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