So Far Into You (11 page)

‘Shit.' The back of his thighs hit the mattress with a whump. ‘Greg discovered it in time?'

‘Rina was coming back from Margaret River about lunchtime, our time,
thank God.
She saw there was something wrong and she raised the alarm.'

‘Shit,' he said again, struggling through the fog of jet lag. ‘She wasn't feeling well when I left. If she wasn't concentrating, that might explain it.'

Ailsa made a sound in her throat. ‘She's the only one who knows what happened. She's saying it was an error—I hope so, Seth. I hope it was human error because I'd hate to think she'd done it on purpose.'

‘Well that makes zero bloody sense. She'd never
mean
to do it.' He thought about Remy's love of growing things; the way she could spot orchids from twenty paces in the bush; and how she'd eyeballed him when his big feet had come too close to squashing one of those lady donkey cowslips.

‘She was upset last night in your office … I thought—'

‘She wasn't well and she probably should have stayed home. Remy must feel terrible.' He wished he was there to tell her it would all be okay. ‘What's Greg doing about the vines? Did he call the WA Ag Department? There'll be a precedent for this sort of thing. They could tell him what to do.'

‘Greg seems confident he has it under control. Only time will tell.'

Seth grunted. ‘I'll email Pops Trimble, but can you get Rina to tell him I want a report every day on how the vines are responding. I want to be kept in the loop.'

It was a fuck-up, and as employee fuck-ups went it was up there, but it sounded like they'd found it early enough, sounded like Pops had it under control. ‘Lucky vines are tough. It might set them back a few weeks but it shouldn't kill them, if Rina saw it fast enough. I'll call Remy.'

‘There's not much point doing that.'

‘Why not?'

‘She doesn't have her phone anymore.'

He was getting damn tired of asking all the questions. ‘Why not?'

‘I took it off her.'

‘Mother?' A question and a warning. He'd been in planes and airports for almost forty hours. His patience was thin.

‘I asked for her resignation, Seth. She gave it to me.'

‘You shouldn't do that without referring it to me.'

‘I'm a director of this company—'

He cut her off. ‘I want to speak with Remy, Mum. I'll talk to her. Bring her back.'

‘Don't you dare,' Ailsa spat, getting so worked up, Seth thought she might have a stroke on the other end of the line. ‘You can't see it, can you? She's a disruptive influence and after today Rina and I shouldn't have to tell you she's also damn well incompetent. What type of message does that send to the other staff if you bring her back?'

‘If she's incompetent, Pops would have told me. This is an accident. Shit happens.' He stared around the room. He'd drawn the heavy drape earlier. He opened it now, looking out the window at the Bordeaux lights. ‘I'll get the first flight home.'

‘Don't do that.' Ailsa let out a sigh. ‘Look, darling. That's not all.'

‘What do you mean that's not all? What the hell else can go wrong?'

‘I didn't want to have to tell you this over the phone, but there's more. Darling, I hope you're sitting down.'

‘Spit it out.'

‘Seth, Remy accused you of sexual harassment.'

Seth dropped the drape. The Bordeaux lights winked out. ‘She
what?'

***

Ailsa Lasrey hung up the phone on her eldest son and permitted herself a tight smile. She'd done the best she could. She'd bought herself a few weeks.

She'd convinced Seth that if he came home now, he'd look guilty.
‘Finish your trip, darling. Stick to your schedule. She's not going anywhere. We can thrash it all out when you get home.'

Seth might try to phone Remy sooner, Ailsa didn't doubt that. Her son would want answers and he'd want those from the source. That's just the way Seth was.

Ailsa knew Seth didn't believe her. Not quite—amazing how hard he'd fallen for Remy, and so fast. But when he got home and Remy was gone, and Ailsa told him about the cheque she'd taken …
Cheques.
That would change things. She was banking on it.

Money talked.

Remy wouldn't be easy to find. Ailsa had taken her work phone and the Hanley's didn't have a home number. Not one Ailsa had been able to trace. With luck, in a week Remy and her mother would be interstate and out of reach.

Blake had been the immediate problem. Blake would never believe Remy deliberately poisoned those vines. Blake would want Remy given the benefit of the doubt.

Ailsa had called Blake before she'd spoken with Seth. She told him to take some time off to think about his surfing plans and work out what it was he really wanted. She'd even transferred $500 into his account. ‘Petrol money, darling,' she'd told him.

By six o'clock the next morning, she knew Blake would be cruising past Perth with his surfboards strapped on the roof-rack and his music up loud, on his way north to the Bluff. The telephone reception up there was third world at best and Blake would be incommunicado for a fortnight. When he heard what had happened, it would be too late. Remy would be gone.

The girl had been an unfortunate blip. An expensive one as it turned out, but Ailsa could afford it. Seth had made her more money in his four years at the helm of Lasrey than Joseph had cobbled together in two decades. Seth would take the Lasrey name and brand far, she could feel it in her bones.

Without Remy around to distract him, everything would be fine.

Then her sense of elation cooled. Just because she'd got out of it easy this time, it didn't mean another girl might not try to trap Seth in the future. He was like his father; that hot-blooded Italian heritage turned him into a fool for a pretty face. She'd have to think of a way to protect him, protect herself, from gold-digging females who might try to split the family, split the business.

Ailsa mused. Rina had proven herself a loyal employee, possibly even director material. With just Seth, Blake and herself, it was too easy for the boys to vote her down. A fourth director would even things up. A vote Ailsa could control on the board would be useful.

Plus Rina was in love with Seth. If she played her cards right, that was knowledge Ailsa could use.

She sat in her office for a long time that night, permitting herself a brandy in the small hours, slowly allowing herself to gloat over what she'd achieved.

Now she and Seth would have years to build the Lasrey Estate brand together.

Starting tomorrow. And the next week. And the month after that.

Book 2

Chapter 8

Five years later

Remy Roberts paused to tip back her hat and take a long drink from the plastic bottle in her pack. When she'd had her fill, she let the liquid waterfall over her chin and throat to soak into her shirt. It was warm, but it was wet and it took some of the scorch out of the sun.

Tucking the water bottle in the pack at her hip, she paused for a moment to check where she was in the vine row before she started the steepest part of the climb for the eighth time in the last hour.

She liked the exercise. Liked the peace and quiet of walking amongst the vines.

She even liked the heat. Western Australia had its fair share of sun, but nothing prepared a girl for the eyeball-searing, scorching dry of a South Australian summer. Especially now the drought had stretched into its third year.

Reaching into the vine canopy, Remy twisted a berry from the ripening bunch of sauvignon blanc. It stuck to the stem and she had to tug hard before she put the fruit on her tongue. The flavours were there, flitting in and out of the sourness like wind through the vine leaves.

She didn't expect sweetness. Harvest was six weeks away. Middle to late February, the local growers reckoned.

There was a thrashing in the vines out to her right and the sound of it made Remy smile. Seconds later her dog burst into the middle of the row in a mini-tornado of dust and dry grass. Breeze stopped at Remy's feet, mouth open wide, pink tongue hanging.

She scratched the concrete block of her dog's head. Breeze's tail batted up a new cloud of dust. ‘Come on, then.'

She finished the last hundred metres to the top of the hill with Breeze at her heels, feeling the stretch in her calves as well as in her lungs.

Once there, she paused again, one hand on the roughened top of the trellis end-post. Breeze slumped in the shade of the vines at her feet and the sound of the dog's puffing drowned everything else.

Remy never tired of this view. First time she'd walked up on the hill five years ago, with the red-faced and wheezy real estate agent, and gazed across the valley, she'd known she had to buy the patch of land locals called Old Menzel's Farm.

Below, the vineyard sloped to the valley where the creek cut through. That creek had been running the first few years, but it was dry now, parched and cracked. The dam that fed from it was little more than a puddle for ducks. Ivy Lodge, Remy's cottage, stood there too. Iron roof shining in the sun.

According to her neighbour Zac Williams, whose family knew everything and everyone in this part of the Hills, Old Menzel's kids hadn't wanted to follow their father into grapegrowing. They'd chosen different paths. As Mr Menzel got older, Zac said he'd
let the farm go.

Remy could remember the exact tone of Zac's voice. It was Christmas morning, the first one after she bought the farm. Seventeen-year-old Zac had been helping her dig a hole.

Breeze—a puppy then—had dodged a bullet that day. She'd chased the Williams' sheep. Remy had paid Zac's dad for a ewe that couldn't be saved, helped Zac bury it, and promised Bryce and Sheila Williams it would never happen again. If it did, Remy said, she'd put Breeze down herself.

Old Menzel let the place go,
Zac had said, as they'd leaned on their spades looking over the valley, in much the same way Remy leaned on the trellis post now.

She was damn glad the old owner had let it go. It was the only way she'd been able to afford it.

Remy slapped her palm on her thigh and Breeze leapt up. The bitch was four now and in her prime: a tan and white ball of mischief with a chest like a front-rower and thighs to match.

‘Come on lazy,' Remy said to the panting dog. ‘This isn't getting our work done.'

***

An hour or so later in the cottage, Remy had made her second cup of tea for the day and was about to take it out into the shade of the big trees near the old stable, when Breeze growled in the yard. At the front of the house, Remy heard tyres crunching gravel.

She put her cup on the sink and crossed to the fridge, pulling out a bag of tomatoes, two zucchinis and a handful of basil with the ends tied into a bundle of damp cottonwool. Seconds later she heard the metallic clank of the lock at the side gate and paws scrabbling.

She pushed out the patio doors.

Zac Williams' leg came through the gate first, blocking Breeze who'd been trying to get her head past his knee. Zac had a carton of eggs in one hand and Remy's mail in the other.

Breeze growled at him. A low staffy growl that was like a vintage car engine cranking on a cold day, tail wagging hard enough to wiggle her entire body.

‘One of these days I'll come in here and she'll take me bloody arm orf,' Zac grumbled.

‘Nah. She
likes
you,' Remy said. ‘People she gets along with fine. It's just anything on four legs, or if it has wings.'

‘No wonder you don't keep chickens.' Zac shut the gate. In the next breath he shoved his sunglasses to the top of his mop of brown hair and held out the eggs and envelopes.

He was pushing twenty-three now, and no longer lanky. Like his dad, Zac had shoulders honed on years of tossing full-grown sheep like they were woolly pillows.

‘Great, you've brought me bills.' Remy swapped the eggs and mail for her homegrown vegetables.

‘Great, you're giving me tomatoes. Mum must be down to her last six dozen.'

‘Well, if she would take any money for the eggs, I wouldn't have to give you fruit and …' It wasn't the first time they'd had this argument. It wouldn't be the last. Remy didn't want people's charity. Never had.

Zac's gaze travelled to her feet, where the big toe of her right foot emerged from her sock like a fat pink worm. ‘Air conditioning?'

‘Yep. Natural ventilation.' Who had money for inconsequential things like socks?

He laughed, dragging his gaze north, up her bare legs to worn denim shorts, before jumping quickly to her face. ‘So,' he began, clearing his throat. ‘Have you heard the news?'

‘I never go anywhere to hear any news, you know that. What's up? You knocked up someone's daughter and you're leaving town?'

‘You know you're the only girl for me, Rem.'

He almost carried it off too, Remy thought, but the bob in his Adam's apple gave him away. Zac had had an almighty crush on her for years. Starting, probably, the day they'd dug that hole for the dead sheep. Not wanting to embarrass him she said again, with a smile: ‘Go on then, tell me. What news?'

‘Max Montgomery sold Montgomery Wines. Walk-in, walk-out. Some West Australian company brought it. Lasley or Laxley. Somethin' like that.'

And winter's ghost stole summer from the sun. The egg carton slipped. The mail slid from Remy's hand, fanning across her outdoor table until the envelopes rustled into the stone wall.

‘Lasrey.'

‘Ah!' Zac slapped the verandah post. ‘Lasrey, that's it. Dad said you'd know 'em. They're big in the West, 'parently, and growin'. Not many wineries doing that right now so we knew they were a player.'

‘They're a player,' Remy confirmed, then clicked her fingers to call Breeze so she could cover the shake in her fingers by stroking her dog's head.