His Brand of Beautiful by Lily Malone Read Free Book Online Page B

enough to send a small animal scuttling through the flower beds.
    Tate’s eyes slid toward a gnarled row of hundred‐year‐old Morton Bay Figs metres off the path—the type of trees that might have sheltered a troll in a good children’s book.

    “I won’t work for you, Christina,” he said softly.
    Her right hand chopped into the palm of her left. “Why the hell not?”
    “Handcrafted by Clay is about as iconic as a brand gets. I don’t know why you’d want to mess with it. You’d be taking a huge risk.”
    “I agree with you. But what if I said it’s not Handcrafted I want to change?”
    For a long time there was only the sound of the sleeping city and her anklet and their footfalls, and then she heard a deep sigh.
    “Go on,” he said.
    Her spirits soared. This was the chance she’d waited three months to get.
    “Michael and I want to create a new brand, one that will turn Australian wine on its head—”
    “Why not just buy an existing brand and revamp it under the Clay Wines umbrella.
    Cheaper. Easy to leverage.”
    She shook her head before he’d finished. “It’s the creativity we like most.
    Handcrafted is Richard and Saffah’s baby. This new brand is something Michael and I want for ourselves.”
    They’d reached two waist‐high granite pillars marking the boundary of the darker parklands beyond, at the very edge of the throw of light from the reception centre car park.
    The path ahead turned from bitumen to gravel, then to grass cut only slightly lower than the wild rough surrounding it.
    “We don’t have enough wine, Tate, it’s that simple. Handcrafted sells out every year months before the new vintage release. That leaves clients we can’t service, markets we can’t tap. We can buy great fruit in McLaren Vale right now and the grape‐growers can’t give it away. It’s not right. There’s an opportunity there and it’ll go begging. I want to grab it.”
    She pivoted, gravel crunched under her heel. Each breath puffed from her lips in little white clouds. Tate leaned against the left‐hand pillar, the blue of his shirt like a patch of clear sky in a storm. Through a gap in the trees behind him, red neon from city skyscrapers lit the tawny tips of his hair.
    “I have all this stuff flying around up here,” —she tapped her forehead— “and I’ve got files and folders of forecasts and projections and none of it has a name. Everything has TBA written across the top. Until I get the concept clear I’ve gone as far as I can. I’m stuck.”
    A shiver racked her body. “That’s why I need you.”
    “Come here.” He reached strong arms for her, tucked her into his chest. His heartbeat thumped her shoulder‐blade and the heat was instant. She felt her body mould itself to his.
    “You look like a female Robin Hood in that outfit — only you would have scandalised Sherwood. The Merry Men wouldn’t have got a speck of work done—no robbing the rich to give to the poor. You would have changed history.” His voice was velvet soft. His forearm brushed the mocha‐coloured fabric clinging to her breasts as he traced her bare collarbone with a finger.
    “I like this.” He plucked at the sash she’d embroidered, slung like a gun belt low on her hips where it gathered folds of green chiffon over the mocha shirt. “It suits you. So does the hat. Now close your eyes.”
    She did as she was told. Tried not to think about his lips so close to her ear.
    “Tell me what your new brand feels like.”
    Her eyes opened. “ I’ll feel like an idiot.”

    Lily Malone
    “If you can’t say it out loud it doesn’t deserve to be said.”
    “The marketing guru speaks.”
    “Marketing guru bullshit. You want to tell me about this brand, I’m listening—against my better judgment. Stop stalling.”
    Three months she’d been trying to get to just this point and now she felt suddenly terrified. Closing her eyes took all her courage.
    “It feels very Australian. Comfortable. Like a pair