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“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.