Too Close to the Sun (13 page)

Ava gave her voice an intensity of its own.
"Despite what anyone else may have told you, Gabriella, I can
assure you that the only change on the horizon is Max's management
of the winery. This is the beginning of a thrilling new era for
Suncrest, one that my husband and I looked forward to for
years."

Ava watched the girl's eyes go wide behind
her sunglasses. "Yes, Mrs. Winsted," she said.

"I trust you're as enthusiastic about this
transition as I am? Because it is crucial that Max be surrounded by
loyal employees. I will not have him undermined by his own
staff."

"I understand. And let me assure you, I am
excited." She paused, then, "I'd like nothing better right now than
to see your son take over Suncrest."

"All right, then." Frowning, and silently
cursing one Will Henley, Ava waved off her young employee.

*

Gabby hurtled her Jeep south along Highway
29, heading for the town of Napa and her parents' house. Here,
around Yountville, the valley was wide around her, with gently
mounded foothills rising to the east and west. Elsewhere in
California, their green lushness might well be hidden beneath tract
housing. But the restrictive zoning in this part of the valley kept
them closer to a natural state.

Will would probably disapprove
. Gabby
snorted quietly.
Too bad
. He was out of luck these days, at
least with regard to Suncrest. It was fantastic news that he hadn't
been able to persuade Mrs. W to sell. There was still the open
question of how Max would run the place, but just maybe he wouldn't
do anything idiotic.

Perhaps she'd luck out and things in her life
would stay pretty much the same. That's what she hoped for, deep
down, though it made her feel boring and unadventurous to admit it.
From when she was a girl, she'd liked habits and routine, order and
predictability. She used to make daily agendas for herself. Up at 7
AM. Shower/breakfast till 7:30. To school by 7:45. Class till 11:15
. . . On and on, for the whole day. It gave her profound
satisfaction to cross through each checkpoint on time, X each item
off the list. It gave her a sense of control and forward
motion.

But falling in love with Vittorio shredded
her lists like confetti and tossed them out the window to blow
away. Life became a free-for-all. And a delicious one, which
surprised her. Things happened when they happened, and the wonder
of it was, she didn't mind. Lovemaking in the middle of the day.
Bathing at four in the afternoon. Walks at all hours. Lunch at
three, with maybe a nap after. Working till nine to catch up, then
wine and pasta and bed, with Vittorio, always with Vittorio.

Highway 29 widened to two lanes, a signal
that she had arrived in the more heavily trafficked southern end of
the valley. Gabby maneuvered around a slow-moving flatbed truck and
wondered if Vittorio was still in Napa. He felt gone, somehow. Yet
he'd felt gone the moment she'd walked out on him at Bistro Jeanty.
She knew it was good that the ache that followed was dull, not
searing, that she felt hollow, but not lost. It meant she was
getting over him, for real his time.

A few minutes later she hit Trancas Street
and turned left. This area, nearer to San Francisco, was a lot less
glamorous than the bucolic towns farther north. The snobbiest folks
from up-valley would drive through as fast as possible, turning
their noses up at what was basically generic commercial suburbia.
Four-lane thoroughfares and strip malls and fast-food chains held
sway. Unfortunately, all the concrete meant you could easily forget
you were in one of the most naturally beautiful spots on earth.

After a few zigzag turns, Gabby found herself
on the cul-de-sac of her childhood. Her parents' home was one among
a series of California bungalows: all small and tidy and
differentiated by how well their owners tended their particular
square of lawn. The DeLucas benefited from both Cosimo and Sofia
being neat freaks.

Gabby pushed open the unlocked front door to
find her father in the living room, wearing pajamas and watching a
raunchy TV talk show. He punched OFF on the remote control the
second he saw her, a sheepish expression spreading over his
unshaven face.

She had to laugh. "I caught you!"

He threw up his hands. "How am I going to do
this for six weeks?"

"You have to take it this easy for only the
next few weeks." She kissed his cheek, then perched on the brown
corduroy couch next to his easy chair. "How're you feeling?"

His face twisted into a
not bad
expression. Even though he was convalescing, Gabby was shocked to
see her father's life reduced to daytime TV and too much free time.
A musty smell lingered about him, as of clothes too long worn or a
bath too hastily taken. The colorful afghan she and Cam had
crocheted as teenagers draped over his legs, as if he were an
invalid in a wheelchair. A small tray cluttered with pill bottles
rested on the side table next to the cheesy Leaning Tower of Pisa
coasters she'd brought back as a gag souvenir from Tuscany. She
pivoted a few of the bottles to face her. Toprol. Zocor. Bayer
aspirin.

"I think I'm due to take one of those," he
said, cocking his chin at the aspirin.

"I'll get you some water."

It was in the kitchen that she noticed the
flowers. A showy assortment of white roses, orange lilies, and
yellow oncidium orchids, delivered in the sort of vase that Gabby's
mother would save rather than recycle. There was only one person
they could have come from.

Will Henley hadn't disappeared from her mind,
despite his ongoing silence, which now had persisted for nearly
three weeks. Still he lingered at the edge of her consciousness,
occasionally giving her pause to wonder.

Why hadn't she heard from him? Did she want
to? Had he been interested in her only when it was possible he
might acquire Suncrest, in which case he would have wanted her
support, and both DeLucas' winemaking expertise? Could he be that
cynical?

Gabby returned to the living room and handed
her father the glass of water, trying to keep her tone light. "That
bouquet in the kitchen is really beautiful."

Her father tipped back his head and swallowed
the aspirin. "You know it's from that Will Henley fellow,
right?"

Was it her imagination or did he sound fake
casual, too? "I know he sent flowers to the hospital."

"And sent this bunch here. I remember liking
him, when I was talking to him during that dinner." Her father's
tone turned wry. "Though I have to say the rest of the evening is
kind of a blur."

"He was very helpful," she heard herself say.
"He really took charge when you had the heart attack, then he came
to the hospital and stayed till past two."

"Did he really?" His brows arched as if that
tidbit gave him something new to think about. "I liked him," he
repeated, then his eyes strayed to the blank TV screen. Gabby had
the funny feeling he was waiting for her to say something
confidential, something girly and private that didn't pass often
enough between fathers and their grown-up daughters.

She was quiet for a time, then, "I like him,
too." It hung in the air, an admission of truth swinging back and
forth in the breeze billowing inside through the open front window.
"But I think I gave him the impression I didn't. I think I may have
overreacted to something he told me."

Her father's gaze snapped back to her. "How
so?"

Gabby crossed her arms and stared out the
window. Some neighborhood ten-year-olds were using the cul-de-sac
in the way it was meant to be used: as an asphalt baseball diamond.
All that was different from her day was that a good number of the
players were girls.

There were things she couldn't tell her
father about Will Henley. That he'd tried to buy Suncrest, for
example. That news flash was strictly verboten, not to mention that
her father would find it highly upsetting.

"He's in business," she began. "In the city.
With some hotshot company that does investments." She paused, then,
"It makes me think he sees the world very differently from how I
do."

"You're in business, Gabby. Suncrest is a
commercial enterprise."

"It's not the same thing. You and I don't
spend our time worrying about whether Suncrest makes money. We just
try to make the best wine we can."

He laughed. "Well, it's good
somebody's
worrying about it! Otherwise Suncrest wouldn't
have lasted for long."

She reclaimed her seat on the couch. "Don't
you ever think the valley's changing too much? That it's a lot more
about making money than it used to be?"

"Oh, sure. For lots of folks, money's all
they're interested in." He paused and looked away from her, his
dark eyes taking on a faraway gleam as if he were thinking about
other times, times she'd never known. "But that's not true for
everybody. Never has been." He frowned and moved his eyes back to
her. Narrowed. Penetrating. "Are you worried that's what this Will
is like?"

She shrugged, feeling slightly embarrassed
and very cornered. "A little."

"Just because of the outfit he works for, the
kind of work he does? Do you even really understand what that
is?"

She heard the incredulity in her father's
voice. She met his gaze and scrunched her nose. "You're thinking
maybe I judged him too fast?"

"Well, it certainly seems to me that he's
been very nice to us. And he didn't have to be. It's not like the
DeLucas can boost him up the corporate ladder." He shook his head,
his mind clearly made up. "Nope, he didn't strike me as the sort of
man who cares only about money."

A tiny hope leaped in Gabby's heart as she
listened to her father.
Maybe he's right. All I've seen Will be
is considerate and helpful. I wonder if it's
me
who's been
the jerk here?

It was ironic. She hated when people judged
her on the basis of snippets of information. She was her father's
assistant winemaker, so they assumed she got her job not because
she was good but because of that inside connection. She was nearing
thirty and never married, so they thought she was too uppity or
picky or careerist to get a man. Now she'd gone and made slapdash
judgments about Will, relying almost entirely on her own
biases.

Great work, Gabby.

Her father continued, but now he had a
sparkle in his eyes. "You know, I noticed him staring at you all
during that dinner."

"You did?"

"Yes, I did." He paused. "And I liked
him."

She didn't know quite why, but tears pricked
behind her eyes. "Oh, Daddy," she managed, then she had her arm
around his neck and her head against his shoulder, and it was as if
all the fear and heartache of the past days fell away like a winter
cloak shed in the first warmth of spring. Her father's heart was
beating a steady rhythm, for the first time in years her life
didn't begin and end with Vittorio Mantucci, and an American man
named Will Henley had sent her father flowers—twice—and stared at
her all through dinner.

She raised her head to see that her father's
dark eyes were moist, too. "You know," he said, "if you made a
mistake, you can always apologize."

She could. And she realized she wanted to.
"Do you—?" she started to say, but she didn't even need to
finish.

Her father patted her knee. "Just come back
later, honey."

She kissed him and then was off, in the Jeep,
on 29 back to the winery, not sure what she was going to do about
Will Henley but knowing it was going to be something.

It turned out he beat her to it.

"You got a package," Cam chirped from the
reception desk when Gabby burst into the winery, hell-bent for who
knew what. "I put it on your desk."

It was a small box wrapped in string and
brown paper, like an old-fashioned delivery. She knew it was from
Will even before she opened it, though a big clue was that the
return address read SAN FRANCISCO. She tore into it with excited
fingers.

Inside was a white box tied with light blue
ribbon. Then tissue paper, then something cool and roundish and
ceramic. Carefully she pulled it out .

It was a pig. Pink and cheerful-looking. With
a big round rump and a squiggly tail and perky pig ears above an
enormous snout.

There was a note attached. Which read,
Dinner Saturday over July 4th weekend? Please say yes. Give your
favorite capitalist something to look forward to . . .
Will
.

*

Will always thought that GPG's Monday
partners' meeting was like a grown-up version of Show and Tell. For
the junior partners like him—who were intent on currying the favor
of the senior partners like Simon LaRue—they generated a fair
amount of performance anxiety. You had to describe your
deals-in-progress in realistic terms yet still project supreme
confidence about them. If the partnership got any whiff of doubt,
it would be a deal-killer. And while you benefited from their best
thinking, you might also get creamed by their analysis.

This group didn't miss much.

Will sat at his usual place at the conference
table, its mahogany expanse littered with folders, documents,
charts, and the occasional laptop computer. Lunch had been cleared,
but the coffee and water services remained. Modern art of the
multimillion-dollar variety hung on the pristine white walls, while
perfectly tended phalaenopsis orchids in blue-and-white Japanese
pots perched on the two side tables. For this session, three of the
usual attendees were missing—two away on business and one on a long
weekend. At midafternoon, seven pairs of challenging eyes turned
toward Will.

Simon LaRue spoke from the head of the table.
He was allowed to play pasha when managing partner Hank Faskewicz
was out of town, and clearly lived for the role. "What do you have
for us, Will?"