Too Close to the Sun (29 page)

She remembered the puppy she and Porter had
given him when he was nine. She'd feared for that dear creature,
too. A sweet yellow Lab, all wet nose and brown eyes and gangly
paws the poor thing never had a chance to grow into. How many times
had she warned Max not to toss the ball near the drive that led up
from the Trail? Did he listen?

Yet, really, whose fault was it? The mother's
or the child's?

She joined her son on the sofa, laid her hand
on his knee. This time her voice was soft, as she wished it had
been more often in the past. "Max, do you realize you'll never
succeed in life if you don't give things time? You haven't even
been running Suncrest for two months. Do you know what would have
happened if I'd left Hollywood after two months? I never would've
gotten a single role."

He raised his head. She saw tears on his
cheeks, felt their tracks on her own heart. But even at that moment
she wondered if perhaps they were just another of Max's
manipulations, another wily attempt to push her maternal
buttons.

"Mom," he said, "let me ask you this. Whose
dream were you pursuing in Hollywood?"

"What?"

"Whose dream? Yours? Or your parents?"

It was so much hers that the question seemed
too absurd to answer. She remembered to this day what her upright
Methodist parents had called her fledgling modeling and acting
career: "a foolish escapade." They'd wanted her to march right back
to SMU and make a show of studying while doing the real work of
finding a doctor or a lawyer to marry. Not until she became a Breck
girl did their objections flag. After she snagged a soap role,
their grousing quieted. Her first movie shut them up for good. But
she wasn't fully restored to their good graces until Porter's
three-carat diamond engagement ring graced her ring finger. And her
acting career fell by the wayside.

"You went to Hollywood for yourself," she
heard Max say. "That's why you stuck at it for so long. It was you
who wanted it, nobody else."

"Don't you want Suncrest?"

"No." He shook his head. "I thought I did,
but I don't really. It was what Dad wanted, but not me. Not you
either, I bet."

That was so true, she had to turn her eyes
away. She stared at the faded Oriental carpet, with its mesmerizing
weave of crimson and gray and brown.

She'd wanted to stay in Bel Air. She'd wanted
Porter to continue as a developer. She'd wanted their carefree life
where she enjoyed wealth and comfort, friends and attention, and
didn't have to raise a finger to get them. A new winery in Napa
meant work and dirt and trial and error. And in those days, before
California wines challenged France's great vintages, not much
glamour at all. She'd nearly left Porter over it. But his
excitement over what he was building, his passion, had won her
over. He was a man nearing fifty who wanted one more stab at
building something big and new. Who was she to tell him no?

Now she had a son who wanted exactly the same
thing. And once again she was the obstacle.

The truth was, she empathized with Max.
Though it made her feel like a traitor to Porter, she didn't want
to run Suncrest, either. She didn't mind in the least it being an
ocean and a continent away. Her desire to return to Napa diminished
with every stroll down the Avenue Foch, every visit to the Musee
d'Orsay, every cafe au lait sipped at a shaded sidewalk table.

She rose from the sofa and walked to the
garden door to gaze at the gurgling stone fountain in the shape of
a half-shell. Porter wouldn't blame her for how she felt, she told
herself. And he wouldn't blame Max, either. He'd been an
understanding husband and a patient father, far more tolerant of
his family's foibles than she could ever be.

Ava turned to regard her son. "I do think
your father would understand your desire to pursue your own
goals."

Max's face lit up. It was Christmas all over
again, her little boy catching sight of the gifts piled high under
the tree. "Yes, Mom, he would understand. He spent his life doing
what he wanted, and so should I. Then I'll really be
committed."

She didn't even haggle with him over the
details of Will Henley's term sheet. Thirty million dollars was a
tremendous amount of cash; it would guarantee that she'd never have
to think twice about money for the rest of her life. And neither
would her son. She would not simply hand it over to Max, of course;
trusts would have to be established and rules set down. She would
take care of all of that, as her maternal duty demanded.

Ava read the document, then reread it. When
finally she poised a pen over the space marked OWNER'S SIGNATURE,
she had the oddest sensation of Porter behind the sofa, watching
her. Judging. And, she had to admit, condemning. The feeling was so
strong she actually turned her head to look, half-afraid of what
she might see.

But there was nothing there, of course, only
the empty Paris apartment she had leased for a few months. Which
might well have ghosts of its own, but none from her swiftly
receding past.

*

Gabby stood with her father among the
stainless-steel fermentation tanks, cleaning them in advance of
another year's crush. It was a messy business involving hoses and
spray nozzles and chemical solutions, and both father and daughter
wore plasticized aprons, rubber gloves, and wading boots.

But this wasn't the only messy business going
on at Suncrest, and the other couldn't be protected against by
proper gear.

"Will says it's called due diligence, Daddy."
Gabby carefully stepped down the last few rungs of the ladder that
had allowed her to peer down into a tank, a large silolike
contraption. She hit the concrete floor and turned to face her
father. "That's why these people are running around, poking their
noses into things and asking questions. He warned me it would start
as soon as Max and Mrs. W signed the term sheet."

"That's the document that lays out the
details of the sale?"

Gabby nodded and started pulling off her
gloves, finger by sticky finger.

"I can't believe Mrs. Winsted signed it," her
father said.

"I couldn't, either." Gabby watched a young
brunette rocket past, notebook in hand, looking every pin-striped
inch like one of Will's colleagues. Will had a few junior GPG staff
helping him out, and while Max was still in France had set himself
up in the winery's main office, his folders and documents and
laptop on what Gabby still thought of as Mr. Winsted's desk. "But
at this point, I think it's the best thing, Daddy." She glanced at
her father to see if he agreed with her, though she wasn't even
sure she agreed with herself. "Max was killing Suncrest, and it's
pretty clear that Mrs. W doesn't want to run it anymore. We need a
new owner. I have to believe that Will and his company know what
they're doing."

Her father nodded. Gabby knew he was having
as much trouble as she had had trying to grasp that Max and Mrs. W
were selling Suncrest to Will Henley and GPG. It was such a huge
development, and so hard to fathom. Truly the end of one era and
the beginning of another.

But the Winsted era had to end
, she
told herself,
one way or another
. Because if someone didn't
buy Suncrest, Max would run it into the ground. Of that Gabby was
fully convinced.

"So it's a done deal?" her father asked.

"Mostly. Unless they find something wrong
they didn't know about. Either Will's people, or the accountants,
or the lawyers." What seemed like armies of them had descended on
the winery that morning. They all looked cut from the same mold as
the brunette, whether male or female. Gabby realized that if she
didn't know Will so well, she'd lump him in as just one more of
their corporate number.

She didn't dwell on how little she liked the
look of them, how poorly they fit in, how much they unnerved her.
They were like visitors from another planet. All wore business
suits and moved around at high speed and spoke in hushed tones with
their heads close together. That is, unless they were on cell
phones, in which case they talked loudly. Sometimes they would
smile at her when she walked past, but invariably they stopped
speaking, as if they couldn't risk her overhearing their
conversation. When she was a few yards away, she could hear them
start up again, and words she didn't care for drifted toward her.
Expansion. Brand extension. Mass market
. They'd barely been
around a day and already she was building a healthy resentment. And
a certain fear.

Will's not like them
, she told
herself.
He understands
. Yet the words he spoke in the
darkness of her bedroom the first night they made love rushed back
into her mind.

If GPG ever does get to acquire Suncrest, I
don't know what the deal will look like. It's not entirely up to
me. You understand I'm a junior partner, right? I don't get to
decide everything myself.

But you'll try?
she'd asked.

I'll try
.

She winced. Later he'd called her a
blackmailer for extracting that promise from him. Yes, he'd
apologized, profusely. But still. Did she really expect he would
honor it? Or, given the partners he had to answer to, that he even
could?

The brunette intruded on Gabby's thoughts.
"May I bother you for a few minutes?" She was smiling, looking kind
and helpful.
Like a nurse who's about to jab a needle in your
arm,
Gabby thought.
But don't worry. It's for your own
good.

"Your name is Dagney?" her father asked.

Another smile. "Good memory!" She brandished
blueprints rolled up into a tube. "I have here a map of the
property and I'd love some help identifying which vineyards produce
which grapes, and so forth." She cocked her head, all charm.
"Will's spoken so highly of both of you and I know you're both so
knowledgeable."

Gabby watched her father wink at Will's young
associate and knew he did it in part for his daughter's benefit.
"We try. Do you want to spread those out on that table over
there?"

Minutes later, all three were bending their
heads over the blueprints, anchored to the table in four corners
with bottles of Suncrest cabernet. In light blue ink on white
architect's paper, the prints mapped Suncrest's buildings and acres
of vineyards. Dagney pointed at Rosemede, on the valley floor.
"What's grown here?"

"Sauvignon blanc." Gabby pointed to the other
vineyard that produced that varietal. "And these eight, including
Morydale here on the slope, produce cabernet sauvignon grapes."

Dagney's pen flew over a page of her open
spiral notebook. "That's everything?"

"We also have a few rows of merlot and petit
verdot here and there," Gabby's father added. "For our cabernet. We
sort of paint with those."

Dagney's pen stopped. She lifted her head and
arched a brow. "You do what?"

Gabby piped up. "We add complexity to the
wine by weaving in the flavors of those other grapes."

Dagney nodded slowly. Then she pointed to an
area that didn't delineate a specific vineyard. "What's grown
here?"

"We don't use that acreage," Gabby's father
said. He pointed to several other blank areas. "We don't use any of
that, either."

Dagney frowned. "And why is that?"

"It's substandard soil," he said. "It doesn't
have the pH value we look for."

"So you don't think it's good enough." Dagney
seemed to consider that while biting the end of her pen. Then,
"Okay, let's move on." She consulted a list of typed questions.
"What is the yield per acre? Approximately?"

"About three tons per acre," Gabby's father
said.

That time Dagney stood straight up, her tone
incredulous. "Don't most wineries get more like eight?"

No wineries that we like
, Gabby
thought. "The rule of thumb is, the lower the yield, the higher the
quality of grape. So Suncrest has always been very selective in
which grapes make the cut, so to speak."

"So you could get a higher yield if you
wanted to?" Dagney asked.

"We could," Gabby's father said, "but the
quality of the wine would suffer."

"Would it suffer by a lot? I mean, they're
Napa grapes, so they're still pretty good, right?"

Gabby and her father looked at each other.
Then Gabby spoke. "Maybe the difference in quality wouldn't be
apparent to everyone. But it certainly would be to Suncrest
customers, who are looking for more complex, nuanced flavors."

Dagney bit her pen and again bent back down
over her notebook. Somehow Gabby got the impression that nuance and
complexity weren't high on her agenda. She asked a few follow-up
questions and then let Gabby and her father go, with protracted
thanks for how helpful they were and what valuable "resources" they
were proving to be.

"Maybe she'll put gold stars on our foreheads
next time," Gabby's father muttered as they ambled back toward the
fermentation tanks. But halfway there, he abruptly sat down on top
of an overturned plastic crate.

Immediately Gabby crouched down next to him.
Her heart started pumping a faster rhythm, but she hoped his hadn't
varied by a single beat. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Do you need to take a rest? Because I can do
everything else myself."

He shook his head and smiled at her, a wan
smile that she knew lacked its usual vigor not because of the grim
prospect of hosing down the tanks but because of the Q and A they'd
just undergone. And what it foretold.

Gabby watched her father rub his forehead and
could guess what he was thinking.
Somebody stop this craziness.
Make it go back to the way it's always been
.

She edged another crate over and sat next to
him. He didn't look at her but stared into the middle distance, as
if replaying scenes from the past in his mind.