JustOneTaste (13 page)

How long they stood together, clutching each other like
people lost at sea, Sarah had no idea. By the time they gathered the presence
of mind to detangle themselves and pull clothing back into place, Sarah’s
cheeks were damp. When her nose began to run, she could no longer silence her
sniffles.

David reached for her, turning her in his arms and gathering
her against him. “Don’t cry, lady. It doesn’t have to end. It
can’t
.”

Determined not to give in to the urge to sob, Sarah eased
away from him. Without meeting his eyes, she gathered the one bag she’d brought
with her and held it against her chest like a shield. “My life will taint this,
David.”

“That’s insane.”

Sarah shook her head. “My father will offer you money.”

As he had before, he responded with a question. “And do you
think I would take it?”

She smiled, the truth giving her nothing but sadness now.
“No. But he’ll poke holes at this relationship, he’ll hunt for your weaknesses.
In short, he’ll disapprove and in the process make it difficult for you to be
with me. And I have reporters following me a lot of the time. They’ll write
about you in magazines, say you’re a con man.”

He pushed out a rough snort. “I
don’t care
.”

“I’ll move back to the States.”

That silenced him. Sarah fancied she actually heard his
heart screech to a stop. “When?”

“I don’t know. But my job is usually based in New York.”
Sarah thought of all the things she loved about this country—its abundant
sunshine, laid-back inhabitants, the spectacular scenery. Then she remembered
the snake and how odd the quiet here at Windy Valley sounded to her ears. She
was used to hustle and bustle. This place wasn’t her. “I don’t belong here. I’m
sorry, David, but I can’t do what Melissa did. I don’t want to draw this out
and make it more painful than it needs to be. This wouldn’t work and it’s
better we both face that now rather than later.”

When he simply stared at her without saying anything, Sarah
finally forced her legs to work. She walked on autopilot to the bedroom
doorway. A few extra feet and she’d be in the hallway then outside, heading
toward her car. She could do this, one step at a time.

David’s voice stopped her before she could exit the bedroom.
His query made her grip the doorjamb with shaking fingers. “If things had been
different, do you think you could have loved me?”

The raw pain in his voice made a sympathetic pang lance her
chest, stealing her breath. She wasn’t even sure her voice was audible but her
whispered response sounded as loud as a sonic boom to her. “I love you now.”

Then she was running. Screw the one-step-at-a-time stuff. If
she didn’t sprint she’d never leave.

Sarah ran all the way to her car, Keaton trotting beside
her. She ignored him as she got behind the wheel of the Mercedes and started
it, the road ahead of her turning blurry as she drove away.

Chapter Fourteen

For a man who owned a winery, David figured he’d seriously
underutilized alcohol in the past. In the week after Sarah left, he did what he
could to remedy that oversight.

“Pissing the profits away,” Phil had joked when he’d come
over one night to find David already deep into a bottle of red, uninterested in
going into town to visit the pub.

David figured he was fine where he was. No people around to
annoy him, razz him about being so cut up over a woman. He didn’t doubt the few
blokes he called mates and even plenty of those he didn’t would know about the
American sweetheart who’d spent a weekend out at Windy Valley. Phil owned the
butcher shop, and despite being a burly hulk of a man he gossiped better than a
little old lady.

No, David figured he should stick where he was, with the
silent vines standing sentinel outside and the dogs snoring peacefully beside
him. So Sarah was gone and she wasn’t coming back. Fine. He didn’t need her. He
didn’t need anybody.

Some guy called, claiming to represent Shelton Holdings, a
conglomerate that owned several upscale hotels in Australian capital cities. He
wanted to order some product to stock in their restaurants as part of a
campaign to showcase boutique winemaking. At first David thought it was a joke,
something Phil arranged to get some kind of reaction out of him besides numb
disinterest. But after a while it dawned on him that the guy on the phone was
serious.

And David smelled a rat.

“It’s her, I know it,” he raged to Kerri after he hung up.
“Shelton Holdings, Harrington Enterprises. These rich people all know each
other. She must have put the guy up to it.”

Kerri shrugged. “So what?”

“She can’t do something like that,” David spat. “Manipulate
my life from afar. Who does she think she is?”

“A woman who cares about what happens to you?”

“Don’t be smart.”

“I’m not.” Kerri merely arched an unimpressed brow at his
snappy tone. “If she really did arrange this, she cares a lot more about you
than you do for yourself right now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means stomping around here barking orders half the time
and getting drunk by yourself the rest is no way to live. And if you’re saying
you told this guy from Shelton to piss off, I’ll begin fearing for your
sanity.”

A tingling sensation attacked the base of David’s spine,
moving upward until he grew downright uncomfortable. Kerri’s description of how
he’d been behaving the last week was not pretty but he had to face the fact it
was accurate. He was miserable but it wasn’t fair of him to spread it around.
“I didn’t tell him to piss off,” he mumbled. “I said I’d get back to him.”

The relief in Kerri’s sigh made David feel worse. This
wasn’t even her winery but she cared deeply about what happened to it—to him.

“Why don’t you let me handle it?” Kerri suggested. “I know
what this place can produce as well as you and I’m in more of a mood to
schmooze.”

Weakened by his sense of remorse, David agreed. “Yeah,
okay.”

Kerri studied him, her expression softening. “Call her,
David.”

He shook his head. “I already played all my cards. There’s
nothing more I can say.”

“If she did arrange this Shelton deal, it must be because
she’s thinking about you.”

“I thought you didn’t like her.”

“I never said that. She was the one who didn’t trust me.
Thought I had designs on you or something, which I did find rather insulting.”

“I know. She had some history, that’s all. Infidelity, that
sort of thing.” Infidelity, betrayal, a father who meddled far too much in her
life as far as David was concerned. When it came to relationships, Sarah had
sure been up against it. Thinking clearly about it for the first time since
last week, David understood Sarah’s position.

Which didn’t make her refusal to take a risk on him hurt any
less.

“I didn’t know that,” Kerri said. “I might have tried harder
to set her straight, let her know I’ve only ever thought of you like a
brother.”

David stopped pacing and turned to stare at Kerri. “Really?”

“Well, yeah.” Her cheeks turned pink and she busied herself
wiping down the bar counter that didn’t need wiping. “I never had a brother and
I kinda think of you that way.”

David managed to muster a smile. “I never had a sister and I
kinda think of you that way too.”

For a moment, the sharing made things a tad awkward. Then
they grinned at each other.

Kerri laughed. “Now we’ve got that settled, it’s time you
stopped being such a sook and got back to work.”

Sook.
David wondered if that was a word Sarah would
know. She’d probably tell him the term was
wuss
. He smiled, picturing
it. Then he frowned because smiling hurt, especially when he was smiling about
Sarah.

He moved through the rest of the week in a daze, although he
could no longer put his ennui down to a perpetual hangover. He missed Sarah.
She’d only spent one weekend on his property but she’d left her indelible mark.
Buster, recovered well from his brush with death and once again fetching sticks
in his spare time, often turned to David in bafflement, silently asking where
his new lady friend had gone. The house was still cold at night, even though
the first day of spring had come and gone. Yet David couldn’t start a fire
because that always reminded him too acutely of the night he and Sarah had
slept on the rug in front of the hearth, talking, laughing and making love
until sunrise.

She’d left without giving him hope there could ever be more
than the perfect weekend they’d shared. David wasn’t sure when or if the hole
she’d ripped in his chest would heal over.

Another weekend passed, blessedly full of customers to charm
and other things to do around the place. Monday morning, David popped down to
the cellar door to do inventory. When he passed through the bar area, a yellow
sticky note resting on top a newspaper caught his eye.

The note was from Kerri.
Are you sure you’ve played every
last card you have?

The paper was folded in three, showing one of the inside
pages instead of the front. David recognized it as a popular Melbourne rag,
probably left behind by one of their visitors from the city. It was the kind of
publication that had a society page and when David lifted Kerri’s note away,
the picture underneath was revealed.

What he saw didn’t register at first. Or maybe that was his
self-defense mechanism kicking in, saving him from the initial shock with a
cotton-wool sensation of numbness. He stared at the photo, his breathing
growing shallower by the second as the truth finally began to set in.

She wore black, an elegant gown even more expensive looking
than the one she’d worn that first time, the fine black wool dress he could still
feel beneath his hands when he closed his eyes at night. The snap had obviously
been taken at a formal event, because her companion wore a tuxedo. He also had
his arms around her.

David was staring at a picture of another man with his arms
around Sarah.

And his lips on hers.

* * * * *

The view beyond her office window was gray again. Locals
always assured her the overcast conditions never lasted, that Melbourne was a
city of four seasons in one day. This afternoon it could well be sunny once
more.

But to Sarah the view would appear gray in any case.

“I’m about to head out to lunch if that’s okay. Can I get
you anything?”

Sarah turned toward the doorway to see her secretary
standing there. The thought of food didn’t appeal and coffee had been doing
little lately to relieve her of the dragging sense of exhaustion that
accompanied her throughout each day. “No thanks. I’m fine.”

Heather was about to take her leave when, with a hand on the
open door, she hesitated. “If you don’t mind me saying so, Sarah, I don’t think
that’s true.”

Surprised as much by the woman’s uncharacteristic dissension
as by the use of her Christian name, Sarah sat a little straighter and frowned.
“Pardon me?”

Visibly taking a breath, the other woman advanced into the
office. “You do not seem fine.”

And here Sarah had been hoping she was hiding her malaise so
well. Deflated, she let out a breath and sank back against the cool Italian
leather of her desk chair. “Am I that transparent?”

“Not to anyone else,” Heather assured her. “But I’ve been
working with you pretty closely for months now and in my opinion you’re not
acting like yourself.”

“Not myself, huh?” Sarah mused. “I wonder what that really
means.”

She’d been trying to figure out exactly who she was and what
she wanted out of life incessantly the last fortnight. Was this job, this
all-consuming career really all she needed to be happy? In her heart, Sarah
knew work wouldn’t be enough. She wouldn’t look back on her life as an old lady
and thank her lucky stars she’d chained herself to the office all these years.
If she didn’t find love, didn’t have a family and real friends, she would be
filled with regret.

As it always did, the idea of love made her think of David.
Instinctively, Sarah’s mind careened away from those memories. They filled her
with too much painful disappointment.

“If I had my guess, I’d say there was a man involved.”
Heather’s suggestion shook Sarah from her inner turmoil. She gave her secretary
a sideways glance, to which the other woman squared her shoulders. “I’m prying
now, aren’t I?”

“A little, yes.”

“Am I going to get fired for it?”

Sarah couldn’t stifle the twitch of her lips. “Of course
not.”

“Well, I might as well stick my foot all the way in my mouth
then. Whoever it is, talk it out with him. You’re killing yourself this way—too
much work, not enough food, no social life at all. It’s not healthy.”

“I have a social life—of sorts.” Sarah thought of the one
evening she’d spent any time with a man since she’d left Windy Valley and
cringed inwardly.

Somehow interpreting her thoughts, Heather said, “I’m not
sure attending a work-related formal dinner with Richard Abercrombie counts as
a social life. Not when it’s obvious you didn’t enjoy yourself last Saturday.”

“What makes you say that? Everyone else seems to think I enjoyed
myself immensely.”

“Yes, I saw that picture in the paper.” She added shrewdly,
“You looked more like you were trying to fight him off than being swept away by
passion.”

The description was so accurate that Sarah’s lips twisted
with chagrin. “Dear lord, it was awful.
He
was awful. He knew that
photographer was there and grabbed me before I had a chance to avoid it. All he
wanted was a photo of himself with me in the paper.”

“Lovely,” Heather drawled.

“Unfortunately all too often the way my ‘dates’ go.”
Realizing she sounded as if she were about to throw a pity party for which she
was the guest of honor, Sarah physically shook herself. “Never mind. I didn’t
like him anyway. He was so full of himself and smarmy, not at all like…”

Sarah covered her mouth. Not even that god-awful, uninvited
smooch from that leech Abercrombie had erased the memory of David’s lips on
hers. She thought about him all the time, day and night. She’d find herself
daydreaming in the middle of meetings, wishing things could be different. She’d
come to accept she didn’t like her apartment with its austere furnishings and
tomblike atmosphere. Not even the view of the city beyond her window—myriad
colored lights twinkling on the gentle bends of the Yarra River—could fill her
nights with even a modicum of joy.

She’d always taken a certain comfort in the constant
movement and noise that came from living an urban life. It had given her the
false impression she was never truly on her own and in the past had enabled her
to ignore the loneliness that gaped inside like a dark chasm. But the activity
around her no longer had that effect. Now she felt separate from it all, no
longer a part of her surroundings. As though she’d left a piece of herself
somewhere.

Windy Valley.

“What’s keeping you from being with him?”

The question turned Sarah’s attention back to her assistant.
She opened her mouth to verbalize all the sensible reasons she had for keeping
herself apart from the man, the life she yearned for. She hadn’t known him that
long, the financial gap between them would cause problems, people would think
bad things about him. But the words didn’t come. None of them seemed…enough.
Not enough motivation to keep going on this way, drifting from day to day
without any hope that things would change or improve.

She stared at Heather, dumbstruck.

Heather smiled. “You’re Sarah Harrington, you know. You can
have anything you want.”

Anything I want.

David had said much the same thing to her. Sarah hadn’t
believed him. Despite being the only daughter in a wealthy family, she hadn’t
been raised with a sense of entitlement. She’d been raised to believe in duty.
It was her duty to carry on the legacy her father had started, to be part of
the company that fed and clothed her and sent her to an Ivy League college.

She’d performed that duty now for over a decade. Perhaps it
was time she started living for herself.

The phone rang and Heather reached to answer it. Sarah stood
and walked to the window, gazing out at the city. To the north beyond those
buildings was Windy Valley. And David.

Only an hour away. Why in hell wasn’t she driving out there
to see him every chance she got? She could fit him in around her job—if she
even wanted to keep doing her job, that was. And he didn’t even get the papers
delivered out there. What on earth did he care what a faceless journalist said
about him in some second-rate rag?

As for her father…

“Sarah, it’s Mr. Harrington for you.”