JustOneTaste (7 page)

The other woman returned to the interior of the shop,
casting one last curious glance back at them. Sarah stared at David, at the man
she’d invited to her bed three weeks ago. He held the baby capably in his arms.
Her stomach roiled as the suspicion formed in her mind, insidious and
sickening.
Tell me no. Tell me it’s nothing that repugnant.

But Kerri of the matching flannel shirt had obviously been
setting up the shop for weekend trading, and she’d handed the baby over
readily, trusting David completely to care for him. And David was obviously
unhappy about Kerri and Sarah coming face-to-face.

Because no man wanted the fling he’d had in the city to meet
his
wife and child
.

Dear God, Sarah. When are you going to stop being so
naïve when it comes to men?

Chapter Eight

David finished strapping Jaxon in his car seat and gave his
chubby belly a scratch before closing the back door of the four-wheel drive. He
said to Kerri, “Thanks for your help today. Say hi to Phil for me.”

“I will. Should I tell my husband you’ll be at the pub
tonight to watch the rugby or do you have other plans?”

David scowled at Kerri’s faux innocent expression. “I
haven’t made other plans.”

“He’ll understand if something better has come up.”

When Kerri wiggled her eyebrows, David rolled his eyes.
“Sarah’s a…business thing.” That was all she wanted there to be between them apparently.
“But it might take me a while to sort it so tell him not to expect me.”

“Business thing, right.” Kerri lowered her voice to a
whisper. “It’s about time you met someone, David. Melissa’s been gone almost
nine months. Is she nice, this one?”

Kerri had never come right out and said so, but David had
sensed her dislike of Melissa and her refusal to even try to fit in with the
locals. Melissa had been a city girl, through and through, and she’d never
adapted to the rhythm of life in the vineyards.

He had to think Sarah would be of the same ilk. But as he
turned, following the line of Kerri’s gaze, he saw Sarah bending down to pet
Buster without care for the stray hairs that may land on her once-pristine
suit. Then she retrieved the mutt’s revolting stick and threw it for
him—something that even David was disinclined to do—and David wondered if he’d
pegged her wrong. Despite her attire and the expensive European car, Sarah
didn’t appear out of place playing with the dogs in the afternoon sun. Instead,
she seemed to fit perfectly into that picture.

David roused himself from that wistful thought and turned
back to find Kerri grinning at him. He showed her an admonishing look. “Don’t
get ahead of yourself, Kez. She thought Jaxon was mine.” That much had been
clear from the way she’d blanched at the sight of him holding the baby, the
disgust that had hardened her features before Kerri came back out with Jaxon’s
baby bag and started talking about going home to her big studly husband.

“So now she knows he’s not.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Nothing worthwhile ever is.” Kerri shrugged and started the
car. “Can I help it if I want you to be happy? You’re a smart bloke, Dave. Go
with whatever your gut tells you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Kerri gave him a wave as she started the vehicle and headed
down the driveway.

David watched her go, contemplating her advice. His gut told
him the same thing it had three weeks ago—having Sarah turn up in his life was
an unexpectedly wonderful stroke of luck for an average guy like him, and he
shouldn’t squander it. He hadn’t been able to resist stealing a slice of the
heaven she offered back then, and no matter what it cost him later he still
couldn’t regret it. What he was going to do about the opportunity her presence
now presented, he hadn’t yet decided.

He ought to send her packing in that gleaming Mercedes, like
he’d wanted to the instant he realized she still thought fiscal generosity was
the way to his heart.
Heart, geez.
David didn’t want to think his heart
had gotten so swiftly and irrevocably involved.

Yet the truth was from their first meeting there’d been
something about Sarah’s direct stare and her faintly curving lips that had
wound around his most vulnerable places and squeezed tight. He hadn’t stopped
thinking about her in the weeks since he’d left her hotel room, even when he
knew it was pointless to dream night and day about a woman who despised him.

Pitiful stuff, Genero. Truly pitiful.

Turning on his heel, David headed back toward the small
facility he used to invite visitors in for wine tasting and complimentary
cheese. Sarah stood at the open door, peering inside. When David approached,
she said without glancing at him, “It’s charming. Would you mind if I have a
peek inside?”

Now would be the time to tell her to take a hike.
What came out instead was, “Be my guest.”

David lingered behind her as she toured the interior,
wondering what she thought of the exposed wooden floors and the bar decorated
with corrugated iron. The old oak barrels used as cocktail tables didn’t exactly
scream class. No doubt she was used to more lavish surrounds.

“It’s impressive what you’ve done with the place. I know you
inherited it in some disrepair.” She turned and caught his surprised
expression. “You have before and after pictures on your website, and lots of
background information. It’s amazing the vineyard’s beginning to thrive again
after the damage you sustained in the bushfires.”

Black Saturday must have been the last straw for his Uncle
Fred, whose failing health had contributed to Windy Valley’s declined
productivity. When the bushfires destroyed a good portion of the outer fence
line, allowing kangaroos to graze freely on the crops, David had come from his
sales job in the city to help.

“My uncle was sick on and off for a long time,” he explained
quietly. “I didn’t know how sick until I got here after the fires and found him
on the floor, barely able to breathe. He died a week later in hospital, from
pneumonia. No one was more surprised than I when he left me this place—except
maybe for my cousin Rick, Fred’s son.”

“He thought it should have gone to him,” Sarah concluded.

“Definitely. I guess Uncle Fred thought Rick would sell it.
He travels overseas often for his job and never had any interest in learning
the business. I spent summers here growing up and always loved the lifestyle.
Uncle Fred wanted to leave it to a Genero who’d keep it in the family.”

Sarah nodded, the gesture showing she understanding the
bonds of family loyalty. “You’ve done the right thing by him keeping the place
open against the odds.”

Pleasure expanded inside him at her praise, defying David’s
attempts to quash it. “I owed it to him.”

“Just as you owe it to him to keep running, keep expanding.
I can help with that.”

“Ah yes.” David shoved his hands in the front pockets of his
jeans. “Here’s where you remind me you’re here to conduct business.”

“I am,” she insisted. “Really, David, I don’t usually have
to beg vendors to sell me stock.”

“You don’t usually deal with people who’ve been accused of
blackmailing you into buying it.”

Tension squared her shoulders. “I told you I was sorry about
that.”

“So that’s it—we forget it? Should I also forget what
happened outside before? That you thought I had a wife and kid, which would
make me not only a blackmailing cad but a cheating pig as well?”

“Kerri clearly knows her way around here, and the baby
obviously adores you.”

“Kerri helps me out on weekends. She’s crazy about her
husband, who also happens to be a friend of mine. And kids tend to like me—is
that a crime?”

She insisted stiffly, “It was a reasonable assumption to
make.”

“Not by my standards. Jesus, what kind of life have you had
that you expect men to treat you like trash and are too surprised when it
doesn’t happen to appreciate the gift it is?”

Her gasp was audible in the high-ceilinged room. Paling, she
turned away on the pretense of studying one of the photographs of the vineyard
that lined the wall, a black-and-white of his uncle planting his first cabernet
crop back in 1982. After a moment during which her struggle to contain her
emotions was palpable, Sarah finally responded in a tremulous voice, “You have
no idea what my life has been like.”

David’s voice was as unsteady as hers. “So tell me, Sarah.”

“Haven’t you googled me?” she queried with droll sarcasm. “I
did it to you.”

“None of the things I want to know about you can be found in
some old magazine articles that have their own slant. I need to know why you’re
so determined to hate me.”

She whirled back to him then, and David saw the telltale
glistening of tears. “I don’t hate you.”

“You don’t trust me.” The mere suggestion of Sarah’s tears
undid him and David took the few steps required to close the distance between
them. Reaching up, he stroked his fingertips along her defined cheekbone. “Do
you trust anyone?”

“That’s not so easy to do when you have something everybody
wants.”

“I’m not interested in your money.” The acquisition of
things for the sake of having had never appealed to him. One reason why he’d
never been suited to his prior commission-based sales job and another key point
of difference between him and Melissa. “And I’m no longer concerned with what
you can do for my business by selling my wine.”

Sarah shook her head, mystification clear in the gesture.
“But
why
?”

“Because if I take anything from you now, on some level
you’ll always wonder if you were right back in Melbourne. You’ll always wonder
if any interest I showed in you then, or that I show in you now or in the
future is because of what you can do for me, not because of how I feel about
you.”

Her trembling breaths fanned into the space between them
while she searched his face, her gaze probing. “How do you feel about me,
David?”

Even as he lowered his head, David called himself all sorts
of idiot for being the one to make the revelations while she still held back.
But the instant his lips touched hers it was like sinking into a familiar,
intoxicating warmth that he couldn’t deny himself, no matter how risky it was
to be alone out on the emotional limb.

She opened to him instantly, as though she’d been waiting,
hoping, for exactly this. David’s arms went around her, winding like vines on
the trellis and trapping her to him. She sighed, a small, delighted sound that
brushed against his mouth and David responded with an animal snarl. He moved
his hand to the back of her head and cupped it, holding her still as he
deepened the kiss. He licked her lips, delved beyond her teeth and tasted her.
Sarah wrapped her arms around his neck and sent her tongue out to dance with
his.

Nothing much more than a sample of her and David was
throbbing everywhere—his heart, his blood, his cock. Sarah was bound to
discover the evidence of his arousal if he didn’t release her, and he wasn’t
sure he wanted her to know just how much she affected him from so small an
effort on her part. David pulled back, drawing in a steadying breath, taking a
modicum of pride in the achievement.

But then Sarah chased him, her smoky-blue eyes still closed
as she leaned forward, seeking his kiss. Giving herself away. So David dove
back into her mouth, helpless to do otherwise. He pulled her lower body up
against his, giving himself away too.

Sarah’s surprised gasp was swallowed by David’s mouth. She
wiggled her hips against his, testing the truth of her discovery. David moved
her backward, half stumbling, until her rear came up against the nearest flat
surface and she was forced to still. Then David was the one moving, rocking his
body in a helpless rhythm as she twined her legs around him. There was a clunk
as one of her shoes hit the timber floor. David ignored it and went on kissing
her, eating up her delighted sighs and the passionate response she couldn’t
hide from him.

With the overturned barrel at Sarah’s back trapping her
between it and him, David’s hands were free to explore. He skimmed over the
slender curves of Sarah’s thighs, rose higher until he spanned her waist inside
the über-professional jacket. The silk of the shirt underneath was soft, but
not as soft as her skin. With a will of their own, his fingers crept beneath
the hem.

The warmth of her flesh, the tautness of her abdomen,
tempted David. Buttons popped open as his hands rose over the bumps of her rib
cage, which became more prominent as Sarah sucked in a deep breath. When he
encountered the undersides of her firm breasts, Sarah let all the air back out
of her lungs, filling David’s hands with flesh that swelled and ripened, like
fruit on the vine begging to be plucked.

“Sarah,” he rasped, his voice sounding like a swatch of fine
fabric tearing in the afternoon quiet. He cupped her breasts, sweeping his
thumbs over their pointy, lace-covered tips as he brushed his lips over hers.
He couldn’t halt the instinctive grind, the thrust of his contained erection
into the V of her open thighs.

Dry humping her up against a barrel in the daylight.
Classy stuff, Genero.
He put some space between them and saw for the first
time the reality of what he’d done. Her blouse was open, the seams smudged by
streaks of dirt put there by his hands. He was filthy and sweaty and smelled
like sunscreen and soil. And he was still wearing his damn hat, when he’d oft
been taught to take it off indoors, especially if there was a lady present. Had
he completely lost his mind?

Muttering a rough apology, David released her and stepped
back. Her sexy, bewildered expression almost made him gather her up again, drag
her to the house by her hair. Then she glanced down and saw for herself how
exposed she was. She grasped the seams of her blouse and pulled them together,
sending a sideways glimpse to the still-open door. “Is there anyone else…?”

“We’re the only ones here.” Which didn’t excuse how far he’d
let things go, not with Sarah, who was no doubt used to much subtler
seductions. “I still shouldn’t have—”

“It’s okay.” Her fingers trembled as she redid the buttons
he’d all but ripped open. “I was…”

“Beautiful. So damn sexy I couldn’t help myself. Sarah, I…”

She looked at him and those gorgeous blue irises still
clouded by desire made him lose his train of thought. Her lips curved, and then
they were both laughing at their mutual inability to finish a sentence. “I
guess we’re both a bit—”

“Hungry,” David supplied, not letting her finish that
sentence either. He hadn’t really been talking about food but the word conjured
a response from his stomach. The afternoon sun had slanted deep and turned
fiery orange, telling him it was almost time for dinner. “I was going to eat
soon. Will you come up to the house and have dinner with me?”