Too Close to the Sun (19 page)

When they'd parked side by side in Suncrest's
employee lot and emerged from their respective vehicles, he judged
her skin a little blotched and her eyes a little puffy. But she
produced a smile. Will knew good sense dictated that he not quiz
her on their interaction with Vittorio, though he was dying to.
This was another case where he thought restraint was the better
part of valor.

They worked the bottling line for four hours.
They shared lunch—hamburgers and salad—with their fellow
assembly-linesmen. They chatted and smiled, and spoke of everything
but the man they'd run into that morning.

When it came time for him to leave, Gabby
walked Will out to his car. He leaned against its silver sun-warmed
chassis and pulled her toward him so that her body settled gently
against his. "Do you know what a wonderful time I had with you?" he
asked her.

She smiled. There was sadness in her eyes,
but a light, too. "Tell me," she said.

"So wonderful that I don't know how I'm going
to make it till the next time I see you." He brushed her lips with
his own. "How about next weekend? Friday night? I'll drive up after
my flight gets in from Kennedy."

"You'll be exhausted."

"Is that a yes or a no?"

She hesitated only a second. "It's a
yes."

He knew Vittorio was on her mind. He knew she
was conscious of her coworkers mere yards away, conspicuously not
watching. So he tried to say what he felt in a short kiss and a
long glance. He drove away very much hoping she'd heard him.

Driver in hand, Max stood on the eighth tee
of the Sonoma Mission Inn golf course and prepared to launch his
golf ball a Tiger Woods-like distance down the center of the
fairway.

Rory stood a few yards behind him, awaiting
his turn. "At least this hole doesn't have a water hazard," he said
to Bucky, loud enough for Max to hear. "But that out-of-bounds all
down the left side is something to watch out for."

"The right's no bargain, either, with those
bunkers," Bucky murmured in that same fake-quiet voice. "Better go
long and straight on this hole, Maxie boy."

Max shook his head. "Shut up," he said, then
gave it one more waggle and let 'er rip.

All three watched the ball curve through the
air on a rightish trajectory, then drop into the rough about twenty
yards shy of the nearest bunker.

"It plays long from there," Bucky opined,
walking forward while bopping the enormous steel head of his driver
into the earth to locate a suitably firm spot into which to plunge
his tee. "But maybe the rough is short enough that you can play
driver again."

Rory chuckled. "Advance the ball another
one-eighty up the fairway."

Max knew this was just more of the
good-natured joshing he'd been taking since high school from these
two, but still he was irked. He didn't like any intimation that he
was one down to them. "I don't see either of you joining the pro
tour."

"True." Bucky took another flawless practice
swing, his gaze locked on the fairway. "Even though there's no way
it could suck as much as med school."

Then he hit, and Max watched Bucky's drive
cream his own by a good seventy yards. He was pleased that it, too,
found the rough. "Maybe the wind took it," Max said. He didn't
bother to keep the snideness out of his voice.

Bucky shook his head. "Gotta work on that
high fade. Didn't hurt Jack Nicklaus, though."

Nicklaus, my ass
. The only relief was
that Bucky just said "med school" that time and not "Johns Hopkins
Medical School," because it seemed like he couldn't stop bragging
about his postgraduate education.

I'm enrolled in the school of hard
knocks
, Max told himself,
otherwise known as the real world.
And I'm blowing its doors off.

It had been a stellar week since he'd
delivered his mother to her Air France flight. He'd spoken with her
by phone every day since, both to keep up the pretense that he was
the most dutiful son in California and to reassure her about
Suncrest. He hadn't breathed a word about the ongoing rebottling,
figuring he'd ease into that discussion once she returned to Terra
Americana. His most fervent wish was that that day be pushed far
into the future. At the moment she was still planning to fly home
in a week, but he knew that if any woman was prone to last-minute
itinerary changes, it was her.

Since Rory had already hit, all three hoisted
their golf bags onto their shoulders and set off down the fairway.
Max's bag banged rhythmically into his back, clubs clattering with
every step. He'd felt forced to walk the course rather than use a
golf cart, though at his current weight—in this heat—he would have
much preferred the latter. Already, at eleven in the morning, it
was above eighty degrees. The summer smell of newly mown grass
filled his nostrils, reminding him of good times, being a kid,
having tons of free hours and doing only what he wanted with them.
Now he looked forward to a barbecued hot dog at the turn, and a
cold beer to go with it, and going home after the round to nap on
the hammock by the pool.

"So you're in town all summer?" he asked
Rory.

"Yup. Don't start the job till after Labor
Day. Just hope I passed the bar."

No way Rory didn't pass the bar. "The job's
with a law firm in DC, you said?"

Rory nodded. He was Max's height—that is to
say, five ten—and about as sturdily built. His brown hair was
thinning by the minute and his wardrobe remained as uninspired
preppy as ever. In other words, Rory looked human—unlike Bucky, who
even after years of slaving away at pre-med and then med school
still looked perfect. So much so, in fact, that he'd scored a date
with Stella Monaco, a babe of major proportions who'd turned Max
down twice. Max thought Rory should give up medicine and become a
soap star. After all, being a doctor wasn't the plush gig it used
to be.

Then again, being a corporate lawyer didn't
sound that entertaining, either. Max felt a rush of superiority
that his own life was on such a splendid course. Running Suncrest,
living in the valley, making scads of money without breaking a
sweat.

He was the smart one, he told himself, he was
the one who had his shit in gear. Every once in a while Max worried
that Rory or Bucky was making more of himself than he was—moving to
the East Coast, joining some hotshot organization, working his way
up to being hot shit himself. But that was stupid. Who was living
better? Answer that.

And any joker who thought Max had everything
handed to him on a silver platter could just guess again. It was
tough following in a father's footsteps, especially one as
successful as Porter Winsted. Max had to prove himself every day of
the week, and that was some heavy burden to carry.

"So how's Suncrest?" Bucky asked.

"Fantastic." That was Max's standard response
to that question. "I'm loving running it. Once we get through
harvest, I'm going to focus on adding more varietals. I have some
new marketing strategies up my sleeve, too."

That wasn't entirely accurate but Max didn't
want to get into the unglamorous arena of cost-cutting. Truth be
told, the number-crunching was less than appealing. No matter how
long he wrestled with some of those digits, they still kept
insisting on coming out red.

He'd found out when he ran the numbers that
the rebottling was a tad pricier than he'd anticipated. So what?
Any good businessman knew you had to spend money to make money.
Besides, he had plenty of ways to trim the winery's fat.

All three halted as they reached Max's ball,
which poked halfheartedly out of the rough's long grass.

"Unfortunate lie," Bucky remarked, then
waited till Max was lined up over his shot before he fired his next
salvo. "It's good you're working on some marketing strategies,
buddy, 'cause I'd say Suncrest could use 'em. I've been to a few of
the hot restaurants in the city lately and none of them had it on
their wine list."

Max pretended to be unfazed by that
revelation. He stepped back from his shot and took a few more
practice swings. "Like where?"

"Chez Spencer. Jeanty at Jack's."

Rory piped up. "It's not at Rubicon, either.
I was just there the other night."

"Or at Boulevard," Bucky added.

Max stepped back up to his ball, his mind
working. Well, well. It looked like his buds had just handed him a
new marketing project. He sighed, imagining the tough work that lay
ahead. That winery was just damn lucky he was back to run it. It
needed his visionary management something fierce.

He hit. The ball launched beautifully into
the cloudless blue sky, drew slightly, then plopped onto the
fairway and rolled an additional twenty yards, putting Max in
perfect position for a pitching wedge onto the green.

"Center cut," Bucky said.

"Nice shot, Max," Rory echoed.

Max returned his seven iron to his bag and
wordlessly accepted his friends' plaudits, not in the least
surprised to be receiving them.

*

"Gabby, wait up, will you?" At twilight Cam's
breathless voice rang out over Suncrest's Morydale vineyard, set on
a west-facing slope to catch the afternoon sun and given a natural
windbreak on three sides by walls of forest. By this late hour the
sun had already dipped below the jagged crest of the Mayacamas,
throwing the vines into shadow and allowing the grapes to relax
after the day's frenetic sweetening.

Gabby was panting herself from hurrying along
the hilly rows of vines. She halted at a waist-high wooden post
both to allow her sister to catch up and to retie a piece of
reflective aluminum tape that had come loose. Crows cawed overhead,
as if taunting her efforts to frighten them away from the ripening
fruit below.

"Damn birds," she muttered. They looked like
a biker gang riding wings instead of Harleys across the dusky sky.
She let her gaze drop to her sister's approaching form, encased in
a gray sweatsuit Gabby thought should immediately go to the rag
bag. "Hurry up, Cam," she whispered. She illuminated the dial on
her digital watch and read its glowing turquoise verdict: 8:52. So
much for getting home early.

Monday night her phone had rung around nine
thirty. It had been Will, calling from Manhattan. They'd nattered
on about his business trip, her rebottling, everything and nothing.
Since then—two nights of zippo.

Okay, he was busy. So was she. But zippo?

It was hard to get a read on him. Maybe he
was as careful about phone calls as he seemed to be about
everything else—sex included. She had to admire him for that; it
was quite a departure from how most men behaved. And it was true
they hadn't known each other long. Not long enough to justify how
intense it felt whenever she was with him.

She toyed with a piece of green Mylar tape
that tied a vine onto a trellising wire. The scary truth was that
part of her wanted to talk with him every day. And part of her
hoped he'd go away and never come back.

You might be better off alone
. Safer,
anyway, in her scientist's routine, where she could keep everything
just the way she wanted it. Men had a way of mucking that up. They
got in your hair, they got in your body, they got in your house,
they got under your skin, and before you knew it, you weren't
controlling anything anymore.

That's certainly what Vittorio had done. It
had been wonderful and terrible both.

Cam reached her, seriously out of breath,
wild dark hair bursting from beneath her black-and-orange Giants
baseball cap. "Can you go any faster?"

"Sorry."

"This vineyard's really hilly, you know." Cam
took a few restorative gulps of air. "Why are we here, anyway?"

"To see if it's too dry." Which, in Gabby's
estimation, it was. She squatted down to grab another handful of
soil, which ran through her fingers like sand. Lots of winemakers
believed that grapes, like artists, needed to struggle to achieve
greatness, that rich, complex flavors grew out of difficult
conditions. She believed that, too, to a point. "We haven't been
using the drip irrigation lately, but I think we need to get back
to it. I'm not sure there's enough groundwater here." She made a
mental note to tell Felix in the morning, then rose and rubbed her
hands together to get rid of the loose dirt. "Thanks for coming
with me, by the way."

"No problem, I needed the exercise." She
chuckled. "I didn't think I'd get this much of it, though."

Gabby nodded. Sometimes she forgot that other
people didn't tromp the vineyards like she did, weren't used to the
long exploratory hikes that gave her a feel for how the crop was
progressing. Did they need to prime the foliage so the fruit got
more sun? Were the vines getting enough nutrients?

She was especially eager to continue those
walks now. Max had decided, in his infinite lack of wisdom, to fire
some field workers.
We don't need them
, he told her.
When
we do for harvest, we'll bring them back.

Yeah, right. Gabby knew what he was up to.
The rebottling cost so much he needed to cut somewhere else. So,
like the idiot owner he was, he took it out of the place that
mattered to the wine the most, but to him the least. The
vineyard.

Silence lengthened between the sisters,
broken only by the distant drone of a small plane's engine and the
nearby chatter of little birds who'd convened on the telephone
wires to report to each other on the day's activities. The sky was
an explosion of pink and orange hues, streaked with purple, as if
the angels had run amok with their celestial crayons. Gabby loved
this twilight hour, when her work was done, her muscles were
pleasantly sore, and dinner, a bath, and bed awaited.

Out of the quiet, Cam spoke. "Has Will
called?"