by Ellen Crosby
She looked like I’d said he offered us a bottle of hemlock. “That Washington wine was the centerpiece of the auction. Without it, we’ll be lucky to fill the guest bathroom with whoever shows up.”
“I tried talking to him, but he’s made up his mind,” I said. “We’ll just have to live with it. Now we need to figure out how to let people know it won’t be part of the auction.”
Amanda threw herself back against the sofa. “We can’t do that! I’ve been calling and e-mailing everyone on the planet crowing about that wine, for God’s sake. We’ll look stupid saying, ‘Hey, guess what?’”
“We’ll look more stupid when people show up and we can’t produce it,” I said. “Not to mention how angry everyone will be. They’ll think we lured them into coming under false pretenses.”
She glared at me. “God, what a mess! Have you told Ryan?”
“I haven’t told anybody. Not even Quinn.”
“Quinn.” She tossed her head. “I heard a rumor about him.”
“Oh?”
“I heard Shane Cunningham’s hot new girlfriend is Quinn’s ex-wife.”
“From a long time ago.” At least she didn’t know about him showing up for work drunk.
“And he was drinking in Leesburg the other night. Got completely plastered.”
“We’re off the subject of the auction,” I said. “And Quinn’s love life is his own business.”
Amanda’s eyes narrowed. “Love life, huh? I thought they were divorced. Are you saying he’s still in love with his ex? How interesting.”
“Poor choice of words. Can we get back to the auction? I still think we need to tell people.”
“Before we do anything, let me talk to Sunny. She might be able to persuade Jack to reconsider.”
Sunny and Amanda were best friends. What did we have to lose?
“Good luck,” I said. “He wants me to bring the bottle over to his house tomorrow evening. Can you talk to Sunny before then?”
“Oh, don’t you worry,” she said. “I’m on my way to see her as soon as I leave here.”
We walked outside together. Amanda pulled out her car keys. “I’ll follow you out,” she said.
“I’m, uh, going to stick around for a while.”
She smiled. “Really? Seeing Mick? You two still together?”
“He asked me to drop by the stables, that’s all.” I hoped she’d leave it alone, but I was blushing.
“He’s quite a catch.” She climbed into the Range Rover. “I heard you stuck it to the Orlandos the other day when they came by and asked you to close your farm to the hunt. They’ve got their nerve. Good for you for telling them to go to hell.”
What, in my life, didn’t Amanda know about? One thing about a small town, we lived in each other’s back pockets—though that was part and parcel of the way people looked after each other around here. Neighbors who’d show up to help dig a garden, take down a tree, pull a car out of a snowbank, or drop off a meal because someone was ill. I knew I could never live in a big city where my next-door neighbor might be a total stranger. Maybe that was the problem with the Orlandos. They underestimated the bonds between families who had lived here since before the Civil War.
“I don’t like being pushed around,” I said.
She started her engine. “What did they say?”
“What you’d expect.”
Amanda’s glance flickered down at my cane. “You’re just like your mother, Lucie. She had guts, too.”
She drove off and I walked to the stables. Even if Amanda persuaded Sunny to talk to Jack, I still didn’t think he’d change his mind about the Washington wine. In fact, less and less did I believe he’d told me the truth about why he wanted it back.
The wind had shifted during the day bringing in cooler air that sharpened the sky to a lacquered cerulean blue I had not seen for months. The Indian summer heat was gone for good.
I liked the ordered serenity I felt each time I walked into Mick’s stables with their pleasant smell of hay and leather. His horses lived a regimented life—especially the ones being schooled. Ultimately, though, it was the animals that decided what they would and wouldn’t do, and the trainers knew better than to try to force them otherwise. Mick raised thoroughbreds, which he planned to race, some foxhunters, and two strings of polo ponies. To care for them, he had a staff of six grooms and exercise riders who reported to Tommy Flaherty, his Irish head trainer. Mick and Tommy had spent all spring and summer supervising the renovation of the farm’s sprawling network of barns, stables, run-in sheds, paddocks and fields, as well as the repainting of miles of post-and-board fences, which divided his land like a giant checkerboard. Now that the work was finished, the place looked magnificent.
I glanced at my watch as I walked into the main stable. Just past four-thirty. Feeding time. Tommy had a rule about not letting anyone in the barns until after four o’clock during the months the thoroughbreds were in training.
“These horses are athletes,” he told me once, in his lilting, musical voice. “They train hard, darlin’, and they need to get their shuteye. I won’t have anyone disturbin’ them.”
I checked first on my favorite—Black Jack—a thoroughbred whose glossy coat fit his name. His feeding tub looked full, but he still came to the stall window when I called him and nuzzled my hand, looking for an extra treat. One of the grooms pulled a carrot out of his pocket and handed it to me.
“Got any apples?” I asked. “He loves apples.”
“Give him an apple and he’ll drool all over himself. He’s just been groomed.”
“Sorry, buddy,” I said to Black Jack. “You heard what the man said.”
“And what would that be?”
I whirled around. Mick stood there, looking amused.
“That apples are off limits for Black Jack.” My face felt hot. I should have asked the maid to tell him that I needed to return to the vineyard after my meeting with Amanda. I should not have come here.
“We’ll make an exception for the pretty lady, all right, Jackie boy?” Mick nodded at the groom, who went to fetch an apple. “We’ll clean you up again after that messy apple, won’t we?” He rubbed Jack’s nose as the groom handed it to me.
“How’d your meeting go with Amanda? She’s running this auction like a bloody military campaign,” he said.
I fed Black Jack, holding the apple while he ate. Gentleman that he was, he avoided chomping on my fingers, though he enjoyed his treat with teeth-baring gusto and a glint in his lovely, liquid brown eyes.
“Jack Greenfield decided to withdraw the Washington bottle this afternoon. He wants to keep it,” I said.
Mick ran his hand down the horse’s neck, studying him. “Sorry to hear that, but it makes sense. The intrinsic value of that bottle is out of this world. I’m sure Jack reconsidered now that it’s getting so much attention.”
“It doesn’t make sense to me. Or the disabled and homeless kids who lost out.”
He stopped patting Black Jack and considered me. “I’m sorry you’re upset but you’re thinking with your heart, Lucie. Jack’s a businessman. I would have done the same thing.”
“Then you’re both cynics.” I walked down to the tack room, leaning on my cane, and found a towel to wipe the apple juice off my hand.
When I came back, Mick pulled me close and brushed a lock of my hair out of my eyes. “I’m not a cynic, I’m a realist. Have dinner with me tonight. I’ll cook for us. You’ll be dazzled by my culinary skills.”
“No.” I didn’t want him teasing me when I was angry. “No, thanks.”
“You have dinner plans already?” He cupped my chin so I couldn’t look away. “I thought not. It’s settled. You’re dining with me. I behaved appallingly the other night and I want to make it up to you.”
“Mick—”
“Please.” His voice was soft in my hair. “Say yes.”
I knew I would regret this. “All right,” I said. “Yes.”
I finished making the r
ounds of the stables with him before we went back to the house. Our last stop was the stallion’s barn and the stall which contained Dunne Gone, a bay with a white blaze on his face. Tommy was sifting through straw with a pitchfork, mucking the stall when we got there.
“You’re keeping an eye on that hock?” Mick asked.
“Doc Harmon’s comin’ here first thing tomorrow when he does his daily rounds.”
“Good. Get the farrier in, too. He needs to reset Casbah’s rear shoe.”
“Already taken care of.”
Mick nodded. “See you in the morning, Tommy.”
“’Evening, sir. Good evening, Miss Montgomery.”
We walked back to the house holding hands. “Casbah’s racing on Saturday at the Point-to-Point,” Mick said. “Along with another of my maidens. I’d like you to come. Amanda’s having her usual tailgate. We could meet there.”
I knew—though he didn’t say it—that he expected his horses to win at the Point-to-Point and he wanted me to see that.
“I’ll bring my grandfather,” I said. “He’s visiting from Paris. I think you’d like him.”
We had reached the terrace by Mick’s swimming pool. When I’d been here last spring, he and I had spent many evenings watching the animals’ beautiful silhouettes from this spot until the sun set behind the Blue Ridge and everything faded to black. When a horse is a champion he shows it. Even from a distance I had seen that regal elegance in Mick’s horses. They knew their destiny and what they were meant to do. With the weather cooling off, he and Tommy had swapped the horses’ routines so they now spent days outside and nights inside. Tonight I missed seeing them.
His housekeeper had already prepared dinner—steaks, baby vegetables, and a salad for two. All he had to do was throw everything together.
I looked over at the plates and cutlery already stacked on a silver tray. “When am I supposed to be dazzled by your culinary skills?” I said. “Is it when you set the table, or when you take the wrapping off that gorgeous salad?”
He grinned. “It’s when I open the wine. Come on. I’ve got something I want you to try. Shane got me a couple of cases.”
A bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin and two Biot wineglasses sat on another tray on the drawing room sideboard. A Burgundy, this one from a grand cru vineyard in a part of France known as the Côte d’Or—the Gold Coast. It would be like drinking silk and velvet together.
I watched him uncork the wine. “Your drawing room looks lovely. Sunny did a wonderful job.”
“She knows what I like,” he said. “You’ll have to see what she’s doing to the guest suite upstairs. It’ll be ready in a few weeks when Selena moves in.”
One of his sisters? A cousin? “Who’s Selena?”
“My goddaughter. Youngest child of an old family friend from the U.K.”
“Why is she moving in?” I didn’t like it that I sounded like a jealous girlfriend.
He didn’t seem to notice. “She’s been winning a lot of prizes in Europe riding show jumpers.” He handed me a pale blue wineglass and touched his glass against mine. “Her father, Lord Tanner, thought perhaps she should get some experience in the States. I offered to let her stay here, though she’ll probably also spend time in Kentucky. She just finished up at Cambridge and planned on taking a year off before working, anyway.”
So she was about Mia’s age—twenty-one.
“It sounds like a great opportunity for her.” I drank some of my wine.
He took my glass. “You are so transparent,” he said, and kissed me on the mouth. “I think of her as a daughter.”
“I hate being transparent,” I said, kissing him back. “And it’s nice you’re doing this for her. I mean it.”
“Come on,” he said. “There’s something else I want to do.”
He brought me to his bedroom and we were rough undressing each other. No tenderness or caresses or words. Our lovemaking was primal and intense, perhaps because it had been months since the last time. I could not tell what drove him, but my own fierce need came from an ache that had burrowed so deep inside me I’d almost managed to forget it existed. The need to be loved—no, to be in love—flared up like a dull pain each time he entered me, because I knew he didn’t want to make any promises. Maybe didn’t even need to.
What he gave in the moment was as good as it got. Sincere but not constant. Passionate but not besotted. In lust, not love. In the end, it was about flesh and comfort and nothing more.
When we finished for the last time he lay next to me, leaning on his elbow, trailing a finger from my forehead down my nose, my lips, my neck, between my breasts, then lower, hovering just before he brushed my sweet spot. Like he was dividing me in half. I shivered. He stopped. “What?”
“Nothing. That was wonderful,” I said. “It always is with you.”
“Stay tonight and it will be wonderful again.”
“I wish I could, but I need to sleep at home. My grandfather.”
“You need to sleep at home because of your grandfather?” He looked incredulous. “Can’t he take care of himself?”
I pulled him down and kissed him. “Of course he can. But he’s eighty-two and he just got here yesterday. I feel like I should be with him.”
“You mean you’d rather be with him than me—”
“That’s not true and you know it.”
“Come on.” All of a sudden he sounded all-business. “Let’s eat. I’m starved.”
He got up and put on his clothes. I picked up my things where he’d flung them and retrieved my cane.
“Give me a few minutes to pull myself together.”
“Of course,” he said. “Come outside on the terrace when you’re ready. I’m going to start the grill.”
We ate in his splendid dining room at a table that seated twenty-four. He moved two silver candelabras so they were at one end of the table and we sat across from each other. His dining room chairs reminded me of thrones. The paintings on the walls seemed to recede and the moss green curtains were drawn across the windows so the room was dark except for the flickering candles, which danced in an occasional current of air. We sat in a golden pool of light and talked quietly.
“I’ll get another bottle of wine,” he said.
“I’ve got to drive,” I said. “That’s enough for me.”
“Your grandfather will be fine. Stay the night.”
He opened the second bottle and I let him fill my glass. “If you’re not careful we’ll drink your entire cave.”
“I rather doubt it.”
“Buying that much, are you?”
He grinned. “And enjoying it. I’ve started buying futures, too. From Shane.”
“When did Shane get into futures?”
“It’s been a while. He told me he’d spent the last few years cultivating relationships with négociants in Bordeaux and a few of the boutique vineyards in California,” Mick said. “He went to France last March for the ‘en Primeur’ tastings. Raved about what he drank so I bought a few contracts in July.”
Wine futures—like futures for any other product traded on the market—lock in a price of a vintage while it’s still in the barrels. The purchaser bets the wine will be worth more down the road, after it’s aged and bottled. If things go the other way, at least with wine there’s always Plan B—drinking it. But while futures, especially Bordeaux futures, had been around for a while, it was an unregulated practice. Gambling with no one to police what went on.
“Futures are risky,” I said. “You can lose a bundle.”
“I like taking risks. And I can afford to lose.” He looked me in the eyes and I was glad I never had to stare him down across a conference room table. In business, I bet he’d been merciless when he wanted something. He, too, had pockets that went all the way to China. He could match any price to get what he wanted.
“You sure Shane knows what he’s doing?” I asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he said. “He’s got great contacts. He introduced me to a
wine buyer he’s been working with. I’m thinking of hiring her.”
I moved my wineglass to the side and leaned across the table. “You’re going to hire Nicole Martin?”
“You know her? Yes, I think so. Why?”
“Do you know who she is?”
“You seem to think I don’t.”
“Quinn’s ex-wife.”
He spun a teaspoon on the table and watched the silver flash in the candlelight. “Does that disqualify her for some reason? I heard she was the best.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said, “but I don’t trust her.”
“So far I have no reason not to,” he said. “But I’ll keep that in mind.”
I stood up. “I should go. Thank you for dinner.”
He reached out and caught my hand. “Please don’t.”
“Mick—” But he was already pulling me into his arms, whispering that I needed to stay and that he wanted me again.
The Greek poet Aeschylus once said that wine is the mirror of the heart. With all the wine we’d drunk surely I should have been able to see into Mick’s heart. But tonight I saw only shadows. Still I let him lead me back to his bedroom and the tangled sheets we’d left before dinner.
The last coherent thought I had before our lovemaking obliterated all other thoughts from my mind was that we were both doing this for the wrong reasons. When I looked into the mirror of my own heart I saw that in the not-too-distant future I would pay a price for my recklessness.
As for Mick, he wouldn’t find what he was looking for in me. He was a gambler and a risk-taker. The more audacious, the better. Now he was into the occasionally gray area of buying wine futures from Shane, not caring if he got burned. And Shane had introduced him to the ruthless Nicole Martin, a woman who was apparently as addictive as heroin.
No good would come of his relationship with her. I was sure of it.
Chapter 12
I got up at two and dressed in a shaft of moonlight shining in through the bedroom window. Mick didn’t stir. Mosby’s Highway was deserted and the drive home uneventful. Good thing, since I didn’t want to bet on passing a breathalyzer test.
