“It’s your choice.”

She let out a laugh, shook her head. “A smooth way. We have to talk. Can we go downstairs?”

“Sure.” He held out a hand, and though he noted her hesitation, he kept it extended until she stepped forward and laid hers in it. “How about a glass of wine by the fire?”

“That would be lovely. Everything here is lovely. I’m terrified Simon’s going to break something.”

“Stop it. The day I was moving back, Flynn stopped by with Moe. The first thing that dog did was run through the house and break a lamp. It wasn’t a national tragedy.”

“I guess I’m just jumpy, between one thing and another.”

“Go in and sit down. I’ll get the wine.”

There was a fire already blazing. He must have seen to that while she was unpacking. Like the rest of the house, the room looked settled and warm and interesting. All the little pieces, the things she imagined he’d collected on his travels, the art, even the way it was all placed.

It spoke of a man who knew what he wanted and was used to having the best.

She wandered over to study a painting of a Paris street scene, the sidewalk café with its cheerful umbrellas, the rivers of flowers, the dignity of the Arc de Triomphe in the background.

A far cry from her framed postcards.

And he’d sat at one of those busy cafés, drinking strong black coffee out of a tiny cup, while she’d only dreamed of it.

Brad came in with a bottle of wine in one hand and two glasses held by the bowls in the other. “I bought that a couple of years ago,” he said as he joined her. “I liked the movement, the way the traffic’s bunched up on the street. You can almost hear the horns blasting.”

He tipped wine into one of the glasses, waited for her to take it. “We Vanes can’t seem to stop collecting art.”

“Maybe you should think about having a museum.”

“Actually, my father’s working on something. A hotel, a resort. He could fill it with some of his art, and have an excuse to buy more.”

“He would build a hotel just so he has a place to put his art collection?”

“That, and enterprise. Art, wood, and capitalism are the Vane bywords. He’s angling to find the right piece of land here in the Highlands, where it all began.” His shrug was a gesture of easy confidence. “But if he doesn’t, he’ll find it elsewhere. Once B.C. knows what he wants, he doesn’t take no for an answer.”

“So you come by it honestly.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. He’s a good man. A little formidable, but a good man. A good husband and father and a hell of a businessman. He’ll like you.”

“I can’t imagine,” she said faintly.

“He’ll admire what you’ve done with your life, what you’ve made. And what you’re still building. He’d say you have grit, and there’s nothing he respects more.”

She expected a man like B. C. Vane would grill her like a hamburger patty if he ever discovered she was involved with his son.

“Do you love them? Your parents?”

“Very much.”

“I don’t know if I love my mother.” It spilled out before she knew she meant to say it, before she knew she thought it. “What an awful thing to say. I want to, but I don’t know if I do.”

Shocked by her own words, she lowered herself to the arm of a chair. “And my daddy, I haven’t seen him in so many years. I don’t even know him, so how could I love him? He left us. He left his wife and his four children, and he never came back.”

“That was tough on you. Tough on your mother.”

“On all of us,” Zoe agreed. “But especially on Mama. It didn’t just break her heart, it shriveled it up until it was all dry and brittle and there wasn’t any juice left for us. When he left, she took off after him. I didn’t think she was going to come back.”

“She left you alone?” The sheer outrage of it vibrated in his voice. “She left four children alone?”

“She was wild to get him back. She was only gone a few days, but . . . oh, God, I was scared. What was I going to do if she didn’t come back?”

“Wasn’t there anyone you could’ve called, gone to for help?”

“My mama’s sister, but she and Mama fought all the time, so I didn’t want to call her. I didn’t know if I should call any of my daddy’s family, the way things were. The fact was, I didn’t know what the hell to do, so I didn’t do anything except mind the kids and wait for her to come home.”

He couldn’t fathom it. “How old were you?”

“Twelve. Junior was only a year younger than me, and he wouldn’t mind me. Joleen, she was a couple years younger than him, so she’d’ve been eight, I guess, and she cried for a whole day. I never saw anybody cry like that before or since,” Zoe said with a sigh. “Mazie, the baby, was five, so she didn’t really understand what was going on, but she knew something was up. I couldn’t hardly take my eyes off her for a minute. I didn’t know what I was going to do if we ran out of food or money to buy more.”

She shifted to sit in the chair, dangling the wineglass between her knees. “But she came back. I remember thinking how tired she looked, and how hard. But she was going to look more tired, more hard before it was done. She did her best for us. She did all she could, but I don’t know that she ever loved us again. I don’t know if she could.”

She looked up at him then. “Those are the people I come from. I wanted you to know.”

“Are you telling me that because you think it’ll change my feelings for you? That if I find your parents irresponsible and selfish I’ll stop loving you?”

Wine sloshed over the rim of her glass when her hand jerked. “Don’t say that. Don’t say something about love when you don’t even know me.”

“I know you, Zoe. Do you want me to tell you what I know? What I see, what I feel?”

She shook her head. “God. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know how to make you understand how this twists me around. How I’m afraid if I let go again, I could end up dried up inside, too.”

“The way you let go with James Marshall?”

She sighed. “I loved him. Bradley, I loved him so much. It was like being inside a crystal bowl, where everything was so shiny and bright. It wasn’t just something reckless, something careless between us.”