The Villa

by Nora Roberts

  Ty was thinking the same thing about life in general as Sophia whipped him into a meeting—a brainstorming session, she called it. She'd rattled off names at him as she'd zipped through the advertising section. Gesturing, calling out orders and greetings, snatching up messages as she went.

  He remembered none of the names, of course, and the faces had all been a blur as he'd kept pace with Sophia. The woman moved like a linebacker with an intercepted ball in her hand. Fast and slick.

  There were three other people in the room now, all what he thought of as Urban Warriors with their trendy clothes and trendy hair and little wire-rim glasses and electronic palm books. Two were female, one was male. All were young and handsome. He couldn't for the life of him remember who was who, as they'd all had androgynous names.

  He had some kind of fancy coffee in his hand he hadn't wanted and everyone was talking at once and munching on biscotti.

  He was getting a killer headache.

  "No, Kris, what I'm looking for is subtle but powerful. A strong image with an emotional message. Trace, quick sketch: couple—young, casual, late twenties. Relaxing on a porch. Sexual, but keep it casual."

  Since the man with the blond choppy hair picked up the pencil and sketch pad, Ty assumed he was Trace.

  "It's sunset," Sophia continued, rising from her desk to wander the room. "End of day. This is a working couple, no kids, upwardly mobile, but settled."

  "Porch swing," the perky black woman in a red vest suggested.

  "Too settled. Too country. Wicker love seat, maybe," Sophia said. "Strong color in the cushions. Candles on the table. Fat ones, not tapers."

  She leaned over Trace's shoulder, made humming noises. "Good, good, but do it this way. Have them looking at each other, maybe have her leg swung over his knees. Friendly intimacy. Roll up his sleeves, put her in jeans, no, in khakis."

  She sat on the edge of her desk, lips pursed as she pondered. "I want them to be having a conversation. Relaxed, having a moment. Enjoying each other's company after a busy day."

  "What if one of them's pouring the wine. Holding the bottle."

  "We'll try that. You want to sketch that one out, P.J.?"

  With a nod perky P.J., as Ty now thought of her, picked up her pad.

  "You should have water." The second woman, a redhead who looked bored and annoyed, stifled a yawn.

  "I see we've interrupted Kris's nap," Sophia said sweetly, and Ty caught the quick, simmering glare under the redhead's lowered lashes.

  "Suburban scenes bore me. At least water adds an element, and subliminal sexuality."

  "Kris wants water." Sophia nodded, pushed to her feet to wander the room while she considered. "Water's good. A pond, a lake. We can get good light from that. Reflections. Take a look, Ty. What do you think?"

  He did his best to tune back in and look intelligent as Trace turned his sketch around. "I don't know anything about advertising. It's a nice sketch."

  "You look at ads," Sophia reminded him. "All the time, whether you consciously take in the message or not. What does this say to you?"

  "It says they're sitting on the porch drinking wine. Why can't they have kids?"

  "Why should they?"

  "You got a couple, on a porch. Porch usually means house. Why can't they have kids?"

  "Because we don't want young kids in an ad for an alcoholic beverage," Kris said, with a hint of a sneer in her voice. "Advertising 101."

  "Evidence of kids then. You know, some toys on the porch. Then it says these people have a family, have been together awhile and are still happy to sit on the porch together and have a glass of wine at the end of the day. That's sexy."

  Kris started to open her mouth, then noted the gleam come into Sophia's eyes. And wisely closed it again.

  "That's good. That's excellent," Sophia said. "Even better for this one. Toss toys on the porch, Trace. Keep the wine bottle on the table with the candles. Here's our cozy yet hip suburban couple.

  "Celebrate the sunset," she murmured. "It's your moment. Relax with Giambelli. It's your wine."

  "More cozy than hip," Kris muttered.

  "We use an urban setting for hip. Two couples, friends getting together for an evening. Apartment scene. Keep them young, keep them slick. Show me the city out the window. Lights and silhouettes."

  "Coffee table," P.J. put in, already sketching. "A couple of them sitting on the floor. The others lounging on the couch, everybody talking at once. You can almost hear music playing. Food scattered on the table. Takeout. This is where we pour the wine."

  "Good, perfect. Celebrate Tuesday. Same tags."

  "Why Tuesday?" Ty wanted to know in spite of himself.

  "Because you never make big plans for Tuesday." Sophia slid onto the edge of the desk again, crossed her legs. "You make plans for the weekend. You fall into plans otherwise. Tuesday night with friends is spontaneous. We want people to pick up a bottle of our wine on the spur. Just because it's Tuesday. Your moment, your wine. That's the pitch."

  "The wine's Giambelli-MacMillan."

  She nodded. "Correct. We need to identify that as well within the campaign. A wedding. Celebrate our marriage. Champagne, flowers, a gorgeous couple."

  "Honeymoon's sexier," Trace commented as he refined his other sketch. "Same elements, but in a snazzy hotel room. Wedding dress hanging on the door and our couple in a lip lock with champagne on ice."

  "If they're in a lip lock, they're not going to be thinking about drinking," Ty said.

  "Good point. Hold the kiss, but the rest is great. Show me…" Her hands began to move. "Anticipation. Silk, flowers, and put the flutes in their hands. Give me eye lock instead of lip lock. Go, my children, and create magic. See what you can get me in the next few hours. Think: Moments. The special and the ordinary."

  She recrossed her legs as her team headed out, talking over one another. "Not bad, MacMillan. Not bad at all."

  "Good. Can we go home now?"

  "No. I've got a lot of stuff to deal with here, and more to pack up in order to set up an office at the villa. Can you draw?"

  "Sure."

  "That's a plus." She scooted off the desk to cross over and dig a sketch pad from a wall of shelves.

  There were a lot of things on the shelves, Ty noted. Not just business junk, but the knickknacks people, particularly female people, in his opinion, seemed to collect. Leading the pack of the dust catchers were frogs. Little green frogs, larger bronze frogs, dancing frogs, fashionably dressed frogs and what appeared to be mating frogs.

  They didn't seem to jibe with the sleekly dressed woman who bulleted down office corridors on high heels and smelled like a night in the forest.

  "Looking for a prince?"

  "Hmm?" She glanced back, following his gesture. "Oh. No, princes are too high-maintenance. I just like frogs. Here's what I see. A kind of montage. The vineyards, the sweep of them in the sunlight. Vines pregnant with grapes. A solitary figure walking through the rows. Then close up, enormous baskets of grapes, just harvested."

  "We don't use baskets."

  "Work with me here, Ty. Simplicity, accessibility, tradition. Gnarled hands holding the basket. Then on to the casks, rows and rows of wooden casks, dim light of the caves. The mystery, the romance. A couple of interesting-looking guys in work clothes drawing out the free flow.

  We'll use red, a lovely spill of red wine out of a cask. Then different workers tasting, testing. Then finally a bottle. Maybe two glasses and a corkscrew beside it.

  "From vine to table. A hundred years of excellence. No, from our vines to your table." Her brow furrowed as she pictured the ad in her mind. "We lead with the hundred years of excellence, then the montage, and below: From our vines to your table. The Giambelli-MacMillan tradition continues."

  She turned back to him, looked over his shoulder, then let out a snort. He'd been sketching while she talked, and the result was circles and stick men and a lopsided column she supposed was a bottle of red.

  "You said you could dr
aw."

  "I didn't say I could draw well."

  "Okay, we're in some trouble here. Sketching isn't my strong suit, though compared to you, I'm da Vinci. I work better when I have some visual aides." She blew out a breath, paced. "We'll make do. I'll have the team fax me sketches as we go. We'll coordinate schedules so that we can hold a weekly session either here or at my office in the villa."

  She dropped down on the arm of his chair, frowned into space. She was tuned in to her team, and had sensed the undercurrents. It was something she needed to deal with right away. "I need a half hour here. Why don't you head over to Armani, and I'll meet you there."

  "Why am I going to Armani?"

  "Because you need clothes."

  "I have plenty of clothes."

  "Honey, your clothes are like your drawing. They meet the basic definition, but they aren't going to win any prizes. I get to outfit you, then you can buy me the proper vintner attire." She gave his shoulder an idle pat, then rose.

  He wanted to argue, but didn't want to waste time. The sooner they were finished and driving north, the happier he'd be.

  "Where's Armani?"

  She stared at him. The man had lived an hour out of San

  Francisco for years. How could he not know? "See my assistant. She'll point you in the right direction. I'll be right behind you."

  "One suit," Ty warned as he walked to the door. "That's it."

  "Mmm." They would see about that, she thought. It might be fun to dress him up a bit. Sort of like molding clay. But before the fun started, she had work. She walked back to her desk and picked up the phone. "Kris, can I see you a minute? Yeah, now. My time's pretty tight."

  With a roll of her shoulders, Sophia began gathering files and disks.

  She'd worked with Kris for more than four years, and was very aware there had been considerable resentment when the fresh-out-of-college Sophia had taken over as head of the department. They'd come to terms, delicately, but she had no doubt that Kris's nose was now seriously out of joint.

  Couldn't be helped, Sophia thought. Had to be dealt with.

  There was a brisk knock, and Kris stepped in. "Sophia, I've got a pile of work."

  "I know. Five minutes. It's going to be rough shuffling things around between here and Napa for the next several months. I'm in a pinch, Kris."

  "Really? You don't look pinched."

  "You didn't see me pruning vines at dawn. Look, my grandmother has reasons for what she does and how she does them. I don't always understand them, and I very often don't like them, but it's her company. I just work here."

  "Right. Um-hmm."

  Sophia stopped packing up, laid her palms on her desk and met Kris's eyes dead-on. "If you think I'm going to enjoy juggling my time between the work I love and mucking around the vineyards, you're crazy. And if you think Tyler is gunning for a position here in these offices, think again."

  "Excuse me, but he now has a position in these offices."

  "And one you believe should be yours. I'm not going to disagree with you, but I'm telling you it's temporary. I need you here. I'm not going to be able to drive down here every day, I'm not going to be able to take all the meetings or delegate every assignment. Essentially, Kris, you've just been promoted. You don't get a new title, but I will do everything I can to see that you get the financial compensation for the extra responsibilities that are about to be dumped on you."

  "It's not about the money."

  "But money never hurts," Sophia finished. "Ty's position here, and his title, are titular. He doesn't know anything about promotion and marketing, Kris, and isn't particularly interested in either."

  "Interested enough to make comments and suggestions this morning."

  "Just a minute." She could be patient, Sophia thought, but she would not be pushed. "Do you expect him to sit here like a moron? He's entitled to express an opinion, and it so happens he made very decent suggestions. He's been tossed off the cliff without a parachute, and he's coping. Take a lesson."

  Kris set her teeth. She'd been with Giambelli nearly ten years and was sick to death of being passed over for their precious bloodline. "He has a parachute, and so do you. You were born with it. Either one of you screw up, you bounce. That doesn't go for the rest of us."

  "I won't go into personal family business with you. I will say you're a valued member of the Giambelli, and now the Giambelli-MacMillan, organization. I'm sorry if you feel your skills and talents have been overlooked or undervalued. Whatever I can do to correct this, will be done. But these adjustments must be made, and over the next several months it would pay all of us to make sure we don't screw up. I have to be able to depend on you. If I can't, I need you to let me know so that I can make other arrangements."

  "I'll do my job." Kris turned to the door, yanked it open. "And yours."

  "Well," Sophia murmured when the door slammed smartly. "That was fun." On a sigh, she picked up her phone again. "P.J., I need a minute."

  "No, we want classic. This very subtle chalk stripe to start."

  "Fine, great. I'll take it. Let's go."

  "Tyler." Sophia pursed her lips and patted his cheek. "Go try it on, like a good boy."

  He snagged her wrist. "Mom?"

  "Yes, dear?"

  "Cut it out."

  "If you'd done more than brood for the last thirty minutes on your own, we'd be practically out the door. This one," she said, handing him the rich brown with narrow stripes, "and this." She selected a classic black three-piece.

  To cut off any complaints, she wandered away from him to ponder the shirts. "Shawn?" She gestured to one of the associates she knew by sight. "My friend Mr. MacMillan? He's going to need guidance."

  "I'll take good care of him, Ms. Giambelli. By the way, your father and his fiancée were in just this morning."

  "Really?"

  "Yes, shopping for their honeymoon. If you're looking for something special for the wedding, we have a fabulous new evening jacket that would be smashing on you."

  "I'm a little pressed for time today," she managed. "I'll come back and see it first chance I get."

  "Just let me know. I'll be happy to send some selections to you for approval. I'll just check on Mr. MacMillan."

  "Thanks." She picked up a dress shirt blindly, stared hard at the cream-on-cream pattern.

  Not wasting a minute, she thought. Shopping for the honeymoon before the divorce is final. Spreading the word far and wide.

  Maybe, maybe it was best she'd be out of her usual loop in the city for a while. She wouldn't be running into people chatting about her father's wedding every time she turned around.

  Why was she letting it hurt her? And if it did, this much, how much worse was it on her mother?

  No point in raging, she told herself, and started through the shirts like a woman panning for gold in a fast stream. No point in sulking.

  No point in thinking.

  She moved from shirts to ties and had a small mountain of choices when Ty came out of the dressing room.

  He looked annoyed, faintly mortified and absolutely gorgeous.

  Take the farmer out of the dell, she mused, and just look what you got. Big, broad shoulders, narrow hips and long legs in a classic Italian suit.

  "My, my." She angled her head, approving. "You do clean up well, MacMillan. Leave fashion to the Italians and you can't go wrong. Call the tailor, Shawn, and let's get this show on the road."

  She walked over with two shirts, the cream-on-cream and a deep brown, held them up to the jacket.