In Defiance of Duty by Caitlin Crews

somehow, that whatever her mother was about to say would take recovering from, and she wasn’t sure she could recover from anything else just at the moment. She didn’t think she could survive Diana’s version of home truths. Not now. Not when she was terrified that she was, in fact, the very ghost Diana accused her of being.
    “Listen—” she began, but then was saved when Harry Thompson walked in the door from the outside, keen to talk about the conversation he’d just had with the Frederick Winery chief winemaker.

    Frederick Winery chief winemaker.
    Dear, friendly Harry, Kiara thought, studying him after they’d exchanged greetings.
    She supposed he was a good-looking man, though it had been a long time since she’d thought of him in that way. He was simply Harry. He would one day run his family’s wine business. He would raise a few children to follow in his footsteps. He would have good years and bad, as dependent as everyone else was on the vagaries of the Australian weather, the moisture in the soil, the odd heat wave or downpour that could change the year’s grape yield. Safe, sweet, dependable Harry.
    As Harry and Diana engaged in a friendly debate about their different winemakers’ approaches to the Riesling this season, Kiara gripped her coffee and watched them over the brim of the mug.
    The truth was, she could understand why Diana still thought Harry was the right choice for Kiara. He’d grown up steeped in wine and the wine business, and for a woman like Diana, who had lost her partner so early and had had to learn the wine business on the run with a small daughter and so many naysayers, he must look like the safest of safe bets. He must look a lot like Kiara imagined her own father must have looked to Diana all those years ago—a kind, loyal family man with deep roots in this valley.
    It made Kiara wonder why she had let her romantic relationship with him fizzle, without even a harsh word spoken if she recalled it right, when she’d set off for university. Had she never really wanted safe, after all? Despite what she’d told herself before meeting Azrin?
    “Are you expecting a big tour group?” Harry asked, stopping in the middle of his lively, friendly argument with Diana to peer out the big kitchen windows that looked out over a portion of the long entry lane leading up to the chateau and the grounds. It wound its way through the vineyards and beneath the small hill where the chateau sat, making the most of the view. “That’s quite a convoy.”
    Kiara followed his gaze with mild interest, but saw nothing but dust kicked up in the air, as whatever vehicles Harry had seen had already disappeared around one of the bends, presumably circling around the final curves toward the front of the chateau.
    “No tour group that I’m aware of,” Diana said. “But I would be the last to know.”
    Kiara realized they were both looking at her. “I’ve no idea,” she said. “I haven’t given a tour of the winery since I was on my summer holidays from university.” Harry’s face cracked into a big smile then, so warm and happy that Kiara found she was unable to do anything but smile back. There was some part of her that mourned the fact that he could never, would never, be the man for her. Surely, she thought, that spoke to defects in her character. Surely she should have wanted him—for all the reasons her mother wanted him for her.
    Because if she married Harry or someone like him and lived her life out making wine here, she would be living out the very dream that Diana had wanted for herself—the dream that had been cut short and altered so terribly when Kiara’s father died.
    And Kiara couldn’t help feeling that helpless guilt roll through her again, because she knew it would never happen. Not even if she never laid eyes on Azrin again. Not ever.
    “Do you remember that summer right before you started university?” Harry was asking. He turned to Diana. “I don’t know how you let us