A sudden and shocking grief hit him square in the chest. Her sentiments lacked the hysteria of others’, the almost theatrical display of misery from strangers at the funeral. Those he’d been able to brush off, but Lily Atwell had cut him off at the knees with her simple, honest rendering.

And all the while, he couldn’t look away. It was as if she let him react to her words and was patiently weathering the storm they conjured, letting him rage silently. She just absorbed it all.

‘You should go,’ he managed to bite out.

‘Of course,’ she said, once again dropping her head slightly as if hiding behind her hair. ‘I just need to speak to Annabelle about—’

‘She’s not here.’

‘What?’

‘No one is. I sent them away.’

‘You did what?’ she demanded. ‘But Henry, this is—’

‘What Hawkesbury estate is or was, is none of your concern,’ he decreed, trying to understand why he had the strange sense that he was wrong. Very wrong.

‘And the guests? At the hotel?’

‘Have been cancelled and given full refunds.’

‘But what about the estate?’

‘What about it?’

‘It’s a working vineyard, Henry, the vines need—’

‘Pretty sure I can handle a few vines, Lily.’

He watched as she bit her lip again to prevent a retort, the angry blush riding high on alabaster cheekbones drawing his gaze upwards from her mouth to her eyes. Eyes that were wide, round and … spitting fire. He could feel the waves of anger rolling off her, breaching his skin like a series of tidal waves. As if by some monumental effort, she released her lip, drew in a jagged inhale, retrieved her bike and wheeled it past him, head held high and knuckles white as they gripped the handles.

He could have sworn he’d heard her utter the words bloody fool as she left through the doorway. And he most definitely agreed.

He should never have come back.

CHAPTER TWO

SHE WAS SUCH A FOOL, Lily told herself as she pulled the bike over the gravel driveway. She was supposed to get him onside, not rant at him like a mad thing. He’d told her to leave. She didn’t think for a minute she’d be allowed back into the herb garden to repair the neglect from the last month since Blake’s death. And without the staff, what would happen to the estate?

As she wheeled the bicycle towards the road, Lily refused to look at the rows and rows of vines gently sweeping down the hill. Would he walk them? Cutting away the ruined grapes, allowing the ones remaining to ripen? Before his death Blake had been worried that the Bacchus might need harvesting early this year. Without John, the estate manager, would Henry even notice?