So Far Into You (15 page)

‘You got married?' Rina asked, with what might have been hope.

‘Um, no. Not married. Roberts was my mother's maiden name. I changed it.'

‘Oh.' Rina waved Lewis Carney into the conversation with one hand. ‘Last time we saw each other, Remy had just sprayed our Margaret River cabernet vines with oxfluorofen.' She gave a tinny-sounding laugh.

Lewis's eyebrows took off like twin rockets.

‘I didn't mean to, Lewis,' Remy said, as more of the growers near the whiteboard turned for a proper look. ‘It was a dumb accident. I wasn't paying attention and I lost my job over it.'

‘You're not poisoning vines now, I hope. Right?' Rina said. There was a flush in the woman's face that Remy attributed to the awkwardness of the situation. It
was
awkward. Remy would have done anything to find a gateway to another universe about now and throw herself through it.

‘Remy has a sauvignon blanc vineyard at Red Gum Valley, Rina. We use her fruit in Chameleon wines. It's our top-end label,' Lewis Carney said. ‘She's one of our most consistent growers.'

Remy could have kissed him. Rina looked like she might kill him.

There was a buzz in the crowd and growers shuffled away from the whiteboard like a flock of disturbed birds.

‘Hey, Seth? Look who the cat dragged in,' Rina said, crossing her arms over her chest so her elbows made triangles either side. ‘She's Remy Roberts now.'

‘How are you, Seth?' Remy said, amazed she could hear herself over the whoosh in her heart.

‘I'm well, Remy, thanks. And yourself? It's been a while.'

So we're going to be polite.
Remy stared at a spot on the bridge of his nose. ‘It has.'

‘If you're Remy Roberts now, you'll be on my list.' Seth leaned forward, causing her pulse a moment's panic. ‘Roberts. Red Gum Valley Road.' His finger traced the whiteboard. ‘There you are. Ten-thirty Wednesday out at your place. I'll look forward to it.'

‘Me too,' Remy muttered, pulling out her phone. She tried to give herself time to breathe by entering the time and date in her electronic diary. At least, she hoped that's what it looked like to anyone watching. The truth was her fingers wouldn't work, she couldn't remember the sequence of key instructions, and nothing came up except a useless toggle between her calendar and her email inbox.

Why hadn't he ever tried to find her? Why hadn't he called her? What happened to him and Helene? So many questions and this wasn't the time to ask them. There might never be a time to ask them.

‘Bet you're the only one out of this lot with a gadget like that,' Rina said.

Lewis Carney took half a step forward. ‘Actually, most of Max's growers are pretty good with technology. It was Max who didn't know his BCC from his CC.'

‘The Remy I remember never had trouble working a phone,' Seth said.

Remy's gaze flew to his face, and this time not to the bridge of his nose.

Rina and Lewis chattered in the background.

Of course they were oblivious. Seth's words had meaning only to her. They told her faster than any neon sign that the past wasn't forgotten, that her mistake wasn't forgiven, and that a hundred grand was a hundred grand, in anyone's language. Whether it was a loan, or a gift, or a bribe.
Whatever.

She couldn't change the past, but she could get rid of the loan. This year's grape cheque would have to cover what she owed Ailsa. If that meant no paving or no wood oven, and no perfect spring garden wedding for her mother, so be it. She'd cross that bridge when she came to it.

‘Ten-thirty it is. Goodbye, Lewis, Rina …' she couldn't look at Seth again, so she said: ‘Seth,' over her shoulder and kept walking.

***

Rina Stein had spent years perfecting her technique of tracking Seth wherever he went. It was so second nature these days she hardly knew she did it. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Seth watch Remy's back as the woman walked away.

Her observation skills were a useful talent. Many times she'd cautioned Seth about a person he'd been dealing with: something about their posture, or the way she'd felt they were holding something back … her ability to read people genuinely amazed him.

She played along with it, joking that all she did was pay attention.

Rina knew Seth's surprise at seeing Remy was feigned—she could see it in the set of his shoulders as he pointed at
Roberts
on the whiteboard. He'd known Remy would be on his list.

What Rina couldn't yet tell was how Seth felt about the girl. He'd kept his face turned away, and while he'd been standing at the whiteboard, nothing about his body softened in Remy's direction. He'd been like stone.

This, Rina decided, was a good thing. Stone she could deal with. Stone was okay. Stone was a long way from the frailty of flesh and blood.

Rina didn't know what the comment about working a phone meant. Remy hadn't liked that.

Did Ailsa know Remy was back on the scene?
No.
She dismissed it. Ailsa would have said.

Some people (Seth included) might consider it an obsession, were they to know how closely Rina watched everything he did. These days, she considered it part of her job. Seth was a bigger target for women now than he'd ever been. She owed it to him and she'd promised Ailsa she'd help keep the gold-diggers and hangers-on away.

A month or so after Remy left Margaret River, Ailsa had sought Rina out. Over a bottle of Joe Lasrey's famous 1992 Back Paddock Cabernet, Ailsa shared what Remy had done: that she'd tried to cash in on Seth's wealth by accusing him of sexual harassment, and that Ailsa had to pay her a considerable sum to keep it out of court. Rina never asked how much money. It wasn't her business, and if Ailsa used the word ‘considerable', that told her enough.

The accusations Remy made against Seth horrified Rina. Disgusted her. More than anything, it justified all she'd done to get Remy sacked.

‘Seth and Blake are such easy targets,' Ailsa had said, over that late-evening wine. ‘I won't let the company Joseph and I built be destroyed because some woman sees herself as the next Mrs Seth Lasrey. You watch them a few years later when they're bored with the country life. Divorce and get half. Well, that's not going to happen. You understand, Rina, don't you?'

Rina said she did.

‘If you'd keep an eye on Seth for me. Discreetly, you understand—he can't know that you're watching. If you could let me know if anyone gets close. I'd be grateful. In fact, I'd be so grateful, I'm sure I could convince Seth and Blake to find you a spot on the board.'

Ailsa had smiled and it made Rina feel good to be trusted, to be part of the inner sanctum. To be rewarded for her loyalty. She took the responsibility seriously.

When Seth brought Helene Bouchard to Australian shores, Rina had been so jealous, she'd made herself sick. She drank to cover the hurt. She couldn't sleep. Worse, it had impacted her work and that was something her professional pride wouldn't allow. She'd been smuggling hip flasks into the office, throwing fresh-mints into her mouth to cover the smell, and she knew if she'd kept it up, it would have been only a matter of time before a colleague smelled alcohol on her breath or she made the type of mistake that would get her dismissed.

So she'd pulled herself together. Cut down on the drinking through a mix of sheer bloody willpower and the knowledge that Ailsa and Seth had faith in her. They believed in her, and she wouldn't—
couldn't
—let them down.

Her thoughts about Seth weren't romantic any more. Too many years had gone by and Rina wasn't stupid. Seth didn't care for her that way, but she was the woman who had Seth's back professionally and personally. It was Rina who Seth shared coffee with most mornings, turning over events for the day, and it was Rina with whom he confided his business plans.

That had been enough.

Until Seth sprang this Montgomery Wines acquisition on them, with Remy hiding in the fine print like a cleverly hidden clause.

Chapter 12

The Wednesday of Seth's scheduled vineyard inspection dawned skittish and cloudy as Remy's mood. The day threatened humidity and every now and then the clouds would part and let a fickle blue sky poke through.

It had been the hottest start to February in five years, yet Remy couldn't get her hands or feet warm.

She'd roast if she wore jeans. Shorts were out of the question. She didn't own a suitable work skirt. In the end she chose a pair of long fawn-coloured cotton pants that tied with a drawstring around her waist and a long-sleeved shirt over a tank top to cover her skin. Put all that with a pair of Blundstone boots and she felt country without being try-hard. The last thing she wanted Seth to think was that she'd tried hard.

Why would she want to look good for him anyway? What was the point? The photos she'd seen of Helene Bouchard—when the French wine heiress came out to Australia and all the wine sites on the internet had carried photographs of the pair together—were enough to make any girl keen on Seth weep. Their so-called engagement hadn't lasted long. It was a rumour the Lasrey PR machine quashed almost as fast as it arrived. If elegant Helene hadn't been enough to hold Seth's interest, what chance did Remy have?

The longer she dicked about over whether to wear her hair loose or tied, or in a headband, or under a hat, the more pissed off with the world she got.
Hell and Tommy.
Who cared? Seth was coming to inspect her grapes. Not
her.

She didn't know where to put herself. She didn't know what to do with herself. Wait inside for his knock? Wait in the vineyard, leaning on a post like a model in a fashion shoot? Loiter on the front steps with Breeze at her feet, like he'd surprised her on a tea break?

She wished he was here already. She wished it was over with already. Anything would be better than this bloody anticipation squeezing her from the inside, out.

At 10.30 am, she sat on the front steps of the cottage with Breeze at her feet.

At 10.35 am she locked Breeze in the backyard, before resettling on the front steps.

At 10.40 am, she raced into her ensuite and slapped lipstick on: a new muted colour called dusky-rose that was so barely-there it couldn't be called a colour at all. She pulled a hairbrush across her scalp and on impulse changed her headband from green to cornflower blue with pretty white squiggles. She made a face at her reflection, at over-bright eyes and the flush in her cheeks that put dusky-rose lipstick to shame. Then she went back outside to wait.

And wait.

Maybe she had the date wrong.

Perhaps he wasn't coming.

Maybe he didn't want to buy her grapes at all.

At 10.50 am, after racing inside to rub dusky-rose lipstick from her lips and plait her hair, she heard a vehicle change gears on the bitumen road. Flicking out the unfinished plait, she tugged the headband back over her crown then scuttled through her bedroom and out the front door, jumping as it clanked closed behind her.

A shiny new black utility sharked into her driveway, nosing its way into the shade of the Redwood Pine. The pine dropped sap and usually Remy told her guests to give it a wide berth. Seth, however, wasn't exactly a
guest.
So he didn't count. Let him park there at his peril.

The engine shut off, and in the quiet it was as if her garden and everything in it held its breath. Then the dog in the back of Seth's ute whined and from the rear of the cottage Breeze let out the kind of high-pitched bark that could break windows.

Thank goodness she'd locked Breeze away. Imagine kicking off this strange new relationship with Seth with a massive dogfight at Ivy Lodge.

I'd like $3000 per tonne for my sauvignon blanc, and you can pick up the vet bills, Seth, thank you.

The driver's side door opened and Seth buried his boots in her gravel and straightened. He turned a slow circle, taking in her cottage and her farm, a bit like Neil Armstrong might have looked before he planted that American flag on the moon.

Adjusting her headband, Remy realised she was sweating beneath it.

‘Morning,' she called.

‘Remy,' he acknowledged. ‘Sorry I'm running late.'

The dog in the utility whined.

‘No problem.'
I hang out on my front steps worrying about lipstick and headbands every day.
She could look at Seth now, as she hadn't been able to during the growers' meeting. There wasn't much point hiding anymore, not now he knew she was here. Or had he always known?

He lifted his sunglasses to the top of his head and stared out from eyes dark as ever.

‘So how are you finding things at Montgomery?' she asked.

‘Fine. Busy.'

Remy ran a quick scan as he cleared the bonnet of his car: hair short as she'd ever seen it and no grey, or not from this distance; short-sleeved black shirt with a bold L emblazoned on the pocket; dark hair where the shirt opened at his throat. Khaki pants. His uniform clung to his body in a way that really wasn't fair to single women everywhere.

‘Nice place.' He extended his arm and waved a red clipboard at the dam and the vineyard beyond it.

The two dogs whined again. Much more of this and they'd have a canine version of duelling banjos.

‘Occhy. Shut up,' Seth growled.

The dog shut like an obedient clam and Remy didn't blame it. Seth's voice startled her off the step and she stumbled as the ground leapt up at her boots. When the earth stopped trying to trip her, she said: ‘Don't tell me that's Occhilupo?'

The big brindle male couldn't resist a whine as Remy said his name, stretching his bowling ball head over the rim of the ute's tray, putting one massive paw on the ledge like he'd give anything to be allowed to jump.

‘
Stay
there,' Seth said, and Occhy retracted his paw as if to say the whole paw-on-the-rim thing was a mistake. ‘I'm dog-sitting for Blake.'