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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.
