Too Close to the Sun (3 page)

"You know what?" He wasn't interested in wine
talk at the moment. "Let's go over there."

He pushed her back toward the bed, where she
didn't need one single
s'il vous plait, mademoiselle
to whip
off her skirt and lean back giggling against the pillows, five feet
six inches of living, breathing, willing French female. Who, thanks
to Max Winsted, was about to have the best time of her entire
life.

The sun was setting as Max Winsted's
homecoming party began. Gabby took up a position on the pebbled
path that curved in front of Suncrest's rustic sandstone winery
building and did her best to play hostess. She'd never been too
keen on the social aspects of the wine business, but having to
pretend to be enthusiastic— when secretly dying inside—was a new
exercise in painful.

"Rosemary, Joel, wonderful to see you." She
grasped the hands of the newest arrivals and puckered up to repeat
the air kisses she'd spent the last half hour producing.

"You must be so pleased Max is taking over."
Rosemary Jepson, with her husband a longtime Calistoga vintner, was
a rail-thin bottle-blonde who rivaled Ava Winsted for Most
Glamorous in the Over Fifty category. "If he's half the vintner his
father was, he'll really give us a run for our money."

Not much chance of that
, Gabby
thought, but she forced a smile and tossed out her line for the
evening. "It certainly marks a new era for Suncrest. We're so happy
you can celebrate it with us."

"Where is the guest of honor, anyway?"
Rosemary Jepson's blue eyes pierced the crowd with the laser focus
of a party expert. "I don't see him."

"He got caught up in a meeting in the city
that ran long." Gabby hated to lie, but that was the excuse Mrs. W
had ordered her to deliver, as none of them actually knew where Max
was. "Something important came up suddenly and Mrs. Winsted asked
Max to handle it. We expect him to arrive shortly."

The older woman's brows arched, as if she
were deeply impressed. "How very ambitious of him," she purred, "to
handle important business his very first day back." Then she
abandoned Gabby to follow her husband into the crush of the
party.

The chattery, wine-sipping throng was grouped
around two soaring date palms, their trunks wrapped for the
occasion with tiny white lights. Between them hung a banner
spelling out BIENVENU, MAX! in red, white, and blue, colors as
patriotic in France as they were in America. To the west, the sun
hung low over the Mayacamas Mountains, burnishing the sandstone
winery a honey gold and kissing the dark green canopy of the
grapevines that covered the gentle slope down to the road. The
Winsted residence—an exquisite contemporary home complete with pool
and pergola—lay slightly east of the winery proper, separated by
grapevines and gardens and olive trees. Banks of fog huddled in the
distance, as if politely holding back their arrival until the
guests repaired inside for dinner.

Gabby watched Ava Winsted flutter among her
guests and concluded she must have been—must still be—a very good
actress. She appeared completely unruffled despite the fact that
her son, her guest of honor, the whole
raison d'etre
of this
party, had failed to show. She was a vision in white silk, her
peroxide blond hair pulled tight into a chignon and a Queen of
England diamond necklace at her throat. She wove expertly in and
out of groups, never spending more than a few minutes with anyone
yet managing to leave everyone charmed and entertained and not in
the least slighted. Like many wives of Napa vintners, Ava Winsted
had been Suncrest's "cultural affairs" director, until that role of
social secretary and PR head became more work than she wanted.
Porter Winsted had serious trouble filling the post, for the simple
fact that no one was as good at it as his wife.

Gabby sighed. She'd envisioned such a role
for herself in years past, when she dreamed of being Signora
Mantucci. Maybe sheer love for Vittorio would have made her more of
a social animal. As it was, she much preferred the solitary
pursuits of winemaking. Nurturing the fruit, tracking its progress
in the oak, blending the varietals just so, all to help her father
create wines they could both be proud of. Wines that carried the
Suncrest label but that privately she felt were as much her
family's creations as those of the Winsted's.

Her father sidled up alongside her. "You look
wonderful tonight, sweetie."

She did like the slinky violet sheath she'd
bought in San Francisco for the occasion, though neither it nor the
matching pashmina did much to ward off the evening's chill. "So do
you, Daddy." She reached up to tweak his bow tie, though it was
ramrod straight. With his deeply tanned skin and thatch of dark
hair streaked with gray, Cosimo DeLuca was a handsome man. Like his
oldest daughter, he preferred kneeling among the grapevines to
hobnobbing with the valley's smart set. But he cleaned up
beautifully, and in a tux looked positively debonair.

"Any sign of the prodigal son yet?" he
asked.

"Not a one. Maybe he decided to stay in
France."
That would be a blessing
, she added silently,
watching her father drain his sauvignon blanc. She knew he wished
Max Winsted would fall off the face of the earth even more than she
did, though unlike his daughter, he was too well-mannered ever to
say it.

She shut her eyes. Twenty-five years her
father had worked at Suncrest. Twenty-five years. His heart was
breaking, Gabby knew. He was so stressed about Max taking over. She
knew that some days he feared he'd lose his job, and others he
worried that he'd hate it under Max's stewardship. But what could
she do about it? What could any of them do?

She nudged him gently. "Don't worry, Daddy.
It'll be fine even when Max takes over."

Her words, which she couldn't even make
herself believe, hung between them. Her father was silent, then he
turned to her, his eyes devoid of their usual sparkle. "You should
get a job at another winery, Gabby. You know enough now to be head
winemaker. You shouldn't be assisting me anymore and you shouldn't
stay here with Max taking over."

"No." The idea made her heart pound, like a
horror about to happen. Abandon Suncrest? Abandon her father?
That's not why she'd come home to California. "I'm not going
anywhere. We're going to make it work, even with Max coming.
Besides . . ."

She stopped. She shouldn't say, especially
here and now, what she secretly hoped for. That if Max managed to
show up, he'd tire fast of the hard work of running the winery.
That he'd step aside for someone else to take over. Her father, for
example. Then she could become head winemaker. Maybe her sister
Camella, the middle of the three DeLuca girls, could get promoted
from the reception desk. Suncrest would run like a dream.

And it would be almost as if the DeLucas
owned the place
.

Gabby watched Camella approach bearing a
lipstick-stained wineglass. Where Gabby had inherited her mother's
Northern Italian blond hair and hazel eyes, Cam got the more
stereotypical olive skin and black eyes and hair. With her plump
figure, round face, and forever unruly dark locks, she looked as if
she'd been plucked from an Italian village. That night she wore a
bright red peasant-style dress that only heightened the effect.

She arranged herself next to Gabby, narrowing
her eyes at the crowd. "There isn't a single good one here," she
whispered.

"There never is," Gabby whispered back,
having already arrived at the same grim conclusion.

She downed the rest of her wine. Dress up,
make up, do your hair, go to a party—sometimes she wondered why she
even bothered. Of course, tonight's bash was work, but every party
seemed to remind her of the sad truth she didn't let herself dwell
upon too often. That the valley might be great for growing grapes,
but it didn't produce much in the way of desirable single men.

*

Will picked up his date to the Suncrest party
at the lush St. Helena estate her family called home. The
forty-acre property boasted vineyards—naturally—an enormous
Mission-style winery, and a matching ten-thousand-square-foot home
complete with red-tile roof and campanile. It went well with the
other manses in the neighborhood, a faux French chateau here, a
Victorian pile there.

Stella Monaco pulled open her massive oak
front door even before Will's convertible rolled to a halt on the
sweep of graveled driveway, a brunette nymph in a turquoise halter
sundress that Will guessed retailed for a thousand dollars at
Neiman Marcus. She bounded toward the car like a puppy, hair
flowing, feet bare, strappy sandals clutched in her hand. She was a
free and daring spirit thanks to the enormous celebrity and wealth
her father had accrued as an international hotelier. He'd become a
vintner, of course, the mega-successful man's top choice for second
career.

She threw herself into the passenger seat and
then turned to smile at Will. She was lovely, and stylish enough to
understand the great attraction—to men at least—of minimal fuss
over hair and makeup.

He smiled back at her. "Hope I haven't kept
you waiting."

"No." She tossed her sandals in the footwell.
"My parents left already, though, so we'll meet them there."

He put the car in gear, "On our way, then,"
and after a few turns got back on Highway 29, the main artery—all
of two lanes in most stretches—that bisected the valley.

Once he was truly on his way to Suncrest,
Will began to wish the drive were longer. Not only did he dread Ava
Winsted's first glimpse of him at her party—opportunistic
financier, interloper, uninvited guest, she'd think all of that and
more—he wasn't clear on how he was going to make money for GPG in
the wine business. It was easier said than done. Many of these
wineries—gorgeous as they were— ranged from breakeven to money pit.
Suncrest had real possibilities, though, because it was a
well-respected brand whose operations could be ramped up and made
much more profitable.

But that was true only if the Winsteds sold
to GPG. Ava had made it clear she'd have none of it. She had to
"preserve Porter's legacy," she told him, and he hadn't come close
to convincing her that selling to GPG would achieve that goal. Now
that her son was coming into the picture, it was Will's job to find
out if she might be more amenable.

Fortunately, Will didn't need to force
conversation with Stella, whose chatter flowed as freely as her
dress. He'd met her weeks before at the annual Napa Valley Wine
Auction, where a three-liter bottle of her father's first vintage
took top honors by fetching sixteen thousand dollars for charity.
She was entertaining and attractive but, he was discovering, a bit
scattered. For example, there was her current indecision over
career options, which ran the widest gamut he'd ever heard of.
Should she go to Oxford, she wondered, like Chelsea Clinton had? Or
become a movie director like Sofia Coppola? Or maybe launch a
clothing line like Stella McCartney?

She sounded genuinely perplexed. "But that
might be too confusing because my name is Stella, too?"

"Probably would be," Will allowed, figuring
this was the sort of conundrum faced by a modern-day American
princess. He slowed to a crawl when they hit the stretch of 29 that
was St. Helena's Main Street, on this June evening jammed with
tourists trying to park near the tony eateries where they had
reservations for dinner.

Stella gazed out the window, twisting an
auburn lock around her index finger. Round and round and round. "My
father says he'll support whatever I do."

That's handy
, Will thought, but merely
made an approving noise and nosed his car around a parallel-parking
Jeep which clearly belonged to a local. LIFE IS A CABERNET declared
its license-plate frame, and for the valley's moneyed residents, it
certainly was.

Stella twisted toward him suddenly. "Do you
want to buy my dad's winery?"

That question was a surprise. "Hadn't really
thought about it," he said carefully. In truth, he hadn't. Robert
Monaco was a canny businessman and already ran his operation at
full throttle. That wasn't what GPG was looking for.

"Because he won't sell, you know." Stella
turned back toward the passenger-side window. "He's had offers but
he always says no. Gallo offered him forty-five million."

Will accelerated as they cleared St. Helena's
downtown. "That's a nice chunk of change."

Stella shrugged, clearly unimpressed by
eight-digit numbers. "Maybe. But what would he do if he sold?" She
sounded baffled again. "He's sick of owning hotels. Plus he loves
the lifestyle here. So does my mom. It's so much more"—she groped
for the word—"natural."

That was it in a nutshell for the newbie
vintners whose previous lives had had nothing to do with
winemaking. Will made a left onto Zinfandel Lane, a narrow,
tree-lined road that would shoot them to the Silverado Trail and
Suncrest, confident he understood men like Robert Monaco.

They'd already done the grubby, unglamorous
work of amassing piles of money. They'd done it in hotels and
commercial real estate and oil and technology and consulting. Now
they wanted the natural work of winemaking, living among rolling
vineyards near towns with romantic names like Rutherford and
Yountville. And if they lost money, as so many did, so what? There
was more where that came from.

Another turn and they were on the Trail,
heading south. Valuable as Napa Valley farmland was—in fact, the
most valuable in the nation—this so-called Rutherford Bench was the
primest cut of all. Somehow the mix of soil, rainfall, fog, and
sunshine combined to create a veritable Eden for grape-growing,
particularly of the cabernet sauvignon variety for which the valley
was most famous.