The Bordeaux Betrayal (17 page)

“No.” I didn’t want him teasing me when I was angry. “No, thanks.”

“You have dinner plans already?” He cupped my chin so I couldn’t look away. “I thought not. It’s settled. You’re dining with me. I behaved appallingly the other night and I want to make it up to you.”

“Mick—”

“Please.” His voice was soft in my hair. “Say yes.”

I knew I would regret this. “All right,” I said. “Yes.”

I finished making the rounds of the stables with him before we went back to the house. Our last stop was the stallion’s barn and the stall which contained Dunne Gone, a bay with a white blaze on his face. Tommy was sifting through straw with a pitchfork, mucking the stall when we got there.

“You’re keeping an eye on that hock?” Mick asked.

“Doc Harmon’s comin’ here first thing tomorrow when he does his daily rounds.”

“Good. Get the farrier in, too. He needs to reset Casbah’s rear shoe.”

“Already taken care of.”

Mick nodded. “See you in the morning, Tommy.”

“’Evening, sir. Good evening, Miss Montgomery.”

We walked back to the house holding hands. “Casbah’s racing on Saturday at the Point-to-Point,” Mick said. “Along with another of my maidens. I’d like you to come. Amanda’s having her usual tailgate. We could meet there.”

I knew—though he didn’t say it—that he expected his horses to win at the Point-to-Point and he wanted me to see that.

“I’ll bring my grandfather,” I said. “He’s visiting from Paris. I think you’d like him.”

We had reached the terrace by Mick’s swimming pool. When I’d been here last spring, he and I had spent many evenings watching the animals’ beautiful silhouettes from this spot until the sun set behind the Blue Ridge and everything faded to black. When a horse is a champion he shows it. Even from a distance I had seen that regal elegance in Mick’s horses. They knew their destiny and what they were meant to do. With the weather cooling off, he and Tommy had swapped the horses’ routines so they now spent days outside and nights inside. Tonight I missed seeing them.

His housekeeper had already prepared dinner—steaks, baby vegetables, and a salad for two. All he had to do was throw everything together.

I looked over at the plates and cutlery already stacked on a silver tray. “When am I supposed to be dazzled by your culinary skills?” I said. “Is it when you set the table, or when you take the wrapping off that gorgeous salad?”

He grinned. “It’s when I open the wine. Come on. I’ve got something I want you to try. Shane got me a couple of cases.”

A bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin and two Biot wineglasses sat on another tray on the drawing room sideboard. A Burgundy, this one from a
grand cru
vineyard in a part of France known as the Côte d’Or—the Gold Coast. It would be like drinking silk and velvet together.

I watched him uncork the wine. “Your drawing room looks lovely. Sunny did a wonderful job.”

“She knows what I like,” he said. “You’ll have to see what she’s doing to the guest suite upstairs. It’ll be ready in a few weeks when Selena moves in.”

One of his sisters? A cousin? “Who’s Selena?”

“My goddaughter. Youngest child of an old family friend from the U.K.”

“Why is she moving in?” I didn’t like it that I sounded like a jealous girlfriend.

He didn’t seem to notice. “She’s been winning a lot of prizes in Europe riding show jumpers.” He handed me a pale blue wineglass and touched his glass against mine. “Her father, Lord Tanner, thought perhaps she should get some experience in the States. I offered to let her stay here, though she’ll probably also spend time in Kentucky. She just finished up at Cambridge and planned on taking a year off before working, anyway.”

So she was about Mia’s age—twenty-one.

“It sounds like a great opportunity for her.” I drank some of my wine.

He took my glass. “You are so transparent,” he said, and kissed me on the mouth. “I think of her as a daughter.”

“I hate being transparent,” I said, kissing him back. “And it’s nice you’re doing this for her. I mean it.”

“Come on,” he said. “There’s something else I want to do.”

He brought me to his bedroom and we were rough undressing each other. No tenderness or caresses or words. Our lovemaking was primal and intense, perhaps because it had been months since the last time. I could not tell what drove him, but my own fierce need came from an ache that had burrowed so deep inside me I’d almost managed to forget it existed. The need to be loved—no, to be
in
love—flared up like a dull pain each time he entered me, because I knew he didn’t want to make any promises. Maybe didn’t even need to.

What he gave in the moment was as good as it got. Sincere but not constant. Passionate but not besotted. In lust, not love. In the end, it was about flesh and comfort and nothing more.

When we finished for the last time he lay next to me, leaning on his elbow, trailing a finger from my forehead down my nose, my lips, my neck, between my breasts, then lower, hovering just before he brushed my sweet spot. Like he was dividing me in half. I shivered. He stopped. “What?”

“Nothing. That was wonderful,” I said. “It always is with you.”

“Stay tonight and it will be wonderful again.”

“I wish I could, but I need to sleep at home. My grandfather.”

“You need to sleep at home because of your grandfather?” He looked incredulous. “Can’t he take care of himself?”

I pulled him down and kissed him. “Of course he can. But he’s eighty-two and he just got here yesterday. I feel like I should be with him.”

“You mean you’d rather be with him than me—”

“That’s not true and you know it.”

“Come on.” All of a sudden he sounded all-business. “Let’s eat. I’m starved.”

He got up and put on his clothes. I picked up my things where he’d flung them and retrieved my cane.

“Give me a few minutes to pull myself together.”

“Of course,” he said. “Come outside on the terrace when you’re ready. I’m going to start the grill.”

We ate in his splendid dining room at a table that seated twenty-four. He moved two silver candelabras so they were at one end of the table and we sat across from each other. His dining room chairs reminded me of thrones. The paintings on the walls seemed to recede and the moss green curtains were drawn across the windows so the room was dark except for the flickering candles, which danced in an occasional current of air. We sat in a golden pool of light and talked quietly.

“I’ll get another bottle of wine,” he said.

“I’ve got to drive,” I said. “That’s enough for me.”

“Your grandfather will be fine. Stay the night.”

He opened the second bottle and I let him fill my glass. “If you’re not careful we’ll drink your entire cave.”

“I rather doubt it.”

“Buying that much, are you?”

He grinned. “And enjoying it. I’ve started buying futures, too. From Shane.”

“When did Shane get into futures?”

“It’s been a while. He told me he’d spent the last few years cultivating relationships with
négociants
in Bordeaux and a few of the boutique vineyards in California,” Mick said. “He went to France last March for the
‘en Primeur’
tastings. Raved about what he drank so I bought a few contracts in July.”

Wine futures—like futures for any other product traded on the market—lock in a price of a vintage while it’s still in the barrels. The purchaser bets the wine will be worth more down the road, after it’s aged and bottled. If things go the other way, at least with wine there’s always Plan B—drinking it. But while futures, especially Bordeaux futures, had been around for a while, it was an unregulated practice. Gambling with no one to police what went on.

“Futures are risky,” I said. “You can lose a bundle.”

“I like taking risks. And I can afford to lose.” He looked me in the eyes and I was glad I never had to stare him down across a conference room table. In business, I bet he’d been merciless when he wanted something. He, too, had pockets that went all the way to China. He could match any price to get what he wanted.

“You sure Shane knows what he’s doing?” I asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he said. “He’s got great contacts. He introduced me to a wine buyer he’s been working with. I’m thinking of hiring her.”

I moved my wineglass to the side and leaned across the table. “You’re going to hire Nicole Martin?”

“You know her? Yes, I think so. Why?”

“Do you know who she is?”

“You seem to think I don’t.”

“Quinn’s ex-wife.”

He spun a teaspoon on the table and watched the silver flash in the candlelight. “Does that disqualify her for some reason? I heard she was the best.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I said, “but I don’t trust her.”

“So far I have no reason not to,” he said. “But I’ll keep that in mind.”

I stood up. “I should go. Thank you for dinner.”

He reached out and caught my hand. “Please don’t.”

“Mick—” But he was already pulling me into his arms, whispering that I needed to stay and that he wanted me again.

The Greek poet Aeschylus once said that wine is the mirror of the heart. With all the wine we’d drunk surely I should have been able to see into Mick’s heart. But tonight I saw only shadows. Still I let him lead me back to his bedroom and the tangled sheets we’d left before dinner.

The last coherent thought I had before our lovemaking obliterated all other thoughts from my mind was that we were both doing this for the wrong reasons. When I looked into the mirror of my own heart I saw that in the not-too-distant future I would pay a price for my recklessness.

As for Mick, he wouldn’t find what he was looking for in me. He was a gambler and a risk-taker. The more audacious, the better. Now he was into the occasionally gray area of buying wine futures from Shane, not caring if he got burned. And Shane had introduced him to the ruthless Nicole Martin, a woman who was apparently as addictive as heroin.

No good would come of his relationship with her. I was sure of it.

I got up at two and dressed in a shaft of moonlight shining in through the bedroom window. Mick didn’t stir. Mosby’s Highway was deserted and the drive home uneventful. Good thing, since I didn’t want to bet on passing a breathalyzer test.

I climbed the spiral staircase in the dark so the hall light wouldn’t disturb Pépé. But when I got to the second floor, his bedroom door stood open and the bed hadn’t been slept in. My octogenarian grandfather was still out carousing on the town. I took two ibuprophen to ward off the effects of the alcohol in the morning and fell asleep in my clothes.

When I woke, Pépé’s door was closed. What time had he come in? I scrawled a note and left it by the coffeepot, asking him to call me when he got up. On my way out the door to the villa, Kit called my cell. The display showed her office number in Leesburg.

“Someone’s at work early,” I said.

“Up getting the worm,” she said. “I’ve got business in Middleburg later. What if I make it around lunchtime and we grab a bite somewhere? I’ve got something to tell you.”

Had she already decided about the Moscow job?

“Good news or bad?” I said.

“Neither.”

“How can it be neither? What is it?”

“You’ll just have to wait until lunch.”

“You’re no fun. Meet me at the Red Fox. Noon. I’ll make reservations.”

“I’m loads of fun. See you at noon,” she said and hung up.

Shane Cunningham’s Porsche was parked next to Quinn’s car when I pulled into the vineyard parking lot. The villa was still locked which meant they were together in the barrel room. I walked through the courtyard. The early morning breeze was cool and the overcast sky obscured the Blue Ridge.

What business did Shane have with Quinn? The only thing they had in common right now was Nicole. One had her. The other wanted her.

But it was Nicole who was with Quinn, not Shane. I wondered if he’d loaned her the Porsche or if she’d borrowed it without asking. Shane was like Eli when it came to cars. If they had their way, they’d shrink-wrap passengers so they couldn’t touch the leather seats or leave a stray fingerprint on any surface.

Quinn and Nicole were together at the far end of the room, engrossed in conversation. Neither looked up when I closed the door, though the thrumming noise of the fans, like the engine on a small plane, would have drowned out the sound. They stood directly under a spotlight near the winemaker’s table, facing each other. The white concentrated light made them seem like heavenly apparitions.

I watched as Quinn leaned against one of the arches at the entrance to the bays and folded his arms across his chest. Nicole sat down in a chair so she faced Quinn. Her face was tilted toward his and her hands clasped together. She gestured as though she were praying—or pleading. He nodded as she talked. Reconciliation, maybe? An olive branch?

Whatever she said, he seemed to accept it and held out his hand. It was too late for me to leave or move or pretend I hadn’t been doing anything but watching them. Quinn’s eyes grew dark as they walked toward me.

“What are you doing here, Lucie?” In French there is an expression,
c’est comme des cheveux sur la soupe,
which means something is as welcome as hair on soup. He asked like I was the hair.

I decided against the obvious answer, that I owned the place and could be anywhere I damn well pleased. Nicole Martin watched me, sly amusement in her long-lashed dark eyes. For the first time, I had a chance to study her, too. Exotic-looking with high cheekbones and a heart-shaped face. Only her mouth, which, in an unguarded moment, settled into a sneer, ruined her beauty.

“The Porsche was in the parking lot so I thought Shane was visiting. I came by to talk to him.” I looked at Nicole. “What brings you here?”