It Was Only a Kiss

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Luke demanded, his hands in the pockets of his smart black pants. Jess noticed his button-down cream shirt with its discreet, expensive logo and sighed at how good he looked.

Mr Savage cleaned up very, very well indeed.

‘Nothing,’ Jess muttered.

‘Rescue Remedy,’ Ally said at the same time. ‘Jess tends to get a bit nervous before presentations.’

‘Alison!’

Luke smiled at Jess and her stomach flipped over. ‘I would never have guessed. Jess doesn’t seem to be the gets-nervous type.’ Luke held out his hand to Alison. ‘Luke Savage.’

‘Ally Davies.’ Ally shook his hand.

‘How nervous?’ Luke asked, and Jess willed Ally not to be her normal open, brutally honest self.

‘Very. Her knees are knocking together and her hands are shaking.’

‘Will you stop?’ Jess demanded. ‘Jeez, Alison! He’s a client.’

‘Relax, Jess, there’s no need to torture such pretty knees.’ Luke sent her another of his slow, sexy smiles that were guaranteed to melt the panties off any female between eighteen and eighty. It was the smile she intended to use to launch his campaign. She was under no illusions. It was going to be tough to sell it to him...

‘And I like the skirt you’re almost wearing, Sherwood,’ Luke added.

‘Oh, shut up!’ Jess told him before sailing into the room, her nose up in the air.

Great start, Jess, telling your prospective client to put a cork in it. Not.

* * *

Jess ended her presentation and caught herself biting the inside of her lip in the resultant heavily pregnant silence. She felt her heart thumping in her chest and wondered if the St Sylve contingency could hear it.

Thump, thump, kadoosh. Thump, thump... Oh, the kadoosh happened every time she looked at Luke; it was, Jess realised, her heart bouncing off the floor.

Well, okay, then. Good to know. Better if she knew how to make it stop.

Luke looked utterly inscrutable and non-committal—especially for somebody who, as she’d suggested, should be the new face of St Sylve wines. Did they love it? Hate it? Think that she’d not only crossed the line but redrawn it as well? Jess just wished they’d say something—anything!

About a million years later—okay, ten seconds, but it felt that long—Luke sat forward and rested his arms on the table. His eyes sliced through her.

‘Let me get this straight... You want me to be the face of St Sylve?’

Jess nodded. ‘Not just the face of St Sylve. I want the consumer to associate you and St Sylve with fun. Hip and cool, yet sophisticated. The plan isn’t to sell your wine. It’s to sell your life.’

Now Luke looked thoroughly puzzled. ‘I don’t have a life, Jessica! I work and that’s about it!’

‘The consumer doesn’t know that, Luke. He sees you as this young, single, good-looking—’ smoking hot, but she couldn’t say that ‘—rich guy who has the world at his feet. He does hip and cool things...like parasailing, dancing, mountain-climbing. He plays touch rugby with his mates, has friends around for dinner, attends balls. And it’s all done with, or followed by, a glass of wine. St Sylve wine.’

‘I love it,’ Kendall said. ‘I think it’s brilliant.’

Jess flashed him a grateful smile.

‘I like the idea, but I don’t like the idea of me doing it. Why can’t you get a model to...model?’ Luke demanded.

‘It would have a bigger impact if the owner of the winery appeared in the adverts and, frankly—’ Jess took a deep breath ‘—why would you want to spend a shedload of cash on a model when you are attractive enough to do it yourself?’

And I managed to say that without blushing or drooling, Jess thought.

‘I’m really liking this,’ Kendall stated.

‘Actually, so am I,’ Owen agreed, but Jess noticed that he wasn’t looking at her but at Ally. Okay, so that was interesting. Jess swivelled her head. Ally was so looking back, the flirt!

Luke stood up abruptly. ‘Thanks, everybody. It’s been a long day. Let’s sleep on it and meet on Monday to make a decision. Jess, if you’d wait, I’d like a moment of your time?’

Now he wants a moment, Jess thought. He’s had three weeks. She looked at Luke, who was writing on her presentation booklet. Then again, it was probably about work.

She was acting like a lonely, lovelorn teenager. She was, it was embarrassing to admit, an utter drip.

* * *

Luke waited until the last person had left the room and the door had snicked closed behind them before walking around the table to the top of the room, where Jess was still standing by the projector screen, a laser pointer in her hand. He sat on the edge of the boardroom table and stretched out his legs. Jess seemed to get better-looking each time he saw her, he thought idly. She’d done something to her hair—there were now pale blonde streaks in the honey colour. It was also brutally straight today. He preferred it loose and curly...

Luke scratched his forehead, thinking that he was too far gone if he was wasting time noticing the details of a woman’s hair. Which was chilling on a dozen different levels.

He was impressed with her presentation, her professionalism; no one would have guessed that this slick, cool businesswoman suffered from performance anxiety. He wouldn’t have guessed it if he hadn’t seen her sticking her tongue out for those drops. The entire episode made her seem not quite so aloof, a little warmer, a lot more human. Infinitely attractive.

‘Um...what do you really think about my idea?’ Jess asked, and he could hear a quiver underneath her professional tone of voice.

‘I like it—apart from me being in the ads.’

‘I should also tell you that I think you should start getting out, promoting the St Sylve name and its wine. I would strongly suggest that you go out more...social events, parties, balls...and that you host wine-tasting evenings and start networking.’

‘Why don’t you just take my internal organs? It would be easier.’ Luke rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Do you have an extra twenty-four hours in the day for me?’

‘It’s important, Luke.’

‘I don’t have the time, Jess. I’m working at St Sylve. I get home from the land and then I spend hours on business plans, financing... I’m running my other businesses at night. I don’t have the time for advertising shoots, let alone for a social life.’

‘Then I think you should be prepared to keep ploughing your own money into St Sylve or to lose it,’ Jess told him bluntly. ‘You need the wines to sell to get St Sylve sustainable, and to do that you need sales—for sales you need advertising.’

‘Then why must I do the social stuff?’

‘Because you need to be seen to be living the campaign or else the consumers won’t believe in it.’ Jess perched on the edge of the conference table and crossed her legs. ‘Step out of your comfort zone, Luke.’

Comfort zone? He hadn’t felt remotely comfortable since he’d set eyes on her again weeks ago.

Luke eyed her long legs in those sexy boots and felt his groin twitch. Dammit! He didn’t like not being able to control his physical reaction to this woman, the fact that he thought about her far too often. And he especially didn’t like the fact that she could talk so coolly about business when he was imagining her naked except for those boots, at the mercy of his touch...

‘If I agree to hire you, and by doing so agree to any and all of your proposals,’ he said in a voice that most of his staff and friends would recognise as non-negotiable, ‘then I have a couple of conditions of my own.’