In His Eyes
In His Eyes
Emmie Dark
Hugh Lawson and Zoe Waters have a tangled history. But she left ten years ago and he's put her behind him. Except she's here again–just when Hugh's ready to make an offer for her family's legendary vineyard. And her version of those long-ago events is enough to make him question everything he thought he knew.Hugh can't let the past destroy his plans for the future. Which means he has to unravel the truth. But as he does, he begins to realize that he may have been as responsible for what happened as Zoe. And that going back could be the only way to move forward.
What if everything he thinks about her is wrong?
Hugh Lawson and Zoe Waters have a tangled history. But she left ten years ago and he’s put her behind him. Except she’s here again—just when Hugh’s ready to make an offer for her family’s legendary vineyard. And her version of those long ago events is enough to make him question everything he thought he knew.
Hugh can’t let the past destroy his plans for the future. Which means he has to unravel the truth. But as he does, he begins to realize that he may have been as responsible for what happened as Zoe. And that going back could be the only way to move forward.
Zoe studied him curiously
Hugh couldn’t bring himself to look away.
If it was possible for ten years of hurt to be conveyed in someone’s eyes, then Zoe had mastered it.
When she spoke, her voice was soft. “Hugh, it was all a long time ago. We’re both very different people now.”
He certainly hoped so. They were going to have to find a way to deal with each other without this massive lump of history coming between them every time their eyes met.
Hugh wanted to buy Waterford—that meant discussions, negotiations, meetings. Interactions he intended to conduct as an adult, not a broken-hearted seventeen-year-old.
Dear Reader,
Like many people, I really enjoy an occasional glass of wine. It’s a reward after a hard day’s work, or a way to mark a celebration—whether it’s a birthday, an achievement or simply friends coming together to enjoy each other’s company.
I’m lucky enough to have two close friends, Kim and John, who own their own boutique winery—and make a very delicious shiraz. I’ve had the opportunity to do a little work with them over the years, and have seen from the inside both the pleasures and sheer hard work that come with winemaking. I’d like to thank Kim and John for their help with the insight into winemaking and their patience with my frequent questions. Any errors I’ve made are my own.
In this story, my heroine, Zoe, says it takes people of “steely determination and unwavering passion” to succeed in the industry. She’s right. I’ve visited wine regions in various parts of the world, and I will never forget the day I visited a winery where a frost had destroyed the estate’s entire grape crop the night before. Can you imagine? I would be inconsolable. But the owner shrugged and said something like, “It happens. There’s always next year.”
In a way, writing is very similar. It is an art, but there is a little science to it, too. Things don’t always turn out the way you think—characters sometimes have their own plans for themselves. And “steely determination and unwavering passion” are pretty much prerequisites for becoming a romance author!
I hope you enjoy Zoe and Hugh’s story. They’re two people with lots of passion and determination—they just need to find a way to apply it to what their hearts are telling them!
I’d love to hear from you. Visit me at www.emmiedark.com (http://www.emmiedark.com).
Cheers,
Emmie Dark
In His Eyes
Emmie Dark
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After years of writing press releases, employee newsletters and speeches for CEOs and politicians—none of which included any kind of kissing—Emmie Dark finally took to her laptop to write what she wanted to write. She was both amazed and delighted to discover that what came out were sexy, noble heroes who found themselves crossing paths with strong, but perhaps slightly damaged, heroines. And plenty of kissing.
Emmie lives in Melbourne, Australia, and she likes red lipstick, chardonnay, sunshine, driving fast, rose-scented soap and a really good cup of tea.
Books by Emmie Dark
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Contents
CHAPTER ONE (#uc84dfab6-9894-5c16-91e0-b22c30929280)
CHAPTER TWO (#ub982fd0b-061c-5882-a995-313f8440c9dd)
CHAPTER THREE (#u388a975d-eea6-596f-ac57-b82c6d4ca154)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u61c71c6f-3734-5af0-b228-2ac95d624eff)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EXCERPT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
ZOE WATERSDROVEUPTHE long, rutted drive and noted that the pale green farmhouse ahead of her desperately needed a new paint job. But then, it had needed one for as long as she could remember. Only these days—more than ten years since she’d last been here—it was beginning to seem as if the flakes of paint were what was holding the crumbling weatherboards together.
Zoe wasn’t sure whether she should feel comforted that so little had changed or disgusted by the neglect.
She pulled into the yard behind the house and climbed out of the rental car, stepping carefully to avoid the soft, squelching mud threatening her inappropriately delicate shoes.
The signs of dereliction were even more obvious here.
A strange, melancholy sense of déjà vu settled over her as she looked around. Now that she surveyed things closer up, it was clear that not only did little appear to have changed—pretty much nothing had. Everything had just decayed a touch more. The scattered car bodies near the back fence had rusted a little redder and sunk a little deeper into the overgrown grass. The door to the shed that held the tractor and her grandfather’s other old-fashioned and outdated farm equipment was crooked, the top hinge clearly broken.
Zoe sighed heavily and leaned against the car, warm from the two-hour drive from Melbourne.
The task ahead of her seemed to grow exponentially as she surveyed the ruins of Waterford Estate.
The only building that still looked in reasonable condition was the tin shed and converted refrigerated shipping container that housed the winery. Well, what passed for a winery on the Waterford estate. She wondered if all those rich people in Sydney, California and France on the Waterford mailing list who so eagerly awaited her grandfather’s vintage Shiraz each year would feel quite the same way if they could see where it came from.
She sighed again and ran a hand through her hair as the wind whipped the long strands into her eyes. Wrapping her light jacket more tightly around herself, Zoe shuddered—she’d forgotten the icy chill of the wind out here and how it could leach into your bones. Too much time in California. Too used to the endless sunshine and warm breezes, unlike the capricious weather of this part of the valley—stinking hot in summer, subject to grape-endangering frosts seemingly out of nowhere in spring. Right now—winter—the weather was at least somewhat predictable. Cold. With a side of rain and wind.
She mentally surveyed the contents of the suitcase still sitting in the boot of the car. She was going to have to buy some new clothes.
A trip into town. Yippee.
The thought sent a different kind of shiver through her.
Turning away from her survey of the ruined outbuildings, Zoe shielded her eyes from the weak sun. The Waterford vines stretched out in long, bare lines to the north and east of the house, dormant for the winter yet still visibly neglected. It was a tragic state for any viticulturist to see—some of the oldest vines in the valley, planted by Zoe’s great-great-grandfather and tended by a member of the Waters family for more than a hundred years.
Until now.
To her left, the well-tended vines of the neighboring Lawson Estate—her family’s rivals for her whole life—grew just a few feet from the property line. Zoe made an effort not to look, to pretend that across the post-and-wire fence there was just a big, empty nothing. Just as she’d always done—at least when her grandfather was watching.
The only way she could get through these next few days was to pretend Lawson Estate didn’t exist, the township of Tangawarra wasn’t there and Waterford had a protective force field around it. She snorted at the fanciful idea at the same time she wished it could be true.
Zoe pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head as the sky clouded over. Heavy, slate-gray clouds waited on the horizon. Rain was definitely on the way. More rain from the looks of the sodden ground. She shivered again. Maybe even a storm.
At least that would give her a break. A few hours to sit and catch up with everything that had happened in the past few days. Perhaps even the chance to turn her brain to the task of working out what to do next.
The very thought started a headache throbbing at the back of her neck.
Just as she made a move to dig out her belongings and find her house keys, the sound of a vehicle reached her. A white utility truck bumped along the corrugated dirt track that led from the unsurfaced road. It had prominent signage along the side—elegant black script, a flowing red ribbon—unmistakably the Lawson Estate logo.
She swore under her breath.
She couldn’t have had a day or so—a few hours maybe—to get her bearings before facing reality? It seemed the universe wasn’t going to extend even that small kindness to her.
Zoe stepped toward the ute as it pulled up beside her own bland white rental car. The driver’s face was hidden in the shadow of a straw, American-style cowboy hat. It struck her as odd—most men in the valley preferred the very Australian Akubra or a simple cap, most often embroidered with the logo of their winery.
The driver cut the engine and climbed out. Time slowed somehow, and Zoe was conscious of every moment. The scuffed R. M. Williams boots that hit the ground first. The tight-fitting jeans, worn almost white around the knees and crotch. The chambray shirt that had once been crisply ironed, but was now creased and loosened by a day’s work. The stubbled jaw—not quite bearded, but wearing more than a five-o’clock shadow—that gave his familiar face a hard, almost savage edge. And last—but never least—those blue eyes, shocking, tormenting blue. The blue eyes she’d dreamed of for ten years; the blue eyes that had been her ruin.
“Well, if it isn’t Zoe Waters,” he drawled.
Zoe’s knees turned to jelly, and as her vision began to blacken at the periphery she realized she’d stopped breathing. Through pure force of will she took in a deep lungful of air and strengthened her wobbly legs. Fainting now would be an unacceptable humiliation. From somewhere deep inside, from the core of steel that had been honed over a lifetime and never before failed her, she managed to paste a tight, unwelcoming smile on her face. She’d show him how little she cared, even if it killed her.
“Hugh Lawson, well, well,” she managed to say, pleased that her voice conveyed exactly the right tone of distaste.
“So the old man finally let you come back.” Hugh was smiling, but his eyes were cold. There was no hint of the warmth or humor she remembered from so long ago.
Was he angry with her? What on earth for? She was the one who had lost everything…her family, her reputation, the only real home she’d ever known.
She managed another grim smile. “The old man died yesterday.”
He hesitated and his cool look faded as concern creased his brow. She felt an odd satisfaction at the knowledge she’d unsettled him, but she clasped her hands tightly to hide their sudden tremor. It had been ten years, for heaven’s sake! She’d moved halfway around the world to escape from her past. She was over it. The mistakes she’d made as an infatuated sixteen-year-old little girl were not going to taint her whole life. She’d made sure of that.
“I’m…I’m sorry to hear that,” Hugh said. His eyes lost their hard edge for a moment and Zoe remembered how easy it had been to fall for him, how easy to think herself in love and to be fooled into thinking he might love her in return.
Hugh took a step forward and reached out a hand. For a moment, she thought he was going to hug her and a mess of emotion washed over her. Mostly, though, she was filled with horror at the idea that she looked as if she needed comforting. She stiffened and took a step back.
Hugh’s hand immediately dropped. Whatever he’d been thinking, whatever sympathetic gesture he’d been about to make was now hidden behind that impenetrable blue gaze.
“Yes, well…” Zoe flicked out her hands in a helpless gesture. Apart from anything else, she had no idea what to do with sympathy; it had been the same when the nurse at the hospital had expressed her condolences. Her grandfather’s death still wasn’t real. Even when it did eventually sink in—assuming that happened—she wasn’t sure how she should feel about it. Sad? Relieved? Indifferent?
She straightened her shoulders. “Why are you here?”
That laconic smile was back, warmer this time, more like the Hugh she remembered, erasing the years from his face and making him look just as he had when they’d snuck away to be together. “Neighbors look out for each other around here, Zoe, don’t you remember that?”
Irritation flared inside her at his veiled reminder. Just where had he been when she’d needed looking after?
And she was over this. Over him.
Yeah, right.
She couldn’t help raising her eyebrows in disbelief at his comment. “Neighbors might. But you know as well as I do that that never applied to the Lawson and Waters families.”
Hugh ignored her. “One of our groundskeepers saw the car,” Hugh continued, gesturing to her white sedan. “We knew Mack was in the hospital, so I thought I’d check it out in case…you were up to no good.” He grinned slyly.
Zoe swallowed her storm of emotions somewhat unsuccessfully, frustrated with herself for feeling them in the first place. The only way to deal with this was to appear as unaffected by their reunion as he seemed to be. As unaffected as she wanted to be. “Thank you so much for your concern,” she said, putting on a sarcastically polite tone. “But there’s no need. You can leave now.”
“Ah, Zoe. Still the angry little firecracker, I see.” He shook his head, then his expression softened. “Are you okay, though, really?”
His condescension made her emotions burn brighter. The fact that he could still see through her, that he remembered anger was her default defense mechanism, was the final straw. “You can leave,” she repeated. “Now.” Zoe dug her fingernails into her palms as she struggled to rein in her response. She must surely be drawing blood.
His gaze swept over her, a lingering glance that created an entirely different kind of heat. When his eyes met hers again, they were subdued, a little clouded. She’d have given anything to know what he was thinking.
“It’s…good to see you again, Zoe. To see you looking so…well.”
Well? What was that supposed to mean? Before she could ask, he turned on his heel and climbed back into the ute. With a short, salutelike wave against the brim of his hat, he was gone. Zoe let out a long, relieved breath and refused to think about the disappointment that washed over her as she watched the car disappear down the track.
At least that was over. Seeing Hugh Lawson again was the thing she’d been dreading most. Now she was just left facing a small town that had always hated the sight of her, dealing with her grandfather’s funeral and his estate, and single-handedly producing the last-ever Waterford Estate vintage. Compared to facing the love of her life who’d abandoned her when she’d needed him most, all that should be easy.
Pushing those thoughts away, Zoe headed toward the house, intent on getting started with the seemingly impossible tasks in front of her.
* * *
THEFIRSTJOBTOTACKLE was organizing her grandfather’s funeral. In comparison to her day-job of managing the production of a multi-million-dollar wine vintage, that was a snap. And not just because her grandfather’s controlling nature hadn’t receded an inch, even right at the end. She should have expected that a man like Mack Waters would have made all the arrangements himself. Especially once it had become clear that the cancer wasn’t going to let him escape.
A simple melanoma on his balding head, burned away like the many others he’d had in his life. Only this one had grown, burrowing below his epidermis, reaching out its ugly tentacles and infiltrating his skull. Once it reached his brain stem it had been only a matter of days.
Mack was too stubborn to leave his funeral to chance—or to risk someone else mucking it up. He wanted what he wanted. And at the time, he’d probably thought it unlikely that his granddaughter would come home to do it for him.
Hadn’t stopped him calling her, though. Zoe wasn’t sure who’d been more surprised—herself when she took the call, or Mack when she’d answered. She’d always made sure Mack had a phone number for her when she made one of her frequent moves, but he rarely used it.
Besides, by the time she got here—still reeling from the shock of her unexpected, and still impossible to explain, decision to take leave from work, pack a suitcase and jump on a plane—he was lucid only in short bursts. It hadn’t stopped him from loading her up with guilt and forcing her to make promises she’d had no intention of keeping. But Zoe had stayed and held his hand at the last.
Mack had opted for a church service, a shock to Zoe since she’d never known him to set foot inside one. Apart from her sightseeing visits in Europe, neither had she. Certainly not this modest, clinker-brick, slate-roofed building that sat on a grassy slope just on the outskirts of Tangawarra township.
The storm that had threatened yesterday still hung low on the horizon. For now, the sun was shining through the stained-glass windows, sending beams of colored light crisscrossing through the dusty air of the church.
As per Mack’s instructions, it was a private funeral—invitation only. And the list consisted of one person: Zoe. She couldn’t help a rueful grin as she surveyed the half-dozen mourners behind her as she sat alone on the front pew. She didn’t recognize any of the other mourners—all women, she noted. They were probably professional funeral-goers, women the minister had asked to attend against Mack’s wishes, just so the church wasn’t completely empty.
Mack wouldn’t be happy about that. His exclusive
funeral was his final joke on the town he loved to hate—and who loved to hate him. That the valley’s most prestigious wine was made by a grumpy, antisocial misanthrope wasn’t lost on the tightly knit community of Tangawarra.
The plain, dark wood coffin at the front of the church stayed silent. No more complaints from Mack. Not anymore.
Zoe swallowed a suspicious lump in her throat.
She was actually grateful for her grandfather’s unsociable wishes—no public announcement of the
funeral, no notice in the local paper. Because if they’d known, Zoe was sure that more members of the Tangawarra community would have turned up—just out of curiosity and that bizarre schadenfreude that was part of small-town life. They’d nod knowingly with superior looks on their faces. The thing of most interest to them wouldn’t be the coffin or the service, but Zoe herself, sitting alone in the front row. She could just imagine them critiquing her hairstyle, her makeup, deciding that her gray pencil skirt and beaded red-and-gray knit sweater weren’t somber enough for the occasion. The fact that she’d worn red lipstick would be a scandal talked about for weeks.
Because they knew the true reason behind Mack Waters’s sad and miserable existence. Although he’d never gone out of his way to make friends, everyone knew his life had been ruined when he’d been saddled with his hell-raiser of a granddaughter to bring up.
Zoe gave an inner shrug—she could understand why he hadn’t wanted the judgmental, gossipy town at his farewell. Neither did she.
Thankfully, the minister kept the service short. One of the anonymous churchgoers read a short passage from the bible. Again, Zoe had no idea why. The minister’s eulogy was polite and for the most part accurate—praise for Mack’s wine making, including a glowing quote from a prestigious wine reviewer, a short note about the tragic loss of his wife and then his daughter, an unexpected mention of his pride in his granddaughter’s success in the California wine industry. Zoe guessed the minister had to say something about her, since she was sitting right there.
So far, so good. The first promise she’d made to Mack—to give him a private, low-key funeral—was almost over. Pity it was the easiest promise of them all.
When she walked outside into pale sunlight, following his coffin, she realized she should have known better. Dozens of people stood around, women with grim smiles aimed at her, men with hats held to their chests.
Tangawarra was an impossible place to keep a secret—she should have learned that years ago. It was also an impossible place to tell the truth, but then that was the dichotomy of small-town life.
“Zoe?”
A woman in a pale blue fleece windbreaker stepped closer as the undertakers pushed her grandfather’s coffin into the hearse. She appeared to be in her mid-fifties, and had the sun-weathered look of someone who worked outside. Zoe frowned, searching her memory to try to put a name to the face.
“My condolences,” the woman said. “Mack was a stubborn old coot, but it’s always hard to lose a loved one.”
Loved one? She and her grandfather had tolerated each other; that was about as far as it went. Zoe just nodded. “Thank you.”
She wished, once again, that she’d thought to pack a winter-weight coat. The morning’s chill still hung in the air. She’d clearly acclimatized to the California weather far more than she’d thought. Zoe was finding the valley colder than she’d ever remembered—a deep, gnawing ache that had gone away only last night when she’d soaked herself in a steaming hot bath. Of course, she’d had to clean the tub first, which had helped warm her up a little, too.
“I’m Patricia Owens. From Long Track Estate—just up the road from Waterford.”
Zoe had seen the sign to the vineyard, neighbors to Waterford on the side opposite to the Lawson Estate, but the woman still didn’t seem familiar.
“We bought the property about eight years ago. Mack was a good neighbor. We used to chat—sometimes
shared pickers and the like. I liked to look out for him—especially in the past year or so when he was beginning to get frail.”
Zoe tried to push away a stab of unwanted guilt. Mack hadn’t phoned her until it was too late—there was no way she could have known that she needed to be home. And even if she had…
At least she’d come back in time, so he hadn’t been alone at the end. She’d given the old man that much, at least.
“Thank you,” she said, giving the other woman a genuine smile. “I really appreciate that.”
Patricia gave her arm a squeeze. “Mack talked about you—he was so proud of what you were doing. You must come by and visit us—are you staying at Waterford?”
Zoe nodded, holding her surprise inside at the unexpected repetition of the words the minister had used in the eulogy. Mack? Proud of her? Zoe was an award-winning winemaker with a reputation—spanning two continents—for quality, perfectionism and an innate talent for bringing out the best in grapes. But she’d never considered what people back in Tangawarra—including her grandfather—thought of her. She’d run so fast to get away from the tiny town, in her mind it was still just as it had been ten years ago. Complete with her own starring role as the town’s one and only teen rebel. She’d never stopped to think that they might see her differently now.
“Come around for dinner one night, then. It would be lovely to get to know you.”
Zoe battled a sudden swell of emotion. “That’s very nice of you. Thanks.”
The funeral directors motioned to Zoe—the procession was ready to head to the cemetery. Zoe would ride in one of their cars. She stepped forward, but Patricia reached out again to place a tentative hand on Zoe’s arm.
“Um, Zoe, would it be okay if we came to the cemetery to pay our respects?”
Zoe looked around; several people in the small crowd were hanging on every word she and Patricia exchanged. Her grandfather couldn’t have been more explicit in his wishes for privacy at the funeral. She figured he meant the interment, as well, but the cemetery was a public place. Zoe couldn’t exactly lock everyone out.
Maybe if she explained.
“Mack was pretty clear—” she began. She stopped short when the slam of the hearse door made the flowers on top of the coffin shudder, as if Mack himself was banging on the lid in protest. Zoe bit back a peculiarly hysterical urge to laugh. A little of her old rebellious streak reared up inside her. You know what, old man? These people want to say goodbye. I’m gonna let them and there’s nothing you can do about it.
She shrugged. “Sure. If you want to.” Although a quick look around the crowd had her instantly regretting her capitulation. It wasn’t just about what Mack would have wanted—or not. She didn’t particularly want to spend a great deal of time with the Tangawarra townsfolk.
Patricia gave her a small hug and pulled back with a sweet, sympathetic look. “Thank you. I’ll see you there.”
From the plush interior of the car, Zoe watched as the small town passed by. She had plenty of time to take in the details; the car was travelling slowly, following the hearse, and the guy from the funeral home made no attempt to speak. Everything seemed unreal, like a David Lynch movie—the colors somehow wrong, some things too bright, others unfocused, as though she existed in a fissure in reality that kept her remote from the world.
Nothing much about the township had changed. Some of the shop fronts were different; a few buildings seemed more modern. The milk bar where Zoe had bought cigarettes—old Mr. Bond sold them to underage teenagers if they paid extra—had become a café with tables and chairs set out on the footpath. The chemist’s where she’d been caught shoplifting was the same, only its sign was brighter and louder, and it had expanded to take over the next-door premises.
An old council building was now the most well-tended and attractive store on the main street—it had become the winemakers’ center, a tourist information spot to help visitors find the various wineries in the valley. The Lawson Estate logo was prominent, and Zoe turned away.
All the worst things that had happened in her life had happened in, or because of, Tangawarra. She didn’t want to notice the changes in the town, the fact that it seemed prosperous, the people friendly, the buildings neat and well maintained. No, she wanted it to still be the dark, miserable place she’d found it as a teenager—it was easier to hang on to those old impressions than integrate new ones. Then it was easier to understand why she’d never wanted to come back.
Just before they left what passed as Tangawarra’s city center, Zoe spied a couple of teenagers hanging around outside the supermarket. The hearse had caught their attention and they stared unabashedly at the pitiful two-vehicle cortege. Both kids were dressed in head-to-toe black; one had shocking pink hair, while the other’s head was half shaved, half long greasy black locks. Zoe peered closer as the car drove past—leather straps encircled their wrists, multiple piercings ran up their ears and one had a heavy-looking crucifix around his neck. Lots of eyeliner on both of them.
Emos, or neogoths, or whatever they were calling themselves these days.
Up to no good is likely what the townsfolk of Tangawarra would call them.
Zoe’s car crawled past and the kids were left standing aimlessly on the footpath, staring after the funeral procession with the world-weary expressions that only teenagers are capable of.
At least there are two of you.
At the cemetery she followed the coffin and the minister over the uneven ground on autopilot. Her attention was mostly focused on walking without stumbling—her impractical heels sank into the ground with every step and she wished she was wearing her usual wine-stained work boots. She was sure Mack wouldn’t have minded.
A tall, granite headstone was already in place, the open grave in front of it lined with eye-wateringly green artificial turf, ready to accept its latest occupant. The headstone hadn’t yet had Mack’s details engraved, but there was a blank space ready for him. Above that was her mother’s name, Margie Waters, dead at thirty-two when Zoe was just ten.
Funny, she didn’t remember her mother’s funeral at all. That was strange. Surely she should remember something as significant as that event. Maybe Mack hadn’t let her attend. But she couldn’t remember that, either.
At the top of the stone was her grandmother’s name; she’d died when Zoe was six. All Zoe had of her were some disconnected memories of hugs, scones hot from the oven and Mack smiling. She was pretty sure he hadn’t smiled ever again after Rachel Waters had died.
The minister began reciting the usual prayers. The wind had picked up and it snatched the monotonous drone away, which was fine with Zoe. She couldn’t seem to concentrate on the words, anyway.
Slowly, something entered in the periphery of her vision. She turned her head, expecting to see Patricia, and realized with a shock that there were at least half a dozen people already standing behind her and more filtering in through the cemetery entrance.
Mack would have hated this. The thought made her smile and a lump grew in her throat that she fought against. She hadn’t cried for ten years—no way was she starting now. Not over this. Not over anything—she simply couldn’t risk it.
Zoe had lived with Mack for nine years, two with her mother, seven more just her and the old man. He’d never really been a parent to her; they’d simply struggled through life together, working it out as they went along. They’d kept in touch sporadically in the decade since he’d sent her away in disgrace a few months before her seventeenth birthday. But Zoe had made her peace with that—it had been the only option he thought available to him.
“Zoe?” The minister gestured to her and she realized she’d missed her cue to throw dirt into the grave. One of the undertakers had removed the floral arrangement from on top of the coffin and Zoe was glad that the lush, lively flowers wouldn’t end up under the ground.
She quickly bent and scooped up a handful of dirt, fertile but thick and claylike, remembering as she did what her grandfather had taught her about terroir and the impact the soil had on the grapes that were grown in it.
It was one of the lessons that had since allowed her to build a career as one of the most renowned up-and-coming winemakers in California’s Napa Valley.
“Goodbye, Mack,” she whispered. Her breath misted in the icy air, floating eerily over the open grave before the wind carried it away. And then the coffin disappeared from sight.
The minister completed his final words and walked over to Zoe to shake her hand and squeeze her shoulder. There was a murmuring then, people began talking and even laughing—telling stories of the old days, she was sure. A shiver of dread ran down her spine. The last thing she wanted to share with this town was memories.
Patricia materialized at her side, cupping her elbow and steering her back toward the cemetery gate. She treated Zoe as if she were fragile, as if she were grief-stricken. Zoe definitely did feel zoned out, but she put that down to tiredness and lingering jetlag. And when had she last eaten? She couldn’t remember.
Overwhelmingly, she was just thankful this task was behind her. Boneless with relief, actually. It probably looked similar to grief, she figured; grief was no stranger to her, and neither was that numb and empty feeling that accompanied it. When she was seventeen and had lost everything, she’d understood what true grief was. This wasn’t even close.
“I’ll make sure she gets there.”
A male voice broke into her thoughts, but Zoe was still finding it difficult to focus on the world around her. Basic senses were returning slowly; she was aware that the wind had become almost a gale, she could smell eucalyptus as people walked over the leaves on the ground and crushed the oil out of them. People were chatting loudly now, getting into their cars with raucous farewells and banging of doors.
“Are you sure?” Patricia asked. “I can go with her in the undertaker’s car. Bert can drive my car over.”
“No, it’s fine, she can come with me.”
Zoe was barely conscious of the fact that Patricia’s soft touch on her arm was replaced with a strong masculine hand and she was being steered assertively toward a European sports car.
“See you there.”
Zoe blinked and found herself sinking into buttery-soft leather seats as the powerful engine purred to life. And next to her sat Hugh Lawson, a grim look on his face. How could she have been that out of it? They were in his car and pulling out of the cemetery car park before she pulled herself together enough to protest.
“See us where? Where are we going?”
“Lawson Estate.”
“What? Why?” The last place on earth she wanted to go.
“Because Mack Waters deserves a decent send-off.”
CHAPTER TWO
“EXCUSEME?” ZOEPROTESTED, just as Hugh expected her to. She reached for the door handle, but he reversed and drove off quickly before she could get out.
He flicked a glance at her as he steered the car away from the cemetery and back toward the road to Lawson Estate. She sat rigid, staring straight ahead. Her head was slightly bowed, and waves of dark hair fell forward hiding her expression, hiding eyes that Hugh knew were velvet brown. Brown eyes that could flash with fire when she was angry, darken with passionate intent late at night.
“Put your seat belt on,” he said.
She cooperated without a word. Well, he hadn’t expected her to be grateful, had he? He’d been an utter pain in the ass at their unexpected meeting yesterday, and he knew it. It had unsettled him just how unsettled he’d been by it. Looked as though today wasn’t going to be any different.
At least now he could direct that emotion at its rightful target instead of his poor staff. They’d tiptoed around him the day before.
“Are you really so bitter about Tangawarra, Zoe? You didn’t think that the people of this town would want to attend Mack Waters’s funeral? That they wouldn’t want a wake for its most famous winemaker? For a man from the family who more or less put the valley on the map?”
“I…I…” Zoe stumbled for words, and Hugh was surprised. But then the old Zoe returned and her eyes flashed at him as she twisted in the seat. There was that spark he remembered too well.
“You think I made that decision? I’d have invited the whole town—it’d be better to get their rubbernecking over and done with in one go. But I was following Mack’s instructions. He wanted it private, low-key.”
Hugh deliberately didn’t turn away from the road, but he rolled his eyes and knew she’d see. “Anyone with an ounce of sense would know that what Mack wanted and what Mack needed were two different things. Besides, funerals aren’t for the dead—they’re for the living.”
“I had to do what—”
Hugh didn’t let her finish. “I’m hosting a wake at Lawson Estate. The word’s gone out, so I figure we’ll have half the town there within an hour or so.”
Her protest died on her lips. She shut her mouth with a snap and sank back into the leather seat. From the corner of his eye, Hugh watched her hands clasp over her stomach, pressing tight enough against her belly to crease her sweater and turn her fingernails white.
“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. Hugh wasn’t sure how, but he could sense the struggle inside her. Then he dismissed the idea. Ridiculous. He knew next to nothing about the woman sitting beside him. They’d been lovers a decade ago when they were practically children. Parted under the most miserable of circumstances. But high school was a long, long time ago. He was a different person now—she surely was, too. A person he had to get to know if his plan to take over Waterford had any chance of success.
“I…we…you can’t. Mack wouldn’t have wanted it. He would hate it. And I’m not prepared for it.”
There was a quiver about her mouth and he noticed that her legs were trembling, too. He fiddled with the controls on the dash and sent a rush of warm air through the car.
He adopted his best authoritative tone. The one he used at Lawson Estate all-hands meetings and at the Tangawarra chamber of commerce breakfasts. The one that convinced other people to listen. “Zoe, this has nothing to do with what Mack would have wanted. It’s about Tangawarra celebrating the life of one of its most famous citizens. It’s the right thing to do.”
“The right thing to do? What would you know about that?” Zoe suddenly blurted, biting her bottom lip with her front teeth as if she’d like to swallow the words.
Oh, that was too much. He’d thought the wake would be a good way to thaw the ice between them—show that the whole Lawson-Waters feud thing was ancient history and had no bearing on the present. In fact, he’d hoped it would become the opening round in his negotiations for Waterford. Not that he’d be so crass as to push Zoe for a deal on the day of Mack’s funeral. But he’d thought she’d at least be grateful. Perhaps even conciliatory. He hadn’t expected Zoe to be so violently opposed—had actually thought she might enjoy going against her grandfather’s wishes. But he wasn’t going to put up with bullshit like that. “Going to give me a lecture on right and wrong, are you, Zoe?” he asked.
“Need a lecture, do you?” she bantered back. Her tone was all careworn insolence, bringing a sudden, long-forgotten memory to the surface despite his determination to focus on the present. Hugh could picture her, clear as day, fronting up to a teacher at school, all fierce bravado and defiance, before being sent to the principal’s office for insubordination. Hugh had
admired her, even before the summer they’d gotten
together. Her “take no prisoners” approach had appealed to the rebel inside him—the one buried deep under layers of family responsibility and community duty. But that was all in the past. All he was concerned about now was seeing both their signatures on a deed of sale for Waterford.
“I suppose you do,” she continued. “You talk about what the community needs, but from what I hear you’ve become Tangawarra’s own little corporate raider.”
Hugh clenched his jaw to prevent himself from responding hastily. Her criticism made him want to bite back, just as he would have years ago. But she wasn’t the only one who’d changed. Hugh had grown up, too, and he wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of letting her know the barb stung.
“Is that what you hear?” he asked blandly. He needed to remember that he had a larger purpose here. He’d dealt with all kinds of people over his years in business, and Zoe Waters wouldn’t be the most difficult by a long shot. He had a strategy and he’d pursue it logically and methodically, like any other business deal. Hugh had the Lawson Estate legacy to honor and the prosperity of Tangawarra to consider. Waterford was too valuable to fall into the hands of a competitor—or be left to fall to ruin. Not to mention the fact that securing Mack Waters’s vines would be an indisputable coup. The two estates had been rivals for decades, and seeing Waterford vines become part of Lawson Estate would be eminently satisfying.
So far, negotiations were not off to the best start, but he could recover from this. He’d been in worse situations before and come out on top.
“Mack told me you were buying all the grapes in the valley—pushing out the smaller players. Even buying up their vines if you could get your hands on them.”
He wondered how far she was going to push him. He soon got his answer.
She waved a careless hand. “I suppose you had to find a way to make sure that watery stuff you call wine gets around the world.”
His knuckles whitened around the leather-wrapped steering wheel and all his good intentions vanished. “You’d know all about that, would you, Zoe? From what I understand, despite the accolades you’ve managed to garner, you never stay anywhere long enough to make a decent career.”
So much for his strategy. He didn’t want to give Zoe the impression that she was anything other than a minor annoyance. Showing her that he was vulnerable to her criticism was a mistake.
He wasn’t Tangawarra’s mayor, or its mythical defender riding in on a white stallion to save the day. But he was, as his father had been, a community leader. And today he was doing what a community leader was expected to do: honor the passing of one of its most famous citizens.
And make some inroads into an important business acquisition at the same time.
He waited for her comeback, but she didn’t have one. She shifted in her seat, and Hugh hated himself for noticing the whisper of her stockings as she crossed her legs, her perfume. She smelled different now—subtler, more complex. But then, her perfume of choice at sixteen had been some generic store brand that she’d more than likely shoplifted.
He glanced her way when she stayed silent. To his surprise, he laughed at her tightly pursed lips.
“What?” she asked.
“I never thought I’d see the day. Zoe Waters lost for words. What happened to that smart mouth of yours? Never short of an insult and never short of an attack. What happened to you?”
“I grew up,” she snapped. “Ever thought of doing it yourself?”
* * *
ZOECURSEDHERIMPETUOUS tongue just as Hugh let out a long breath that sounded a little like a wistful sigh. “Ah. There she is.” A quick grin shot across the car at her. “Good to see.”
She pressed her lips into a taut line. This was why she hadn’t wanted to come back to Tangawarra. Hugh Lawson had known her better than anyone. He’d seen into her heart—at least, at the time she’d thought he had—and he still expected her to be the delinquent, impertinent teen who had been the town’s number one trouble-maker until she’d been shipped off in a cloud of shame. How would it be facing other townspeople? Maria from the chemist’s shop where she’d been caught shoplifting, Frank from the hardware store she’d vandalized… Oh, God, what if the school principal was still around? Her stomach did another unsettling swoop at the very thought.
“Who’s coming to this…thing you’ve arranged?” Zoe asked, waving her hand around in a way she hoped looked dismissive. She found herself grinding the heels of her shoes into the pristine carpet of the car, leaving behind some of the mud she’d collected at the cemetery. The sight of Hugh’s beautiful car messed up, even this tiny way, was a small satisfaction.
“I don’t know. You know how it works out here. Bush telegraph.”
Ugh. That’s exactly what she dreaded. Anyone and everyone would be coming. Anyone who even vaguely remembered the tear-away teenaged Zoe, the girl who had caused her grandfather all that grief, would be champing at the bit to stare at the creature she’d become. What were they expecting? A Mohawk hairdo, top-to-toe tattoos, a sneer and a gutter mouth? Probably.
The best Zoe could offer them was the fact that her right ear was pierced at the top as well as in the lobes and—not that anyone was going to see it—she had a tiny winding grapevine with a bunch of plump purple grapes tattooed on her right butt cheek, which she couldn’t quite bring herself to regret. Sure, she could still swear with the best of them, but she’d long since learned to control herself. By many standards, she would be considered civilized, well-mannered. Polite, even.
She hated the fact that Hugh’s presence seemed to make her regress ten years in her manners. She resolved not to let it happen again—well, at least try not to let it happen again.
The car pulled into a reserved space near the entrance to a huge, architecturally impressive building full of hard edges and angled planes that somehow still seemed totally in tune with its surroundings. A large sign announced it as the Lawson Estate tasting room and restaurant. Tall sheets of glass that made up much of the building’s walls reflected the gum trees whipping in the wind, and the native garden and vineyard beyond provided a romantic view for the diners inside. The building was just one of the many improvements Hugh had made to the estate after taking over the reins from his father.
Right now the view was spectacular—the dark gray clouds that had skittered across the sky during the interment now loomed overhead, providing a ghostly backdrop for the skeletal vines.
Hugh turned off the purring motor and turned to face her. The silence was deafening. Zoe maintained her stony expression, staring straight ahead, refusing to feel intimidated by him.
But, oh, she did.
Always had, really.
When Zoe first left Australia, a naive and wide-eyed eighteen-year-old, she’d sworn she’d never let anyone make her feel like a second-class citizen again. But then she’d also sworn to never set foot in a winery again. All she’d wanted was a complete break from her past. Easy in theory, but when she needed to earn a living, it was common sense to turn her hand to the tasks she knew so well. Since then, she’d made her own way in wine-making, a male-dominated industry, holding her own against some of the toughest, roughest characters imaginable. Wine-making seemed so civilized from the outside, all la-di-da and French words, but within it was just like any other kind of farming: backbreaking physical labor, absolute dependence on the whims of the weather and no guarantees of returns at the end. It took people of steely determination and unwavering passion to succeed.
Why, then, did she feel so weak now? Hugh’s presence in the tiny car was overwhelming. His broad shoulders filled the car seat; his solid thighs were disturbingly close to her own. His scent surrounded her, some expensive musky cologne, but underneath the smell that was all his own, one that had called to her sixteen-year-old inner self and made her want to crawl into his arms and seek shelter there. Back then, he’d been her safe harbor.
At least, that’s what she’d thought.
Zoe’s hands were still primly and tightly folded against her stomach. She took the risk of glancing in his direction. He was frankly staring at her, and she could have sworn there was melancholy in his blue eyes, an expression that exactly reflected her own mixed feelings about the past, but he covered it so quickly she wondered if she’d imagined it. It was replaced by a look of cool indifference. He looked for all the world as if he was sitting beside a business colleague, not a woman he’d shared the most intimate of experiences with.
The chill shocked her. But she wasn’t sure what she should have expected instead. Sympathy? Pity? Ugh. Anything but that. But she realized she’d definitely expected some kind of recognition of what she’d gone through. She was the one who’d been run out of town. She was the one who’d lost her home. She was the one who’d been broken beyond repair.
He’d been allowed to continue his privileged life as normal.
“What?” she asked, eventually breaking the uncomfortable silence, interrupting his unsettling examination. “Not what you expected?”
He paused for a moment and Zoe realized she cared far too much about what his answer might be.
But then, instead of speaking, he reached across and took her left hand, pulling her arm towards him.
“What—?” Zoe started in reflex. His fingers curved around to hold her in his grasp, reminding her of how much bigger he’d always been. His hands were different now, though—harder, more weathered. Calloused and scarred from physical labor. If he was a lord, he wasn’t one who sat in the manor directing others to do the dirty work. It was clear he got stuck in himself.
Zoe had no idea what was going on. He gripped her palm with one hand, while he pushed up her sleeve with the other.
Zoe tried to pull her hand from his grasp, but it was futile. “Let me go!” she protested as she struggled.
His finger traced a path down the inside of her arm, marking a light trail from her inner elbow to her wrist. Zoe gasped at the tingling sensation his fingertip left behind and at the way her pulse leaped in response.
Then his touch slowed, repeating the stroke, this time becoming feather-light as he reached the faded scars on the insides of her wrists. Barely noticeable anymore unless someone looked closely, the fine white lines were permanent reminders of a past that Zoe did her best to ignore. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d specifically examined them. It had been such a childish thing to do, a silly, attention-seeking stunt. She’d never really intended to end her life—just to get Mack to notice her. He’d noticed her long enough to take her to the clinic, then things went back to exactly the way they had been before. The whole thing made her feel embarrassed to remember, now.
But Hugh…Hugh had always been a little awed by her scars, a little scared by them, too. He used to kiss them and ask her to never do anything like that again. It hadn’t been a hard promise to make. Or keep.
He sucked in a breath and then sighed heavily. In annoyance or regret? Zoe didn’t trust herself to guess.
“I wish…” he began, before trailing off.
“What?”
Before he could answer, another car crunched on the gravel and pulled up beside them. Zoe ripped her hand from Hugh’s grasp and pushed her sleeve down, feeling suddenly exposed. Her scars—physical or metaphorical—were no longer any of his business, and they were certainly not the business of any other Tangawarra townsperson who might look through the window. Townspeople who were turning up to honor her grandfather’s memory, even though it was against his explicit instructions.
Righteous—and very welcome—anger flooded through her, but before she could explode again about this betrayal of Mack’s wishes, Hugh was out of the car, walking around to open her door. Her new neighbor, Patricia, was standing right there to greet her.
Another three cars arrived and people began climbing out.
She needed to control her responses. She was an adult now, and she’d left that angry teenage Zoe behind long ago. Even if anger was still her default defense mechanism, she’d since learned to control it better.
Just not when Hugh Lawson was around, it seemed.
Screaming at him might help let off some steam, but even if Tangawarra had changed since she’d left, she bet it was just the kind of thing that the gossip-hungry townsfolk would still love to watch.
“Hugh, it is so kind of you to do this.” Patricia stood on tiptoe and gave Hugh a peck on the cheek.
“I’m sure Mack would have really appreciated it.” Patricia smiled sadly and then walked over to a small gathering of women to chat.
No, he wouldn’t! Zoe wanted to yell. Somehow she kept the words to herself. How was it possible that the people who had known Mack for years, lived with him in their community, had so little understanding of how the man worked? She’d shared a house with him, sure, but they’d never shared their inner selves. Even still, it just seemed so obvious to her that this was wrong.
“Shall we head inside, Zoe?” Hugh took a step closer to her and Zoe refused to move back, even though she wanted to. “I need to make a few arrangements.”
Then his hand was on her arm again, leading her up a long ramp to the entrance. She was sure that from an observer’s perspective it seemed perfectly correct—yet another example of saintly Hugh comforting the grieving granddaughter. They couldn’t see that his fingertips were ever so slightly stroking the inside of her elbow. She wondered if he was even aware that he was doing it himself. And if so, was he doing it only to rile her? She still couldn’t help the physical response of her body. It had been trained too well to respond to his touch.
* * *
THENEXTHOURPASSED in a blur. Accosted on every side, Zoe could barely catch a breath as everyone wanted to pass on their condolences and, more subtly, find out what the naughty Zoe Waters had been up to these past ten years.
“So you didn’t end up in jail, then.” An older man she didn’t recognize had remarked with a laugh. The woman next to him laughed, too, and Zoe figured she was supposed to think it was a joke. Very funny. Not.
“Or did you?”
Zoe didn’t dignify the question with a response.
Other people were nicer—asked about her life in California, made sincere-sounding comments about Mack’s passing.
On the one hand, she was genuinely surprised. She wondered if her gruff, antisocial grandfather had had any idea just how many people cared enough to turn up to say farewell. Or perhaps they were here for the free Lawson Estate wine on offer, her more cynical side couldn’t help thinking. She did note that it was their table wine being poured, not their premium label, but even still.
She shook her head in bewilderment at some of the stories people were telling—her grandfather turning up to repair fences when George Armino had his tractor accident, donating wine as an auction prize to raise money for the primary school, sending his pickers to spend an extra day helping out the DiAngelos when they hadn’t had enough cash to pay for their own.
Surely they were making it up? None of that sounded remotely like the grandfather she’d grown up with. Other stories—Mack turning the hose on a particularly persistent person who’d come to help him when he was sick—seemed more familiar.
People were curious about her, but again Zoe was surprised—Mack seemed to have shared some of her various moves and achievements with a couple of people. Which, in Tangawarra, meant everyone knew. He had talked about her current position as winemaker at the Golden Gate Estate in Napa; mentioned her work at wineries all around the world. When they’d had their occasional phone calls every year or two, he’d responded to her tales of what she’d been doing with little more than a grunt. If he’d been proud of her, she’d had no idea.
On the other hand, there was no mistaking her appeal as a novelty here today. The sly glances and hushed conversations where people looked at her, then looked away when she caught them staring. The constant stream of people wanting to talk to her, each subsequent person interrupting to ask the same round of intrusive questions, the same gleam in their eye. How did a girl like you make it? They all seemed to silently ask. Or maybe it was just her own paranoia. From an outsider’s perspective it probably looked like pretty average curiosity about the naughty teenager who’d been sent away to get straightened out. And some of the people had been genuinely friendly and sweetly concerned for her. It was just so hard to let go of her ingrained memories of Tangawarra—and of the people who’d watched her live through some of the most miserable years of her life.
It was exhausting. Not only the nonstop chatter, but the constant second-guessing of herself. The only good thing was that Hugh Lawson had turned invisible—he’d organized this thing, dumped her in it and then disappeared. It annoyed her, even while she knew she should be grateful that he wasn’t around to further upset her equilibrium.
Patricia appeared just as Zoe’s polite smile was growing ragged around the edges.
“Zoe? Why don’t you come over here with me and take a seat?”
Zoe could have hugged the woman in gratitude. She’d worn her heels—still thick with mud—figuring she’d be on her feet only an hour or so for the funeral. But now, after three hours, her toes were blistered and the balls of her feet were burning. Patricia steered her to a padded-leather bench seat that ran along one wall of the restaurant.
“Have you had anything to eat or drink?” Patricia fussed around her like a mother hen. Usually the attention would have made Zoe uncomfortable, but for the moment she was immensely grateful.
Zoe grimaced. “I haven’t had a chance. Too many people want to grill me.”
Patricia gave her a frowning look. “Grill? I don’t think—”
Before she could finish, the crackling sound of a PA system interrupted. Someone blew into a microphone and the din of conversation in the room hushed.
“Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?”
A chorus of people yelled out that it was, in fact, on. A rotund man Zoe vaguely recognized struggled to stand on a chair and everyone turned to face him. Grateful for her seat, Zoe stayed where she was.
“We’re here today to celebrate the life of Mack Waters.”
A muted cheer went up and everyone held their wineglasses aloft.
“Mack kept himself to himself, but as many of you know, the Waters family were the original trailblazers of wine-making in this valley—a trail that many of us here today have followed. Mack carried on his family’s tradition in his own way. He only ever sold his wine by mail order because, in his own words, it meant he’d never have to deal with any bloody customers.” The portly man laughed at his own wit and an answering ripple of laughter ran around the room.
“We also know that although he wasn’t a joiner, Mack was a part of this community in his own manner. He helped out his neighbors—well, some of them, anyway…”
The man paused for the wave of hushed tittering at his unsubtle reference to the long feud between the Lawson and Waters families—a matter that was widely known but rarely discussed publicly.
“…although I guess today goes some way to seeing that put to bed.” He gestured to their surroundings. He didn’t have to say anything more. A member of the Waters family being farewelled on Lawson Estate property spoke volumes in itself.
Zoe watched everyone nod. The lump in her throat rose again to block her windpipe, surprising her with its intensity. No crying. She tried to take deep breaths to hold the emotion at bay, but her chest just wouldn’t expand properly.
“Mack also raised his granddaughter, Zoe, after Margie was killed in that awful car accident.”
Zoe tried hard to ignore the fact that almost everyone in the room turned to look at her as they tut-tutted in what could only be fake sympathy. No one in Tangawarra had liked her mother, either.
She swallowed again, but the lump didn’t move.
“We all know Zoe gave him a run for his money.” He paused for a hearty chuckle that a few in the crowd joined. “But we also know that once she found her way onto the straight and narrow he was rightly proud of her. Mind you, she tested him—and most of us—along the way.” Another jovial laugh. “I remember when she was fifteen and she was caught spraying graffiti on my store…”
That’s where she knew him from. Frank from the hardware store. He’d just put on a lot of weight and aged ten years.
The room closed in. Her lungs seized. There was no air.
Whatever Frank said that caused another wave of laughter in the room passed her by as her ears buzzed with growing panic.
“Zoe, are you all right?” Patricia whispered nervously at her side.
“Now, Zoe,” Frank boomed. It was clear he had no need of a microphone—that voice of his resonated in Zoe’s bones without any kind of amplification. “It’s your turn to come up and say a few words about your grandfather.”
Zoe tried again, unsuccessfully, to take a deep breath. She waved him off, even as a spattering of applause began, encouraging her to take the microphone. Zoe had done plenty of public speaking, led talks in front of many large groups—wine appreciation societies in the main. But now? Invisible bands tightened around her chest and her heart skipped and thudded as if it were about to grind to a halt.
“Come on, Zoe. Everyone wants to hear from you. Just a few words. Come on, lass.”
“I—I have to get out of here…” she stammered to Patricia. “Fresh air…” She couldn’t breathe; the temperature in the room had just gone up ten degrees.
“Leave the girl alone, Frank,” Patricia called out. “She’s had enough to deal with today.”
She had to get away. Escape from the staring and the accusations and draw a breath. Zoe rushed from her seat and took a hurried step toward the nearest door. That was when the room blackened around her and her knees buckled.
CHAPTER THREE
HUGHHADBEENWATCHING proceedings from the sidelines. It had taken him a while to calm down his hot-tempered chef, furious that Hugh had sprung catering for a crowd of at least fifty on him with about ten minutes’ notice. And right before a fully booked dinner service, too. As the chef had railed about the insanity of the idea, Hugh had been on autopilot, placating him while at the same time he was internally agreeing with him.
He’d made up some rational-sounding reasons, but the whole thing was crazy. Why was he doing this? As a tactic to warm Zoe Waters to the idea of selling Waterford to him, it had already failed miserably—her reaction in the car had told him that as much as her forced smile from across the room did now. He couldn’t pinpoint why he’d thought it might work in the first place.
Mack Waters and he had certainly never been friends. The bitter enmity between Mack and Hugh’s father, Pete Lawson, hadn’t ended at his father’s death—it had simply been transferred to Hugh. And, if anything, Hugh had even more reason to dislike the stubborn old goat. The cantankerous-but-kind-at-heart-if-you-look-hard-enough man people were speaking of today was not someone Hugh had ever known. Mack Waters had been cranky, vengeful, rude and argumentative.
Hugh had gone out of his way to try to move on from the past, to offer assistance as it became clear that Waterford was foundering under Mack’s failing health. Mack hadn’t even pretended to listen.
It didn’t help that whenever he and Mack had tried to talk business they seemed to be stuck in a time warp. When they were forced to interact, Mack always treated Hugh as if he was still seventeen and Hugh found himself responding in kind. It frustrated him no end that no matter what he’d achieved in life—the money he’d made, the wine he’d created and sold around the world—as far as Mack was concerned, Hugh was still the boy who’d taken his granddaughter’s innocence.
Hugh had never bothered to correct him, but in truth it had very much been the other way around. Zoe Waters had been like a thrilling adventure park in comparison to Hugh’s sheltered upbringing and good-boy persona. She’d introduced him to sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll—not necessarily in that order. Mack Waters had made it clear that he blamed Hugh for Zoe’s troubles. How the old man didn’t see that those troubles had begun long before Hugh had come on the scene—and that Mack himself had had a significant role to play—Hugh would never know.
He gritted his teeth and surveyed the room of people cheerily drinking his wine, toasting the old man whose presence just across the fence line had cast a shadow over Hugh’s whole life. He wouldn’t be joining in the celebration. He’d get on with his life, just as he had all these years. And maybe now his long-held plans to possess the Waterford Estate would finally come to fruition.
There was just one fly in the ointment. She was sitting across the room from him right now, a strained smile on her face.
Watching Zoe, he was again struck by the difference between the wild child he’d known and the woman who appeared before him. A woman who, if she’d been anyone else, Hugh could admit he found attractive. Very attractive.
Her hair was its natural shiny brunette, none of the bright purple or fire-engine red she’d experimented with from time to time back at school. There were some lighter streaks in it now, probably the result of the California sunshine. Her makeup was restrained, no dark circles of kohl. She’d once liked to draw those on him, as well. She’d insisted it looked cool and that all the male rock stars wore makeup, but Hugh knew Tangawarra and knew that the town wasn’t ready for boys in eyeliner. He’d always washed it off before anyone else had seen.
A smattering of freckles had appeared across her nose—they were new. Otherwise, her skin was still the pale creamy porcelain that he remembered.
Very pale.
A surprising stab of sympathy for Zoe shot through him as Frank appealed to her to get up and speak. He knew she’d hate doing anything of the sort. When he looked across at her, the stark terror on her face sent an unexpected wave of protectiveness through him. Even as he told himself to stay out of it, he found himself stepping forward, about to take the microphone from Frank to save Zoe from the spotlight.
But then she stood up and the blood drained from her face. Hugh knew what was going to happen a moment before it did. It was just like that day right before she’d left town when she’d had fainted in the corridor—only this time he wouldn’t be carrying her to the school nurse.
In a few quick strides he was by her side, scooping her into his arms as her knees collapsed and she fell.
Hugh took no notice of the collective gasp or the mutterings of concern in the room. Heading straight for the side door, he carefully maneuvered them out onto the small walkway that led into the Lawson Estate homestead and to his personal suite of rooms at the back.
He was aware of footsteps following him, but he didn’t pause until he had carefully lowered Zoe onto the navy blue quilt of his bed.
“Is she all right?” Hugh turned and saw that Patricia was watching nervously from the doorway. She seemed to have adopted her neighbor for the time being.
“I think she’s just fainted,” Hugh said. “I’ll just get Morris to—”
“I’m here.” A burly man with a weathered face, Lawson Estate cap and graying beard appeared in the doorway clutching the estate’s sizable medical kit. Morris was Hugh’s foreman, in charge of the day-to-day operations of the Lawson Estate vineyards and had been for as long as Hugh could remember. He’d tended every kind of emergency Hugh could imagine, from tractor and machinery accidents to the scrapes and bumps of guests who’d overindulged and overbalanced. The man had also been witness to all the ins and outs of the Lawson family—from the minor to the traumatic—over the years.
Hugh stepped back to let Morris look over Zoe, while Patricia nattered on about Zoe not eating and having had a stressful day.
Hugh’s stomach churned with a concern he didn’t want to admit to. He sucked in a breath and blew it out, hating the faint nausea that had begun to stir in his gut.
He’d honestly thought he’d put everything to do with Zoe Waters and their tempestuous relationship behind him. The strength of his reaction to her was a surprise. Maybe he hadn’t been so successful at processing all that history as he’d thought.
On one level it was impossible to comprehend that Zoe was lying on his bed, her hair on his pillow, her skin against his sheets. She was no longer the sixteen-year-old girl he’d seen lying like this in the nurse’s office. She’d gained weight in the past ten years, but that wasn’t quite the right way of putting it. It was more like she’d filled out—the curves that her teenage body had hinted at were fully developed now. A lush, hourglass figure was outlined by her clingy top and tight skirt, cinched at the waist with a skinny, patent leather belt. The skirt had hitched up as he’d carried her and a set of stunning legs in black stockings were on display.
Part of him wished she was just another customer—someone who’d overindulged on chardonnay or stayed out in the sun too long. He could patch her up, get her on her feet again, then ask for her phone number. They could go on a date and have the kind of short-lived, intensely physical relationship he preferred.
He cursed under his breath. He shouldn’t have brought her to his bedroom—he wouldn’t have brought any other guest here.
“She’ll be all right,” Morris declared matter-of-factly, bringing Hugh back from his daydream. “I’d say her blood sugar’s a bit low. Just needs to eat and drink something when she comes ’round. I’ll get the kitchen to organize something.”
“Good,” Hugh said, feeling a genuine rush of relief at Morris’s words.
“You need me to hang around awhile?” Morris asked. There was a strange inflection in his words and Hugh looked at him sharply.
“Why?”
“No reason. Just askin’. You look like you—”
“Everything’s fine,” Hugh interrupted harshly. He had no desire to hear what Morris thought. Unusual, because Morris was one person whose opinion Hugh trusted implicitly.
Thankfully, Morris didn’t do more than twitch an eyebrow at Hugh’s imperious tone before giving a short nod acknowledging his boss’s bidding.
“You must be busy, Hugh. I’ll sit with her,” Patricia offered.
“No.” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated to be once again losing his usual cool because of Zoe Waters. “I mean, it’s fine. Patricia, please go back and tell everyone that Zoe’s okay, but that it’s time for the party to come to an end.” He turned to his foreman. “Morris, once you’ve placed the order with the kitchen, show everyone out and then organize the staff to get the dining room cleared and reset before the dinner crowd arrives.” The world calmed a little as he gave orders and took control.
“Of course.” Patricia shuffled out with a pleased look on her face. Hugh knew she couldn’t wait to get back to the restaurant and have her little moment of fame as everyone hung on her news. Patricia meant well and did a lot for the town, but sometimes her tendency to gossip overwhelmed her common sense.
Morris gave a brusque nod and went off to carry out his orders.
Hugh pulled up a chair and sat heavily. He waited for a moment, watching Zoe’s breasts rise and fall, trying hard not to wonder whether they’d changed, too. He made his voice as unaffected as it could be. “It’s okay, they’re gone now.”
Zoe blinked, and after a moment shuffled on the bed a little, rearranging her skirt more modestly and propping her head up on the pillow. “How did you know?” she asked, not looking at him.
“You started holding on.” She’d been a dead weight until they’d reached the bedroom, then she’d stirred against him; the arm that had been thrown around his shoulders had gripped him tightly.
“Ah.” She didn’t sound surprised.
“It’s just like last time,” he said, not understanding the impulse.
She stiffened. “No, it’s not.”
One of his staff members appeared with a tray. “Mr. Lawson? Morris asked me to bring this up. Is the lady awake? He wanted to know if she was still unconscious.”
“I’m awake,” Zoe answered before Hugh could.
“Leave it and get out,” he ordered.
“Uh, fine.” The waiter looked startled at the harsh words from his usually friendly boss, put the tray at the end of the bed and beat a hasty retreat.
“Drink this.”
Hugh reached for the coffee mug on the tray and handed it to Zoe. She sat up and pushed a pillow behind her back, accepting the cup meekly.
She grimaced after taking a sip. “Ew, too sweet.”
“You need the sugar. Drink it.”
Zoe took another few sips and Hugh was relieved to see some color return to her cheeks. She reached for a plate of biscuits and nibbled on a chocolate chip cookie.
“I guess you’re right,” Hugh said, returning to the conversation that had been interrupted when the waiter had arrived.
Zoe’s forehead crinkled in a frown. Was she deliberately avoiding the topic?
“It’s not like school,” he said. “After all, we’re adults now. Grown up. Responsible for our own actions.”
Her frown deepened. Hugh himself wasn’t even sure what he was trying to say.
Zoe’s eyes dropped from his and she shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I’m fine, so I guess I’ll—” She threw her legs over the side of the bed and began to stand up, staggering almost as soon as she was on her feet.
Hugh jumped up and put a restraining arm around her shoulders. Now he knew exactly what he wanted to say. “Don’t be an idiot. You fainted a minute ago. Sit down.” He pushed her back down, but he didn’t need to use much force. She was trembling and as weak as a kitten. Once she was leaning against the pillows again, she drew a shaky breath.
Hugh tugged his chair closer to the bed and sat. Anxiety was still unsettling his gut, although he couldn’t put his finger on why.
She managed a weak, mocking laugh. “Don’t worry, Hugh, I’m not about to throw a tantrum or pull out a razor blade.”
He cursed himself for being so easy to read. But then, to her, he always had been. He’d just thought he’d learned to hide his inner thoughts better in the intervening years. “I want…I want you to be okay,” he finished lamely.
She smiled then, sad and sweet. “You always were too nice,” she said, almost to herself.
“Not really,” he said.
She studied him curiously for a while and Hugh couldn’t bring himself to look away. If it was possible for ten years of hurt to be conveyed in someone’s eyes, then Zoe had mastered it.
When she spoke, her voice was soft. “Hugh, it was all a long time ago. We’re both very different people now.”
He certainly hoped so. They were going to have to find a way to deal with each other without this massive lump of history coming between them. He wanted to buy Waterford—that meant discussions, negotiations, meetings. Interactions he intended to conduct as an adult, not an angry and broken-hearted seventeen-year-old.
But despite his best intentions, a flash of fury from back then revived itself somewhere deep inside him. It was wrong, so wrong, to be angry with someone for something they couldn’t control. Zoe had been sick. Mental illness was a disease just like cancer—intellectually he understood that. Emotionally, the idea that she’d tried to take her life again after she’d promised…
“Mack told me you were lucky to survive,” he said. So much for leaving the past in the past.
Her eyes became glassy. Not with tears, but with a sadness that was beyond crying. “That’s not quite true. It took a few weeks to recover, but I was eventually okay—healthwise.”
He noted her modifier, didn’t know what to say about it. “Good. I’m, uh, glad to hear it.” Cringe. Hugh scrubbed a hand across his mouth. His business goals evaporated. Suddenly, more than anything, he needed to talk about it. Let her know how hard it had been on him—how doing the right thing had felt like the worst thing possible. He wasn’t sure if talking would make it any better, but it would be something.
“Zoe? I…” He blew out a breath. “Christ, this is hard.”
“Don’t say it.” She looked almost…frightened.
Of what? “What?”
She looked down at her hands, her fingers twisting together. “Don’t apologize. I couldn’t bear it. Not now.”
Apologize? No, that wasn’t what he’d been about to do. “But I—”
She didn’t let him finish. “It’s too late,” she said simply.
His shoulders slumped. “Yeah, I know.” She was right. They should leave it alone.
A thick silence fell over the room.
“Why?” Her voice was barely more than a breath.
“Why what?”
“Why didn’t you come for me? I called so many times, wrote letters when my emails to your account bounced…”
He ignored the email comment—he’d deactivated his account on instruction from his father and Mack. But letters? “I didn’t get any letters.”
“You didn’t…” She sighed heavily. “Your dad.”
Hugh nodded. Pete Lawson would have made sure that any mail from Zoe didn’t reach Hugh. He’d probably thought he was helping. “Yeah, I guess.”
“But I called.” Her voice held no accusation; it was a simple statement of fact.
“I know. But, Zoe, I was doing what I thought was best. They told me it would be better for your recovery if I didn’t speak to you. And…” Oh, this was hard. On a scale of one to ten, this sucked pole.
“You still believed what Jason told you.”
It sounded so juvenile now. Hell, it had been juvenile at the time, he’d just been too young to realize it.
“What is Jason up to these days?” Zoe asked mildly.
“Accountant. Married, with a kid, I think. Lives in Melbourne. I don’t see him much. He came out here a couple of years ago to visit the winery—that was probably the last time.”
“You guys were best friends.”
“Yeah.” The friendship hadn’t survived Zoe’s betrayal—fictional or otherwise. And it certainly hadn’t survived Hugh’s guilt. He and Jason had stopped being friends the day after Zoe’s collapse.
“I didn’t, you know. Not with him. Not with anyone else when we were together. Just in case you were still wondering.” She sounded so calm.
Hugh managed a tight smile. “I wasn’t.” Although, if he was honest he’d never been completely sure. Jason was full of shit, but Zoe had earned her bad-girl reputation. And she’d been the first—and only—girl Hugh had lost his heart to. Even the idea of her infidelity had been enough to send a blood haze over his vision. His teenage rage had been a scary thing—to both himself and Zoe, he was sure.
“But you were fine,” he said, deliberately not making it a question, ready for this conversation to end. Zoe’s still countenance and her calm, monotone voice were becoming unnerving.
She gave a strange, bleak laugh. “Oh, I don’t think I was ever fine again, actually. But I get by.”
Ah, shit. Had he intended this conversation to make him feel better? Because that hadn’t happened so far.
“Did you cut yourself again? Or was it something else?” The question blurted itself out without Hugh’s conscious permission. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that.”
For the first time, her Stepford-wife-like composure seemed to slip. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”
Zoe sat up straighter in bed. “No, no. This is important. Why did you ask that?”
Hugh sighed what felt like his hundredth sigh for the day. He kicked himself yet again for starting down this path in the first place. “I guess…I guess I asked because it’s been bothering me, not knowing what you’d done.” That was part of it, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on the true source of his unease about Zoe’s disappearance. Let alone express it.
She swung her legs over the bed to sit up, her face a picture of the kind of deadly seriousness that had always made Hugh’s heart pound. She’d worn that expression when she’d talked about her plans to get away from Tangawarra, from her grandfather, when she’d talked about her first suicide attempt at thirteen, when she’d told him she loved him.
“Hugh—we had a fight, right?”
“Yeah.” Ten years ago and he still remembered it in high definition. Jason had just dropped his bombshell. Then Zoe walked up, all urgent and panicked looking. I need to talk to you. Oh, he’d needed to talk to her, too. He’d needed to yell. The fight had been momentous. Zoe had denied everything so vehemently she’d worked herself into hysterics.
“And then you passed out.”
“You took me to the nurse.”
Hugh nodded. “And then, after Mack took you home, you…you did it again. He wouldn’t tell me how. But I guess I figured…” He gestured towards her wrists.
Zoe shook her head, eyes wide. “Oh, no.”
The ground shifted under Hugh’s feet at her expression. “What?” he asked nervously.
“Is that what Mack told you? That I tried to kill myself again?”
The weird anxiety in Hugh’s belly stepped into high gear. He had a feeling that whatever was coming, it wasn’t going to be good. “That’s what both Mack and my father told me.” He paused. “You didn’t?” he asked, not entirely sure he wanted to know the answer.
“Oh, Hugh. Mack sent me away because I was pregnant.”
* * *
SHOCKMADETHETRUTH come tumbling out before Zoe could reel it in. The full weight of the grief and distress of those twelve months after she’d been banished from Tangawarra crashed down on her all over again. And Hugh hadn’t even known?
“Pregnant?” Hugh blurted. He was gripping the seat of his chair as if he might fall off.
She couldn’t speak, so simply nodded. A hot tear spilled down her cheek. It surprised her so much she swiped at it and stared at the telltale moisture on her fingertip. Tears? Really? An edge of panic rose inside her. She couldn’t cry. Not now. Not ever. Because if she did, Zoe genuinely feared she might not be able to stop.
“What? But…what?” His eyes popped as his voice rose.
She struggled to calm her ragged breathing, blinked up at the ceiling to force the treacherous tears away. “You didn’t know.” It wasn’t a question.
If someone had told her that a five-minute conversation could shatter some of the foundations on which she’d built her life, Zoe would never have believed them. But here she was….
“Of course I didn’t know.” His anger began to surface again, knuckles white against the chair. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.
“I tried!” she protested. “What do you think I needed to talk to you about that day? But you started in on me about cheating on you with Jason. You didn’t give me a chance and I…”
She threw her hands in the air at the futility of at all. Too late. It was all just far too late.
That last day was a blur. She’d fainted at school after working herself into a state arguing with Hugh. Hugh, ever proper, had carried her to the nurse’s office. After he’d gone back to class, the nurse—a stern, severe woman—had asked a lot of questions. Zoe’s confession prompted the scowling woman to make Zoe take a pregnancy test, confirming her own suspicions. Then her grandfather had been called in and she’d been taken home, the older man stony silent in the car beside her.
That night, Mack locked Zoe in her bedroom, the first time he’d ever resorted to such a measure, even though she’d given him plenty of reasons before then. She could have climbed out the window if she’d wanted, but fear kept her captive.
Instead she lay there, rigid with terror, listening to her grandfather make phone call after phone call. Then Hugh’s father arrived and the two men had spoken, too quietly for Zoe to overhear. Strange, because usually they yelled at each other, if they spoke at all.
The following morning Mack made her pack a bag as she sobbed her protest, and next thing she knew she was on the train to Sydney. Her great-aunt Maureen’s disgust and heavily worn martyrdom had been waiting on the platform for her when she arrived.
“Mack and my father told me you went to a…to somewhere to get psychiatric care,” Hugh muttered, almost to himself. “And then you were going to a girls’ school in Sydney that was designed to help girls like…” He trailed off. When he spoke again his voice was firmer. “They told me that after you recovered you ran away, overseas.”
“Well, that bit was true.” Why the lies? The sweet tea and chocolatey biscuit she’d consumed formed a solid ball in her stomach. “That must have been the story Mack and your dad agreed on. What on earth were they thinking?” She didn’t understand how Mack or Pete Lawson could think a suicide attempt less scandalous than a teenage pregnancy.
Hugh still looked stunned. “The suicide part of it was a secret—they told everyone else you went to a girls’ school in Sydney. But why would they tell me you tried to kill yourself?”
Zoe shrugged, just as baffled as he appeared, still too deeply in shock to reason out past motivations.
“Pregnant,” Hugh said again. His eyebrows drew together and he leaned forward. “Does this mean you…I…we have…” He broke off and swallowed hard. “Where’s the child?”
His voice was strangled and Zoe couldn’t interpret the look in his eyes. Panic? Longing? Fear?
Zoe’s mouth compressed in a tight line. “You don’t have anything to worry about, Hugh. There’s no illegitimate Lawson offspring running around out there, waiting to make a claim on your fortune.” It took every ounce of her dwindling strength to get the next words out without shattering into tiny pieces. “Our baby died.”
Hugh recoiled as if she’d slapped him, but just as quickly his face shuttered down into its usual mask of impenetrable cool.
Zoe battled against a rising tide of panic. Breaking down now—or ever—would be of no help, but this conversation had her feeling like she was on the edge of a very high precipice. What she had to do was get through the next few weeks then sell Waterford and get the hell out of town. She’d endeavor to do that with as little contact with anyone else as possible.
“I can’t believe they lied to me. I can’t believe they kept us apart,” he said under his breath.
Hugh stood and paced over to the French doors that led out to a small terrace and showcased the vines beyond. His impressive silhouette made something inside Zoe clench.
“I know why Mack and my father came up with that story,” he said bitterly. “They knew I’d go after you,” he added more quietly.
Why didn’t you? A tiny, traitorous voice inside Zoe wanted to wail. Why didn’t you come for me when I needed you most? You weren’t there when our beautiful daughter was born, when she was laid in my arms, not breathing, but exquisitely perfect.
When I was so alone.
The dangerous thoughts made her shudder, even as she shook her head in quiet denial. She’d known, by then—even not knowing what lies he’d been told—that he wouldn’t come. After her unanswered calls, after her desperate, unsuccessful attempts to reach him. If there was one thing she’d already learned, it was that even in her most desperate hour, the only person she could rely on was herself.
And by then, she’d reached a kind of peace with his silence. In a way, it was almost better that she’d never spoken to him—because at least then she could secretly cling to the hope that he might come—than to know he’d rejected her, just as her grandfather had told her he would.
Hugh stood ramrod straight. “Your disappearance was big gossip at school for a while, as you can imagine. I kept up the pretense, just said you were sent to a girls’ school in Sydney. Everyone was speculating on the reasons.” He barked a short, black laugh. “No one went with ‘pregnant,’ though.”
“No, I guess they didn’t. According to what I heard out there, most people were betting on jail.” She tried to sound as if it didn’t matter, but knew she failed. It was time to get out of here—away from this hellish reminiscing.
Zoe stood up gingerly, testing her weight, but the dizziness had passed.
Hugh didn’t so much as turn around to see if she was okay.
She swallowed hard and willed her voice not to waver. “Thank you for the first aid and thank you for the wake, although I know Mack is turning in his grave at the very idea.”
Hugh could have been carved from granite. He acknowledged her thanks with a grunt. Zoe wasn’t sure what to do. A silly, juvenile part of her wanted to throw herself into his arms and sob, to cry with him over the loss of their child, to have him hold her again, to be surrounded by his scent and cradled in his protective embrace. A stupid instinct—it wouldn’t change anything.
She stared for a moment at his frozen posture. What was going through his mind right now? She’d been living with the knowledge for ten years and the sharp edges were as jagged as ever. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have it dumped in one blow.
He deserved some comfort.
Pity she had none to give.
Zoe slipped her still-aching toes into her stilettos and made for the door. She wanted to get out before everyone left, beg someone to give her a lift back to Waterford. There was no way she could cope being in that little sports car with Hugh again.
CHAPTER FOUR
NOTLOOKINGBACKTO see whether Hugh turned away from the windows, Zoe headed down the corridor. Her pace increased as a strange kind of panic enveloped her until she was almost running, desperate to escape. By the time she made it to the empty car park, her breath was coming in pants.
“Damn.” She swore as she glanced around. The only vehicles left were Hugh’s coupe and a couple of Lawson Estate utes.
“Need a lift?” Morris appeared from around the side of a building. He’d been Lawson Estate’s foreman as long as she could remember, and it was somehow comforting that he was still around. He wore jeans, a checkered blue shirt and a Lawson Estate cap pulled low on his forehead. His graying, unkempt beard covered most of his face, but his eyes were as bright and shrewd as they’d always been—she’d guess he didn’t miss much.
“Yes, please.” Zoe hated asking for favors, and didn’t want to be any more indebted to Lawson Estate than she already was with this farce of a wake, but Tangawarra didn’t have a taxi service. And although Waterford was next door it would be a painful twenty-minute walk in her stupid shoes. Not to mention in the rain that had finally begun to spatter from the dark clouds overhead.
“Jump in.” Morris tilted his head toward one of the utes and Zoe gratefully clambered in. She was even more grateful when he started it up and drove her home without speaking. Polite small talk was beyond her.
“Thank you.” Zoe reached for the door handle.
“Zoe?” Morris broke his silence just as she was about to open the door and jump out. She paused a moment.
“Yes?”
“I remember you from when you was a kid.”
Zoe sagged with the physical and mental exhaustion of the past few days. She didn’t have the energy for any further trips down memory lane. “I’m sorry,” she said, her tone resigned. “For whatever it was I might have done to annoy you.”
“Nah, it wasn’t like that. Do you remember when I caught you and Hugh?”
A wash of memory flooded through her. “Oh, God. The tractor shed.” Her cheeks burned. So embarrassing. She folded her arms over her chest, feeling as naked now as she’d been then.
“Been wondering all these years whether I did the right thing by not turning you kids in.”
“We… I was very grateful that you didn’t.”
He shot her a quick, avuncular smile. “I always liked ya. You had spunk. Weren’t gonna let a small town grind away your individuality.”
That was one way to look at it, Zoe guessed. Just a pity no one else shared his perspective. “Uh, thanks, I suppose.” She opened the door and climbed out, holding on to the vehicle for balance as she found her feet on the muddy ground.
“You were a good influence on the boy,” Morris said, raising his voice to be sure she heard him.
At that, Zoe started in genuine surprise. “I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who thought so.”
Morris’s eyes were kind. “He was in danger of being a spoiled little brat, if you ask me. Being friends with you changed that.”
Zoe’s fragile composure began to crack. She stared down at the grass and took a moment’s pause, to be sure her voice wouldn’t betray her. “I guess our…friendship changed both of us,” she said eventually.
“Hugh ain’t the one to blame, Zoe. Don’t take it out on him.”
Zoe looked up from watching her Italian leather heels sink slowly into the soggy ground, startled. Of course, anyone from the Lawson side would be defending Hugh. Morris had no idea what had really happened. Although it was long past the time for blame games, Zoe hated the twist in her gut that reminded her of her outraged teen self.
It might not be Hugh’s fault, but it wasn’t her fault, either.
“Right,” she managed to say through gritted teeth. A teenage impulse urged her to yell and insult this man who’d butted in where he didn’t belong. But she was too tired, too emotionally drained to be bothered. “Thanks for the lift,” she muttered, before giving the door a solid shove to slam it shut, expressing herself physically instead of verbally. She marched into the house, slamming that door, as well.
As the ute drove off, the storm broke and a deluge of rain hit the tin roof of the house. She sank to the floor, curling up against the cold, cracked linoleum. She shivered and just tried to remember to breathe.
* * *
ANDTHEHITSJUSTKEPTONCOMING.
The conversation Zoe had had with Stephen Carter, her grandfather’s accountant rang in her ears for the next two hours.
Waterford was on the verge of bankruptcy.
The options the accountant had presented still burned in her belly. Sell up now, or find some extra money—from somewhere—if she wanted to bottle the final Waterford vintage as she’d promised Mack. Stephen was strongly in favor of selling—he had a buyer all lined up and everything.
That buyer just happened to be Hugh Lawson.
Zoe should have known.
Holding the wake for Mack hadn’t been some altruistic community gesture on Hugh’s part. It had been a ploy, a gambit to butter her up so he could get his hands on Waterford, just as his father had been trying to do for decades. As a tactic it hadn’t been successful—Zoe had hated every minute of it and Hugh really didn’t know her anymore if he hadn’t realized that.
Seemed like Hugh had grown up to become the spitting image of his dad: an ambitious, heartless, money-grabbing industrialist, more interested in the financial rewards than the art and science of viticulture and wine-making.
Zoe sighed as she put the groceries away and leaned against the counter, surveying the decrepit kitchen.
When she’d first arrived back in Australia everything had seemed so clear. Say goodbye to her grandfather. Organize his funeral. Settle his estate. Get back to California as fast as possible.
Only she hadn’t bet on the old man hanging on for a few days. Long enough to extract promises from her. Promises that even at the time she hadn’t wanted to keep. Why she felt she owed Mack any loyalty at all was a mystery she hadn’t yet unraveled.
And yet now that she was here, standing on Waterford soil once again, something deep inside her railed at the idea of directly countering his instructions. Could she sell Waterford to her grandfather’s lifelong enemy in direct contrast to his wishes? See it swallowed up by Lawson Estate, disappear as if it had never existed, the way so many other smaller vineyards in the valley had been?
Not to mention the more immediate issue: would she be able to fulfill Mack’s request to finish his last-ever vintage before she sold Waterford? He’d been under no illusion that Zoe had returned to take over from him. Just begged her to please see the last of his wine into bottles. Then sell up and leave, finish Waterford on a high.
Her grandfather had been specific about that, too: the Waterford name was not to be sold, only the property. Waterford would not be Waterford without a member of the Waters family at the helm. At least that was something Zoe could agree with.
More than a century of her family’s heritage, gone at the stroke of a pen. Even if it was a family she felt no real connection to, it was the only one she had.
Maybe that was why she felt so conflicted.
After putting the groceries away, Zoe grabbed a coat and headed outside. With a notepad and pencil, she walked around the property and all its rickety sheds, taking an inventory of everything she found. She quickly realized that she could have made the list from memory. Nothing had changed in ten years. A couple of pieces of machinery had been updated—there was a new pump and a new pile-driver attachment for the tractor—but otherwise everything was the same. Only older, more run-down, more rusted and decayed.
The shed that housed the winery was chilled and held the sharp smell of young wine, oak barrels, acid and bleach. Her grandfather had been a stickler for cleanliness in the winery. He’d been in the hospital for several weeks before he’d died, and no one had tended to anything in that time. But unlike the house, which Zoe had spent some hours that morning scrubbing, the winery still seemed pristine. Old-fashioned and worn out, like the rest of the place, but clean.
Zoe stood and stared at the rack of wine barrels that lined one side of the shed. Waterford had never made a fortune, Zoe had always known that. She’d never gone without the basics as a child, but she’d never had luxuries or indulgences, either. Partly because there wasn’t a lot of money to go around, partly because her grandfather was frugal to the point of meanness. No wonder she’d shoplifted nail polish—Mack would never have bought something so frivolous and the ten dollars a month for “women’s things” that Mack allowed her certainly didn’t stretch to treats.
The winery was Mack’s priority. Every dollar went back into it. Although his wine was critically acclaimed as one of Australia’s best, Waterford was run on a shoestring. Mack refused to irrigate his vines to increase his grape crop, claiming it would water down his wine. He never did any of the marketing or publicity that would allow his boutique Shiraz to become an “investment” wine. He refused to open a cellar door to passersby to increase his trade.
Mack’s fans said it was because he was a purist, interested in nothing but making the perfect wine.
Mostly, Zoe reckoned, it was because the old man simply didn’t like people, and by keeping things small he didn’t have to bother with having employees or advisors.
Waterford’s Shiraz was sold by mailing list to a discerning group of loyal buyers who, Zoe was sure, had no doubt they were getting a bargain. They sold out every year.
And yet, the place was practically bankrupt.
“The income from each vintage just paid for the next one,” Stephen Carter had explained. “Mack had some savings, but those were eaten up by medical bills. There’s nothing left, and there are more than a few outstanding debts, including the mortgage on the property that your grandfather took out back when your grandmother was sick. And, for example, my bills with regard to his estate.” Stephen had had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Zoe, but once you sell and pay off the debts, there won’t be anything left over.”
Zoe ran a hand along the smooth surface of one of the oak barrels. “Oh, Mack.” She sighed, her voice echoing dully from the concrete floor and tin walls.
She grabbed a glass pipette and tasted each barrel carefully. As the ruby red liquid swirled around her mouth, she smiled in rueful amazement. She had no idea how her ailing grandfather had managed it, but he’d created yet another magnificent wine. A pang of family pride and professional jealousy rushed through her as she found Mack’s notebook and flicked through his meandering scribbles.
The wine needed to be racked off—the barrels emptied and cleaned before the wine was returned to them—and then bottled. It wasn’t impossible to do on her own, but it would be difficult, dirty and time-consuming.
It was a reminder of her dilemma.
There was no money to hire help, no money to pay for the bottling. The existing debts made further borrowing impossible. And Zoe had no nest egg of her own to reach into. She lived from paycheck to paycheck and was perfectly okay with that. As long as she had enough for food, shelter and an occasional bottle of good wine, she didn’t care. She never stayed anywhere long enough to put down the kind of roots that would require significant purchases.
She rested a hand on the smooth oak barrel, the wine flavor lingering in her mouth. Her only option was to sell immediately, but that meant breaking her promise to produce one last Waterford vintage for her grandfather.
The grandfather she’d barely tolerated during her teenage years, and barely spoken to since. What did it matter? Mack was dead. He would never know.
There would be no last Waterford vintage. It was just impossible.
Zoe sighed. Heading back to the kitchen to put on the kettle and make a cup of tea, she tried to rationalize the decision that for some reason sat uneasily within her.
It’s not your problem.
It’s not like Waterford means anything to you.
It’s not like Mack will know. And even if he did—she imagined him peering down at her from the clouds, that familiar disapproving frown etched on his face—why do you care?
Zoe sat on the back step of the farmhouse, her hands clasped around her mug of tea for warmth and comfort.
She shivered as a gust of wind whooshed through the yard, making the shed door bang and a tangle of litter rise in a dusty whirlwind before settling back over the unkempt ground.
Zoe drained the last of her tea, standing up and wrapping her cardigan tighter around her as she headed back inside the dilapidated house.
Decision made. She’d instruct Stephen Carter to sell up, pay out Waterford’s debts and give anything left over—however measly—to charity. Something to support teen mothers, just for the hell of it. And she would book a plane ticket back to California and leave all of this behind. In the past. Where it belonged.
* * *
ITWASANORMALDAY on the Lawson Estate, which meant that by midday Hugh had already been working for more than six hours.
He started the morning checking his stocks on the internet and talking with his trader in Sydney. At eight, Morris and the operational crew for the vineyards held their weekly meeting—this morning the hot topic was security, and how to stop enthusiastic and/or drunken visitors from wandering around the vines, potentially damaging them or, worse, introducing pests to the vulnerable plants.
Then his advertising agency had come to present a campaign for the new Lawson Estate sparkling rosé—a light and pretty wine they were targeting squarely at the female market. The hope was to have it out in time for the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival, when the whole country gorged itself on celebratory bubbles. After that there’d been a distribution bungle to sort out, a complaint from one of their largest buyers—an airline—about lopsided labeling on the last shipment. And, just now, an intoxicated winery visitor angry about being refused service.
Hugh headed back to his office after escorting the staggering man out to the car park. The man’s friends had been embarrassed, and once Hugh had been sure that he wasn’t driving, he’d left them to sort it out.
Usually Hugh strode through the day with energy and confidence, seeing any challenge as a hurdle to be overcome with perseverance and charm.
But not today.
He’d yelled at the trader for missing a deal, dismissed the concerns of the operational staff with a wave of his hand and sent the ad agency back to the drawing board. He’d left the bottling company in little doubt as to his fury about the labeling mistake, and had barely managed to rein in his temper when dealing with the visitor. Drunk before noon from wine tasting—Hugh had trouble hiding his disgust for the guy.
He sank into his executive leather chair and let out a sigh. Someone had placed a steaming caffe latte on his desk and disappeared—apparently word about the boss’s foul mood had circulated fast.
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Emmie Dark
Hugh Lawson and Zoe Waters have a tangled history. But she left ten years ago and he's put her behind him. Except she's here again–just when Hugh's ready to make an offer for her family's legendary vineyard. And her version of those long-ago events is enough to make him question everything he thought he knew.Hugh can't let the past destroy his plans for the future. Which means he has to unravel the truth. But as he does, he begins to realize that he may have been as responsible for what happened as Zoe. And that going back could be the only way to move forward.
What if everything he thinks about her is wrong?
Hugh Lawson and Zoe Waters have a tangled history. But she left ten years ago and he’s put her behind him. Except she’s here again—just when Hugh’s ready to make an offer for her family’s legendary vineyard. And her version of those long ago events is enough to make him question everything he thought he knew.
Hugh can’t let the past destroy his plans for the future. Which means he has to unravel the truth. But as he does, he begins to realize that he may have been as responsible for what happened as Zoe. And that going back could be the only way to move forward.
Zoe studied him curiously
Hugh couldn’t bring himself to look away.
If it was possible for ten years of hurt to be conveyed in someone’s eyes, then Zoe had mastered it.
When she spoke, her voice was soft. “Hugh, it was all a long time ago. We’re both very different people now.”
He certainly hoped so. They were going to have to find a way to deal with each other without this massive lump of history coming between them every time their eyes met.
Hugh wanted to buy Waterford—that meant discussions, negotiations, meetings. Interactions he intended to conduct as an adult, not a broken-hearted seventeen-year-old.
Dear Reader,
Like many people, I really enjoy an occasional glass of wine. It’s a reward after a hard day’s work, or a way to mark a celebration—whether it’s a birthday, an achievement or simply friends coming together to enjoy each other’s company.
I’m lucky enough to have two close friends, Kim and John, who own their own boutique winery—and make a very delicious shiraz. I’ve had the opportunity to do a little work with them over the years, and have seen from the inside both the pleasures and sheer hard work that come with winemaking. I’d like to thank Kim and John for their help with the insight into winemaking and their patience with my frequent questions. Any errors I’ve made are my own.
In this story, my heroine, Zoe, says it takes people of “steely determination and unwavering passion” to succeed in the industry. She’s right. I’ve visited wine regions in various parts of the world, and I will never forget the day I visited a winery where a frost had destroyed the estate’s entire grape crop the night before. Can you imagine? I would be inconsolable. But the owner shrugged and said something like, “It happens. There’s always next year.”
In a way, writing is very similar. It is an art, but there is a little science to it, too. Things don’t always turn out the way you think—characters sometimes have their own plans for themselves. And “steely determination and unwavering passion” are pretty much prerequisites for becoming a romance author!
I hope you enjoy Zoe and Hugh’s story. They’re two people with lots of passion and determination—they just need to find a way to apply it to what their hearts are telling them!
I’d love to hear from you. Visit me at www.emmiedark.com (http://www.emmiedark.com).
Cheers,
Emmie Dark
In His Eyes
Emmie Dark
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After years of writing press releases, employee newsletters and speeches for CEOs and politicians—none of which included any kind of kissing—Emmie Dark finally took to her laptop to write what she wanted to write. She was both amazed and delighted to discover that what came out were sexy, noble heroes who found themselves crossing paths with strong, but perhaps slightly damaged, heroines. And plenty of kissing.
Emmie lives in Melbourne, Australia, and she likes red lipstick, chardonnay, sunshine, driving fast, rose-scented soap and a really good cup of tea.
Books by Emmie Dark
HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE
1769—CASSIE’S GRAND PLAN
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For the OC Babes, without whom none of this would have happened.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE (#uc84dfab6-9894-5c16-91e0-b22c30929280)
CHAPTER TWO (#ub982fd0b-061c-5882-a995-313f8440c9dd)
CHAPTER THREE (#u388a975d-eea6-596f-ac57-b82c6d4ca154)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u61c71c6f-3734-5af0-b228-2ac95d624eff)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EXCERPT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
ZOE WATERSDROVEUPTHE long, rutted drive and noted that the pale green farmhouse ahead of her desperately needed a new paint job. But then, it had needed one for as long as she could remember. Only these days—more than ten years since she’d last been here—it was beginning to seem as if the flakes of paint were what was holding the crumbling weatherboards together.
Zoe wasn’t sure whether she should feel comforted that so little had changed or disgusted by the neglect.
She pulled into the yard behind the house and climbed out of the rental car, stepping carefully to avoid the soft, squelching mud threatening her inappropriately delicate shoes.
The signs of dereliction were even more obvious here.
A strange, melancholy sense of déjà vu settled over her as she looked around. Now that she surveyed things closer up, it was clear that not only did little appear to have changed—pretty much nothing had. Everything had just decayed a touch more. The scattered car bodies near the back fence had rusted a little redder and sunk a little deeper into the overgrown grass. The door to the shed that held the tractor and her grandfather’s other old-fashioned and outdated farm equipment was crooked, the top hinge clearly broken.
Zoe sighed heavily and leaned against the car, warm from the two-hour drive from Melbourne.
The task ahead of her seemed to grow exponentially as she surveyed the ruins of Waterford Estate.
The only building that still looked in reasonable condition was the tin shed and converted refrigerated shipping container that housed the winery. Well, what passed for a winery on the Waterford estate. She wondered if all those rich people in Sydney, California and France on the Waterford mailing list who so eagerly awaited her grandfather’s vintage Shiraz each year would feel quite the same way if they could see where it came from.
She sighed again and ran a hand through her hair as the wind whipped the long strands into her eyes. Wrapping her light jacket more tightly around herself, Zoe shuddered—she’d forgotten the icy chill of the wind out here and how it could leach into your bones. Too much time in California. Too used to the endless sunshine and warm breezes, unlike the capricious weather of this part of the valley—stinking hot in summer, subject to grape-endangering frosts seemingly out of nowhere in spring. Right now—winter—the weather was at least somewhat predictable. Cold. With a side of rain and wind.
She mentally surveyed the contents of the suitcase still sitting in the boot of the car. She was going to have to buy some new clothes.
A trip into town. Yippee.
The thought sent a different kind of shiver through her.
Turning away from her survey of the ruined outbuildings, Zoe shielded her eyes from the weak sun. The Waterford vines stretched out in long, bare lines to the north and east of the house, dormant for the winter yet still visibly neglected. It was a tragic state for any viticulturist to see—some of the oldest vines in the valley, planted by Zoe’s great-great-grandfather and tended by a member of the Waters family for more than a hundred years.
Until now.
To her left, the well-tended vines of the neighboring Lawson Estate—her family’s rivals for her whole life—grew just a few feet from the property line. Zoe made an effort not to look, to pretend that across the post-and-wire fence there was just a big, empty nothing. Just as she’d always done—at least when her grandfather was watching.
The only way she could get through these next few days was to pretend Lawson Estate didn’t exist, the township of Tangawarra wasn’t there and Waterford had a protective force field around it. She snorted at the fanciful idea at the same time she wished it could be true.
Zoe pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head as the sky clouded over. Heavy, slate-gray clouds waited on the horizon. Rain was definitely on the way. More rain from the looks of the sodden ground. She shivered again. Maybe even a storm.
At least that would give her a break. A few hours to sit and catch up with everything that had happened in the past few days. Perhaps even the chance to turn her brain to the task of working out what to do next.
The very thought started a headache throbbing at the back of her neck.
Just as she made a move to dig out her belongings and find her house keys, the sound of a vehicle reached her. A white utility truck bumped along the corrugated dirt track that led from the unsurfaced road. It had prominent signage along the side—elegant black script, a flowing red ribbon—unmistakably the Lawson Estate logo.
She swore under her breath.
She couldn’t have had a day or so—a few hours maybe—to get her bearings before facing reality? It seemed the universe wasn’t going to extend even that small kindness to her.
Zoe stepped toward the ute as it pulled up beside her own bland white rental car. The driver’s face was hidden in the shadow of a straw, American-style cowboy hat. It struck her as odd—most men in the valley preferred the very Australian Akubra or a simple cap, most often embroidered with the logo of their winery.
The driver cut the engine and climbed out. Time slowed somehow, and Zoe was conscious of every moment. The scuffed R. M. Williams boots that hit the ground first. The tight-fitting jeans, worn almost white around the knees and crotch. The chambray shirt that had once been crisply ironed, but was now creased and loosened by a day’s work. The stubbled jaw—not quite bearded, but wearing more than a five-o’clock shadow—that gave his familiar face a hard, almost savage edge. And last—but never least—those blue eyes, shocking, tormenting blue. The blue eyes she’d dreamed of for ten years; the blue eyes that had been her ruin.
“Well, if it isn’t Zoe Waters,” he drawled.
Zoe’s knees turned to jelly, and as her vision began to blacken at the periphery she realized she’d stopped breathing. Through pure force of will she took in a deep lungful of air and strengthened her wobbly legs. Fainting now would be an unacceptable humiliation. From somewhere deep inside, from the core of steel that had been honed over a lifetime and never before failed her, she managed to paste a tight, unwelcoming smile on her face. She’d show him how little she cared, even if it killed her.
“Hugh Lawson, well, well,” she managed to say, pleased that her voice conveyed exactly the right tone of distaste.
“So the old man finally let you come back.” Hugh was smiling, but his eyes were cold. There was no hint of the warmth or humor she remembered from so long ago.
Was he angry with her? What on earth for? She was the one who had lost everything…her family, her reputation, the only real home she’d ever known.
She managed another grim smile. “The old man died yesterday.”
He hesitated and his cool look faded as concern creased his brow. She felt an odd satisfaction at the knowledge she’d unsettled him, but she clasped her hands tightly to hide their sudden tremor. It had been ten years, for heaven’s sake! She’d moved halfway around the world to escape from her past. She was over it. The mistakes she’d made as an infatuated sixteen-year-old little girl were not going to taint her whole life. She’d made sure of that.
“I’m…I’m sorry to hear that,” Hugh said. His eyes lost their hard edge for a moment and Zoe remembered how easy it had been to fall for him, how easy to think herself in love and to be fooled into thinking he might love her in return.
Hugh took a step forward and reached out a hand. For a moment, she thought he was going to hug her and a mess of emotion washed over her. Mostly, though, she was filled with horror at the idea that she looked as if she needed comforting. She stiffened and took a step back.
Hugh’s hand immediately dropped. Whatever he’d been thinking, whatever sympathetic gesture he’d been about to make was now hidden behind that impenetrable blue gaze.
“Yes, well…” Zoe flicked out her hands in a helpless gesture. Apart from anything else, she had no idea what to do with sympathy; it had been the same when the nurse at the hospital had expressed her condolences. Her grandfather’s death still wasn’t real. Even when it did eventually sink in—assuming that happened—she wasn’t sure how she should feel about it. Sad? Relieved? Indifferent?
She straightened her shoulders. “Why are you here?”
That laconic smile was back, warmer this time, more like the Hugh she remembered, erasing the years from his face and making him look just as he had when they’d snuck away to be together. “Neighbors look out for each other around here, Zoe, don’t you remember that?”
Irritation flared inside her at his veiled reminder. Just where had he been when she’d needed looking after?
And she was over this. Over him.
Yeah, right.
She couldn’t help raising her eyebrows in disbelief at his comment. “Neighbors might. But you know as well as I do that that never applied to the Lawson and Waters families.”
Hugh ignored her. “One of our groundskeepers saw the car,” Hugh continued, gesturing to her white sedan. “We knew Mack was in the hospital, so I thought I’d check it out in case…you were up to no good.” He grinned slyly.
Zoe swallowed her storm of emotions somewhat unsuccessfully, frustrated with herself for feeling them in the first place. The only way to deal with this was to appear as unaffected by their reunion as he seemed to be. As unaffected as she wanted to be. “Thank you so much for your concern,” she said, putting on a sarcastically polite tone. “But there’s no need. You can leave now.”
“Ah, Zoe. Still the angry little firecracker, I see.” He shook his head, then his expression softened. “Are you okay, though, really?”
His condescension made her emotions burn brighter. The fact that he could still see through her, that he remembered anger was her default defense mechanism, was the final straw. “You can leave,” she repeated. “Now.” Zoe dug her fingernails into her palms as she struggled to rein in her response. She must surely be drawing blood.
His gaze swept over her, a lingering glance that created an entirely different kind of heat. When his eyes met hers again, they were subdued, a little clouded. She’d have given anything to know what he was thinking.
“It’s…good to see you again, Zoe. To see you looking so…well.”
Well? What was that supposed to mean? Before she could ask, he turned on his heel and climbed back into the ute. With a short, salutelike wave against the brim of his hat, he was gone. Zoe let out a long, relieved breath and refused to think about the disappointment that washed over her as she watched the car disappear down the track.
At least that was over. Seeing Hugh Lawson again was the thing she’d been dreading most. Now she was just left facing a small town that had always hated the sight of her, dealing with her grandfather’s funeral and his estate, and single-handedly producing the last-ever Waterford Estate vintage. Compared to facing the love of her life who’d abandoned her when she’d needed him most, all that should be easy.
Pushing those thoughts away, Zoe headed toward the house, intent on getting started with the seemingly impossible tasks in front of her.
* * *
THEFIRSTJOBTOTACKLE was organizing her grandfather’s funeral. In comparison to her day-job of managing the production of a multi-million-dollar wine vintage, that was a snap. And not just because her grandfather’s controlling nature hadn’t receded an inch, even right at the end. She should have expected that a man like Mack Waters would have made all the arrangements himself. Especially once it had become clear that the cancer wasn’t going to let him escape.
A simple melanoma on his balding head, burned away like the many others he’d had in his life. Only this one had grown, burrowing below his epidermis, reaching out its ugly tentacles and infiltrating his skull. Once it reached his brain stem it had been only a matter of days.
Mack was too stubborn to leave his funeral to chance—or to risk someone else mucking it up. He wanted what he wanted. And at the time, he’d probably thought it unlikely that his granddaughter would come home to do it for him.
Hadn’t stopped him calling her, though. Zoe wasn’t sure who’d been more surprised—herself when she took the call, or Mack when she’d answered. She’d always made sure Mack had a phone number for her when she made one of her frequent moves, but he rarely used it.
Besides, by the time she got here—still reeling from the shock of her unexpected, and still impossible to explain, decision to take leave from work, pack a suitcase and jump on a plane—he was lucid only in short bursts. It hadn’t stopped him from loading her up with guilt and forcing her to make promises she’d had no intention of keeping. But Zoe had stayed and held his hand at the last.
Mack had opted for a church service, a shock to Zoe since she’d never known him to set foot inside one. Apart from her sightseeing visits in Europe, neither had she. Certainly not this modest, clinker-brick, slate-roofed building that sat on a grassy slope just on the outskirts of Tangawarra township.
The storm that had threatened yesterday still hung low on the horizon. For now, the sun was shining through the stained-glass windows, sending beams of colored light crisscrossing through the dusty air of the church.
As per Mack’s instructions, it was a private funeral—invitation only. And the list consisted of one person: Zoe. She couldn’t help a rueful grin as she surveyed the half-dozen mourners behind her as she sat alone on the front pew. She didn’t recognize any of the other mourners—all women, she noted. They were probably professional funeral-goers, women the minister had asked to attend against Mack’s wishes, just so the church wasn’t completely empty.
Mack wouldn’t be happy about that. His exclusive
funeral was his final joke on the town he loved to hate—and who loved to hate him. That the valley’s most prestigious wine was made by a grumpy, antisocial misanthrope wasn’t lost on the tightly knit community of Tangawarra.
The plain, dark wood coffin at the front of the church stayed silent. No more complaints from Mack. Not anymore.
Zoe swallowed a suspicious lump in her throat.
She was actually grateful for her grandfather’s unsociable wishes—no public announcement of the
funeral, no notice in the local paper. Because if they’d known, Zoe was sure that more members of the Tangawarra community would have turned up—just out of curiosity and that bizarre schadenfreude that was part of small-town life. They’d nod knowingly with superior looks on their faces. The thing of most interest to them wouldn’t be the coffin or the service, but Zoe herself, sitting alone in the front row. She could just imagine them critiquing her hairstyle, her makeup, deciding that her gray pencil skirt and beaded red-and-gray knit sweater weren’t somber enough for the occasion. The fact that she’d worn red lipstick would be a scandal talked about for weeks.
Because they knew the true reason behind Mack Waters’s sad and miserable existence. Although he’d never gone out of his way to make friends, everyone knew his life had been ruined when he’d been saddled with his hell-raiser of a granddaughter to bring up.
Zoe gave an inner shrug—she could understand why he hadn’t wanted the judgmental, gossipy town at his farewell. Neither did she.
Thankfully, the minister kept the service short. One of the anonymous churchgoers read a short passage from the bible. Again, Zoe had no idea why. The minister’s eulogy was polite and for the most part accurate—praise for Mack’s wine making, including a glowing quote from a prestigious wine reviewer, a short note about the tragic loss of his wife and then his daughter, an unexpected mention of his pride in his granddaughter’s success in the California wine industry. Zoe guessed the minister had to say something about her, since she was sitting right there.
So far, so good. The first promise she’d made to Mack—to give him a private, low-key funeral—was almost over. Pity it was the easiest promise of them all.
When she walked outside into pale sunlight, following his coffin, she realized she should have known better. Dozens of people stood around, women with grim smiles aimed at her, men with hats held to their chests.
Tangawarra was an impossible place to keep a secret—she should have learned that years ago. It was also an impossible place to tell the truth, but then that was the dichotomy of small-town life.
“Zoe?”
A woman in a pale blue fleece windbreaker stepped closer as the undertakers pushed her grandfather’s coffin into the hearse. She appeared to be in her mid-fifties, and had the sun-weathered look of someone who worked outside. Zoe frowned, searching her memory to try to put a name to the face.
“My condolences,” the woman said. “Mack was a stubborn old coot, but it’s always hard to lose a loved one.”
Loved one? She and her grandfather had tolerated each other; that was about as far as it went. Zoe just nodded. “Thank you.”
She wished, once again, that she’d thought to pack a winter-weight coat. The morning’s chill still hung in the air. She’d clearly acclimatized to the California weather far more than she’d thought. Zoe was finding the valley colder than she’d ever remembered—a deep, gnawing ache that had gone away only last night when she’d soaked herself in a steaming hot bath. Of course, she’d had to clean the tub first, which had helped warm her up a little, too.
“I’m Patricia Owens. From Long Track Estate—just up the road from Waterford.”
Zoe had seen the sign to the vineyard, neighbors to Waterford on the side opposite to the Lawson Estate, but the woman still didn’t seem familiar.
“We bought the property about eight years ago. Mack was a good neighbor. We used to chat—sometimes
shared pickers and the like. I liked to look out for him—especially in the past year or so when he was beginning to get frail.”
Zoe tried to push away a stab of unwanted guilt. Mack hadn’t phoned her until it was too late—there was no way she could have known that she needed to be home. And even if she had…
At least she’d come back in time, so he hadn’t been alone at the end. She’d given the old man that much, at least.
“Thank you,” she said, giving the other woman a genuine smile. “I really appreciate that.”
Patricia gave her arm a squeeze. “Mack talked about you—he was so proud of what you were doing. You must come by and visit us—are you staying at Waterford?”
Zoe nodded, holding her surprise inside at the unexpected repetition of the words the minister had used in the eulogy. Mack? Proud of her? Zoe was an award-winning winemaker with a reputation—spanning two continents—for quality, perfectionism and an innate talent for bringing out the best in grapes. But she’d never considered what people back in Tangawarra—including her grandfather—thought of her. She’d run so fast to get away from the tiny town, in her mind it was still just as it had been ten years ago. Complete with her own starring role as the town’s one and only teen rebel. She’d never stopped to think that they might see her differently now.
“Come around for dinner one night, then. It would be lovely to get to know you.”
Zoe battled a sudden swell of emotion. “That’s very nice of you. Thanks.”
The funeral directors motioned to Zoe—the procession was ready to head to the cemetery. Zoe would ride in one of their cars. She stepped forward, but Patricia reached out again to place a tentative hand on Zoe’s arm.
“Um, Zoe, would it be okay if we came to the cemetery to pay our respects?”
Zoe looked around; several people in the small crowd were hanging on every word she and Patricia exchanged. Her grandfather couldn’t have been more explicit in his wishes for privacy at the funeral. She figured he meant the interment, as well, but the cemetery was a public place. Zoe couldn’t exactly lock everyone out.
Maybe if she explained.
“Mack was pretty clear—” she began. She stopped short when the slam of the hearse door made the flowers on top of the coffin shudder, as if Mack himself was banging on the lid in protest. Zoe bit back a peculiarly hysterical urge to laugh. A little of her old rebellious streak reared up inside her. You know what, old man? These people want to say goodbye. I’m gonna let them and there’s nothing you can do about it.
She shrugged. “Sure. If you want to.” Although a quick look around the crowd had her instantly regretting her capitulation. It wasn’t just about what Mack would have wanted—or not. She didn’t particularly want to spend a great deal of time with the Tangawarra townsfolk.
Patricia gave her a small hug and pulled back with a sweet, sympathetic look. “Thank you. I’ll see you there.”
From the plush interior of the car, Zoe watched as the small town passed by. She had plenty of time to take in the details; the car was travelling slowly, following the hearse, and the guy from the funeral home made no attempt to speak. Everything seemed unreal, like a David Lynch movie—the colors somehow wrong, some things too bright, others unfocused, as though she existed in a fissure in reality that kept her remote from the world.
Nothing much about the township had changed. Some of the shop fronts were different; a few buildings seemed more modern. The milk bar where Zoe had bought cigarettes—old Mr. Bond sold them to underage teenagers if they paid extra—had become a café with tables and chairs set out on the footpath. The chemist’s where she’d been caught shoplifting was the same, only its sign was brighter and louder, and it had expanded to take over the next-door premises.
An old council building was now the most well-tended and attractive store on the main street—it had become the winemakers’ center, a tourist information spot to help visitors find the various wineries in the valley. The Lawson Estate logo was prominent, and Zoe turned away.
All the worst things that had happened in her life had happened in, or because of, Tangawarra. She didn’t want to notice the changes in the town, the fact that it seemed prosperous, the people friendly, the buildings neat and well maintained. No, she wanted it to still be the dark, miserable place she’d found it as a teenager—it was easier to hang on to those old impressions than integrate new ones. Then it was easier to understand why she’d never wanted to come back.
Just before they left what passed as Tangawarra’s city center, Zoe spied a couple of teenagers hanging around outside the supermarket. The hearse had caught their attention and they stared unabashedly at the pitiful two-vehicle cortege. Both kids were dressed in head-to-toe black; one had shocking pink hair, while the other’s head was half shaved, half long greasy black locks. Zoe peered closer as the car drove past—leather straps encircled their wrists, multiple piercings ran up their ears and one had a heavy-looking crucifix around his neck. Lots of eyeliner on both of them.
Emos, or neogoths, or whatever they were calling themselves these days.
Up to no good is likely what the townsfolk of Tangawarra would call them.
Zoe’s car crawled past and the kids were left standing aimlessly on the footpath, staring after the funeral procession with the world-weary expressions that only teenagers are capable of.
At least there are two of you.
At the cemetery she followed the coffin and the minister over the uneven ground on autopilot. Her attention was mostly focused on walking without stumbling—her impractical heels sank into the ground with every step and she wished she was wearing her usual wine-stained work boots. She was sure Mack wouldn’t have minded.
A tall, granite headstone was already in place, the open grave in front of it lined with eye-wateringly green artificial turf, ready to accept its latest occupant. The headstone hadn’t yet had Mack’s details engraved, but there was a blank space ready for him. Above that was her mother’s name, Margie Waters, dead at thirty-two when Zoe was just ten.
Funny, she didn’t remember her mother’s funeral at all. That was strange. Surely she should remember something as significant as that event. Maybe Mack hadn’t let her attend. But she couldn’t remember that, either.
At the top of the stone was her grandmother’s name; she’d died when Zoe was six. All Zoe had of her were some disconnected memories of hugs, scones hot from the oven and Mack smiling. She was pretty sure he hadn’t smiled ever again after Rachel Waters had died.
The minister began reciting the usual prayers. The wind had picked up and it snatched the monotonous drone away, which was fine with Zoe. She couldn’t seem to concentrate on the words, anyway.
Slowly, something entered in the periphery of her vision. She turned her head, expecting to see Patricia, and realized with a shock that there were at least half a dozen people already standing behind her and more filtering in through the cemetery entrance.
Mack would have hated this. The thought made her smile and a lump grew in her throat that she fought against. She hadn’t cried for ten years—no way was she starting now. Not over this. Not over anything—she simply couldn’t risk it.
Zoe had lived with Mack for nine years, two with her mother, seven more just her and the old man. He’d never really been a parent to her; they’d simply struggled through life together, working it out as they went along. They’d kept in touch sporadically in the decade since he’d sent her away in disgrace a few months before her seventeenth birthday. But Zoe had made her peace with that—it had been the only option he thought available to him.
“Zoe?” The minister gestured to her and she realized she’d missed her cue to throw dirt into the grave. One of the undertakers had removed the floral arrangement from on top of the coffin and Zoe was glad that the lush, lively flowers wouldn’t end up under the ground.
She quickly bent and scooped up a handful of dirt, fertile but thick and claylike, remembering as she did what her grandfather had taught her about terroir and the impact the soil had on the grapes that were grown in it.
It was one of the lessons that had since allowed her to build a career as one of the most renowned up-and-coming winemakers in California’s Napa Valley.
“Goodbye, Mack,” she whispered. Her breath misted in the icy air, floating eerily over the open grave before the wind carried it away. And then the coffin disappeared from sight.
The minister completed his final words and walked over to Zoe to shake her hand and squeeze her shoulder. There was a murmuring then, people began talking and even laughing—telling stories of the old days, she was sure. A shiver of dread ran down her spine. The last thing she wanted to share with this town was memories.
Patricia materialized at her side, cupping her elbow and steering her back toward the cemetery gate. She treated Zoe as if she were fragile, as if she were grief-stricken. Zoe definitely did feel zoned out, but she put that down to tiredness and lingering jetlag. And when had she last eaten? She couldn’t remember.
Overwhelmingly, she was just thankful this task was behind her. Boneless with relief, actually. It probably looked similar to grief, she figured; grief was no stranger to her, and neither was that numb and empty feeling that accompanied it. When she was seventeen and had lost everything, she’d understood what true grief was. This wasn’t even close.
“I’ll make sure she gets there.”
A male voice broke into her thoughts, but Zoe was still finding it difficult to focus on the world around her. Basic senses were returning slowly; she was aware that the wind had become almost a gale, she could smell eucalyptus as people walked over the leaves on the ground and crushed the oil out of them. People were chatting loudly now, getting into their cars with raucous farewells and banging of doors.
“Are you sure?” Patricia asked. “I can go with her in the undertaker’s car. Bert can drive my car over.”
“No, it’s fine, she can come with me.”
Zoe was barely conscious of the fact that Patricia’s soft touch on her arm was replaced with a strong masculine hand and she was being steered assertively toward a European sports car.
“See you there.”
Zoe blinked and found herself sinking into buttery-soft leather seats as the powerful engine purred to life. And next to her sat Hugh Lawson, a grim look on his face. How could she have been that out of it? They were in his car and pulling out of the cemetery car park before she pulled herself together enough to protest.
“See us where? Where are we going?”
“Lawson Estate.”
“What? Why?” The last place on earth she wanted to go.
“Because Mack Waters deserves a decent send-off.”
CHAPTER TWO
“EXCUSEME?” ZOEPROTESTED, just as Hugh expected her to. She reached for the door handle, but he reversed and drove off quickly before she could get out.
He flicked a glance at her as he steered the car away from the cemetery and back toward the road to Lawson Estate. She sat rigid, staring straight ahead. Her head was slightly bowed, and waves of dark hair fell forward hiding her expression, hiding eyes that Hugh knew were velvet brown. Brown eyes that could flash with fire when she was angry, darken with passionate intent late at night.
“Put your seat belt on,” he said.
She cooperated without a word. Well, he hadn’t expected her to be grateful, had he? He’d been an utter pain in the ass at their unexpected meeting yesterday, and he knew it. It had unsettled him just how unsettled he’d been by it. Looked as though today wasn’t going to be any different.
At least now he could direct that emotion at its rightful target instead of his poor staff. They’d tiptoed around him the day before.
“Are you really so bitter about Tangawarra, Zoe? You didn’t think that the people of this town would want to attend Mack Waters’s funeral? That they wouldn’t want a wake for its most famous winemaker? For a man from the family who more or less put the valley on the map?”
“I…I…” Zoe stumbled for words, and Hugh was surprised. But then the old Zoe returned and her eyes flashed at him as she twisted in the seat. There was that spark he remembered too well.
“You think I made that decision? I’d have invited the whole town—it’d be better to get their rubbernecking over and done with in one go. But I was following Mack’s instructions. He wanted it private, low-key.”
Hugh deliberately didn’t turn away from the road, but he rolled his eyes and knew she’d see. “Anyone with an ounce of sense would know that what Mack wanted and what Mack needed were two different things. Besides, funerals aren’t for the dead—they’re for the living.”
“I had to do what—”
Hugh didn’t let her finish. “I’m hosting a wake at Lawson Estate. The word’s gone out, so I figure we’ll have half the town there within an hour or so.”
Her protest died on her lips. She shut her mouth with a snap and sank back into the leather seat. From the corner of his eye, Hugh watched her hands clasp over her stomach, pressing tight enough against her belly to crease her sweater and turn her fingernails white.
“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. Hugh wasn’t sure how, but he could sense the struggle inside her. Then he dismissed the idea. Ridiculous. He knew next to nothing about the woman sitting beside him. They’d been lovers a decade ago when they were practically children. Parted under the most miserable of circumstances. But high school was a long, long time ago. He was a different person now—she surely was, too. A person he had to get to know if his plan to take over Waterford had any chance of success.
“I…we…you can’t. Mack wouldn’t have wanted it. He would hate it. And I’m not prepared for it.”
There was a quiver about her mouth and he noticed that her legs were trembling, too. He fiddled with the controls on the dash and sent a rush of warm air through the car.
He adopted his best authoritative tone. The one he used at Lawson Estate all-hands meetings and at the Tangawarra chamber of commerce breakfasts. The one that convinced other people to listen. “Zoe, this has nothing to do with what Mack would have wanted. It’s about Tangawarra celebrating the life of one of its most famous citizens. It’s the right thing to do.”
“The right thing to do? What would you know about that?” Zoe suddenly blurted, biting her bottom lip with her front teeth as if she’d like to swallow the words.
Oh, that was too much. He’d thought the wake would be a good way to thaw the ice between them—show that the whole Lawson-Waters feud thing was ancient history and had no bearing on the present. In fact, he’d hoped it would become the opening round in his negotiations for Waterford. Not that he’d be so crass as to push Zoe for a deal on the day of Mack’s funeral. But he’d thought she’d at least be grateful. Perhaps even conciliatory. He hadn’t expected Zoe to be so violently opposed—had actually thought she might enjoy going against her grandfather’s wishes. But he wasn’t going to put up with bullshit like that. “Going to give me a lecture on right and wrong, are you, Zoe?” he asked.
“Need a lecture, do you?” she bantered back. Her tone was all careworn insolence, bringing a sudden, long-forgotten memory to the surface despite his determination to focus on the present. Hugh could picture her, clear as day, fronting up to a teacher at school, all fierce bravado and defiance, before being sent to the principal’s office for insubordination. Hugh had
admired her, even before the summer they’d gotten
together. Her “take no prisoners” approach had appealed to the rebel inside him—the one buried deep under layers of family responsibility and community duty. But that was all in the past. All he was concerned about now was seeing both their signatures on a deed of sale for Waterford.
“I suppose you do,” she continued. “You talk about what the community needs, but from what I hear you’ve become Tangawarra’s own little corporate raider.”
Hugh clenched his jaw to prevent himself from responding hastily. Her criticism made him want to bite back, just as he would have years ago. But she wasn’t the only one who’d changed. Hugh had grown up, too, and he wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of letting her know the barb stung.
“Is that what you hear?” he asked blandly. He needed to remember that he had a larger purpose here. He’d dealt with all kinds of people over his years in business, and Zoe Waters wouldn’t be the most difficult by a long shot. He had a strategy and he’d pursue it logically and methodically, like any other business deal. Hugh had the Lawson Estate legacy to honor and the prosperity of Tangawarra to consider. Waterford was too valuable to fall into the hands of a competitor—or be left to fall to ruin. Not to mention the fact that securing Mack Waters’s vines would be an indisputable coup. The two estates had been rivals for decades, and seeing Waterford vines become part of Lawson Estate would be eminently satisfying.
So far, negotiations were not off to the best start, but he could recover from this. He’d been in worse situations before and come out on top.
“Mack told me you were buying all the grapes in the valley—pushing out the smaller players. Even buying up their vines if you could get your hands on them.”
He wondered how far she was going to push him. He soon got his answer.
She waved a careless hand. “I suppose you had to find a way to make sure that watery stuff you call wine gets around the world.”
His knuckles whitened around the leather-wrapped steering wheel and all his good intentions vanished. “You’d know all about that, would you, Zoe? From what I understand, despite the accolades you’ve managed to garner, you never stay anywhere long enough to make a decent career.”
So much for his strategy. He didn’t want to give Zoe the impression that she was anything other than a minor annoyance. Showing her that he was vulnerable to her criticism was a mistake.
He wasn’t Tangawarra’s mayor, or its mythical defender riding in on a white stallion to save the day. But he was, as his father had been, a community leader. And today he was doing what a community leader was expected to do: honor the passing of one of its most famous citizens.
And make some inroads into an important business acquisition at the same time.
He waited for her comeback, but she didn’t have one. She shifted in her seat, and Hugh hated himself for noticing the whisper of her stockings as she crossed her legs, her perfume. She smelled different now—subtler, more complex. But then, her perfume of choice at sixteen had been some generic store brand that she’d more than likely shoplifted.
He glanced her way when she stayed silent. To his surprise, he laughed at her tightly pursed lips.
“What?” she asked.
“I never thought I’d see the day. Zoe Waters lost for words. What happened to that smart mouth of yours? Never short of an insult and never short of an attack. What happened to you?”
“I grew up,” she snapped. “Ever thought of doing it yourself?”
* * *
ZOECURSEDHERIMPETUOUS tongue just as Hugh let out a long breath that sounded a little like a wistful sigh. “Ah. There she is.” A quick grin shot across the car at her. “Good to see.”
She pressed her lips into a taut line. This was why she hadn’t wanted to come back to Tangawarra. Hugh Lawson had known her better than anyone. He’d seen into her heart—at least, at the time she’d thought he had—and he still expected her to be the delinquent, impertinent teen who had been the town’s number one trouble-maker until she’d been shipped off in a cloud of shame. How would it be facing other townspeople? Maria from the chemist’s shop where she’d been caught shoplifting, Frank from the hardware store she’d vandalized… Oh, God, what if the school principal was still around? Her stomach did another unsettling swoop at the very thought.
“Who’s coming to this…thing you’ve arranged?” Zoe asked, waving her hand around in a way she hoped looked dismissive. She found herself grinding the heels of her shoes into the pristine carpet of the car, leaving behind some of the mud she’d collected at the cemetery. The sight of Hugh’s beautiful car messed up, even this tiny way, was a small satisfaction.
“I don’t know. You know how it works out here. Bush telegraph.”
Ugh. That’s exactly what she dreaded. Anyone and everyone would be coming. Anyone who even vaguely remembered the tear-away teenaged Zoe, the girl who had caused her grandfather all that grief, would be champing at the bit to stare at the creature she’d become. What were they expecting? A Mohawk hairdo, top-to-toe tattoos, a sneer and a gutter mouth? Probably.
The best Zoe could offer them was the fact that her right ear was pierced at the top as well as in the lobes and—not that anyone was going to see it—she had a tiny winding grapevine with a bunch of plump purple grapes tattooed on her right butt cheek, which she couldn’t quite bring herself to regret. Sure, she could still swear with the best of them, but she’d long since learned to control herself. By many standards, she would be considered civilized, well-mannered. Polite, even.
She hated the fact that Hugh’s presence seemed to make her regress ten years in her manners. She resolved not to let it happen again—well, at least try not to let it happen again.
The car pulled into a reserved space near the entrance to a huge, architecturally impressive building full of hard edges and angled planes that somehow still seemed totally in tune with its surroundings. A large sign announced it as the Lawson Estate tasting room and restaurant. Tall sheets of glass that made up much of the building’s walls reflected the gum trees whipping in the wind, and the native garden and vineyard beyond provided a romantic view for the diners inside. The building was just one of the many improvements Hugh had made to the estate after taking over the reins from his father.
Right now the view was spectacular—the dark gray clouds that had skittered across the sky during the interment now loomed overhead, providing a ghostly backdrop for the skeletal vines.
Hugh turned off the purring motor and turned to face her. The silence was deafening. Zoe maintained her stony expression, staring straight ahead, refusing to feel intimidated by him.
But, oh, she did.
Always had, really.
When Zoe first left Australia, a naive and wide-eyed eighteen-year-old, she’d sworn she’d never let anyone make her feel like a second-class citizen again. But then she’d also sworn to never set foot in a winery again. All she’d wanted was a complete break from her past. Easy in theory, but when she needed to earn a living, it was common sense to turn her hand to the tasks she knew so well. Since then, she’d made her own way in wine-making, a male-dominated industry, holding her own against some of the toughest, roughest characters imaginable. Wine-making seemed so civilized from the outside, all la-di-da and French words, but within it was just like any other kind of farming: backbreaking physical labor, absolute dependence on the whims of the weather and no guarantees of returns at the end. It took people of steely determination and unwavering passion to succeed.
Why, then, did she feel so weak now? Hugh’s presence in the tiny car was overwhelming. His broad shoulders filled the car seat; his solid thighs were disturbingly close to her own. His scent surrounded her, some expensive musky cologne, but underneath the smell that was all his own, one that had called to her sixteen-year-old inner self and made her want to crawl into his arms and seek shelter there. Back then, he’d been her safe harbor.
At least, that’s what she’d thought.
Zoe’s hands were still primly and tightly folded against her stomach. She took the risk of glancing in his direction. He was frankly staring at her, and she could have sworn there was melancholy in his blue eyes, an expression that exactly reflected her own mixed feelings about the past, but he covered it so quickly she wondered if she’d imagined it. It was replaced by a look of cool indifference. He looked for all the world as if he was sitting beside a business colleague, not a woman he’d shared the most intimate of experiences with.
The chill shocked her. But she wasn’t sure what she should have expected instead. Sympathy? Pity? Ugh. Anything but that. But she realized she’d definitely expected some kind of recognition of what she’d gone through. She was the one who’d been run out of town. She was the one who’d lost her home. She was the one who’d been broken beyond repair.
He’d been allowed to continue his privileged life as normal.
“What?” she asked, eventually breaking the uncomfortable silence, interrupting his unsettling examination. “Not what you expected?”
He paused for a moment and Zoe realized she cared far too much about what his answer might be.
But then, instead of speaking, he reached across and took her left hand, pulling her arm towards him.
“What—?” Zoe started in reflex. His fingers curved around to hold her in his grasp, reminding her of how much bigger he’d always been. His hands were different now, though—harder, more weathered. Calloused and scarred from physical labor. If he was a lord, he wasn’t one who sat in the manor directing others to do the dirty work. It was clear he got stuck in himself.
Zoe had no idea what was going on. He gripped her palm with one hand, while he pushed up her sleeve with the other.
Zoe tried to pull her hand from his grasp, but it was futile. “Let me go!” she protested as she struggled.
His finger traced a path down the inside of her arm, marking a light trail from her inner elbow to her wrist. Zoe gasped at the tingling sensation his fingertip left behind and at the way her pulse leaped in response.
Then his touch slowed, repeating the stroke, this time becoming feather-light as he reached the faded scars on the insides of her wrists. Barely noticeable anymore unless someone looked closely, the fine white lines were permanent reminders of a past that Zoe did her best to ignore. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d specifically examined them. It had been such a childish thing to do, a silly, attention-seeking stunt. She’d never really intended to end her life—just to get Mack to notice her. He’d noticed her long enough to take her to the clinic, then things went back to exactly the way they had been before. The whole thing made her feel embarrassed to remember, now.
But Hugh…Hugh had always been a little awed by her scars, a little scared by them, too. He used to kiss them and ask her to never do anything like that again. It hadn’t been a hard promise to make. Or keep.
He sucked in a breath and then sighed heavily. In annoyance or regret? Zoe didn’t trust herself to guess.
“I wish…” he began, before trailing off.
“What?”
Before he could answer, another car crunched on the gravel and pulled up beside them. Zoe ripped her hand from Hugh’s grasp and pushed her sleeve down, feeling suddenly exposed. Her scars—physical or metaphorical—were no longer any of his business, and they were certainly not the business of any other Tangawarra townsperson who might look through the window. Townspeople who were turning up to honor her grandfather’s memory, even though it was against his explicit instructions.
Righteous—and very welcome—anger flooded through her, but before she could explode again about this betrayal of Mack’s wishes, Hugh was out of the car, walking around to open her door. Her new neighbor, Patricia, was standing right there to greet her.
Another three cars arrived and people began climbing out.
She needed to control her responses. She was an adult now, and she’d left that angry teenage Zoe behind long ago. Even if anger was still her default defense mechanism, she’d since learned to control it better.
Just not when Hugh Lawson was around, it seemed.
Screaming at him might help let off some steam, but even if Tangawarra had changed since she’d left, she bet it was just the kind of thing that the gossip-hungry townsfolk would still love to watch.
“Hugh, it is so kind of you to do this.” Patricia stood on tiptoe and gave Hugh a peck on the cheek.
“I’m sure Mack would have really appreciated it.” Patricia smiled sadly and then walked over to a small gathering of women to chat.
No, he wouldn’t! Zoe wanted to yell. Somehow she kept the words to herself. How was it possible that the people who had known Mack for years, lived with him in their community, had so little understanding of how the man worked? She’d shared a house with him, sure, but they’d never shared their inner selves. Even still, it just seemed so obvious to her that this was wrong.
“Shall we head inside, Zoe?” Hugh took a step closer to her and Zoe refused to move back, even though she wanted to. “I need to make a few arrangements.”
Then his hand was on her arm again, leading her up a long ramp to the entrance. She was sure that from an observer’s perspective it seemed perfectly correct—yet another example of saintly Hugh comforting the grieving granddaughter. They couldn’t see that his fingertips were ever so slightly stroking the inside of her elbow. She wondered if he was even aware that he was doing it himself. And if so, was he doing it only to rile her? She still couldn’t help the physical response of her body. It had been trained too well to respond to his touch.
* * *
THENEXTHOURPASSED in a blur. Accosted on every side, Zoe could barely catch a breath as everyone wanted to pass on their condolences and, more subtly, find out what the naughty Zoe Waters had been up to these past ten years.
“So you didn’t end up in jail, then.” An older man she didn’t recognize had remarked with a laugh. The woman next to him laughed, too, and Zoe figured she was supposed to think it was a joke. Very funny. Not.
“Or did you?”
Zoe didn’t dignify the question with a response.
Other people were nicer—asked about her life in California, made sincere-sounding comments about Mack’s passing.
On the one hand, she was genuinely surprised. She wondered if her gruff, antisocial grandfather had had any idea just how many people cared enough to turn up to say farewell. Or perhaps they were here for the free Lawson Estate wine on offer, her more cynical side couldn’t help thinking. She did note that it was their table wine being poured, not their premium label, but even still.
She shook her head in bewilderment at some of the stories people were telling—her grandfather turning up to repair fences when George Armino had his tractor accident, donating wine as an auction prize to raise money for the primary school, sending his pickers to spend an extra day helping out the DiAngelos when they hadn’t had enough cash to pay for their own.
Surely they were making it up? None of that sounded remotely like the grandfather she’d grown up with. Other stories—Mack turning the hose on a particularly persistent person who’d come to help him when he was sick—seemed more familiar.
People were curious about her, but again Zoe was surprised—Mack seemed to have shared some of her various moves and achievements with a couple of people. Which, in Tangawarra, meant everyone knew. He had talked about her current position as winemaker at the Golden Gate Estate in Napa; mentioned her work at wineries all around the world. When they’d had their occasional phone calls every year or two, he’d responded to her tales of what she’d been doing with little more than a grunt. If he’d been proud of her, she’d had no idea.
On the other hand, there was no mistaking her appeal as a novelty here today. The sly glances and hushed conversations where people looked at her, then looked away when she caught them staring. The constant stream of people wanting to talk to her, each subsequent person interrupting to ask the same round of intrusive questions, the same gleam in their eye. How did a girl like you make it? They all seemed to silently ask. Or maybe it was just her own paranoia. From an outsider’s perspective it probably looked like pretty average curiosity about the naughty teenager who’d been sent away to get straightened out. And some of the people had been genuinely friendly and sweetly concerned for her. It was just so hard to let go of her ingrained memories of Tangawarra—and of the people who’d watched her live through some of the most miserable years of her life.
It was exhausting. Not only the nonstop chatter, but the constant second-guessing of herself. The only good thing was that Hugh Lawson had turned invisible—he’d organized this thing, dumped her in it and then disappeared. It annoyed her, even while she knew she should be grateful that he wasn’t around to further upset her equilibrium.
Patricia appeared just as Zoe’s polite smile was growing ragged around the edges.
“Zoe? Why don’t you come over here with me and take a seat?”
Zoe could have hugged the woman in gratitude. She’d worn her heels—still thick with mud—figuring she’d be on her feet only an hour or so for the funeral. But now, after three hours, her toes were blistered and the balls of her feet were burning. Patricia steered her to a padded-leather bench seat that ran along one wall of the restaurant.
“Have you had anything to eat or drink?” Patricia fussed around her like a mother hen. Usually the attention would have made Zoe uncomfortable, but for the moment she was immensely grateful.
Zoe grimaced. “I haven’t had a chance. Too many people want to grill me.”
Patricia gave her a frowning look. “Grill? I don’t think—”
Before she could finish, the crackling sound of a PA system interrupted. Someone blew into a microphone and the din of conversation in the room hushed.
“Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?”
A chorus of people yelled out that it was, in fact, on. A rotund man Zoe vaguely recognized struggled to stand on a chair and everyone turned to face him. Grateful for her seat, Zoe stayed where she was.
“We’re here today to celebrate the life of Mack Waters.”
A muted cheer went up and everyone held their wineglasses aloft.
“Mack kept himself to himself, but as many of you know, the Waters family were the original trailblazers of wine-making in this valley—a trail that many of us here today have followed. Mack carried on his family’s tradition in his own way. He only ever sold his wine by mail order because, in his own words, it meant he’d never have to deal with any bloody customers.” The portly man laughed at his own wit and an answering ripple of laughter ran around the room.
“We also know that although he wasn’t a joiner, Mack was a part of this community in his own manner. He helped out his neighbors—well, some of them, anyway…”
The man paused for the wave of hushed tittering at his unsubtle reference to the long feud between the Lawson and Waters families—a matter that was widely known but rarely discussed publicly.
“…although I guess today goes some way to seeing that put to bed.” He gestured to their surroundings. He didn’t have to say anything more. A member of the Waters family being farewelled on Lawson Estate property spoke volumes in itself.
Zoe watched everyone nod. The lump in her throat rose again to block her windpipe, surprising her with its intensity. No crying. She tried to take deep breaths to hold the emotion at bay, but her chest just wouldn’t expand properly.
“Mack also raised his granddaughter, Zoe, after Margie was killed in that awful car accident.”
Zoe tried hard to ignore the fact that almost everyone in the room turned to look at her as they tut-tutted in what could only be fake sympathy. No one in Tangawarra had liked her mother, either.
She swallowed again, but the lump didn’t move.
“We all know Zoe gave him a run for his money.” He paused for a hearty chuckle that a few in the crowd joined. “But we also know that once she found her way onto the straight and narrow he was rightly proud of her. Mind you, she tested him—and most of us—along the way.” Another jovial laugh. “I remember when she was fifteen and she was caught spraying graffiti on my store…”
That’s where she knew him from. Frank from the hardware store. He’d just put on a lot of weight and aged ten years.
The room closed in. Her lungs seized. There was no air.
Whatever Frank said that caused another wave of laughter in the room passed her by as her ears buzzed with growing panic.
“Zoe, are you all right?” Patricia whispered nervously at her side.
“Now, Zoe,” Frank boomed. It was clear he had no need of a microphone—that voice of his resonated in Zoe’s bones without any kind of amplification. “It’s your turn to come up and say a few words about your grandfather.”
Zoe tried again, unsuccessfully, to take a deep breath. She waved him off, even as a spattering of applause began, encouraging her to take the microphone. Zoe had done plenty of public speaking, led talks in front of many large groups—wine appreciation societies in the main. But now? Invisible bands tightened around her chest and her heart skipped and thudded as if it were about to grind to a halt.
“Come on, Zoe. Everyone wants to hear from you. Just a few words. Come on, lass.”
“I—I have to get out of here…” she stammered to Patricia. “Fresh air…” She couldn’t breathe; the temperature in the room had just gone up ten degrees.
“Leave the girl alone, Frank,” Patricia called out. “She’s had enough to deal with today.”
She had to get away. Escape from the staring and the accusations and draw a breath. Zoe rushed from her seat and took a hurried step toward the nearest door. That was when the room blackened around her and her knees buckled.
CHAPTER THREE
HUGHHADBEENWATCHING proceedings from the sidelines. It had taken him a while to calm down his hot-tempered chef, furious that Hugh had sprung catering for a crowd of at least fifty on him with about ten minutes’ notice. And right before a fully booked dinner service, too. As the chef had railed about the insanity of the idea, Hugh had been on autopilot, placating him while at the same time he was internally agreeing with him.
He’d made up some rational-sounding reasons, but the whole thing was crazy. Why was he doing this? As a tactic to warm Zoe Waters to the idea of selling Waterford to him, it had already failed miserably—her reaction in the car had told him that as much as her forced smile from across the room did now. He couldn’t pinpoint why he’d thought it might work in the first place.
Mack Waters and he had certainly never been friends. The bitter enmity between Mack and Hugh’s father, Pete Lawson, hadn’t ended at his father’s death—it had simply been transferred to Hugh. And, if anything, Hugh had even more reason to dislike the stubborn old goat. The cantankerous-but-kind-at-heart-if-you-look-hard-enough man people were speaking of today was not someone Hugh had ever known. Mack Waters had been cranky, vengeful, rude and argumentative.
Hugh had gone out of his way to try to move on from the past, to offer assistance as it became clear that Waterford was foundering under Mack’s failing health. Mack hadn’t even pretended to listen.
It didn’t help that whenever he and Mack had tried to talk business they seemed to be stuck in a time warp. When they were forced to interact, Mack always treated Hugh as if he was still seventeen and Hugh found himself responding in kind. It frustrated him no end that no matter what he’d achieved in life—the money he’d made, the wine he’d created and sold around the world—as far as Mack was concerned, Hugh was still the boy who’d taken his granddaughter’s innocence.
Hugh had never bothered to correct him, but in truth it had very much been the other way around. Zoe Waters had been like a thrilling adventure park in comparison to Hugh’s sheltered upbringing and good-boy persona. She’d introduced him to sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll—not necessarily in that order. Mack Waters had made it clear that he blamed Hugh for Zoe’s troubles. How the old man didn’t see that those troubles had begun long before Hugh had come on the scene—and that Mack himself had had a significant role to play—Hugh would never know.
He gritted his teeth and surveyed the room of people cheerily drinking his wine, toasting the old man whose presence just across the fence line had cast a shadow over Hugh’s whole life. He wouldn’t be joining in the celebration. He’d get on with his life, just as he had all these years. And maybe now his long-held plans to possess the Waterford Estate would finally come to fruition.
There was just one fly in the ointment. She was sitting across the room from him right now, a strained smile on her face.
Watching Zoe, he was again struck by the difference between the wild child he’d known and the woman who appeared before him. A woman who, if she’d been anyone else, Hugh could admit he found attractive. Very attractive.
Her hair was its natural shiny brunette, none of the bright purple or fire-engine red she’d experimented with from time to time back at school. There were some lighter streaks in it now, probably the result of the California sunshine. Her makeup was restrained, no dark circles of kohl. She’d once liked to draw those on him, as well. She’d insisted it looked cool and that all the male rock stars wore makeup, but Hugh knew Tangawarra and knew that the town wasn’t ready for boys in eyeliner. He’d always washed it off before anyone else had seen.
A smattering of freckles had appeared across her nose—they were new. Otherwise, her skin was still the pale creamy porcelain that he remembered.
Very pale.
A surprising stab of sympathy for Zoe shot through him as Frank appealed to her to get up and speak. He knew she’d hate doing anything of the sort. When he looked across at her, the stark terror on her face sent an unexpected wave of protectiveness through him. Even as he told himself to stay out of it, he found himself stepping forward, about to take the microphone from Frank to save Zoe from the spotlight.
But then she stood up and the blood drained from her face. Hugh knew what was going to happen a moment before it did. It was just like that day right before she’d left town when she’d had fainted in the corridor—only this time he wouldn’t be carrying her to the school nurse.
In a few quick strides he was by her side, scooping her into his arms as her knees collapsed and she fell.
Hugh took no notice of the collective gasp or the mutterings of concern in the room. Heading straight for the side door, he carefully maneuvered them out onto the small walkway that led into the Lawson Estate homestead and to his personal suite of rooms at the back.
He was aware of footsteps following him, but he didn’t pause until he had carefully lowered Zoe onto the navy blue quilt of his bed.
“Is she all right?” Hugh turned and saw that Patricia was watching nervously from the doorway. She seemed to have adopted her neighbor for the time being.
“I think she’s just fainted,” Hugh said. “I’ll just get Morris to—”
“I’m here.” A burly man with a weathered face, Lawson Estate cap and graying beard appeared in the doorway clutching the estate’s sizable medical kit. Morris was Hugh’s foreman, in charge of the day-to-day operations of the Lawson Estate vineyards and had been for as long as Hugh could remember. He’d tended every kind of emergency Hugh could imagine, from tractor and machinery accidents to the scrapes and bumps of guests who’d overindulged and overbalanced. The man had also been witness to all the ins and outs of the Lawson family—from the minor to the traumatic—over the years.
Hugh stepped back to let Morris look over Zoe, while Patricia nattered on about Zoe not eating and having had a stressful day.
Hugh’s stomach churned with a concern he didn’t want to admit to. He sucked in a breath and blew it out, hating the faint nausea that had begun to stir in his gut.
He’d honestly thought he’d put everything to do with Zoe Waters and their tempestuous relationship behind him. The strength of his reaction to her was a surprise. Maybe he hadn’t been so successful at processing all that history as he’d thought.
On one level it was impossible to comprehend that Zoe was lying on his bed, her hair on his pillow, her skin against his sheets. She was no longer the sixteen-year-old girl he’d seen lying like this in the nurse’s office. She’d gained weight in the past ten years, but that wasn’t quite the right way of putting it. It was more like she’d filled out—the curves that her teenage body had hinted at were fully developed now. A lush, hourglass figure was outlined by her clingy top and tight skirt, cinched at the waist with a skinny, patent leather belt. The skirt had hitched up as he’d carried her and a set of stunning legs in black stockings were on display.
Part of him wished she was just another customer—someone who’d overindulged on chardonnay or stayed out in the sun too long. He could patch her up, get her on her feet again, then ask for her phone number. They could go on a date and have the kind of short-lived, intensely physical relationship he preferred.
He cursed under his breath. He shouldn’t have brought her to his bedroom—he wouldn’t have brought any other guest here.
“She’ll be all right,” Morris declared matter-of-factly, bringing Hugh back from his daydream. “I’d say her blood sugar’s a bit low. Just needs to eat and drink something when she comes ’round. I’ll get the kitchen to organize something.”
“Good,” Hugh said, feeling a genuine rush of relief at Morris’s words.
“You need me to hang around awhile?” Morris asked. There was a strange inflection in his words and Hugh looked at him sharply.
“Why?”
“No reason. Just askin’. You look like you—”
“Everything’s fine,” Hugh interrupted harshly. He had no desire to hear what Morris thought. Unusual, because Morris was one person whose opinion Hugh trusted implicitly.
Thankfully, Morris didn’t do more than twitch an eyebrow at Hugh’s imperious tone before giving a short nod acknowledging his boss’s bidding.
“You must be busy, Hugh. I’ll sit with her,” Patricia offered.
“No.” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated to be once again losing his usual cool because of Zoe Waters. “I mean, it’s fine. Patricia, please go back and tell everyone that Zoe’s okay, but that it’s time for the party to come to an end.” He turned to his foreman. “Morris, once you’ve placed the order with the kitchen, show everyone out and then organize the staff to get the dining room cleared and reset before the dinner crowd arrives.” The world calmed a little as he gave orders and took control.
“Of course.” Patricia shuffled out with a pleased look on her face. Hugh knew she couldn’t wait to get back to the restaurant and have her little moment of fame as everyone hung on her news. Patricia meant well and did a lot for the town, but sometimes her tendency to gossip overwhelmed her common sense.
Morris gave a brusque nod and went off to carry out his orders.
Hugh pulled up a chair and sat heavily. He waited for a moment, watching Zoe’s breasts rise and fall, trying hard not to wonder whether they’d changed, too. He made his voice as unaffected as it could be. “It’s okay, they’re gone now.”
Zoe blinked, and after a moment shuffled on the bed a little, rearranging her skirt more modestly and propping her head up on the pillow. “How did you know?” she asked, not looking at him.
“You started holding on.” She’d been a dead weight until they’d reached the bedroom, then she’d stirred against him; the arm that had been thrown around his shoulders had gripped him tightly.
“Ah.” She didn’t sound surprised.
“It’s just like last time,” he said, not understanding the impulse.
She stiffened. “No, it’s not.”
One of his staff members appeared with a tray. “Mr. Lawson? Morris asked me to bring this up. Is the lady awake? He wanted to know if she was still unconscious.”
“I’m awake,” Zoe answered before Hugh could.
“Leave it and get out,” he ordered.
“Uh, fine.” The waiter looked startled at the harsh words from his usually friendly boss, put the tray at the end of the bed and beat a hasty retreat.
“Drink this.”
Hugh reached for the coffee mug on the tray and handed it to Zoe. She sat up and pushed a pillow behind her back, accepting the cup meekly.
She grimaced after taking a sip. “Ew, too sweet.”
“You need the sugar. Drink it.”
Zoe took another few sips and Hugh was relieved to see some color return to her cheeks. She reached for a plate of biscuits and nibbled on a chocolate chip cookie.
“I guess you’re right,” Hugh said, returning to the conversation that had been interrupted when the waiter had arrived.
Zoe’s forehead crinkled in a frown. Was she deliberately avoiding the topic?
“It’s not like school,” he said. “After all, we’re adults now. Grown up. Responsible for our own actions.”
Her frown deepened. Hugh himself wasn’t even sure what he was trying to say.
Zoe’s eyes dropped from his and she shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I’m fine, so I guess I’ll—” She threw her legs over the side of the bed and began to stand up, staggering almost as soon as she was on her feet.
Hugh jumped up and put a restraining arm around her shoulders. Now he knew exactly what he wanted to say. “Don’t be an idiot. You fainted a minute ago. Sit down.” He pushed her back down, but he didn’t need to use much force. She was trembling and as weak as a kitten. Once she was leaning against the pillows again, she drew a shaky breath.
Hugh tugged his chair closer to the bed and sat. Anxiety was still unsettling his gut, although he couldn’t put his finger on why.
She managed a weak, mocking laugh. “Don’t worry, Hugh, I’m not about to throw a tantrum or pull out a razor blade.”
He cursed himself for being so easy to read. But then, to her, he always had been. He’d just thought he’d learned to hide his inner thoughts better in the intervening years. “I want…I want you to be okay,” he finished lamely.
She smiled then, sad and sweet. “You always were too nice,” she said, almost to herself.
“Not really,” he said.
She studied him curiously for a while and Hugh couldn’t bring himself to look away. If it was possible for ten years of hurt to be conveyed in someone’s eyes, then Zoe had mastered it.
When she spoke, her voice was soft. “Hugh, it was all a long time ago. We’re both very different people now.”
He certainly hoped so. They were going to have to find a way to deal with each other without this massive lump of history coming between them. He wanted to buy Waterford—that meant discussions, negotiations, meetings. Interactions he intended to conduct as an adult, not an angry and broken-hearted seventeen-year-old.
But despite his best intentions, a flash of fury from back then revived itself somewhere deep inside him. It was wrong, so wrong, to be angry with someone for something they couldn’t control. Zoe had been sick. Mental illness was a disease just like cancer—intellectually he understood that. Emotionally, the idea that she’d tried to take her life again after she’d promised…
“Mack told me you were lucky to survive,” he said. So much for leaving the past in the past.
Her eyes became glassy. Not with tears, but with a sadness that was beyond crying. “That’s not quite true. It took a few weeks to recover, but I was eventually okay—healthwise.”
He noted her modifier, didn’t know what to say about it. “Good. I’m, uh, glad to hear it.” Cringe. Hugh scrubbed a hand across his mouth. His business goals evaporated. Suddenly, more than anything, he needed to talk about it. Let her know how hard it had been on him—how doing the right thing had felt like the worst thing possible. He wasn’t sure if talking would make it any better, but it would be something.
“Zoe? I…” He blew out a breath. “Christ, this is hard.”
“Don’t say it.” She looked almost…frightened.
Of what? “What?”
She looked down at her hands, her fingers twisting together. “Don’t apologize. I couldn’t bear it. Not now.”
Apologize? No, that wasn’t what he’d been about to do. “But I—”
She didn’t let him finish. “It’s too late,” she said simply.
His shoulders slumped. “Yeah, I know.” She was right. They should leave it alone.
A thick silence fell over the room.
“Why?” Her voice was barely more than a breath.
“Why what?”
“Why didn’t you come for me? I called so many times, wrote letters when my emails to your account bounced…”
He ignored the email comment—he’d deactivated his account on instruction from his father and Mack. But letters? “I didn’t get any letters.”
“You didn’t…” She sighed heavily. “Your dad.”
Hugh nodded. Pete Lawson would have made sure that any mail from Zoe didn’t reach Hugh. He’d probably thought he was helping. “Yeah, I guess.”
“But I called.” Her voice held no accusation; it was a simple statement of fact.
“I know. But, Zoe, I was doing what I thought was best. They told me it would be better for your recovery if I didn’t speak to you. And…” Oh, this was hard. On a scale of one to ten, this sucked pole.
“You still believed what Jason told you.”
It sounded so juvenile now. Hell, it had been juvenile at the time, he’d just been too young to realize it.
“What is Jason up to these days?” Zoe asked mildly.
“Accountant. Married, with a kid, I think. Lives in Melbourne. I don’t see him much. He came out here a couple of years ago to visit the winery—that was probably the last time.”
“You guys were best friends.”
“Yeah.” The friendship hadn’t survived Zoe’s betrayal—fictional or otherwise. And it certainly hadn’t survived Hugh’s guilt. He and Jason had stopped being friends the day after Zoe’s collapse.
“I didn’t, you know. Not with him. Not with anyone else when we were together. Just in case you were still wondering.” She sounded so calm.
Hugh managed a tight smile. “I wasn’t.” Although, if he was honest he’d never been completely sure. Jason was full of shit, but Zoe had earned her bad-girl reputation. And she’d been the first—and only—girl Hugh had lost his heart to. Even the idea of her infidelity had been enough to send a blood haze over his vision. His teenage rage had been a scary thing—to both himself and Zoe, he was sure.
“But you were fine,” he said, deliberately not making it a question, ready for this conversation to end. Zoe’s still countenance and her calm, monotone voice were becoming unnerving.
She gave a strange, bleak laugh. “Oh, I don’t think I was ever fine again, actually. But I get by.”
Ah, shit. Had he intended this conversation to make him feel better? Because that hadn’t happened so far.
“Did you cut yourself again? Or was it something else?” The question blurted itself out without Hugh’s conscious permission. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that.”
For the first time, her Stepford-wife-like composure seemed to slip. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”
Zoe sat up straighter in bed. “No, no. This is important. Why did you ask that?”
Hugh sighed what felt like his hundredth sigh for the day. He kicked himself yet again for starting down this path in the first place. “I guess…I guess I asked because it’s been bothering me, not knowing what you’d done.” That was part of it, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on the true source of his unease about Zoe’s disappearance. Let alone express it.
She swung her legs over the bed to sit up, her face a picture of the kind of deadly seriousness that had always made Hugh’s heart pound. She’d worn that expression when she’d talked about her plans to get away from Tangawarra, from her grandfather, when she’d talked about her first suicide attempt at thirteen, when she’d told him she loved him.
“Hugh—we had a fight, right?”
“Yeah.” Ten years ago and he still remembered it in high definition. Jason had just dropped his bombshell. Then Zoe walked up, all urgent and panicked looking. I need to talk to you. Oh, he’d needed to talk to her, too. He’d needed to yell. The fight had been momentous. Zoe had denied everything so vehemently she’d worked herself into hysterics.
“And then you passed out.”
“You took me to the nurse.”
Hugh nodded. “And then, after Mack took you home, you…you did it again. He wouldn’t tell me how. But I guess I figured…” He gestured towards her wrists.
Zoe shook her head, eyes wide. “Oh, no.”
The ground shifted under Hugh’s feet at her expression. “What?” he asked nervously.
“Is that what Mack told you? That I tried to kill myself again?”
The weird anxiety in Hugh’s belly stepped into high gear. He had a feeling that whatever was coming, it wasn’t going to be good. “That’s what both Mack and my father told me.” He paused. “You didn’t?” he asked, not entirely sure he wanted to know the answer.
“Oh, Hugh. Mack sent me away because I was pregnant.”
* * *
SHOCKMADETHETRUTH come tumbling out before Zoe could reel it in. The full weight of the grief and distress of those twelve months after she’d been banished from Tangawarra crashed down on her all over again. And Hugh hadn’t even known?
“Pregnant?” Hugh blurted. He was gripping the seat of his chair as if he might fall off.
She couldn’t speak, so simply nodded. A hot tear spilled down her cheek. It surprised her so much she swiped at it and stared at the telltale moisture on her fingertip. Tears? Really? An edge of panic rose inside her. She couldn’t cry. Not now. Not ever. Because if she did, Zoe genuinely feared she might not be able to stop.
“What? But…what?” His eyes popped as his voice rose.
She struggled to calm her ragged breathing, blinked up at the ceiling to force the treacherous tears away. “You didn’t know.” It wasn’t a question.
If someone had told her that a five-minute conversation could shatter some of the foundations on which she’d built her life, Zoe would never have believed them. But here she was….
“Of course I didn’t know.” His anger began to surface again, knuckles white against the chair. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.
“I tried!” she protested. “What do you think I needed to talk to you about that day? But you started in on me about cheating on you with Jason. You didn’t give me a chance and I…”
She threw her hands in the air at the futility of at all. Too late. It was all just far too late.
That last day was a blur. She’d fainted at school after working herself into a state arguing with Hugh. Hugh, ever proper, had carried her to the nurse’s office. After he’d gone back to class, the nurse—a stern, severe woman—had asked a lot of questions. Zoe’s confession prompted the scowling woman to make Zoe take a pregnancy test, confirming her own suspicions. Then her grandfather had been called in and she’d been taken home, the older man stony silent in the car beside her.
That night, Mack locked Zoe in her bedroom, the first time he’d ever resorted to such a measure, even though she’d given him plenty of reasons before then. She could have climbed out the window if she’d wanted, but fear kept her captive.
Instead she lay there, rigid with terror, listening to her grandfather make phone call after phone call. Then Hugh’s father arrived and the two men had spoken, too quietly for Zoe to overhear. Strange, because usually they yelled at each other, if they spoke at all.
The following morning Mack made her pack a bag as she sobbed her protest, and next thing she knew she was on the train to Sydney. Her great-aunt Maureen’s disgust and heavily worn martyrdom had been waiting on the platform for her when she arrived.
“Mack and my father told me you went to a…to somewhere to get psychiatric care,” Hugh muttered, almost to himself. “And then you were going to a girls’ school in Sydney that was designed to help girls like…” He trailed off. When he spoke again his voice was firmer. “They told me that after you recovered you ran away, overseas.”
“Well, that bit was true.” Why the lies? The sweet tea and chocolatey biscuit she’d consumed formed a solid ball in her stomach. “That must have been the story Mack and your dad agreed on. What on earth were they thinking?” She didn’t understand how Mack or Pete Lawson could think a suicide attempt less scandalous than a teenage pregnancy.
Hugh still looked stunned. “The suicide part of it was a secret—they told everyone else you went to a girls’ school in Sydney. But why would they tell me you tried to kill yourself?”
Zoe shrugged, just as baffled as he appeared, still too deeply in shock to reason out past motivations.
“Pregnant,” Hugh said again. His eyebrows drew together and he leaned forward. “Does this mean you…I…we have…” He broke off and swallowed hard. “Where’s the child?”
His voice was strangled and Zoe couldn’t interpret the look in his eyes. Panic? Longing? Fear?
Zoe’s mouth compressed in a tight line. “You don’t have anything to worry about, Hugh. There’s no illegitimate Lawson offspring running around out there, waiting to make a claim on your fortune.” It took every ounce of her dwindling strength to get the next words out without shattering into tiny pieces. “Our baby died.”
Hugh recoiled as if she’d slapped him, but just as quickly his face shuttered down into its usual mask of impenetrable cool.
Zoe battled against a rising tide of panic. Breaking down now—or ever—would be of no help, but this conversation had her feeling like she was on the edge of a very high precipice. What she had to do was get through the next few weeks then sell Waterford and get the hell out of town. She’d endeavor to do that with as little contact with anyone else as possible.
“I can’t believe they lied to me. I can’t believe they kept us apart,” he said under his breath.
Hugh stood and paced over to the French doors that led out to a small terrace and showcased the vines beyond. His impressive silhouette made something inside Zoe clench.
“I know why Mack and my father came up with that story,” he said bitterly. “They knew I’d go after you,” he added more quietly.
Why didn’t you? A tiny, traitorous voice inside Zoe wanted to wail. Why didn’t you come for me when I needed you most? You weren’t there when our beautiful daughter was born, when she was laid in my arms, not breathing, but exquisitely perfect.
When I was so alone.
The dangerous thoughts made her shudder, even as she shook her head in quiet denial. She’d known, by then—even not knowing what lies he’d been told—that he wouldn’t come. After her unanswered calls, after her desperate, unsuccessful attempts to reach him. If there was one thing she’d already learned, it was that even in her most desperate hour, the only person she could rely on was herself.
And by then, she’d reached a kind of peace with his silence. In a way, it was almost better that she’d never spoken to him—because at least then she could secretly cling to the hope that he might come—than to know he’d rejected her, just as her grandfather had told her he would.
Hugh stood ramrod straight. “Your disappearance was big gossip at school for a while, as you can imagine. I kept up the pretense, just said you were sent to a girls’ school in Sydney. Everyone was speculating on the reasons.” He barked a short, black laugh. “No one went with ‘pregnant,’ though.”
“No, I guess they didn’t. According to what I heard out there, most people were betting on jail.” She tried to sound as if it didn’t matter, but knew she failed. It was time to get out of here—away from this hellish reminiscing.
Zoe stood up gingerly, testing her weight, but the dizziness had passed.
Hugh didn’t so much as turn around to see if she was okay.
She swallowed hard and willed her voice not to waver. “Thank you for the first aid and thank you for the wake, although I know Mack is turning in his grave at the very idea.”
Hugh could have been carved from granite. He acknowledged her thanks with a grunt. Zoe wasn’t sure what to do. A silly, juvenile part of her wanted to throw herself into his arms and sob, to cry with him over the loss of their child, to have him hold her again, to be surrounded by his scent and cradled in his protective embrace. A stupid instinct—it wouldn’t change anything.
She stared for a moment at his frozen posture. What was going through his mind right now? She’d been living with the knowledge for ten years and the sharp edges were as jagged as ever. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have it dumped in one blow.
He deserved some comfort.
Pity she had none to give.
Zoe slipped her still-aching toes into her stilettos and made for the door. She wanted to get out before everyone left, beg someone to give her a lift back to Waterford. There was no way she could cope being in that little sports car with Hugh again.
CHAPTER FOUR
NOTLOOKINGBACKTO see whether Hugh turned away from the windows, Zoe headed down the corridor. Her pace increased as a strange kind of panic enveloped her until she was almost running, desperate to escape. By the time she made it to the empty car park, her breath was coming in pants.
“Damn.” She swore as she glanced around. The only vehicles left were Hugh’s coupe and a couple of Lawson Estate utes.
“Need a lift?” Morris appeared from around the side of a building. He’d been Lawson Estate’s foreman as long as she could remember, and it was somehow comforting that he was still around. He wore jeans, a checkered blue shirt and a Lawson Estate cap pulled low on his forehead. His graying, unkempt beard covered most of his face, but his eyes were as bright and shrewd as they’d always been—she’d guess he didn’t miss much.
“Yes, please.” Zoe hated asking for favors, and didn’t want to be any more indebted to Lawson Estate than she already was with this farce of a wake, but Tangawarra didn’t have a taxi service. And although Waterford was next door it would be a painful twenty-minute walk in her stupid shoes. Not to mention in the rain that had finally begun to spatter from the dark clouds overhead.
“Jump in.” Morris tilted his head toward one of the utes and Zoe gratefully clambered in. She was even more grateful when he started it up and drove her home without speaking. Polite small talk was beyond her.
“Thank you.” Zoe reached for the door handle.
“Zoe?” Morris broke his silence just as she was about to open the door and jump out. She paused a moment.
“Yes?”
“I remember you from when you was a kid.”
Zoe sagged with the physical and mental exhaustion of the past few days. She didn’t have the energy for any further trips down memory lane. “I’m sorry,” she said, her tone resigned. “For whatever it was I might have done to annoy you.”
“Nah, it wasn’t like that. Do you remember when I caught you and Hugh?”
A wash of memory flooded through her. “Oh, God. The tractor shed.” Her cheeks burned. So embarrassing. She folded her arms over her chest, feeling as naked now as she’d been then.
“Been wondering all these years whether I did the right thing by not turning you kids in.”
“We… I was very grateful that you didn’t.”
He shot her a quick, avuncular smile. “I always liked ya. You had spunk. Weren’t gonna let a small town grind away your individuality.”
That was one way to look at it, Zoe guessed. Just a pity no one else shared his perspective. “Uh, thanks, I suppose.” She opened the door and climbed out, holding on to the vehicle for balance as she found her feet on the muddy ground.
“You were a good influence on the boy,” Morris said, raising his voice to be sure she heard him.
At that, Zoe started in genuine surprise. “I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who thought so.”
Morris’s eyes were kind. “He was in danger of being a spoiled little brat, if you ask me. Being friends with you changed that.”
Zoe’s fragile composure began to crack. She stared down at the grass and took a moment’s pause, to be sure her voice wouldn’t betray her. “I guess our…friendship changed both of us,” she said eventually.
“Hugh ain’t the one to blame, Zoe. Don’t take it out on him.”
Zoe looked up from watching her Italian leather heels sink slowly into the soggy ground, startled. Of course, anyone from the Lawson side would be defending Hugh. Morris had no idea what had really happened. Although it was long past the time for blame games, Zoe hated the twist in her gut that reminded her of her outraged teen self.
It might not be Hugh’s fault, but it wasn’t her fault, either.
“Right,” she managed to say through gritted teeth. A teenage impulse urged her to yell and insult this man who’d butted in where he didn’t belong. But she was too tired, too emotionally drained to be bothered. “Thanks for the lift,” she muttered, before giving the door a solid shove to slam it shut, expressing herself physically instead of verbally. She marched into the house, slamming that door, as well.
As the ute drove off, the storm broke and a deluge of rain hit the tin roof of the house. She sank to the floor, curling up against the cold, cracked linoleum. She shivered and just tried to remember to breathe.
* * *
ANDTHEHITSJUSTKEPTONCOMING.
The conversation Zoe had had with Stephen Carter, her grandfather’s accountant rang in her ears for the next two hours.
Waterford was on the verge of bankruptcy.
The options the accountant had presented still burned in her belly. Sell up now, or find some extra money—from somewhere—if she wanted to bottle the final Waterford vintage as she’d promised Mack. Stephen was strongly in favor of selling—he had a buyer all lined up and everything.
That buyer just happened to be Hugh Lawson.
Zoe should have known.
Holding the wake for Mack hadn’t been some altruistic community gesture on Hugh’s part. It had been a ploy, a gambit to butter her up so he could get his hands on Waterford, just as his father had been trying to do for decades. As a tactic it hadn’t been successful—Zoe had hated every minute of it and Hugh really didn’t know her anymore if he hadn’t realized that.
Seemed like Hugh had grown up to become the spitting image of his dad: an ambitious, heartless, money-grabbing industrialist, more interested in the financial rewards than the art and science of viticulture and wine-making.
Zoe sighed as she put the groceries away and leaned against the counter, surveying the decrepit kitchen.
When she’d first arrived back in Australia everything had seemed so clear. Say goodbye to her grandfather. Organize his funeral. Settle his estate. Get back to California as fast as possible.
Only she hadn’t bet on the old man hanging on for a few days. Long enough to extract promises from her. Promises that even at the time she hadn’t wanted to keep. Why she felt she owed Mack any loyalty at all was a mystery she hadn’t yet unraveled.
And yet now that she was here, standing on Waterford soil once again, something deep inside her railed at the idea of directly countering his instructions. Could she sell Waterford to her grandfather’s lifelong enemy in direct contrast to his wishes? See it swallowed up by Lawson Estate, disappear as if it had never existed, the way so many other smaller vineyards in the valley had been?
Not to mention the more immediate issue: would she be able to fulfill Mack’s request to finish his last-ever vintage before she sold Waterford? He’d been under no illusion that Zoe had returned to take over from him. Just begged her to please see the last of his wine into bottles. Then sell up and leave, finish Waterford on a high.
Her grandfather had been specific about that, too: the Waterford name was not to be sold, only the property. Waterford would not be Waterford without a member of the Waters family at the helm. At least that was something Zoe could agree with.
More than a century of her family’s heritage, gone at the stroke of a pen. Even if it was a family she felt no real connection to, it was the only one she had.
Maybe that was why she felt so conflicted.
After putting the groceries away, Zoe grabbed a coat and headed outside. With a notepad and pencil, she walked around the property and all its rickety sheds, taking an inventory of everything she found. She quickly realized that she could have made the list from memory. Nothing had changed in ten years. A couple of pieces of machinery had been updated—there was a new pump and a new pile-driver attachment for the tractor—but otherwise everything was the same. Only older, more run-down, more rusted and decayed.
The shed that housed the winery was chilled and held the sharp smell of young wine, oak barrels, acid and bleach. Her grandfather had been a stickler for cleanliness in the winery. He’d been in the hospital for several weeks before he’d died, and no one had tended to anything in that time. But unlike the house, which Zoe had spent some hours that morning scrubbing, the winery still seemed pristine. Old-fashioned and worn out, like the rest of the place, but clean.
Zoe stood and stared at the rack of wine barrels that lined one side of the shed. Waterford had never made a fortune, Zoe had always known that. She’d never gone without the basics as a child, but she’d never had luxuries or indulgences, either. Partly because there wasn’t a lot of money to go around, partly because her grandfather was frugal to the point of meanness. No wonder she’d shoplifted nail polish—Mack would never have bought something so frivolous and the ten dollars a month for “women’s things” that Mack allowed her certainly didn’t stretch to treats.
The winery was Mack’s priority. Every dollar went back into it. Although his wine was critically acclaimed as one of Australia’s best, Waterford was run on a shoestring. Mack refused to irrigate his vines to increase his grape crop, claiming it would water down his wine. He never did any of the marketing or publicity that would allow his boutique Shiraz to become an “investment” wine. He refused to open a cellar door to passersby to increase his trade.
Mack’s fans said it was because he was a purist, interested in nothing but making the perfect wine.
Mostly, Zoe reckoned, it was because the old man simply didn’t like people, and by keeping things small he didn’t have to bother with having employees or advisors.
Waterford’s Shiraz was sold by mailing list to a discerning group of loyal buyers who, Zoe was sure, had no doubt they were getting a bargain. They sold out every year.
And yet, the place was practically bankrupt.
“The income from each vintage just paid for the next one,” Stephen Carter had explained. “Mack had some savings, but those were eaten up by medical bills. There’s nothing left, and there are more than a few outstanding debts, including the mortgage on the property that your grandfather took out back when your grandmother was sick. And, for example, my bills with regard to his estate.” Stephen had had the good grace to look slightly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Zoe, but once you sell and pay off the debts, there won’t be anything left over.”
Zoe ran a hand along the smooth surface of one of the oak barrels. “Oh, Mack.” She sighed, her voice echoing dully from the concrete floor and tin walls.
She grabbed a glass pipette and tasted each barrel carefully. As the ruby red liquid swirled around her mouth, she smiled in rueful amazement. She had no idea how her ailing grandfather had managed it, but he’d created yet another magnificent wine. A pang of family pride and professional jealousy rushed through her as she found Mack’s notebook and flicked through his meandering scribbles.
The wine needed to be racked off—the barrels emptied and cleaned before the wine was returned to them—and then bottled. It wasn’t impossible to do on her own, but it would be difficult, dirty and time-consuming.
It was a reminder of her dilemma.
There was no money to hire help, no money to pay for the bottling. The existing debts made further borrowing impossible. And Zoe had no nest egg of her own to reach into. She lived from paycheck to paycheck and was perfectly okay with that. As long as she had enough for food, shelter and an occasional bottle of good wine, she didn’t care. She never stayed anywhere long enough to put down the kind of roots that would require significant purchases.
She rested a hand on the smooth oak barrel, the wine flavor lingering in her mouth. Her only option was to sell immediately, but that meant breaking her promise to produce one last Waterford vintage for her grandfather.
The grandfather she’d barely tolerated during her teenage years, and barely spoken to since. What did it matter? Mack was dead. He would never know.
There would be no last Waterford vintage. It was just impossible.
Zoe sighed. Heading back to the kitchen to put on the kettle and make a cup of tea, she tried to rationalize the decision that for some reason sat uneasily within her.
It’s not your problem.
It’s not like Waterford means anything to you.
It’s not like Mack will know. And even if he did—she imagined him peering down at her from the clouds, that familiar disapproving frown etched on his face—why do you care?
Zoe sat on the back step of the farmhouse, her hands clasped around her mug of tea for warmth and comfort.
She shivered as a gust of wind whooshed through the yard, making the shed door bang and a tangle of litter rise in a dusty whirlwind before settling back over the unkempt ground.
Zoe drained the last of her tea, standing up and wrapping her cardigan tighter around her as she headed back inside the dilapidated house.
Decision made. She’d instruct Stephen Carter to sell up, pay out Waterford’s debts and give anything left over—however measly—to charity. Something to support teen mothers, just for the hell of it. And she would book a plane ticket back to California and leave all of this behind. In the past. Where it belonged.
* * *
ITWASANORMALDAY on the Lawson Estate, which meant that by midday Hugh had already been working for more than six hours.
He started the morning checking his stocks on the internet and talking with his trader in Sydney. At eight, Morris and the operational crew for the vineyards held their weekly meeting—this morning the hot topic was security, and how to stop enthusiastic and/or drunken visitors from wandering around the vines, potentially damaging them or, worse, introducing pests to the vulnerable plants.
Then his advertising agency had come to present a campaign for the new Lawson Estate sparkling rosé—a light and pretty wine they were targeting squarely at the female market. The hope was to have it out in time for the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival, when the whole country gorged itself on celebratory bubbles. After that there’d been a distribution bungle to sort out, a complaint from one of their largest buyers—an airline—about lopsided labeling on the last shipment. And, just now, an intoxicated winery visitor angry about being refused service.
Hugh headed back to his office after escorting the staggering man out to the car park. The man’s friends had been embarrassed, and once Hugh had been sure that he wasn’t driving, he’d left them to sort it out.
Usually Hugh strode through the day with energy and confidence, seeing any challenge as a hurdle to be overcome with perseverance and charm.
But not today.
He’d yelled at the trader for missing a deal, dismissed the concerns of the operational staff with a wave of his hand and sent the ad agency back to the drawing board. He’d left the bottling company in little doubt as to his fury about the labeling mistake, and had barely managed to rein in his temper when dealing with the visitor. Drunk before noon from wine tasting—Hugh had trouble hiding his disgust for the guy.
He sank into his executive leather chair and let out a sigh. Someone had placed a steaming caffe latte on his desk and disappeared—apparently word about the boss’s foul mood had circulated fast.
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Emmie Dark
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Hugh Lawson and Zoe Waters have a tangled history. But she left ten years ago and he′s put her behind him. Except she′s here again–just when Hugh′s ready to make an offer for her family′s legendary vineyard. And her version of those long-ago events is enough to make him question everything he thought he knew.Hugh can′t let the past destroy his plans for the future. Which means he has to unravel the truth. But as he does, he begins to realize that he may have been as responsible for what happened as Zoe. And that going back could be the only way to move forward.