Too Close to the Sun (15 page)

But he wanted those French bottles. He
knew—he
knew
—the wine would sell faster. It would be yet
more proof that Max Winsted knew what he was doing. And weren't his
instincts spot on? Hadn't he been right about the wine reviews?

She spoke again, and this time her tone was
big-time accusing. "Does your mother know about this?"

That's it. He'd had enough—of her tone, her
complaints, her arrogance. And all because she didn't want to go to
the trouble of rebottling! Sure, she said all she cared about was
the wine. But he knew that was just an excuse. "I'm doing this,
Gabby. With or without you. Now are you in or not?"

"So you don't care that the wine could be
hurt?"

"It's your job to make sure it isn't. So I
repeat, are you in or not?"

She threw out her hands. "I have to be in, if
only to try to keep the wine from being ruined! So I don't really
have a choice, do I, Max?"

The threat was unspoken but as loud as a
fighter jet directly overhead.
No
, Max thought,
not if
you want to keep working here. Or if your father does. Remember
that health coverage he's depending on right about now? Who do you
think pays for that?

"Another thing," he said. "I don't want to
miss the release date so—"

"What?"

"You heard me." He couldn't miss the date,
because then everyone would think something was wrong. Not to
mention that Suncrest would lose shelf space if the new sauvignon
blanc wasn't out on time. "It's Tuesday today. You've got till a
week from Friday. That's plenty enough time."

"But we're talking about twenty thousand
cases! And it's July Fourth weekend coming up. Everybody's off for
three days. By the time we get the bottles back from the warehouse
and get a decanting truck in here and reprocess the wine and
rebottle it, we'll never make the release date!"

He moved a step closer to her and stared
right into her eyes. He watched her stiffen. "You are going to make
that date." He kept his voice low. "I don't care how you do it.
Make people work the weekend. I'll pay overtime. Just do it."

"This is insane."

"Just do it."

He would have liked her to look away before
he did, but it didn't happen. She just narrowed her eyes at him and
then stalked off. He watched her go.

Does your mother know about this? she'd asked
him. As if the decision weren't his to make. He pulled his
cigarettes out of his shorts pocket and lit one. Of course his
mother didn't know about it. Hell, she hadn't even known when he'd
hired the consultants. He'd only told her he needed her approval to
make her happy. He'd hired them days before.

The nicotine didn't calm him like it usually
did. Somewhere in the back of his mind a doubt rose and flew,
dipped and buzzed, like those damn mosquitoes. He tossed the
half-finished cigarette on the lawn.

Women. Stubborn. Set in their ways. Think
they know best when they don't know a damn thing.

It took him a second to smell the smoke,
another three or four to stamp out the tiny blaze his cigarette had
ignited on the sunburnt lawn. He stared at the miniature charred
circle, thinking he'd better remember to make the gardener patch
the area before his mother got home from Paris.

*

3:30 Saturday afternoon found Gabby at
Suncrest. Near the bottling line but not on it, because the
equipment had broken down.

Cam came to sit next to her on the idled
forklift, her round cheeks flushed, dark hair pulled back into a
haphazard ponytail from which numerous curly strands had escaped.
Like Gabby, she wore beat-up jeans, work boots, and a tee shirt.
None too glamorous but right for eight hours on an assembly line.
"When did Felix say he'd get back?"

"He should be back by four."

"I hope he gets the part we need."

"You're not kidding."

They lapsed into silence, though mariachi
music blared through the high-ceilinged warehouselike room where
the mechanized bottling line hulked silently, like a wounded beast.
Six of their fellow bottlers lounged on various stools and crates
and boxes. Gabby knew none of them was as anxiety-ridden as she
was. Sure, people griped about having to work the entire July
Fourth weekend. But double overtime eased that pain. And nobody but
Gabby DeLuca had to worry about how well the finished product
turned out, or whether they'd still make the release date.

Cam spoke. "I can't believe Max is making us
do this."

Gabby shook her head. She'd toyed with the
idea of trying to reach Mrs. W in France, even quizzed Mrs.
Finchley about her boss's whereabouts. But she'd come up empty. The
veteran housekeeper was too loyal and well trained to divulge any
personal information to a mere Suncrest employee.

"This was exactly what I was afraid of when
Max took over," Gabby said. "That he'd make a bunch of asinine
decisions. But even I never imagined he'd come up with anything
this stupid."

"Mom almost had to tie Daddy down to keep him
from coming in here today."

"His reputation's really on the line. More
than mine."

Since they were rebottling on the QT,
everybody would blame any deficiency in Suncrest's 2003 Sauvignon
Blanc directly on the winemaker. Surprisingly poor winemaking for
Cosimo, they'd say. Wonder if it had anything to do with his
daughter helping him for the first time? Her first vintage as
assistant winemaker—and thanks to Max Winsted, it might taste like
swill.

It was so frustrating. A classic no-win. If
the rebottling went well, all she'd have accomplished was to help
Max achieve his French-bottle coup. But if it went poorly, the
blame was on her and her father, who was laid up trying to recover
from a heart attack Gabby was convinced Max Winsted had brought
on.

And where was the man of the hour? Nowhere in
sight, though maybe it was better that way. When the leased
decanting truck had rolled in Thursday—to uncork the old bottles
and decant the contents back into the stainless-steel tanks where
the wine had aged till March—Max had been around. Strutting like a
peacock, asking idiotic questions, basically getting in the way.
He'd been around Friday, too, when Gabby had spent the day
carefully feeding nitrogen into the tanks to displace the oxygen
the decanting had introduced. Now it was the three-day weekend—at
least for those people who didn't have massive work crises—and she
didn't see hide nor hair of Max. Nor did she expect to until the
holiday was over. Let the peons do the work—that was his attitude
through and through.

"Your dress for tonight is gorgeous," Cam
said. "Will's going to love you in it."

Gabby had to smile. Little sleeveless wrap
dress, soft and swirly with a deep V neck, in a black-and-rust
pattern that went really well with her hair and skin. It was
hanging in Suncrest's women's lockers because she'd known she
wouldn't have time to get home to shower and change. "You don't
think it's too much?"

"No." Cam vigorously shook her head. "It's
perfect. Just sexy enough but not over the top. With those strappy
black sandals of yours, it'll be great. Where are you guys
going?"

"Bistro Don Giovanni."

"Fabulous. I'm so jealous."

Gabby glanced at her watch. A bubble of
nervousness pulsed through her veins.
Felix better get back soon
with that corker jaw
. If the line was operational again by four
thirty, she could bottle for two hours, hop in the shower, and be
ready for Will by seven. Felix could oversee the last ninety
minutes of production. She wouldn't be too nervous letting him
handle that much.

They had to finish the shift, because they
had to bottle four thousand cases a day. Otherwise they wouldn't
get the twenty thousand done in five days. And they'd miss the
release date.

4:15 rolled around. Still no Felix. Gabby
walked outside to stare down the drive to the Trail. For some
reason that didn't make Felix reappear.

4:30. She called Leo Gordon, the
bottling-line manufacturer's rep. He'd promised Felix he had the
right corker jaw for their line. His cell phone went directly to
voicemail.

4:45. Gabby went in search of Cam and found
her in the break room. She looked up from her paperback and
frowned. "Still nothing?"

"This is getting serious."

"You are not going to cancel dinner."

"Cam, we have three and a half hours of
bottling to do."

"So? We can do it without you."

Maybe they could. No part of her wanted to
blow Will off. But so much could go wrong with the rebottling and
it was up to her to make sure that it worked. And what could she
even use for an excuse with him? She couldn't tell him the truth.
As it was, she'd have to pretend they were bottling the sauvignon
blanc the first time around.
Oh, there's so much demand, we want
to release a little earlier than we'd intended!

The capitalist pig he'd sent her had fast
become one of her most precious tokens. She'd named it Warren for
Warren Buffett—one famed investor whose business values she'd long
admired—and set it atop her nightstand between her alarm clock and
current stack of paperbacks.

Every time she saw Warren, she thought of
Will. And was reminded anew that he didn't take himself too
seriously. And that he had a sense of humor. And that he cared
enough about her to go out of his way to make this little private
joke between them.

It was highly endearing.

At ten past five, Felix burst into the
bottling area. "I didn't get it."

That blow nearly knocked Gabby to the
concrete floor. "What?"

"Leo got the part numbers mixed up. He
thought he had the right one, but he didn't." From a small plastic
bag, Felix shook onto his weathered palm three variations of a
corker jaw, used to compress corks before insertion into bottles.
"I took these with me in case we could rejigger one to fit. If that
doesn't work, Leo said we could try to borrow from Indigo Hill or
Tulip Mountain. They've both got the same bottling line we do.
Otherwise he'll get one for us Tuesday."

Tuesday! The next regular business day.
Meaning they'd lose two and a half bottling days. Meaning they'd
never make the release date.

Gabby's mind raced. But borrowing would
require telling rival wineries that Suncrest was bottling the
Saturday evening of July Fourth weekend. How weird would that
look?

She made an instant decision. "Felix, you try
to make one of those fit. I'll make some phone calls.''

Forty minutes and five delicately worded
phone calls later, she succeeded in convincing Mirador Winery in
Sonoma Valley to lend her what she needed. She sent Felix to get
it—as none of the rejiggering had come even close to working—sent
Pepe to get pizza for the crew, and stared at the big, round,
white-faced clock that hung in the break room.

5:50.
We can't start bottling till seven
at the earliest. So we won't be done till 10:30. What do I
do?

"You go on your date," Cam declared. "Felix
can manage the line. Don't worry."

How can I not worry? But how can I cancel on
Will?

*

At seven o'clock on Saturday night, Will
stood outside the big oak door of Suncrest's main winery building.
He wiped his palms down his trouser legs. Again.

So much for his usual sangfroid. The Will
Henley who brokered deals with big-name CEOs and extracted
concessions from hard-ass bankers was disconcerted to find himself
more than a little undone by the prospect of an evening with a
five-foot-six-inch blonde with hazel eyes, a ski-jump nose, and a
fascination with crushing grapes into wine. It occurred to him that
maybe he should have shown up with a wrist corsage. He was about as
nervous as he'd been on prom night.

He took a breath, pushed open the door, and
walked into the winery. His feet led him toward surprisingly loud
clanging noises directly ahead, which competed for aural dominance
against ear-splitting Mexican music. He stepped into an open
warehouselike space where a half-dozen people were spread out
around some kind of assembly line. It took him a few seconds to
recognize what they were doing.

A forklift carted a massive stack of
cardboard wine cases—all labeled SUNCREST SAUVIGNON BLANC 2003 and
bound together with shrink wrap—out big rear doors to a Mack truck.
Dozens more cases waited for attention, some filled and some empty.
Pizza boxes, soda cans, paper napkins, and plastic cutlery littered
a metal table set up against the north wall.

He frowned. They were bottling on Saturday
night? Over July Fourth weekend? And they must've been at it all
day, too. He was pondering that mystery when he caught sight of
Gabby approaching him across the expanse of concrete floor, and all
of a sudden couldn't care less what her crazy colleagues were up
to.

He got an eyeful of long bare legs in
high-heeled sandals and long bare arms swinging at her sides and
long-lashed eyes the color of honey. She moved with an easy grace,
like an athlete or a dancer, hips undulating in a mesmerizing
rhythm beneath the thin fabric of her summer dress. He swallowed,
his throat suddenly dry, remembering the feel of that warm supple
body pressed against his, the baby-velvet softness of her skin, the
sweet demands of those full coral-colored lips.

She stopped a few feet away, and his nostrils
filled with the same musky perfume she'd worn the night they met.
"Hi," she said.

"Hi."

"You're right on time."

"And you're gorgeous."

The smile, which had seemed a bit tentative
at first, widened. Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw two
Hispanic women on the assembly line exchange a glance, smile, then
refocus on the bottles whizzing past.

"You must be a real slave driver," he told
Gabby, "bottling on Saturday night."