One Secret Night (10 page)

Eleven

E
than left the winery with thunder in his face and murder on his mind. Okay, so maybe murder was taking things just a little too far, but Isobel Fyfe had definitely overstepped the mark. They’d only discussed this very thing last night—he’d reiterated his stance on the matter and yet she’d gone behind his back and told Tamsyn about their mother.

His ears still rang with Tamsyn’s vitriolic verbal attack from only moments ago. She’d accused him of all manner of things, including treating her like a child and of pushing her away. He hadn’t known what to say. She’d been so angry he decided that it probably didn’t matter what he said—nothing would diffuse the situation.

Damn Isobel for sharing news that wasn’t hers to tell.

His footsteps echoed sharply on the flagstone path. Isobel had better be at her cottage because what he had to say to her right now did not need an audience and, the way he felt, he wasn’t going to hold back even if she was with someone else. Rage roiled inside him as he lifted his fist to hammer on her wooden door which, to his surprise, opened before he could make the first strike.

“I’ve been expecting you,” Isobel said calmly. “Please, come in.”

Ethan let his arm drop uselessly to his side. She was expecting him. Well, wasn’t that nice?

Isobel turned away from him and moved into the sitting room area, gesturing for him to take a seat.

“I’d rather stand. This won’t take long. I’ve just been with Tamsyn, although I guess you already knew that.”

An intense haze of anger dried the words in his throat and he fought to swallow it down. Ethan’s fists clenched at his sides and he slowly and deliberately unfurled his fingers, one by one, as he fought to control his fury.

“Why?” he said, when he was finally able to get the growl out of his voice. “Why did you do it?”

To his annoyance, Isobel looked cool and composed.

“Because someone had to and you wouldn’t.”

“You had no right.”

“It’s not about my rights—it’s about Tamsyn’s rights. She deserved to know.”

Ethan huffed out a hard breath. “What? Deserved to know that our mother was apparently an alcoholic? One who drove away from here, filled to the gills with wine and with both of us in the car, on her way to meet her lover? A car that she crashed, injuring both of us but allowing her to walk away unscathed—and never come back for us? Do you think Tamsyn is really better off knowing all that?”

He put up a hand as Isobel made to speak. “Don’t say a word. You’ve said more than enough already. You didn’t have the full story and you didn’t respect my right to withhold it from Tamsyn. I believe now that our father was right to keep the truth from us. We didn’t both need to have our childhood memories of our mother tarnished. But now you’ve taken that choice away from me with your interference.”

“Horrible or not, I still believe Tamsyn deserved to know. You might not have wanted to face up to the truth, but she at least had to be given the chance to know what happened and decide for herself how she feels about it.”

Isobel stood her ground. Her posture straight and stiff, her blue eyes blazing. She wasn’t going to back down and admit she’d been in the wrong and knowing that just spiked his ire even more.

“You don’t know any of us well enough to have made that judgment call.” Despite the fire raging in his veins his voice was cold and hard. “You’re not part of our family, you don’t know what we’ve been through. We were better off without our mother, that much is clear. Now that you’ve told Tamsyn she’s still alive, she has some harebrained idea that she needs to find her.”

“As I would myself, if I had that chance, which is exactly
why
I told Tamsyn. You grew up with your father as your mentor. Who did Tamsyn have?”

“She had all of us—the whole family. We’ve always been here for each other. Why would she need some drunk who didn’t care enough about us to stay? Who actually took money in exchange for agreeing to abandon her children?” he answered scathingly. “Your meddling has created a far bigger problem than having grown up without a mother. Didn’t you stop to think beyond the actual words you said? Did the ramifications of Tamsyn knowing only the smallest amount of information not occur to you?”

“She’s upset, of course—”

“Upset?
Upset?
” Ethan pushed a hand through his hair in frustration. “Of course she’s upset, but worse, she feels abandoned now on top of everything else. And she wants to know why. She’s a determined young woman, Isobel. She won’t rest until she knows the full truth behind what happened and, dammit, she doesn’t need that cluttering up her life right now.”

Isobel eyed him carefully. “She doesn’t? Or
you
don’t? Be honest with yourself, Ethan. You don’t need this as a complication in your life. You were quite happy to just trawl on in your own private kingdom, maintaining the status quo. Don’t you remember your mother? Don’t you remember the good times with her? Tamsyn was too young for any of that but now she still has a chance to learn about her and, if she’s lucky, to forge a relationship with her. Yet you still think you had the right to stand in her way of happiness.”

“
What
happiness? Our mother abandoned us. Do you think she really wants Tamsyn to walk back into her life now? What happens when Tamsyn tracks her down and gets rejected—when instead of barely remembering a mother who died, she gets to have crystal-clear memories of her mother telling her to her face that she doesn’t want her?”

He was viciously pleased to see Isobel flinch at that, but she still didn’t back down. “You can’t know that will happen. And even if it does, all you can do is be there for her. Tell her the whole truth, and then help her deal with it. Let her help
you
deal with it. You can’t protect her by shutting her out. She feels like an outsider in her own home. Did you know that?”

Ethan felt her words suck the anger out from deep inside him, leaving behind a void of darkness and hurt. He shook his head abruptly.

“I suppose she told you that during your little heart-to-heart?” he bit out.

“She did. That’s why I told her about your mother. Once everything’s out in the open, you won’t have to exclude her anymore. She can finally understand what’s going on.”

Silence stretched out between them until Ethan groaned. “I wish I’d never met you.”

He watched the impact of his words upon her dispassionately, noted the tightening of her lips, the paleness that replaced the natural warmth in her cheeks.

“It was inevitable, Ethan—Tamsyn finding out about your mother. It was going to happen eventually.”

He shook his head. “I want you to leave.”

“I told you before and I’ll tell you again. My contract isn’t with you. I’m not going until my job is done.”

“If you had any decency, you’d go.”

“It’s because of my integrity that I’m staying. Besides, Tamsyn needs someone in her corner right now who’s willing to be honest with her. I will not desert her.”

Ethan stared hard into her eyes. She didn’t so much as blink, meeting his gaze in a full-on challenge.

“Just stay out of my way,” he growled.

“That’s going to be hard to do,” Isobel said. “We have the wine-tasting shoot this week. Can we at least be civil to one another?”

“Civil, you say? I don’t feel terribly civil right now. I can arrange for one of the others to be there in my stead.”

She shook her head. “No, that won’t do. The focus of the new brochures is the Masters family ethos. As head winemaker and new head of the family, you have to be involved.”

To his surprise, Isobel stepped closer and laid one hand on his chest. “You’re a good man, Ethan Masters. I know you love Tamsyn, I know you wanted to do what you thought was best for her.”

“And yet you still went ahead and told her anyway. We’ll never be able to go back, Tamsyn and I. Nothing will ever be the same.”

“Change can be a good thing.”

Isobel’s hand dropped away from him and, as much as he hated to admit it, he felt its loss immediately. He didn’t want to be that weak—to allow her to affect him this way. His response, when it came, was sharp and clear.

“I hope for your sake it is. You say that Tamsyn is your friend and that you wanted to help her, so if this ends up blowing up in our faces, with our mother leaving Tamsyn feeling even more rejected and betrayed, then you ‘helped’ her right into a whole new world of heartbreak. A world
I
tried to protect her from ever entering.”

Before she could respond, he spun on his heel and stalked back out of the cottage. The fury that had driven him there had abated but it had been replaced by a cold, hard anger that sat like a leaden ball in his gut.

* * *

“Well, that went well,” Isobel said to the empty room after Ethan had left.

She sank down onto the sofa and hugged her arms around her. She’d known he’d be angry but she’d expected a full-on explosion of it—not the intensely controlled version Ethan had brought to her just now. It made her begin to wonder if Ethan had come to terms with the news about Ellen Masters himself. As she turned the thought over in her mind, it occurred to her that he probably hadn’t even had time to properly grieve his father’s death, either.

Being as controlled as he was—as responsible and conservative as he was—he had to be undergoing a massive internal struggle with himself. Her heart ached for him. She knew what that struggle felt like, should—in an ideal world—be able to help him with this. But their entire relationship, if you could call it such a thing, had been flashes of passion interspersed with flashes of disagreement. It was the original push-me-pull-you type of attraction she’d never understood in others. Didn’t understand in herself now, either, to be honest.

Isobel looked across the room and out the picture window that faced the vineyard. The Masters was all about stability, longevity and growth. All of which formed strong foundations in their family. She’d undermined that stability by taking it upon herself to tell Tamsyn what she had today.

She still believed she’d been right to do it—but at what cost to everyone else? Ethan was right that Tamsyn would be very vulnerable when she confronted her mother. If the meeting went badly and the rift was still in place between her and her brother, would she even be willing to turn to her family for comfort? The thought of that, more than anything, sat very heavy in her heart right now.

She couldn’t regret what she’d done. But she could ache, with all her heart, over the pain it had caused for both Ethan and Tamsyn.

The next few days proved busy, a fact for which she was grateful. Tamsyn appeared to be none the worse for the revelation about her mother, although Isobel noted that from time to time her attention would wander, her expression become pensive. Personally, Isobel felt that Trent should be very strongly supporting Tamsyn right now but he remained as scarce as he’d been through the duration of her stay to date. When Isobel pressed Tamsyn about this, her friend merely brushed her concern aside, saying he was busy in the city and that she was okay.

When the morning of the wine-tasting shoot dawned, Isobel rose early, her stomach tied in knots. She scowled at her reflection as she brushed her teeth at the bathroom mirror, reminding herself she was a professional and would continue to behave that way no matter how distant or rude Ethan might be.

Ethan. God, the very thought of him sent a spear of longing through her body, making every sense come alive. She had it bad, but infatuation was like that. They’d barely seen each other since he’d confronted her here at the cottage, but even if they hadn’t had their falling-out, she doubted she would have gotten much of his time. He was incredibly busy at the winery, pulling long hours with his team as the harvest from their reserve block arrived. New barrels had been brought in and even though Isobel had taken shots of the entire process, Ethan had kept his distance from her.

Today, though, it would be only the two of them. The new brochure would feature each family member in their role at the vineyard. The photo of Raif and his father, Edward, working in such obvious unity had been the family’s pick for the vineyard part of the operation. Tamsyn in her office, her wall planner filled behind her, a phone to her ear and her day planner in her hand, had been designated for the accommodation and events along with a surprisingly poignant photo Isobel had taken of the bride and groom during bridezilla’s special day last weekend. Cade and Cathleen together with the chef at the restaurant had photographed well in a lighthearted moment that had been an absolute joy to capture. Now it was Ethan’s turn.

Isobel checked the smaller daypack she carried with her when she worked, making sure her camera batteries were fully charged and that she had additional memory cards if she needed them. Ethan was delightfully photogenic, she’d discovered in the surreptitious shots she’d taken of him to date. The camera loved the sculpted lines of his face and the way the light fell upon his bone structure. An all-too-familiar ache throbbed low in her belly, forcing her to remind herself that for today, he was only a subject. One to be captured in the course of his work—that was all.

Ethan was prepared and waiting for her at the winery when she arrived. She checked her watch quickly—no, she wasn’t late and yet he had that look about him as if he’d been waiting for her for some time. She cast her eye across the setting he’d created—the bentwood chairs set at a crisp-white-linen-covered round table with a row of barrels behind them and the handcrafted stone walls visible as a backdrop. The lighting was to be augmented with strategically placed spotlights that Isobel had hired specifically for this shoot, and she could see them standing off to one side.

“Good morning,” Ethan said as she drew closer.

Isobel felt an indefinable frisson ripple down her spine. So he was going for civilized today. She could live with that.

“Good morning. Thank you for setting up in advance today.”

He nodded in acknowledgment. “Do you need a hand with the spots?”

Isobel considered the lighting in the area. It was dim, but had a distinct ambience that lent itself well to the solemnity of the process she knew was about to be unveiled to her camera. If she made the right adjustments it was possible she might not need the spotlights after all.