‘I know,’ she said with far too much sympathy and understanding. Lily couldn’t breathe for a moment. Couldn’t really believe that she was having this conversation. Because Blake was gone. And her life had irrevocably changed.

‘Do you think you could talk to Henry? Tell him how much you’ve been involved in the estate, the winery?’

‘I don’t know. There’s a distinct possibility any repeat encounter could end up in murder,’ she growled, remembering his arrogance, audacity, and she was sure there was another ‘a’ word there somewhere that would also be appropriate.

‘Murder? Lils, are you OK? You’re never normally like this,’ Victoria replied, her tone wavering into the worried.

‘I know,’ she groaned. She really wasn’t normally like this. She was making such a mess of things. She had to tell Victoria that the wedding couldn’t be held at the estate.

‘V—’

‘Oh, I meant to say. Oliver’s mother has shown the photographer the Hawkesbury estate website and I think she’s just about forgiven me for not having the wedding at her village’s chapel. Just!’ Victoria concluded on a light laugh.

Oh God. Oh God.

Lily knew how much winning over Oliver’s parents had meant to Victoria. Nausea swirled in her stomach. She heard Oliver calling Victoria’s name in the background and grabbed onto it like a lifeline.

‘Lils—’

‘It’s OK. Go, go, go. Give him my love!’

Lily ended the call before Victoria could say – or ask – anything further. She dropped the phone into the basket beside the herbs as if it were a poisonous snake. She may even have squeaked a little, but thankfully there was no one there to hear the long-drawn-out groan as she rested her forehead against the handlebars.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

She would have kicked the tyres if she hadn’t needed to get back to the restaurant. She gulped in a breath of air around the giant boulder of guilt pressing against her lungs. Damn Henry Hawkesbury.

Tall, delicious, hot …

How had that happened? In ten years Henry had gone from the angry, haunted, guilty, too-skinny-teen she had seen on the steps of the courthouse where the inquest into the accident had cleared him and Victoria of any wrongdoing, to a very impressive man.

Yes, he’d been angry, and yes, she might have sworn off men, but she wasn’t blind. Her eyes had hungrily eaten up the changes in him. The breadth of his shoulders, perfectly defined in that jumper, stretching across his muscles as if taunting her. The old linseed-coloured leather belt at the waist of his jeans had drawn her unwilling gaze to thin hips and a lean stomach, and she hadn’t missed the way that his jeans had clung to his thighs like … Lily Atwell actually growled at herself.

Tall, delicious, hot …

And horrible.