Tessa Radley - The Saxon Brides

He heard a door slam, heard her footsteps crossing the hard ground. She stopped behind him.

His every muscle went rigid.

“You’re right.” She sighed, a soft, breathy sound that only served to ratchet up the tension inside him. “I’ve been working so damn hard.”

“Why?” He stared blindly ahead, for once not seeing the beauty of the valley. “What drives you?”

“It’s so hard to explain.”

He swivelled to face her, his eyes searching her features. Her eyes were troubled, her mouth soft. “Try me.”

For a moment he thought Alyssa might refuse. Then she said, “I was raised an only child …” Her voice trailed away.

Raised an only child? That was a peculiar way to phrase it. Joshua let it pass. She was clearly unhappy about the subject matter. And waited.

Eventually she spoke and the words were so soft that he had to strain his ears before the wind carried them away. “I was brought up to excel. Special tutoring. Piano. Drama. Art. Tennis lessons.”

“Because you were an only child?” He eyed her profile. It would explain some of her hard edges, the ambition that drove her.

She didn’t answer immediately. “My parents thought of me as their protégée … their chosen child. Eventually all their expectations became my own. I was expected to become someone. Don’t think I was a cipher—I wanted that, too. For a long time I wanted success so much, even though my version was a little different from my parents’. My father was a judge and he wanted me to become a lawyer. It took a while for him to come to terms with my choice of career. I worked like a dog.”

“But you got your success.” Joshua couldn’t help wondering if some of her father had rubbed off on her. “Maybe you’re a chip off the old block after all.”

Her lips curved into a sad smile. “I was always a bit of a crusader. And my father made sure I had firm ideas about right and wrong from the time I was very young. Believe me, it’s not easy being a judge’s daughter. Especially when you’re a teen. You can never win.” Her eyes had regained a hint of sparkle. “But once I grew up, I realised he was right. The world needs people who stand up for what they believe in. For truth and honesty and all those old-fashioned values.”

Joshua decided that this was not the best moment to remind her that trying to break up his brother’s engagement was hardly honourable behaviour. But he didn’t want to see the desolation return to her eyes.

“At least my mother lived long enough to see me become an award-winning wine journalist,” Alyssa was saying. “A television personality instantly recognizable. But it cost me time I should have spent with her—though I never knew she was ill. Cancer,” she added as she read the question he didn’t ask.

“That would’ve been hard.” There was compassion in his eyes. “She must have been proud of you.”

“Oh, she was.”

“I’ve never thought of what it might be like being an only child. About the pressures that go with it,” Joshua mused, tilting his head to one side to study her. “We’ve shared all the responsibilities that go with Saxon’s Folly. My life would have been empty without Roland and Heath to fight with, without Megan always wanting her own way.”

“You’re lucky.” There was a wistful light in her eyes.

“Think so?” He gave a chuckle. “Sometimes I want to murder them. But I love them,” he added hurriedly when he saw the horrified expression on her face.

“Maybe I was too driven,” Alyssa conceded. “But that changed around three years ago.”

“When your mother died?”

Alyssa’s eyes were bleak. “I missed her.” Her gaze focused on him. Direct. Disconcerting. “I wanted siblings … a brother. More than anything in the world, I wanted a family.”

Maybe death did that to a person. He knew he would give anything to have Roland back. Pity for Alyssa stirred inside Joshua. Carefully he said, “I’m sorry that you lost your mother. Death is so final.”

Emotion flared in her eyes. “I grieved for her.”

“And your father?”

“He grieved, too. He remarried last year … He was lonely, I think.”

She turned her head and gestured to where the sun had sunk a little more. “Somewhere along the line, I stopped looking for sunsets.”

Joshua stood quietly beside her, staring out over the distant western hills at the orange-and-gold streaked sky as uneasiness filled him. He wished that her story had not moved him so much. He wished that the senseless attraction to her would cease.

He should have more sense than to want Alyssa Blake.

“You know, Joshua, I never thought that every splendid sunset means the death of another day—and that time is passing by at an alarming rate.” She looked up at him, her eyes a haunting purple that would seduce him if he let them. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe my life has become too fast.”

A long-waited sense of satisfaction curled inside him. The impulsive words escaped him before he could curb them. “I didn’t think I’d see the day that Alyssa Blake might admit that she was wrong.”

Her eyes narrowed, the purple depths no longer soft as they shot sparks at him. “You’re pretty fast, too. Vineyard manager of a sizeable estate. CEO of Saxon’s Folly. Mentor to a full staff. Architect of employment practices that business schools studied,” she reeled off his successes. “Are you any better? Saxon’s Folly is a big business. You’re the boss where the buck stops. Surely you’re driven to achieve? Surely you set goals?”

He should’ve know she’d come back fighting. “Touché. Sure I do. But I’m not obsessed by goals.”

“You’re implying that I am?”

He shrugged. “You know my philosophy. Here at Saxon’s Folly enjoyment is fundamental to the wines we make. How can people enjoy our wines, if the people who work with the wine don’t have fun making it?”

She shook her head dismissively. “That’s a pile of codswallop. I told you that back when you tried to sell me that line in the ten minutes you granted me for a Wine Watch interview.”

“I was busy. You caught me in the midst of the harvest with a bad forecast on the way.” He paused, not liking how defensive he sounded. “And I firmly believe that the happiness of the staff shows in the finished product.”

He could see her fighting to hold her tongue. She wanted to tell him that his concern and benevolence was nothing more than an act. He could see it in her blazing eyes.

Finally she said, “You didn’t strike me as the crusading type.”

His own anger was rising. “No, you preferred to view me as the type who could dismiss someone arbitrarily.”

Alyssa took up the challenge. “So why did you dismiss Tommy Smith? He maintained he was victimised, that you made his life a misery. That your ‘happiness’ philosophy was a sop.”

“You know that’s not true, you discovered he was dismissed from his next job only three months after I fired him. I know that the vineyard owner advised you.” He’d asked Michael Worth to let her know. Her low opinion of him had rankled. It still rankled.

“That was long after the story was published,” she protested. “And it was different. That time Tommy was dismissed for a sexual harassment of a fellow worker.”

“And you don’t think that I dismissed him for the same reason?”

Alyssa looked at him in horror. “That’s why you dismissed him? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“The last thing the victim needed was the story spilled over the papers.”

“So who—”

But Joshua was shaking his head. “Sorry, I’m not at liberty to say. Even off the record.”

Alyssa thought back to how dismissive she’d been of Joshua in the story she’d done, how she’d championed Tommy, the underdog. Her stomach rolled over. Had she misjudged Joshua … and Tommy … so badly?