Too Close to the Sun

by Dempsey, Diana

  And what would she get out of her little Italian jaunt? A big fat zero. Mantucci would not ride in on his white horse. Now, most likely, Suncrest would get auctioned off to the highest bidder, or sold off in pieces.

  She'll get what she deserves, Will's devil said. And Will—angry, hurt, thwarted—agreed.

  Porter Winsted's door opened, and Dagney walked out into the hall. Before she closed the door behind her, he caught a glimpse of his two male lawyers and Suncrest's one female on the tartan couches, still waiting, not quite giving up yet.

  But he had. Unless something truly bizarre happened, this game was over.

  Dagney joined him at the head of the stairs. "What do you want to do?"

  "Go back to the city."

  "I'm really surprised by all this." She seemed genuinely perplexed, her demeanor somber, her brow furrowed. He realized this was the moment for him, as the senior member of the team, to dispense wisdom and perspective.

  He took a deep breath. "Some deals just fall through, Dagney. Often at the eleventh hour. Emotions play a big role, and people do unexpected things. In this business, it's really true that it's never over till it's over. That's why it's so important always to have several possibilities in play." Right now he could kick himself for not following his own advice. "Come on, let's get going. We've got work to do."

  She nodded, seemed mildly cheered, and followed him as he said his good-byes and collected his paperwork. They exited the winery together and halted in unison as they stepped onto the pebbled path. "Wow," she said. "Something's burning,"

  "The smell is really strong, isn't it?" Will half jogged down the drive that led to Suncrest's entry gate, twisting his head around to look behind him. Then he saw it, to the southeast of the winery, up on the forested ridge: flames consuming the oak trees and gray smoke mushrooming into the perfect blue sky.

  Dagney jogged up next to him, nearly out of breath. "It's a wildfire."

  It certainly was. Already claiming a good chunk of the slope, seeming to move very fast. Will knew a fair amount about such fires, having grown up in Denver where during the hot summer months enormous blazes regularly broke out in the local mountains. He knew conditions were ripe for such a conflagration: weeks of scorching weather without a whisper of fog, and today this erratic wind. Combine that with acres of grassland that had grown long in previous rainy seasons, which provided plenty of fuel to light the oak trees, which seemed as if they were made for burning.

  For a second Will couldn't speak, as if he were close enough to the flames that his own lungs were sucking in the noxious fumes. His mind raced when he realized just how close the fire might be to some of Suncrest's vineyards, those that lay just below the easternmost slopes of the Howell Mountains.

  And Gabby's there.

  *

  Gabby stood in Suncrest's Morydale vineyard with her arm around her father, both with their backs to the wall of fire not far up the hill. A cough stalled in her throat like a boil. Tears squeezed from her smoke-seared eyes. It's a nightmare. I've died and gone to hell. And the flames prove it.

  She had to yell above them. At this short distance they were amazingly loud. "Daddy, there's nothing we can do. We've got to get out of here. Fast."

  He couldn't speak, either, at least not in words. The horror in his dark eyes told her all she needed to know. For what more could befall Suncrest? Why had the gods turned so cruel?

  This vineyard that nestled up close to the forest, that she and her father had tended with such care, would be devastated. In an ugly irony, the grapes that were so close to harvest would be destroyed right at the peak of their perfection. And not only would the fruit be lost: the vines would burn, too. For the vineyard was covered with grasses grown long over the past months and now tinder dry, gone to nature when Max fired the field workers that would have kept them mowed. And once the grasses caught, they would incinerate every grapevine they passed. The entire vineyard would be lost, and years in the remaking.

  "Come on, Daddy." She moved him forward down a row of grapevines. There was no time to waste; already the fire was licking at the vineyard's edge. Field workers streamed around them, running toward the tractor while balancing on their heads the yellow bins that held what grapes they'd been able to harvest, what grapes they might be able to save.

  Her father clutched her arm. "I have to stop."

  She wouldn't let him. "Not yet," she shouted in his ear. "Let's go a little farther."

  Oh God, don't let him have another attack. The panic, the smoke, was a danger to all of them but particularly to her father, given the fragility of his heart. She urged him forward, turning her head to look behind her as they continued to move. So much of the forest was engulfed now, so many of those mighty oaks were writhing in their death throes. Somewhere in her scientist's brain she understood that fire was a natural cleansing part of nature's cycle. But still she hated it, the ruthless power of it, the indiscretion, the haphazard destruction of everything in its path. Including so much of what she loved, what she'd fought for.

  If she believed in signs from above, this would be one. Give up on Suncrest, this fire was telling her. You've lost that battle.

  With that realization, it was Gabby who stopped short. Her father turned to look at her, surprise in his eyes. This time it was he who forced the pair onward, he who suddenly waved his arm above his head in what Gabby realized was a greeting.

  It was for Will. He was running toward them, Will in his business suit with his crimson tie flapping over his shoulder, with worry creasing his brow and something she couldn't read in his expression. He came up close to them and met her eyes. "I thought you'd be in one of these vineyards. I've been trying to find you. Are you all right?"

  She nodded, seriously doubting that he much cared. She knew it made no sense to blame him for this fire, but she couldn't help but tie him to all that had gone wrong at Suncrest. Certainly so much of it was caused by Max but some of it was due to Will, too—Will with his unrelenting competitiveness, his heartless calculation of what made business sense and what didn't, the people who were affected just so much collateral damage. Now Suncrest would be reduced to a shell of itself. But knowing Will, he'd probably see it as an opportunity.

  He gazed at her a moment longer, then took her father's other arm, and together they made it faster to the edge of the vineyard, where her dusty Jeep was waiting. She and Will were helping her father into the passenger seat when she heard a roar overhead. She stopped to watch. Her father did, too, half in and half out of the car.

  It was a white firefighting tanker plane skimming low over the woods. They watched it glide just above the leaping flames, then release a cloud of retardant over the trees. It fell like a mantle of red dust.

  All three lingered at the vineyard's edge to watch as two other tankers joined the aerial performance. One made a pass over the vineyard, a good part of which was now engulfed, the fire consuming the grasses and torching the vines with appalling speed.

  Gabby slumped onto the oven-hot seat of the Jeep. That was that, then. The fire would destroy both the grapes and the vines—some of the latter as old as she was. For them, as for her, it was the end of the line.

  Chapter 17

  Max learned one thing from the fire: he wouldn't be a good actor. Because it was making him a nervous wreck to have to go around pretending he had no idea how the conflagration started.

  Early Saturday, on the proverbial morning after, he stood with Gabby and Cosimo on the charred wasteland that used to be Suncrest's Morydale vineyard. Now, though it was way too late to do any good, the fog had come back, the wind had disappeared, and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees.

  In this as in everything else, he was a victim of bad timing.

  "So how bad is it?" Max asked Gabby.

  She shook her head. Even in disaster, she looked good—little shorts, fleece pullover, nice wave to the hair. "Bad. As far as the crop goes, we took a huge hit. But the bigger disaster really is the vines."r />
  "How so?"

  "Most of the damage is limited to two vineyards. We'd only just begun harvesting in those, so basically we lost the whole crop."

  Her father piped up. "All told, about a quarter of our cabernet sauvignon grapes were destroyed."

  That was not good. Suncrest made most of its money from the cab. But now they wouldn't be able to produce nearly as much of it. And it wasn't like they could make up the lost revenue with the sauvignon blanc. Thanks to the rebottling debacle, that wasn't exactly selling well.

  Max kicked at the nearest vine, a gnarled, blackened thing he almost didn't recognize as something that would grow grapes. It was so brittle and dried out, a whole branch dropped to the ground from his foot's impact. "And what about the vines?"

  "They're gone," Gabby said. "They're dead. We'll have to yank them and start over."

  That was even worse than not good. It took at least three years to get usable grapes off a vine, sometimes five, and a buttload of cash to pay for it. You had to plant the vines and nurture them and in the meanwhile buy grapes from someplace else. Mantucci wasn't going to like that and Henley wouldn't, either. If he even cared. Maybe Mantucci wouldn't care, either.

  Max felt sick to his stomach. Earlier, he'd called Mantucci—he hadn't been able to stop himself. But had Mantucci finally made an offer? No. Had he heard about the fire? Yes. Apparently the news of this bizarre vineyard blaze had traveled all over the wine world—like wildfire! And while Mantucci had been really sympathetic, and nice as could be, and swore he'd call back later, Max had gotten a bad feeling. A very bad feeling.

  Max turned from Gabby and Cosimo and walked a few yards away, rubbing his forehead. The only good thing was that he didn't have to pretend not to be upset. Everybody expected that a winery owner whose vineyards got incinerated would be upset. But nobody could know that was only part of it. That what really killed was that Max knew he'd done this to himself—accidentally, of course. And that he'd made a catastrophic error by not cashing in on the damn winery when he had the chance.

  In fact, he realized, if he'd been at the signing ceremony, he wouldn't have been at the overlook smoking. And someday very soon, he'd have twenty-seven million dollars cash in the bank. And Suncrest and its problems would be a thing of the past.

  He trundled back to Gabby and her father. Cosimo he had no problem with, but Gabby had caused him a lot of grief. He narrowed his eyes at her. "If you'd started harvesting earlier, we'd have more of the crop already back at the winery."

  Gabby shot back. "If you hadn't canned the field workers, we would've had enough manpower to keep the ground grasses mowed. Like we have every other year. Then the vineyard wouldn't have lit up like a bonfire."

  Cosimo raised his hands between the two of them, as if he were stopping a fight. "All right, all right. What's done is done. What we need to do is deal with the situation at hand."

  Max threw out his hands. "Which is what exactly?"

  "What do you care?" Gabby said. "It's not your problem anymore, anyway. It's GPG's."

  Whoa! Max reeled backward but kept himself from saying a word. Either there was trouble in paradise and Henley wasn't telling Gabby a damn thing, or he'd told her he was still buying Suncrest.

  Max felt a rush of hope. Was that possible? Maybe it wasn't over. Maybe even after Max bailed on the signing ceremony, maybe even after the fire, Henley still wanted Suncrest.

  "Gabriella," Cosimo said—pretty sternly, Max thought—"what we need to focus on is salvaging what we've got." That seemed to simmer her down. Then Cosimo turned to Max. "We'll continue with our harvest plan, and we'll increase the yield from the vineyards that haven't been affected."

  "That'll make up some of the loss," Gabby said, "but won't have a substantial impact on the quality of the wine. Which we can't afford," she added, but Max had had about as much of her opinions as he could take.

  "Fine. Do what you have to do." He started back toward his convertible, which he'd left on the side road. "I'll talk to you later." He had e-mails to return, calls to make, business to conduct. Maybe now was the time to call Henley back. Feel him out.

  Mrs. Finchley emerged from the kitchen the minute Max got back to the house. She handed him a slip of paper. "A Vittorio Mantucci called while you were out. He asked you to please return the call."

  Max returned the call from the extension in his bedroom. "Buona sera," Mantucci said.

  "How are you, Vittorio?"

  "Very well. And please let me repeat what I told you earlier, how sorry I am about the catastrophe that has befallen your winery in California."

  "I appreciate that." Get on with it already, Max thought. He could barely take the suspense anymore.

  Mantucci took a deep breath. Max cringed in anticipation. "I'm afraid I have bad news," Mantucci said. "It pains me to say that I will not be able to make an offer for Suncrest."

  I knew it.

  "Even before this terrible fire, this was a very difficult arrangement for me to make. As you know, I have to line up a partner. But now"—he let his voice trail off—"now, with this bad news that has made its way to Italy and all around the world, I'm afraid none of my potential partners is willing to make the commitment."

  Suncrest is cursed. Now everybody knows it.

  "This is a great disappointment to me, Max. I am very sorry."

  Mantucci didn't know the first thing about disappointment. Max didn't want to sound desperate, but he had to say something. "Suncrest is still very valuable, you know. It's not like the fire ruined it."

  "Of course not, I completely understand. But you see . . ." He sounded pained. "The fire, may I say, is the culmination of events. I know you have had difficulties with your sauvignon blanc this year, and there have been other matters."

  Max harrumphed. Mantucci might live in Italy, but he was surprisingly plugged in to valley gossip.

  "Again, I am sorry," Mantucci repeated, and at that point Max gave up. He ended the call a little later and flopped down on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Then came a knock on his door. "Come in," he muttered.

  It was Mrs. Finchley. "I thought you should know that your mother will be coming home tonight."

  "What?" He bolted upright. "Why tonight?"

  Mrs. Finchley's brows arched. "Why, because of the fire, of course."

  "She knows about the fire?"

  "Of course she does." Mrs. Finchley backed out into the hall, looking as prim and self-righteous as ever. "I called her." The door clicked shut.

  Max closed his eyes. Just what he needed.

  *

  Ava behaved uncharacteristically on her first morning home in Napa. She slept late, well past ten, then instead of going down to the kitchen asked Mrs. Finchley to bring tea and toast to the master suite, where, still in her robe, she breakfasted off a tray in the sitting area overlooking the pool.

  Part of her lassitude was caused by fatigue. Her flight from Paris had been delayed, and the long limo ride north to the valley from the airport had seemed endless. It wasn't until after midnight that she'd collapsed into bed, even forgoing a bath. Then, courtesy of jet lag, she'd awoken at three and suffered through a few sleepless hours.

  But it wasn't exhaustion alone that kept her in seclusion. Ava sipped tepid tea from her china cup, gazing without joy at the magnificent view. She dreaded seeing Max, whose actions she found more inexplicable than ever. She dreaded assessing the fire damage with her own eyes. And she dreaded dealing with Suncrest's future, which looked uncertain indeed. She'd thought that by this weekend she'd be free of the winery, for once she'd agreed to sell it she was impatient to have it done. But no. Like everything else that involved her son, something had gone wrong.

  She was mystified as to why Max had failed to sign the final documents selling Suncrest to GPG. Why he'd balked at the eleventh hour, when he'd been so terrifically intent before, she had no idea. Neither did her attorney, who'd informed her that her son had left Will Henley and numerous attorneys waiting in Porter's
office while he was off God knew where doing God knew what. Then the fire began. Minutes later.

  Ava shivered, though on this Sunday morning the sun had already burned through the fog and the breeze through the open French doors was balmy. She was not a churchgoer: one of her youthful rebellions had been to turn her back on her parents' Methodist faith. Though her own views on the Almighty were murky and unresolved, she couldn't help but think of the fire as some sort of celestial sign. If it wasn't from God, then perhaps it was from Porter, who'd sent a thunderbolt down from the heavens to show how mightily he disapproved of the way his beloved Suncrest was being managed.

  She hung her head. Porter would be colossally disappointed, she knew. And not only in Max.

  Ava wished she had managed Suncrest better, and raised Max with more care. Yet he'd always been such a handful. She shouldn't resent her own child, but sometimes she couldn't help it. And now nothing was going as it ought, and when had that started? The day Max returned from France.

  She forced herself to throw her napkin aside and rise from her breakfast. Perhaps it was just as well that this morass had dragged her back to California. She'd been shirking her duty, and it wasn't as if her European pursuits were flourishing, anyway.

  Ava showered and dressed quickly so as to be ready for her first visitors of the day. It was time to find Max and face reality. She exited the master suite to hear the noise of a televised sporting event blaring from the family room. Could it be football season already?

  Max hoisted himself off the sofa to hug her. "Hey, Mom, welcome back." He gave her a tight squeeze before he released her. "How are you? I guess the flight got in really late last night."

  "There was a mechanical problem. A five-hour delay."

  He winced. "Ouch."

  She eyed him. He might be lounging in front of the television on a bright weekend morning but he had taken some care with his appearance, in deference to her return, no doubt. He'd showered and shaved, and wore pressed khakis and a polo shirt. She even caught a whiff of cologne. "You seem to be holding up well," she said.