Chapter Five
It was colder than she’d expected. And grayer.
When Hannah had looked up the small town of Aster Bay, Rhode Island, it was all pictures of beaches and historic homes, charming shops and quaint cafes. Somehow she hadn’t realized the town’s tourism website wasn’t necessarily the best representation of what to expect in New England in March. The constant barrage of phone calls and social media notifications had made it hard to think rationally.
Rain pelted the windshield of the car Micah had hired to drive her to Rhode Island as it navigated admittedly charming streets. They drove past those same shops, including a surprising number of adult-themed businesses—a sex toy shop, a lingerie store, and a boudoir photography studio all right there in the heart of the historic downtown. The calm voice of the GPS alerted her driver to an upcoming turn as the cheery sign for Nuthatch Vineyard with its hand painted, metallic gold grapevine came into view. Daemon’s brother and sister-in-law had asked her to meet them there. Maybe they thought she could use a glass of wine after the last twenty-four hours. They wouldn’t be wrong.
At the end of a long winding road that hardly looked wide enough for two vehicles to pass at the same time, the farmhouse-style main building of the vineyard came into view. The sprawling grounds lined by tall pine trees looked even more lush and green in the spring downpour than they had on the vineyard’s website. A faux grain silo on one side of the wood-shingled building stood out like a beacon on the horizon. The gravel of the driveway and parking lot crunched beneath the tires as the car pulled in alongside the half dozen others already there.
“Do you need help with your bag?”
the driver asked.
“No, thank you.”
She did a last check of her hair in the rearview mirror, finger combing the frizzier bits. “It had to rain,”
she muttered as she climbed out of the car. Her heels immediately sank in the muddy gravel and she swung the purse over her head, shielding her hair from the worst of the rain.
The driver followed after her, opening the trunk and handing her the handle to her small rolling suitcase. She thanked him again, then jogged across the parking lot to the safety of the front door, dragging the bag through the puddles behind her.
At least there were no photographers.
The clack of her heels and whirr of the plastic suitcase wheels on the lobby’s hardwood floor echoed in the cavernous space. At one side of the room, a spiral staircase with a shiny metal railing descended from the second floor beside French double doors of frosted glass. A wall of windows at the other end of the room overlooked the fields, rows of grapes with the bay in the distance. Oversized brown leather chairs were arranged in little seating areas throughout the space, a hallway disappearing off to the left, the walls lined with large black and white photographs: A young couple in front of the main building, the woman’s pregnant belly cradled by both of their hands and the names Louise and Henry scrawled in pencil beneath the image. Another of a handsome young man, barefoot, holding up a bundle of grapes in the field above the words “Papa, 1952.”
A young girl, maybe two or three, proudly showing off a precarious stack of blocks: “Tessa’s masterpiece.”
“Hannah?”
She stiffened and turned to see a beautiful woman with dark hair and eyes watching her. No camera.
The woman pressed a hand to her chest. “I’m Tessa Chase. My husband Jamie is Daemon’s brother.”
Hannah breathed a sigh of relief and extended her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Hannah Matthews. It’s so kind of you and your husband to take me in like this.”
“Can I get you anything? Glass of water or wine? Cupcake?”
Tessa asked.
“No, thank you. I’m alright.”
“I’m sorry Jamie’s not here to greet you. There was a small mix up at his restaurant that he had to take care of.”
“I hope everything’s alright.”
“It’ll be fine. He got a large order of turnips and apparently the supplier brought him Gilfeather instead of Macomber.”
“What’s the difference?”
Hannah asked.
“Haven’t a clue. But Jamie is very particular about his produce.”
Tessa smiled, but it seemed hesitant. “And I’m afraid there’s been a small change of plans.”
“Oh?”
“We live in a very small cottage and our daughter doesn’t like to sleep through the night,”
Tessa said with an uncomfortable chuckle.
Oh. I’m being sent away.
That was fast.
“Okay, sure,”
Hannah said, nodding as her mind unspooled. Why couldn’t they have told her this before she drove four hours from New York? “It was a lot to ask. I’ll see if my driver is still here and I—”
“No, no, I’m explaining this poorly. You can stay. We want you to stay. You just won’t be staying with us.”
“Who will I be staying with then?”
It was bad enough to stay with people she’d never met, but at least they were relatives of her friends. That almost made them her friends, through the transitive property or something.
“My father lives on the other side of the vineyard and has a lovely guest room. I should know—I’ve stayed there many times myself,”
Tessa said.
“Your father?”
“I promise he doesn’t bite and you’ll be perfectly safe. I’m sure Daemon and Liv would agree if you want to check in with them. Honestly, you staying with him would be doing me a favor because I wouldn’t worry so much about whether or not he’s feeding himself,”
Tessa said. “I know it’s not what you were expecting, but I really think you’ll have a much better time and sleep so much more soundly if you stay with him. I can take you back and introduce you before you decide.”
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. It wasn’t what she’d planned, but it was only temporary. And her friends’ parents had always loved her growing up. This would be like that. She shook out her hands, as if she could shake off the anxiety slowly simmering inside her.
It can’t be worse than paparazzi climbing the fire escape.
Tessa led Hannah down the hallway past even more black and white family photos and glass doors offering glimpses of rooms filled with artfully displayed bottles of wine. At the end of the hall, the only solid wood door in the place stood slightly ajar. Tessa pushed it open, sauntering into the large office space. Like the lobby, it was decorated in dark hardwood and leather with an entire wall of windows overlooking the vineyard.
“Hey, T. When did you get here?”
Ethan’s familiar voice crashed into Hannah, bringing her up short as her eyes caught a glimpse of the man in question through the partially open door. She froze where she stood in the hallway, drinking in the sight of him—strong forearms beneath the neatly rolled sleeves of his shirt, the beard she’d become intimately acquainted with only a few days before—
“Just now.”
Tessa gestured towards the doorway where Hannah stood. “It’s alright. You can come in.”
For a moment, Hannah considered turning around and running, begging Micah to send the car service back to pick her up, locking herself in her apartment and ignoring the photographers with their incessant phone calls and pounding on her door. She’d thank Daemon and Liv but tell them she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stay here. Not when Ethan was standing right there looking at her like he’d seen a ghost—
But she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
She took a deep breath and stepped into the office.
“Hannah?”
Ethan’s forehead creased, his brows drawing together, and he moved towards Hannah with alarming speed and a confused sort of half-smile. “What are you doing here?”
“You know each other?”
Tessa asked.
His eyes flicked back towards Tessa, his lips pressed together. “We’re acquainted.”
“What are you doing here?”
Hannah asked, the panic she’d barely contained stirring and stretching in her chest.
His eyes crinkled and his lips spread into a smile, disarming and questioning, and she wasn’t sure if she should kiss him or run.
Run. Definitely run.
Or kiss him.
Maybe kiss him?
“I live here. This is my vineyard,”
Ethan said, looking at her like she should have known that crucial piece of information.
But how could she have known? She didn’t know anything about Ethan.
Except that he can make you come five times in one night with his tongue alone.
“So you must be…”
“My father,”
Tessa said, filling in the end of Hannah’s sentence.
No. This couldn’t be happening. Tessa’s father should be an old, decrepit man with thinning white hair and a cane. A frail senior citizen. Not Ethan. Not the man who knew how to make Hannah’s eyes roll back in her head and her toes curl.
Oh, God, she shouldn’t have had that breakfast burrito at the highway rest stop. She was going to be sick, right there in Ethan’s office.
Tessa’s eyes narrowed with concern. “Are you alright?”
Hannah tried to smile but it came out as more of a grimace.
“I’m going to get you a bottle of water.”
Tessa slipped past her, back out into the hallway, leaving Hannah and Ethan alone.
“If you’re not here to see me, then what are you doing here?”
Ethan asked.
“I’m—I’m here to see Tessa,”
she said. It was sort of true. Half true, at least. “You never told me you had a daughter.”
“You never asked.”
Ethan had a daughter. A stunning, full-on adult daughter who reappeared at that moment with a bottle of water.
“Look, Han, now’s not really a good time,”
Ethan said. “We’re expecting someone any minute.”
Tessa glanced between them. “Dad—”
Ethan continued, “Why don’t I call you later and we can get dinner and talk?”
“Ethan, I’m not—”
“I really am glad to see you,”
he said, squeezing her bicep, his fingers trailing down her forearm and brushing against her hand, leaving heat in its wake.
Tessa eyed Ethan warily. “How do you two know each other again?”
“We’re good friends,”
Ethan said, his eyes crinkling as his smile widened. Something low in Hannah’s belly clenched in response to that smile.
Not now.
“Dad, this is Daemon’s friend, Hannah. The actress from New York we told you about,”
Tessa said slowly, as though she were explaining it to a child.
The confusion on Ethan’s face contorted into a look of pain. Betrayal. “You? You’re the one who’s hiding out because her boyfriend cheated on her?”
Her mouth went dry and she forgot how to speak as his expression shifted, the mask of a man she didn’t recognize replacing the openness and sparkle that had been in his eyes only moments before.
God, what must he think of me?
Ethan shook his head and spoke firmly, as though he could bend reality to his will. “No, there’s been a mistake. You’re not—I just saw you a few days ago. You— No.”
He stormed away from her, disappearing behind his desk and shuffling papers like he was going to find something to prove she didn’t belong there.
“I should give you two a minute.”
Tessa inched towards the door, slipping through the opening and closing it behind herself with a soft snick.
“Ethan.”
He didn’t look up. He just stood there, shaking his head and shifting through paperwork. “Will you please look at me?”
“You were in a relationship with someone else when we…”
He trailed off, his voice gone cold.
She swallowed. “It’s complicated.”
“It’s not, though, Hannah. Either you were someone else’s girlfriend when you asked me to meet you in Boston last weekend or you weren’t.”
“Technically—”
“Don’t do that shit. There is no gray area here. Did you use me to cheat on him, or didn’t you?”
“No.”
She took a step forward, willing her voice not to shake. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t. Ethan, you and I—”
“But that’s why you’re here. Not to see me—”
He broke off, pressing his lips together. “You’re here because there’s some scandal with your boyfriend and you need to hide from the press.”
She swallowed. Nodded. “Jesus, I almost feel bad for the fucker. He’s getting dragged through the mud and you did the same thing.”
“I didn’t. Jackson and I—”
Ethan growled, a low rumbling sound of disapproval that did very inconvenient things to the parts of her struggling to remember it wasn’t a sexy growl.
“We were never really together,”
she blurted. Ethan’s brow furrowed deeper, his eyes narrowing to slits. “It was all a show for the media.”
“Explain,”
he said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Jackson was my co-star in a Broadway show, a musical adaptation of the Bridget Jones movies.”
A moment of surprise flickered across his face before he locked it back down, shuttering any emotion. “The show was filmed for a theatrical release. It’s going to be the start of his big comeback moment, but he needed to clean up his image. He didn’t want people to think of him as the ‘heartbreaker’ of Midnight Storm anymore. And the fans of the show were already speculating about us… So, we made an agreement that until the film released, we’d pretend to be a couple.”
“Why would you do that?”
She hesitated. “Because he’s a friend and he needed me.”
Ethan seemed to consider this as he studied her face. “But you still called me last weekend. Why?”
She didn’t have a good answer to his question. She’d been asking herself the same thing ever since she’d left him. It had been a stupid, risky move, but the idea of being in Boston—in their city—and not seeing Ethan had been untenable. “I wanted to see you.”
“Weren’t you afraid someone would see us together?”
“Hardly anyone ever recognizes me outside of the theatre district. At least, they didn’t before yesterday.”
“And your boyfriend didn’t care you were fucking another man?”
She closed her eyes against the harshness of his tone, the bitterness dripping from each consonant and the cold look in his eyes. She’d never seen him like this and it made her want to rewind, go back and do this whole thing over, never get out of the car in the first place and keep driving until… What? You have nowhere else to go.
“He’s not my boyfriend. He never was.”
“He got closer to a relationship with you than I ever did.”
“That’s not true. I never slept with him.”
“But you didn’t hide him in a hotel room out of town either.”
“I’m not the only one who was hiding,”
she shot back, anger seeping through her veins where her anxiety had been only moments before. “We both agreed. It was just supposed to be sex.”
“I remember what we agreed,”
he seethed. “My mistake for thinking that after three fucking years it was time to admit—”
Her stupid heart fluttered in her chest, hope warring with her rapidly cooling anger. She didn’t want to fight with him. She didn’t want to push him away. “Admit what?”
“This is…a lot.”
A thousand emotions flashed over his face that she couldn’t read, except the one coming through loud and clear: disappointment.
Her stomach twisted. “It’s still me. I’m still the same person you’ve known for the last three years.”
“That’s the thing, though, isn’t it, Han? We don’t really know each other at all.”
∞∞∞
Jamie: Ethan, what’s the deal with you and Daemon’s friend?
Ethan: There’s no deal.
Jamie: That’s not what Tessa said.
Gavin: Ooo, ratted out by your own daughter. That’s gotta sting.
Jamie: Tessa said you know each other.
Baz: That’s not possible. Ethan doesn’t know anyone outside of Aster Bay.
Ethan: Fuck you. You’re more of a misanthrope than I am.
Baz: Yes, but I own it.
Gavin: How do you know her?
Ethan: It’s a long story.
Ethan: And it doesn’t matter. I said she could stay with me and I’m a man of my word.
Jamie: Tessa said she couldn’t tell if you were gonna fight this woman or fuck her.
Ethan: She did not.
Jamie: Believe me, it hurt her to speculate about your dick as much as it’s hurting you to hear it.
Baz: Which is it? Fuck or fight?
Gavin: Whatever happened to taking a woman to dinner first?
Jamie: Not a bad idea. You should invite her to trivia.
Ethan: No. She doesn’t want to spend any more time with me than I want to spend with her.
Gavin: Uh oh. Grumpy Ethan has entered the chat.
Jamie: If this is going to be a problem, I can ask someone else to take her in.
Gavin: I’m sure my mom would be happy to.
Ethan: It’s not a problem.
Baz: Because he’s choosing fuck.
Ethan: I’m not choosing fuck.
Gavin: You can’t choose fight!
Ethan: I’m not choosing either. She caught me off guard, that’s all. Nothing is going to happen between us and I’m not going to fight with her so Tessa can’t stop worrying.
Jamie: Then why can’t you invite her to trivia?
Gavin: Oh! Maybe he’s choosing flirt!
Baz: The precursor to fuck.
Ethan: I hate you all.