The Saxon Brides: Mistaken Mistress

Joshua pointed through the windshield to where a winding pass cut into the hills ahead, which had they been higher might have earned the label of mountain range.

As they crested the summit of The Divide, he heard her breath catch. He flicked her a look and caught the entranced expression on her face.

Ahead of them lay a valley so beautiful it never failed to take his own breath away. But this time all his senses were focused on the woman seated beside him, a pencil gripped in her fist as she took in the vista of rolling hills, the wide plain, the river running through.

“So, what do you think?” Holding his breath, Joshua waited for her response.

“My God, it’s beautiful,” she said softly. “Too beautiful to describe in words.” She tapped her pencil against her shorthand notebook.

Joshua started to smile inwardly. Satisfaction spread through him. Maybe it hadn’t been a mistake to bring her here after all. “On a warm summer’s day this is the best place in the world. See that river?”

Alyssa nodded.

“Chosen Valley Vineyard—Heath’s home—lies on the other side. There are trout in the river. They lurk under the rocks. It takes time to coax them out.”

“What a lovely picture. It’s absolutely idyllic. Clearly you love it here and Heath must, too, otherwise he wouldn’t live here.” Alyssa fell silent for a moment. “What about Roland, did he love it, too?”

Joshua forced himself not to react to the way his brother’s name fell so easily from her lips. Yet he couldn’t stop the tension that settled between them, destroying the bond that had been forged in the last few minutes.

He gave a short laugh. “Roland didn’t have the patience to land a trout. He was drawn to dangerous sports, fast cars …” he cast her a derisive glance “… and equally fast women.”

She rose like one of the trout that lived in the stream to a particularly tempting lure. “You’re saying that I’m fast?”

Joshua pulled the vehicle off the road and turned his head. “Fast lane? Fast tracked for success? Maybe. When last did you take time to reflect a little? To go hiking? To stand on the edge of a hill and wait for the sunset?”

Then he turned his back on her wide eyes and silky hair and the womanly fragrance that tangled him up in knots. Swinging out of the driver’s seat, he slammed the door behind him, and walked to the road’s edge, his back to her, his hands on his hips.

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?”