Sooner or Later (18 page)

“Can you just imagine this kitchen when there was a chef, and half a dozen maids and a butler?” Ellie said. “Even then, it never seemed crowded. Why, my little kitchen at the cafe would fit comfortably into the butler’s pantry.”

Buck’s eyes glittered; he had to get those keys. “I
wonder,” he said politely, “if I might have a drink of water?”

“Of course. Or maybe you’d prefer a Diet Coke?”

“That would be fine.”

As he had hoped, Ellie walked into the butler’s pantry to find a glass. He was at the door in a flash, and the keys were in his hands. The writing on the labels was large and three of them said
Kitchen.
He’d hit pay dirt, the old lady had more keys than she knew what to do with. Sliding a key off the ring, he put it in his pocket. He was standing by the big scrubbed pine table when Ellie came back with the cold drink.

He hated to leave her, hated to leave Journey’s End. Her spun-sugar voice as she said goodbye wrapped around his heart like a soothing blanket, and the touch of her hand left a searing imprint in his memory, one that he would dwell on, later, alone.

Driving back out the big iron gates, he couldn’t get her image out of his mind. He was in love. Soon, he would make her his princess. He would give her everything she wanted, she would forget everyone else when she was with him. Though, of course, only he would ever see her.

Smiling, he patted the key in his pocket. It was going to be easy.

He was whistling again as he headed back to the hotel, and the bar. He had earned a celebratory drink. Phase two was complete and the deed was as good as done.

“T
HIS IS IT.
” D
AN STARED PROUDLY AT HIS ROWS OF
neatly cropped vines.

The bare sticks were trained like an army of little soldiers into perfect rows, curving over the hillside into infinity. “Impressive.” Ellie threw him a mocking grin. “Not a grape in sight.”

“Wait till next year, then I think the proper word to use will be ‘burgeoning.’”

“Burgeoning?”

“As in growing, flourishing.”

She stared skeptically at the skinny, dead-looking branches. “Aren’t we being a little optimistic here?”

Dan shook his head, exasperated. “You’re a toughie, Ellie Parrish Duveen. Okay, so I bought this place like a kid at a party, sticking the tail on a donkey. Pure guesswork. But the fact is, Running Horse failed because they planted the wrong grapes for the soil. We’re starting cabernet here, on the south slopes, and chardonnay on the other side of the hill.” He shrugged. “Anyhow, it
was all I could afford, but I look at it this way, if I make a success of it, I got a bargain.”

There was something magical about it, though, Ellie thought, wandering through the rows of vines, gazing at the serene pastoral view. In the distance, she could see the road curving round the bottom of the hill, and opposite, under a clump of oaks, black-and-white-spotted cat-de were bunched together in the shade. The setting sun warmed her back and a light wind tossed her hair around. Eyes closed, she listened entranced to the special “silence” of the countryside: the soft moan of the wind sweeping over the hill; a whirr of wings as a bird took flight; secret rustlings in the grass. Taking deep breaths of the clean fresh air, she wanted to bottle it and take it home with her.

“This is how it must have been, years ago,” she whispered, her eyes still shut tight. “Before there was traffic, and planes and ghetto blasters. Nothing but slopes of vines and silence, for miles.”

Dan heard it first. He held up a warning hand as her eyes popped open. A minute later Ortega’s rusty pickup crested the hill, mariachi trumpets shrilling from the radio. They glanced at each other, laughing, as he jumped from the pickup and strode toward diem.

“Señorita.” Doffing his sombrero, he gave her a beaming smile, then took her hand and held it to his lips. “It is a great pleasure to meet such a beautiful woman. The señor has kept you a mighty big secret.” He winked at Dan.

Ellie had to laugh. “Thank you, Señor Ortega, I’ve heard a lot about you too.”

“Of course.” He put on his modest face. “The señor will have told you I am the best winemaker in the county. And now I work with him, we shall make a wonderful cabernet.
This
Running Horse will be ‘first past
the post’ in the wine stakes.” His mustache bristled and his white teeth flashed as he laughed again at his own topical little racehorse joke.

“I was just about to show Ellie the winery.” Dan grabbed her hand and led her back to the car. She turned and waved to Ortega. He bowed low, still smiling.

“You think that’s a great act,” Dan told her, grinning, “wait till you catch him on the palomino.”

It was cool inside the red barn, and silent. Dan ran an appreciative hand over his sleek new barrels. “These are American oak, not French. It’ll give a softer, more subtle oaky finish to the wine. Of course, there’ll be no harvest here this year, but we’re buying in grapes and we’ll put out our first vintage. Zinfandel. It’s good hearty stuff, fruity, rich. It won’t be a long-lasting wine, but a wonderful mouthful and not expensive. It’ll be a good workout for us.”

Ellie peered into the freshly cleaned steel fermenting vats; she inspected the bottling plant that looked as though it came from a Disney cartoon, then wandered through the lofty space at the front of the barn, which, Dan told her, would become the tasting room.

“One day, visitors will flock here to try our wines, and taste our delicious food,” he said.

She spun round, hands on her hips, her eyes challenging him. “What food?”

“Oh”—he shrugged nonchalantly—“just a little French cafe, nothing grand you understand … casual, comfortable, with excellent food and the best bread and
tarte tatin
in California.”

Her eyes lit with amusement. “Hah, some hope, Mr. Cassidy. My next restaurant is going to be upmarket, I’m aiming for that Michelin star, and this time I will be the chef.”

“Just dreaming,” he said with a regretful grin, grabbing
her hand and leading her toward the stables. “Just dreaming, woman.”

Pancho dashed at her, prancing on his hind legs, “This is cupboard love,” she said. “He remembers I’m the sucker who brought the filet steak.” She sleeked his rough fur, glancing surprised at Cecil, the brown dog, lurking behind him. “Now you have two, and I don’t know which is worse looking.”

He showed her round the property: the glossy horses in the picturesque stables; Cecil and Pancho running wild around the place; the team of Mexicans recruited by Carlos, working their way rhythmically along the furrows. New stock had been bought, the earth was being revitalized with the proper nutrients, and Dan told her that was where a great deal of his, and the bank’s, money had gone.

“At least it’s beginning to look like a winery again,” he said, picking a red rose from the bush and handing it to her.

Tucking it into her hair, Ellie thought how much he seemed to love what he was doing. He was such a physical man, and she could tell he enjoyed the hard work; he loved getting his hands in the earth, back to his farming roots.

She was silent on the return drive to Montecito, her head tilted back, her eyes closed, thinking about the life Dan had chosen, far from the city’s stresses and pleasures. Maybe there was something to it, but it wasn’t for her. She was a city girl now, through and through. She was making her own way, on the big screen of L.A.

She was yawning from a surfeit of fresh, unsmogged air when Dan parked and they walked across Coast Village Road, into Mollie’s.

Looking at her across the candlelit corner table, with her long, curling red hair, Dan thought she resembled a
woman in a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Except in real life, she was a sunshiny person. Or was she? He knew nothing about her life, except for the deeply personal confidence she had shared with him that first night at the beach house.

“Do I really know you?” he asked. Ellie’s eyes widened in surprise, and he added, “I feel like we’re old friends, but I know so little about you.”

“I thought I’d told you everything.” She took a sip of the Chianti he’d ordered to go with the Italian food.

He leaned closer, across the table. “There’s a big empty space between the kid on the beach and the woman sitting opposite me. What happened in those years? Where did you go to college? Who are your friends? Have you ever been in love?”

She eyed him warily, head tilted to one side, half smiling. “That’s a very personal question.”

“Where you went to college is personal?” His pseudo-innocent expression made her laugh.

“I’ll answer that one. Arizona State, in Phoenix. That’s where I met Maya, my dearest friend. It’s also the place where we almost got ourselves thrown out. We were saved from absolute disaster only by Miss Lottie and Maya’s father. Ah, we were wild in those days, crazy kids having their first taste of freedom.”

Dan laughed when she told him the story of her college career; it was quite different from his own, more serious one, as a married student with the impossible romance and even more impossible dreams.

“Of course, I fell in love there.” Tasting the lobster ravioli, she made a rapturous face. “This is heaven.”

“You were in love?” His eyes were on her delicious mouth.

“Mmmm, once or twice.” The Italian with the Michelangelo body seemed eons away, another lifetime, another
world. “But I guess I sublimated those feelings when I bought the red Harley.”

“You bought a Harley as a substitute for sex?” He was laughing at her now.

“Mr. Cassidy.” Her lashes covered her downcast eyes, demurely. “We all know there is no substitute for that.”

His sigh of relief was exaggerated. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“Though of course it doesn’t even enter into our personal equation.” This time, she wasn’t joking around. Reaching across the table she took his hand in hers, held it to her lips, dropped a kiss on it, then returned it to him. “I’m just so glad to have you as my friend.”

His blood pressure lifted a few notches, maybe he wouldn’t wash that hand again, like a teenager in love. “Of course not,” he agreed, even though he didn’t mean it. “I just don’t get it,” he added.

“Get what?” She spooned up the last of the sauce. “I really have to compliment Mollie on this dish, it’s wonderful.”

“You should try her red mullet, she has it flown in specially from Italy, on Fridays. And what I don’t get is exactly what makes you tick. I mean, why are you so driven? What motivates you to make this cafe such a success, to devote all your time, all your energy, your
life
to it?”

Ellie sat back, her face serious, considering the question. “It’s like I have to prove something to myself,” she said honestly, after a minute. “That I
can
do it, that I
can
succeed. That because I had a privileged upbringing doesn’t mean I can’t make it on my own. And for me, that means the big screen. You know, L.A. or New York. I want to be up there with the best, with my name in lights like on Broadway. I want them to say ‘there goes
Ellie Parrish,’ just the way they do about Puck, or Verge, or Ducasse.”

“You want to be a star.”

“I admit it,” she said flatly. “And I want to make a lot of money. Mostly so I don’t have to think about it, and so I can keep Miss Lottie in the style to which she is still accustomed.”

“And what else will you do, with all that money?” Somehow, he didn’t think money was her main motivation.

“If I make really a lot, you mean? That’s easy. I’d use part of it to open special kitchens, like in the Depression. But not just for soup. I’d serve good simple, nutritious meals to kids who go to school hungry every morning. To kids who have to pretend they’ve forgotten their lunch because they’re too ashamed to say they don’t have any lunch. To kids who go home after school to an empty house and no dinner on the table, or to a parent out of it on drugs. I’ve never known what being hungry is like, being seriously deprived. I just feel it’s my duty to repay some of the goodness of my life, let it spill over into theirs.” She shrugged, looking apprehensively at him. “I didn’t mean to sound preachy.”

“You didn’t.” The young waiter came with the tiramisu she’d ordered, and two forks. “I think I like you, Ellie Parrish,” he said. “Even though you still haven’t told me about being in love.
Seriously
in love?”

She heaved a sigh, scooping up the delicious creamy dessert. “You don’t quit, do you?”

“Not when it’s a subject that interests me.”

She grinned, thinking about Steve Cohen, and how young she had been then, and how naive. “I’ve only been seriously in love once,” she admitted, telling him about the long skirts, and the braid and the Doc Martens, and Steve’s almost overnight tranformation from
intellectual to upwardly mobile executive in a Hugo Boss suit. “He ditched me and broke my heart,” she added, then laughed. “But you know, it’s a funny thing, hearts seem to patch themselves right back up again, if you let them.”

A yawn surprised her. “It’s all that fresh air,” she apologized. “I’m a big-city girl, I’m not used to it anymore.”

“You could always stay the night.” He was an optimist by nature.

“Thanks, friend”—she squeezed his hand across the table—“but this time I really must get back. Thanks for showing me the ranch, I loved it.”

His dark blue eyes linked with her opal ones. “Come again, when the house is finished. Stay for dinner this time? How about next week?”

She nodded, smiling. “I can’t make it Monday, but what about Wednesday? I’ll take the night off, specially.”

“Great. This is getting to be a habit.”

Ellie thought so too, but it was one she liked. Being with Dan Cassidy was as seamless as being with a friend she’d known all her life.

“See you Wednesday, then,” she called, climbing into the old Wrangler.

He was leaning in the window, looking at her. The scent of fresh clean air still clung to him, and impulsively, she put her hand to his face and drew him toward her, then kissed him on the lips. It was a light, friendly little kiss, nothing important, she reassured herself.

“Good night Danny Boy,” she murmured, backing the Jeep too quickly out of the tight parking spot. There was a crunch as it hit his Explorer.