Too Close to the Sun

by Dempsey, Diana

  Yet somewhere in Will's subconscious, a worry lurked. Gabby. What is she going to think about this? And what is Suncrest going to end up looking like?

  The promise she'd extracted from him dimmed the roar of triumph in his head. Yet still Will had to chuckle as he ambled back to his desk to place the call, deciding to put Max on speakerphone just to have that much more of a psychological advantage. He hoisted his legs atop his desk and crossed his hands in his lap.

  The call was answered after the first ring. "Max Winsted."

  "Will Henley."

  "Thanks for calling back."

  "My pleasure." Will nearly choked on those syllables. The last time he'd seen the bastard, he was manhandling Gabby and might have done much worse. Will despised him, but strategy demanded that he bury his antagonism. At least until the deal was done.

  "There's a business matter I'd like to discuss with you," Max said.

  "Shoot."

  Max cleared his throat. "You recall the discussions you've had with my mother and myself about a possible acquisition of Suncrest?"

  "I do indeed."

  "Well, I want to let you know that my mother and I didn't mean to discourage you with our refusal. We both assumed that your initial lowball offer was just that. But for the right price, I can tell you that we would be interested in pursuing the matter further."

  I'll just bet you would. Though Will seriously doubted that Ava was on board with Max's plan at the moment, or even knew about it. The last he'd heard she was playing movie-star wannabe in Europe.

  "I'm pleased to hear it, Max," he said. "I continue to be interested in acquiring Suncrest. As I've said before, it's a unique property."

  "Should we talk about a more realistic price than the one you offered before?"

  "Now, here's the thing." Will paused to give Max a chance to worry. "My partners agreed to that offer a few months back. There've been a variety of negative developments in the wine industry since then, and at this stage I can't really tell you what their appetite is for that price point."

  Silence. Will smiled. He wanted Max to believe that if anything, the price of Suncrest was going down over time, not up. That way Max would be thrilled to nail down a sale at the original, so-called "lowball" offer.

  "Well, perhaps the wine business is having some troubles," Max declared, "but Suncrest is doing as well as ever. Even better."

  Even better, my ass. Will bit back the guffaw that rose in his throat. Apparently Max was arrogant enough to believe that Will had no idea what was actually going on at the winery. Even if Max knew Gabby wasn't telling him anything—which she wasn't—he should gather that Will was sufficiently well connected to have other sources of information.

  "As I say, Max, I'll have to consult with my partners."

  "Tell you what." Will could imagine Max hunched over the phone, his brain cranking into overdrive to try to find a way to make the deal work. "My mother and I would sell at your initial offer if you could do an all-cash transaction."

  Will shook his head. This was like taking candy from a baby. No doubt Max Winsted thought he was being very clever but he'd just broken the cardinal rule of negotiating. He'd just told Will exactly what he was willing to do.

  I want cash. I want it fast. And I'll give on price to make that happen.

  That was all Will needed to know. And those parameters suited him just fine. For him, cash was no problem. Price and speed were his issues.

  And Max was truly a fool if he thought he was pulling a fast one by pushing a deal through quickly, before Will got wise about Suncrest's growing roster of difficulties. Will could "discover" all those things he already knew during the due-diligence process, and reduce his offer price even more then.

  "So, Max," Will said, "let me make sure I've got this straight. You and your mother would sell Suncrest to GPG for thirty million dollars if we were able to handle an all-cash transaction."

  "That's right. If you were able to do it in, say, a month."

  Well, that was pretty darn clear. Will smiled. "Max, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go back to my partners and lay all this out. I'm not sure on the price, but there's a real possibility we can make something work." He could almost hear Max's sigh of relief. "Then I'll work up a term sheet for you and your mother to take a look at."

  Will would generate that document ASAP, complete with a no-shop clause to prevent Max from using GPG's offer to get a better price. Will needed no reminding that he was not the only player in Napa Valley attempting to make an important acquisition.

  Max bit at the prospect of a term sheet like a shark chomps on a seal pup. Minutes later Will ended the call, linked his hands behind his head, and sat at his partner's desk for some time, watching the world go by through his big paned windows.

  *

  Sunday evening found Gabby standing next to Camella at the kitchen sink of their parents' home. With the barbecue over and the sun just dipping behind the mountains, Cam was rinsing dirty dishes and Gabby was loading them into the dishwasher.

  Cam threw back her head and cackled. "I can't believe you went in Max's face and laid down the law!"

  "Shh!" Gabby cocked her chin at the half-open window above the sink, beyond which was the patio on which Will was having one last beer with the rest of her family. "Keep it down. He'll hear you."

  "So what if he hears me?" Cam's volume didn't drop a notch. "Don't you talk about work with him?"

  "No, I don't."

  "How weird is that?"

  "It's not weird. It's"—she struggled for the right word—"prudent."

  Cam scoffed at that notion, though Gabby knew her sister didn't begin to understand why she insisted on keeping the details of her work life secret from Will.

  Including the latest. As she'd known he might, Joseph Wagner had called her and asked flat out if Suncrest had rebottled its sauvignon blanc. And she'd done exactly what she'd warned Max she would do: she told him the truth. The big question was whether Wagner believed her explanation. It was very likely he'd think that Suncrest rebottled because she and her father had screwed up the wine. She dreaded every upcoming issue of Wine World, knowing that the piece Wagner eventually wrote about Suncrest could wreak havoc on her reputation as a winemaker. And on her father's.

  She sighed and raised her head to eye her father through the window. In the fading light, he stood next to Will, the two of them debating the relative merits of charcoal versus gas grills. Her father was thinner than he had been before the heart attack, a little grayer, maybe a little more fragile looking, though she hoped that was only in her imagination.

  One thing was undeniably true, though, and it loosened a bit the perpetual worry knot she had in her stomach these days. Her father and Will looked sweet together, the older man and the younger, chatty, comfortable, relaxed. Will was the first man she'd brought to her family's home since college. Vittorio, damn him, had never made the trip.

  Gabby took a bowl from Cam's hands and found a place for it on the dishwasher's bottom tray. "Daddy doesn't know the half of what's been going on at Suncrest," Gabby said, "but I'm going to have to bring him up to speed."

  On some things, not others. Certainly not on Max's attempted assault or the ongoing question of whether Will would someday acquire the winery. Gabby had unilaterally decided—with no help from the cardiologists—that her father's heart was in no condition to hear either of those news flashes.

  No wonder I'm a basket case. She straightened to stretch the kinks from her back. I'm keeping secrets from everybody.

  "Do you think Daddy's ready to go back to work?" Cam asked.

  "The doctors say he is. It's been seven weeks, and it's only part-time—till harvest anyway." She would keep an eagle eye on him while he was at Suncrest, that was for sure. If he so much as looked winded, she'd make him rest. And as a precaution, she and her mother both had learned CPR, so if something happened to him at home or at the winery, they'd know how to help him.

  Gabby lowered her voice and edg
ed closer to her sister. "Now don't you say a thing to Daddy about what Max did to me."

  "I won't."

  "I mean it. It'd make him really mad and I'm not sure he could take it."

  "You know"—Cam set her hand on her hip—"have you wondered whether maybe we should all just quit?"

  Gabby was silent. Of course she had, though even now the idea of Suncrest permanently out of her life was impossible to fathom. "Well, you could if you really wanted. But you know Daddy won't quit. And I can't, especially not right before harvest. It'd be too irresponsible. Suncrest could never bring in another winemaker that fast. Plus I promised Mrs. W. It wouldn't be fair to her." Gabby sighed. "It's not her fault her son's such a disaster."

  Cam shot out her chin. "It's at least partly her fault. She raised him, didn't she?"

  Gabby looked through the window at her own mother. She looked happier than she'd been in weeks, what with her eldest daughter dating someone so eligible and her husband on the mend.

  Sofia DeLuca, dutiful Italian wife that she was, had nevertheless complained to her daughters that having their father underfoot was driving her crazy. Taking naps in the middle of the day and never remaking the bed. Leaving dirty dishes in the sink. Redoing her vegetable patch for reasons God alone understood.

  Every complaint session ended the same way. "I love him, he is my husband and the father of my children, every night I thank God on my knees that he is still here with us." Then she raised her index finger in the air for the final pronouncement. "But that doesn't mean I'm not ready for him to get out of the house and go back to work."

  Gabby got the dishwasher going, then turned toward Cam. "Will Mom kill us if we put candles on Dad's cake?"

  Both sisters approached the kitchen table to peer at the torta angelica their mother had baked that morning. They knew from delicious experience that it was truly heavenly, a sponge cake soaked with Malvasia dessert wine then topped with blueberries, blackberries, and chilled zabaglione. In deference to their father's new health concerns, Sofia had agreed to vary the standard barbecue menu by grilling chicken instead of beef and using light mayonnaise in the potato salad. But no true DeLuca celebration would ever occur without some sort of homemade dolci to mark the occasion.

  Cam furrowed her brow. "I think candles are good. How about three? For the past, the present, and the future?"

  Who couldn't get behind that idea? But as Gabby watched Cam poke around the miscellaneous drawer, she wondered what that third candle held in store. She'd never been this uneasy, not even in that blighted time when she'd fled Tuscany for Napa, fresh from Vittorio's betrayal. Then she'd had some idea what lay ahead of her. No more.

  Holding the cake with its candles lit, Gabby stood poised at the kitchen's screen door as Cam pushed it open and began to sing to the "Happy Birthday To You" tune. "Happy Suncrest to you, happy Suncrest to you . . ."

  Everyone joined in. Gabby stepped carefully onto the patio, eyes trained on her father's megawatt grin, for a moment glancing at Will to see the smile that lit his mouth and his eyes, the private gleam meant only for her. Will fit in so well with all of them, it was almost frightening. The old fear about getting too close was always with her these days; she couldn't quite shake it. He seemed so devoted now, but who knew how fleeting that might be. She'd seen devotion die before. What was to say it wouldn't again?

  Her father had plenty of breath for three candles. He blew, everyone clapped, Lucia's husband Ricky let out a whoop that rose to the dusky heavens. Then they all stilled, while crickets clicked and mosquitoes flitted about seeking bare flesh. Will moved beside Gabby and draped an arm over her shoulders. Very gently he kissed her forehead as she watched her father gaze at each of them in turn.

  "I am blessed," he said. "I knew that even before the heart attack, but I really know it now. And since I'm an old man who's even wiser than he used to be"—he paused while his family noisily disputed that assertion—"then let me say that this is what life is all about. Having your family around you, living in the place that you love, enjoying as best you can every day that God gives you."

  Gabby watched the father she adored turn toward the man she was so close to loving. "And let me thank you, William. I've heard more than once how much you've helped this family when they needed it most. I am very grateful."

  "I was glad to do it, sir."

  Cosimo DeLuca nodded, giving Will a steady gaze that Gabby was gratified to see he steadily returned. Her father ended the moment. "Come on." He waved his arm to move everyone toward the cake perched on the patio table. "Let's cut."

  A half hour later, with leftovers packed in aluminum foil resting on Gabby's lap, she sat in Will's car as he drove them in the dark toward Crystal Mountain Road. She wasn't sure exactly where on Highway 29 he told her, but knew she would never forget the moment when he suddenly swerved off the road, turned off the ignition, and pivoted in his seat to clasp her hands in his. For the rest of her life, she knew she would remember the flashes of white light on his face as cars hurtled toward them on the opposite side of the narrow highway.

  "I want to tell you something, Gabby," he said.

  She was almost afraid to ask. "What?"

  "I know it hasn't been a long time. Not even two months." He stopped, looked away out the windshield, staring at something she wasn't even sure was visible. She held her breath, willing him to say what she felt in her own heart but didn't yet have the courage to put into words.

  Again he met her eyes. And smiled, and ran a finger down the curve of her cheek. "I love you."

  "Oh, Will." It was what she wanted and yet she was going to disappoint him. She watched him wait for her reply and hated to do it but couldn't bring herself to say what no doubt he longed to hear. It wasn't easy for a man to put himself on the line like this, she knew, especially not a proud man like Will. Like Vittorio, too, she thought, and hated to include him in this moment. Yet it was because of Vittorio that she couldn't reply in kind to Will. Not yet, I'm not ready yet, she tried to say with her eyes and her smile and a squeeze of his hand, but just give me a little more time, and I know I will be.

  Perhaps somehow he understood, for he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips, a soft kiss with no hint of recrimination. Then he fell back in his seat and took a deep breath. "There's something else I need to tell you, Gabby. Something is happening at Suncrest. Something that matters to both of us."

  "What is it?"

  "I can't say any more."

  She frowned. "You can't tell me more than that?"

  He shook his head.

  "Because of professional ethics?"

  He said nothing.

  She twisted back in her seat to stare straight ahead, her left hand still holding his. Really, it was true, he didn't need to say more. She understood him perfectly.

  He restarted the car, got back on the road. The valley flew past on both sides of them, the grapevines glinting silver gray in the moonlight.

  Now, everything would change. For good or for ill, it had started.

  Chapter 13

  Ava sat on the sofa in the living room of her leased Paris apartment and watched her son gear up to play the charming persuader. Really, she thought, he wouldn't make a bad actor. Were he ever able to commit to one script long enough to memorize it.

  For she knew Max wanted something from her; she knew he must have some agenda for this supposedly spontaneous trip to the City of Light. Her son wouldn't come so far merely because he longed to see his chere maman.

  He stood with his back to her at the open doors that led to the walled garden. A weak breeze, the best this steamy August afternoon could produce, fingered the gauzy white draperies. "This place is fabulous! How many bedrooms?"

  "Four."

  "And a garden, too. In central Paris." He turned toward her and shook his head, as if in great admiration that she'd unearthed such a find. "But why'd you pick this area? I didn't know you liked the Trocadero."

  "Actually, it was the apartment I picked
." There were only so many choices for short-term luxury rentals, after all. This one had won Ava over with its garden, its well-appointed rooms, its slightly worn elegance—all of which created the right impression for the dinner parties she'd already started giving. "I'm not too keen on the area."

  "Too many ministries and embassies and official residences? It is a little overbearing. And of course you're done with the Eiffel Tower and the Invalides."

  "I have been for years." Those were for tourists, whom Ava abhorred. She was a traveler, which was a different thing entirely.

  She eyed her son, who now sat beside her on the sofa, hands linked between his knees, easy smile on his lips. She was happy to see that he'd lost weight. He looked healthy, well groomed, clean shaven, despite ten hours on a transoceanic flight. And really, he could be quite charming and insightful.

  She sighed. If only those moments weren't so forced and fleeting.

  "So you had enough of staying with Jean-Luc?" he asked.

  Answering that required some delicacy. Ava gave herself time to think while gazing around the living room, at its cherry-red walls, Italian marble fireplace, and wood-framed mirror above the mantel, in which she and Max were reflected as side-by-side toy figurines of Mother and Son.

  "I had the sense he needed his privacy," she lied, "especially now that he's revising his script. You know, he's a writer. He can be moody and he wants to work all hours. Even though he never said a word, I felt I was getting underfoot."

  Max nodded. She had the idea he knew she was lying but was willing to buy into her story for the sake of politeness. There was some truth to what she said. Jean-Luc was doing a script revision—to what end Ava couldn't guess—and there was no denying his moodiness. But to claim he wanted privacy was like saying Romeo had had enough of Juliet. Ava could no longer abide Jean-Luc's clinging, especially after it became obvious that he wouldn't be able to relaunch her career. She made time for him, certainly, but only when her new social calendar allowed it.

  For Ava was doing some revising of her own. And Jean-Luc might or might not end up in her final script.