The only way to keep them all safe was to stay vigilant. To stay strong. To imprison his feelings, chaining them beneath walls of iron, chiseling them beneath stone.
He took a deep breath, forcing his heart to ice.
The only way to love his family...was to not let himself feel anything for them at all.
For the first few weeks after Oliver was born, Rosalie’s days and nights blended into a haze of waking and sleeping.
She was tired, so tired. Her nipples were sore from nursing. Her shoulders ached from holding her newborn baby in the same position for hours as he slept, afraid of waking him, as she herself dozed upright in the rocking chair.
“We should get a nanny,” her husband had told her multiple times, every time he saw her drugged-looking expression and the dark circles beneath her eyes. “A night nurse, at the very least.”
But Rosalie had refused. This was her precious baby, and he deserved all her attention and love. She held him for hours, both because he cried when she set him down and also because she wanted to. She cradled his warm, tiny body close to her chest, and breathed in the scent of him, baby powder and sweet skin. Her baby needed her more than anyone ever had.
Oliver’s birth utterly and completely changed her life. In more ways than one.
Labor had been difficult, especially since she’d been forced to do it without an epidural. For hours, she’d endured the worst physical pain of her life. She didn’t know how she would have gotten through it if she hadn’t been able to grip Alex’s hand. “I’m here, cara,” he’d murmured softly, his dark eyes glowing. “I’m here.”
Afterward, exhausted, she’d cuddled her sweet newborn, and then slept. But when she’d woken, she had opened her eyes and had seen everything she’d ever dreamed of.
There, on the cushioned chair beside the window of the private suite, Alex sat cuddling their tiny baby.
He was shirtless, holding their son against his powerful, tanned chest, rippled with muscle and laced with dark hair. Both of them were half-covered by a knitted baby blanket sent overnight by her great-aunt from France.
And it was in that moment, buried beneath an avalanche of emotions, that Rosalie suddenly realized what she really felt.
She was in love with her husband.
All summer, she’d denied her growing feelings. They were merely partners, both in the vineyard, and as parents-to-be. Yes, they were lovers, and every night he brought her to shuddering, gasping fulfillment.
But that didn’t mean they were in love. Even though he’d become her best friend, the person she kissed before she fell asleep at night, the one who made her smile when she opened her eyes each morning. The man she wanted to spend time with; the one she wanted to talk to. But that didn’t mean she loved him. Of course it didn’t.
But when she saw him holding their baby son, her heart had simply exploded. And she could no longer deny the feeling or pretend it was anything else.
She was in love with Alex.
Totally, recklessly and utterly in love.
It terrified her. She tried not to think what it could mean for their future. Love had never been part of the deal. In fact, when she’d married him, he’d warned her: there would be no love. And there would be no divorce.
After they’d left the hospital and returned to the villa, she’d been almost relieved that, in those very early days of motherhood, she’d had no time to think about it.
But now, with Oliver nearly two months old and sleeping in four-hour chunks at night, she’d slowly resurfaced from the haze. Coming up from the baby undertow, Rosalie’s brain began to function again. And she was forced to face the cold, hard fact of her love.
And she was afraid.
Because now, for the first time, she also saw how her husband had grown increasingly distant since Oliver was born, spending very little time with them. Her husband never volunteered to care for their baby. In fact, after that miraculous afternoon in the hospital when he’d cradled him to his bare chest, he’d barely held his son at all.
It was almost, Rosalie thought with a shiver, as if he was purposefully trying to push her away. As if he knew.
But he couldn’t know she’d fallen in love with him, she told herself desperately. His emotional distance had to be a coincidence. When she’d been busy, utterly focused on the baby, exhausted and barely surviving, she hadn’t asked him for help. And in fairness, he’d been nearly as busy himself, with harvest. Harvesting grapes was labor-intensive, as Alex still insisted on the traditional method, harvesting by hand, with sharp shears and baskets. So it was all hands on deck. Alex always paid the top wages in the game, so he had no problem finding employees, and he himself worked hardest of all, from dawn till dusk, harvesting first the white grapes, mostly pinot grigio, and now the red, pinot nero and merlot.
An entire season of growing could be undone if the grapes were harvested too soon, or too late. So it was an intense, stressful season, until the grapes were all safely harvested and brought to the winery on the estate, where they’d be sorted, destemmed and crushed. Harvest was the most important time of a vintner’s year.
That had to be the reason he seemed so distant now, so hostile almost, whenever Rosalie tried to speak to him. She hadn’t even been able to tell him about the latest offer she’d received from a corporate American winery, asking to buy her family farm.
If she was truly never going back to California, she should sell, rather than continue to pay taxes on land that was going to seed, left a fallow ruin. The town deserved better. But every time she tried to force herself to accept the generous offer, she couldn’t. She couldn’t face it alone.
But Alex never talked to her. They hadn’t shared a single meal together since the baby was born. She tried not to take it personally. But it was hard. Especially since they hadn’t made love since the baby was born. They’d been separated not just by day, but by night too.