The Villa Page 7

  "Ty, I'm aware there are reasons for pruning."

  "Fine. Explain them to me."

  "To train the vine," she said between her teeth. "And if we're going to have an oral lesson, why can't we do it inside where we'd be warm and dry?"

  "Because the vines are outside." And because, he thought, here he ran the show. "We prune to train the vines to facilitate their shape for easier cultivation and harvesting, and to control disease."

  "Ty—"

  "Quiet. A lot of vineyards use trellising techniques instead of hand pruning. Here, because farming's an unending experiment, we use both. Vertical trellising, the Geneva T-support and other types. But we still use the traditional hand-pruning method. The second purpose is to distribute the bearing wood over the vine to increase its production, while keeping it consistent with the ability to produce top-quality fruit."

  When he told her to be quiet, he did so like a patient parent might to a small, irritable child. She imagined he knew it and fluttered her lashes. "Is there going to be a quiz, Professor?"

  "You don't prune my vines, or learn trellising, until you know why you're doing it."

  "We prune and trellis to grow grapes. We grow grapes to make wine."

  Her hands moved as she spoke. It was like a ballet, he'd always thought. Graceful and full of meaning.

  "And," she continued, "I sell the wine through clever, innovative promotion and marketing techniques. Which, I'll remind you, are as essential to this vineyard as your pruning shears."

  "Fine, but we're in the vineyard, not in your office. You don't take an action here without being aware of the cause and the consequence."

  "I've always thought it more being aware of the odds. It's a gamble," she said, gesturing widely. "A high-stakes game, but a game at the core."

  "You play games for fun."

  She smiled now and reminded him of her grandmother. "Not the way I play them, sweetheart. These are older vines here." She studied the rows on either side of them.

  The rain was dampening his hair, teasing out those reddish highlights, the color of a good aged Cabernet. "Head pruning here, then."

  "Why?"

  She adjusted the bill of the cap. "Because."

  "Because," he continued, taking his pruners out of their sheath on his belt, "we want the bearing spurs distributed evenly on the head of the vine."

  He turned her, slapped the tool in her hands. He pushed a cane aside, exposing another, then guided her hands toward it and made the cut with her. "We want the center, the top, left open. It needs room to get enough sun."

  "What about mechanical pruning?"

  "We do that, too. You don't." He shifted her to the next cane. She smelled female, he decided. An exotic counterpoint to the simple perfume of rain and damp earth.

  Why the hell did she have to splash on perfume to work in the fields? He nearly asked her, realized he wouldn't like or understand her reasons, and let it go.

  "You work by hand," he told her, and did his level best not to breathe her in. "Cane by cane. Plant by plant. Row by row."

  She scanned the endless stream of them, the countless vines being tended by laborers, or waiting to be tended. The pruning, she knew, would run through January, into February. She imagined herself bored senseless with the process before Christmas.

  "We break at noon," she reminded him.

  "One. You were late."

  "Not that late." She turned her head, and her body angled into his. He was leaning over her, his arms around her so that his hands could cover hers on cane and tool. The slight shift was uncalculated. And potent.

  Their eyes met, irritation in his, consideration in hers. She felt his body tense, and the tingle of response inside her own. A slightly quickened pulse, a kind of instinctive scenting of the air, and the resulting stir of juices.

  "Well, well." She all but purred it, and let her gaze skim down to his mouth, then back again. "Who'd have thought it?"

  "Cut it out." He straightened up, took a step back as a man would on finding himself unexpectedly at the edge of a very long drop. But she simply continued her turn so that their bodies brushed again. And a second step back would have marked him a coward. Or a fool.

  "Don't worry, MacMillan, you're not my type." Big, rough, elemental. "Usually."

  "You're not mine." Sharp, slick, dangerous. "Ever."

  If he'd known her better, he'd have realized such a statement wasn't an insult to her. But a challenge. Her mild, and purely elemental, interest climbed up another level. "Really? What is?"

  "I don't like cocky, aggressive women with fancy edges."

  She grinned. "You will." She turned back to the canes. "We'll break at twelve-thirty." Once again she looked over her shoulder at him. "Compromise. We're going to have to do a lot of it to get through this season."

  "Twelve-thirty." He pulled off his gloves, held them out to her. "Wear these. You'll get blisters on those city-girl hands."

  "Thanks. They're too big."

  "Make do. Tomorrow you bring your own, and you wear a hat. No, not there," he said as she started to clip another cane.

  He moved in behind her again, put his hands over hers and angled the tool correctly.

  And didn't see her slow, satisfied smile.

  Despite the gloves, she got the blisters. They were more annoying than painful as she did a quick change for the afternoon in the city. Dressed and polished, she grabbed her briefcase and called out a goodbye as she dashed out the door. During the short drive to MacMillan she ran over her needs and obligations for the rest of the day. She was going to have to pack quite a bit into a very short amount of time.

  She zipped up to the front entrance of the sprawling cedar-and-fieldstone house, gave two quick toots of the horn. He didn't keep her waiting, which pleased her. And he had changed, she noted, so that counted for something. Though the denim shirt and comfortably faded jeans were a long level down from what she considered casual office wear, she decided to tackle his wardrobe later.

  He opened the door of her BMW convertible, scowled at her and the ragtop. "You expect me to fold myself into this little toy?"

  "It's roomier than it looks. Come on, you're on my time now."

  "Couldn't you have driven one of the four-wheels?" he complained as he levered himself into the passenger seat.

  He looked, she thought, like a big, cranky Jack in a very small, spiffy box. "Yes, but I didn't. Besides, I like driving my own car." She proved it, the minute his seat belt was secured, by punching the gas and flying down the drive.

  She liked the glimpses of mountain through the rain. Like shadows behind a silver curtain. And the row upon row of naked vines, waiting, just waiting for sun and warmth to lure them into life again.

  She sped past the MacMillan winery, its faded brick upholstered with vines, its gables proud and stern. It was, to her, a romantic and lovely entrance to the mysteries of the caves it guarded. Inside, as inside the winery at Giambelli, workers would be lifting, twisting the aging bottles of champagne or readying the tasting room if there was a tour or wine club scheduled for the day. Others might be transferring wine from vat to vat as it cleared and clarified.

  There was work, she knew, in the buildings, in the caves, in the plants, even as the vines slept.

  And, she thought, there was work for her in San Francisco.

  She was racing out of the valley like a woman breaking out of jail. Ty wondered if she felt that way.

  "Why is my seat warm?"

  "Your what? Oh." She glanced over, laughing. "Just my little way of warming your ass up, darling. Don't like it?"

  She clicked the button, turned off the heated seat. "Our top priority," she began, "is the centennial campaign. There are a lot of stages, some of which, like the auction earlier this week, are already implemented. Others are still on the drawing board. We're looking for something fresh but that also honors tradition. Something classy and discreet that appeals to our high-end and/or more mature accounts, and something kicky that catc
hes the interest of the younger and/or less affluent market."

  "Yeah, right."

  "Ty, this is something you have to understand the causes and consequences of as well. Selling the wine is every bit as essential as what you do. Otherwise, you're just making it for yourself, aren't you?"

  He shifted, tried to find room for his legs. "Sure would be easier that way."

  "Look, you make different levels of wine. The superior grade that costs more to produce, more to bottle, more to store and so on, and your middle of the line right down to the jug wine. More goes in the process than the wine."

  "Without the wine, nothing else matters."

  "Be that as it may," she said with what she considered heroic patience, "it's part of my job, and now yours, to help sell those grades to the consumer. The individual consumer and the big accounts. Hotels, restaurants. To pull in the wine merchants, the brokers, and make them see they must have Giambelli, or what will now be Giambelli-MacMillan, on their list. To do that, I have to sell the package as well as what's inside the bottle."

  "The packaging's fluff," he said, eyeing her deliberately. "It's what's inside that tips the scales."

  "That's a very clever, and subtle, insult. You get a point. However, packaging, marketing, promotion are what up the product on the scale to begin with. With people, and with wine. Let's stick with wine for the moment, shall we?"

  His lips twitched. Her tone had gone frigid and keen, a sure sign he'd indeed scored a point. "Sure."

  "I have to make the idea of the product intriguing, exclusive, accessible, substantial, fun, sexy. So I have to know the product and there we're on even ground. But I also have to know the account, and the market I'm targeting. That's what you have to learn."

  "Surveys, statistics, parties, polls, meetings."

  She reached over and patted his hand. "You'll live through it." She paused, slowed down slightly. "Do you recognize that van?"

  He frowned, squinting through the windshield as a dark, late-model minivan turned on the road up ahead into the entrance to Villa Giambelli. "No."

  "Cutter," Sophia muttered. "I just bet it's Cutter."

  "We could put off the trip to San Francisco and find out."

  It was tempting, and the hope in Ty's voice amused her. Still, she shook her head and kept on driving. "No, that would make him too important. Besides, I'll grill my mother when I get home."

  "I want in that loop."

  "For better or worse, Ty, you and I are in this together. I'll keep you in my loop, you keep me in yours."

  It was a long way from coast to coast. It was, in some ways, another world, a world where everyone was a stranger. He'd ripped out the roots he'd managed to sink into New York concrete with the hope he could plant them here, in the hills and valleys of northern California.

  If it had been that, only that, David wouldn't have been worried. He'd have found it an adventure, a thrill, the kind of freewheeling gamble he'd have jumped at in his youth. But when a man was forty-three and had two teenagers depending on him, there was a great deal at stake.

  If he'd been certain remaining with La Coeur in New York was what was best for his kids, he'd have stayed there. He'd have stifled there, trapped in the glass and steel of his office. But he'd stopped being sure when his sixteen-year-old son had been picked up for shoplifting, and his fourteen-year-old daughter had started painting her toe-nails black.

  He'd been losing touch with his kids, and in losing touch, losing control. When the offer from Giambelli-MacMillan had fallen in his lap, it had seemed like a sign.

  Take a chance. Start fresh.

  God knew it wouldn't be the first time he'd done both. But this time he did so with his kids' happiness tossed into the ante.

  "This place is in the middle of nowhere."

  David glanced in the rearview mirror at his son. Maddy had won the toss in San Francisco and sat, desperately trying to look bored, in the front seat. "How," David asked, "can nowhere have a middle? I've always wondered that."

  He had the pleasure of seeing Theo smirk, the closest he came to a genuine smile these days.

  He looks like his mother, David thought. A young male version of Sylvia. Which, David knew, neither Theo nor Sylvia would appreciate. They had that in common as well, both of them bound and determined to be seen as individuals.

  For Sylvia, that had meant stepping out of marriage and away from motherhood. For Theo… time, David supposed, would tell.

  "Why does it have to be raining?" Maddy slumped in her seat and tried not to let her eyes gleam with excitement as she studied the huge stone mansion in front of the car.

  "Well, it has something to do with moisture gathering in the atmosphere, then—"

  "Dad." She giggled, and to David it was music.

  He was going to get his children back here, whatever it took. "Let's go meet La Signora."

  "Do we have to call her that?" Maddy rolled her eyes. "It's so medieval."

  "Let's start out with Ms. Giambelli and work from there. And let's try to look normal."

  "Mad can't. Geeks never look normal."

  "Neither do freaks." Maddy clumped out of the car on her ugly black boots with their two-inch platforms. She stood in the rain, looking to her father like some sort of eccentric princess with her long pale hair, pouty lips and long-lashed blue eyes. Her little body—she was still such a little thing—was draped and swathed in layers of black. There were three silver chains dangling from her right ear—a compromise, as David had been terrified when she'd started campaigning to have her nose, or somewhere even more unsanitary, pierced.

  Theo was a dark contrast. Tall, gangly, with his deep brown hair a curling, unkempt mass around his pretty face, straggling toward his still bony shoulders. His eyes were a softer blue, and too often for his father's taste, clouded and unhappy.

  He slouched now in jeans that were too baggy, shoes nearly as ugly as his sister's and a jacket that sagged past his hips.

  Just clothes, David reminded himself. Clothes and hair, nothing permanent. Hadn't his own parents nagged him into rebellion about his personal style when he'd been a teenager? And hadn't he promised himself he wouldn't do the same with his kids?

  But God, he wished they'd at least wear clothes that fit.

  He walked up the wide fan of steps, then stood in front of the deeply carved front door of the villa and dragged a hand through his own thick, dark blond hair.

  "What's the matter, Dad? Nervous?"

  There was a smirk in his son's voice, just enough of one to strain the wire holding David's composure together. "Give me a break, okay?"

  Theo opened his mouth, a sarcastic retort on the tip of his tongue. But he caught the warning look his sister gave him and saw his father's strained expression. "Hey, you can handle her."

  "Sure." Maddy shrugged. "She's just an old Italian woman, right?"

  With a half-laugh, David punched his finger to the buzzer. "Right."

  "Wait, I gotta get my normal face on." Theo put his hands on his face, shoving, pulling at the skin, drawing his eyes down, twisting his mouth. "I can't find it."

  David hooked an arm around his neck, and the other around Maddy's. They were going to be all right, he thought, and held on. They were going to be fine.

  "I'll get it, Maria!" Pilar dashed down the foyer, a spray of white roses in her arms.

  When she opened the door she saw a tall man holding two children in headlocks. All three of them were grinning.

  "Hello. Can I help you?"

  Not an old Italian woman, David thought as he hastily released his children. Just a beautiful woman, with surprise in her eyes and roses lying in the crook of her arm. "I'm here to see Ms. Giambelli."

  Pilar smiled, scanned the faces of the boy and girl to include them. "There are so many of us."