“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.