about that. Instead, it made her feel terribly alone.
He gently tugged down her underwear. From the first time Steven ever touched her, it was like he knew her body intuitively. But now the practiced stroke of his hand felt clinical.
“I’m going to get on top,” she murmured, wanting to keep things moving, not wanting to get so much in her own head she couldn’t continue.
“Everything okay?” Steven said after a minute.
“Yes,” she said, opening her eyes. “Are you close?”
His movement beneath her stopped, his body still except for his heavy breathing.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Leah. You tell me. It’s like you’re not even in the room.”
She moved off him and lay down by his side, staring up at the ceiling. Her heart beat with equal parts guilt for feeling so detached and defensiveness that he picked up on it.
He sat up, running his hand through his hair and looking at her. “What is it?”
She clutched the sheets to her chest. “I think I’m just upset about the winery.”
When she was a younger woman, sex could offer escape—just like drinking or running off to the beach or taking an aimless drive with the music blasting. Nothing was ever so bad that sensory pleasure couldn’t fix it at least temporarily. But now that she was older, whatever was bothering her was always primary. And she had to be in a perfect frame of mind to have sex.
“Leah, I know it’s a loss. And of course you need to be supportive of your parents. But you can’t let this consume you. You have a life waiting for you back in the city.”
She was thankful for her life in Manhattan. She’d run a successful business of her own while raising her daughter and sustaining a loving marriage. But the cheese shop, as much as she’d wanted it to, never filled the void that had been created when she left the winery. In the way that music and books and movies you see later in life can never compare to the ones you experienced as a child, so it was with a place.
Just like wine and cheese had a terroir, so did people. And this vineyard was her terroir. It was unthinkable that she was losing it, and yet there was nothing she could do about it. Her father had made sure of that.
But there was something she could do, and that was be there for her mother. Oh, she’d put up a good front at the dinner table. But Leah knew it was just that: a front. The dark glasses stayed on, and while she smiled and made conversation, she drank more than she ate. And when Sadie said something about being sad to leave, she hadn’t responded in her typical way, which would have been, “So don’t.” She was a strained, superficial version of herself. “I don’t think I can leave tomorrow,” Leah said. “I need to stay.”
“What do you mean, stay? For how long?”
“I don’t know. A week or so?”
“To do what?”
“Give my mother some moral support.”
“It’s not your job to fix this, Leah. You weren’t needed in boom times, so they can do without you during the bust,” he said. “Besides, we have to get back to work.”
“Just for a week,” Leah repeated.
“So you want me to go back to the city and deal with Bailey’s Blue?”
“Can you?”
He hesitated, and she could tell his mind was racing with images of long customer lines at the counter during the day and the hours of bookkeeping and placing orders at night . . . all things she had managed with an occasional part-timer, but things he was relatively new to handling—and never all alone. Still, she knew he could do it. It was just a matter of whether he was willing. And that was what she knew he was truly grappling with. When he ultimately nodded, Leah reached for his hand. “But, Leah,” he said, “don’t get overly caught up in all this. Your parents make the decisions about Hollander Estates. They made that clear a long time ago.” He got out of bed and walked to the bathroom.
Leah knew he was trying to be protective of her, but it felt like criticism. And the truth was, she had been a Hollander before she was a Bailey. But this, like her disconnection from their sex life, was something she couldn’t express to her husband. And with a few days apart, she wouldn’t have to try.