Too Close to the Sun (37 page)

"The smell is really strong, isn't it?" Will
half jogged down the drive that led to Suncrest's entry gate,
twisting his head around to look behind him. Then he saw it, to the
southeast of the winery, up on the forested ridge: flames consuming
the oak trees and gray smoke mushrooming into the perfect blue
sky.

Dagney jogged up next to him, nearly out of
breath. "It's a wildfire."

It certainly was. Already claiming a good
chunk of the slope, seeming to move very fast. Will knew a fair
amount about such fires, having grown up in Denver where during the
hot summer months enormous blazes regularly broke out in the local
mountains. He knew conditions were ripe for such a conflagration:
weeks of scorching weather without a whisper of fog, and today this
erratic wind. Combine that with acres of grassland that had grown
long in previous rainy seasons, which provided plenty of fuel to
light the oak trees, which seemed as if they were made for
burning.

For a second Will couldn't speak, as if he
were close enough to the flames that his own lungs were sucking in
the noxious fumes. His mind raced when he realized just how close
the fire might be to some of Suncrest's vineyards, those that lay
just below the easternmost slopes of the Howell Mountains.

And Gabby's there
.

*

Gabby stood in Suncrest's Morydale vineyard
with her arm around her father, both with their backs to the wall
of fire not far up the hill. A cough stalled in her throat like a
boil. Tears squeezed from her smoke-seared eyes.
It's a
nightmare. I've died and gone to hell. And the flames prove
it.

She had to yell above them. At this short
distance they were amazingly loud. "Daddy, there's nothing we can
do. We've got to get out of here. Fast."

He couldn't speak, either, at least not in
words. The horror in his dark eyes told her all she needed to know.
For what more could befall Suncrest? Why had the gods turned so
cruel?

This vineyard that nestled up close to the
forest, that she and her father had tended with such care, would be
devastated. In an ugly irony, the grapes that were so close to
harvest would be destroyed right at the peak of their perfection.
And not only would the fruit be lost: the vines would burn, too.
For the vineyard was covered with grasses grown long over the past
months and now tinder dry, gone to nature when Max fired the field
workers that would have kept them mowed. And once the grasses
caught, they would incinerate every grapevine they passed. The
entire vineyard would be lost, and years in the remaking.

"Come on, Daddy." She moved him forward down
a row of grapevines. There was no time to waste; already the fire
was licking at the vineyard's edge. Field workers streamed around
them, running toward the tractor while balancing on their heads the
yellow bins that held what grapes they'd been able to harvest, what
grapes they might be able to save.

Her father clutched her arm. "I have to
stop."

She wouldn't let him. "Not yet," she shouted
in his ear. "Let's go a little farther."

Oh God, don't let him have another
attack
. The panic, the smoke, was a danger to all of them but
particularly to her father, given the fragility of his heart. She
urged him forward, turning her head to look behind her as they
continued to move. So much of the forest was engulfed now, so many
of those mighty oaks were writhing in their death throes. Somewhere
in her scientist's brain she understood that fire was a natural
cleansing part of nature's cycle. But still she hated it, the
ruthless power of it, the indiscretion, the haphazard destruction
of everything in its path. Including so much of what she loved,
what she'd fought for.

If she believed in signs from above, this
would be one.
Give up on Suncrest
, this fire was telling
her.
You've lost that battle
.

With that realization, it was Gabby who
stopped short. Her father turned to look at her, surprise in his
eyes. This time it was he who forced the pair onward, he who
suddenly waved his arm above his head in what Gabby realized was a
greeting.

It was for Will. He was running toward them,
Will in his business suit with his crimson tie flapping over his
shoulder, with worry creasing his brow and something she couldn't
read in his expression. He came up close to them and met her eyes.
"I thought you'd be in one of these vineyards. I've been trying to
find you. Are you all right?"

She nodded, seriously doubting that he much
cared. She knew it made no sense to blame him for this fire, but
she couldn't help but tie him to all that had gone wrong at
Suncrest. Certainly so much of it was caused by Max but some of it
was due to Will, too—Will with his unrelenting competitiveness, his
heartless calculation of what made business sense and what didn't,
the people who were affected just so much collateral damage. Now
Suncrest would be reduced to a shell of itself. But knowing Will,
he'd probably see it as an opportunity.

He gazed at her a moment longer, then took
her father's other arm, and together they made it faster to the
edge of the vineyard, where her dusty Jeep was waiting. She and
Will were helping her father into the passenger seat when she heard
a roar overhead. She stopped to watch. Her father did, too, half in
and half out of the car.

It was a white firefighting tanker plane
skimming low over the woods. They watched it glide just above the
leaping flames, then release a cloud of retardant over the trees.
It fell like a mantle of red dust.

All three lingered at the vineyard's edge to
watch as two other tankers joined the aerial performance. One made
a pass over the vineyard, a good part of which was now engulfed,
the fire consuming the grasses and torching the vines with
appalling speed.

Gabby slumped onto the oven-hot seat of the
Jeep. That was that, then. The fire would destroy both the grapes
and the vines—some of the latter as old as she was. For them, as
for her, it was the end of the line.

Max learned one thing from the fire: he
wouldn't be a good actor. Because it was making him a nervous wreck
to have to go around pretending he had no idea how the
conflagration started.

Early Saturday, on the proverbial morning
after, he stood with Gabby and Cosimo on the charred wasteland that
used to be Suncrest's Morydale vineyard. Now, though it was way too
late to do any good, the fog had come back, the wind had
disappeared, and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees.

In this as in everything else, he was a
victim of bad timing.

"So how bad is it?" Max asked Gabby.

She shook her head. Even in disaster, she
looked good—little shorts, fleece pullover, nice wave to the hair.
"Bad. As far as the crop goes, we took a huge hit. But the bigger
disaster really is the vines."

"How so?"

"Most of the damage is limited to two
vineyards. We'd only just begun harvesting in those, so basically
we lost the whole crop."

Her father piped up. "All told, about a
quarter of our cabernet sauvignon grapes were destroyed."

That was not good. Suncrest made most of its
money from the cab. But now they wouldn't be able to produce nearly
as much of it. And it wasn't like they could make up the lost
revenue with the sauvignon blanc. Thanks to the rebottling debacle,
that wasn't exactly selling well.

Max kicked at the nearest vine, a gnarled,
blackened thing he almost didn't recognize as something that would
grow grapes. It was so brittle and dried out, a whole branch
dropped to the ground from his foot's impact. "And what about the
vines?"

"They're gone," Gabby said. "They're dead.
We'll have to yank them and start over."

That was even worse than not good. It took at
least three years to get usable grapes off a vine, sometimes five,
and a buttload of cash to pay for it. You had to plant the vines
and nurture them and in the meanwhile buy grapes from someplace
else. Mantucci wasn't going to like that and Henley wouldn't,
either. If he even cared. Maybe Mantucci wouldn't care, either.

Max felt sick to his stomach. Earlier, he'd
called Mantucci—he hadn't been able to stop himself. But had
Mantucci finally made an offer? No. Had he heard about the fire?
Yes. Apparently the news of this bizarre vineyard blaze had
traveled all over the wine world—like wildfire! And while Mantucci
had been really sympathetic, and nice as could be, and swore he'd
call back later, Max had gotten a bad feeling. A very bad
feeling.

Max turned from Gabby and Cosimo and walked a
few yards away, rubbing his forehead. The only good thing was that
he didn't have to pretend not to be upset. Everybody expected that
a winery owner whose vineyards got incinerated would be upset. But
nobody could know that was only part of it. That what really killed
was that Max knew he'd done this to himself—accidentally, of
course. And that he'd made a catastrophic error by not cashing in
on the damn winery when he had the chance.

In fact, he realized, if he'd been at the
signing ceremony, he wouldn't have been at the overlook smoking.
And someday very soon, he'd have twenty-seven million dollars cash
in the bank. And Suncrest and its problems would be a thing of the
past.

He trundled back to Gabby and her father.
Cosimo he had no problem with, but Gabby had caused him a lot of
grief. He narrowed his eyes at her. "If you'd started harvesting
earlier, we'd have more of the crop already back at the
winery."

Gabby shot back. "If you hadn't canned the
field workers, we would've had enough manpower to keep the ground
grasses mowed. Like we have every other year. Then the vineyard
wouldn't have lit up like a bonfire."

Cosimo raised his hands between the two of
them, as if he were stopping a fight. "All right, all right. What's
done is done. What we need to do is deal with the situation at
hand."

Max threw out his hands. "Which is what
exactly?"

"What do you care?" Gabby said. "It's not
your problem anymore, anyway. It's GPG's."

Whoa!
Max reeled backward but kept
himself from saying a word. Either there was trouble in paradise
and Henley wasn't telling Gabby a damn thing, or he'd told her he
was still buying Suncrest.

Max felt a rush of hope. Was that possible?
Maybe it wasn't over. Maybe even after Max bailed on the signing
ceremony, maybe even after the fire, Henley still wanted
Suncrest.

"Gabriella," Cosimo said—pretty sternly, Max
thought—"what we need to focus on is salvaging what we've got."
That seemed to simmer her down. Then Cosimo turned to Max. "We'll
continue with our harvest plan, and we'll increase the yield from
the vineyards that haven't been affected."

"That'll make up some of the loss," Gabby
said, "but won't have a substantial impact on the quality of the
wine. Which we can't afford," she added, but Max had had about as
much of her opinions as he could take.

"Fine. Do what you have to do." He started
back toward his convertible, which he'd left on the side road.
"I'll talk to you later." He had e-mails to return, calls to make,
business to conduct. Maybe now was the time to call Henley back.
Feel him out.

Mrs. Finchley emerged from the kitchen the
minute Max got back to the house. She handed him a slip of paper.
"A Vittorio Mantucci called while you were out. He asked you to
please return the call."

Max returned the call from the extension in
his bedroom. "
Buona sera
," Mantucci said.

"How are you, Vittorio?"

"Very well. And please let me repeat what I
told you earlier, how sorry I am about the catastrophe that has
befallen your winery in California."

"I appreciate that."
Get on with it
already
, Max thought. He could barely take the suspense
anymore.

Mantucci took a deep breath. Max cringed in
anticipation. "I'm afraid I have bad news," Mantucci said. "It
pains me to say that I will not be able to make an offer for
Suncrest."

I knew it.

"Even before this terrible fire, this was a
very difficult arrangement for me to make. As you know, I have to
line up a partner. But now"—he let his voice trail off—"now, with
this bad news that has made its way to Italy and all around the
world, I'm afraid none of my potential partners is willing to make
the commitment."

Suncrest is cursed. Now everybody knows
it
.

"This is a great disappointment to me, Max. I
am very sorry."

Mantucci didn't know the first thing about
disappointment. Max didn't want to sound desperate, but he had to
say something. "Suncrest is still very valuable, you know. It's not
like the fire ruined it."

"Of course not, I completely understand. But
you see . . ." He sounded pained. "The fire, may I say, is the
culmination of events. I know you have had difficulties with your
sauvignon blanc this year, and there have been other matters."

Max harrumphed. Mantucci might live in Italy,
but he was surprisingly plugged in to valley gossip.

"Again, I am sorry," Mantucci repeated, and
at that point Max gave up. He ended the call a little later and
flopped down on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Then came a knock
on his door. "Come in," he muttered.

It was Mrs. Finchley. "I thought you should
know that your mother will be coming home tonight."

"What?" He bolted upright. "Why tonight?"

Mrs. Finchley's brows arched. "Why, because
of the fire, of course."

"She knows about the fire?"

"Of course she does." Mrs. Finchley backed
out into the hall, looking as prim and self-righteous as ever. "I
called her." The door clicked shut.

Max closed his eyes. Just what he needed.