Unfortunately Yours (A Vine Mess, #2)

Then again . . . maybe it was?

They’d been married for only six days. Maybe it was totally within his character to leave before she woke up without any prior warning. And not just to push his tire—but to leave. Off the property. She’d gone looking for him around the house and in both barns, the unsettled feeling in her stomach yawning wider by the moment. Was something wrong? Did he have an emergency? Why didn’t he wake her up to help?

Then she’d finally found the note, attached to her favorite coffee mug.

Went to see Sam.

Until that moment, she’d never speculated on when August might bring her to see Sam. Or if he ever would. But as close as they’d been yesterday and last night, the way she’d been so vulnerable with him, August going to the cemetery alone felt a little like being shut out. Again. Perhaps it wasn’t a rational reaction, but tell that to her heart while it sank like a setting sun. August had a whole private part of his life, his grief, and he guarded it like a lion.

It was a part of him she’d never touch. She just had to accept that.

She’d just given herself to this man, not only in name now, but emotionally.

Less than a day later, she felt as if he’d dropped her without a safety net.

Reluctantly, she started her car and pulled out of the parking space in front of the bank. She didn’t feel like going home, though. To August’s house. It was too quiet without him there and she was looking for some reassurance, not more questions.

To be fair, she should have known that the Vos estate was the last place she should go. Maybe she was a masochist or maybe she had a tiny bit of hope that her relationship with Corinne was getting stronger. She’d surprised her mother with her research on VineWatch, right? Plus, if she and Corinne could relate to each other about anything, it was a man disappointing them. So home she went, with a frisson of hope in her chest.

It was doused the moment she pulled into the circular driveway and she saw two hybrids parked outside. The VineWatch logo was silk-screened onto their windows. Two men and one woman in khakis and navy blue polo shirts had just alighted from the vehicles. And Julian and Corinne were approaching them to shake hands.

She’d obviously just crashed their meeting.

A meeting they were having without her. As if she should be surprised.

Yet, she was? Obviously, she still had the capacity to be hurt by her family, because her stomach turned completely around and all she could do was stare.

Julian must have caught sight of her, because he was suddenly standing beside the driver’s-side window, signaling for her to roll it down.

“Hey,” he said warmly. “I’m glad Corinne decided to invite you to the meeting. I told her—”

“She didn’t invite me,” Natalie said dully. “I’m here by accident.”

If that didn’t sum up how she felt about everything, this entire day, maybe her entire life at this very moment in time, nothing did.

Julian straightened his tie, openly befuddled. “I see. She didn’t want to interrupt your first week as a married couple with business. For the record, I knew you’d want to be here—”

“It doesn’t matter, Julian,” she said, sounding numb. Feeling hollow.

What am I doing in this stupid town?

Nothing had changed. She would always be the odd one out. In her family. In her marriage. New York was the only place she’d ever been a consideration to others. It was the only place her input had ever been valued.

Not here.

Never here.

“I have a business meeting tonight in New York, so I’ll be wining and dining a tech billionaire at Scarpetta if anyone needs me,” she said, putting the car in reverse, blowing off her brother’s request that she stay and talk. She ignored the phone when it started to ring on the way home, too. August. When her mother started calling, as well, she turned the device off altogether. And it felt good. It felt good to slip back into that mindset of her early twenties, when she’d needed no one but herself. Natalie against the world.

They wouldn’t even miss her.

Thank God she’d never called Claudia to cancel the meeting with William Banes Savage.

As soon as Natalie walked through the door of August’s house, she opened her laptop and swapped her midafternoon flight for the next possible plane to New York. Feeling in control for the first time in months, she sent the boarding pass to her phone and tucked the laptop into her purse. One hour until she needed to leave for the airport and August still wasn’t home. Was he having a hard time with the visit to Sam?

Not my problem. He’s made that clear.

Pain carved a slice out of her chest, calling her a liar. She had to pause in the act of packing her small carry-on bag in order to breathe. It seemed that shutting herself off from August wasn’t going to be an easy process. Not like it had been before, with her ex. With every ex, really. If recovering from breakups was an Olympic sport, she would have medaled in all events. Vaulting over the truth. Sprinting away from accountability.

She wouldn’t win gold so easily in the August relay race.

Her chest was a dumpster fire. And leaving for the airport without saying goodbye wasn’t going to give her the vindication she wanted. The way she kept staring at the front door of the house, hoping he would walk through it, made that obvious.

The barn caught her eye through the window. Off-limits. She wasn’t allowed to go in there and mess with his fermentation process.

Well, too bad.

Natalie shoved her feet into some flats and stomped out of the bedroom, stepping over the sprawled cat on her way to the front door. She yanked it open, hating the way hope that August’s truck would be parked outside rose in her chest. It was not. There was nothing but an empty slab of concrete decorated with oil stains.

With her heart in her mouth, she paraded into the barn. She was surprised to find that the farther she ventured into August’s off-limits workshop, the more the bowstrings inside her chest loosened. Sure, she didn’t have his express consent to be in there, among his things, but she’d never consented to him making her fall in love with him, only to be compartmentalized. Kept at a distance. Close but not too close, the way her family kept her.

August wasn’t supposed to do that to her, too.

Natalie realized she was staring across the rows of oak barrels through a veil of tears. Her nose was on fire and those flames followed a trail of kerosine to the dead center of her chest, lighting up that sad, suffering organ and turning it to ashes. Partially.

Some part of it must have remained beating, because she swiped at her nose and pulled out the stopper from the first barrel, immediately recognizing the need for filtration.

Nobody wanted her help, especially August.

Well, that was too damn bad, wasn’t it?

*

I fell asleep. How could I fall asleep with her waiting for me?

How could I do that?

When August pulled into his usual spot outside the house, his stomach was already a bubbling cauldron of acid. Because she wouldn’t answer his calls, they went straight to voice mail and now, her blue hatchback was gone. Natalie’s car. Was gone.

He dove out of the truck and without missing a beat, started shouting, “Natalie.”

She wasn’t inside the house. He knew it, because if she was anywhere in the vicinity, he would feel that welcome presence. Despite that intuition, he almost kicked down the door of the house, because his fingers wouldn’t work well enough to unlock it, shouting her name the whole time.

When he got inside, it was dead silent. Menace sat perched on the edge of a dining room chair, her expression nothing short of a narrow-eyed accusation. Panic rising, he took out his phone and called Natalie, cursing a blue streak when it went to voice mail again. Maybe she’d just gone to Vos Vineyard? Maybe she’d been pissed off at him enough to move some of her things back to the guest house? Because, yeah. His wife was not in the bedrooms or the bathroom and her fucking toothbrush was gone? a fact that made his windpipe shrink to the size of a pinhole.

“No. No, no, no . . .”

Julian would know if she’d gone to the guest house.

He’d call Julian.

August didn’t notice his hand was shaking until he hit the number for Natalie’s brother. “Yes?” answered the professor on the second ring.

“Is Natalie there?” August barked into the receiver.

“She was. But she left.” A long pause, some creaking. “That was over two hours ago. She’s not answering your calls, either?”

“If she was, I wouldn’t be calling you!”

“Good point,” Julian said—and August really, really didn’t like the fact that this normally unflappable dude sounded worried. “All right. Take a deep breath. She was obviously upset, I just didn’t think she’d really leave—”