Biding Her Time

His smile mocked her. She had the incredibly disturbing sensation that he knew exactly what she’d been thinking.

Picking up her fork, she took a poke at her salmon. “I try not to discriminate against produce.”

“Commendable. I’m a staunch supporter of the kiwi myself. Try to attend all the rallies, go door-to-door for the cause when necessary.”

Such a wiseass.

“That sounds time-consuming. What do you do for a living? No! Don’t tell me. I’ll guess.”

Giving him a good long look, as if he wasn’t already an indelible imprint on her brain, she ventured, “You’re an… undertaker.”

Jenna gasped. Thomas and Melanie laughed, and the man in question spit up a little bit of ice water.

The look he gave her—surprised, amused, a little irritated—sent a buzz of excitement running through her body and pooling low, low in her belly.

“What tipped you off?” he said, dabbing his lips with the napkin—the perfect gentleman, though his voice was low and laced with challenge.

In that moment, he reminded her of a tiger pretending to be full while a gazelle strolled by. No matter how relaxed he looked, he could pounce when least expected.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t convince herself to change her course.

Reaching for the roll on her bread plate, Audrey broke a piece off, popped it into her mouth and spoke around it. “The dark suits, I suppose. And the fact that you have a stick up your—”

Pausing while she faked a need to concentrate on her chewing, she swallowed and completed her sentence.

“—back.” Then she widened her eyes and tried to look innocent. “You have really good posture.”

Chapter Four

So she wanted to wrangle.

Shane came close to giving in to the temptation to cross swords with the idiosyncratic woman beside him.

Carefully avoiding eye contact with the others around the table, he slid his fork into his salmon and considered his various strong reactions to Audrey Griffin.

Even now that she was cleaned up, she looked no more formal than she had in the bar. Jeans that were designed to be serviceable rather than sexy appeared to be her uniform, a damned disappointment given the obvious shapeliness of the body beneath them. Her freckled skin was toasted to an appealing tan by the sun, and her hair, still damp from a shower, was the color of wet bricks. The lack of makeup and the plain rubber band holding her long braid made him think of a hardworking pioneer woman.

The disparity between her appearance and her personality did not escape him. A first glance at Audrey Griffin suggested someone guileless and straightforward, perhaps philosophical, definitely sweet. Then she opened her mouth and all he could think was trouble.

He was thirty-four, thank God, not twenty. Several years ago, he may have gotten to know her better for her audacity alone. Now he had a business and a life to build. A reckless young woman out for a good time was not on his radar.

“Thank you for the compliment, Miss Griffin,” he said with boring neutrality. “I look forward to telling my parents that their insistence on cotillion classes did not go to waste.”

“Did you really take cotillion?” Melanie eyed him with suspicion. “Mom tried to coerce us, but Brent and Robbie threatened to run away from home. I went twice and both times the instructor ended the class with a horrible migraine. She’d never had one before, so it was agreed all around that I could quit.” She shifted her gaze. “Audrey, did your dad ever send you to cotillion or did you escape that nightmare?”

Audrey hesitated. Lines of tension formed around her lips before she visibly forced herself to smile. “I escaped.”

She ducked her head, and Shane was certain that she blushed. Curiosity mingled with sympathy, because it was pretty damned obvious that the audacious young woman had never taken a course on manners or conventional grace.

Then Shane realized what Melanie had revealed: Audrey had had a father, but no mother. It might be the mention of that fact or something else, but Audrey was suddenly acutely uncomfortable.

While Melanie and her parents debated the merits of cotillion, he reached spontaneously for Audrey’s hand and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. To his surprise, she jumped as if he’d stuck her with his fork. Her blush deepened, flushing not only her cheeks, but also her chest and even a few splotchy areas onher arms. Fidgeting, she reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear, unnecessary as it was already scraped back into a braid, but the movement drew his attention to the scar on her neck.

Standing out white against her reddened skin, the scar ran from behind her ear to below the collar of her shirt.

“We’re pouring one of your wines, Shane.” Thomas commanded his attention, raising a bottle of Chardon-nay that had been uncorked in the kitchen. “We’re not as sophisticated about this as I’m sure you are. I’m a Kentucky bourbon man. So if there’s something special you want us to—”

“I’d be happy to act as your sommelier, if you’ll allow me.” Shane rose, awaiting permission to take the bottle from his uncle.

“Sommelier, huh?” Thomas huffed, half impressed and half gently mocking. “Around here we call that bartending.” He held out the bottle. “Have at it.”

Adrenaline pulsed through Shane as he rounded the table and accepted the wine.

This was why he was in the U.S. This bottle in his hands was his future. Hilary’s future.

Respectfully, he poured an inch of Chardonnay into Thomas’s wineglass and another inch into Jenna’s. He didn’t believe in gender bias when it came to choosing a good wine. And he knew his aunt was more likely to be of service to him and to Hilary on this business trip.

He watched her expression, especially, as she swirled the glass briefly and took her first sip.

Her brow furrowed just a bit, perhaps due to the fear she might not like his product. But then she relaxed and smiled. “Delicious. I’m not a connoisseur, but I’d order it in a restaurant. It has the most interesting combination of fruit and…I’m not sure…herbs?” She tasted again. “I’ll remember it.”

I’ll remember it.

Those three words were like music to Shane. He endeavored to appear relaxed and connected, despite the excitement coursing through him.

For years he’d bounced from job to job, trying to excavate some meaning out of each one. When he dug and came up empty-handed, he moved on, his hunt for purpose and passion nearly desperate. Throughout his twenties, he had responded to each dashed hope by distracting himself for a time—with women, with a broken-down boat he’d sailed from Perth to Maui, with a trek through Central America carrying nothing but a backpack and a map.

In his adolescence, he’d watched his parents and even his younger brother slot into exactly what made life worth living for them. He’d taken for granted that he would find his own reason for being, but that sense of rightness had eluded him.

There had been times when he’d wondered whether his search had been so much harder because he had craved meaning. He remembered feeling a restless hunger even when he was a kid—wanting every walk he took to leave a footprint.

He’d still been searching last year when Hilary’s accident brought him home to Australia. He hadn’t expected to find his groove running the winery that had belonged to her parents, but that’s what was happening.

Lochlain, the family’s stable, adjoined Cambria Estates Vineyard. As a boy, he’d spent almost as much time among the grapevines as he had at Lochlain. He’d worked at Cambria on school vacations when his father had granted permission not to work at the stable, but he’d never considered a career as a vintner.

He’d arrived in Hunter Valley last year, committed only to doing what he could for his cousin. He hadn’t cared that he was growing grapes. He’d have grown damned zinnias if it would have helped. But one morning, months after he’d arrived, he’d awoken thinking about grapes, smelling them, curious about every aspect of the winery. Not long after, he’d realized that—for the first time in his life—he wasn’t thinking about where to go next. Feet on the earth, hands on the vines, mind wrapped around the art and science of being a vintner, he’d found something with a history and a future. He could plant more than grapes; he could plant the seeds of his life, and they would grow into a legacy.

He planned to attend a series of wine shows in New York, Boston and Montreal, introducing his product to the international market. By the time he and Hilary returned to Australia, Cambria Estates would be the wine that people were talking about.

There was only one problem he could foresee: although he’d learned much about wine, he didn’t know a damned thing about wine shows.

By the time he’d filled each glass and resumed his seat at the table, his elevated mood had dropped a bit.

Beside him, Audrey was picking apart her salmon, lost in thoughts of her own and seeming to have forgotten her earlier desire to spar. Across the table, his cousin Melanie was happily engaged in a discourse with her father and anyone else who cared to join in. The topic, of course: horses and racing. Thomas listened avidly to his daughter while simultaneously scowling at his fish, as though he would trade his best dirt runner for a decent burger.

Shane wasn’t sure what he’d expected to achieve today; he knew only that he felt as if he were in a starting gate, about to race for his life and now facing an agonizingly long wait for the bell.

He stuck the tines of his fork into a piece of grilled asparagus, picked up his knife and told himself to be a good guest, that everything would happen in due time. He didn’t have long to wait.