In His Eyes by Emmie Dark

Author:Emmie Dark
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Goint Back 38
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-08-31T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THERE WAS A STRANGE tone in Hugh’s voice, so Zoe gave up her struggle with the filing cabinet contents and stood. She looked at the dirty white cardboard boxes he’d lined up—there were three so far. “Where did they come from?”

“Over there—behind those shelves.”

Zoe frowned. There was a small space behind the bookshelves that lined one side of the office. She’d never thought to look there.

“What’s in them?” she asked when Hugh bent over a box.

“See for yourself.” He straightened and took a step back, giving her space to inspect his discovery.

The first box held half a dozen bottles of wine and they looked familiar. Zoe picked one out. The gold seal over the cork, the white-and-gold label… “What?” she said in utter disbelief.

Golden Gate Estate zinfandel.

“Why would he…?” Puzzled, Zoe pulled the wine out of the box and checked the vintages. There were three bottles of each vintage of each year since she’d begun working there. The wines she’d been part of creating. Only those years—no others.

“Look at the box,” Hugh prompted gently.

On the side of the cardboard, in shaky, old man’s handwriting were the words “Zoe’s wine” and the years of the vintages inside.

A sick sensation grew in Zoe’s stomach.

“There’s more.”

Between the two of them, they excavated four additional boxes from the gap. Eventually they were sitting on the cold concrete floor, surrounded by the cartons they’d discovered. Each box had “Zoe’s wine” written on it, with years next to them. Not all of them were full, and the contents hadn’t been particularly carefully packed—snails had feasted on the labels of more than a few. In total, there were about thirty bottles from most of the wineries Zoe had worked at over the past ten years—even ones where she’d just been picking grapes.

Zoe shook her head as she held a bottle from a winery she’d worked in for a short time in France. She couldn’t even remember telling her grandfather she’d been there. Another box even contained a few bottles from when she’d worked with the unbearable Pierre Renault.

But the most astonishing box was the one filled with unlabeled bottles. The dates on the front went right back to when Zoe was fourteen and still living at Waterford. She pulled one out and held it up to the light. The year was scrawled in white marker pen on the side.

“What is it?” Hugh asked, frowning.

“A joke. It must be.” Zoe felt her stomach clench again. “It couldn’t be…”

“Couldn’t be what?”

Zoe hesitated before answering. Were her eyes deceiving her? Surely this wasn’t real.

“After my mother died, when it was just me and Mack here—” She broke off, disgusted by the quaver in her voice.

“He started me working in the winery and vineyard. He’d said he was a child when he’d started working for his father, so it shouldn’t be any different for me.”

Hugh nodded for her to continue.

“Mostly I just did chores—cleaning things up, helping the pickers, pruning the vines, that kind of thing. When I was fourteen, he let me start work with him on the wine-making side of things.

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