Page 66 of Taken Away

Aubrey tightened her grip on her pen.

Mabel hadn’t just left her Blackwood.

She’d been preparing for her.

Mezzanine

Aubrey stepped out of Walter’s office an hour later, a manila folder of efficiency reports tucked under her arm—numbers she wanted to cross-reference with Zack Fowler’s production logs.

The air along the catwalk was cooler, conditioned against the mountain heat, but the second she leaned her forearms against the black steel railing, the temperature in her blood spiked.

Bennett was standing at the base of the suspended tasting bar below.

He wore his default viticulturist uniform—dark, clay-dusted denim; a faded black T-shirt that clung to the heavy, solid breadth of his shoulders; work boots planted wide on the concrete. He was speaking quietly with Savannah, a clipboard in his large hand, his face set in that flat, disciplined mask he wore for the world.

As if he felt the weight of her gaze, Bennett glanced up.

His eyes locked onto hers through the glass railing of the mezzanine. He didn’t blink. He didn’t smile. Something in his expression sharpened, his eyes holding hers.

He tracked her slowly. His gaze drifted down the structured lines of her cream blazer, lingered on the slight glimpse of skin above her black silk camisole, then rose to the flawless chignon at the back of her head. He looked at her as though he remembered the woman beneath the tailored linen—eyes wide, fingers fisted in his shirt in the dark hallway.

Twenty-four hours ago, she’d nearly broken an ankle in heels and snapped at cellar crews.

Today, she carried herself like someone about to acquire a Fortune 500 company.

But beneath the safety of her tailored linen, her heart lurched. The memory of his forearm bracing her hips, the raw heat of his body, flared between them so sharply that Aubrey’s fingers crinkled the edges of the manila folder.

He didn't look like a business partner.

He looked like the man who'd held her against the bedroom wall the night before.

Slowly, Bennett gave her a single, almost imperceptible nod—a silent challenge that said, Your move, Princess—before turning back to Savannah's clipboard.

Aubrey gripped the steel railing. He was entirely too comfortable, too confident that he’d won.

But as her thumb brushed the phone in her pocket, thinking of Machelle's text, a slow, dangerous smile touched her lips.

Bennett McCrae thought he owned this mountain. He had no idea what happened when corporate compliance came to harvest.

SIXTEEN

Blackwood Estate

Six Weeks Before Mabel Blackwood’s Death

Mabel Blackwood sat alone in the library, a glass of Chardonnay untouched beside her elbow as afternoon light slid through the tall windows.

A cardboard box rested open on the desk. Photographs—thirty years of bad blood and good summers, all in one battered container. She smiled as she lifted one from the stack.

Anne at sixteen. Wild and beautiful even then.

Lord, that girl had been trouble from the minute she discovered she could smile her way out of almost anything.

Mabel’s smile thinned.

The next photograph showed Harold with both Blackwood sisters at the first harvest festival. Smiling. Laughing. Before everything broke.

She set it aside and reached for another. This one stole her breath.