PROLOGUE
KICK
Ifound Isabel Van Orr on a Sunday afternoon, nine days after I’d dropped her off at the airport. Four days after her father told me she’d never arrived in Italy.
She was pruning vines in the back section of the Whitmore Estate Vineyards, five hours north of Paso Robles, wearing work clothes I’d never seen her in and an expression of fierce concentration that disappeared the second she looked up and saw me.
For a moment, we stared at each other across ten feet of vineyard rows. Her face went white, then red, then she dropped the pruning shears and ran.
“Isabel!” I broke into a sprint. “Stop!”
She cut through the vines toward an equipment barn on the far side of the property, moving fast despite the uneven ground.
I was faster.
I caught her arm and spun her around. She crashed into my chest, and for one terrible, wonderful second, every reason I had for ending things between usevaporated. All I felt was relief that she was alive, that I’d found her.
Then she shoved against my chest. “Let go of me.”
“Not until you tell me what’s going on.” I didn’t release her. Couldn’t. “You’re supposed to be in Italy. I drove you to the airport myself.”
“I lied.” She wrenched free and put distance between us. “How did you find me? Does anyone else know I’m here?” Panic flickered across her face. “You can’t tell my father where I am.”
“Isabel! He deserves to know you’re alive.”
“Then tell him that, but not where I am.”
I took a step closer. She took one back.
“What are you running from, Isabel?”
“I’m not running?—”
“You’re terrified. I can see it. Tell me why.”
She laughed, but the sound came out broken. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
“Wrong. You’re not as good an actress as you think you are.”
“Why are you here?” The question burst out of her. “You made it very clear what you thought of me. I’m spoiledand?—”
“When I said those things, I was angry and scared you’d hurt people I care about. And I apologized. More than once.”
“It doesn’t matter now.” She turned away. “You need to go.”
“What are you doing, working at Whitmore? If he finds out who?—”
“He knows exactly who I am, and he hired me anyway.” Her eyes filled with tears she blinked away. “Please, Kick. If you ever cared about me at all, just go. Tell my father I’m alive. Tell him I’ll come home when I’m ready. But don’t tell him where I am.”
“When will you be ready?”
“I don’t know.”
The gaze she leveled at me was the closest she came to looking like the Isabel I’d known most of my life.
I should walk away. Respect her wishes and leave her to whatever she was trying to do. But every instinct I had was screaming that something was very wrong. That whatever had sent her here had nothing to do with her dad.
“Just go. Please.”
