A Fine Year for Love (Shores of Indian Lake)

by Catherine Lanigan

  He’d held back.

  After dancing with her and confessing the truth about the Mattuchi deal, which he hadn’t even shared with his parents—a first for him, since he always blurted his secrets to his mother—Gabe had to admit he was enchanted with Liz.

  Definitely enchanted. At the very least.

  He’d noticed Liz’s spine stiffen when he declared his plans to build a proper vineyard on the property. She obviously regarded him as competition, and he knew he could be slitting his own throat by revealing why he’d wanted to test her soil. She was smart. He hadn’t fooled her for a minute. Still, he was helping the Mattuchis. No one else in Indian Lake would have agreed to such a preposterous real estate deal. Anyone with any business acumen would have forced Mario to sell the entire farm, not just a piece of it, and then booted the family off the land.

  Gabe wasn’t sure how effective he’d been in turning Liz’s opinion of him around, but he’d made a dent in her very apparent armor. He supposed that telling her he was going into the wine business might have reinforced her negative opinion of him, but it was his bet that Liz was the kind of person who cut her teeth on challenges. He liked that about her.

  “She’s fearless.”

  “What was that?” Angelo said as he sat down in a chair next to his eldest son. “Who is fearless?”

  Gabe’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you’d gone to bed.”

  “No. Your mother is asleep.” Angelo watched the workers tie up trash bags. “This is my favorite part of a party. When it’s over.”

  “I thought you liked Mother’s parties.”

  “I indulge her,” Angelo replied in the patronizing tone Gabe had grown to despise.

  “She worked very hard. I think everyone, especially Nate and Maddie, appreciated it.”

  Angelo shrugged and undid his bow tie. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Gabe paused, mulling over the wisdom of telling his father about his personal life. For years, Gabe had struggled to keep his friends, decisions and goals to himself. His father’s controlling nature had been intimidating when he was younger, but these days Gabe simply believed that what he did in his own life was none of his father’s concern. Still, since Liz was one of the bridesmaids in Nate’s wedding, his father would find out about her sooner or later.

  “Her name is Liz.”

  “Is she from around here?”

  “Yes. She and her grandfather own the vineyard north of town.”

  “Crenshaw?”

  Gabe swore his father’s intake of breath was so sharp it could have cut crystal. “Yeah. Sam Crenshaw. You know him?”

  “I do,” Angelo replied, a steel edge to his voice.

  Gabe sat up straight. “How do you know him?”

  “I just do. And you are not to have anything to do with his granddaughter. Do you understand me?”

  “Are you giving me an order?” Gabe asked disbelievingly.

  “Precisely,” Angelo said firmly. “I’m the head of this household, and I forbid you to see her.”

  Gabe shook his head. “Who I see is my personal business. There’s no good reason—”

  “I have lots of reasons.” Angelo was nearly fuming. “I’ve known Sam Crenshaw since I moved here. He is vermin, I tell you! When I was first establishing this farm he tried to malign me.”

  “Sam? I find that hard to believe,” Gabe said.

  “He told lies about me all over town. He said I was cheating the farmers and stealing their land. Lies!” Angelo spat. “I forbade your mother to have anything to do with him or his family.”

  “Mother?”

  Angelo cut the air with his palm. “He was very angry after his wife died. Some people said he was insane. He was a recluse, they said. In the beginning, I didn’t care because I was too busy building my own empire. Sam lost several crops. Money got tight. Then I heard the rumors about me. I knew he had started them.”

  “But why? It makes no sense. Did you do anything to him?”

  “It was jealousy. I was becoming rich. He was poor. The bank turned him down for a loan. Harold Kramer told me that himself at the Feed Store.”

  “Who’s Harold Kramer?”

  “He was the bank president. He also told me Sam had asked him if he’d heard the stories about me cheating my neighbors.”

  Gabe looked at his father. “But Harold didn’t say Sam had started the gossip.”

  Angelo rammed his fist on the chair arm. “Nitpicker! It was Sam, I tell you. Back then, I drove out to Sam’s vineyard and had it out with him. I warned him I would destroy him if he ever spoke to Gina or you boys ever. A person that evil could contaminate a young mind permanently. I had to protect my family.”

  “You had a showdown with Sam Crenshaw?”

  “Yes.” Angelo exhaled forcefully.

  “And you never resolved it?”

  “There is no resolution when you’re dealing with the devil.” Angelo shot to his feet and pointed his finger at Gabe. “And his granddaughter is never to set foot on my land again. Do you understand?”

  If Angelo’s story had been about another family, Gabe would have thought it bizarre, but considering how tyrannical his father was, he believed it. Or at least portions of it. Intuition told him something was missing in his father’s version. The truth lay beneath layers of anger and a near-pathological need for control. Angelo was judgmental, and he held grudges for decades. “Like I said, she’s a bridesmaid and I’m a groomsman for Nate’s wedding.”

  “Make sure that’s all it is.”

  Gabe pressed further. “What are you talking about?”

  “I watched you dancing with her. I saw the way she looked at you and you looked at her.” He tapped his temple. “I know the look. It was the look of love.”

  “Love?” Gabe chortled. He admired Liz, respected her expertise, but he wasn’t in love with anyone. The suggestion was ridiculous.

  “Not her, Gabriel. Any woman but her.”

  Angelo tromped away, making certain he had the last word. As he always did.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  LIZ TOOK THE early-morning South Shore to Chicago and got off near Randolph Street station. Though it was a distance, Liz preferred to walk to the Merchandise Mart. It was a rare treat for her to leave Indian Lake and get to the city. Her life was not easy—her vines and vintages were demanding. They left no time for frivolity or vacations. This day in the city was something she’d had planned for months, ever since she’d heard about the symposium of international wine editors and tasters. Liz walked up Michigan Avenue to Wacker Drive and then headed west. It was a perfect summer Saturday morning in the city as she crossed the Chicago River on the Wells Street Bridge and looked down at the tourist boats as they chugged through the water. The city seemed to glisten in the sun, refracting light from polished steel and newly washed skyscraper windows. A day like this, with profusions of summer flowers billowing from streetside urns, planters and window boxes, was enough to make anyone believe they had entered dreamland.

  Liz pulled the ticket and brochure out of her slouchy leather purse and checked the address of the meeting room.

  The ticket had been expensive, and though Liz had attended only one of these lectures in the past, her recollection was that the audience had been mostly composed of winemakers. This lecture was particularly interesting to Liz because in the past year, small harvests in western Europe, Australia and South America had caused the price of wines to rise substantially. There was no question in Liz’s mind that across the globe, vintners were improving the quality of their products. Sheer volume was no longer the objective. It was excellence. And that was precisely what Liz aspired to. She didn’t care if her vineyard ever logged more than fifteen thousand cases in a given year, which would be a real stretch for them, even now. She cared that someday, her pi
not noirs, chardonnays and eventually champagnes—and possibly some merlots—would rate ninety points from the experts. A rating of ninety points or more brought in close to a hundred dollars a bottle for wine in France. In California, the price was closer to eighty-five. Illinois was still down at the bottom with states like Washington and Oregon, where vintners could only hope for forty-five to fifty dollars for their finest bottles. But Liz knew better times were ahead of her.

  She and her grandfather had not yet released his prize cabernet sauvignons. Sam had sold some to a few wine buffs whom he trusted, but mostly, Sam kept his bottles under lock and key. This season they would sell pinot noirs. This year they’d hold back their chardonnays.

  But it was on the fallow land that Liz’s greatest dream lived. She intended to create a product as renowned as the incredible Pétrus wines of Bordeaux. If they could create history with their merlot and cabernet grapes on only twenty-eight acres of land, so could she and Sam.

  Walking this close to the Chicago River, Liz could feel the summer air turn cool. She noticed ominous storm clouds to the west, barreling toward the city with a vengeance. Liz realized she hadn’t checked her weather app in the past several hours, as she normally would have, since she wanted to take as much of a break from the vineyard as possible.

  She was only a block away from the Merchandise Mart, with its imposing Art Deco design. The wind swept down the river, rustled leaves and then swooped around the corners and up the sidewalks. If she was lucky, she’d make it to the glorious bronze-and-buff lobby before she got drenched.

  Just as she stepped inside, the skies opened up. Shoppers and tourists raced past her into the safety of the lobby.

  Liz had to laugh to herself. In her giant French satchel, she had a small folding umbrella. She was prepared.

  Liz went to the security guard near the bank of elevators.

  “I’m going to the eighteenth floor,” she told the dark-haired man, who wore a sour, bored expression. She couldn’t help but wonder if he had been hired for his very apparent indifference.

  “Last car. Let me see your ticket. That’s an exclusive meeting,” he said, surveying her summer dress and lime-green linen jacket.

  She handed over her ticket and kept smiling at him, hoping to melt his judgmental exterior, but apparently the man had never been the beneficiary of a smile in his life. He continued to frown at her.

  She walked away and pressed the elevator button, then rode to the top of the building.

  The meeting room was small, with four dozen chairs set in neat rows. Along the walls were long tables covered in white cotton cloths and sparkling clean red-and-white wineglasses. She saw clusters of corkscrews, aerators and stacks of paper cocktail napkins. There were cases of wine stacked on the floor, and next to them were portable “wine cellars” filled with white wines. Chilled to a very proper forty-five to fifty-five degrees, no doubt, Liz thought.

  There were a couple dozen men in the room already, most of them wearing business suits or expensive summer golf shirts with expertly cut slacks and Italian shoes. They watched her as she entered. She was the only woman at the symposium so far. Liz put her purse on an aisle chair and stayed standing for a moment, hoping to make eye contact with anyone who looked like a vintner. Finally, giving up, she sat down.

  Within a few minutes, two elderly gentlemen and an attractive woman in her early forties walked up to the front of the room with arms full of brochures, papers and a laptop. As if someone had hit a gong, all the men scrambled for a chair. Several more people arrived, and among them were three more women. Liz was relieved that she wasn’t the only woman here, though she wasn’t sure why that would have bothered her. All these people were potential buyers and customers. For that, she realized, she was very happy.

  The lights in the room dimmed slightly. By now, all the chairs were full except for the one directly across the aisle from Liz.

  Just as the lead speaker turned on his microphone, the door opened and one more man, drenched to the skin, rushed in. His loafers squished when he walked, as if he’d jumped through mud puddles on his way here. His white linen jacket, sky-blue shirt and twill pants were plastered to his skin.

  He swiped his hand through his wet hair and took the last seat. Across from Liz.

  He smiled at her.

  “Gabe?”

  Jabbing his thumb toward the door, he said, “It’s pouring out there.” He chuckled.

  “I can see that,” she whispered as the first speaker, a wine expert from New York, began his welcome speech. Of all the people in the world she could meet at this exclusive and not-all-that-well-advertised symposium, here was Gabriel Barzonni. She blinked. He wasn’t supposed to be in Chicago while she was here on her mini break.

  She’d been fortunate that he hadn’t texted or called in the week since she’d dismissed him after the party. She’d told herself she was rid of him, that he’d understood she didn’t want anything to do with him. She’d convinced herself Gabe was simply being polite when he’d inquired about her safe arrival home. There was nothing romantic going on between them.

  Gabe had been courteous toward her, dancing with her as one of Maddie’s bridesmaids. Many groomsmen felt such things were their duty, and she knew better than to read anything more into it than that.

  Yet here he was, soaking wet, having braved the summer storm to attend the same lecture as her. Distrust buzzed through her entire body. “What are you doing here?”

  He leaned across the aisle and grinned charmingly. “Learning something, I hope,” he whispered back. Then he winked at her.

  Liz sat up straighter. Now she knew he was up to something. He was being too cute. Why did he do that? Didn’t he know she would never fall for his magnetism?

  And that was another thing. What was wrong with her that she felt so drawn to him? Even now, she couldn’t help but try to catch a glimpse of him. He was smiling as the speaker began, completely absorbed.

  Perhaps Gabe’s interest in winemaking was as deep-rooted as hers. If so, she was wrong to judge him so harshly. She shouldn’t think the worst of him and his motives.

  Liz focused on the lecturer. He was saying that all twenty thousand of their tastings that year had been held under blind and controlled conditions.

  “How can they do that?” Gabe asked Liz, leaning into the aisle again.

  The man sitting in front of her turned around and gave her the most withering look she’d ever seen. She wanted to stick her tongue out at him—no, that was childish. It would have felt good, but she didn’t give in to the impulse. Instead, she twirled her finger. “Turn around and pay attention. You’ll miss something.”

  “Not with you talking all the time,” the man growled.

  Liz lifted her chin haughtily and stared past him at the speaker.

  Just then, Gabe rose and stood over her. He tapped the arm of the man beside Liz.

  “Pardon me. Do you mind switching seats with me? I had a meeting and couldn’t get a cab.”

  The man stared blankly at Gabe.

  Gabe didn’t miss a beat. “It’s my girlfriend’s birthday,” he said, putting his hand on Liz’s shoulder. “I promised her I’d meet her here. Do you mind?” Then for emphasis, Gabe flashed the man a wide, disarming smile.

  “Sorry,” the man whispered, gathering his briefcase. “Be happy to.”

  Gabe stood back and let the man pass, then he quickly sat down, took Liz’s hand and kissed it.

  As the man sat in Gabe’s chair, his face screwed up into a grimace. He lifted his thigh, touched the back of his pants and realized the chair was wet. He shot Gabe a nasty glance.

  Gabe lowered his eyes and kissed Liz’s cheek as if he hadn’t seen the man’s predicament.

  Liz turned on Gabe and shook her finger at him. “Don’t you be nice to me,” she whispered. “Anyway, that
was a horrible thing to do. That poor man.”

  “I’ll buy him some new slacks.”

  “That’s what you do? Use money to get you out of scrapes?”

  “This wasn’t a scrape.”

  “It was certainly a lie.”

  “A white one. Besides,” Gabe whispered, “I couldn’t spend the entire lecture having that guy be mad at you because of me.” Gabe wrinkled his nose as he glanced at the man in front of Liz. “Sourpuss.”

  Liz had to smile. Then she bit her lip. “Well, he’s right. You are disturbing the lecture. I paid a lot of money to hear this.”

  “So stop talking to me and listen. That’s what we’re here for,” Gabe retorted. He crossed his ankle over his knee and leaned back, his eyes on the podium.

  The expert from Burgundy was a boring speaker, but his information was fascinating. Liz found herself in a nearly rhapsodic state as he discussed the 2010 wines from his home region, the most elegant in twenty years.

  Ninety minutes into the lecture, the speakers announced a ten-minute break. Half the audience bolted for the restrooms.

  Liz turned to Gabe. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “It is,” he said, taking a mini recorder out of his jacket pocket. “Luckily, I’ll never lose a single word.”

  Liz admired the recorder. “I wish I’d thought of that,” she said. “I could have played it back for Grandpa. It’s all as good as I hoped it would be. I can’t wait till the grafting expert talks.”

  “I’m here for the tasting,” Gabe said. “I have so much more to learn, and some of these new blends coming out of South America fascinate me. The Malbecs are really catching on.”

  “Is that what you’re going to grow on the Mattuchi land?”

  “I am,” he said.

  She pointed to a thin man with even thinner hair who was fiddling with a stack of notes near the front of the room. “Professor Argus is going to address Malbecs.”

  “He’s another reason I’m here,” Gabe said flatly. “I called him when he was in Buenos Aires two years ago. We talked for quite some time.”