Too Close to the Sun

by Dempsey, Diana

  He consoled himself with the fact that he couldn't have imagined her attraction to him the night before. He told himself it didn't matter that she considered him an outsider while Vittorio was a sort of wine soul mate, someone who understood what she loved because he loved it, too. He told himself that those two had parted for a reason, whatever it was, and that it needn't impede Will's future with her at all.

  He didn't let himself dwell on how he himself was treating her, the little nagging worry that he wasn't being entirely on the up-and-up, that he had an agenda she didn't know about, and that if she did, he might be part of her history, too.

  When they'd parked side by side in Suncrest's employee lot and emerged from their respective vehicles, he judged her skin a little blotched and her eyes a little puffy. But she produced a smile. Will knew good sense dictated that he not quiz her on their interaction with Vittorio, though he was dying to. This was another case where he thought restraint was the better part of valor.

  They worked the bottling line for four hours. They shared lunch—hamburgers and salad—with their fellow assembly-linesmen. They chatted and smiled, and spoke of everything but the man they'd run into that morning.

  When it came time for him to leave, Gabby walked Will out to his car. He leaned against its silver sun-warmed chassis and pulled her toward him so that her body settled gently against his. "Do you know what a wonderful time I had with you?" he asked her.

  She smiled. There was sadness in her eyes, but a light, too. "Tell me," she said.

  "So wonderful that I don't know how I'm going to make it till the next time I see you." He brushed her lips with his own. "How about next weekend? Friday night? I'll drive up after my flight gets in from Kennedy."

  "You'll be exhausted."

  "Is that a yes or a no?"

  She hesitated only a second. "It's a yes."

  He knew Vittorio was on her mind. He knew she was conscious of her coworkers mere yards away, conspicuously not watching. So he tried to say what he felt in a short kiss and a long glance. He drove away very much hoping she'd heard him.

  Chapter 9

  Driver in hand, Max stood on the eighth tee of the Sonoma Mission Inn golf course and prepared to launch his golf ball a Tiger Woods-like distance down the center of the fairway.

  Rory stood a few yards behind him, awaiting his turn. "At least this hole doesn't have a water hazard," he said to Bucky, loud enough for Max to hear. "But that out-of-bounds all down the left side is something to watch out for."

  "The right's no bargain, either, with those bunkers," Bucky murmured in that same fake-quiet voice. "Better go long and straight on this hole, Maxie boy."

  Max shook his head. "Shut up," he said, then gave it one more waggle and let 'er rip.

  All three watched the ball curve through the air on a rightish trajectory, then drop into the rough about twenty yards shy of the nearest bunker.

  "It plays long from there," Bucky opined, walking forward while bopping the enormous steel head of his driver into the earth to locate a suitably firm spot into which to plunge his tee. "But maybe the rough is short enough that you can play driver again."

  Rory chuckled. "Advance the ball another one-eighty up the fairway."

  Max knew this was just more of the good-natured joshing he'd been taking since high school from these two, but still he was irked. He didn't like any intimation that he was one down to them. "I don't see either of you joining the pro tour."

  "True." Bucky took another flawless practice swing, his gaze locked on the fairway. "Even though there's no way it could suck as much as med school."

  Then he hit, and Max watched Bucky's drive cream his own by a good seventy yards. He was pleased that it, too, found the rough. "Maybe the wind took it," Max said. He didn't bother to keep the snideness out of his voice.

  Bucky shook his head. "Gotta work on that high fade. Didn't hurt Jack Nicklaus, though."

  Nicklaus, my ass. The only relief was that Bucky just said "med school" that time and not "Johns Hopkins Medical School," because it seemed like he couldn't stop bragging about his postgraduate education.

  I'm enrolled in the school of hard knocks, Max told himself, otherwise known as the real world. And I'm blowing its doors off.

  It had been a stellar week since he'd delivered his mother to her Air France flight. He'd spoken with her by phone every day since, both to keep up the pretense that he was the most dutiful son in California and to reassure her about Suncrest. He hadn't breathed a word about the ongoing rebottling, figuring he'd ease into that discussion once she returned to Terra Americana. His most fervent wish was that that day be pushed far into the future. At the moment she was still planning to fly home in a week, but he knew that if any woman was prone to last-minute itinerary changes, it was her.

  Since Rory had already hit, all three hoisted their golf bags onto their shoulders and set off down the fairway. Max's bag banged rhythmically into his back, clubs clattering with every step. He'd felt forced to walk the course rather than use a golf cart, though at his current weight—in this heat—he would have much preferred the latter. Already, at eleven in the morning, it was above eighty degrees. The summer smell of newly mown grass filled his nostrils, reminding him of good times, being a kid, having tons of free hours and doing only what he wanted with them. Now he looked forward to a barbecued hot dog at the turn, and a cold beer to go with it, and going home after the round to nap on the hammock by the pool.

  "So you're in town all summer?" he asked Rory.

  "Yup. Don't start the job till after Labor Day. Just hope I passed the bar."

  No way Rory didn't pass the bar. "The job's with a law firm in DC, you said?"

  Rory nodded. He was Max's height—that is to say, five ten—and about as sturdily built. His brown hair was thinning by the minute and his wardrobe remained as uninspired preppy as ever. In other words, Rory looked human—unlike Bucky, who even after years of slaving away at pre-med and then med school still looked perfect. So much so, in fact, that he'd scored a date with Stella Monaco, a babe of major proportions who'd turned Max down twice. Max thought Rory should give up medicine and become a soap star. After all, being a doctor wasn't the plush gig it used to be.

  Then again, being a corporate lawyer didn't sound that entertaining, either. Max felt a rush of superiority that his own life was on such a splendid course. Running Suncrest, living in the valley, making scads of money without breaking a sweat.

  He was the smart one, he told himself, he was the one who had his shit in gear. Every once in a while Max worried that Rory or Bucky was making more of himself than he was—moving to the East Coast, joining some hotshot organization, working his way up to being hot shit himself. But that was stupid. Who was living better? Answer that.

  And any joker who thought Max had everything handed to him on a silver platter could just guess again. It was tough following in a father's footsteps, especially one as successful as Porter Winsted. Max had to prove himself every day of the week, and that was some heavy burden to carry.

  "So how's Suncrest?" Bucky asked.

  "Fantastic." That was Max's standard response to that question. "I'm loving running it. Once we get through harvest, I'm going to focus on adding more varietals. I have some new marketing strategies up my sleeve, too."

  That wasn't entirely accurate but Max didn't want to get into the unglamorous arena of cost-cutting. Truth be told, the number-crunching was less than appealing. No matter how long he wrestled with some of those digits, they still kept insisting on coming out red.

  He'd found out when he ran the numbers that the rebottling was a tad pricier than he'd anticipated. So what? Any good businessman knew you had to spend money to make money. Besides, he had plenty of ways to trim the winery's fat.

  All three halted as they reached Max's ball, which poked halfheartedly out of the rough's long grass.

  "Unfortunate lie," Bucky remarked, then waited till Max was lined up over his shot before he fired his next salvo
. "It's good you're working on some marketing strategies, buddy, 'cause I'd say Suncrest could use 'em. I've been to a few of the hot restaurants in the city lately and none of them had it on their wine list."

  Max pretended to be unfazed by that revelation. He stepped back from his shot and took a few more practice swings. "Like where?"

  "Chez Spencer. Jeanty at Jack's."

  Rory piped up. "It's not at Rubicon, either. I was just there the other night."

  "Or at Boulevard," Bucky added.

  Max stepped back up to his ball, his mind working. Well, well. It looked like his buds had just handed him a new marketing project. He sighed, imagining the tough work that lay ahead. That winery was just damn lucky he was back to run it. It needed his visionary management something fierce.

  He hit. The ball launched beautifully into the cloudless blue sky, drew slightly, then plopped onto the fairway and rolled an additional twenty yards, putting Max in perfect position for a pitching wedge onto the green.

  "Center cut," Bucky said.

  "Nice shot, Max," Rory echoed.

  Max returned his seven iron to his bag and wordlessly accepted his friends' plaudits, not in the least surprised to be receiving them.

  *

  "Gabby, wait up, will you?" At twilight Cam's breathless voice rang out over Suncrest's Morydale vineyard, set on a west-facing slope to catch the afternoon sun and given a natural windbreak on three sides by walls of forest. By this late hour the sun had already dipped below the jagged crest of the Mayacamas, throwing the vines into shadow and allowing the grapes to relax after the day's frenetic sweetening.

  Gabby was panting herself from hurrying along the hilly rows of vines. She halted at a waist-high wooden post both to allow her sister to catch up and to retie a piece of reflective aluminum tape that had come loose. Crows cawed overhead, as if taunting her efforts to frighten them away from the ripening fruit below.

  "Damn birds," she muttered. They looked like a biker gang riding wings instead of Harleys across the dusky sky. She let her gaze drop to her sister's approaching form, encased in a gray sweatsuit Gabby thought should immediately go to the rag bag. "Hurry up, Cam," she whispered. She illuminated the dial on her digital watch and read its glowing turquoise verdict: 8:52. So much for getting home early.

  Monday night her phone had rung around nine thirty. It had been Will, calling from Manhattan. They'd nattered on about his business trip, her rebottling, everything and nothing. Since then—two nights of zippo.

  Okay, he was busy. So was she. But zippo?

  It was hard to get a read on him. Maybe he was as careful about phone calls as he seemed to be about everything else—sex included. She had to admire him for that; it was quite a departure from how most men behaved. And it was true they hadn't known each other long. Not long enough to justify how intense it felt whenever she was with him.

  She toyed with a piece of green Mylar tape that tied a vine onto a trellising wire. The scary truth was that part of her wanted to talk with him every day. And part of her hoped he'd go away and never come back.

  You might be better off alone. Safer, anyway, in her scientist's routine, where she could keep everything just the way she wanted it. Men had a way of mucking that up. They got in your hair, they got in your body, they got in your house, they got under your skin, and before you knew it, you weren't controlling anything anymore.

  That's certainly what Vittorio had done. It had been wonderful and terrible both.

  Cam reached her, seriously out of breath, wild dark hair bursting from beneath her black-and-orange Giants baseball cap. "Can you go any faster?"

  "Sorry."

  "This vineyard's really hilly, you know." Cam took a few restorative gulps of air. "Why are we here, anyway?"

  "To see if it's too dry." Which, in Gabby's estimation, it was. She squatted down to grab another handful of soil, which ran through her fingers like sand. Lots of winemakers believed that grapes, like artists, needed to struggle to achieve greatness, that rich, complex flavors grew out of difficult conditions. She believed that, too, to a point. "We haven't been using the drip irrigation lately, but I think we need to get back to it. I'm not sure there's enough groundwater here." She made a mental note to tell Felix in the morning, then rose and rubbed her hands together to get rid of the loose dirt. "Thanks for coming with me, by the way."

  "No problem, I needed the exercise." She chuckled. "I didn't think I'd get this much of it, though."

  Gabby nodded. Sometimes she forgot that other people didn't tromp the vineyards like she did, weren't used to the long exploratory hikes that gave her a feel for how the crop was progressing. Did they need to prime the foliage so the fruit got more sun? Were the vines getting enough nutrients?

  She was especially eager to continue those walks now. Max had decided, in his infinite lack of wisdom, to fire some field workers. We don't need them, he told her. When we do for harvest, we'll bring them back.

  Yeah, right. Gabby knew what he was up to. The rebottling cost so much he needed to cut somewhere else. So, like the idiot owner he was, he took it out of the place that mattered to the wine the most, but to him the least. The vineyard.

  Silence lengthened between the sisters, broken only by the distant drone of a small plane's engine and the nearby chatter of little birds who'd convened on the telephone wires to report to each other on the day's activities. The sky was an explosion of pink and orange hues, streaked with purple, as if the angels had run amok with their celestial crayons. Gabby loved this twilight hour, when her work was done, her muscles were pleasantly sore, and dinner, a bath, and bed awaited.

  Out of the quiet, Cam spoke. "Has Will called?"

  "Yup. From New York." Somehow it felt like a badge of honor to be able to say that. "He'll be back in San Francisco tomorrow and is driving right up."

  "Wow." Cam shook her head, clearly impressed. "I need one like that."

  Cam didn't enjoy massive success in the man department, though Gabby thought no one deserved a good one more than her sister did. "Come on," Gabby said, "it's getting dark. Let's walk back to the car," and turned to head for the Jeep, waiting half a mile downhill.

  They had just arrived when Cam piped up again. "You know, I've seen Vittorio."

  Gabby stopped cold, her fingers frozen on the Jeep's door handle. "What?"

  "He's here. I mean, I'm not sure he's here this second, but he's been around. Everybody's seen him. I saw him at Gillwood's. Lucia saw him, too." She was their other sister, the youngest, whom old-timers usually referred to as "the married one." "The weird thing is, he came into her office."

  "He wants to buy real estate?"

  "Apparently he's interested in that land off 29 that's been for sale forever. You know, between Rutherford and St. Helena?"

  Oh, God. Vittorio wants to buy vineyards in Napa.

  That was too weird for words. Was the Mantucci family planning to expand into Napa Valley? They were a little small to do that—they ran a midsize winery, about the same volume as Suncrest—but maybe they'd joined forces with some bigger money, like a European beverage company or something.

  The idea of Vittorio setting up operations in Napa Valley angered her. It wasn't enough that he ran roughshod over her heart? Now he wanted to invade her territory, the one sacrosanct thing she had left?

  "Don't tell me Lucia's his broker," Gabby said.

  "No." Cam shook her head. "Somebody else in the office. I'm almost afraid to ask, but did you run into him, too?"

  "At Dean and DeLuca." Gabby didn't want to face the ire that would ensue if she told Cam she'd actually had dinner with him.

  "How was it?"

  She hesitated. "Odd. I was shocked, at first. Then sad. A little angry, too, like I still can't believe what he did to me." Cam's gaze was steady on her face. Somehow Gabby wanted to downplay the emotions that had coursed through her, left her wobbly for days. "It's weird to see him wear a wedding ring. And his wife's pregnant now, too."

  A train whis
tle sounded far away, its last notes vanishing into the gloaming sky. "Do you feel like you're over him?"

  "Mostly."

  Sometimes she worried she was to blame for the hold he still had on her. Long ago she'd come to believe that she and Vittorio had a great tragic love affair, one doomed by the gods. It imbued their love with a grand romantic quality. In some ways that conviction was one of her most cherished beliefs.

  Yet was she clinging to an illusion? How great a love affair could theirs have been if Vittorio had been willing to set her aside? Wouldn't a great romantic hero fight against all odds to keep his love at his side?

  Wouldn't he at least fight his parents?

  "Well," Cam said, walking around the rear of the Jeep, "I wish you hadn't had to see him, but I'm glad he didn't call you." She hoisted herself onto the passenger seat. "That would've really pissed me off."

  Gabby got into the car herself and carefully inserted the key into the ignition. "What would've been so bad about him calling?" She tried to keep her voice casual. "I mean, what if he had something to tell me?"

  Cam didn't hesitate. "He's already told you plenty."

  *

  Will was driving to Napa as fast as the law would allow. Faster, actually. The desire that had clawed at him all week in New York now kept his foot pressed hard on the accelerator. He'd been fantasizing relentlessly about Gabby, in heart-stopping detail, and now she was waiting for him at her mountaintop retreat. He couldn't get there fast enough.

  When they'd spoken on the phone, she'd been playful. He'd gotten no hint of the hurt and distraction he'd seen at Dean and DeLuca. Her mood had allowed him to push Vittorio Mantucci into the recesses of his mind, like an old attic box that didn't need to be sorted just yet.

  You could fall in love with this woman. That knowledge hovered in the back of his brain, daring contradiction. None came. He was old enough to know what he liked and what he didn't. He knew he was a pretty traditional guy. He actually wanted to settle down. He gave more than a passing thought to kids. He wanted what his parents had, what his sister had. He was, as women's magazines portentously put it, ready to commit.