Читать книгу In His Eyes - Emmie Dark - Страница 12

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.