The Villa

by Nora Roberts

  Tyler paced outside with the phone. The house seemed too small when he was talking to his father. California seemed too small when he was talking to his father.

  Not that he was doing any talking at the moment, just listening to the usual gripes and complaints.

  He let them run through his head. The country club was rife with gossip and black humor involving him. His current wife—Ty had actually lost track of how many Mrs. MacMillans there'd been by this time—had been humiliated at the spa. Expected invitations for various social functions had not been forthcoming.

  Something had to be done about it, and quickly. It was Eli's responsibility to keep the family name above reproach, which he had obviously ignored by marrying the Italian woman in the first place. But be that as it may, it was essential, it was imperative, that the MacMillan name, label and company be severed from Giambelli. He expected Tyler to use all his influence before it was too late. Eli was old, and obviously long past the time for retirement.

  "Finished?" Tyler didn't wait for his father's assent or objection. "Because here's how it's going to be. You have any complaints or comments, you direct them to me. If you call and harass Granddad again, I'll do whatever I can, legally, to revoke that trust fund you've been living off of for the last thirty years."

  "You have no right to—"

  "No, you have no right. You never worked a day for this company, any more than you and my mother worked a day to be parents. Until he's ready to step aside, Eli MacMillan runs this show. And when he's ready to step aside, I'll run it. Believe me, I won't be as patient as he's been. You cause him one more moment's grief, and we'll have more than a phone conversation about it."

  "Are you threatening me? Do you plan to send someone after me like Tony Avano?"

  "No, I know how to hit you where it hurts. I'll see to it all your major credit cards are canceled. Remember, you're not dealing with an old man now. Don't fuck with me."

  He jabbed the off button, considered heaving the phone, then spotted Sophia standing at the edge of the patio.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to eavesdrop." If he'd looked angry, she could have brushed it off, but he looked miserable. She knew, how well she knew, what it was like. So she went to him, cupped his face in her hands. "Sorry," she said again.

  "No big deal. Just a conversation with dear old Dad." Disgusted, he tossed the phone onto the patio table. "What do you need?"

  "I heard the weather report, so I know there's a frost warning tonight. I wondered if you wanted any company out there."

  "No, thanks. I can handle it." He lifted her bangs, studied the healing wound. "Very attractive."

  "Those things always look worse a few days later. But I don't feel stiff when I wake up in the morning anymore. Ty… tell me what's wrong."

  "Nothing. I handled it."

  "Yes, yes, you can handle anything. Me too. We're so annoying." She gave his shoulders a squeeze. "I told you where it hurt. Now you tell me."

  He started to shrug her off, then realized he didn't want to. "My father. He's sniping at my grandfather about all the bad press, all the police business. Interfering with his tennis lessons, or something. I told him to lay off."

  "Will he?"

  "If he doesn't, I'm going to talk to Helen about putting some leaks in his trust fund. That'll shut him up quick enough. The son of a bitch. The son of a bitch never did a day's work in his life—worse, never stirred himself up to show an ounce of gratitude for what he was given. Just takes and takes, then whines if he runs into a bump. No wonder he and your father got along so well."

  He caught himself, cursed. "Goddamn it, Sophie. Sorry."

  "No, don't be. You're right."

  There was a bond here, she thought, that neither of them had acknowledged before. Perhaps this was the time.

  "Ty, have you ever considered how lucky we are, you and I, that certain genes skipped a generation? Don't close off," she said before he could draw away. "You're so like Eli."

  She combed her fingers through his hair. She'd come to love the way she could tease out the reds. "Tough guy," she said as she touched her lips to his cheek. "Solid as a rock. Don't let the weak space between you and Eli cut at you."

  As his temper deflated, he laid his forehead lightly on hers. "I never needed him—my father." Not, he thought, the way you needed yours. "Never wanted him."

  "And I needed, wanted too much from mine for too long. That's part of what made us what we are. I like who we are."

  "I guess you're not half-bad, considering." He gave her arms a casual caress. "Thanks." He leaned down, kissed the top of her head. "I wouldn't mind a little company on frost watch tonight."

  "I'll bring the coffee."

  Chapter Twenty-One

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  Tiny flowering buds, bursting open as the lengthening days bathed them in sunlight, covered the vines. The earth was turned, opened to hold the promise of new plantings. Trees held their spring leaves in tight fists of stingy green, but here and there sprouts, brave and young, speared out of the ground. In the woods, nests were heavy with eggs, and mother ducks guarded their newly hatched babies while they swam in the stream.

  April, Tereza thought, meant rebirth. And work. And hope that winter was over at last.

  "The Canada geese are about to hatch," Eli told her as they took their morning walk in the cool and quiet mist.

  She nodded. Her father had used that same natural barometer to judge the timing of the year's harvest. She had learned to watch the sky, the birds, the ground, as much as she watched the vines. "It'll be a good year. We had plenty of winter rain."

  "Still a couple weeks yet to worry about frosts. But I think we've timed the new plantings well."

  She looked over the rise of land to where the ground was well plowed. She'd given fifty acres for the new plantings, vines of European origin grafted to rootstock native to America. They'd chosen prime varieties—Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chenin Blanc. And, consulting with Tyler, had done much the same on MacMillan ground.

  "In five years, perhaps four, we'll see them bear fruit." She had learned, too, to look from the moment to the future in one sweeping glance. Cycle would always spin into cycle.

  "We'll have been together a quarter of a century, Eli, when what we plant now comes home to us."

  "Tereza." He took her shoulders, turned her to face him, and she felt a shiver of alarm. "This is my last harvest."

  "Eli—"

  "I'm not going to die." To reassure, he ran his hands down her arms. "I want to retire. I've been thinking of it, seriously thinking of it since you and I traveled to Italy. We've let ourselves become too rooted here and there," he said, gesturing toward MacMillan land, "and at the castello. Let's do this last planting, you and I, and let our children harvest. It's time."

  "We talked of this. Five years or so we said before we stepped aside. A gradual process."

  "I know. But these last months have reminded me how quickly a life, even a way of life, can end. There are places I want to see before my time's up. I want to see them with you. I'm tired, Tereza, of living my life to the demands of each season."

  "My life, the whole of it, has been Giambelli." Tereza stepped away from him, touched a delicate white blossom. "How can I turn from it now, when it's wounded. Eli, how can we pass something to our children that's blighted?"

  "Because we trust them. Because we believe in them. Because, Tereza, they've earned the chance."

  "I don't know what to say to this."

  "Think about it. There's plenty of time before the harvest. I've thought. I don't want to give Ty what he's earned, what he deserves, in my will. I want to give it to him while I'm alive. There's been enough death this year." He looked over the buds toward the new plantings. "It's time to let things grow."

  So she turned from the vines toward him. A tall man weathered by time, by sun, by wind, with an old and faithful dog at his side. "I don't know if I can give you what you're asking me. But I'll promise to thi
nk about it."

  "Effervescence is the essential ingredient in a sparkling wine." Pilar led a winery tour through a favorite phase. The creation of champagne. "But the first stage is to make the still wine. These"—she pointed at the racked bottles in the cellars—"are aged for several months, then blended. We call the blend cuvee, from the French, where it's believed the process has its origin. We're grateful to that very fortunate monk Dom Perignon for making the discovery and being the first to, as he called it, drink stars."

  "If it's just wine, what makes it bubble?"

  "The second fermentation, which Dom Perignon discovered in the seventeenth century."

  Her answer was smooth and practiced. Questions tossed out by groups no longer spooked her or made her scramble for answers.

  Dressed in a trim suit and low heels, she stepped to the side as she spoke so her group could take a closer look at the racked wine.

  "It was initially thought to be a problem," she continued. "Wine bottled in fall popping their corks, or what was in those days cotton wadding, in the spring. Very troublesome, and in particular in the Champagne district of France. The Benedictine, the cellar master at the Abbey in Hautvillers, applied himself to this problem. He ordered thicker stoppers, but this caused the bottles themselves to break. Determined, he ordered stronger bottles. Both the stoppers and the bottles held, and the monk was able to sample the re-fermented wine. It was the first champagne toast."

  She paused to give the group an opportunity to shuffle around the racks. Voices echoed in the cellars, so she waited until they subsided.

  "Today…" A little flutter of anxiety rippled through her when David joined her group. "Today we create champagne quite purposely, though for the best we follow the traditional methods developed centuries ago in that French abbey. Using methode champenoise, the winemaker bottles the young, blended wines. A small quantity of yeast and sugar is added to each bottle, then the bottle is capped, as you see here."

  She took the sample bottle to pass among the tour. "The additive triggers the second fermentation, which we call, again in the French, prise de mousse. The bubbles result from the conversion of sugar into alcohol. Capped, the bubbles can't escape into the air. These bottles are then aged, from two to four years."

  "There's gunk in here," someone commented.

  "The sample bottle demonstrates sedimentation and particle separation. This is a natural process during this second aging and fermentation. The bottles are stored neck down on these inclined racks, and are lifted out and twisted every day for months."

  "By hand?"

  Pilar smiled at the woman who frowned at the wall of bottles. "Yes. As you've seen through the tour, Giambelli-MacMillan believes every bottle of wine offered to the consumer requires the art, the science and the labor necessary to earn the label. This turning process is called riddling, or in French, remuage, and accelerates the particle separation so that in a matter of months the wine is clear. When it is, the bottles are racked upside down to keep the particles in the neck."

  "If they drink that stuff, it's no wonder it kills them."

  It was said in a whisper, but it carried. Pilar tensed, felt her rhythm break, but kept going. "It's the winemaker's task to determine when the wine's reached its peak. At this point, the bottle is frozen at the neck in a solution of brine. In that way, the cap can be removed, no wine is lost and the frozen sediment slides out. Degorgement, or disgorging.

  The bottle is topped off with more wine or a bit of la dosage—brandy or sugar to sweeten it—"

  "Or a little digitalis."

  Her rhythm faltered again, and a number of people shifted uneasily. Still she shook her head as David took a step forward. "Throughout the process, as with any wine bearing our label, there are safety checks and security measures. When the sparkling wine is judged ready, it's corked and shipped to market so that you can bring it to your table for your own celebration.

  "There are cheaper and less cumbersome ways to create champagne, but Giambelli-MacMillan believes tradition, quality and attention to detail are essential to our wines."

  She smiled as she took back the sample bottle. "At the end of the tour, you'll be able to judge for yourself in our tasting room."

  Pilar let the guests mingle in the tasting room, enjoy their complimentary samples, and answered individual questions. It was, she'd discovered, very much like entertaining. That, she'd always had the knack for. Better, it made her feel not just part of the family, but part of the team.

  "Nice job." David stepped up beside her.

  "Thanks."

  "Despite the heckler."

  "He isn't my first. I think I've gotten the hang of it. At least my palms don't sweat anymore. I'm still studying. There are times I feel like I'm back in school cramming for exams, but it's satisfying. I still have to—"

  She broke off as a man at the end of the bar began to gag. He clutched his throat, staggered back. Even as Pilar rushed forward, he began to laugh uproariously.

  The same joker, David realized, who'd made the sarcastic cracks in the cellar. Before he could deal with the situation, Pilar was taking over.

  "I'm sorry." Her voice was a coo of polite concern. "Isn't the wine to your taste?"

  He gave another snort of laughter even as his wife jabbed her elbow viciously into his side. "Cut it out, Barry."

  "Aw, come on. It's funny."

  "Humor's often subjective, isn't it?" Pilar said pleasantly. "Of course, we at Giambelli-MacMillan have difficulty finding amusement in the tragic deaths of two of our own, but we appreciate your trying to lighten the mood. Perhaps you should try it again, with our Merlot." She signaled to the bartender. "It's more appropriate."

  "No, thanks." He patted his belly. "I'm more of a beer man."

  "Really? I'd never have guessed."

  "You're such a jerk, Barry." His wife snatched her purse off the bar and steamed out the door.

  "It was a joke! Jeez." Hitching up his belt, he hurried after her. "Can't anybody take a joke?"

  "Well now." Pilar turned to her group. People were either goggling or pretending to look elsewhere. "Now that we've had our comic relief, I hope you've enjoyed your tour. I'm here to answer any questions you may have. Please feel free to visit our retail shop, where our wines, including those you've sampled, are available. We at Villa Giambelli hope you'll visit us again, and stop by our sister facility at the MacMillan Winery, only minutes away here in Napa. We wish you buon viaggio, wherever your travels take you."

  David waited until people began to wander off before he took Pilar's arm and led her outside. "I was premature on the nice job. I should've said fabulous. Fabulous job. Though I'd've been more inclined to crack that idiot over the head with the bottle of Merlot than offer him one."

  "Oh, I do. Mentally." She drew a deep breath, stepped away from the vine-covered stone of the old winery. "We get someone like Barry once or twice a week. Responding in an obnoxiously pleasant manner seems to work best. It helps that I'm family."

  "I haven't come in before during your tours. Didn't want you to think I was checking up on you." He lifted her pearls, let them run through his fingers. "You, Ms. Giambelli, are a natural."

  "You know what? You're right," she agreed, delighted with herself. "Just as you were right to push me into this. It gives me something tangible to do."

  "I didn't push you. The fact that no one does is one of your secrets. You figured out a long time ago how to live your life the way that made sense to you at the time. Times changed. I opened a door, but you're the one who walked through it."

  "That's very interesting." Amused at both of them, she cocked her head. "I'm not sure my family would agree with you. I'm not sure I do."

  "It took spine to stay in a marriage that wasn't a marriage because you took your vows seriously. It would have been easier to walk away. I know all about that."

  "You give me too much credit."

  "I don't think so, but if you want to be grateful I gave you a nudge into this jo
b, I'll take it. Especially," he added, sliding his hands up her arms, "if you think of a way to pay me back."

  "I could think of something." She let her fingers link with his. Flirting, she thought, got easier with practice. She'd certainly been enjoying her lessons. "We could start with dinner."

  "I've been scoping out this little inn."

  "That's very nice." But dinner at the inn was a date—and formal, however much they enjoyed each other's company. She was,