Chapter 12
TWELVE
Blackwood Estate Winery
Tasting Room
By the time Aubrey walked into the tasting room, the evening was already underway.
Low golden light glowed beneath the pendant fixtures over the black walnut bar while soft jazz threaded under the hum of conversation and crystal. Beyond the towering windows, the mountains had turned dusky blue, vineyard rows disappearing into shadow.
The room carried itself with the quiet confidence of a place that had spent decades earning its name.
Everyone looked like they belonged there.
Men in sport coats and dark denim stood near tasting tables with glasses in hand.
Women in silk blouses and tailored jackets laughed quietly near the windows overlooking the vines.
Names from Mabel’s invoices floated through the air—Mercer Distribution, Asheville Beverage Group, Highland Table, The Overlook, Biltmore Wine Collective.
Savannah moved through the crowd with effortless confidence, a tray of glasses in one hand and the entire room’s rhythm in the other.
Apparently everyone at Blackwood was terrifyingly competent.
Then Bennett looked up.
He’d been leaning against the far end of the walnut bar, speaking with two men Aubrey vaguely recognized from earlier introductions. One hand rested loosely on a glass while the other disappeared into the pocket of his dark trousers beneath a charcoal suit coat.
No tie. Of course not. The open collar of his white shirt somehow made him look more dangerous, not less.
His gaze landed on her. And stopped for a second.
But it was enough.
The conversation around him seemed to fade as his eyes moved over her slowly—the dark green dress, her hair, the heels she already regretted wearing on mountain stone.
Something unreadable flickered across his face before he smoothed it away.
“Well,” he said when she reached him, voice rougher than before. “That’s significantly better than the Penn sweatshirt.”
Aubrey lifted a brow.
“Careful. You’re staring.”
“Occupational hazard.”
“Take a picture,” she said smoothly. “It lasts longer.”
His eyes narrowed a fraction.
“Like you did this morning?”
Heat shot straight into her face.
Across the room, Savannah nearly choked on champagne.
“Oh my God,” Aubrey hissed.
“You left your phone face up on the kitchen counter, Princess.”
“That was an invasion of privacy.”
“That,” Bennett said calmly, “was amateur hour.”
A laugh slipped out before she could stop it.
For one brief second his expression shifted—warmer, younger—then one of the distributors approached.
“McCrae,” the silver-haired man said, offering his hand to Aubrey. “You must be the niece.”
“Aubrey Langford.”
“Stephen Reynolds.” He smiled. “Your winemaker’s been intimidating half the restaurant industry all afternoon insisting nobody else in western North Carolina can touch your Cabernet Franc.”
Bennett didn’t even blink.
“Because they can’t.”
Stephen laughed.
“You see what we deal with?”
Aubrey glanced at Bennett.
“I’m starting to.”
Savannah appeared with fresh wine.
“Tree of Life Reserve,” she told Aubrey quietly. “Brace yourself.”
Aubrey accepted the glass.
“You all act like this wine cures disease.”
“It might,” Savannah said.
Bennett took a sip from his own glass without looking away from Aubrey.
“Drink it.”
The challenge in his voice was unmistakable.
Fine.
She lifted the glass.
The wine arrived rich and dark at first—blackberry and oak and something warmer she couldn’t quite name. Then the finish opened slowly across her tongue, deeper and smoother than she’d expected, carrying smoke and earth and a strange, clean note she could only think of as mountain air.
Her eyes lifted to Bennett automatically.
Which unfortunately seemed to satisfy him.
“That look,” he said quietly, “is why people keep writing checks.”
She hated that she understood immediately.
“Oh,” she admitted softly.
“Yeah,” he said.
Near the windows, another buyer swirled his glass.
“The mineral structure on this is incredible.”
“That’s the north ridge,” Bennett answered easily.
Every head turned toward Bennett.
Aubrey found herself standing beside Savannah, watching him work.
Not flirt. Not charm.
Command.
He spoke about Blackwood as though it lived under his skin—elevation and fog lines and granite in the soil. Late frost and harvest timing. Why the north ridge vines struggled harder than the lower blocks.
“They shouldn’t work up there,” he said simply. “That’s why they do.”
People listened.
Actually listened.
Aubrey found that deeply annoying.
“He’s good at this,” she murmured.
Savannah smiled into her glass.
“He loves this place.”
The words landed harder than she expected.
Across the room, Bennett’s gaze flicked back to her like it had never left.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
It did.
Zack Fowler wandered up beside them carrying a bourbon instead of wine.
“I just watched three distributors agree to price increases because McCrae stared at them long enough,” he said conversationally. “Honestly, it was impressive.”
Savannah sighed.
“Zack.”
“What? The man negotiates like a Viking warlord.”
Aubrey laughed despite herself.
Zack looked delighted.
“Oh good,” he said. “You have a personality. Vanessa owes me twenty dollars.”
“Those were the options?” Aubrey asked.
“Vanessa said Bennett’s mysterious heiress would be terrifying or homicidal.” Zack took a sip of his drink. “I said she’d be hot and sarcastic.”
Savannah closed her eyes briefly.
“You made a bet.”
“Absolutely. Welcome to Mercer Distribution.”
Across the room, Bennett’s eyes narrowed at whatever expression Zack was wearing.
Zack noticed, of course. His grin only widened.
“Oh,” he murmured happily. “This is going to be fun.”
Savannah clapped her hands once near the front of the tasting room, and half the distributors turned toward her like she’d hit a switch.
“All right, gentlemen,” she called. “If everyone could grab your jackets and whatever remains of your professional dignity, the sprinter vans are outside.”
A low ripple of laughter moved through the room.
Zack lifted his wine.
“Too late for that.”
“Especially you,” Savannah shot back.
The crowd began drifting toward the front doors in warm waves of conversation and glassware and expensive jackets. Staff moved efficiently through the room, clearing stems as someone dimmed the pendant lights a little lower for evening service.
Outside, two sleek black sprinter vans waited beneath the portico, headlights glowing against the gravel drive.
Savannah stood near the steps with a clipboard in one hand and absolute authority in the other.
“Mercer team in the first van,” she called. “Asheville Beverage Group in the second. Stephen, if you wander off again I’m leaving you on the mountain.”
Stephen Reynolds pointed at her in mock outrage.
“She threatens me every quarter.”
“And yet here you are.”
Aubrey turned back toward the bar to grab her bag, the dark green dress skimming over her hips as she walked away.
Savannah watched her go, then glanced sideways at Bennett.
“You know she knows you’re staring, right?”
“I’m not staring,” Bennett said.
“You absolutely are.”
“I’m assessing management.”
Savannah hummed. “Management has great legs.”
His mouth flattened. “You’re fired.”
“You can’t afford me,” she said, already pivoting back toward the steps.
Aubrey paused outside the tasting room doors, watching the organized chaos unfold under the soft vineyard lights.
The whole thing felt polished. Expensive. Established.
Not the charmingly modest, mountain winery she’d expected to inherit.
Not even close.
“You look confused.”
Bennett’s voice.
She turned.
He’d shrugged into a dark charcoal jacket sometime during the tasting, white shirt open at the throat, sleeves pushed back enough to expose the heavy watch at his wrist. The low lights and wine weren’t helping her think rationally around him.
“I’m realizing your supposedly struggling little vineyard operation is significantly fancier than advertised.”
One corner of his mouth lifted.
“We aim to disappoint people slowly.”
Savannah passed by with two forgotten glasses and paused long enough to glance between them.
“Oh, good,” she said dryly. “You’re both still alive.”
“Barely,” Aubrey muttered.
Savannah grinned.
“Try to keep the sexual tension below felony level while I load twelve distributors into luxury transportation.”
Then she vanished toward the vans before Aubrey could die of embarrassment.
Bennett looked entirely too amused.
“She likes you.”
“She’s deranged.”
“She worked here through three wedding seasons and a kitchen fire. That woman fears nothing.”
Outside, the last of the buyers climbed into the sprinters while Zack leaned halfway back out the passenger door.
“McCrae!” he shouted. “You riding with us or brooding separately tonight?”
“Separately,” Bennett called back.
Zack looked delighted by that in a way Aubrey did not trust.
“See you at The Overlook, sweetheart,” he told her cheerfully.
“Don’t encourage him,” Bennett muttered.
“I’m absolutely encouraging him.”
The van doors slid shut. A moment later, the sprinters rolled down the drive, taillights disappearing into the dark.
Aubrey turned automatically toward the gravel lot, already looking for Bennett’s battered truck.
Instead, Bennett’s fingers brushed lightly at the inside of her elbow.
“Wait here.”
She looked up.
“I’ll pull the car around.”
“The car?” she repeated, suspicious.
“Try not to sound so shocked.”
He disappeared down the side drive toward the lower lot. Crickets hummed in the warm June air.
Aubrey folded her arms and waited beneath the portico lights, fully expecting that familiar old truck to come rattling around the curve.
Instead, headlights swept silently across the gravel.
A black Range Rover eased up beneath the covered entrance.
She blinked.
The thing looked expensive enough to come with stock options.
Bennett rolled down the window.
“You getting in or judging me from a distance?”
Aubrey stared at the SUV.
“You own a Range Rover.”
“Get in, Princess.”
She slid into buttery black leather.
“This is deeply upsetting,” she muttered, shutting the door.
“Why?”
“Because you keep turning out to be significantly more complicated than I originally budgeted for.”
His eyes flicked toward her, then back to the road as the Range Rover eased away from the winery, one hand loose on the wheel.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I’ve been having a similar problem.”