Prosecco Heart

by Julie Strauss

  “I am, yes.”

  “Aren’t you still the owner?”

  “I am, yes.”

  Tabitha watched the board of directors shift in their seats and glance at each other. She faced them with equanimity. The last time she had seen most of these people was on the stage at SommFest. They wore the same suits today, it seemed to her, as they had at the SommFest and at every single competition she had ever seen them in. Variations in charcoal. Tiny silver lapel pins the only indication of their distinction. Faces untouched by pleasure, despite the fact that they worked with wine all day long.

  “You’ve testified to all of this in a court of law?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Is the testimony you gave us the same as the testimony you gave the court?”

  “No.”

  “Can you clarify that?”

  “I’ve told you much more than I told the court. The court testimony was only to help defend Mr. McClintock in the libel suit Royal Hamilton brought against him. I only spoke about the truth in the details he published in his article of November 2016. I confirmed everything that Mr. McClintock printed to clear his name and the name of the publication.”

  “And that case has been thrown out by the court?” asked Donald Purcell. The man she once considered a friend, who had laughed along with the other men when Royal called her a ball-buster. The judge of her service test who had sneered at her description of a terrible wine. Tabitha eyed him steadily, wishing she could dump an entire bottle of rugby field wine on his head.

  “It has, yes. The court determined that Mr. Hamilton had no cause for a libel suit against Mr. McClintock and dismissed it. Mr. McClintock’s name has since been cleared.”

  “You have more to say.”

  Bella Masbach, the only woman on the board of directors of Vintner International, looked at Tabitha with carbon-grey eyes. It took nerves of steel to reach this level of the business. Tabitha wondered what this woman had sacrificed to get to her position. Nothing, she hoped. But she doubted it.

  “Mr. McClintock has a lot more to publish, because now I am going on record, and providing him with all of the documents I provided for you today. Some of them will lead to charges of tax evasion, which will result in fines for the winery. In addition to that, he is going to expose how Mr. Hamilton rigged every wine competition he has ever won. He has paid judges of competitions you oversee. I have documentation for all that, too.”

  “Yet you’ve never come forward before.”

  “No.” She swallowed and took a deep breath. “For many reasons. I didn’t want to believe it was going on. Whenever I got suspicious—the wine he was selling didn’t taste right, or it didn’t make sense how he won competitions against wineries that were objectively better—I brushed it off. I didn’t want to think I was married to someone who cheated the system, because that would only mean one thing: that he was cheating me, too. I was too proud.”

  “This is going to reflect on your reputation,” Jack McDowell spoke almost lazily, leaning back in his seat and regarding Tabitha with a sleepy interest. She wondered if Royal had already attempted to manipulate him.

  She attempted a brave smile, but her resolve wavered. “Yes, I do realize that my reputation is shot. But it’s not like I had a great reputation anyway, working for a cheater. All I can do is tell you what I know now. You will be able to see from the timeline I created exactly what I knew and when I knew it.”

  “Is there any way we can convince Mark McClintock not to publish that information?”

  Tabitha bit back a smile. Everyone was protecting a reputation.

  “You’ll have to take that up with Mr. McClintock. But I doubt it.” She wondered how a roomful of old people could have forgotten how investigative journalism worked, but it didn’t matter. The truth would out. It always did.

  “If we can verify that what you are saying is true, Mr. Hamilton will be stripped of all titles.”

  Tabitha nodded.

  “As this relates to you directly, in cases of fraud, the runner-up is given the title of International Sommelier of the Year. Which, last year, was you. Are you aware of that?”

  “I am. But I would like to pre-emptively decline it.”

  Bella spoke up again. “You are declining the title of International Sommelier of the Year? The most distinguished achievement in the world for a sommelier?”

  Tabitha shook her head. “I don’t want to win it that way.”

  “You still technically won on your own merits. Had he not bribed judges, the title would already be yours. No one doubts your skill.”

  “When I win that award—and I will win it, someday—there will not be an asterisk next to my name.”

  Bella glanced over at her colleagues before continuing. Tabitha thought her eyes looked different now; a cool, appraising look came over her face.

  “Furthermore, the winery will be stripped of its distinctions. This could be catastrophic for the business.”

  “I am aware of the consequences. I still have to tell the truth.”

  They regarded her for a long moment. She forced herself to breathe slowly and face them without flinching.

  “You are a strange person, Ms. Hamilton.”

  “Lawson. My name is Tabitha Lawson. And yes, I realize that, too.”

  30

  She squinted at the bright sunlight when she emerged from the building and rooted around in her purse for sunglasses. The Vintner International corporate offices sat on the edge of a nondescript strip mall, but when exiting the building, she faced the ocean. Tabitha took a deep breath of the fresh, salty breeze and felt a new sense of freedom fill her lungs.

  “How did it go in there?”

  She looked up from the mess in her purse to see Mark sitting on the bench on the edge of the path overlooking the rocky shore. She sat down next to him and didn’t speak for a moment.

  Finally, she looked at him. “Are you asking me as a friend or as a reporter?”

  “Do you care anymore?”

  She thought that over. “I guess not. It would be nice if you don’t print when I curse, though.”

  He laughed and raised his coffee toward her. “Noted. I’ll make you sound as pure as Alaskan snow.”

  “It went fine. I mean, I’m professionally and financially ruined, and I have probably reduced my ex-husband and the entire business he built to ashes. But other than that, yeah. I feel pretty good.”

  Mark put his hand over hers. “He reduced it to ashes. Don’t ever forget that. You told the truth about how he ruined things.”

  She nodded. “I know. I was mostly kidding.”

  “What are you doing with the rest of your day? Do I need to keep a suicide watch over you?”

  She laughed. “This afternoon I’m heading over to El Zop to talk to the staff and start working on the reorganization. We’re still working through the buyout, but Royal hasn’t shown his face around there too much lately, so most of the work is falling on me. I’m just trying to keep my head above water.”

  “What do you think will happen next?”

  “My main goal is to make sure the employees are taken care of. Maybe you should come with me and give them that same pep talk. You could tell them about how it’s not my fault.”

  “You don’t need me for that. I think you are a woman who can handle the truth.”

  “My old mailman would disagree with you.”

  “Possibly.”

  “I really ought to send him a fruit basket or something, don’t you think?”

  “I think maybe you ought to leave that poor guy alone.”

  Tabitha laughed. “You are probably right. There is only so much trauma an average man can take.”

  “What do you think will happen to the most average man we know?”

  “Gabrielle had already made copies of every document in the company’s history, so by the time he realized I was researching, it was too late for him to try to shred any evidence. We put a rock-solid termination agreement in place f
or the winery when I married him. I thought it was so silly at the time—why would a happy couple need an exit plan? But I ignored that concern, just like all others.”

  “In retrospect, it was a wise move.”

  “Yep. He thought it would protect him. Turned out it protected me.”

  “Can you run the winery yourself?”

  “Yes, because we have an amazing staff. I’ve promoted Emil to winemaker, which is a great move. He’s got impeccable taste and was wasted as production manager. I promoted my sister to Operations Manager. And I have a few investors.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Cori Melbourne, from Old World New School. She’s been looking for a new home base and has some great ideas for importing a lot of new product from around the world and turning our tasting room into more of a showcase for all kinds of wines. I’m really excited about her ideas.”

  “She’ll be a great addition to your team. Who else?”

  “The great Jillie Jones Lawson is another investor.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Not bad, Rock and Roll Somm. That will give you a whole lot of street cred. You’ll be able to handle her?”

  Tabitha paused before replying. “It’s going to be interesting. Before, I would have said no, I can’t handle her. But things have changed lately. She’s different toward me, somehow. Still a pain in my ass, but differently.”

  “She’s going to love it when you start naming wines after Black Sabbath songs. Who else?”

  “Well-ll. As a matter of fact, I have a foreign investor.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “It is a fact.”

  “Some wealthy venture capitalist, I presume?”

  “No. An Italian winemaker.”

  “Italian? What do they know about wine?

  “It turns out, they know a whole lot,” Tabitha replied. “Much more than I do. And this particular winemaker is just starting to get some recognition on the international stage, but doesn’t want to expand his home operation too much.”

  Mark grinned at her. “I’m glad you talked him into doing that. It will be really nice to get his wines locally.”

  Tabitha dropped her cagey manner and smiled back at him. “I didn’t talk him into anything, actually. He suggested it. His uncle Alessandro was really pushing him to expand to the States, and Giovanni didn’t want to. This was a perfect compromise. A small expansion, with someone he trusts. He can distribute wine through Cori. Emil’s staying with him in Treviso right now, in fact, so he can get to know Giovanni’s style. Emil’s family is French, and they have really similar philosophies about wine. It’s all about passion and art and love and romance, blah, blah, blah.”

  “Gross.”

  “I know, it’s so disgusting.” They looked at each other and laughed.

  “And you’ll do what, exactly?”

  “Own a winery, and let people I trust run it. Work as Cori’s full-time rep in Italy.”

  “Have twelve Italian babies?”

  “It’s not my fault that Italian men adore me.”

  He grinned and stood up from the bench. She looked up at him, shielding her eyes from the sun behind him.

  “Where the hell are you going? We are bonding here.”

  “I have a story to write. One with a happy ending. You have a business to save.”

  Tabitha slumped back against the bench and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Fine, then. Leave me alone. I upend the entire wine world, and you don’t even have the decency to sit here and worship me.”

  He tossed his coffee cup into the nearby trash can and gazed out at the sea. For a moment they remained in silence, letting the sound of the pounding surf wash over them, lost in their thoughts.

  “Listen,” he finally said, “don’t leave town without saying goodbye. Liz will kill me if I let you run off to Italy without coming over for dinner.”

  “Oh, right, like I ever miss dinner. I’m not going anywhere yet. My to-do list is rather long, thanks to you. In case you didn’t notice.”

  He smiled and nodded. “I noticed. But I think you’ll figure it out. After that, I’m not sure we’ll be seeing too much of you. Not when there are Italian winemakers who want your attention.”

  She watched him walk to his car with a strange mixture of gratitude and surprise. Everything had changed since the day they’d first met. She thought Mark McClintock was in her life to one small role—to prop up her career, to stroke her ego, and give her a platform for her ambition. His article was the first step to a whole new life, but not at all the way she’d expected.

  She grinned and waved at him as he drove away. She would see him and Liz, a lot. She would make a point of it. Ultimately, his dismantling of her world had led her to the truth. She had come out of this ordeal with only a handful of people who knew her, the real Tabitha, with all of her flaws and furies. She intended to cling to those people for the rest of her life.

  She watched the waves for a few more minutes. She had a lot to do today. Mark was right: she had a business to save, and the road would not be easy. She’d need to devise a marketing campaign to get in front of what was sure to be a terrible backlash to Royal’s cheating. She’d have to show the team that she would put in the work and the long hours to rebuild their reputation.

  But in the end, she’d change the winery into one that was run by people who weren’t blinded by ambition and greed and ego, but by people who cared only about great wine. Someone like her, before she met Royal Hamilton, who she no longer cared enough about to nickname anymore.

  Because if there was one thing she was sure of, it was that she didn’t belong here anymore. Her body and brain may live here for a while longer, but her heart was around the world, in a tiny village in Treviso, where the air smelled like oranges and basil and the days moved slowly, like honey.

  “You can have the whole world, Royal Hamilton,” she murmured to herself. “But I get Italy.”

  She smiled and stood up from the bench, stretching a bit and enjoying the way her limbs moved against the warm air. For the first time in her life, she was in complete control.

  31

  Six months later

  The Treviso airport seemed like an entirely new place. Every other visit was hazy in her mind. She’d been here once not long after her divorce, lost and furious. Once after an unsuccessful wine-tasting trip and a stellar one-night stand that made her lose track of time. Once with a killer hangover so blinding she could barely look up from her shoes as she stepped off the plane. And the last time, when she was so anguished over saying goodbye that she couldn’t see through her tears. She walked off her plane now with clear eyes, looking around the bright room with a smile. The rush of the Italian vowels washed over her; she grinned at the waving arms punctuating the conversations.

  She looked up at the end of the walkway and searched through the crowds. Her heart pounded when she saw Giovanni waiting for her. He smiled at her, his handsome face knocking the breath out of her lungs. The girls stood next to him, both holding armfuls of sunflowers. Her heart skipped a beat, and she quickened her pace, running to them with a wide smile on her face.

  The girls pushed in front of Giovanni and tackled Tabitha in an embrace, chattering loudly in a mix of Italian and English, talking over each other in an attempt to tell her everything that had happened to them in the last months.

  Finally, she looked up from the onslaught. Nicoletta had taken her bag; Alessia had her purse. Tabitha stood empty-handed before Giovanni now, a sudden shyness washing over her. He was even more handsome than she remembered, his skin deeply tanned from the recent harvest and his hair grown just a tad too long so that it curled over his collar.. Their video calls over the last months had done nothing to diminish her feeling for him, but every interaction had been mechanized, computerized, pixelated. Now he stood before her, flesh and blood, skin and bone, all heat and joy and beautiful Italian grace and energy. She could not move from where she stood, and she only stared at him, in awe
of his beauty. She wanted to stroke his face, feel the slight scruff of his whiskers against her palm, feel his lips on hers, inhale his scent. But for now, all she could do was stare at him.

  He stared back, seemingly as mesmerized by her as she was by him. Finally, his face cracked into a slight smile, the tiny dimple that she loved so much forming at the corner of his mouth. He glanced down at his hands and held up a bottle of Prosecco. The very same one that he’d given her the night they met.

  “Welcome home,” he said.

  She realized as she looked at him that everything she loved was in front of her. Wine and joy and sunshine and family and love and lust and trust. Giovanni and his daughters.

  The spell broke, and she rushed into his arms. She buried her face into his neck and inhaled the scent of his skin, curled her fingers in his thick hair to bring him closer to her. For a moment, they remained locked together, alone in the world.

  He pulled back, stared into her eyes, and ran his thumb across her bottom lip before caressing her cheek and running his hand through her hair.

  “Welcome home,” he repeated. “Amore mio.”

  And he pulled her into a kiss that erased every other kiss she had ever had in her life. A kiss that fed her soul and inflamed her body. A kiss that soothed her heart. The first kiss of her new life; the last first kiss she would ever have.

  * * *

  THE END

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Grazie mille per tutto

  Thank you and Cheers to Andii Ulrich,

  the Girl in the Vines.

  Everything that is correct about sommeliers in this book is because of what Andii taught me. All inaccuracies and exaggerations are entirely my own.

  I took a lot of liberties about the somm life for the sake of drama. In particular, there is no such thing as the International SommFest compeition or the governing organizations as I have described them.