Too Close to the Sun (18 page)

Truth be told, the house in the midst of this
natural wonder looked a bit the worse for wear—all brown shingle
and chipped white window frames and slightly crooked stone chimney.
It was vintage, to put it nicely. Run-down, to be frank.

Will didn't want to leave it. He didn't want
to leave the woman who called it home. He didn't want to do what he
had to do that day: drive away from Gabby, pack for a week in New
York, board the red-eye that night, refocus his mind on his telecom
deal. What he wanted to do was go back inside that ramshackle
former barn and take Gabby DeLuca to bed—all morning, all
afternoon, and preferably well into the evening.
Maybe—
maybe
—he would allow food breaks, but that was hardly
a given.

He could have taken her to bed the prior
night, he knew. He'd felt her want—Christ, he'd tasted it, seen it,
smelled it. Maybe he'd been a fool. He knew there was no perfect
time for these things; there was no crucial moment. Yet some
instinct had told him it was too soon, too fast, that he shouldn't
rush it. There was a skittishness about her, a wariness. It made
him think she was getting over someone, or didn't fully trust him
yet. Maybe Suncrest was still in the way.

He grimaced. He hadn't
lied
about
that, exactly, but he'd certainly committed a sin of omission.
No, Gabby, I'm not disappointed about Suncrest. I still believe
I'll be able to acquire it
. But he would've landed right back
in the doghouse if he'd told her that. And the bottom line was, he
didn't want to muck things up with this woman. There could be
something real with her.

Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.

Will threw back his head and stared at the
morning sky, trying to convince himself that he would be able to
manage the situation. No, he told himself, he wouldn't have to
choose between Gabby and GPG. If he got to the point of acquiring
Suncrest—which he'd better, since he had to make a Napa deal happen
and this was the only winery he'd bet on—he would simply have to
bring Gabby around to his point of view: Suncrest was better off in
GPG's hands than in the Winsteds'.

In the meanwhile, he couldn't lie to her. He
wouldn't
lie to her. But he would have to keep his mouth
shut about a possible deal. Professional ethics demanded it.

He ambled back into the house to find the
makings of coffee. The simple actions of opening and closing
cabinets, foraging for coffee beans, a measuring spoon, a filter,
centered and contented him. Eventually the aroma of coffee brewing
prodded his brain cells, made other questions rise in his mind.

Why in the world did Gabby live alone on a
mountaintop? Okay, she was a bit of a hermit. That jibed with her
being a scientist and a nature girl. But she was young and single.
That didn't jibe. He would've expected her to rent a bungalow in
downtown St. Helena, near restaurants and bars and something
resembling civilization.

Yet her reclusiveness attracted him. Clearly
she wasn't on the prowl to snare a man. Nor was she afraid to break
the mold. She did what suited her whether it was standard operating
procedure or not.

He poured himself a mug of coffee and warmed
his hands through the ceramic.
You got it bad, Henley. There's
nothing about her you don't like.

True, frightening but true. Gabriella DeLuca
was exciting and comfortable all at the same time, at once a
mystery and a mystery solved. He couldn't remember the last time a
woman had exerted this kind of pull on him.

Maybe because none ever had.

He loped back outside to inhale more of the
view, halting on the vineyard's edge to listen to a mourning dove,
its lulling song absent from his city life. A few minutes later he
heard Gabby call out behind him.

"Careful! Watch out for rattlesnakes."

He heard the teasing note in her voice but
still had to stop himself from doing a fast-step pirouette away
from the grapevines. He turned to face her. "Isn't it too hot for
them to be out?"

"Not this early."

She was smiling, and looked sweet and
sleep-tousled. She, too, held a mug, and wore a red plaid flannel
robe that looked as if it got a lot of use. A crease was pressed
into the soft skin of her cheek from the bedclothes. He felt
another rush of desire for her and wondered how he would keep
himself from tearing off that robe and taking her right there in
the dirt.

She came to stand beside him, looking small
without heels on. "Did you sleep well?"

"Like a baby," he said, then added, "Once I
fell asleep." The conspiratorial light in her eyes told him she'd
endured some sleeplessness, as well.
We're co-sufferers of the
same disease
, he thought.
My damn common sense.

"I have some bad news," she said.

"I don't like the sound of that."

"I have to be back at Suncrest for bottling
in a little over an hour."

"Mind if I join you?"

She laughed, a surprised happy sound light as
a bird call. "You want to do that
again
?"

"Yes, I do."
I want as much time with you
as I can get
. Already he had a crushing sense of how hard it
was going to be to see her. He lived seventy miles away and had a
killer job with frequent travel. He'd be lucky to get up to Napa
some weekends. And she wasn't exactly sitting on her hands, either.
"I have to catch a flight later but I'd love to help out this
morning. If that'll work for you."

She was silent. He could almost hear the
gears of her mind turning. Then, "You know those professional
ethics you told me about before? The ones where you have to keep
all kinds of confidential information to yourself?"

He looked away. "Sure."

"If you promise to honor that code for me,
I'll tell you something."

Part of him wanted to scream
Stop! Don't
tell me!
But something—curiosity? opportunism?—kept his lips
from mouthing that warning. Instead he repeated, "Sure," one
noncommittal syllable he hoped would keep her talking.

She regarded him solemnly, sipped from her
mug, then spoke. "We're actually rebottling the sauvignon blanc.
That's why there's so much time pressure to get it done. Max came
up with this cockamamie idea of using these new French bottles. . .
."

She explained, and Will listened, and the
more he heard, the more jumbled his feelings became. On one hand,
this was a boneheaded management decision on Max's part. Meaning he
was screwing up faster than Will had anticipated. Meaning there
might be upheaval soon at the winery and an early opening for Will
and GPG to step in and save the day.

Yet . . . this was clearly bad news for
Gabby. She was Max's employee. She had to implement whatever
strategies he came up with, sensible or not. That bothered him in a
way it hadn't before.

Her eyes were on his face, squinting slightly
as the sun gathered force in the sky. He understood the trust she
put in him to confide in him like this. He knew she wouldn't have
said word one if she knew he still considered Suncrest fair game.
He regarded himself as a highly trustworthy individual but suddenly
had to wonder if he was betraying her with his agenda regarding her
employer.

Yet what could he disclose? He couldn't tell
her that in his mind, Suncrest was still in play. Besides, he told
himself, it might not be. He'd built his whole Napa Valley strategy
around Suncrest, but the deal might truly be dead, the way she
thought it was. Yet any intimation to the contrary would put her
off him.

He couldn't risk it. He didn't want to. He
tamped down his discomfort and just listened, saying nothing to
encourage her but nothing to stop her, either.

Finally she wound to a close. "So if you're
still game to bottle this morning—"

"Absolutely."

"—we could pick up some muffins at Dean and
DeLuca first, then head over to the winery."

"Any relation?"

"I wish." She was edging away from him,
smiling, her voice teasing, her hips swaying beneath the red plaid
flannel.

Half an hour later, showered but back in the
clothes he'd worn the night before, Will discovered that the Napa
Valley outpost of Dean and DeLuca was just as grand as its flagship
Manhattan store. It was the sort of high-end specialty shop that
catered to people who demanded six types of goat cheese and nine
varieties of dried mushrooms. Of course, many of Napa's residents,
particularly up-valley, were as pampered as their big-city
counterparts. The valley might have begun as an agricultural
backwater, but it was glossy now, and had the estates and
restaurants and boutiques to prove it.

Will reached inside a woven basket and
plucked two warm apricot muffins for himself, a cranberry for
Gabby, and an assortment for the troops assembling at Suncrest. He
was returning his change to his wallet when he heard a sharp intake
of breath behind him, coming from Gabby. He pivoted to find a tall,
swarthy man about his own age standing beside her.

"Vittorio," Gabby breathed, "you're
back."

But this Vittorio fellow wasn't looking at
Gabby, Will noticed, though he himself was acutely aware of her
paralyzed state. The guy was eyeing him, with a narrowed gaze that
said,
What are you doing with her at seven o'clock on Sunday
morning?
Then,
I know what you're doing. And I don't like
it.

Vittorio lowered his gaze to Gabby, grasped
her hands and kissed her cheeks, one after the other,
European-style. "It's good to see you, Gabriella." His voice was
accented—Italian, Will concluded—and undeniably affectionate.

Will's mind raced.
You're back
, she'd
said to him.
So she's seen him recently
.

Again Vittorio fixed his eyes on Will, though
he addressed Gabby. "And who is your friend?"

Will watched Gabby turn to face him, her eyes
wide, her skin flushed, her movements jerky. Shock, confusion,
uneasiness were written all over her. "Vittorio, this is Will
Henley. Will, Vittorio Mantucci."

Will reached out to shake hands. "Pleasure to
meet you, Vittorio. Are you visiting us from out of town?"
You
heard me say
us
? That's her and me, Vittorio. Us.

Vittorio's grasp was somewhat firmer than it
needed to be. "From Chianti, actually."

Let me guess. Castelnuovo
. "Are you
also in the wine business?"

"Yes. And you?"

"No." Will smiled, refrained from saying
more.
I'll let you wonder what I do. And I'll let you worry how
well I know the woman you call Gabriella ...

Though how well these two knew each other
could not have been more painfully obvious. Will watched Gabby
struggle not to stare at Vittorio; he saw the darting of her eyes
to the far corners of the store, as if the July Fourth picnic
displays had suddenly taken on enormous interest. For machismo
reasons alone, Will wished he'd taken her to bed the prior night,
just so he wouldn't be one down to this man who clearly had been
Gabby's lover, the man who had made living in Tuscany "a very
special time," the man who now had her locked in a queer sort of
suspended animation.

She was in love with him. Maybe she still
is.

Probably this explained her strange reticence
when he'd asked her about Italy. At the hospital she'd promised him
an epic. What he'd gotten out of her in the hot tub was barely a
paragraph. And Will felt sure that the reason was six feet two and
standing right in front of him.

The stab of jealousy that assailed him was
embarrassing. He had no claim to her, no right to feel possessive.
It was also absurd to think that a woman of her age, with her
looks, her sweetness, her allure, wouldn't have a romantic history.
Yet it chafed at him.

Vittorio ran a hand through his hair and Will
suffered a second shock.
The guy's wearing a wedding ring! Was
this jerk married? Was Gabby his mistress?
Will felt a surge of
dislike for old European marital customs. And clearly Gabby had
seen Vittorio recently.
Is she still his mistress?

But it didn't seem so, not from the stiffness
between them. That was some relief at least. "Are you back here on
business?" she was asking him.

"Yes. Some projects I'm working on are going
faster than I'd thought."

What projects?
Will's mind clicked
into another gear. He filed Vittorio Mantucci's name into his
mental Rolodex, determined to get the lowdown on this guy and
whatever wine-industry business he was conducting in Napa
Valley.

Gabby glanced at Will, and he read in her
eyes that she wanted to leave. He himself was more than ready to
get out of there. He made his voice all hearty friendliness. "Good
to meet you, Vittorio." He slapped the guy's back as he moved past,
a little too hard but he couldn't help himself. He then claimed
Gabby's hand and pulled her toward the exit. "Enjoy your stay."

She was silent as they walked to their cars,
then released his hand wordlessly and got into her Jeep. He trailed
her to Suncrest, trying to ascertain how she felt from how she
drove. Did that quick lane change mean she was upset? Was that
swipe at her nose an indication she was crying? Was that a tissue
she dug out of her purse?

He consoled himself with the fact that he
couldn't have imagined her attraction to him the night before. He
told himself it didn't matter that she considered him an outsider
while Vittorio was a sort of wine soul mate, someone who understood
what she loved because he loved it, too. He told himself that those
two had parted for a reason, whatever it was, and that it needn't
impede Will's future with her at all.

He didn't let himself dwell on how he himself
was treating her, the little nagging worry that he wasn't being
entirely on the up-and-up, that he had an agenda she didn't know
about, and that if she did, he might be part of her history,
too.