Tangled Vines

by Janet Dailey

  “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mademoiselle Douglas.” He greeted her with a preoccupied courtesy, the line of his mouth curving without managing to break his sober face. Kelly wondered how many had mistaken his distracted air for aloofness.

  “The honor is mine, Baron Fougere,” she insisted, then added, “and New York’s.”

  He nodded with a trace of vagueness, then, almost belatedly, remembered the woman at his side. “Forgive me, my wife, ‘Baroness Natalie Eugenie Magdalene Fougere. Mademoiselle Douglas. And you know our host, Monsieur Townsend.”

  Kelly turned toward his wife, a slim, petite woman, easily twenty years younger than her husband. “I’m very happy to meet you, Baroness Fougere.”

  “Natalie, please.” Her smile was bright and quick, like her eyes. Her hair lay darkly on top of her head, exposing small and dainty ears with diamond-and-ruby pendants. A love of color was obvious in her gown of metallic silk chiffon in a swirl of rainbow hues. “We are in America. It is not the place for titles. May I call you Kelly?”

  “Please.” It was impossible not to like her. And impossible not to see the stark contrast of natures in husband and wife.

  “Your city is a most fascinating place,” she told Kelly. “It must be very exciting to live here.”

  “At times,” she admitted. “Is this your first visit to New York?”

  “I have been here twice before, but there is so much to see and do, I could never tire of it,” Natalie Fougere declared, unaware that the baron’s attention had already wandered. But Kelly was.

  “Nearly everyone feels that way – New York may tire of you, but you never tire of it,” Kelly replied, and the baroness laughed in delighted agreement, the sound like musical notes on a scale, all light and airy. The baron glanced at her in his grave, absentminded way, having heard none of the exchange.

  “That is an excellent – how do you say? – bon mot, Kelly.”

  “Merely an observation from one who lives here,” she corrected, then turned to include the baron. “I’m told, Baron Fougere, that you have an outstanding library at Chateau Noir.”

  His eyes lit up at the mention of it, his expression becoming almost animated. “It is true the collection holds many fine and rare first editions. But the credit is not mine. They are books acquired by my family over the years. Over the centuries. The library is a source of great enjoyment to me.”

  He went on at length, referring to works by some of the world’s greatest writers and philosophers. A few of the names and titles Kelly remembered from her college days, enough that she was able to respond with some display of intelligence.

  “You must come to Chateau Noir so that I may show you the treasures of its library,” the baron stated in a tone that made it sound like a command.

  Before Kelly had a chance to respond, Gil Rutledge walked up and laid a friendly hand on the baron’s shoulder. “Emile,” he said in greeting. “I see you have met the very charming and attractive Miss Douglas.”

  “Indeed I have.”

  Gil flashed a smile at Kelly. “Did the baron tell you that he was still in short pants the first time we met?”

  Kelly tried, and failed, to imagine this scholarly-looking man before her as a very young boy. “No, he didn’t mention that.”

  “It was back in ‘forty-five,” Gil recalled. “The war in Europe was over and the first atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan only the day before. I was a young second lieutenant, stationed in France at the time. I had a month’s leave coming and Emile’s grandfather graciously invited me to spend it at Chateau Noir.”

  “The ‘forty-five Chateau Noir,” Hugh murmured almost reverently. “That is a truly noble wine.”

  “I am proud to say I was there for the birth of it,” Gil declared. “Even as it fermented, one could sense the future greatness of it. Several years later when the wine was released, Emile’s grandfather very generously sent a case to me. A memento of my visit to Chateau Noir, he called it. I still have a few bottles left. I assure you they are reserved for very special celebrations.” He turned to Emile. “Perhaps we will have an occasion to open one in the near future, Emile.”

  “Perhaps,” he replied and added nothing more.

  Clay Rutledge observed the initial meeting between the baron and Kelly Douglas. His attention centered on her in absent appraisal and he continued to stand by the gilded console table. The faint thinning of his lips was the only outward sign that he was still smarting from the cut Sam had made in parting.

  When his father joined them, Clay’s glance drifted to him. There was nothing his father wouldn’t do to steal this deal from Katherine. Years ago Clay had learned that his father lived for only one thing – besting Katherine in the wine business. For as long as Clay could remember, she had dominated their lives, both before and after she had thrown his father out of the company and his young family out of the house. He had come to share his father’s hatred of her.

  The baron’s wife laughed at something Kelly said, drawing his glance. Clay studied her in quiet speculation, watching her smile fade, replaced by a look of polite interest as her husband took over the conversation. She was the baron’s second wife. Considerably younger than Fougere, she needed brightness and drama in her life and, Clay suspected from previous meetings, yearned for an ardent kind of affection her husband was far too sedate to show.

  He thought of the merger his father wanted so desperately. It was a thing that could be attacked on two fronts. While his father worked the business angle with the baron, he would use his persuasions on the baron’s wife.

  Clay waited until Kelly and Townsend had moved on to another cluster of guests, then wandered over to join the baron and his father. After an exchange of greetings, he chatted with the baron a full minute or more about the wine auction and the vertical selection of Bordeaux vintages donated by Chateau Noir. Then, with a slight turn of his head, he glanced at Natalie Fougere, giving her a faint smile, a nod, and nothing more.

  The baron divided a blank glance between them, then roused himself as if suddenly reminded of his manners. “You have met, non?” he inquired of his wife.

  “Yes.” She smiled slightly. “On two or three occasions.”

  “This makes the third, I believe,” Clay inserted smoothly.

  “We have attended many social functions. It is difficult to remember,” the baron offered in excuse.

  “I understand.” Clay nodded.

  Gil said something to the baron, claiming his attention. Clay moved to the side, as if to avoid intruding on their conversation, and held Natalie’s gaze, returning its veiled inspection. There, in the hollow of her throat, he saw the rapid beat of her pulse and knew he had stirred her. Instinct and experience told him the best method of approach: dark and serious, saying more with his tone than his words.

  “Are you enjoying your stay in New York?” he asked.

  “It is an exciting city. Do you not find it so?” She continued to watch him, her expression composed to show a mild interest in the conversation – and him.

  “If you are lonely and bored, it makes very little difference where you are.” Clay kept himself perfectly still, everything about him showing the intensity of restraint – his stance, his voice, his look.

  “I would think a man would find many enjoyable diversions here,” she replied, almost casually.

  “Perhaps I wish for things that can’t be.” He looked directly into her eyes. “As you do, I think.”

  Her eyes widened slightly. For an instant she was completely engrossed with him, her control slipping briefly to let a warmth and a hunger show before she recovered.

  “Many would wish for the things I have, Monsieur Rutledge.”

  “Of course,” he said, and turned back to his father and the baron without pressing her further. He had aroused her interest. For now that was enough. Tomorrow he knew the baron had a mee
ting with Katherine. And he also knew the baron never took his young wife to such business appointments. Which meant she would be left to her own devices. Or to his.

  Kelly slipped into the softly lit library. After more than an hour of circulating among the guests, smiling and chatting, she needed a break. She had never been comfortable at large social gatherings like this one. At least, not as a guest.

  She crossed to the window with its view of the Empire State Building, and the more distant twin towers of the World Trade Center. She opened her gold evening bag and took out a cigarette, lighting it.

  “Haven’t you heard? Smoking can be hazardous to your health.”

  With a faint start, she turned to face Sam Rutledge, her pulse skittering in reaction, all her nerves swimming to the surface. He lounged in a taupe-and-white-striped chair, the lamp beside it unlit. She noticed the faint curve of his lips and the tanned skin taut across his facial bones.

  Snapping her bag closed, she blew the smoke at the ceiling. “So are eggs, prime rib, sticky doughnuts, and walking along city streets after dark.” With effort, she managed an easy smile.

  “You left out alcohol.” He swirled the beer in his pilsner glass.

  “If you listen to all the health experts, the list is endless.”

  “True.” He rose from the chair and wandered over to stand by the window, his body angled toward her.

  She wished he had remained in the chair. She was tall, but he was taller. She was usually eye-level with most men, but with him, she had to look up. She didn’t like that. She felt a hum of tension and fought it.

  He leaned a shoulder against the glass and glanced back at the open doorway and the throng of well-dressed guests beyond it. The din of their collective voices filtered into the room. He brought his gaze back to her. The metallic threads woven through the gold lace of her dress shimmered in the room’s subdued lighting. It caused him to wonder if she wore more silk beneath it, or simply nothing at all.

  “I take it you felt the need for a little quiet, too,” he said and took a sip of beer.

  She smiled and nodded, something automatic in both responses, as if they were programmed. “It’s been a long day for me.”

  “I imagine it has.”

  “For you, too, I suppose,” she added. She looked relaxed, at ease, but there was a guarded look to her eyes when she glanced at him, giving Sam one more thing to wonder about. “Did you fly in today?”

  “Yesterday. Which gave Katherine a chance to rest a little before all the activities started.”

  He had calm eyes, Kelly thought. Dark and calm with a kind of quiet strength that would draw a woman. She had the impression he would defend what was his, protect it from harm.

  Annoyed, she looked away. She had learned to fight for herself long ago. She didn’t need anyone to look after her. She could take care of herself with no help from anyone.

  “Didn’t your wife come with you?”

  “I don’t have a wife.”

  Kelly gave him a half-startled look. “I thought I read somewhere that you were married.”

  “Past tense. We’re divorced.”

  “I never know what to say when people tell me that.” She toyed with her cigarette. “Whether I should be sympathetic and say I’m sorry, or rejoice with them and be glad.”

  “Be glad.” He smiled faintly. “I am.”

  “All right. I’m glad for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Katherine seems to be enjoying herself.” Kelly had a brief glimpse of the Rutledge family matriarch through a break in the string of guests clustered around her.

  “She’s had an audience surrounding her all evening.” Which thankfully had meant Kelly had needed to do no more than catch her eye, smile and nod from the fringes, and any social obligation was satisfied.

  “Katherine enjoys any opportunity to talk about the wine trade. Which is hardly surprising, I guess. To the whole Rutledge family, life is a cabernet.” His mouth slanted in a wryly cynical line.

  Kelly smiled at his play on words, and then eyeing him curiously, she felt compelled to point out: “You’re a Rutledge.”

  His grin became more pronounced, as did the gleam of amusement in his eye. “Katherine would tell you that I’m one of those big, strong, slow-growing cabernets, with a little too much tannin yet. She tends to describe people as wines, regarding both as living things with individual characteristics. In your case -” He paused, his look turning thoughtful as he studied her, his gaze a little too direct, and a lot too personal. “I think she would have some difficulty figuring you out. You’re definitely a dry wine rather than a sweet. Probably a white variety-“

  “I hope not,” Kelly interrupted with deliberate lightness. “They don’t have a very long life.”

  “Some do, depending on the variety and the vintage.

  “That wouldn’t be so bad then.” She tapped her cigarette on a crystal ashtray, knocking off the buildup of gray ash. “I hope Katherine wasn’t offended by any of the questions I asked during the interview.”

  “If she was, you would have known it already,” Sam assured her, conscious that she had deliberately swung the focus of the conversation away from herself. “I have the feeling she probably found your questions challenging and Katherine likes challenges. Any vintner does. If they don’t, they’d better get out of the business.”

  “Obviously that has to mean you like them, too.”

  “I do.” And he was looking at one now. “How long did you live in Napa Valley before your family moved away?”

  “Not long.” She let out the smoke slowly, stalling. “Iowa is a great place to grow up, though. The air is fresh. No smog, no pollution. Everybody knows everybody, and there’s always something going on – Friday-night football games at the high school, homecoming parades, hayrides, Christmas programs at the church, sledding parties, Memorial Day parades, summer softball games, county fairs, detasseling crews walking the corn rows-“

  “Did you detassel corn?” he broke in curiously.

  “By that, are you implying that you think I was tall enough?” She raised an eyebrow in light challenge.

  “Actually I was trying to picture you in blue jeans and a plaid shirt, your hair in pigtails and a straw hat on your head.” His gaze skimmed her face. “With your fair skin, you must have wound up with a ton of freckles.”

  “No.” But she noticed he had some, although very faint beneath his sun-bronzed tan. They should have given him a boyish look, but his face was too rugged. “I looked like a boiled lobster instead.”

  “Then you did detassel corn.”

  Little escaped him – she needed to remember that. “Just one summer. After that, I got a job at a low-budget, low-frequency radio station first as a receptionist and general dogsbody. Within a couple months the station manager had me subbing for the disc jockeys whenever one of them didn’t show up. It wasn’t long before I got a slot of my own.”

  “With your voice, I’m not surprised.”

  “It helped. And it also helped that I could double as an engineer, newscaster, weather-person, and interviewer. Even program director and salesperson, if I had to.”

  “I suppose doing the news on radio is when you decided you wanted to get into the television side.”

  “Not really.” Kelly saw that he wasn’t drinking his beer, merely holding the glass, swirling it occasionally and letting the beer ride up the sides. “It was a very small radio station,” she reminded him. “Doing the news consisted of tearing the latest sheet from the wire and reading whatever was there. We called it rip ‘n’ read. At the time I wanted to get into print journalism, become a newspaper reporter. It wasn’t until my second year of college that I became interested in the television side. I worked as an intern for one of the local television stations for credits. Then, right before I graduated, they offered me a job as a reporte
r. I accepted.” She lifted one shoulder in a light shrug. “The rest, I guess you would say, is history.”

  She had spoken easily and naturally about her early work in radio, but Sam had noticed the subtle changes that had occurred the instant she mentioned television: the added warmth in her voice, the softening around the lips, and the quickening light in her eyes. Television was a medium Kelly Douglas loved, even if she didn’t express it with words. Just as he had never found the words to explain the challenge and contentment he found working in the vineyards and winery.

  “Your family must be very proud of you.”

  “I don’t have any.” Kelly ground her cigarette out in the ashtray and instantly regretted it. Now she had nothing to occupy her hands. “My mother died when I was eight, and I had just graduated from high school when I lost my father. There wasn’t anyone else, no brothers, no sisters, no one.”

  “It must have been rough for you.”

  “Life always seems rough – until you consider the alternative.”

  “True,” he conceded, a smile briefly lifting the corners of his mouth. Then he tipped his head to one side. “What kind of work did your father do?”

  “Anything, everything. As they say in Iowa, he would work wherever he was hitched.”

  Sam nodded absently as a hint of a frown touched his expression. “I just realized you said you were born in Napa Valley, but you never said what part. Was it St. Helena, Rutherford, Napa, Calistoga Springs?”

  When he started naming off the towns in the valley, Kelly knew she had to stop him. She crossed her arms and cocked her head, giving him an amused look.

  “What is this? Am I being interviewed or something?” she chided. “If you’re trying to find out how old I am, the answer is twenty-nine. I’m five-foot-eight, one hundred and twenty-five pounds, auburn hair and green eyes, single. I attended the University of Iowa, graduated fifteenth in my class. I like earth colors, Calvin Klein clothes, Cole Porter music – especially when it’s sung by Sinatra. I like Yoplait yogurt better than Dannon, and German chocolate cake, but I can’t stand devil’s food. I’d rather drink Evian water than Perrier. I have an occasional glass of wine, but never drink so-called hard liquor. I smoke, though I’m trying to cut back. There, have I left anything out?”