this year.”
“That is...awfully quick, Lin,” Dane said.
“Sure,” Lindy said, waving a hand. “But it isn’t like we’re a start-up. It’s just a new, extended showroom. And with the plans that Lydia West has for Christmas this year, we can’t afford to not be open. It’s going to be a whole Victorian Christmas celebration this year with carolers and chestnuts roasting on...well, probably not open fires because of safety. But we need to be there with hot mulled wine and cheeses and goodwill toward men!”
“Did you want to add world peace too?” Dane asked. “Because with all that you might as well.”
Dane wasn’t wrong. It was a very tall order. But they knew exactly what they wanted the showroom to have, and they already had stock at the winery. They would just be moving some of it to town. So it might be tricky, but not impossible.
And suddenly Sabrina wanted it all to work, and work well. If for no other reason than to prove to Liam that she was not at all the seventeen-year-old girl whose world he’d wrecked all those years ago.
Sabrina had to admit she envied the tangible ways in which Lindy was able to get revenge on Damien. Of course, her relationship with Liam wasn’t anything like a ten-year marriage ended by infidelity. She gritted her teeth. And she did her best not to think about Liam. About the past. Because it hurt. Every damn time it hurt. It didn’t matter if it should or not.
Didn’t matter if it was something she should be over. It was stuck there, a thorn in her heart that she wasn’t sure how to remove. If she could have figured that out, she would have done it a long time ago.
At least, for a while, she hadn’t thought about him all the time.
She had tried to date. She’d really tried when she’d been working in Gold Valley and had been exposed to men she hadn’t known as well at school in Copper Ridge. But it just hadn’t worked. Inevitably, there would be comparisons between the way Liam made her feel and the way those guys made her feel. Which was... Well, there was no comparison, really.
But now that he was back in town, now that she sometimes just happened to run into him, it was different. It was harder not to think about him. Him and the grand disaster that had happened after. The way it had ruined her relationship with her father. And that thorn in her heart constantly felt like it was being worked in deeper.
That first time she had run into Liam when he had come back...
She had walked into Ace’s bar, ready to have a drink with Lindy after a long day of work, and he had been there. She hadn’t even questioned whether or not it was him. He looked different, older, deep grooves bracketing the side of his mouth, lines around his eyes.
His chest was broader, thicker. And there had been tattoos covering the whole of his arms. But it was Liam. It was most definitely Liam, and before her brain had been able to process it, her body had gone into a full-scale episode.
Her heart had nearly lurched into her throat, her pulse racing and then echoing between her thighs, an immediate reminder of how it had always been to be near him. A tragic confirmation that her memory had not blown those feelings out of proportion.
Because, after enough years of unexciting good-night kisses and attempts at physical relationships that hadn’t gone any further than a man putting his hand up her shirt while sitting on his couch, she had started to wonder if she had really ever felt anything close to the intensity that she’d associated with Liam. For sure, she had started to think, her memory had exaggerated it, and was actively sabotaging her now.
But such hopeful notions had been demolished when she had seen him again.
And with that attraction had come anger. Because how dare he? How dare he show up in her part of Oregon again, after abandoning her the way that he had. How dare he come back to Copper Ridge and invade her space like this? He was supposed to stay away.
Mostly, she was angry that he had the nerve to come back even sexier than he’d been before. If there was any justice in the world he would have lost his hair, gotten a beer gut and had his face eaten off by a roving band of rabid foxes. Yeah, those things combined might have worked together to make Liam Donnelly less appealing to her.
But there were never any rabid roving foxes around when you needed them.
The door to the winery tasting room opened again, and in walked her sister, Beatrix, who was holding a large cardboard box that she was staring down into worriedly. Her hair was sticking out at odd angles, a leaf attached to one of the wayward curls.
At twenty-two, Beatrix sometimes seemed much younger than that, and occasionally much older. She was a strange, somewhat solitary creature who defied any and all expectation, and was a source of incredible frustration for their parents.
Sabrina had spent a great many years trying to be exactly what her parents wanted her to be. Beatrix had never even tried. And somehow Bea wasn’t the one their father wouldn’t speak directly to.
Not that she could hold it against Bea. No one could hold anything against Bea.
“What do you have in the box, Bea?” Dane asked.
“Herons,” Beatrix responded. “Green herons. They got kicked out of their nest.”
Lindy’s forehead wrinkled. “Beatrix, could you not bring wildlife into the dining room? We have food in here.”
“I just wanted to see if you had an extra dropper. I have one, but I can’t find the other one.”
“I don’t think I have a dropper in my dining room,” Lindy said.
“The kind you use for medicine,” Beatrix pressed.
“Yes,” Lindy said, “I actually did understand what you meant.”
Beatrix looked fully bemused by the idea that Lindy did not have a dropper readily at her disposal.
“Okay. I guess I’m going to have to go down to town.” Which, Sabrina knew, Beatrix didn’t like to do.
“I have to go down later,” Dane said. “I’ll get one for you, Bea.”
Beatrix brightened, and her cheeks turned slightly pink. “Thank you.”
Sabrina occasionally worried that Beatrix did not see Dane as a brother, which was fair enough, since he wasn’t even actually their brother-in-law. But Dane was not the kind of guy for a sweet girl like her, and anyway he was far too old for her. About ten years and a whole other lifetime of experience.
She would worry more than occasionally if she thought that Dane returned Beatrix’s feelings at all. Fortunately, his attitude toward her was entirely appropriate. He saw her as a younger sister, as he should.
But that didn’t seem to change the fact that Beatrix’s entire face illuminated whenever he spoke to her.
“Come on, I’ll help you find a safe place for your herons so you can stick close to them today.” Beatrix followed Dane out of the tasting room, leaving Lindy and Sabrina alone.
Lindy didn’t say anything, but she did lift one eyebrow. Sabrina had a feeling she wasn’t the only one who had observed Beatrix’s response to Dane.
In
