your father loves you, Nicole.”

“I know, but it’s not the same. I could never fill the hole that Judd left, and now he’s back.”

Anna’s heart twisted. She was sure that that wasn’t the case. Charles loved both of his children—he’d just gotten in such a habit of being strict with Nicole that he didn’t know how to show it. Still, she knew how much it had to hurt to see Charles lavish the affection on Judd that Nicole had always craved for herself.

“So you won’t be coming back to us anytime soon?”

Nicole gave her a haunted look and shook her head. “I…I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t? Of course you can. Your home is with us, your career was with us. Come back, please?”

“No, it’s not that simple. Not anymore.”

“Why? What is it?”

Nicole shook her head again. “I can’t talk about it just now. Maybe later, who knows? I just wanted to see you again and to say sorry for the horrible things I said before. I was upset and I needed someone to blame. Unfortunately, you were it.”

“So are we all good now?”

“Yeah, we are. I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”

They finished the rest of their lunch while discussing anything and everything other than work, or men. For some reason Nicole was cagey about the questions Anna started to ask her about Nate Hunter, and Anna certainly wasn’t prepared to talk about her feelings for Nicole’s brother to her face. It was easier to skirt over those issues and just skim the basics. By the time she had to head back to work, Anna felt so much better for having been able to spend some time with Nicole.

“I’m glad you emailed me,” Anna said, standing and giving her friend a hug as their lunch together drew to an end.

“I’m glad you’re still talking to me. I don’t deserve you, you know.”

“Of course you do, and more,” Anna replied. “I’ll settle the bill, okay? Next time will be your turn.”

“Are you sure?”

“That there’ll be a next time? Of course there will.”

“Not that, silly.” Nicole laughed.

Anna felt a sense of relief that she’d finally brought a smile to her friend’s face, a smile that, however briefly, dispelled the tension that had been there. She watched Nicole head out the restaurant before she went to the cashier to settle their account. To her surprise, it had already been paid.

“There must be some mistake,” she said.

“No, there’s no mistake,” said an all too familiar voice from behind her. “I figured it was worth the price of lunch to find out what you were up to.”

Judd caught her elbow in a firm hold and guided her out the door toward the car park.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, hating the panic in her voice.

“More to the point, what are you doing here?”

“Nicole asked to see me for lunch, that’s all.”

“All? Seems kind of interesting that the week we lose a considerable amount of business to Jackson Importers you should meet her for lunch. Are you sure you weren’t discussing anything else, like the Californian wineries on our list, for example?”

“Of course not! I wouldn’t dream of doing anything of the sort.” Indignation fueled her to add, “I don’t know where you managed to form this incredibly low opinion of me, and I really don’t care, but don’t keep bringing your insinuations to my face. They are, without exception, wrong.”

“So why were you together?”

“We’re friends. We’ve been friends for most of our lives. Did we need a reason?”

“I understood that your friendship was pretty much severed over me.”

“Don’t rate your effect on people so highly. As I said, we’ve known each other a very long time. It would take far more than someone like you to destroy that. Look, if you feel that strongly that you can’t believe me, why don’t you just fire me? In fact, forget that. I quit. I can’t work for someone who doesn’t even begin to know the meaning of the word
trust.
”

Anna pulled her arm free of his hand and headed for her car. She was shaking with anger to think that he could even begin to imagine that she’d do anything to deliberately sabotage Wilson Wines. It would be like slitting her throat, both professionally and personally.

She heard his footfall behind her and she dug in her handbag for her car keys, desperate to get away from him. She wouldn’t let him know how much his words today had hurt, just like she hadn’t shown him how his belief that she and Charles had been lovers had also cut her.

“Anna, wait!” he called.

But she didn’t want to wait. She wanted distance and she wanted it now, before he saw the sheen of tears that now glazed her eyes. Damn it, where were those keys? Long, warm fingers closed over her hand as she finally extracted her keys from the depths of her bag and her finger depressed the remote to unlock her car.

“Anna, stop. I’m sorry. I jumped to conclusions.”

“You’re pretty good at that, aren’t you?” she said bitterly, blinking back the moisture that stung her eyes.

“What can I say, I have a suspicious mind.” He smiled back at her, and despite herself she was charmed by his self-deprecating tone. And that was more than half the problem, she acknowledged. He could get under her defenses with no more than a smile.

“I need to get back to the office. Please let me go.”

She stared pointedly at his hand, which still captured hers within its warmth.

“Not yet. I want to apologize to you properly. I’ve been an idiot and I’ve treated you very unfairly. In my defense I can only say that it started back in Adelaide.”

“But surely you can understand why I didn’t tell you the truth about why I was there right from the start? For all I knew, you would have just shipped me off the property—which is what you pretty much did anyway after you read the letter.”

“I can understand now. And like I said, I am sorry for allowing myself to let that color my judgment about you.”

“Fine, I accept your apology. Now let me go.”

“Ah, Anna, in such a hurry to leave me?”

He stepped a little closer and Anna felt that all-too familiar thrum of awareness course through her veins. He was like a drug to her, and she was rapidly losing, becoming addicted. She’d let herself become dependent on his kisses, his touch, everything.

“Don’t, please.”

She dropped her handbag and put up her hand, but he didn’t stop moving, not even when her hand became trapped between the wall of his chest and her breasts. He was so close she could see the silver striations that feathered his irises and lent his eyes their particular vivid blue hue. Her heart quickened as she watched his pupils dilate.

“Don’t what?” he asked, his voice soft, enticing.

“Don’t kiss me.”

“Afraid of me, Anna?”

“No,” she admitted. “I’m afraid of me.”

“I’ll keep you safe,” he said.

His kiss was short and incredibly sweet. The seal of a promise that offered so very much—perhaps even a chance of a future together that was no longer threatened by the shadows of his family’s past. She was trembling when he released her, her entire body screaming for more than just that brief embrace.