Too Close to the Sun

by Dempsey, Diana

Which might not be that long anymore.

  "Will you miss running the winery when Max takes over?" he asked her.

  At that, Ava had to laugh, but didn't have to lie. "Not in the least. You know me, Jean-Luc. I am many things, but a businesswoman is not among them." She turned from the view to wipe nonexistent dust from a round glass-topped table crowded with art books and photo frames. "I had to run Suncrest after Porter died. And I think I managed it reasonably well."

  "Better than that, Ava."

  She shook her head. "My heart was never really in it, not the way Porter's was." She cast her mind back to those long-ago years when she'd resented Porter's passion for Suncrest. Perhaps obsession was a better word. No woman could be as demanding a mistress as a fledgling winery, and it had caused their young marriage real distress. But they had emerged intact, and the winery prospered beyond anything they'd imagined. "Porter loved Suncrest, Jean-Luc. It is his legacy."

  But it is not mine. Hers was as an actress.

  Hollywood would have no room for her, Ava knew. She might have assiduously protected her blond, Breck-girl looks, and no one could deny that she had some impressive credits to her name, but she was still a fifty-something has-been. Fortunately Europe was more willing to embrace women d'un certain age who still knew how to light up a screen. Screenwriters like Jean-Luc Boursault even wrote parts for them.

  Ava's mouth pursed in wry humor. Imagine that.

  Jean-Luc returned to his armchair, his wineglass refreshed. "And you are certain Max can manage as well as you?"

  "Oh, of course." On went Ava's megawatt smile, for even with a friend as dear as Jean-Luc she felt compelled to maintain the fiction that she had complete confidence in her son. What she'd learned in Hollywood was equally true in Napa Valley: Image was everything. She would not derail what chance of success Max had by appearing to doubt him from the start. "He grew up in the wine business. And now he's had this apprenticeship in France. He's far more knowledgeable than I ever was."

  And far more reckless. And far less disciplined. And so stunningly oblivious of his own limitations.

  Ava sipped from her wineglass, thinking back to those painful weeks before Max had decamped to France. The whole episode was so unseemly and embarrassing and she hated even to think of it. Such a classic tale: a young lady, the daughter of a small Sonoma vintner, who, the morning after, regretted what she had done. Started to think it hadn't been her choice at all. Ugly accusations flew from her father, and veiled threats, and Ava hastily cobbled together a face-saving solution. She wrote a massive check to charity in the family's name and packed Max off to the Haut-Medoc, claiming a long-planned apprenticeship.

  She shut her eyes. Why was there so little of the father in the son? Where was Porter's caution, his thoughtfulness, his good sense? True, Max had many natural gifts. He was intelligent and nice-looking and didn't lack for confidence or charm. But there was a wildness to him that frightened Ava and made her worry for the future.

  And now of course there was the problem of Suncrest. She knew that the most prudent course would be for her to continue to run the winery. Yet, though it made her feel horribly guilty to admit it, she was done with it—done. She'd had enough of marketing strategies and distribution agreements and P&L statements. She could play the vintner no longer. It was a role she was handed against her will and she'd hated it from the moment she walked onstage.

  Of course, the other option was to sell it to Will Henley and GPG. Suncrest would survive if she did, though probably not in a form of which Porter would have approved. Those buyout firms changed businesses—she was a savvy enough businesswoman to understand that. But sometimes it was hard to believe Suncrest would fare any better in Max's hands.

  Ava abruptly set down her glass. "Shall we have lunch?" she asked, and swept toward the sun-drenched terrace beyond the French doors without waiting for Jean-Luc's answer. "I've asked Mrs. Finchley to lay a table for us in the pergola."

  Jean-Luc looked confused. "Didn't Max's flight land two hours ago? Shouldn't we wait for him to get here to eat?"

  "Oh no, let's not." Ava knew her son well enough to know it was unwise to wait for him for anything.

  *

  Ninety miles south of his mother's intimate lunch with Jean-Luc Boursault, Maximilian Winsted was doing some entertaining of his own. He stood at the foot of a San Francisco Airport Marriott queen-size bed, puffing on a Gauloises cigarette and eyeing Ariane, Air France flight attendant, First Class. Her bodacious Parisian self was draped across the bed, the top half of her uniform strewn all over the industrial-strength blue carpet alongside her bra and pumps and pantyhose. She was giggling so much, she kept spilling her champagne on her breasts, where it ran across her nipples and only made her laugh harder. At this rate, Max didn't think it'd be a huge challenge getting off the bottom half of her uniform, too.

  Vive la France!

  He chuckled, took a last gulp of his own bubbly and stubbed out his cigarette. Bet Rory never got a stewardess into bed, or Bucky either, that tool. They didn't have anywhere near his charm. Sure, he'd had to spend most of the ten-hour flight from Paris standing at the rear of the cabin flirting and telling stories, but now he was going to get his reward: Ariane's full roster of private First Class favors.

  I can still top them, he told himself. So what if Rory was graduating from Yale Law and Bucky was in med school? Max Winsted was still the biggest stud from Napa High, class of '97, and he was about to get even bigger.

  "Viens!" The arm holding the champagne glass motioned him to come closer. Her bright red lipsticked mouth smiled, her big dark eyes teased. "Viens jouer, Max!"

  "Let me just shut the drapes." After eighteen months of French food and French pastries and French wine, Max suspected he'd look better in the dark.

  Since his shirt was already off, he sucked in his stomach before he walked to the windows, double-thick to keep out the roar of the 101 freeway six stories below. He was surprised to see how much traffic there was even at noon. He had plenty of time, though, since the party didn't start till seven and from here the drive home took only an hour and a half.

  Besides, he'd get there when he got there. The party was more for his mother than for him, anyway. The important business started the next day, when he got down to running Suncrest.

  He tugged on the drape cord to shut out the view. "Your winery is how big?" Ariane was behind him all of a sudden, pushing her boobs into his back and reaching around his belly.

  "Big." Max turned to face her. "More than a hundred thousand cases a year." At least that would be true once he was in charge.

  Ariane grabbed him lower, holding his gaze. Her eyes sparkled. "C'est tres, tres grand."

  He harrumphed. "No kidding."

  "You're very rich?" She pronounced it reech but he got the point.

  "Tres," he told her. And just wait to see how much richer I'll be this time next year.

  Oh, he had plans. Big plans. Suncrest would really be on the map once Max Winsted was at the helm. No more treading water like it had been under his mother's management. Of course, what else could you expect from her? She didn't have a practical bone in her body. And while his father had been an excellent businessman in his day, he'd been old-school. Too cautious. Too plodding.

  "What types of wine"—Ariane was kissing his neck now, her left hand still working its magic south of the equator—"do you make?"

  "You know what?" He wasn't interested in wine talk at the moment. "Let's go over there."

  He pushed her back toward the bed, where she didn't need one single s'il vous plait, mademoiselle to whip off her skirt and lean back giggling against the pillows, five feet six inches of living, breathing, willing French female. Who, thanks to Max Winsted, was about to have the best time of her entire life.

  Chapter 2

  The sun was setting as Max Winsted's homecoming party began. Gabby took up a position on the pebbled path that curved in front of Suncrest's rustic sandstone winery building and did her be
st to play hostess. She'd never been too keen on the social aspects of the wine business, but having to pretend to be enthusiastic— when secretly dying inside—was a new exercise in painful.

  "Rosemary, Joel, wonderful to see you." She grasped the hands of the newest arrivals and puckered up to repeat the air kisses she'd spent the last half hour producing.

  "You must be so pleased Max is taking over." Rosemary Jepson, with her husband a longtime Calistoga vintner, was a rail-thin bottle-blonde who rivaled Ava Winsted for Most Glamorous in the Over Fifty category. "If he's half the vintner his father was, he'll really give us a run for our money."

  Not much chance of that, Gabby thought, but she forced a smile and tossed out her line for the evening. "It certainly marks a new era for Suncrest. We're so happy you can celebrate it with us."

  "Where is the guest of honor, anyway?" Rosemary Jepson's blue eyes pierced the crowd with the laser focus of a party expert. "I don't see him."

  "He got caught up in a meeting in the city that ran long." Gabby hated to lie, but that was the excuse Mrs. W had ordered her to deliver, as none of them actually knew where Max was. "Something important came up suddenly and Mrs. Winsted asked Max to handle it. We expect him to arrive shortly."

  The older woman's brows arched, as if she were deeply impressed. "How very ambitious of him," she purred, "to handle important business his very first day back." Then she abandoned Gabby to follow her husband into the crush of the party.

  The chattery, wine-sipping throng was grouped around two soaring date palms, their trunks wrapped for the occasion with tiny white lights. Between them hung a banner spelling out BIENVENU, MAX! in red, white, and blue, colors as patriotic in France as they were in America. To the west, the sun hung low over the Mayacamas Mountains, burnishing the sandstone winery a honey gold and kissing the dark green canopy of the grapevines that covered the gentle slope down to the road. The Winsted residence—an exquisite contemporary home complete with pool and pergola—lay slightly east of the winery proper, separated by grapevines and gardens and olive trees. Banks of fog huddled in the distance, as if politely holding back their arrival until the guests repaired inside for dinner.

  Gabby watched Ava Winsted flutter among her guests and concluded she must have been—must still be—a very good actress. She appeared completely unruffled despite the fact that her son, her guest of honor, the whole raison d'etre of this party, had failed to show. She was a vision in white silk, her peroxide blond hair pulled tight into a chignon and a Queen of England diamond necklace at her throat. She wove expertly in and out of groups, never spending more than a few minutes with anyone yet managing to leave everyone charmed and entertained and not in the least slighted. Like many wives of Napa vintners, Ava Winsted had been Suncrest's "cultural affairs" director, until that role of social secretary and PR head became more work than she wanted. Porter Winsted had serious trouble filling the post, for the simple fact that no one was as good at it as his wife.

  Gabby sighed. She'd envisioned such a role for herself in years past, when she dreamed of being Signora Mantucci. Maybe sheer love for Vittorio would have made her more of a social animal. As it was, she much preferred the solitary pursuits of winemaking. Nurturing the fruit, tracking its progress in the oak, blending the varietals just so, all to help her father create wines they could both be proud of. Wines that carried the Suncrest label but that privately she felt were as much her family's creations as those of the Winsted's.

  Her father sidled up alongside her. "You look wonderful tonight, sweetie."

  She did like the slinky violet sheath she'd bought in San Francisco for the occasion, though neither it nor the matching pashmina did much to ward off the evening's chill. "So do you, Daddy." She reached up to tweak his bow tie, though it was ramrod straight. With his deeply tanned skin and thatch of dark hair streaked with gray, Cosimo DeLuca was a handsome man. Like his oldest daughter, he preferred kneeling among the grapevines to hobnobbing with the valley's smart set. But he cleaned up beautifully, and in a tux looked positively debonair.

  "Any sign of the prodigal son yet?" he asked.

  "Not a one. Maybe he decided to stay in France." That would be a blessing, she added silently, watching her father drain his sauvignon blanc. She knew he wished Max Winsted would fall off the face of the earth even more than she did, though unlike his daughter, he was too well-mannered ever to say it.

  She shut her eyes. Twenty-five years her father had worked at Suncrest. Twenty-five years. His heart was breaking, Gabby knew. He was so stressed about Max taking over. She knew that some days he feared he'd lose his job, and others he worried that he'd hate it under Max's stewardship. But what could she do about it? What could any of them do?

  She nudged him gently. "Don't worry, Daddy. It'll be fine even when Max takes over."

  Her words, which she couldn't even make herself believe, hung between them. Her father was silent, then he turned to her, his eyes devoid of their usual sparkle. "You should get a job at another winery, Gabby. You know enough now to be head winemaker. You shouldn't be assisting me anymore and you shouldn't stay here with Max taking over."

  "No." The idea made her heart pound, like a horror about to happen. Abandon Suncrest? Abandon her father? That's not why she'd come home to California. "I'm not going anywhere. We're going to make it work, even with Max coming. Besides . . ."

  She stopped. She shouldn't say, especially here and now, what she secretly hoped for. That if Max managed to show up, he'd tire fast of the hard work of running the winery. That he'd step aside for someone else to take over. Her father, for example. Then she could become head winemaker. Maybe her sister Camella, the middle of the three DeLuca girls, could get promoted from the reception desk. Suncrest would run like a dream.

  And it would be almost as if the DeLucas owned the place.

  Gabby watched Camella approach bearing a lipstick-stained wineglass. Where Gabby had inherited her mother's Northern Italian blond hair and hazel eyes, Cam got the more stereotypical olive skin and black eyes and hair. With her plump figure, round face, and forever unruly dark locks, she looked as if she'd been plucked from an Italian village. That night she wore a bright red peasant-style dress that only heightened the effect.

  She arranged herself next to Gabby, narrowing her eyes at the crowd. "There isn't a single good one here," she whispered.

  "There never is," Gabby whispered back, having already arrived at the same grim conclusion.

  She downed the rest of her wine. Dress up, make up, do your hair, go to a party—sometimes she wondered why she even bothered. Of course, tonight's bash was work, but every party seemed to remind her of the sad truth she didn't let herself dwell upon too often. That the valley might be great for growing grapes, but it didn't produce much in the way of desirable single men.

  *

  Will picked up his date to the Suncrest party at the lush St. Helena estate her family called home. The forty-acre property boasted vineyards—naturally—an enormous Mission-style winery, and a matching ten-thousand-square-foot home complete with red-tile roof and campanile. It went well with the other manses in the neighborhood, a faux French chateau here, a Victorian pile there.

  Stella Monaco pulled open her massive oak front door even before Will's convertible rolled to a halt on the sweep of graveled driveway, a brunette nymph in a turquoise halter sundress that Will guessed retailed for a thousand dollars at Neiman Marcus. She bounded toward the car like a puppy, hair flowing, feet bare, strappy sandals clutched in her hand. She was a free and daring spirit thanks to the enormous celebrity and wealth her father had accrued as an international hotelier. He'd become a vintner, of course, the mega-successful man's top choice for second career.

  She threw herself into the passenger seat and then turned to smile at Will. She was lovely, and stylish enough to understand the great attraction—to men at least—of minimal fuss over hair and makeup.

  He smiled back at her. "Hope I haven't kept you waiting."

&nbs
p; "No." She tossed her sandals in the footwell. "My parents left already, though, so we'll meet them there."

  He put the car in gear, "On our way, then," and after a few turns got back on Highway 29, the main artery—all of two lanes in most stretches—that bisected the valley.

  Once he was truly on his way to Suncrest, Will began to wish the drive were longer. Not only did he dread Ava Winsted's first glimpse of him at her party—opportunistic financier, interloper, uninvited guest, she'd think all of that and more—he wasn't clear on how he was going to make money for GPG in the wine business. It was easier said than done. Many of these wineries—gorgeous as they were— ranged from breakeven to money pit. Suncrest had real possibilities, though, because it was a well-respected brand whose operations could be ramped up and made much more profitable.

  But that was true only if the Winsteds sold to GPG. Ava had made it clear she'd have none of it. She had to "preserve Porter's legacy," she told him, and he hadn't come close to convincing her that selling to GPG would achieve that goal. Now that her son was coming into the picture, it was Will's job to find out if she might be more amenable.

  Fortunately, Will didn't need to force conversation with Stella, whose chatter flowed as freely as her dress. He'd met her weeks before at the annual Napa Valley Wine Auction, where a three-liter bottle of her father's first vintage took top honors by fetching sixteen thousand dollars for charity. She was entertaining and attractive but, he was discovering, a bit scattered. For example, there was her current indecision over career options, which ran the widest gamut he'd ever heard of. Should she go to Oxford, she wondered, like Chelsea Clinton had? Or become a movie director like Sofia Coppola? Or maybe launch a clothing line like Stella McCartney?

  She sounded genuinely perplexed. "But that might be too confusing because my name is Stella, too?"

  "Probably would be," Will allowed, figuring this was the sort of conundrum faced by a modern-day American princess. He slowed to a crawl when they hit the stretch of 29 that was St. Helena's Main Street, on this June evening jammed with tourists trying to park near the tony eateries where they had reservations for dinner.