Page 42 of Taken Away

Bennett didn’t smile, but something like satisfaction eased into his features.

“Too big for you?” he asked quietly.

Aubrey looked up at him.

“You know,” she said, “for a man who pinned me against a wall at the Drift Bar forty-eight hours ago, you’re awfully committed to acting like I annoy you.”

Bennett went very still beside the barrel.

“That,” he said after a beat, “was before I knew who you were.”

Aubrey tilted her head slightly. “Interesting.”

She searched his face, looking for regret. What she found looked far more like restraint.

His eyes narrowed. “What’s interesting?”

“You’re saying if you’d known who I was…” Her eyes held his. “…you wouldn’t have kissed me?”

Silence stretched between them in the cool barrel cave.

Bennett slowly took the glass from her hand. He didn’t brush her fingers this time; his calloused hand enveloped hers around the icy stem, trapping her hand beneath his. The heat of his skin against her frozen fingers was a shock.

He didn’t pull the glass away immediately. He leaned in, his dark eyes dropping to her mouth, tracking the wet, purple stain on her lower lip.

"I'm saying," he growled, his thumb tracing the racing pulse at her wrist, "I wouldn't have stopped at the patio."

The air left her lungs in a sharp hitch.

Bennett stared at her for one endless, heavy beat, letting the truth burn between them, before he slowly pulled the glass from her fingers. "Now drink your wine, Langford."

TEN

Blackwood Ridge

Bennett’s House

The afternoon sun beat down on the black corrugated roof of the ridge house. Bennett stood shirtless at the dark stone kitchen island, June heat clinging to his skin like a second layer. Red clay dust and dried sweat from three hours of spraying the lower Merlot blocks coated him, but his mind wasn’t on the crop.

It was on the tall, sun-streaked blonde in the green Victorian down the hill.

“Jasmine Rouge, right? Very subtle for seven in the morning.”

Her cool, venomous executive purr echoed through the quiet kitchen. Bennett dragged a rough, dirt-stained hand through his hair, letting out a sharp breath. She’d looked like a ghost at the top of Mabel’s stairs, all bare legs and champagne-blonde hair, and then she’d nailed Vanessa’s perfume to the exact brand.

She wasn’t stupid. That was the problem. His gaze dropped to the edge of the island.

The manila envelope Eleanor Harper had passed to Aubrey—the one he’d tucked under his arm to get away from her—sat there undisturbed.

Bennett reached into his pocket, pulled out his worn buck knife, and snapped the blade open with a metallic click. He didn’t want the land Mabel had left him. He didn’t want the lake parcel. He wanted her back. But as he looked down the ridge toward the sage-green roof hidden beneath the hemlocks, he knew he couldn’t protect her if he didn’t know what cards she’d dealt him.

He sliced the heavy paper seal and tipped the contents onto the stone.

A thick stack of legal deeds slid out, along with a smaller, square envelope of heavy cream stock. On the front, in Mabel’s elegant, unyielding cursive, was a single word: Ben.

Bennett set the knife down, traced the ink with his thumb, and pulled a single sheet of linen paper from the sleeve.

Ben,