A Delicate Finish

by Jeanette Baker

  Nick sighed. “Don’t expect a miracle, Dad. I’m not that good.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t like the clinches. I’m afraid someone will kick me.”

  “They’re supposed to kick you. That’s why you wear shin guards.”

  “It still hurts.”

  “After dinner we’ll go outside and knock the ball around a little,” his father suggested. “Would you like that?”

  “I guess so.” Nick swallowed the last of his potato. “I ate everything.” He looked at his grandmother. “May I have my éclair now?”

  “Yes,” the three adults at the table spoke in unison.

  “Yours is on the plate in the refrigerator,” said Julianne.

  Francesca waited until she was sure Nick was out of the room. “Don’t be too hard on him, Jake. Not everyone is an athlete.”

  “He just needs a little confidence, that’s all.”

  “Maybe it isn’t his thing.”

  “Spelling’s not his thing either, but when he works at it he can do it.”

  “Missing two out of twenty isn’t my idea of doing it,” she said under her breath.

  “For Christ’s sake, Francie. What’s wrong with ninety percent?”

  “It isn’t a hundred.”

  “Come on, you two,” Julianne protested. “Call a truce. You both want the best for your son. Ease up on each other a little. This gets exhausting.”

  Francesca looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Julianne.”

  “Apology accepted.” She looked meaningfully at her son. “Well?”

  “I’m sorry, too, Mom,” he said softly.

  “Now,” she ordered, “finish your meat loaf, please, and then I could use some help with the dishes.”

  Thirteen

  Jake Harris walked into the tiny building that housed the Santa Ynez River Water Conservation District offices and smiled at the girl seated behind the high counter. “Hi, Cindy.”

  The girl’s brown eyes widened. “Hi, yourself, stranger. It’s been a long time. Where have you been?”

  “Working in Napa. How about you? I’ve been home for a while but I haven’t seen you.”

  “I live in Buellton now. I’m filling in for my sister, Isabel. She’s on maternity leave.” She pronounced the name with a Latin flavor, a sibilant S and heavy on the first syllable. Cindy tilted her dark head. “I’m sorry about your divorce, Jake. It surprised everyone. It must be hard for you to come back here. You put your heart and soul into DeAngelo.”

  Jake shrugged. “That’s water under the bridge. Francesca and I are friends now. It works better that way.” He grinned. “Especially since that’s where I’m living.”

  “Really?” She looked doubtful. “Whatever suits you best, I guess. I couldn’t live in the same town as my ex. That’s why I moved to Buellton.”

  Jake changed the subject. “I’m looking for Norman Layton. Is he in?”

  “I think so.” She scooted her chair-on-wheels into the hallway and called out. “Norman? Are you available? You’ve got company.”

  “Send ’em back,” answered a gruff, tobacco-flavored voice.

  “You heard him,” said the girl. “It’s as close to an invitation as you’re ever going to get with old Norman.”

  Jake laughed and made his way down the hall. He stood for a minute at the entrance of an office that, except for a state-of-the-art computer, looked as if it belonged in another century. A green-shaded banker’s lamp sat on a rolltop desk thick with papers stacked on top of each other in no apparent order. Shelves filled with books, pamphlets and periodicals lined the walls. A trash can overflowing with wadded paper, pencil shavings and a banana peel stood near the door, and a cat with a tom ear and orange stripes stretched out on a pillow near the window. Only the computer, blinking blue, green and red lights, gave testimony to the technological age.

  Norman Layton, seventy-six years old, diamond-sharp, with no thoughts of retiring, motioned Jake inside. “Come in, come in,” he said impatiently. “I shoulda known you’d be here.”

  Confused, Jake closed the door behind him and pulled up a chair. “I don’t remember making an appointment.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, Jake Harris,” the old man warned. “I’ve known you since you were in short pants. Between you and that wife of yours, I don’t have time to do anything other than DeAngelo business.”

  “Has Francesca been to see you?”

  Layton scratched his lined cheek. “When hasn’t she? First she pesters me with questions about water rights for GGI until I’m dizzy, and now she’s got a notion in her head that there’s underground flooding. I told her we’d check it out, but Jake, she wants everything to happen yesterday. There’s no satisfying her.”

  “Francesca has never won awards for patience,” Jake admitted, hiding a smile. “But I think she’s on to something here, Norm. The water table is higher than I’ve ever seen it. We’ve lost some vines. Has anyone else noticed anything?”

  Norm sighed and clasped his hands behind his head. “Someone else was in here asking for a map of our local wells. That’s about all the company I’ve had for a week. This time of year everyone’s out in the field.”

  “Who wanted the map?”

  “The new GGI man. Gillette is his name.”

  Jake’s forehead wrinkled. “Is he thinking of drilling for his own water?”

  “You’ll have to ask him. I mind my own business.”

  “Water is your business, Norm,” Jake reminded him. “It wouldn’t be out of line for you to ask him what’s going on.”

  “Even if I did, it wouldn’t be professional for me to tell you, now, would it?”

  Jake laughed. “I suppose it wouldn’t. We do need someone to check out a potential underground leak. When do you think that’ll happen?”

  The old man leaned forward, swept aside a stack of papers, picked up his pencil and scribbled something on the desk calendar. “I’ll have someone drive out to your place tomorrow. Is that soon enough for you?”

  “I couldn’t ask for more. Give me a call and let me know how it turns out.”

  “Carl Harris was a friend of mine.”

  “Yes, he was,” said Jake.

  “Say hello to your mother.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Jake stood on the steps, squinting against the summer sun, and considered his next move. There was nothing more he could do with regard to the water leak other than scout out other potential problem areas. That would take the rest of the day. What he really wanted to know was why Mitchell Gillette had requested a map of local wells. No one would voluntarily share water with GGI. They might, however, be willing to share it with a local vintner as long as he guaranteed none of that water would be siphoned off to the conglomerate. The amount of water necessary for Mitch’s few acres would be negligible, barely noticeable to a vineyard the size of Francesca’s, and not nearly enough to irrigate one as large as GGI planned to establish. What the company needed was permission to siphon a number of local wells. Gillette was intelligent enough and persuasive enough, and he had the capital to make sharing their water extremely tempting for local vintners, especially those who had been hit hard by the state’s slow economy or by a natural disaster such as a leak that raised the water table enough to destroy premium vines. Not that anyone in the valley would cave in for a quick buck when his future livelihood was at stake, not anyone who wanted to stay in the business.

  He checked his watch. Francesca would be at the winery checking the deliveries. She wouldn’t be happy with his interruption. The Pinot Noir grapes were at a crucial place. A shipment of barrels had arrived, French oak from the Allier forest. She would be inspecting them carefully to see that one-third of them were new, clean and medium toasted. The barrels would be filled nearly to the top with Pinot Noir until the fermentation slowed, and then they would be topped weekly to eliminate oxidation. After a week or two, the wine would be inoculated, as all red wines were, for malolactic fermentation
, making it rich, seamless and more elegant in the palate, satin smooth as only a Pinot Noir can be in the finish.

  No, she wouldn’t be pleased to have her work interrupted, but she would be more upset by the possibility of GGI’s infiltration of local well water. More important, she was a member of the board of directors of the local vintners’ association. If Francesca DeAngelo called a meeting, everyone would attend. This time Jake wanted everyone there.

  He found her where he least expected, slumped over at her desk, her arms cradling her head, sound asleep. Carefully, so as not to disturb her, Jake sat down, prepared to wait until she woke.

  It wasn’t often that he found Francesca in a vulnerable position. He didn’t think of her as a needy woman. In fact, on a scale that measured capability, she ranked right up there with his mother. Her strength was a shield. Jake knew that now. For a long time Francesca’s perceived strength had kept his tender feelings at bay. He believed she didn’t need him. His ego was damaged and their relationship had eroded. Strange what a difference two years could make. Now he recognized his own culpability, the immaturity that caused him to flee instead of staying in the marriage and working through their issues.

  Jake’s gaze moved over his sleeping ex-wife, her shining hair, the exposed nape of her neck, the thin, muscled strength of her shoulders and back, the curve of her cheek, the tanned skin of her arms. She was beautiful. His awareness of her physical attributes struck him almost dispassionately. Francesca had always been beautiful with the kind of looks that made grown men, happily married men, turn and stare. But to him she was much more than just another beautiful woman. Jake was inured to physical beauty. It wasn’t important to him. Santa Barbara County had more than its share of lovely women. The combination of money, spas, health clubs and plastic surgeons drew the svelte, the well-heeled, the attractive and those seeking perpetual youth and expensive real estate to its coasts and valleys. No, it wasn’t Francesca’s looks that attracted him or kept his interest.

  Maybe it was the same for everyone who’d been married a long time. Maybe, after a while, every man looked at his wife and saw the person, the entire package, not the outer wrapping. Maybe that was why a woman could gain thirty pounds over thirty years and a man could develop a paunch and lose his hair but, if the marriage was good, neither noticed.

  Francesca’s beauty was a part of her. Because of it, and because of her intelligence and her sense of who she was, a DeAngelo from a long line of DeAngelos in the community of Santa Ynez, she’d developed confidence. Jake loved her confidence, her enthusiasm for life, her belief that there were no limits to what she wanted to do. She never complained. Nothing was too difficult or too complicated. She was lightning quick when it came to understanding. Frank DeAngelo had never been her match when it came to words. Jake grinned, remembering the heated exchanges between father and daughter and how Frank had often ended an argument he wasn’t winning with a roaring, “Because I said so.”

  Jake had learned something in the last two years. He’d learned that family and tradition and loving one woman until he died was how he was made. It was the way he’d been raised, the only role model he had. He didn’t have it in him to erase his past, to start again with a new woman who had her own history, her own children, a woman who hadn’t shared his youth, or his dream of running his own vineyard, of passing his land and his knowledge down to his own son, to establish a dynasty of vintners in the valley where he’d been raised. It was Francesca’s dream, too. He desperately hoped he’d be allowed another chance at getting it right.

  A breeze from the window lifted the wisps of hair around her face. Francesca stirred, opened her eyes, a slow butterfly fluttering of her lash-rimmed lids. For an instant after she saw him, she smiled. Then her eyes went wary. She lifted her head.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked immediately.

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Why are you here in the middle of the day?”

  “Have you had lunch?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Why don’t we pack up some bread and cheese from the case in the winery and I’ll find us a bottle of wine. We can eat at the picnic table, the one with the view of the valley.”

  “Jake.” She stood with her hands on her hips. “Are you sure you don’t have something to tell me?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said nothing was wrong.”

  She gave in. “All right. Let me make one more phone call and I’ll meet you outside.”

  The western view from the winery was the more dramatic one, with its low hills sweeping toward a diamond-bright sea, brilliantly blue under the late-summer sun. But Jake preferred the other side, the eastern view. The San Rafael mountain range was shadowed, almost blue-gray, a backdrop against the gold and green valley dotted with oak, eucalyptus and olive trees, premium cattle and even more premium horses munching on the last of the season’s wild grass.

  He’d chosen a sauvignon blanc, a mild white wine, a crusty French loaf, a half pound of sliced salami and wedge of Gruyére for their lunch.

  Francesca pulled the blue and yellow French print tautly over the picnic table and, because there was a breeze, secured it with clips. She tucked the napkins under the wineglasses and sat down on the bench. “I’m hungry,” she said, reaching for the salami. “Did you bring a knife for the cheese?”

  Jake pulled a pocketknife from his jeans and handed it to her. Then he tore two chunks of bread from the loaf and poured the wine while she sliced the cheese.

  “I love it here.” He waved his arm, encompassing the valley. “I don’t know if it’s this place in particular or if I’d feel that way about anywhere I’d grown up.”

  She nodded. “I know what you mean. This is home.” She nibbled on a slice of salami and washed it down with a sip of wine. “This is just right,” she announced. “I wouldn’t have chosen the sauvignon blanc, but it’s perfect.”

  “Thank you.”

  She drank some more, tilted her head and asked the question he’d been hoping she would ask since he came home.

  “Why didn’t you make it in Napa, Jake? You’re a natural. Any winery would be happy to have you.”

  He was tempted to swallow the rest of his wine for the temporary glow, the flow of false courage for what might come next. His answer was easy. It was her reaction he was afraid of. “You weren’t there.”

  She stared at him, dark eyes narrow, skeptical, her mouth soft, bare of lipstick, slightly chapped. “You’re kidding.”

  It wasn’t a question, just a blunt, matter-of-fact statement. He nearly laughed. Trust Francesca to remove all possibility of romance from the conversation. “No.”

  “You couldn’t wait to get away from me.”

  He didn’t deny it. “I was an idiot.”

  “I thought you hated me.”

  “For God’s sake, Francie. I never hated you. That was never the problem. If I hated you, I wouldn’t have been so miserable.” This wasn’t going the way he’d planned.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  He drew a deep breath. “I wanted to tell you the truth. People make mistakes. I made a bad one, possibly an irrevocable one. I shouldn’t have left you. I should never have divorced you.”

  “I divorced you,” she reminded him.

  He shook his head. “I’m not going to let you make me mad.” He looked at her. “Do you know that you’re the only person who can make me lose my temper?”

  “I’m not sure that’s the best qualifier for a marriage.”

  “Do you want to know what I think it means?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I care so damn much about what you think, specifically, what you think of me, that I can’t see straight. I want you to agree with me. I want you to think like I do. You’re important to me.” He picked up his glass and set it down again.

  Francesca stared out across the mountains, her profile to him. “What do you want?” she asked after a minute.

  “I just wanted
you to know how I feel,” he said. “That’s all.”

  She nodded, picked up the wine bottle and refilled his glass. “This is hard for you, isn’t it?”

  “Very hard.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know where I stand with you. You’re so damn cool and controlled and I’m losing it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice low.

  “For what?”

  She looked at him this time, with the full effect of her dark brown eyes. “I’m sorry that I don’t trust you. I almost died when you left me. I couldn’t get up off the floor for three days, not even for Nick. Your mother took care of him. I would hear her telling him stories, singing songs, just talking to him. She told him I was sick.” Her mouth trembled. “I was sick. I can’t risk going through that again.”

  “You won’t have to go through it again. I guarantee it.”

  “How can you possibly do that, Jake? Are you suggesting a legal contract? Something along the line of, you’ll never leave me again?”

  “If that’s the way you want it.”

  She smiled. “If only it worked that way. But we both know it doesn’t.”

  He sighed. “What do you want me to do, Francie? This is driving me crazy.”

  It wasn’t nice. She wasn’t proud of it. But it gave her the smallest tingle of satisfaction to hear him say it. “I don’t want to do anything except grow my grapes and make my wine and watch my son grow.”

  “What about love, Francie? Aren’t you a little young to give up on that part of your life?”

  “Love? Is that what we’re talking about?” She stared at him incredulously. “Are you saying that you love me?”

  “What else?”

  She stood and brushed the bread crumbs from her lap. “You’ll have to do better than that, Jake.” Her smile was brittle. “I have some errands to run. Tell Julianne I’ll be home later to help her.”

  Completely bewildered, he watched her walk away. It wasn’t until she’d driven off that he realized he hadn’t told her about Mitch Gillette and the local wells.

  Fourteen