The air inside the Hollister tasting room tastes of silt and forgotten summers. Dust motes dance in the slanted afternoon light, settling over the mahogany bar where Margaux’s grandmother once poured the valley’s finest Cabernet. She sets her leather suitcase down with a hollow thud that echoes too long against the vaulted ceiling. It has been sixteen years since she stood on these floorboards, and the neglect is a physical weight, heavier than the grief that brought her back to Sonoma. The architect in her notes the sagging beams and the peeling wallpaper with a clinical, protective ache.
Fix the roof, sign the papers, get back to the city, she tells herself, tucking a pencil behind her ear. Her fingers brush the thin gold chain at her throat, a nervous habit she hasn't outgrown. The silence of the estate is absolute, broken only by the settling of the old timber. She reaches for her field notebook, ready to catalog the damage, when a sudden shift in the light catches her eye. A long, sharp shadow stretches across the sunlit doorway, slicing through the dust.
She freezes, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. This part of the ridge is supposed to be deserted until the lawyer arrives at five. The shadow remains still, possessive and broad-shouldered, before it begins to move. The heavy, measured boot steps crossing the floorboards do not belong to the estate lawyer.
