Too Close to the Sun (20 page)

"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 whistle 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
.

All he was waiting for was the right woman, a
woman he could truly imagine sharing the rest of his life with. He
hadn't known Gabby long, but by age 32 his ability to give
thumbs-up or thumbs-down to a particular female was honed damn near
to perfection. Some judgments took less than a minute. And with
her, he experienced something truly exceptional. Every time he saw
her or spoke to her—every single time—he liked her more. Found more
to enjoy, more to admire.

If that keeps happening
, he told
himself,
this is it
.

Only one obstacle stood between them.

He pushed Suncrest from his mind as he made
his way through St Helena's Main Street—traffic stop-and-go on a
Friday at dinner hour as tourists and locals alike crowded the chic
little eateries. Finally Highway 29 again opened up before him, and
Gabby's house lay only a few miles ahead. As his anticipation
mounted, his cell phone rang.

He glanced at the readout of the incoming
number and frowned—9 PM on a Friday, Denver time, wasn't a standard
hour for his sister to call. He pushed the connect button. "Hey,
Beth."

"Hey, yourself. You sound like you're in the
car."

"You'll be happy to hear I'm heading up to
see that woman I told you about."

"The one who thinks you're a capitalist
pig?"

"Apparently I've convinced her I'm not that
bad."

"Well, good for you."

She fell silent. Or, rather, stopped
speaking, because Will heard sounds coming from her end, but they
couldn't be described as speech. "Beth?" He paused. "Are you
crying, sweetie?"

Full-out sob, followed by a loud sniffle.
"Yes."

"What's wrong?"

"It's Bob."

Damn
. "Is it the Philadelphia thing
again?"

"He's there now. Interviewing. He just
called. He had dinner with people from some company that he says is
thinking of hiring him."

"Did you fight over the phone?"

"No. Because I hung up."

More sobbing, so gut-wrenching that Will
wished he could beam himself right over to Denver to console his
sister, tell her it was all right, that somehow it would all work
out in the end. "So he's still serious about this?"

"He wants me to put the house on the
market."

Will did not like the sound of that. "What
did you tell him?"

"That I wouldn't do anything irreversible
until he had an actual offer. And then we'd talk about it. Hold on,
it's call-waiting. It might be him."

Beth clicked off. Will shook his head. So
this problem wasn't going away, as he had hoped it would. What if
Bob actually accepted an offer? Beth would have to move to Philly
then, wouldn't she? And what would that mean for Henley Sand and
Gravel?

She came back on. "It is him. He's waiting."
She sniffled. "I think he wants to apologize."

Good.
"Call me if you need to talk."
He hoped she didn't, for all sorts of reasons.

"I will. Have a good time tonight. Have a
better time than I'm having." Then she was gone, off to try to keep
her marriage on track, a marriage Will had never expected would be
in trouble.

He made the sharp left turn onto Crystal
Mountain Road. Apparently none of this was easy. Not the part about
finding the right woman, not the part about keeping her. It got all
mixed up with the chaotic rest of life. It was a wonder people ever
stayed together.

But they did. His parents had. So had
Gabby's.

He arrived at her house, and since he didn't
have a timid cell in his body that night—he wouldn't make
that
mistake again—he called out her name and pushed open
her front door and found her in the kitchen. She was wearing a long
flowing skirt and a sort of blouson top that drooped off her
shoulders in a way that said
Take me off. Take me off
.

His pulse quickened. He kissed her, and her
lips were as soft as his feverish dreams had remembered them.

"Did you have a good week?" she asked
him.

"Very good." He nipped at her mouth, swayed
her in his arms.

She smiled, cocked her head to the side. "Did
you miss me?"

"You don't know the half of it."

She slipped away from him, called back over
her shoulder. "We finished the rebottling. I tell you, Max is such
an idiot that sometimes I think Suncrest would be better off if you
bought it."

He wanted no dash of cold water on this
night. He went into the kitchen after her, came up from behind to
nuzzle her neck. "Let's not talk about Suncrest."

She twirled to face him, her expression
teasing. "You don't want to talk business tonight?"

"No, I do not."

"What do you want to talk about?"

"I don't want to talk at all."
I want to
take you to bed and do terrible things to you. Repeatedly
.

He might as well have just said that right
out loud, for the idea seemed to hover in the air between them like
spoken words. Will watched Gabby still and catch her breath.

He didn't want to think and didn't want her
to, either. He sensed that her need ran as deep as his, even if it
was hidden under a thicker veneer of control.

He wanted the control gone.

On impulse he picked her up and threw her
over his shoulder as if he were a firefighter rescuing her from a
burning building. Funny, because he was the one ablaze. He made for
the front door and on the way out grabbed the ratty old blanket she
kept on the back of the couch.

In a few steps he reached the edge of the
vineyard, over which the sun was beginning to set. He tossed the
blanket on the ground and took a stab at flattening it out with his
foot. He did a makeshift job then laid her on top, like the prize
catch she was.

For a moment he stood and just stared at her.
She lay on that rust-colored wool blanket staring back, her skin
flushed and her lips parted and her skirt bunched around her hips.
Her man-killer legs were slightly spread, and what he was dying to
explore was cast in shadow. He was half-delirious as he dropped to
his knees, bent over, and wrenched the tantalizing blouson top from
her shoulders.

"You're not wearing anything underneath." He
managed to get out that observation as he watched her nipples
harden in the cool air.
Or maybe
, he thought, taking one in
his mouth,
it isn't the air that's doing it.

"Oh, God," Gabby said. She plucked at the
buttons of his shirt, succeeded at getting most of them undone. Her
breathing was ragged. "What in the world made me think you were a
conservative businessman?"

"I have no idea."

He levered himself up to take off his shirt.
He flung it, and it landed on top of the nearby row of
grapevines.

"Let's try not to disrupt the vines," she
said.

"God, Gabby." He tasted her mouth again.
Sweet, like wine and summer. Of this woman he'd expect no less.
"Don't tell me you're thinking about the grapes now."

"It's not what you think."

He used his tongue on her nipples again, made
her arch against him in a way that nearly drove him mad. "What is
it then?"

She pulled up his head so their eyes met.
"Rattlers. At Suncrest we dislodge them by flinging dirt on the
vines." A smile, a tease of a smile, spread over that gorgeous
tanned face of hers. "Don't worry, they're shy."

"For all I care right now, they can come on
out and watch the fun."

She threw back her head and laughed, a
throaty roar that fired his imagination. He bunched the skirt up
around her hips and got another surprise. "You're not wearing
anything underneath this, either." He squeezed the flesh of her
buttocks, deliciously firm and tight from all the tromping through
the vineyards. He kept his eyes on her face and explored further,
into the hidden parts of her, wet and ready.

She moaned. He bent his head down to her
flesh. "Oh, God, Will."

"Tell me you want it."

"I do."

"Tell me you want it."

"I want it so bad, Will."

He offered himself to her in every way he
knew how, in every way that would tell her how much she meant to
him. She was bawdy and sweet, a temptress and an angel, a wonder he
would never forget, never get over, and never get enough of.

He pulled her into the bedroom when the sun
had fully set. Though his fever had abated, he wasn't sated yet: he
was still as thirsty as a vine seeking water at the end of a hot
summer day. The fresh sheets were cool against his skin, the air
blowing through the window redolent with the scent of grapes heavy
with sweetness.

*

Hours later, after food and wine and talk and
still more love, Will was exhausted, in the best possible way.
Gabby was nestled against him, his left arm stretched beneath her
neck, his right cradling her soft naked warmth. Her hair, tickling
his nose, smelled faintly of vanilla. Here in her mountaintop
house, no city sounds assailed his ears—no sirens or car alarms or
maniacs taking advantage of Pacific Heights's abandoned midnight
streets to hot-rod it from stop sign to stop sign.

Her voice, drowsy, wafted toward him.
"Will?"