Chapter Five
I gathered all of my notes together, menus, seating charts, delivery schedules, and ran through my mental checklist one last time.
Everything for tomorrow was in place.
Well, mostly.
I’d learned the hard way never to call anything “done” until the bride had walked down the aisle and no one had fainted.
Still, I’d earned five minutes of peace.
I poured a small glass of the house white, the kind of crisp Margaret River Chardonnay that could almost make you forget your inbox existed, and sank into one of the plush couches in the formal lounge.
The room was all soaring A-frame ceilings, polished timber beams, and a statement stone fireplace that dominated the far wall, the whole space styled to within an inch of its life. It was undeniably luxurious.
Outside the floor to ceiling windows, the vines stretched across the hills in neat, silvery rows.
I could almost relax.
Then came the sound of footsteps in the corridor. Slow, steady, definitely not a guest.
Noah appeared in the doorway, still in his work clothes, the faintest trace of dust on his shirt sleeves and a half-empty bottle of shiraz dangling from one hand.
His expression flickered with surprise. Then again, he always looked a little surprised, as if human company was an optional extra he hadn’t ordered.
“Couldn’t resist checking things one more time?” he asked, leaning casually against the doorframe.
“Couldn’t resist making sure I hadn’t rearranged the place?” I said, lifting my glass.
His mouth twitched, the closest I’d seen to a smile all day.
We held each other’s gaze a beat too long before I turned back to the window, pretending to admire the view again.
He took a few steps into the room, moving with that unhurried, casual confidence that made me want to both admire and shake him.
“Well, if you’re going to trespass in my lounge, the least I can do is offer you something better than that white,” he said, holding up the bottle. “Shiraz. Proper drink for a long day.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Nice of you.”
“Consider it a peace offering,” he said, pouring two glasses before I could argue. “Can’t have a war breaking out before the wedding.”
I took the glass, our fingers almost brushing as he passed it over.
The silence stretched again, comfortable this time, in that unexpected way that happens when you’re both too tired to keep up your defences.
The wine was smoother than I expected, dark and full, the kind that wrapped around your tongue and refused to be rushed. Noah leaned back in his chair, one arm slung lazily across the backrest, his eyes fixed on the view outside.
“It’s different out here at night,” I said after a while. “Like the place is keeping its own secrets.”
He looked over at me, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Secrets, huh? That’s one way to describe it.”
“So there are secrets,” I said, smiling.
“Oh, this place has stories all right,” he said.
He took another slow sip of wine, then rested the glass on his knee. “My grandfather Edward used to say the land remembers everything. Every storm, every good season. He believed it held on to the people, too.”
There was something almost reverent in his tone, a rare softness that made me sit forward in my seat. “Your family’s had this place a long time, haven’t they?”
He nodded. “It started with my great grandfather, Henry Langston. He came back from the war in ’45 with nothing but a few coins and a head full of stubborn ideas.”
Noah’s voice altered slightly, the usual clipped edge giving way to something more careful.
“Bought this land the next year, it was all scrub back then, full of wattle and snakes. Originally, he intended to farm the land. But it was too dry, too rocky, wrong side of the ridge. They said he’d be lucky to get anything but dust for his trouble. ”
He paused for a moment, looking towards the dark window beyond us.
“Of course, it wasn’t really empty. The Wadandi people had been walking this land for thousands of years.
I never got told much about that part, but…
sometimes I think he knew what it meant to live in a place that already had so much history in it. ”
There was a subdued honesty in his tone, almost reflective.
“He cleared the bush with an axe and a bad back, built a hut from old timber and scavenged tin. There’s a story about him dragging the first posts for the fences by hand when the horse went lame. He just kept going, day after day, until there was something that resembled farmable land.”
I could almost see it, red dirt and thick eucalyptus, a man with sun-cracked hands and a will that refused to bend.
“Henry built everything himself,” Noah said, nodding towards the window. “The original homestead? His. Even that oak by the drive, grown from a seed he carried back from the war. He said he wanted proof that something good could grow from something terrible.”
I imagined heat shimmering over scrub, sky bleached thin as paper, one man with an axe and more stubbornness than sense, carving out land that didn’t want to give. The kind of determination that either built something lasting… or broke you trying.
“But my grandfather Edward wanted to do something more with the land than his father had. Henry ran it as a farm, but Edward had bigger ideas. He went to Europe in the early sixties to study viticulture, back when people only suspected Margaret River might be good wine country. He came back in ’67 and planted some of the first vines in the region. ”
Noah’s voice relaxed as he spoke, his usual guarded tone melting away. “He met my grandmother Elsie not long after that. She was a nurse at the Busselton hospital, one of the first in the district. She treated him after he nearly took his thumb off building the wine cellar.”
I smiled. “Romantic.”
He laughed under his breath, that low, surprised kind of laugh that made him look younger.
“Painful, more like it. But she must’ve seen something in him.
They built everything together, the house, the cellar, even the labels for the first bottles.
Elsie used to hand-paint them. Said no two were ever the same, and that was kind of the point. ”
He leaned back in his chair, swirling the shiraz in his glass, eyes catching the faint reflection of the firelight. “The first proper vintage was bottled in 1971,” he said. “Only a few hundred cases. They corked each one by hand.”
He smiled faintly, and there was something underneath it. Pride, maybe. “There’s still one bottle left in the cellar. They never opened it.”
I glanced out towards the window where the vines stretched into the darkness, their leaves catching bits of moonlight like silver threads. I tried to imagine that first harvest, the relief, the pride, the exhaustion that must’ve sunk into their bones.
I studied him for a bit, the set of his jaw, the tired ease of his posture, the way his thumb traced the rim of his glass without thinking.
He was still that kind of man, I realised.
The kind who built things by hand, even if it meant breaking a few knuckles along the way.
The kind who didn’t talk about what it cost.
“Edward sounds… kind of incredible,” I said in a hushed voice. “Starting a vineyard from nothing like that.”
“Yeah.” His eyes flicked to the window again. “He never asked for help and didn’t give much away. Tough as nails but fair. If someone worked hard, he looked after them. But he never talked about the people who helped him start it all.”
He paused, swirling his glass, the dark wine catching the firelight in slow, lazy ribbons. “He kept everything else though. Journals, harvest notes, rainfall charts, even the moon phases for every season. Shelves of them in the old study.”
I leaned back, watching the way the light flickered across his face. There was something in the way he said it, not curiosity, exactly, but the faint unease of someone who’d grown up inside a story without ever being told the ending.
Something about it made me shiver, not fear, exactly, but the feeling of brushing up against a story half-told.
“Sounds like he was… private,” I said gently.
“Fiercely,” Noah replied. “You couldn’t pry things out of him with a crowbar.”
I nodded, letting the silence settle between us. “Your dad must’ve been proud of you for keeping the Langston legacy going.”
A faint smile crossed his face, there and gone again. “Maybe. I don’t know. He died when I was ten, car accident. My grandfather taught me everything after that, the vines, the soil, when to panic and when to just pour another glass and wait it out.”
I chuckled and for a moment, neither of us said anything. Leaves rustled softly outside, the wind moving through them like it had secrets.
I set my glass down and smiled. “Thanks for sharing that. I can see why this place means so much to you.”
He gave a small shrug, his mouth quirking into something halfway between pride and self-doubt. “Yeah, well. My family built it to last. Guess I’m just trying not to mess it up.”
There was a vulnerability in his voice I hadn’t heard before, a small crack in the gruff vineyard-owner act. For a second, I didn’t know what to say. The air between us felt like the pause after a song ends and no one wants to move.
So I did what I always do when things get too sincere. I filled the silence. “Don’t worry,” I said, taking the last sip of my wine. “I’m sure I’ll keep you too busy this week to ruin anything.”
He let out a snort, one that sounded like it surprised even him. “I don’t doubt that for a second.”
I stood, setting my glass on the side table. “Thanks for the wine. And the history lesson.”
He nodded, leaning back in his chair. “Anytime.”
I was halfway to the doorway when he said, almost absently, “Edward used to say the vines hold a kind of magic. Maybe that’s why they behave for me.”
I turned, one hand on the doorframe. “That sounds oddly sentimental.”
He smiled, small and wry. “He had his moments. I’m just quoting for effect.”
I grinned. “Well, tell the vines they’ve got a busy week ahead, minimal drama, maximum charm.”
He lifted his glass in a lazy salute. “I’ll pass it on.”