Maeve shrugged. “Yeah, it’s really nice.”
Brodie said, “It’s from my vineyard in Napa. It’s not actually champagne—we’re not allowed to call it that because it’s not from Champagne—but it’s up there with the best.” He was showing off, he couldn’t help it, he did it on autopilot around women.
Maeve smiled politely, didn’t seem massively impressed with the quality of his sparkling vintage. Instead, she said, “I didn’t know you had a vineyard. That must be a lot of work.”
“For the people who run it, yeah!” Brodie joked.
“You’re not involved?” She seemed surprised.
Brodie shrugged. “I’m not really there enough. When I am, it’s great. But it’s more of an investment.”
Her silent nod propelled him to say more, not liking the impression she was forming of him swaggering into his vineyard a couple of times a year to taste the Pinot Noir. “I actually have learned quite a lot,” he admitted because her values seemed to be different to those of the people he hung around with—who were more concerned with when the next bottle would be opened. “I didn’t think I’d be that interested in vines but—” He glanced to see if she was listening. “Well, they’re complicated little fellas.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “John-Luke has some at the orchard. I watch him out there talking to them.”
“I’ll admit I’ve never said a word to my vines,” he replied, and she laughed, mouth closed, eyes creasing as shelooked down at the glass in her lap. It felt as if some of the awkwardness between them was lessening.
But then they lapsed into silence again.
Brodie hated any kind of social discomfort or unease. He knew it probably had something to do with his dad—the protracted silences that came with Emmett’s stern disapproval of the boys when they’d done something wrong, silences that Brodie itched to fill, to crack a joke, to make it good again and eventually run as far away as he could.
But it was Maeve who said, “How did you find today?” and he imagined her using the same tone as she stood at the side of a patient’s bed, calmly assessing.
“Good,” he said. Then, “Exhausting!” Maybe to try and make her laugh and it worked. She laughed out loud, seemingly surprising herself.
“I take it that’s what most days are like?” He gestured back to where Zoey was asleep, thinking he could happily shut his eyes and take a little nap.
“Yes,” Maeve replied, still with the hint of a smile. “It’s hardcore.”
“You’re telling me.” He blew out a breath. The most brutal bits had been when he was just having a sit down and Zoey ran over, grabbed his hand and dragged him to look at some poor frog quivering under a rock or beg him to climb the pine tree to get a fir cone.
“It’s better now she’s older.”
Brodie felt his eyes widen. “Better?”
He watched her brows draw together as she looked at him like he was joking. “Yeah,waybetter.”
He shook his head. He couldn’t have spent eight years doing that. He’d be a wreck. Again, the image of himself prostrate on his yacht flashed into his head. “Wow.” He wondered if he was missing a trick somewhere. “And you’re a doctor, too.” He was genuinely perplexed.
She laughed and he thought he saw her relax a little. She leaned back in her chair and, rolling her head his way, said, “I guess—” She paused, rolled her lips together as she thought about what to say. “It’s hard but you just get on with it.” She sipped her drink, the condensation fogging the glass. “I got through it, that’s the best I did.”
“Please!” From what Brodie had seen of her so far, he imagined she’d aced it. “I’m picturing you sitting in classes with a baby strapped to your front, blazing a trail with all those crusty Stanford professors.”
He couldn’t even imagine getting into somewhere like Stanford, let alone with the goal of medical school. Brodie had dropped out of school at fifteen when they’d signed with the record label. They’d had tutors, but he didn’t pay a huge amount of attention. Who wanted to do lessons when there were mobs of screaming girls outside and interviewers begging for an audience, and cities to explore after dark? He was living his best life, and algebra didn’t register highly on that agenda.
Maeve put her wine glass down on the deck and, taking a deep breath as if bracing for something, said, “I wasn’t at Stanford, Brodie.”
He was intuitive enough to know that the statement meant something. He found himself wanting to rewind five minutes and go back to talking about the vineyard. He said, “My mistake, sorry, I thought you were.”
She considered for a moment, then said, “I mean, Iwasat Stanford,” she corrected herself. “But not when I had Zoey.”
Brodie shifted a fraction in his seat. He thought about saying that his vineyard had a fourteenth-century, Tuscan-inspired castle on the grounds. Instead, he said what he was meant to say, which was, “What happened?”
She bit her bottom lip for a second, then she tucked her leg underneath her and turned his way, as if she knew she had to go through this at some point. “My parents—Let’s just say they weren’t too happy about the fact I was pregnant. Or, you know—” she swallowed awkwardly “—the circumstances around it.”
The more time Brodie spent with Maeve, the more he could recall glimpses of the night they spent together. His main memory had been of a very pretty girl with a really sexy pair of silver boots. But he was starting to recall other stuff, too. Like a lot of laughing. And ripping open a packet of hotel hot chocolate when normally he’d ordered up expensive room service. He had an inkling they’d playedSuper Mario, which didn’t usually happen on his nights with women. Either way, in his view of it there were no life-changing ramifications. No sad eyes or heads bowed in shame.
“My parents were paying for Stanford, and, well, when they knew there was going to be a baby, they decided that it was no longer the best use of their money.” She glanced up, eyes narrowing in humorless amusement, like that was the polite way of saying what her parents had said. “They felt that I had not made thebest use of my potential.” She smiled wryly as she said it like she’d lived with those words, that disappointment, for a long time.
