Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Blackwood Estate
Morning
Aubrey woke feeling like she’d lost an argument with sleep.
Sun knifed through the guest room windows, burning the mountain fog off the glass in a blinding, aggressive glare that promised brutal June heat by noon.
She sat up, linen sheets sliding off her bare legs.
She hadn’t slept. Every time her eyes drifted shut, the tight, dark space of the bedroom doorway closed in around her—the heat of Bennett’s breathing, the solid weight of his hand on her arm, the raw gravel of his voice calling her bluff, her skin still tingling where his rough overnight stubble had brushed her cheek.
Do you want me to kiss you, Princess? Or do you need me to?
“Arrogant vineyard troll,” she muttered, plowing a hand through her unbrushed hair. Her body was stubbornly refusing to forget the absolute certainty of his hold.
Her phone buzzed against the nightstand.
Machelle: Good morning from civilized society. Important update: I have all the clothes and things you wanted shipped boxed up, taped, and ready to go. Julian dropped them off at FedEx this morning, so you should have everything by Thursday afternoon.
Machelle: Also, Julian already moved the rest of your personal items to secure storage and found a new VP in corporate compliance who wants to sublet your West Chester condo until you come home.
It’s handled, babe. Your life is officially on ice until next June.
Miss you at martinis. Let us know if you need us to mail anything else!
Aubrey blinked, her thumb hovering over the screen.
Julian. Her department's lead acquisitions analyst. Her closest ally on the Ashford board. A man who looked as though he'd stepped straight out of the pages of GQ.
She let out a breath that was half laugh, half a sigh. Her life in Philadelphia was being disassembled, folded into cardboard, taped shut, and loaded onto some anonymous delivery truck, leaving her stranded in a valley that smelled like crushed grapes, cow manure, and Bennett McCrae.
She swung her legs out of bed and forced herself upright, moving on muscle memory. A quick shower. She spent an extra five minutes under the spray, letting the hot water pound against her shoulders, hoping it would quiet everything that had happened the night before.
Why was this man getting under her skin? Good grief, he was sexy—she could admit that much—but the last thing she needed was a man who walked around like he owned this mountain.
She applied moisturizer, then dabbed concealer over the dark shadows under her eyes.
She donned a tailored cream linen blazer over a black silk camisole and slim black trousers, then stepped into the only pair of sensible loafers she’d packed.
The thin silk of the camisole brushed against her chest—a stark reminder of his body pressed against hers only hours ago.
She looked like she was heading into a merger meeting.
Good.
After last night, she needed every bit of self-control she could muster.
Blackwood Estate Winery
The Mezzanine
The winery was already humming by eight o’clock.
Down on the production floor, a forklift whined as Jack Lockwood directed a pallet of new fermentation valves, his deep voice carrying over the industrial rumble. Stainless-steel tanks gleamed in the high light. Hoses looped across the concrete like coils of sleeping snakes.
Aubrey bypassed the tasting floor, her loafers marking a sharp, disciplined rhythm against the open steel steps as she climbed toward the mezzanine. She did not look toward Bennett’s corner office.
She refused to.
At the top of the stairs, the center glass double doors stood open.
Walter Grady sat behind Mabel’s desk. Wire-rimmed glasses perched low on the bridge of his nose, silver hair neatly parted, a crisp blue button-down rolled precisely twice at the cuffs.
He looked grandfatherly, patient, and completely indispensable.
He looked up as her shadow touched the glass, a warm, soft smile tugging at his mouth.
“Well now, look at you,” Walter drawled, his voice a soothing, small-town cadence. “You look like Anne when she had her mind set on getting something done. Come on in, child.”
“Morning, Walter,” Aubrey said, stepping into the office.
“I have the primary asset ledgers from the last five fiscal years laid out for you,” Walter said, patting a thick stack of leather-bound binders.
“Bennett handles the dirt, but someone around here has to manage the truth of where the dollars land. I figured a city girl like you would appreciate a clear column.”
“I live for clear columns,” Aubrey admitted, sliding into the leather chair opposite him.
For the next two hours, Walter was the perfect teacher. Patient. Thorough. Completely transparent.
He walked her through distribution margins for Mercer, the rising cost of French oak barrels, and the exact agricultural tax exemptions Mabel had secured for the cattle land across the road. The numbers were complicated, but they made sense.
“Mabel was a force,” Walter said quietly, taking a slow sip of his coffee. His gaze drifted out through the glass wall to the production floor, where the staff moved efficiently between tanks. “But she could be hard.
Aubrey paused, her pen hovering over a ledger line noting an uncharacteristically large corporate expense from three years ago. “Hard how?”
Walter glanced back at her. The reflection off his wire-rimmed glasses obscured his expression.
“Your mother,” he said softly, “Anne had a way about her, you know.
Beautiful... impossible to ignore. Wild as a briar rose, but she had a heart that felt things deeply.
When everything happened, the town slowly stopped talking about Anne.
Before long, it was as if she'd never belonged here at all. "
Something in Aubrey’s chest pulled tight. Hearing it from Walter—the man who had watched it happen from the inside—made her realize how little she actually knew.
“Mabel didn’t leave her anything, did she?” Aubrey asked quietly. “Until this will.”
Walter was silent for a moment, looking down through the glass at the production floor.
“Not a penny,” he said softly.
His fingers turned the coffee mug slowly between his palms.
“Truth is, child, there are folks in this valley who never quite got over what happened back then.”
Aubrey glanced up.
Walter gave a small shrug.
“Anne was gone. Mabel was here. That’s the version everybody ended up living with. Small towns have a way of remembering the ending and forgetting everything that came before it."
The old bookkeeper smiled faintly, though there wasn’t much humor in it.
“Funny thing about ledgers, though. Numbers balance. People don’t.”
Aubrey looked back down at the open binder.
Walter took another slow sip of coffee.
“Some things never get balanced properly,” he said quietly. “Not even after decades.”
An hour later, Aubrey had three spreadsheets open on her laptop, two legal pads filled with notes, and a new respect for how much money people would spend on fermented grapes.
Walter sat across from her, reviewing a stack of invoices while she worked through a binder labeled **LAND ACQUISITIONS — HISTORICAL**. The records stretched back decades: parcel purchases, timber rights, equipment leases, conservation easements.
Mabel apparently kept everything.
Aubrey flipped another page.
Something slid free from between two sheets of paper and drifted onto the desk.
A photograph.
Walter looked up over his glasses. “What’ve you found there?”
Aubrey picked it up.
The photograph was old, the corners faded and soft. Three people stood in front of a much smaller version of Blackwood Winery. A young man with dark hair. A blonde woman laughing at something off camera. And another woman beside her. Beautiful.
Aubrey’s breath caught.
Anne. Young and beautiful.
Aubrey recognized her mother immediately.
But it wasn't Anne that stole her breath.
It was the way she and Mabel looked at each other.
“What year is this?” she asked.
Walter lowered his coffee mug, squinting. “Oh Lord.” Something softened across his face. “Long time ago.” Aubrey stared harder.
The photograph didn't match the stories she'd grown up hearing.
Anne wasn't standing apart. She wasn't angry. She wasn't isolated.
She was laughing.
And so was Mabel.
The sisters had their arms thrown around each other.
Walter smiled faintly. "Used to be thick as thieves."
"My mother never talked about that," Aubrey said.
"No," Walter replied quietly. "I suppose she wouldn't."
Silence settled between them.
Aubrey studied the photograph again...
A family.
Not yet enemies.
"People change," she said finally.
Walter's expression grew distant. "Sometimes they get hurt."
Aubrey slid the picture back onto the desk, the story she'd carried her entire life suddenly shifting beneath her feet. Maybe her mother hadn't told her everything.
As he did, a small square of yellow slipped halfway out from beneath a clipped stack of expense reports. Aubrey caught the neon edge and tugged it free before it fell.
A sticky note. Edges curled. Ink still dark.
Two lines in Mabel’s firm, uncompromising cursive:
AUbrEY — SALARY?
Eleanor – match Ashford.
Heat stung behind Aubrey’s eyes.
That wasn’t a whim.
That was a plan.
She slid the note back under the reports before Walter could see her hand shake, tucking it neatly where it had been hidden. When she looked up, he was already reaching for another ledger.
“Now let’s see if we can figure out why Mabel paid twelve thousand dollars for replacement irrigation pumps in 2018,” he said.
Outside the glass wall, a forklift beeped across the production floor.
Aubrey tightened her grip on her pen.
Mabel hadn’t just left her Blackwood.
She’d been preparing for her.
Mezzanine
Aubrey stepped out of Walter’s office an hour later, a manila folder of efficiency reports tucked under her arm—numbers she wanted to cross-reference with Zack Fowler’s production logs.
The air along the catwalk was cooler, conditioned against the mountain heat, but the second she leaned her forearms against the black steel railing, the temperature in her blood spiked.
Bennett was standing at the base of the suspended tasting bar below.
He wore his default viticulturist uniform—dark, clay-dusted denim; a faded black T-shirt that clung to the heavy, solid breadth of his shoulders; work boots planted wide on the concrete.
He was speaking quietly with Savannah, a clipboard in his large hand, his face set in that flat, disciplined mask he wore for the world.
As if he felt the weight of her gaze, Bennett glanced up.
His eyes locked onto hers through the glass railing of the mezzanine. He didn’t blink. He didn’t smile. Something in his expression sharpened, his eyes holding hers.
He tracked her slowly. His gaze drifted down the structured lines of her cream blazer, lingered on the slight glimpse of skin above her black silk camisole, then rose to the flawless chignon at the back of her head.
He looked at her as though he remembered the woman beneath the tailored linen—eyes wide, fingers fisted in his shirt in the dark hallway.
Twenty-four hours ago, she’d nearly broken an ankle in heels and snapped at cellar crews.
Today, she carried herself like someone about to acquire a Fortune 500 company.
But beneath the safety of her tailored linen, her heart lurched. The memory of his forearm bracing her hips, the raw heat of his body, flared between them so sharply that Aubrey’s fingers crinkled the edges of the manila folder.
He didn't look like a business partner.
He looked like the man who'd held her against the bedroom wall the night before.
Slowly, Bennett gave her a single, almost imperceptible nod—a silent challenge that said, Your move, Princess—before turning back to Savannah's clipboard.
Aubrey gripped the steel railing. He was entirely too comfortable, too confident that he’d won.
But as her thumb brushed the phone in her pocket, thinking of Machelle's text, a slow, dangerous smile touched her lips.
Bennett McCrae thought he owned this mountain. He had no idea what happened when corporate compliance came to harvest.