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“Oh, Noah,” she whispered, shaking her head, running her fingers through her long, chestnut hair. “What has happened to us?”
She had forgotten there were other people in the room. When she looked up, she met Katharine’s sorrowed gaze. “I’m sorry,” Katharine murmured. “Come on, Ben, let’s leave them alone.” She tried to help her husband out of the living room, but he refused.
Ben yanked his arm out of Katharine’s grasp. “I think you should understand something, Miss Lindstrom.” Sheila raised her head to meet his cool, laughing eyes. It was as if he were enjoying some private joke at her expense. “I’m a businessman, and I can’t let you continue to operate the winery.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I’m not prepared to invest the money Noah promised you to rebuild the winery.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Noah interjected. “I’ll handle it.”
Ben continued, unruffled by his son’s visible anger. “The most prudent thing for you to do, Sheila, would be to sell out your portion of Cascade Valley to Wilder Investments.”
“I can’t do that. . . . I won’t.”
Ben’s toothy smile slowly turned into a frown. “I don’t think you’ll have much of a choice, considering the information in Mr. Simmons’s report—”
“Stop it!” Noah shouted, taking Sheila by the arm and nearly dragging her out of the living room. “Don’t listen to him . . . don’t pay any attention to any of his suggestions.”
She pulled what little shreds of dignity she could find and turned her cold eyes on Noah. “I won’t,” she assured him coolly, while extracting her arm out of his fingers. Her eyes burned, her throat ached, her heart bled, but she held her face as impassive as possible. “Nothing you or your father can say will convince me to sell my father’s winery.”
“I know that,” he admitted softly.
“But you were the first one to suggest that I sell.”
“At that time I thought it would be best.”
The unhappy smile that twisted on her lips was filled with self-defeat. “And now you expect me to believe that you don’t?”
“You know that, Sheila.” His fingers reached out to cup her chin, and they trembled as he sought to rub his thumb along her jawline. She had to turn away from him; she was too numb to feel the tenderness in his caress.
“Leave me alone, Noah,” she whispered tonelessly. “I’m tired.”
“Don’t go,” he begged, his hand dropping impotently to his side. The pain in his eyes wasn’t hidden as he watched her move slowly toward the door. “Don’t let the old man get to you.”
“The ‘old man’ isn’t the one that got to me.”
“Sheila!” He reached for the bend of her elbow, clutching at her arm and twisting her to him. He held her so savagely that she wondered for a moment if she could breathe . . . or if she really cared. The tears that had slid over her lips to warm them with drops of salt told her she was crying, but she couldn’t feel them. She didn’t feelanything. Empty. Hollow. It was as if the spirit she had once owned had been broken.
“Let go of me,” she said through her sobs.
“You can’t go. You don’t understand. . . .”
“I understand perfectly! You may have been able to get what you wanted from Marilyn by paying her off, but you can’t buy me, Noah Wilder! No man can. I’ll go bankrupt before I’ll sell you one bottle of my cheapest wine!” She wrenched free of his hold on her and backed toward the door.
He watched her leave, not moving from the foyer where he had held her in his arms. They felt strangely empty as his eyes followed the path of her flight. The door slammed ·shut, closing her out of his life. He fought the vain urge to follow her and tried to convince himself that everything was for the best. If she trusted him so little, he was better off without her.
Chapter Thirteen
For five long weeks Sheila tried futilely to get the image of Noah Wilder out of her mind. It had been an impossible task. Everywhere on the estate she was reminded of him and the bittersweet love they had shared. There wasn’t a room in the château where she could hide from him or the memories of the nights of surrendered passion they had shared together. She couldn’t even find solace in her·own room, the sanctuary where they had held each other dear until the first stirrings of dawn. Now the room seemed pale and empty, and Sheila was alone. She attempted to convince herself that she never had really loved him, that what they had shared was only a passing fancy, an affair to forget. It was a bald-faced lie, and she couldn’t deceive herself for a minute. She had loved Noah Wilder with a passion time and deceit couldn’t erase. She loved him still.
The winery had become a ghost town. Reconstruction of the west wing had been halted by one fell stroke: an executive order from Ben Wilder himself. Gone was the whine of whirring saw blades consuming wood, vanished were the shouts and laughter from the construction crew. The air was untainted with the smell of burning diesel or the scent of freshly cut lumber. The west wing of the winery was as defeated as her dreams.
Sheila had tried, ineffectively, to tell Emily about Noah. As comfortingly as possible she had mentioned that Noah and Sean wouldn’t be back to Cascade Valley as they had originally planned and that her marriage to Noah would probably never happen. If Sheila had hoped not to wound her child, she had failed miserably. Emily was heartbroken. When Sheila had explained that she doubted if Noah and Sean would return to the winery, Emily had burst into tears, screamed that it was all her mother’s fault and raced from the dinner table to hide in her room. It had taken several hours for Sheila to get through to her and calm her down. The child had sobbed on her shoulder bitterly, and it was difficult for Sheila to hold back the tears stinging the backs of her eyes.
Part of Emily’s reaction was due to incredibly bad timing. The girl had just returned from a dismal trip to visit her father, a vacation that was to have lasted a week and was cut down to five regretful days. It seemed as if Jeff and his wife Judith just didn’t have the time or the inclination to take care of a busy eight-year-old. Emily felt rejected not only by her father but by Noah as well.
The final blow to Sheila’s pride had come from a local banker she had dealt with for years. Regardless of the winery’s past record, Mr. Stinson couldn’t justify another loan to Cascade Valley. It had no reflection on Sheila, but the winery just didn’t qualify. There was simply not enough collateral to back up a quarter of a million dollars of the bank’s money. He was kind and told her that he would talk to his superiors, although he was sure that her request was next to impossible. There was a distinct note of inflexibility in his even voice.
