Too Close to the Sun (45 page)

He cleared his throat, pretended to be
casual. "And does your husband like to ride, too?"

She looked away. "Actually, I'm not
married."

He feigned surprise, then arched his brows as
if this revelation were of profound interest to him. Actually, it
was. "Well." He smiled at her. "That's hard to believe. But
interesting to know."

She smiled back. Then the moment passed, and
they began to chat about ordering dessert, busying themselves with
a topic that had nothing to do with the one each was secretly
mulling.

For his part, Max was trying to imagine life
with this woman and an assortment of large farm animals. And
big-boned, athletic children with names like Biff and Muffy.

There were worse fates, he told himself. He
could imagine weekdays in the city, weekends in the country,
Landowers gathering for black-tie foundation dinners and
cross-country ski trips and barbecues and pickup football games,
sort of like the Kennedys. He would be a son-in-law, a secure,
enviable position, particularly once he sired a few members of the
next generation. And he had nothing against the Midwest; he could
get used to the cold. Plus, it wasn't like he'd have to
shovel
.

He gave Claudia a conspiratorial wink when he
caught her glancing at him. She blushed slightly, looked away. She
wasn't bad. Attractive enough. A nice girl. Easy to talk to,
relaxing to be with. Older than him, so likely to be grateful. He
could do what had to be done. Plus, after a few kids, she probably
wouldn't want to anymore anyway.

He could do what British women were told to
do in Victorian times:
Close your eyes, and think of
England.

Max could manage that. He'd just think of his
bank account.

*

On Saturday evening, Gabby was alone in the
old winery building hosing down the floor around the fermentation
tanks, when she looked up and saw Will watching her. She'd had no
warning that he would come by and hadn't heard his footsteps over
the noise of the jetting water. He suddenly appeared, not smiling,
not frowning, just watching.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi." She turned off the hose and listened to
the water gurgle into the drain gulley that ran the length of the
concrete floor. She was keenly aware of what a sorry spectacle she
must make in her shorts and wading boots, her tee shirt speckled
with baby cab stains and her hair in a sloppy knot on top of her
head. Will wore jeans and a casual shirt with the sleeves rolled
up, and looked clean and healthy and strong.
Maybe tired
,
she thought, assessing him, her heart clenching as it always did
when she saw him after an absence.

"Saturday night and here you are." He smiled.
"Do you work constantly?"

"Now
there's
the pot calling the
kettle black." She busied herself with arranging the hose in a
neatish circular pile.
Is it my imagination or are we awkward
with each other?
Maybe that wasn't so odd. So much had
happened; they'd each been so angry and so hurt. There was bound to
be tension.

Especially now at our moment of
reckoning
. For that was what this was, and they both knew
it.

Gabby ran out of things to do with the hose
and so was forced to look at him again. She noticed he was holding
a wine bottle and cocked her chin at it. "What's that?"

He glanced at the label. "Suncrest's 1987
Cabernet Sauvignon. Ava gave it to me. She told me it was Porter's
favorite vintage."

"That was nice of her." Gabby knew there
weren't many of those bottles left.

Will held it out in Gabby's direction. "I'd
like you to have it."

Her arm failed to reach out. She didn't want
to take it. Somehow it seemed too much like a parting gift. But
there he was holding the bottle toward her, and what else could she
do? She moved forward and relieved him of it and then stepped back
again, looking at everything but his face. But she couldn't make
her ears stop hearing what he next had to say.

"We should talk, Gabby."

There it was again, the unmistakable, hollow
ring of finality. "We should," she heard herself agree, though deep
in her soul she wished she could turn this scenario on its head and
make it unfold in the way she had hoped for. She had dreamily
imagined something quite different from this odd scene with its
disconcerting last-time quality.

"Is there a place here at the winery you
particularly like?" he asked.

That surprised her, too. "You don't want to
talk here?"

He hesitated, then, "Not really."

Too many bad memories maybe, of
misunderstandings and bruised feelings. They'd had a lot of those.
Maybe too many. She tried to think. "There's the barrel-aging room.
That's always been a favorite of mine."

"Is that where dinner was served the night of
the homecoming party?"

She nodded.
The night we met
. She read
the same recollection in his eyes and had the fleeting idea that
they were moving in a circle.

He took her hand, and they walked there in
silence, claiming two moth-eaten director's chairs. In the
semi-darkness, surrounded by the two-hundred-year-old sandstone
walls and dozens of French oak barrels, they sat and stilled, held
in that pregnant quiet that only very old buildings can produce, as
if some essence of all those who had passed through before lingered
in the air.

He cleared his throat. "I want to apologize
to you, Gabby. I've been really unfair. I accused you of betraying
me, but the fact is that I wasn't always straight with you. I knew
I was going after Suncrest, but I let you believe I wasn't. I
didn't out-and-out lie, but I might as well have. I was just so
intent on getting Suncrest. Then I went a long time refusing to
take you at your word. I know now that you were telling me the
truth about why you went to Vittorio." He shook his head. "Maybe
back then I couldn't recognize the truth."

"Oh, Will." She touched his arm, but he
didn't look at her. "I feel like I did betray you when I went to
Vittorio. I don't blame you for being angry with me. But it seemed
there was nothing else I could do."

Their eyes met. She gazed into the ocean-blue
depths of his and found not a shred of the bastard in them.

"I understand now that you were only doing
what you had to do," he told her. "I wish I'd understood it
earlier, your love for this place. And what it's always meant to
your family."

She forgave him everything. She cared not one
whit about the mistakes they'd made, his and hers both, the real
and supposed betrayals. She knew that at heart he was a good man,
and she loved him, and now she cared only for what they might do
right if they had the chance.

Yet something was off. This was the time for
him to take her in his arms, for all to be made right again. But
instead he looked away, rose abruptly.

She frowned, staring at this back. "What's
wrong?"

Time swelled, lengthened into an eternity
while she spun nightmarish scenarios in her mind. Still he faced
away from her. Still he said nothing.

Then, "There's something I need to tell you,"
and he began to relate a story that transported her back to a slice
of her history she would rather forget, her history with another
man, in another country, and another life.
I can't marry you,
Gabriella
, that other man had said.
I have to do what's
right for my family. I'm sorry, so sorry, so sorry ...

Now words she could never have imagined she
would hear again came spewing out of Will's mouth, stories of his
family's company and what they wanted him to do and how for years
he had worried he'd shirked his responsibilities to them. How his
sister had flown out from Denver to talk to him about it. How the
timing was so uncanny, because he'd been thinking lately about
doing something on his own. Gabby knew it was Napa Valley outside
the old sandstone walls but it might as well have been Tuscany. One
land exchanged for the other but still the same sad tale.

She couldn't look at him anymore. She felt
sick. She had to get away. He was still speaking to her, but she
couldn't bear to hear anymore. She rose and made for the door.

"Gabby."

She was nearly out of the barrel-aging room
when he grabbed on to her arm, held her back. "You don't
understand."

"I understand only too well."

"I don't think so." He turned her around,
grasped her by both shoulders. "I'm not going to do what Vittorio
did."

"You don't even know what Vittorio did."

"I can guess." His eyes bored into hers. "I'm
not going to Denver, Gabby. Ill find somebody else to run the
company." He gave a little laugh. "After all these years with GPG,
that's something I'm good at."

She was confused. "But what about your
family? What did I just hear you say?"

"You heard me say I feel an obligation to
them. And I'll fulfill it, in my own way. But I won't put that
obligation over you, Gabby. And I don't feel it's right to ask you
to move to Denver, to give up your whole life here. I won't do
it."

She shook her head. "But you talked about
doing something on your own."

"Not quite on my own." He led her back to the
ratty director's chairs, made her sit again. "With you. Let's start
a winery."

She couldn't speak. That was so far from her
craziest imaginings, she hadn't a thing to say to him.

"Why not?" He laughed again. "I know you
don't want to stay at Suncrest. I'm sure your father doesn't. One
thing I have from GPG is my own capital to invest. Yes, we'd need
to start small, smaller than Suncrest was at the beginning. But we
could do it."

Her father's words stampeded into her brain.
It was always a pipe dream of mine. A label for the DeLucas. A
fantasy, you'd have to call it
. She looked into Will's eyes, as
true and blue as Napa's sky. "You'd give up GPG for this? A little
fledgling winery?"

"Well, I'm hoping it wouldn't be fledgling
forever." He laughed. "And as far as GPG goes, I'd miss some of the
excitement, sure. But I've thought a lot lately about where I'd
like my life to go, and I know I don't want to work for somebody
else forever. Porter Winsted made me think about that." His eyes
grew more serious. "You, too."

"But how could we be business partners?
There's so much we disagree about."

"There's a lot we agree on, too. We'd have to
figure out in the beginning just what kind of winery we were
shooting for, but I think if we both moved a bit from where we are
now, we'd find common ground."

She thought about that. "I'd like my father
to be in, too, though he probably wouldn't want to be full-time."
This might be perfect for him, she realized. He would enjoy part
ownership and yet have the flexibility no other winery would give
him.

She took a deep breath. What a responsibility
this would be, as well as a joy. To be not just an employee but an
employer as well, with all the burdens that entailed. To take full
ownership of the wine she made, the good vintages and the less
good.

"I hope your father will join us. I'd want
his expertise." Will crossed his arms over his chest. "You have to
know, Gabby, that if we did this, it would be serious business.
Neither one of us would be satisfied with a two-bit operation. I'd
want to grow it, make it something important. You make the wine,
with your dad if you want to, and I handle the business end. I
think we could make it work."

Maybe they could bring in Felix, too. If they
bought land, they'd need a manager for the vineyards. Her mind was
reeling. "It's so much to think about . . ." She stood up. "I have
to let it sink in. I have to think it through."

He rose as well, and bundled her into his
arms. He whispered into her hair. "I missed you, Gabby. I don't
want to be apart from you again. That was the worst mistake I
made." His lips slashed against her cheek and found her mouth, and
the kiss he gave her was gentle and urgent both. Then he pulled
away, and on the uneven dirt floor stained with centuries of wine,
he got down on one knee.

Gabby's hands flew to her face, her heart
leaping in a dance she'd never once practiced. Now the picture
truly changed. She'd never before seen these frames of film. It was
a sad movie no longer, but still it brought tears to her eyes.

"I love you, Gabby. Marry me.''

He pulled a little black velvet box out of
his jeans pocket. She could have hit him for hiding it from her so
cunningly, but so he had. Maybe he was a magician, her Will,
appearing at just the right moment to make dreams come true.

The diamond inside the little box sparkled
bright, like the sun in Napa mornings and the light in a baby's
eyes.

"Say yes."

There was a new light in Will's eyes, too,
born of truth and promise and so many of the good things she'd once
stopped hoping for. Love wasn't free. She had paid for this moment
with the pain of the past. She had paid with Vittorio. She had paid
with Suncrest. Yet she would do it all again.

Her answer came without volition, from an
unscarred place in her heart that had always been waiting for just
this man and just this moment. "I would love to marry you, Will
Henley."

He laughed and rose again to his full height
and wrapped her in his arms. They clung together in an age-old room
that had seen lovers before, had heard their stories, all in their
own way blessed and cursed, all with their own zigzag road to
travel. And this was the way it was meant to be, when love came
down from the heavens and shone its light into the shadows and took
its lucky lovers on a blessed flight.

The ring slipped on her finger, like the
circle she had traveled. Vittorio had wished her a man who loved
her with all his heart, who could do better than he had. And now,
in Will, she had found him.