Ellen Crosby - The Chardonnay Charade

“Tell your dad I’ll be by to see him later,” I said.

After she left I said to Quinn, “You can reel your tongue in now. She’s way too young and she’s Hector’s daughter.”

“She’s, like, cute,” he said. “And I know she’s just a kid.”

“Except we’re not paying her to be cute. She’s got to pull her weight. At least she was up front enough to admit that Hector nearly broke my arm twisting it in the ER last night,” I said. “I told him she could stay for a year and he was okay with that. She and Mia used to compete for the hell-raiser of the year award when they were growing up.”

He grinned. “I can see that. But, hey, I like a woman with a bit of spirit. It’ll come in handy when she’s here with the rest of the boys.”

“You are such a chauvinist.”

“I am not.” He paused, then said, “I guess I was kind of hard on you last night.”

“You were.”

“Angie called.” He picked up a beaker and swirled around the straw-colored liquid, watching it intently. “While you were in with Hector.”

Angela Stetson was Quinn’s ex-girlfriend and a former high school classmate of mine. They’d met when she was a dancer at Mom’s Place.

“How’d that go?”

He shrugged. “She’s getting married. Again. To the guy she was seeing when she was living with me.”

“Oh, God. I’m sorry. She called to tell you that?”

“I think she’d had a few.” He set the beaker down and got two glasses. “She was feeling bad about what she did to me. Wanted to put things right before she married Bozo.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Is that why you went back to Mom’s last night?”

He looked up. “I never went. I came here instead. To the summerhouse. You’re still okay with me setting up my telescope there?”

I watched him fill the glasses. My mother had the little screened-in summerhouse built as an outdoor retreat, not far from the main house and behind the rose garden. When I was growing up we used to have dinner parties there or use it as a hideaway to get lost in a book. It was now a dumping place for broken or rusted outdoor equipment, and Quinn had started bringing his telescope there because it was perched on the edge of a bluff, a great observation site with its panoramic view of the night sky.

“Be my guest. But I thought you gave up stargazing.”

“For a while. Angie didn’t like it, so I quit.” He handed me a glass. “Those two nights we were out when it was freezing…God, the skies were so clear you could see clear up to the floor of heaven.” He clinked his glass against mine. “I thought about calling you and asking if you wanted to join me, but I figured you were probably dead on your feet.”

I drank a large mouthful of wine, then after a moment spat it into a dump bucket. “Well, one foot, at least.”

He spat, too. “Aw, jeez. I didn’t mean that. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m pulling your leg…oh, God, now I’m doing it.” We both laughed. “Thanks for the invite. It would have been nice. Maybe another time?”

“Sure.” He held up his glass. “What do you think of this one?”

“I like it, but—”

“I’m sorry, sir, we’re closed here,” Quinn cut me off. He was addressing someone behind me.

I turned around. Mick Dunne, wearing jeans that had been ironed and an expensive-looking oxford shirt, stood in the doorway.

“I beg your pardon.” He was staring at me with the same intensity I remembered from the first time we’d met. “Hello, Lucie. Lovely to see you again. Your assistant in the other building told me I could find you here. I apologize. I didn’t realize I’d be interrupting your work.” To Quinn he added, “You must be Quinn. Mick Dunne.”

Quinn gave me a sharp what’s-up look as he shook Mick’s hand.

“Mick’s a friend of Ross’s, Quinn. He’s here for Georgia’s funeral. And he’s in the market for a vineyard,” I added. “Or so I’ve heard.”

For an instant, I’d knocked his cocky self-confidence off kilter. Then he grinned. “So I am. News travels fast.”

The room was already a nippy sixty degrees thanks to the air-conditioning and the refrigeration equipment. As I watched Quinn take stock of Mick Dunne—who wore brilliantly polished black wing tips along with the pressed jeans and starched shirt—the temperature seemed to plummet nearer to freezing.

Both men looked about the same age, though Mick could have been a few years younger, perhaps in his late thirties. Like Quinn, he had the fit, lean build of an athlete. But where Quinn’s sunburned ruggedness came from years of hard physical labor in the vineyard, Mick, who wore a gold signet ring on the pinky finger of his right hand, looked like the type who got his exercise at the country club. Something about the cut of the clothes he’d worn the night I met him said he spent most of his life wearing a suit and tie and working in an office. Wing tips with the jeans pretty much confirmed it.

“This one’s not for sale,” Quinn said rudely. “Sorry.”

“I know it’s not,” Mick said. “But I’d very much like a tour of your place, Lucie, if it’s not too much trouble. I’m particularly keen to see how you laid out your fields and what grapes you’ve planted.” The request sounded like a polite command. Whatever he did for a living, he was used to being in charge.

“Uh…” He’d caught me off guard. “You don’t mean now?”

“I’m meeting an estate agent this afternoon and I expect I’ll make my decision rather quickly,” he said. “Right now would be lovely. Thanks very much.”

I opened my mouth to explain that wasn’t what I’d intended to say when Quinn cut in. “Do you know anything about running a vineyard? The English aren’t really known as great winemakers, are they?”

When the good angels were handing out the gifts, they went a little light with Quinn in the tact and diplomacy department.

“He meant that there aren’t many vineyards in England,” I explained.

“No, I didn’t.”

I frowned at him, but Mick grinned, apparently no offense taken. “Fair enough, but you do remember that when the English arrived in Jamestown, making wine was practically the first thing we did, don’t you? England was desperate for its own wine industry in the sixteen hundreds. That’s why we made our first wine only two years after we got here. Mind you, it was bloody awful.” He was still smiling. “I’m just following in my countrymen’s footsteps.”

“Why Virginia? Why not California?” Quinn sounded more curious than combative. Mick Dunne had gotten his attention.

“Because they’re not experimenting as much in California anymore. Though it’s impressive, the world-class wines they produce. But you lot in Virginia seem to enjoy taking risks with your wines, growing some interesting varietals. Didn’t Thomas Jefferson try to grow twenty-two kinds of grapes at Monticello?”

“Yes,” I said, surprised at the depth of his knowledge, “as a matter of fact, he did.”

Though I’d thought he was talking to me, I now wondered if Mick was playing to Quinn, who’d straightened up and was looking at him with new respect, especially after Mick brought up the subjects of experimenting and taking risks in wine making.

“Where are you from?” Quinn asked. “Besides England.”

“Florida, for the last eight years.”

“What was in Florida?”

“A pharmaceutical company.”

“Quinn,” I said finally, “give the poor man a break. He just asked for a tour. We don’t interview our prospective employees this intensively.”

“Yeah, especially the last one we hired,” he said.

I turned to Mick. “I’d love to show you around. I’m sure Quinn can spare me for an hour or so.”