The drive into Montgomery Wines wound around the side of a camel-hump shaped hill. In winter, the hill was green. This time of year like everywhere else, it was sun-baked brown. Cars had to leave the safety of the bitumen to drive the two kilometres into the winery and Remy always had the feeling that the Mercedes and BMW drivers braving the gravel path enjoyed the thought they were officially off-road. Gleaming, expensive cars wore the shimmer of dust like a suit of honour. The owners probably didn’t get them washed for a week.
On the Monday of the growers’ meeting, it was too early to have to slow for tourists and she was too preoccupied to pay attention to the view. Parking under some river gums, she left her car without bothering to lock it. No one would steal the car. No one would steal any of its contents either, unless they had a hankering for old Fleetwood Mac CDs, a pair of well-worn Blundstone boots or the big box of vegetable seedlings tucked in the passenger footrest.
Remy had dressed to blend in. Her hair was in a sloppy bun at her neck, cap pulled low over her forehead, big sunglasses. Her usual denim shorts had been replaced by faded denim jeans. Add flat shoes instead of boots and an over-sized blue long-sleeved shirt and she had a look Zac would have called incognito.
She wished she felt incognito. Unfortunately, she felt more like a high-kicking chorus line of neon fairies sat on the brim of her cap, chanting her name. Remy. Remy. Remy.
A sign at the bottom of the stairs directed growers up stone steps to the balcony. From there the timber decking led into the back of Montgomery’s restaurant. Remy had been there plenty of times with Max and Sue, celebrating their big wine show wins, celebrating the Christmas party Max threw every year.
It wasn’t like that now. The atmosphere was subdued. Normally, get a bunch of blokes together they’d be talking football, ribbing each other over teams, talking about what they’d got up to the last weekend, or what might be planned for the weekend ahead.
Quite a few growers had brought wives or partners, which made sense, Remy thought, because these were business decisions that affected the livelihoods of entire Hills families. The wives would want to hear from Seth Lasrey too. Get it straight from the horse’s mouth.
‘Come to see what the new boss has to say, hey, Rem?’ Dave Hackett slotted himself beside her shoulder and they joined the bottleneck at the base of the stairs.
‘Thought I’d better, Dave,’ she said.
The Hackett property was a few kilometres further along Red Gum Valley Road. Dave and Nance had sold grapes to Max Montgomery for years.
‘Heard this Lasrey guy’s a tough operator.’ Dave placed his foot on the bottom step and moved up. ‘Dunno why he had to come sniffing around here anyway.’
‘He smelled blood in the water, I’d say Dave.’
‘Yeah. Maybe. That’s why the big keep getting bigger. Way of the world these days.’
Once he’d crossed the threshold, Dave headed straight for a trestle table laden with white coffee cups and saucers, two big freshly brewed glass coffee jugs, and a stack of sugar in those dainty packets blokes like Dave opened by ripping in half.
Remy ignored the coffee and the trays of mini-muffins. Her stomach was twitchy enough.
It was almost impossible not to surreptitiously hunt the restaurant for Seth, but she didn’t want to risk eye contact. She had no idea what reception she’d get. So here she was—hiding in a group of blokes gathered around the morning tea, trying to work out the safest place to sit.
Carefully, she raised her chin. There. That row of vacant seats behind Matt and Melissa Gilmore. Matt was built like a bus and his wife was even wider. Together, they presented a united front the size of the People’s Republic of China. Aiming for that spot, Remy crossed the polished concrete floor, tucked herself behind the Gilmores, and sank into her chair.
Only then did she push her sunglasses to the top of her cap, and dare to look around.
At the front of the restaurant near the cashier’s counter, two tables had been laid end to end with four chairs behind them, only one of which was currently filled. The person seated wasn’t in a Lasrey uniform, and he wasn’t Seth. Remy let out a slow breath.
Leaning to her right, she peered around Melissa Gilmore’s neck and saw the back of Rina Stein. The woman was in deep conversation with a man near the dessert counter.
Rina’s dark hair was shorter than when Remy had last seen it, cut in layers that shaped her neck. She wore the Lasrey khaki pants and a short-sleeved shirt. Her elbows and hips were every bit as pointy as Remy remembered.
It was the man Rina was talking to who gave Remy her first real shock of the morning. She hadn’t recognised Montgomery’s winemaker, Lewis Carney, in his Lasrey uniform. Lewis never wore uniform. She didn’t think Montgomery Wines had ever even had a uniform. Certainly Max never wore one.
Matt Gilmore bent his head to the right to listen to his wife. Remy leaned with him, pretending to knock a stone out of her shoe. That was when the peal of metal on glass quietened the room like a headmaster’s visit to a classroom of kids.
Remy slumped low in her chair.
‘Can I start by thanking you all for coming? I’m Seth Lasrey. I’ve met some of you already, and it’s great to see so many of Montgomery’s grapegrowers here. I know it’s a busy time of year for you and I appreciate your interest.’
At the sound of Seth’s voice, Remy’s heart moved from jog to sprint, and when Melissa Gilmore tilted her head sharply to the left, Remy was sure Melissa was about to alert the crowd to an animal stampede or an earthquake, so loud was the thumping in her chest.
Melissa beckoned down the aisle and whispered: ‘We saved you a seat.’
‘Yes. Please, sit down,’ Seth broke his speech to encourage a tall man now crab-walking down the Gilmore’s aisle. ‘Make yourself comfortable. There looks like some room in the middle there.’
Melissa shuffled her bulk into the vacant seat on her right, Matt moved too, and through the gap presented by Matt’s now-vacant chair, Remy got a perfect view of Seth at the front of the room, as relaxed in the spotlight as any career politician.
His gaze connected with hers and her heart did a lava lamp somersault through her stomach. Why her heart bothered with the calisthenics Remy didn’t know, because Seth continued his speech without a hitch.
He didn’t even have the decency to blink.
***
The second Remy stepped from her truck, tugging that cap like she’d pull it all the way over her nose if she could, Seth knew she was there. Remy Hanley might try to hide under a new name or a baggy cotton shirt or those sunglasses that hid half her face, but nothing short of a wheelchair could disguise the way she moved.
Watching her walk across the driveway, rubbing shoulders with a big guy with a beard when she got to the steps; laughing with him like they were old friends, she still moved like a goddamned angel. Goddammit.
He knew from what Max had said that she hadn’t let herself go, but that didn’t stop him wishing his first sighting of her in five years didn’t kick him quite so squarely in the balls.
There wasn’t a silver earring in the world that he could see against a woman’s neck without Remy crashing through his thoughts like a fireball.
Silver suited her. There was a time he would have bought her all the silver or gold in the world.
More fool him.
Standing a few steps back from the window on the first floor of the winery building, Seth watched until the angle became too great and he lost her.
‘They’ve all got their cup of tea,’ Rina’s voice dragged his attention from the window. ‘Some are on their second muffin. I’d say it’s as good a time as any to get the show on the road.’
Funny how the mood of a grower meeting could turn based on a free scone. Give a bunch of grapegrowers morning tea and they were happy enough. Skimp on the muffins and you had a mutiny on your hands.
Seth was about to follow Rina into the restaurant when his phone rang. Glancing at the screen, he told her: ‘It’s Bainbridge.’
‘Again?’ Rina made a face. ‘That guy is such an old woman.’
Seth accepted the call and waved Rina on, holding up two fingers. Two minutes. He’d had a gutful of Dan Bainbridge and his whining: a raindrop fell on the guy’s head and he called for Noah and the fucking Ark.
By the time Seth dealt with Dan and entered the restaurant, there were only a couple stragglers hovering around the coffee pot. Most seats were filled.
Conversation dipped then buzzed anew as the growers worked out who he was. Remy, at least for the moment, must have found herself some dark corner. He couldn’t see her anywhere.
Rina, who’d been in conversation with Lewis Carney, caught his eye. ‘All okay?’
Seth spoke out the side of his mouth, still scanning the room for Remy. ‘Yeah. Bainbridge can’t organise getting his own arse out of bed in the morning.’
‘That’s why you’ve got me,’ Rina said and she laughed. Carney did too, even though it was obvious the winemaker wasn’t sure what they were laughing about.
Seth cut him some slack. He needed him. One thing that helped smooth any acquisition was keeping a key player from the old firm onside. With Sue and Max gone, the Montgomery’s winemaker was last man standing.
Seth picked up a glass tumbler and tapped it with a restaurant spoon. Rina and Lewis pulled out the chairs behind the trestle table at the front of the room, but Seth ignored the seats. He couldn’t remember the last CEO he’d seen give a welcome-to-the-new-order speech while sitting behind a trestle table covered in white tablecloth.
The room hushed.
A beanpole of a latecomer was trying to find a seat. Seth waited for the guy to come through. A lady shuffled sideways to make room. The bloke beside her moved too, and in the beat of shuffling chairs, while the beanpole apologised for stepping on toes, Seth came face to face with a pair of grey eyes staring out beneath a navy blue cap.
In a sea of faces that were a mix of expectant or heard-it-all-before resigned, Remy’s stunned-rabbit expression was worth every cent of the $3.12 million it cost him to buy Montgomery Wines.
He was glad he’d given this exact speech so many times. Easy now to switch to autopilot while his brain registered all the little details: the hair escaping her cap was blonder than his memory, probably due to summer sun. Her throat was bare and her skin flushed, but was it with sunburn or a guilty conscience?
He tugged his hungry gaze away and kept talking, and after he wound up the spiel he asked for questions.
‘What are my grapes worth?’ That was first cab off the rank. It always was.
‘I understand that’s the question everyone wants me to answer, but it’s simply too soon to talk about individual price per tonne. What I can say is that all of you will have a place for your fruit this vintage. Max was very strong on that point.’
‘Who’ll be making the wines?’ A bloke in the second row wanted to know.
Seth opened his arm to indicate Rina and Lewis. ‘I’m really pleased that Lewis Carney has chosen to stay on with us through the merger. Help us learn the ropes.’
Lewis smiled. Like Max, he wasn’t a great fan of all the attention.
Seth continued: ‘You will also get to know Rina Stein in time. Rina is our senior winemaker for Lasrey Estate. She oversees our entire winemaking technical operations. She’s also part of our senior management committee, and, with my mother, brother and myself, a company director.’
That was Rina’s cue to smile at the room, but Rina—who loved the spotlight—looked like someone had squirted too much lemon in her tea. It puzzled him, until he realised where she was staring.
Rina had just found Remy.
Perhaps he should have warned her? But if he’d disclosed that his plan to purchase Montgomery Wines came with that sort of string attached, the board would never have backed his bid.
Seth returned his attention to the room, and couldn’t stop his gaze revisiting Remy. He could see the crescent bones of her collarbone outlined through her shirt. Remembered how they’d looked under that pink dress in the park when the wind and rain had lashed them in that storm—
The same guy who asked the question about contracts had his hand in the air again. Seth nodded at him, grateful for the distraction, but annoyed that he needed one. ‘Yeah, mate?’
‘My bank manager is breathing down my neck. I gotta be able to tell him something. When will we have some idea of what price you’re offering?’
Offering. Seth admired the man’s optimism. You think of it as a negotiation if it helps, mate. ‘Over the next week, Rina and I will personally visit your vineyards. We’ll talk with you about our expectations for the fruit and we should have a better idea then, about price.’ He spread his hands wide, palms up. ‘Give us a chance, mate. We’ve only been here five minutes.’
It got him a laugh. Part of him wondered if Remy had chuckled with the others. He refused to look.
‘Any more questions?’
There were none and he turned to Lewis and Rina and asked if they had anything further to add. They didn’t.
‘I’d like to thank you again for coming this morning. We’ve put a schedule of our grower visits up on that whiteboard over there, so check it on your way out. Rina is doing the vineyard visits for the growers with surnames alphabetically from A to M and that means the Ns to Zs are stuck with me.’
Some of the growers got to their feet. The older ones had stiffened after half an hour sitting in the restaurant chairs. They had to spend a few seconds stretching before they moved. In ones and twos, people wandered toward the whiteboard, checking the lists. Some nodded. Some shook their heads.
‘If that time or day doesn’t suit, give us a call and we will do our best to reschedule.’ Seth’s gaze scuttled toward the centre rear of the room, where Remy had yet to move, then back to the whiteboard. He watched as a grower stole a last handful of mini-muffins. ‘Jeez … Rina, I can still see a few plates of morning tea that hasn’t been eaten. I hope our chef’s scones were up to scratch?’
That got him a rumble of laughter, too. It always did.
He checked the centre of the room again because he couldn’t help it. Nope. No laugh from Remy.
***
Feet, get up and move, Remy ordered.
She had no good reason to stay seated. More than half the people had already checked for their appointment time and gone. If she stayed any longer she’d be last to leave.
She’d felt Seth’s gaze touch her during his speech. Felt it sweep past her like a winter breeze. She hadn’t wanted to look at him. Couldn’t bear the thought of being caught staring because there were so many emotions in her head she was a whirlpool. He would see that confusion, and he’d know.
The last time she’d seen Seth Lasrey, she’d been ready to sink to her knees on the carpet with him, lie on his office floor and stare at him in wonder until she worked out whether his eyes were charcoal or black; and whether if he kissed her and smiled, she’d taste that smile on her lips.
He’d been smiling two minutes ago—cracking jokes about the bloody morning tea—then his winter gaze whistled across her skin again and she knew those smiles weren’t meant for her.
To think, she’d once accused him of not smiling enough.
If you don’t get up now, feet …
Carefully, she braced her flat shoes on the polished concrete floor and rocked forward. The restaurant chairs were solid timber, and the seats now vacated by the Gilmore family gave her something to anchor against and pull herself up. But the aisle of chairs didn’t last forever. She had five football-field metres to traverse to reach the whiteboard, and nothing to hold her straight except her pride.
It felt so darn open out there.
‘Remy Hanley? It is you. I thought so. I didn’t see you on my list?’
Hell and Tommy. Remy’s eyelids fluttered closed before they sprang open. ‘Small world, Rina, isn’t it? And you’re a director now? Congratulations. It’s Remy Roberts these days. How are you?’ Remy turned to greet Lasrey’s winemaker as the growers at the whiteboard glanced their way. Remy could see them thinking: Hanley? Remy Hanley? Dumb Sandgropers. Can’t even get our names right.
‘You got married?’ Rina asked, with what might have been hope.
‘Um, no. Not married. Roberts was my mother’s maiden name. I changed it.’
‘Oh.’ Rina waved Lewis Carney into the conversation with one hand. ‘Last time we saw each other, Remy had just sprayed our Margaret River cabernet vines with oxfluorofen.’ She gave a tinny-sounding laugh.
Lewis’s eyebrows took off like twin rockets.
‘I didn’t mean to, Lewis,’ Remy said, as more of the growers near the whiteboard turned for a proper look. ‘It was a dumb accident. I wasn’t paying attention and I lost my job over it.’
‘You’re not poisoning vines now, I hope. Right?’ Rina said. There was a flush in the woman’s face that Remy attributed to the awkwardness of the situation. It was awkward. Remy would have done anything to find a gateway to another universe about now and throw herself through it.
‘Remy has a sauvignon blanc vineyard at Red Gum Valley, Rina. We use her fruit in Chameleon wines. It’s our top-end label,’ Lewis Carney said. ‘She’s one of our most consistent growers.’
Remy could have kissed him. Rina looked like she might kill him.
There was a buzz in the crowd and growers shuffled away from the whiteboard like a flock of disturbed birds.
‘Hey, Seth? Look who the cat dragged in,’ Rina said, crossing her arms over her chest so her elbows made triangles either side. ‘She’s Remy Roberts now.’
‘How are you, Seth?’ Remy said, amazed she could hear herself over the whoosh in her heart.
‘I’m well, Remy, thanks. And yourself? It’s been a while.’
So we’re going to be polite. Remy stared at a spot on the bridge of his nose. ‘It has.’
‘If you’re Remy Roberts now, you’ll be on my list.’ Seth leaned forward, causing her pulse a moment’s panic. ‘Roberts. Red Gum Valley Road.’ His finger traced the whiteboard. ‘There you are. Ten-thirty Wednesday out at your place. I’ll look forward to it.’
‘Me too,’ Remy muttered, pulling out her phone. She tried to give herself time to breathe by entering the time and date in her electronic diary. At least, she hoped that’s what it looked like to anyone watching. The truth was her fingers wouldn’t work, she couldn’t remember the sequence of key instructions, and nothing came up except a useless toggle between her calendar and her email inbox.
Why hadn’t he ever tried to find her? Why hadn’t he called her? What happened to him and Helene? So many questions and this wasn’t the time to ask them. There might never be a time to ask them.
‘Bet you’re the only one out of this lot with a gadget like that,’ Rina said.
Lewis Carney took half a step forward. ‘Actually, most of Max’s growers are pretty good with technology. It was Max who didn’t know his BCC from his CC.’
‘The Remy I remember never had trouble working a phone,’ Seth said.
Remy’s gaze flew to his face, and this time not to the bridge of his nose.
Rina and Lewis chattered in the background.
Of course they were oblivious. Seth’s words had meaning only to her. They told her faster than any neon sign that the past wasn’t forgotten, that her mistake wasn’t forgiven, and that a hundred grand was a hundred grand, in anyone’s language. Whether it was a loan, or a gift, or a bribe. Whatever.
She couldn’t change the past, but she could get rid of the loan. This year’s grape cheque would have to cover what she owed Ailsa. If that meant no paving or no wood oven, and no perfect spring garden wedding for her mother, so be it. She’d cross that bridge when she came to it.
‘Ten-thirty it is. Goodbye, Lewis, Rina …’ she couldn’t look at Seth again, so she said: ‘Seth,’ over her shoulder and kept walking.
***
Rina Stein had spent years perfecting her technique of tracking Seth wherever he went. It was so second nature these days she hardly knew she did it. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Seth watch Remy’s back as the woman walked away.
Her observation skills were a useful talent. Many times she’d cautioned Seth about a person he’d been dealing with: something about their posture, or the way she’d felt they were holding something back … her ability to read people genuinely amazed him.
She played along with it, joking that all she did was pay attention.
Rina knew Seth’s surprise at seeing Remy was feigned—she could see it in the set of his shoulders as he pointed at Roberts on the whiteboard. He’d known Remy would be on his list.
What Rina couldn’t yet tell was how Seth felt about the girl. He’d kept his face turned away, and while he’d been standing at the whiteboard, nothing about his body softened in Remy’s direction. He’d been like stone.
This, Rina decided, was a good thing. Stone she could deal with. Stone was okay. Stone was a long way from the frailty of flesh and blood.
Rina didn’t know what the comment about working a phone meant. Remy hadn’t liked that.
Did Ailsa know Remy was back on the scene? No. She dismissed it. Ailsa would have said.
Some people (Seth included) might consider it an obsession, were they to know how closely Rina watched everything he did. These days, she considered it part of her job. Seth was a bigger target for women now than he’d ever been. She owed it to him and she’d promised Ailsa she’d help keep the gold-diggers and hangers-on away.
A month or so after Remy left Margaret River, Ailsa had sought Rina out. Over a bottle of Joe Lasrey’s famous 1992 Back Paddock Cabernet, Ailsa shared what Remy had done: that she’d tried to cash in on Seth’s wealth by accusing him of sexual harassment, and that Ailsa had to pay her a considerable sum to keep it out of court. Rina never asked how much money. It wasn’t her business, and if Ailsa used the word ‘considerable’, that told her enough.
The accusations Remy made against Seth horrified Rina. Disgusted her. More than anything, it justified all she’d done to get Remy sacked.
‘Seth and Blake are such easy targets,’ Ailsa had said, over that late-evening wine. ‘I won’t let the company Joseph and I built be destroyed because some woman sees herself as the next Mrs Seth Lasrey. You watch them a few years later when they’re bored with the country life. Divorce and get half. Well, that’s not going to happen. You understand, Rina, don’t you?’
Rina said she did.
‘If you’d keep an eye on Seth for me. Discreetly, you understand—he can’t know that you’re watching. If you could let me know if anyone gets close. I’d be grateful. In fact, I’d be so grateful, I’m sure I could convince Seth and Blake to find you a spot on the board.’
Ailsa had smiled and it made Rina feel good to be trusted, to be part of the inner sanctum. To be rewarded for her loyalty. She took the responsibility seriously.
When Seth brought Helene Bouchard to Australian shores, Rina had been so jealous, she’d made herself sick. She drank to cover the hurt. She couldn’t sleep. Worse, it had impacted her work and that was something her professional pride wouldn’t allow. She’d been smuggling hip flasks into the office, throwing fresh-mints into her mouth to cover the smell, and she knew if she’d kept it up, it would have been only a matter of time before a colleague smelled alcohol on her breath or she made the type of mistake that would get her dismissed.
So she’d pulled herself together. Cut down on the drinking through a mix of sheer bloody willpower and the knowledge that Ailsa and Seth had faith in her. They believed in her, and she wouldn’t—couldn’t—let them down.
Her thoughts about Seth weren’t romantic any more. Too many years had gone by and Rina wasn’t stupid. Seth didn’t care for her that way, but she was the woman who had Seth’s back professionally and personally. It was Rina who Seth shared coffee with most mornings, turning over events for the day, and it was Rina with whom he confided his business plans.
That had been enough.
Until Seth sprang this Montgomery Wines acquisition on them, with Remy hiding in the fine print like a cleverly hidden clause.