Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
Blackwood Winery
Aubrey
The irritation followed her all the way down the mezzanine stairs and straight out of the production barn.
The June heat had settled over the valley, thick and close. Aubrey shoved her sunglasses onto her face and marched down the stone path with no destination in mind, desperate to outrun the contradictions clawing at her ribs.
Nothing matched. Not her mother’s stories. Not Walter’s quiet version of events. Not the kingdom spreading out around her.
The lane curved past the tasting room toward the vineyard blocks.
Rows of vines marched across the hillsides in perfect formation, their leaves catching the sunlight in a thousand shades of green.
Aubrey had spent years negotiating luxury projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
She knew expensive. She knew curated. She knew how to sell the illusion of permanence.
Blackwood wasn’t an illusion.
Blackwood was permanent.
The path narrowed into an older stone walk through a secluded corner of the property. Boxwoods crowded the trail. Hydrangeas exploded in white and pale blue. Climbing roses twisted around an iron arbor weathered silver with age. At the end of the path sat a gazebo overlooking the valley.
A faint, irrational sense of déjà vu brushed the back of her neck. As if she’d been here once before, much smaller, with skinned knees and someone’s warm hand wrapped around hers.
The white paint had faded soft at the edges; the roof shingles had gone silver in the sun. Aubrey climbed the steps. Shade wrapped around her in a cooler hush. She sat on the wooden bench, leaning her head back against a corner post, eyes tracing the terraced rows rolling down the mountain.
From here, the estate didn’t look like a resort or a line item. The mountains rose layer after layer toward the horizon, sunlight flashing off a distant sliver of water while a hawk wheeled high above the vines. Wind moved through the leaves like a ripple across a green ocean.
Beautiful.
Her mother had spent thirty years describing Blackwood as a wound. Standing here, Aubrey couldn’t reconcile that with what she was seeing. The place didn’t feel like a prison or a legal hostage situation.
It felt like something that had been waiting for her.
A faint mark in the wood near her shoulder caught her eye.
Carved into the gazebo post were dozens of initials. Generations of them. Dates. Names. Memories. Near the bottom, one set looked older than the rest.
A.M.
Beside it, cut at the same depth:
M.M.
The letters sat side by side.
Aubrey stared, her pulse giving a sharp, disbelieving kick.
Anne McAllister. Mabel McAllister.
The photograph from Walter’s office flashed behind her eyes—her mother laughing, Mabel’s arm hooked around her shoulders, Harold in the background with a bottle held high.
A family. Not enemies. Not yet.
Maybe her mother hadn’t told her everything. Maybe nobody had.
“They used to hide out up here when Harold’s father was tearing up the lower pastures,” a rough baritone rumbled. “Mabel told me she and Anne practically lived up here some summers.”
Aubrey jolted, her heart slamming against her ribs as she lurched to her feet.
Bennett stood at the base of the gazebo steps.
He leaned against the railing, heavy leather work gloves tucked into the back pocket of his clay-dusted denim.
His black T-shirt clung to his powerful frame, damp with sweat, outlining the solid strength of his chest. His gold-flecked eyes didn’t so much blink as slowly assess her, tracing the structured lines of her cream blazer and the low cut of her black silk camisole.
“You are going to give me a heart attack,” Aubrey snapped, pressing a hand to her chest. “Is it a requirement on this mountain to stalk the management?”
One corner of his mouth twitched. “You’re standing in the middle of my afternoon pruning block, Princess. If anyone’s stalking, it’s you.”
He climbed the wooden steps, his heavy work boots sending a dull tremor right through the floorboards—and straight up her spine.
The tight space of the gazebo suddenly shrank, consumed by the sheer heat rolling off him.
He stopped a foot away, crowding her back against the wooden bench.
His gaze dropped to the carved initials.
Aubrey swallowed, her fingers hovering above the letters, hyper-aware of his shoulder.
“Walter showed me a photograph,” she said, her voice losing its defensive edge as she traced the A.M. with the tip of her finger. “My mother never mentioned carving their initials up here. She never mentioned being happy here with Mabel.”
“No?” Bennett asked quietly. He shoved his hands deep into his front pockets and looked out over the valley. “Mabel always said it was good once. Real good. She never talked about what happened to make it go bad.”
Aubrey huffed out a bitter laugh. “So she told you it was good once and then stopped there,” she said, tracing the M.M. again. “That tracks. Everybody’s got a fragment, but nobody will say why it all went to hell, and somehow I’m the one walking around like a ghost in somebody else’s mess.”
Bennett was silent for a long moment. The mountain breeze stirred the hemlocks; the vines below whispered against their trellises.
“Because people prefer villains, Aubrey,” he said at last, his voice dropping into that low, gravelly register. “Villains are easy. They give you a clean place to put your anger. Complicated hurts too much.”
The brutal honesty of it knocked the breath from her lungs. She stared up at him, the walls she'd rebuilt after last night useless, against the weight of his gaze.
He looked down at her mouth, his eyes darkening for one heavy, silent beat—bringing back the memory of the bedroom threshold where he’d held her flush against his chest the night before.
"Your aunt wasn't perfect," Bennett added, a humorless smile touching his mouth. "Neither was your mother. Mabel always said it hadn't always been like this. They loved each other once."
Aubrey looked away, her throat burning as she turned back toward the view. Far below, the oldest trunks along the lower ridge cast long, twisted shadows.
“That block down there,” she said, desperate to steer her mind away from his mouth. “Closest to the ridge. That’s the original?”
“Yeah. Harold planted those. Forty-two years old and still producing fruit. The entire winery started right there.”
He stepped past her, his sleeve brushing against her bare arm, leaving a trail of static friction in its wake. He paused at the top of the steps, looking back over his shoulder.
“You’re a long way from your martini bar, Princess,” he said quietly.
Aubrey looked out over the endless green rows, the fight draining right out of her. “Yeah.”
Bennett was quiet for a beat.
“There’s a place in Sylva,” he said. “Best burger in the county. Cold beer that doesn’t come with a tasting note.”
She glanced at him, her carefully rebuilt composure trying to flare. “And?”
“And,” Bennett went on, his tone dropping an octave, “I was thinking we could call it a truce. One night. No ledgers, no inheritance clauses, no trying to fire each other. A burger and a beer so you can see the town you supposedly hate.”
Aubrey hesitated. Her life in Philadelphia was taped into boxes and moving through a FedEx distribution center. Her mother’s stories were cracking at the edges. The dirt beneath her feet had outlived more than one family feud.
“Fine,” she said at last, the word tasting reckless on her tongue. “One burger. One beer. Temporary ceasefire.”
“I’ll take it,” Bennett said, stepping down one stair. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“I can drive myself,” she shot back on reflex, her executive independence slamming down like a shield.
Bennett stopped. He turned slowly, climbing back up that single step until he was towering over her again. He leaned down a fraction of an inch, his eyes locked onto hers, and the look stole whatever argument she’d been about to make.
“I know you can, Princess,” he murmured. “I’m still picking you up at seven.”
She opened her mouth to argue, her breath catching as his gaze settled on her lower lip, intentionally letting her know exactly how far her authority extended where he was concerned.
She closed her mouth again.
“Seven,” she repeated instead.
Bennett’s smile deepened. “Try not to overthink it, Langford. It’s a burger, not a merger.”
He turned and walked down the steps, heading toward the pruning block as if he hadn’t just detonated her defenses.
Aubrey stayed where she was, the late sun warm on her shoulders, her inner wrist tingling where her pulse was still racing.
She was supposed to be proving she could run a winery with a man who owned forty percent of it—not replaying the way her knees had buckled when he’d held her against him the night before and brought his mouth within a breath of hers.
She watched him walk down the lane until he disappeared into the shadows of the lower vines.
She reached back, her thumb tracing the faint carved edges of A.M. and M.M. in the aged wood, then smoothed down the lapels of her cream blazer.
Seven o'clock.
She drew in a deep, unsteady breath of mountain air. It was just a burger, she told herself. Just a temporary ceasefire.
But as she looked back out over the rolling green hills, she had an unsettling feeling that Blackwood was already winning.