Too Close to the Sun

by Dempsey, Diana

  "Gabby." It was not for her to tell him how the bottles were. "I understand your concern, I understand it'll make more work for you to rebottle this vintage. But this is a marketing decision and I don't think you are in any position to make marketing decisions for this winery."

  Apparently she didn't agree. "Have you considered the implications? The potential damage, for example? A million things can go wrong during rebottling and any one of them could hurt the wine. Particularly a delicate white like a sauvignon blanc."

  He had to bite his tongue. Of course he'd thought about that! Sure, he'd heard horror stories about decanting, but like all horror stories, they were exaggerated, overblown. And who was Gabby DeLuca to wonder—out loud—if Max Winsted knew what he was doing?

  But she kept going. "I just want to protect the wine. That's priority number one. And we charge a lot for our sauvignon blanc—it's very dangerous to risk a degradation in quality. Especially when we don't have to."

  Max started to get seriously irritated. He slapped at a mosquito squatting on his forearm. Its corpse left a bright red blotch of blood on his skin. "There is a very good reason why I want to do this, Gabby, and I'm taking the time to explain it to you. Which I certainly don't need to do."

  "Have you considered how much this will cost? And what are you gonna do with the old bottles? Just throw them out?"

  No, he wanted to scream, I'm going to use them for the new rose Suncrest will be making next year! But he didn't want to get into the topic of adding varietals with this woman, who no doubt wouldn't cotton on to that idea, either.

  "I have to say, Max, I don't like this." She stood up and set her hands on her hips. She sort of loomed over him. He wasn't finding her all that attractive anymore. "If it gets out that we rebottled, everyone will assume there's something wrong with the wine." She paused, then, "And why wouldn't they? No winery would decant unless it had to."

  In other words, you're an idiot, Max. All of a sudden he stood up, too, and she backed away a step. If she were a man, he might have punched her, for by now he was pretty damn pissed off. Particularly because he realized he hadn't thought about the PR implications of rebottling.

  But he wanted those French bottles. He knew—he knew—the wine would sell faster. It would be yet more proof that Max Winsted knew what he was doing. And weren't his instincts spot on? Hadn't he been right about the wine reviews?

  She spoke again, and this time her tone was big-time accusing. "Does your mother know about this?"

  That's it. He'd had enough—of her tone, her complaints, her arrogance. And all because she didn't want to go to the trouble of rebottling! Sure, she said all she cared about was the wine. But he knew that was just an excuse. "I'm doing this, Gabby. With or without you. Now are you in or not?"

  "So you don't care that the wine could be hurt?"

  "It's your job to make sure it isn't. So I repeat, are you in or not?"

  She threw out her hands. "I have to be in, if only to try to keep the wine from being ruined! So I don't really have a choice, do I, Max?"

  The threat was unspoken but as loud as a fighter jet directly overhead. No, Max thought, not if you want to keep working here. Or if your father does. Remember that health coverage he's depending on right about now? Who do you think pays for that?

  "Another thing," he said. "I don't want to miss the release date so—"

  "What?"

  "You heard me." He couldn't miss the date, because then everyone would think something was wrong. Not to mention that Suncrest would lose shelf space if the new sauvignon blanc wasn't out on time. "It's Tuesday today. You've got till a week from Friday. That's plenty enough time."

  "But we're talking about twenty thousand cases! And it's July Fourth weekend coming up. Everybody's off for three days. By the time we get the bottles back from the warehouse and get a decanting truck in here and reprocess the wine and rebottle it, we'll never make the release date!"

  He moved a step closer to her and stared right into her eyes. He watched her stiffen. "You are going to make that date." He kept his voice low. "I don't care how you do it. Make people work the weekend. I'll pay overtime. Just do it."

  "This is insane."

  "Just do it."

  He would have liked her to look away before he did, but it didn't happen. She just narrowed her eyes at him and then stalked off. He watched her go.

  Does your mother know about this? she'd asked him. As if the decision weren't his to make. He pulled his cigarettes out of his shorts pocket and lit one. Of course his mother didn't know about it. Hell, she hadn't even known when he'd hired the consultants. He'd only told her he needed her approval to make her happy. He'd hired them days before.

  The nicotine didn't calm him like it usually did. Somewhere in the back of his mind a doubt rose and flew, dipped and buzzed, like those damn mosquitoes. He tossed the half-finished cigarette on the lawn.

  Women. Stubborn. Set in their ways. Think they know best when they don't know a damn thing.

  It took him a second to smell the smoke, another three or four to stamp out the tiny blaze his cigarette had ignited on the sunburnt lawn. He stared at the miniature charred circle, thinking he'd better remember to make the gardener patch the area before his mother got home from Paris.

  *

  3:30 Saturday afternoon found Gabby at Suncrest. Near the bottling line but not on it, because the equipment had broken down.

  Cam came to sit next to her on the idled forklift, her round cheeks flushed, dark hair pulled back into a haphazard ponytail from which numerous curly strands had escaped. Like Gabby, she wore beat-up jeans, work boots, and a tee shirt. None too glamorous but right for eight hours on an assembly line. "When did Felix say he'd get back?"

  "He should be back by four."

  "I hope he gets the part we need."

  "You're not kidding."

  They lapsed into silence, though mariachi music blared through the high-ceilinged warehouselike room where the mechanized bottling line hulked silently, like a wounded beast. Six of their fellow bottlers lounged on various stools and crates and boxes. Gabby knew none of them was as anxiety-ridden as she was. Sure, people griped about having to work the entire July Fourth weekend. But double overtime eased that pain. And nobody but Gabby DeLuca had to worry about how well the finished product turned out, or whether they'd still make the release date.

  Cam spoke. "I can't believe Max is making us do this."

  Gabby shook her head. She'd toyed with the idea of trying to reach Mrs. W in France, even quizzed Mrs. Finchley about her boss's whereabouts. But she'd come up empty. The veteran housekeeper was too loyal and well trained to divulge any personal information to a mere Suncrest employee.

  "This was exactly what I was afraid of when Max took over," Gabby said. "That he'd make a bunch of asinine decisions. But even I never imagined he'd come up with anything this stupid."

  "Mom almost had to tie Daddy down to keep him from coming in here today."

  "His reputation's really on the line. More than mine."

  Since they were rebottling on the QT, everybody would blame any deficiency in Suncrest's 2003 Sauvignon Blanc directly on the winemaker. Surprisingly poor winemaking for Cosimo, they'd say. Wonder if it had anything to do with his daughter helping him for the first time? Her first vintage as assistant winemaker—and thanks to Max Winsted, it might taste like swill.

  It was so frustrating. A classic no-win. If the rebottling went well, all she'd have accomplished was to help Max achieve his French-bottle coup. But if it went poorly, the blame was on her and her father, who was laid up trying to recover from a heart attack Gabby was convinced Max Winsted had brought on.

  And where was the man of the hour? Nowhere in sight, though maybe it was better that way. When the leased decanting truck had rolled in Thursday—to uncork the old bottles and decant the contents back into the stainless-steel tanks where the wine had aged till March—Max had been around. Strutting like a peacock, asking idiotic questions, b
asically getting in the way. He'd been around Friday, too, when Gabby had spent the day carefully feeding nitrogen into the tanks to displace the oxygen the decanting had introduced. Now it was the three-day weekend—at least for those people who didn't have massive work crises—and she didn't see hide nor hair of Max. Nor did she expect to until the holiday was over. Let the peons do the work—that was his attitude through and through.

  "Your dress for tonight is gorgeous," Cam said. "Will's going to love you in it."

  Gabby had to smile. Little sleeveless wrap dress, soft and swirly with a deep V neck, in a black-and-rust pattern that went really well with her hair and skin. It was hanging in Suncrest's women's lockers because she'd known she wouldn't have time to get home to shower and change. "You don't think it's too much?"

  "No." Cam vigorously shook her head. "It's perfect. Just sexy enough but not over the top. With those strappy black sandals of yours, it'll be great. Where are you guys going?"

  "Bistro Don Giovanni."

  "Fabulous. I'm so jealous."

  Gabby glanced at her watch. A bubble of nervousness pulsed through her veins. Felix better get back soon with that corker jaw. If the line was operational again by four thirty, she could bottle for two hours, hop in the shower, and be ready for Will by seven. Felix could oversee the last ninety minutes of production. She wouldn't be too nervous letting him handle that much.

  They had to finish the shift, because they had to bottle four thousand cases a day. Otherwise they wouldn't get the twenty thousand done in five days. And they'd miss the release date.

  4:15 rolled around. Still no Felix. Gabby walked outside to stare down the drive to the Trail. For some reason that didn't make Felix reappear.

  4:30. She called Leo Gordon, the bottling-line manufacturer's rep. He'd promised Felix he had the right corker jaw for their line. His cell phone went directly to voicemail.

  4:45. Gabby went in search of Cam and found her in the break room. She looked up from her paperback and frowned. "Still nothing?"

  "This is getting serious."

  "You are not going to cancel dinner."

  "Cam, we have three and a half hours of bottling to do."

  "So? We can do it without you."

  Maybe they could. No part of her wanted to blow Will off. But so much could go wrong with the rebottling and it was up to her to make sure that it worked. And what could she even use for an excuse with him? She couldn't tell him the truth. As it was, she'd have to pretend they were bottling the sauvignon blanc the first time around. Oh, there's so much demand, we want to release a little earlier than we'd intended!

  The capitalist pig he'd sent her had fast become one of her most precious tokens. She'd named it Warren for Warren Buffett—one famed investor whose business values she'd long admired—and set it atop her nightstand between her alarm clock and current stack of paperbacks.

  Every time she saw Warren, she thought of Will. And was reminded anew that he didn't take himself too seriously. And that he had a sense of humor. And that he cared enough about her to go out of his way to make this little private joke between them.

  It was highly endearing.

  At ten past five, Felix burst into the bottling area. "I didn't get it."

  That blow nearly knocked Gabby to the concrete floor. "What?"

  "Leo got the part numbers mixed up. He thought he had the right one, but he didn't." From a small plastic bag, Felix shook onto his weathered palm three variations of a corker jaw, used to compress corks before insertion into bottles. "I took these with me in case we could rejigger one to fit. If that doesn't work, Leo said we could try to borrow from Indigo Hill or Tulip Mountain. They've both got the same bottling line we do. Otherwise he'll get one for us Tuesday."

  Tuesday! The next regular business day. Meaning they'd lose two and a half bottling days. Meaning they'd never make the release date.

  Gabby's mind raced. But borrowing would require telling rival wineries that Suncrest was bottling the Saturday evening of July Fourth weekend. How weird would that look?

  She made an instant decision. "Felix, you try to make one of those fit. I'll make some phone calls.''

  Forty minutes and five delicately worded phone calls later, she succeeded in convincing Mirador Winery in Sonoma Valley to lend her what she needed. She sent Felix to get it—as none of the rejiggering had come even close to working—sent Pepe to get pizza for the crew, and stared at the big, round, white-faced clock that hung in the break room.

  5:50. We can't start bottling till seven at the earliest. So we won't be done till 10:30. What do I do?

  "You go on your date," Cam declared. "Felix can manage the line. Don't worry."

  How can I not worry? But how can I cancel on Will?

  *

  At seven o'clock on Saturday night, Will stood outside the big oak door of Suncrest's main winery building. He wiped his palms down his trouser legs. Again.

  So much for his usual sangfroid. The Will Henley who brokered deals with big-name CEOs and extracted concessions from hard-ass bankers was disconcerted to find himself more than a little undone by the prospect of an evening with a five-foot-six-inch blonde with hazel eyes, a ski-jump nose, and a fascination with crushing grapes into wine. It occurred to him that maybe he should have shown up with a wrist corsage. He was about as nervous as he'd been on prom night.

  He took a breath, pushed open the door, and walked into the winery. His feet led him toward surprisingly loud clanging noises directly ahead, which competed for aural dominance against ear-splitting Mexican music. He stepped into an open warehouselike space where a half-dozen people were spread out around some kind of assembly line. It took him a few seconds to recognize what they were doing.

  A forklift carted a massive stack of cardboard wine cases—all labeled SUNCREST SAUVIGNON BLANC 2003 and bound together with shrink wrap—out big rear doors to a Mack truck. Dozens more cases waited for attention, some filled and some empty. Pizza boxes, soda cans, paper napkins, and plastic cutlery littered a metal table set up against the north wall.

  He frowned. They were bottling on Saturday night? Over July Fourth weekend? And they must've been at it all day, too. He was pondering that mystery when he caught sight of Gabby approaching him across the expanse of concrete floor, and all of a sudden couldn't care less what her crazy colleagues were up to.

  He got an eyeful of long bare legs in high-heeled sandals and long bare arms swinging at her sides and long-lashed eyes the color of honey. She moved with an easy grace, like an athlete or a dancer, hips undulating in a mesmerizing rhythm beneath the thin fabric of her summer dress. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry, remembering the feel of that warm supple body pressed against his, the baby-velvet softness of her skin, the sweet demands of those full coral-colored lips.

  She stopped a few feet away, and his nostrils filled with the same musky perfume she'd worn the night they met. "Hi," she said.

  "Hi."

  "You're right on time."

  "And you're gorgeous."

  The smile, which had seemed a bit tentative at first, widened. Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw two Hispanic women on the assembly line exchange a glance, smile, then refocus on the bottles whizzing past.

  "You must be a real slave driver," he told Gabby, "bottling on Saturday night."

  "Oh . . ." She waved a hand in the air, causing the silver bangles on her forearm to crash together in a tinny collision. "Last year's sauvignon blanc sold out so fast, our distributor wants the new shipment earlier than we expected. So we've got to bottle all weekend."

  He nodded, his businessman's mind immediately dismissing that explanation. Given what he'd learned about the wine industry, it made no sense. Sauvignon blanc was bottled in the early spring. Plus, all the overtime—probably double?—made it too expensive to be plausible. Maybe he could get Gabby to confess what was really going on over dinner.

  "Shall we?" He crooked an arm toward her.

  "Sure," her lips said, but she didn't move
an inch. Instead her gaze fluttered toward the assembly line. Then, "Just a sec," and she ran off to huddle with what looked to be the senior man on the line. A half-minute later she hurried back. "Okay."

  "Is everything all right?"

  "Fine."

  But her voice was unnaturally chirpy, and there was something jittery about her movements. Still, she grabbed a small black handbag from atop a crate and accepted his arm. They had made it nearly to the big oak door before a cacophony rang out behind them. Two women shouted "Stop the line!" Equipment clanged; a bottle broke; then another. Finally a loud male voice called out "Shit! Stop!" and a prolonged mechanical groaning rent the air. Followed by silence.

  Gabby halted in her tracks. Will looked down to see her features twist into a grim mask of indecision and worry. "What is going on?" he asked her.

  She hesitated, then, "We're having a little trouble with the bottling."

  Unfortunately, that much was becoming clear. So was the fact that it was her responsibility. Holiday weekend or no holiday weekend. Date or no date.

  He watched her and saw a woman aquiver with tension. Brow furrowed, lips clenched. Her reluctance to leave radiated like a force field.

  It was admirable, he had to admit, though his own competing desires roared through his head. He saw the evening he'd been anticipating for days slip away like a party balloon in a summer sky. His heart sank as he envisioned a long disappointed drive back to the city, hungry, alone, frustrated, Gabby-less. He steeled himself. "You're not okay with going out to dinner, are you?"

  She said nothing, just drew in a breath through her teeth. Then what to do hit him, and he smiled. Like all good solutions, it was obvious and made perfect sense. "How about," he said, "we stay here and I help you guys bottle?"

  Her head swung back toward him, her eyes wide. "What?"

  "I don't know, it might be fun!" He laughed. Actually, it might be. He hadn't done anything remotely resembling physical labor since the days of his youth, when he'd routinely pitched in to help with the grunt work at Henley Sand and Gravel. In some ways that had been more satisfying than a lot of what he did now.