I turned around and stalked off toward my bedroom.
“Go to bed, Jake. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”
“I don’t want to talk about it then.”
I could hear his heavy footsteps behind me as I flicked on the kitchen light and spun around. “Well, that’s too bad. I don’t want to talk about it now.”
“Whose jacket is that?”
Knowing this was not going to end unless I told him, I placed a hand on the back of the kitchen chair and braced myself. “The jacket belongs to Noah. We had dinner tonight.”
Jake scoffed. “Dinner, huh? Is that why you’re creeping around at—”
“I’m not creeping anywhere,” I shouted, much louder than I’d intended. But at this stage I was finding it difficult to temper my annoyance.
“You’re not? Looked like it to me.”
“I don’t care how it looked to you. Plus, you aren’t even supposed to be home.”
“Which is why you went in the first place. You wouldn’t have to be home at a respectable hour.”
“Just who do you think you are? The dating police? It’s not a crime that I decided to finally go out, you know? And weren’t you the one telling me I should?”
Jake’s jaw clenched and the expression that crossed his face could only be described as furious. “That was before. I worked it out, Mom. Your little secret.”
And there it was. My stomach dropped as my suspicions were confirmed. The certainty of those words cleared up any question of why he was so angry.
As I stared across the kitchen at my son, my heart beat so hard that it was a miracle it hadn’t flown out of my chest. Then Jake took a step forward, and I steeled myself for whatever he was about to say next.
“It’s him, isn’t it?”
I sucked in a shaky breath and gripped the back of the chair. Jake glared me down, waiting for a response. But all words had left me. I didn’t know what to say. The lie I’d told so many times reared its ugly head and demanded that I finally tell the truth.
“Mom.”
“Jake—”
“Answer me. It’s him, right? Noah? He’s my dad.”
My eyes blurred as the enormity of those words being spoken out loud for the first time hit me with the force of a shock wave. I felt like I was going to be sick.
“I’m gonna take this bullshit silence as a yes. Is that why he left? Because of me? The rumor was he was a one-night stand. Something you never denied. But it’s not true, is it?”
No, it wasn’t. I stood there trying to think of a way to explain my reasons for doing what I’d done, but came up with nothing.
Jake snatched his coat from one of the chairs and headed for the back door.
“Jake…” My voice cracked as I watched him storm out without a backward glance. As the door slammed closed behind him, the silence that followed mocked me.
Oh God. God. What had I done?
A racking sob left me as tears fell down my face. I barely managed to pull the chair out before I collapsed into it.
I wiped at my cheeks, but it was no use—the tears kept coming as I was thrust back into a different time and place, when the only option available was to take what the devil had offered…
28
Laurel
I STOOD OUTSIDE the black iron gates of Chamberlin Winery, and had never felt more intimidated in my life. The hot August sun was beating down on the back of my neck, but it still wasn’t enough to make me head inside and out of the sweltering heat.
I was nervous. No, nervous wasn’t the right word. I was terrified. But there was no way around what I was here to do, and I’d promised my mom I wouldn’t leave until this was done. So I took in a deep breath, pushed through the gates, and made my way up the gravel drive to the entrance. When I reached the front door, I stopped for a minute and tried think of any way out of this. But when nothing came, I went up the couple of stairs and knocked.
A warm breeze ruffled the hem of my dress, and just as I was about to try again, I heard, “You don’t have to knock. It’s a business. They want you to go in.”
I turned to see Noah’s brother Ryan standing behind me in mud-caked boots, jeans, and a t-shirt.
“Uh, hi.” I gave a quick, self-conscious wave, and he smiled. I hadn’t had much contact with Noah’s family when we’d dated, but I knew Ryan from school, and he’d always been kind. He also bore a striking resemblance to Noah, which made it really difficult to look at him right now.
“Hi. Seriously, just go on in. Mom’s in there somewhere.”
“Oh, I’m not looking for your mom. I’d like to speak to Harry—I mean, your father.”
Ryan frowned but gestured to the side of the main building. “He’s out the back, down at the production facility. Do you want me to show you?”
I looked over to where Ryan indicated and worried my lower lip with my teeth. The last thing I needed was an audience. I had no idea how Harry was going to react to what I had to say.
“Uh, thanks, but that’s okay. I’m not going to take long. You said it’s just behind the house?”
“You mean the villa?”
I glanced up at the double-story Spanish-style building and nodded.
“Yep, just go around the side there. It’s the big, shed-like thing down the back. You can’t miss it.”
“Okay, thanks again.”
I was about to walk off when Ryan stepped forward and said, “Hey, Laurel?”
“Yeah?”
“He didn’t want to go. Just so you know.”
My breath caught, but I didn’t have it in me to say Noah’s name out loud. These past few months had been difficult for so many reasons, and the only way I’d managed to survive was to lock him in a box and forget that I ever knew him. I didn’t want to seem rude, though, so I forced a smile and hoped that would be the end of that.
When Ryan said nothing and moved aside, I sent up a quick prayer and hurried off to find his father. The sooner I got this over with, the better.
I made my way around the back, and Ryan was right—there was no way to miss the mammoth “shed.” I twisted my hands in front of myself. Okay, it was now or never. I needed to get this over and done with so I could move on. I had too much on my plate these days to have a cloud of guilt this big following me around.
That final pep talk had my spine straightening and my feet moving. But when I got to the open door of the shed and spotted a man’s boots sticking out from under a tractor, I thought about making a run for it.
I didn’t, though. I cleared my throat, and the dirt-covered boots dug into the ground and crawled the man out on a flatbed creeper. He had a wrench in one hand and a spanner in the other, and the frown on the tanned, leathery face said he was clearly unimpressed by my interruption.
Great. This was off to a fantastic start.
I was about to introduce myself when the man sat up and tossed his tools into the toolbox with a loud clang. Then he reached for the rag stuffed in his pocket and began wiping the grease off his hands.
“Did you take a wrong turn, miss? There’s no tours this afternoon.”
It didn’t surprise me that he had no clue who I was. We’d never met before, and I certainly didn’t run in his family’s circles. The only communication I’d ever had with him was over a phone, and it had been brief to say the least.