Stephen? Her father image. A perpetually exhausted and worried man left with two and a half daughters when all he wanted was a beer in front of a football game before he crashed into bed.
Mother? Erica could hardly remember what she looked like. Her main memory of her was her mother’s suitcase in the front hallway while her own was still under her bed. For a week, she’d slept under the bed hugging it, but it hadn’t brought her mother back, not even once.
On her own. She understood that. But she’d kept trying to plug men into the picture so that she’d be complete.
Dwayne—a married man and her boss. She was so much smarter than that, yet she’d gone there.
Ridley—the bad boy who had even told her that’s exactly what he was. But she couldn’t regret Ridley, not even when she tried.
Why was that?
She threw back the covers and looked around the room. The rain was back, hard and heavy, beating against her terrace door. But inside, her room was safe and warm. There were a dozen signs of Ridley here. Not only the items they’d found together. There were also purchases she’d made because he’d made her feel prettier and more special than she’d thought she was. And those purchases hadn’t been for him, they’d been for her. A celebration of who she was finally turning out to be.
About freaking time, Erica.
Why was that a bad thing? Perch?
She laughed alone in the empty room, but could detect no edge of hysteria. Not much anyway.
Never in her life had she told a man that she loved him. That was the lock on her heart that Ridley had somehow unwound like one of those town clocks until it rang true again.
What if…
There was a glimmer of hope somewhere. And it certainly wasn’t coming from the storm outside, so it must be coming from her.
What if rather than being somehow incomplete without a man—time to face it, without Ridley—what if he was the man she deserved?
“Ha!” Wouldn’t that thought surprise the daylights out of him.
It should surprise her. But it didn’t. He was the best man she’d ever known. And with the dream of a vineyard, he’d looked as if he’d finally come completely into his own.
She shoved out of bed and paced around the tiny space. From rain-splattered terrace doors to the entry, then the bedroom and back.
“Think, Erica. Think. It’s what you do.” She’d always been the big-picture gal in business, able to see how all the various pieces must fit together to make a unified process. What about her life? And Ridley’s?
For a long, painful week, she’d given up on them. But that was wrong.
“Just plain wrong!”
She loved his dream. And not only for how it had transformed him standing there. It was an exciting idea to create a business from nothing—something she’d never tried. His words had painted it so clearly in her mind’s eye that she could see the pieces unfolding even now. There was a huge amount of work to do, but she already knew where to start. What a gift the vintners had given him. She’d start with interviewing each of those fifteen men who had volunteered to help. She’d learn until she understood.
But one thing she understood right now!
If Ridley was the right man for her, she was the right woman for him. He’d never have stopped moving long enough to discover the dream without her. And it was her help he’d need to clarify his thinking.
It was her he needed.
It was just a matter of helping him figure that out.
* * *
Ridley meant to go check on Erica at lunchtime. But at the unexpected renewal of the downpour, he ducked into the entry to Emilio’s restaurant. It was only open for dinner, but the door was unlocked when he tried it.
Inside, Emilio was just making himself a lunch of pasta with pomodoro red sauce and thick slices of fresh-baked ciabatta. He threw an extra handful of pasta into the water and in minutes they were sitting at one of the tables.
Business and food might be the standard practice in America, but here they were separate. So, as well as they could, they talked of other things—even with ridiculous simplicity.
“Corniglia. Living. Good. Quiet.” Emilio had offered.
“Weather like today?”
“Winter. Yes. Summer?” and an Italian shrug saying sometimes.
Most of the meal passed in companionable silence.
Afterward, over a glass of cool white, which finished with the Cinque Terre trademark salt and mineral, Emilio asked the question with raised eyebrows.
Ridley tapped his temple that he was still thinking. Then he gave a thumb’s up, swinging it to a thumb’s down, before turning it to a little above level. Maybe more than a little, like forty-five degrees up.
Riding high on Erica’s approval, he was tempted to give it a full thumb’s up. He could afford to run it out of pocket for his entire lifetime, but Erica had been right. It had to pay for itself. And that was an exciting challenge. Not just an Italian winery, but a successful one. He had no idea how to do that, but she’d tell him.
“Erica,” he pointed toward the café, tapped his temple for thinking, then pretended to be making calculations on paper.
“Sì. Per Conrad.” And Emilio wiggled his fingers as if working a keyboard.
“Sì,” Ridley agreed.
Emilio was eyeing him closely.
“What?”
“Erica?” Then he pointed at Ridley and then his own eyes, the same way he’d told Ridley to look at the vines.
“Sì,” Ridley kissed his finger tips and tossed the kiss in the air in what he thought was an appropriately Italian gesture. “Bella.” Very damn pretty.
Emilio reached over and thumped him hard in the center of the chest.
“Ow! What?”
Emilio looked pissed. Again he pointed at Ridley, then his own eyes, then emphatically across the street toward the café. “Importante!”
“Crap!” She was important. Really important. Her approval this morning had meant so much. As if she believed in him. He wasn’t even sure that Bibi had done that. She’d loved him, no question there, but she’d seen the choices he was making and he could see the disappointment there sometimes. She hid it well, but he’d seen it.
Erica believed in him at a level he’d never believed in anything. Not even the idea of the winery. He’d been able to see the pieces clicking together in her head, what it would take to do: resources, money, time.
But it was really the way she’d asked the question, “Can you think of anything else you’d rather be doing?”
Somehow she’d even taken into account that he was a creature of emotion, not calculation. He leapt before he thought.
He barely noticed as Emilio cleared the table.
All he could think about was the woman across the street.
“Yes, Emilio,” he told his friend, even though he wasn’t there. “I see her clear as day. Maybe for the first time.”
He rose to his feet and tucked the chairs back into place. Maybe he should go find her and talk about something other than his vineyards. He wasn’t sure what, but there had to be something.
Emilio tossed his slicker at him.
Because he hadn’t been paying attention, Ridley caught the wet mass square in the face. He shrugged it on, not sure if it made him drier or wetter.
Then Emilio led him out the door, past the café, and to one of the tiny trucks that serviced so much of these villages.
Resigned, he clambered aboard. He’d find Erica later, maybe after he’d figured out what the hell to say to her.
They drove up the hill, then turned toward the chiuso sign that had sent him here. Maybe he should have the thing bronzed, or burn incense in front of it, or whatever one did for such things. Most of a month ago, it had turned him toward Corniglia.
What a difference a month made.
Before they reached the sign, Emilio turned onto a narrow track that led farther up hill. After another climb through the trees, they reached a small town. It had
a run-down church and a few dozen houses. It also had an old barn in good repair that Emilio parked close beside.
He led Ridley inside into a wonderland. It was modern and ancient combined.
“Macchina!” Emilio patted a crushing machine. A line of fermentation tanks followed. But the next step was a line of oak barrels for clarification. Emilio went down the line of barrels naming grapes, mixtures, and popping off the bung to dip for sugar content. Smaller barrels for more aging. A bottling machine and finally racks and racks of bottles aging in the tipped-down position to keep the cork wet. At the third rack, Emilio began giving the bottles the standard half turn and Ridley helped.
The size of the operation was ludicrously small in his experience. However, based on the number of bottles produced here, it was probably plenty. A small, efficient winery.
He asked why the last aging was in oak rather than steel. Energetic whites were often finished in steel.
Emilio tapped his own chest and then the oak. He tapped Ridley’s chest and shrugged “maybe you.”
Ridley nodded. It was something to consider.
Then Emilio led him out into the rain and tromped along as if it was summer sunshine rather than a chill deluge that kept slipping down the back of his neck.
At the other end of the tiny town was a small barn. Emilio led him inside through a broken door half off its hinges. There had once been cow or horse stalls, but those too had fallen into disrepair.
Emilio pointed at the ceiling and Ridley realized that no water was coming in. It was a good space. He paced it off. Yes. It was possible. Tight but possible.
He turned to get Erica’s reaction…
But of course she wasn’t here.
Chapter 14
She’d passed Ridley on the stairway the next day. “I’ll start today, but it will take time.”
He’d accepted that without question, then told her about the old barn on the hill.
“I’ll think about that. First I have to finish what I’m doing for Bridget.”
He’d looked disappointed, but then gone about his business. Thankfully, he’d returned to the vines and the next terrace. When she realized that his vines were visible from her little top-floor terrace, she’d bought a small pair of binoculars.
“Not voyeuristic,” she assured herself as she looked at him working for longer than she should have. “I’m not being voyeuristic. It’s just that as long as he’s out there, I can be working here.”
Bridget still got her mornings, but her afternoons were for Ridley.
She started with Emilio. Numbers transcended language and she soon had a gauge for the amount of work the terraces would require. The hug he gave her afterwards was far more than normal, even among Italians. Though he was barely taller than she was, he held her close for a long moment, patting her gently on the back.
“Bene, Erica. Molto bene.” Not pretty, but rather good. Very good.
He’d left her feeling sniffly for reasons she couldn’t quite identify.
He sent her to Leon for the harvest and Tomas for the processing. Bartolo gave her to understand what a vintner went through to make a palatable wine into an exceptional wine.
At marketing, she hit a wall. Cinque Terre wines were in restaurants and shops. They sold nothing outside the region. They didn’t need to promote the wines, they simply sold. She backtracked one by one all the way to Emilio, but each merely shrugged.
On one of her runs up through the hills, she found the little barn that Emilio had showed to Ridley. It would work, but was that enough? Ridley needed it to excel.
She researched Claremont Family Wines’ history. She knew nothing about wine, but the prices that Claremont commanded per bottle was stratospherically out of her price range. A basic bottle was forty dollars and the reserves started at over a hundred. She poked through a few other wineries’ websites. The split became obvious very quickly: drinking wines (some better, some worse), and premium wines (some exceptional and a rare few up in Claremont’s category).
Erica did know Ridley. Perhaps better than he did.
Just to confirm it, she researched his motorcycle. The Indian Chieftain Classic wasn’t merely an exceptional machine, it was one of their best. Various websites also noted that it was one of the motorcycles for the real connoisseur. They weren’t just selling the bike, but also the history and tradition. This wasn’t some monster Harley declaring “I have the soul of a biker!” Nor was it some speed demon. This was a real rider’s machine.
Ridley all over.
She factored in lower crop yield, better processing equipment, and a marketing campaign. Even with an infusion of startup capital, two limiting factors rapidly became clear.
One, Ridley could either take the lead on the vines or the processing. But there was only one of him and he couldn’t possibly do both.
Two, he needed a business and marketing manager badly.
That made her smile.
She signed up for an on-line course in marketing and started the first session that night.
* * *
Another week had gone by, another terrace done. He’d worked right through a pair of rainy days, but had been glad of the sun for the day-long task of pruning the vines on the second terrace. He could have fifty terraces inside a year if he did nothing else.
While his first year’s harvest was going to be crap, he still had to set up the processing line to be ready for the fall. That would be hours of thinking about the wines and then the processes. He needed to repeat the tour of Emilio’s line with each of the other vintners and then think about the wines they created to understand how the grapes behaved before even starting on designing his own.
He sat on the newly finished rock wall of his second terrace and dangled his feet out over his first. He drained a bottle of water as he watched the sun head into the Med; the light giving the vines a warm orange glow of new hope at their rediscovered freedom from the tangle. A roll of his shoulders told him just how lax he’d become. Another week, maybe two and he wouldn’t feel the aches so much.
Still no word from Erica. Every time he saw her, she was head down over Bridget’s laptop. More than one evening he’d sat out at a table on the carruggio (though not their first one), and eavesdropped. Any of the locals who came in always made a point of greeting her and asking how it was going. She always answered them cheerfully. She missed more than her fair share of teases, but that was Erica. Straightforward and pleasant to a fault…and a total gudgeon. He liked that about her.
As a matter of fact, he couldn’t think of anything much to not like about her.
That too was outside his experience. Women always had shortcomings. The main one was that they wanted a slice of him or his wealth. He knew he was “a catch” by Napa/Sonoma standards. And a lot of women came aboard with grappling hooks at the fore.
They all assumed that, of course, he’d pay the way. And get them into the best parties. And buy them insanely expensive little gifts.
Erica hadn’t even let him buy her a goddamn leather purse.
It wasn’t pride either. It was…what?
Damned if he knew.
One thing he did know though. He needed some serious help.
He had moved ahead with tackling the vines, confident that Erica would figure out how to make it all work. He’d thought about hiring a laborer to help him. He still might for the rock work. But he wasn’t going to trust the pruning to anyone else. That trapped him out here.
Then he had an idea and yanked out his cell phone.
“Marissa, my favorite vintner on the planet.” He shouted out when Claremont Winery’s chief vintner answered her phone. “You must run away with me.”
“Ridley, my favorite vagabond. Where are you?” It was so good to hear her voice, to hear her laugh that big open laugh of hers. The lush tones of her Mexican heritage were like a piece of his childhood.
“How do you feel about Italian men? Or perhaps an English Count? He’s a sweet old chap.”
“Eh,” she made a shrugging sound. “You sweeping down the Italian ladies?”
He opened his mouth to assure her he absolutely was, but nothing came out.
Marissa made a thoughtful humming sound. “So, why are you calling?”
“I need a reason?”
“Months of silence, then a call out of the blue from Italy. Must be a reason.”
“I knew there was a reason I always liked you.” She was as straightforward as Erica. Well, not quite, Marissa was a teasing Latina as well, but she was all business when it came to wine.
“You always liked me because I am soo beautiful.”
“It’s true. It’s so true. You were the older woman I always longed for.”
“Don’t say it that way, I was all of twenty when I first came to Claremont. Of course you were five. It is so impossible that you are motorcycling your way around Italy. You’re too young!” And they laughed together. From the Italian sunset to the Californian noon. It was a good sound.
“So, if you’re ambivalent about Italian men, how do you feel about Italian wines?”
The sudden silence said that he had her full attention as he knew he would.
“I’m sitting here in Corniglia, Cinque Terre, in the heart of Liguria. I’m sitting and watching the sun set into the Mediterranean from my new vineyard.”
She gasped. It made him laugh. It was hard to surprise Marissa. “You bought a winery?”
“More like building it from scratch. But the vines are old and very good. The wines here are young and fresh.”
“Like you?”
“Worse.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
And it would have been before he met Erica. But she made him feel less youthful, more like a grown-up. More like…himself. Like a man that Bibi would be proud of. It was a strange sensation, but it fit. Like the new winery fit.
“How much area do you have under cultivation?”
Ridley glanced over his shoulder at the just finished second terrace. “About two-tenths of an acre.”
“Two-tenths…?” Marissa managed to sputter out.
Path of Love Page 18