Forbidden: An Older Man Younger Woman Romance

“What do you mean ‘no’?” I demanded.

“I mean no,” he said. “I’m not going to give out her home address. You called her. That was her opportunity to talk to you if she wanted to. If she didn’t answer, that’s her choice.”

“You’re the one who just stood there threatening me, saying I needed to fix this situation with her and make sure she isn’t gone for good. But now you’re making it impossible for me to actually do that?”

“I’m not making it impossible.” He finally looked up at me. “But Ally is my friend, Noah. I actually care about her. Her home is her private space where she can go and feel safe. It’s not my place to just tell someone where she is without knowing if she would be okay with it. And I would venture to say she wouldn’t be okay with you just popping up at her door right now.”

My jaw tightened. I wanted to tell him I cared about her too, but the words were churning in my stomach and aching in the middle of my chest. I couldn’t say them yet. Not to Derek, anyway. So far, Ally and I had done everything backward. This was one thing I wasn’t going to do the wrong way. I wanted to give her the chance to pour everything out to me and decide what she wanted to do about the baby. Then we could talk about us.

That thought was hard enough. The idea that I could ever be a part of an “us” again was something that hadn’t crossed my mind. Not in two years. That was who I was when Monica was alive. I was fully dedicated to my marriage and our partnership. When I lost her, I never wanted to think of myself in that way ever again. I swore to myself I would never go through that again. I would never open myself up to anyone and certainly would never fall for someone and risk that kind of pain.

But that was exactly why I needed to find Ally. I needed to tell her how sorry I was for the way I acted when I first heard the news of her pregnancy. I needed to explain it had been a shock and I didn’t know how to handle it at first, but that I had accepted it. I was on board. We could do this together.

It wasn’t just the apology and the promise to be there for her and the baby I needed to say. At first, I thought it might be better to just compartmentalize any feelings I was having for her. I needed to just tuck them away in the corner of my brain somewhere, so I was only thinking about the baby. Now as I stood in the kitchen trying to convince my brother to help me find her, I realized that wasn’t going to work.

I needed to tell Ally what was really going on in my head, to be honest with her. We’d never talked about my past, and I felt the need to bare it all to her. I wanted to tell her about Monica and how devastating it was to lose her so suddenly. How that loss affected me to my soul, and I thought it was impossible for me to ever have feelings for any woman ever again.

I’d sworn to myself I wouldn’t. But Ally snuck in. She came when I wasn’t expecting her and shook me down to my core. From the first moment I saw her and the first time we came up against each other, she was different. There was something about her I told myself I couldn’t stand but realized I actually couldn’t get enough of.

Clashing with her and telling myself, and anyone else who would listen, that I didn’t like her and how much we didn’t get along was a protective mechanism. It was my way of denying what was really happening and how I actually felt about her. She had come in and destroyed my defenses without even knowing it. She had no idea what she’d done in my life, and I needed to tell her.

“I need to find her,” I reiterated.

“You have her phone number,” Derek said. “Keep calling her. Eventually, she’ll pick up. And if she doesn’t, she doesn’t. If you are really determined to find her, you will.”

“Yes, I will.”

“The personnel records are off-limits,” he reminded me as I headed for the door.

It wasn’t a condition he’d come up with in that moment. The five of us brothers had sat down for a meeting early in the process and talked about how we were going to manage the vineyard. It was a huge undertaking, and we all knew it was important to our grandparents that each one of us played a role in running it. They wouldn’t have left it all to us if that wasn’t the case. They wanted to know we had something we could share and were in it together.