“Yeah,” he lied. “I can.”
Adam watched him for a long minute or two, before finally nodding. “All right then. That’s good enough for me. You and Julie keep a low profile, for God’s sake. All of this press attention is making Gina a nervous wreck and she doesn’t need that with the baby due any day.”
“It’s not like I’m enjoying the media circus myself, you know.”
Adam ignored that. “Jackson and I will keep looking for information on Jean Claude. There’s bound to be something somewhere in his background.”
“Yeah,” Jackson said. “Maybe we can find a reporter to work for us for a change. Maybe hint that Jean Claude’s not all he seems to be.”
“Worth a shot,” Travis said.
And it was worth looking in to, he thought as he came out of the memory like a man who’d been asleep too long and couldn’t quite shake the cobwebs out of his mind.
The only thing that concerned him was if they did find something on Jean Claude, would the information implicate Julie, as well? He didn’t want to think so. Not only because it would be infuriating as hell to be so completely wrong about a person but also because he’d have to live with her duplicity for the next year. He’d be damned if he’d enter into another media feeding frenzy that would ensue if he tried for a quick divorce from her.
Travis shook his head and shoved one hand through his hair. Fisting his hand around the damn phone that continued to spew hideous music into his ear, he fought down the urge to throw the phone across the room. He might not be able to straighten out one part of his life, but he for damn sure was going to iron out a deal with Thomas Henry or die trying.
“King?” A deep, brusque voice interrupted Travis’s thoughts. “What is it?”
“Henry,” Travis said, sitting up straight in his chair, keeping his voice pleasantly, deliberately even. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“Been busy,” the other man said.
“Right. Me, too.” Travis knew the older man had been reading the newspapers, following the scandal that had risen up around Travis and Julie, so the first order of business was to smooth that over. “I’ve been dealing with lawyers for the last week. Not the way I’d planned on spending the first weeks of my marriage.”
“Yes,” Henry mused. “I’ve been reading about you and your wife.”
“I can imagine,” Travis said. “But I want to assure you that there is no truth to the stories you’ve been seeing in the press about us.”
“So she wasn’t married to this…Doucette character?”
Scowling, Travis picked up a pen from the top of his desk, tapped it on the oak surface, then tossed it aside again. “Actually, yes, she was.”
“Well, then—you’re both getting exactly what she deserves,” the man blustered, a dismissive tone in his voice that sent a blast of protective fury whipping through Travis.
“Doucette tricked my wife,” he said, voice hard. Yeah, he wanted the distribution contract, but he’d be damned if he’d sit here and let someone who didn’t even know her insult Julie. “She’s done nothing wrong and I don’t appreciate your innuendo.”
“Now just one minute…”
“No, Henry,” Travis said, standing up as he allowed his anger to swell inside him. “You wait a minute. It’s true I want your company to distribute my wine, but I can live without it.” He didn’t want to. Hadn’t planned to. But he wasn’t going to sit back and let someone stomp on him, either.
It wouldn’t be easy to find a good distributor if this deal didn’t come through, but he’d find a way and damned if Travis King was going to kiss anyone’s ass just to move along the success train. “You know as well as I do that a deal with King wines would serve you as well as me.”
“Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“I could ask the same, Henry,” Travis said and shoved one hand into the pocket of his slacks. His voice was deep and dark and filled with the venom that was coursing through his veins. “I’m not some green kid just breaking in to the wine business. I’ve got one of the top wineries in California and you know it. King wines is growing every year. Now we can work together to build the name into something that will make us both a lot of money—” he paused, took a breath and tamped down the anger nearly choking him “—or you can utter one more insult toward my wife and I hang up and find a new distributor.”
For one split second, Travis wondered if he’d gone too far—if the other man was going to hang up and forget about King wineries. Then that moment passed and the other man spoke up again.
“You’re right,” Henry said thoughtfully. “And I admire a man who stands for his family. I’m willing to discuss the distribution deal. Let’s meet next week to talk it over.”
Success. It tasted bittersweet, but Travis could choke it down. When he hung up, Travis thought about going to tell Julie the good news. Then he reconsidered. After all, it wasn’t as if this was a real marriage.
Upstairs, Julie closed the door to the master bedroom, stepped over to the wide window that overlooked the acres of neatly tended grape vines. White, billowy clouds drifted like sails across a sky so blue it almost hurt to look at it. Sunlight slanted down on the vineyard and just for a moment, Julie took a breath and paused simply to enjoy the beauty of the scene.
But she hadn’t come upstairs to admire the King winery. She’d come for a little privacy. She wasn’t going to be a passive observer in her life anymore. It was time that Julie faced her past and did something about straightening out her future. Flipping open her cell phone, she dialed a number she’d tried to forget. Waiting impatiently as the phone rang, she tugged at the white sheers hanging alongside the window and almost jumped when a man’s voice came on the line.
“Hello?”
God, how she hated that voice.
“Jean Claude,” she said. “We have to talk.”
Eight
J ulie felt like a spy.
Any minute now, she half expected Travis to jump out from the shadows, point an accusing finger at her and shout Traitor!
“This was probably a bad idea,” she muttered and carried her hot cup of coffee to the scratched-up white guardrail at the edge of the lookout over the ocean. She hunched a little deeper into her dark blue windbreaker and turned her face into the wind, letting that icy breeze blow her hair back from her face.