Vintage (36 page)

He held her gaze. Madeleine swallowed nervously. It was an invitation to go to bed with him. No doubt about it.

This was a disaster. She wanted a business relationship with Mackesy, nothing else. The rose-gold ring on his wedding finger seemed to be shining right in her eyes. Madeleine sensed the end of a beautiful friendship looming.

“Mackesy,” she said. “You have no integrity. I should go.”

“I could give you a lift in the DB4,” he suggested hopefully.

Gathering her coat, she allowed him to walk her to a taxi and no farther.

Back at the hotel, Madeleine threw herself down onto the bed with a groan of disappointment. She’d blown it. She’d known when Mackesy invited her to the tasting it was because he fancied her. Of course he was going to make a pass. And of course she would have to rebuff it. He’d never stock her champagne now. Was she stupid to have let her morality get in the way of business? And, frankly, of her own desires. He was quite ridiculously fanciable.

Madeleine’s mobile phone chirruped. She had a text.

“Piers Mackesy Wines would be delighted to stock Champagne Arsenault.”

Madeleine bounced on her hotel bed like a five-year-old.

G
ina’s life had definitely changed since she took Kelly’s advice and raised her standards. She’d given up working at the Gloria Hotel altogether. Her chambermaid’s wages were nothing compared to the kind of sums she could command by the hour now. Five hundred pounds a night was just the start of it.

It was a curious thing but Gina felt she might have accidentally found her vocation. She was good at being a high-class call girl. Not just the sex part but also the companionship. That was after all what so many of her clients really wanted. They weren’t paying to see Gina because their wives had stopped sleeping with them. It was because their wives had stopped
talking
to them.

That was what the guy Gina was lunching with that day complained about most of all. Dennis was a fifty-something businessman from Texas, who visited the UK a couple of times a month. The first time he spent the night with Gina, after picking her up in a smart hotel bar in Mayfair, was a disaster. The poor guy just couldn’t get it up. But Gina handled the situation with aplomb and, more importantly, with kindness, and these days she and Dennis didn’t bother with sex at all. Gina would just meet him for lunch or dinner whenever he was in London and nod patiently while he talked about the stress of being a mere multi-millionaire in a billionaire’s world.

The money was incredible. But Gina was being careful. She really didn’t intend to get used to the lifestyle.
After achieving her career aims, she hoped one day to have a husband of her own and some children. Hooking was hardly compatible with that. And so she salted the cash away. But like all small businesses, some investment was required. Gina needed to look the part. She needed to be able to walk into any restaurant or hotel in Mayfair or Chelsea and look as though she belonged there. That meant dressing perfectly. And expensively.

She didn’t shop on Sloane Street, however. She shopped in the charity shops and designer resale places nearby. If you were lucky, you could find the most amazing stuff in the Knightsbridge and Kensington branches of Oxfam; designer gear cast off by the kind of women who could not be seen dead in something “last season.” Likewise, you could get some great bargains in the resale places, with the advantage that they didn’t smell quite so much of the charity shop. These days Gina’s wardrobe contained Armani, Versace and Prada, but all of it she bought secondhand. The guys she saw didn’t care whether Gina’s dress was last season. The concept meant nothing to them. Shame it meant something to their credit-card-toting wives, Gina thought, smiling.

Gina had built up quite a friendship with an elderly woman named Janet who worked part-time in her friend’s resale shop in Notting Hill.

“You remind me of my granddaughter,” Janet told her. “She’s into her clothes just like you are.”

Soon Janet started to put aside things she thought Gina might like. Gina gave Janet her phone number and asked her to call whenever something good came in. Janet was under the impression that Gina was an impoverished fashion student. It was sort of true, Gina told herself. She had recently decided that a degree in fashion design might be up her alley.

Janet was getting ready to close up the shop when Gina arrived.

“The minute I saw this woman walk in I thought, she’ll have something for our Gina. She was exactly your height. She even looked a bit like you. Nice dark hair. She brought in loads of stuff. Says she’s relocating. Lucky it’s just me in today so none of it has gone out on the floor. I saved it all for you.”

“Thanks, Janet.” Gina gave the older woman a hug. “You are a star.”

“I’ll make us a nice cup of tea while you look through it,” said Janet. Then she turned the sign on the shop door to “closed.” Gina took off her denim jacket and opened the first box.

“Oh my God, Janet!” Gina exclaimed as she picked out a small black bag. “I have to have this. This is real Chanel!”

O
ne of the people Christina had been most pleased to see during her first harvest at the Villa Bacchante was her old New York friend Greg Stroud, who was now the head of a lifestyle cable channel headquartered in Los Angeles.

It was in his capacity as head of the Good Life Channel that Greg found himself in San Francisco one weekend in April. Christina was delighted to get the call asking whether she’d mind if he dropped by her place before heading home to So-Cal.

Greg drove up to Napa as soon as his last meeting ended. He arrived just in time for the sunset. And a night cap.

“This place is so great,” Greg said as he shrugged off his jacket and laid it over the back of one of the patio chairs. “I feel like the city is a million miles away.”

Christina handed him a vodka tonic, mixed how he’d always liked it. She’d been surprised by how much she’d looked forward to seeing him this weekend.

“I’m really glad to have you here again,” she said. “I hope you’re not expecting to be entertained in too much style, however. Everything’s pretty casual.”

Casual? Christina laughed at herself. Hardly. She had spent much of the day getting ready for Greg’s visit. She’d asked Ernestina to stay a little later than usual to help put together a deceptively simple-looking meal. Meanwhile, Christina arranged the flowers that the gardener had cut that morning. She was pretty good at arranging flowers. When she thought she might marry the finance guy and thus spend a lot of time entertaining snotty New York socialites she’d actually done a course in “hostess skills.” She also spent a good hour arranging the framed photographs on top of the piano. Would Greg be impressed by a picture of Christina with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger? she wondered. She couldn’t remember Greg’s politics.

After the, Christina had to prepare herself. When Greg arrived she was wearing a multi-colored chiffon maxidress by Cavalli, accessorized with a pair of simple flat gold Jimmy Choos. Around her neck she wore a couple of heavy bead necklaces. She looked as though she had just walked in from the beach—Nikki Beach, St. Tropez, that is, rather than the wilder reaches of Malibu. Her ensemble was simple. Casual. Beautiful. Greg had no idea that she
had tried on eleven different outfits before settling on this chic “at home” style.

Greg admired the dress. He admired the flowers. He praised the food. He went into raptures over the wine.

“Is this really Villa Bacchante’s own?” he asked his hostess.

“It is.”

“It’s fantastic. I bet you’re glad you got this place in your divorce settlement.”

Christina nodded. “I can’t accept any of your praise, though,” she admitted. “This bottle is five years old. Made long before I turned up.”

“But imagine what your own wine will taste like in five years’ time,” Greg said to her.

“It better be good.” Christina told Greg about the
Vinifera
competition. “Ronald Ginsburg was up here earlier this week tasting the still wine we’ve just transferred into the bottle.”

“Ronald Ginsburg? I’m impressed. I bet half the wine-makers in this valley would kill to have Ginsburg as a mentor.”

“I think he gets just as much out of it as I do,” said Christina, recalling that whenever Ginsburg went to kiss her good-bye he somehow always managed to miss her cheek and plant a smacker on her mouth.

Greg and Christina hadn’t spoken to each other since the harvest so there was plenty to catch up about—weddings, divorces, comings and goings, comings-out. Christina’s jaw dropped at the news that a mutual friend was leaving his wife for the pool boy.

“Isn’t it meant to be the other way around?” she laughed.

And then they were on to their own news. Greg claimed not to have much, before he revealed that he had been headhunted by a rival cable channel for a vast
amount of money, stayed put at the Good Life Channel for even more money and was remodeling his house in Bel Air around the Hockney painting to which he’d treated himself with the resulting golden-handcuff cash.

“And how about you?” he asked Christina. “How come we don’t see you in LA anymore?”

“I’ve been taking time out to reflect,” Christina admitted. “Rethinking life. Before I did the ISACL campaign, I felt like my career was on an upswing. And then Bill got caught with that slut in Paris, and you know the rest.”

“Go on,” said Greg.

Christina took a sip of wine. She hadn’t really spoken about her disappointment with the way life had gone with anyone but Marisa, but there was something about Greg that made her feel like unburdening herself. They’d shared a lot of secrets when they were younger. “I got dropped by Guilty Secrets for being out of shape.” It was the first time Christina had admitted that. Marisa had persuaded Guilty Secrets to present Christina’s departure as her decision. “After that Marisa assured me that something else would come up but nothing has. My diary is looking somewhat empty these days. I really think that my career as a model is finally over. I’m unemployed and unemployable.”

“What are you talking about? You’re a winemaker. Maybe you should concentrate on making wine.”

“You mean making a huge loss? I had no idea how expensive this business is. When I first got here to Napa, someone said to me that the best way to make a small fortune in wine is to start with a big one. They weren’t kidding.”

“But you make great wine here in Carneros.”

“So does everybody else. The Villa Bacchante is just another boutique winery in a valley of boutique wineries.
Why should anyone choose my wine over Schramsberg or Domaine Randon?”

“You need to make this place stand out. It’s just a matter of marketing. Capitalize on your celebrity.”

“Easier said than done. I swear there’s a big reverse snobbery that makes wine buffs automatically dismiss a wine made by anyone faintly famous.”

Greg shook his head. Christina brought the subject to a close by asking him to help her carry the dishes back into the kitchen. Though it had been a beautiful day, it was starting to get chilly. They finished supper at the kitchen counter.

But as they drank their coffee, Greg looked pensive. Christina was about to ask him what was on his mind, expecting to hear about some infighting at work or some girl who was tugging on his heartstrings, when Greg said, “The ISACL campaign showed me a side of you I didn’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re not just a pretty face. You came over as well as any of those actors and presenters. Have you ever thought about presenting?”

“What? Some fashion TV show?”

“No. Something different.”

“What else would I be qualified to present?”

“Luckily for you, it’s just come to me. We could make a show. You and me together. Like a cross between a reality show and a food show, based here at the villa. We could film what’s going on in the vineyard at any time of the year then come back into the house for a cooking segment. Right here.”

“In my kitchen?”

“Sure. It’s a great kitchen. This Tuscan style. I love it. Everybody loves it.”