A Taste of Sauvignon (4 page)

Esteban frowned, confused. “What do you mean, ‘this time'?”

“This isn't the first time Xavier St. Pierre has tried to get his hands on my property.”

Esteban pulled Sauvignon's crumpled card from his front pocket. He reread the name of her firm, then extended the card toward Padre before jerking it back at the last second, mindful of offending him. “Not her father this time. An investment group. The name's on the papers back at the house. She only works for the law firm that's representing them.”

“Two visits in one day? You expect me to believe this is a coincidence? I'm not stupid. Trust me. St. Pierre has a plan.”

“How do you hatch a plot to run over a stray chicken?”

“Don't put anything past Xavier St. Pierre.”

Esteban kept his expression neutral. Padre's wrath wasn't confined to St. Pierre. He resented all the big-name vintners, who he claimed were “taking over” the valley, now that wine was such a huge commodity. That's all he and his group of longtime expats talked about at their breakfasts down at the diner.

Modest as their little farm was by some standards, Padre had found success beyond the wildest dreams of the young, uneducated
hombre Michoacán
who'd immigrated to California two decades ago, but it wasn't in his nature to boast. Besides, bragging about your good fortune was taboo, according to Padre. It attracted something he called
envidia.

“Goes without saying we aren't going to sell. Still, it might be a good idea to read over the offer anyway, see what people are thinking about our land.”

Padre grunted.

“I'll read the papers to you after supper,” said Esteban.

D
uring dinner, Savvy shared the events of her day with the family, starting with the death of Marlena and ending with the offer she'd made on behalf of NTI.

“The Moraleses should keep a better watch on their assets,” declared Papa. “What if you had been injured, running over that free-ranging bird?”

Savvy made a face. “It was an accident. A hole in the fence. And don't call Marlena an asset. She was Mrs. Morales's pet. You act like it's a barrio over there, like they have mongrels wagging all over the place and a goat on a spit in the yard. It's actually a very tidy little farm.” She took a bite of risotto. “You'd be impressed, if you ever took the time to be neighborly, go over and introduce yourself.”

“Farmette,”
Papa corrected her. “Morales is an imbecile. Winegrapes would bring in more than ten times the price per ton than his peas and tomatoes. The valley floor is rich in calcium.” He kissed his bunched fingertips. “Perfect for pinot.”

How many times had she heard that? “Anyway, this is my first case, and I have to admit, I'm kind of excited about it,” she said.

“We are so proud of you,” said Char, the middle child. The peacekeeper.

“So, are they willing to sell?” asked Meri, the youngest sister.

“Too soon to tell. One-point-five million is only the initial offer. NTI is willing to go higher. Mr. Morales doesn't speak English, so his son, Esteban, is acting as a go-between.”

Papa looked up from cutting his filet. “You realize that if you are successful with this case,
ma chère,
that will be your first step toward making partner.”

She knew. Since the day she'd been hired, she'd spent every minute laying the groundwork. Working overtime, offering to take on extra responsibilities—everything she could think of to ingratiate herself to the partners in Witmer, Robinson and Scott.

Making partner meant more to her than mere paternal approval. Somebody had to hold this family together. Take care of her sisters, keep an eye on Papa. Half the time, he was all about business. The other half, he was carousing with starlets half his age or getting into some other kind of trouble. Savvy never stopped worrying what his next shenanigan would be. Because it would always be something.

After supper, Savvy and her sisters did the dishes.

“Have you thought about a good time for us to discuss your prenup, now that you're engaged?” Savvy asked Char, handing her a dripping plate to dry.

Char gave a bored sigh. “Not really.”

“Don't put it off. I can't tell you how important it is. If things go sour, you don't want to leave things up to the courts. There are any number of reasons why—”

“I know, I know,” said Char, rolling her eyes. She sang the litany of reasons Savvy had drilled into her like a song. “To learn more about each other, marriage is a business relationship, future alimony, property settlement, yada yada yada.”

“Go ahead and make fun,” said Savvy. “Someday you'll thank me.” She turned to Meri. “And that goes for you, too.”

Meri held up her left hand. “Do you see a ring on this finger?”

“He gave you the gold ingot and the rock. Is it my fault you haven't made it yet? You spend half your nights with him in the city! You have to start thinking about these things.” When she turned back to the sink, she felt her sisters' eyes connecting behind her back.

“Cocoa Puffs,”
one of them whispered dramatically, loud enough for Savvy to hear.

They could mock her all they wanted. Savvy considered it her responsibility to see that they were taken care of. Wasn't that why she'd become a lawyer in the first place?

 

Savvy concluded her elaborate bedtime routine—makeup remover, cleanser, toner, and moisturizer. She'd intended to take work to bed, but she was too keyed up. She wandered downstairs into the kitchen, where Jeanne was seated at the table, planning the next week's meals. During all those years in exile back east, the kitchen— the beating heart of every home—was the room Savvy had missed the most. Jeanne ran this one like a well-oiled machine. The counters had been wiped, fresh tea towels had been laid out for the next day, and the dishwasher hummed in the background.

Though she wasn't hungry, she opened the fridge and peered inside.

“French women do not snack,” said Jeanne.

Savvy sighed and came out empty-handed. “I know.

“Where are the others?”

“Out with their paramours,” replied Jeanne.

This past year had been golden for Meri and Char. Each had stumbled upon her soul mate.

“And you? Why don't you go out more often?”

“I have a brief to read.”

“You work too hard for such a young lady. How are you going to meet anyone?”

“I'm not looking for anyone.” Savvy poured herself a glass of spring water and walked to the window.

“Well, if you were, it would be too dark to see anything out there. Come. Tell me what's wrong.”

“Nothing's wrong. It's just—I'm waiting for a call.”

Jeanne lifted a shaped brow. Ever since Savvy had graduated from law school and moved back to the winery, Jeanne and her sisters were always on the lookout for Savvy to meet someone. “Someone special?”

Savvy's head whipped around.

“Ah. So there
is
someone.”

Savvy bit her tongue while Jeanne casually licked a finger and flipped a page in her cooking magazine.

“Not really. Just business.”

“Must be very
important
business.”

Savvy went over and slid into the seat next to her. Char and Meri came to Savvy for advice. But Savvy had no one older and wiser to confide in except Jeanne.

“It's Esteban.” She'd already told Jeanne about the dead chicken incident before dinner, while helping her stir the risotto.

“You're waiting to hear if his papa will agree to sell their property.”

Savvy smiled glumly while Jeanne studied an ad for soy milk as if it were the most interesting concept since the Swedish AGA range she'd insisted Papa install for her, twenty years back.

“I should've given him a deadline to get back to me, but I didn't think of it. Now I have no idea when I'll hear from him.”

“It has been but a few hours, no?”

“Yessss . . .” She sounded to herself like a pathetic, lovelorn teenager instead of an officer of the court.

“Next time, you'll know to give a time limit. I would say you could call him, but this is never a good idea for a woman to call a man.”

Savvy huffed. “It's not like that! Like I said, this is business. Only business.” She adored Jeanne, even if her advice was sometimes old school.

“Of course,” said Jeanne, pursing her lips. She took off her reading glasses and set them on the table. “And you have no personal interest whatsoever in Esteban Morales. Is that what you wish me to believe?”

Savvy's heart rate speeded up. “No—I mean yes! I mean—” Her sheepish grin was a dead giveaway.

“Of course you don't. Why would you be interested in a kind, hardworking man from an honorable family? Perhaps you don't like his strong arms, his capable hands, his soulful eyes. . . .”

“Jeanne!” Savvy's face heated. Jeanne was like a mother to her. Mothers didn't say things like that to their daughters. Did they?

Jeanne shrugged. “Then there is no reason for concern. Go to bed. It is only business, as you said. He will call when he will call.”

Savvy turned and padded out of the kitchen, up the sweeping staircase, and down the long hallway to her room. But her thoughts were too scattered to focus on her brief. She fell asleep hours later, dreaming that Esteban's face was on the body of the David at the Academia, and she and all the other visitors were circling him with admiration.

O
ne morning, a week after the real estate offer, Esteban waited in vain for his father to join him in the fields after breakfast. Gradually, he worked his way closer to the house so he could ask Madre where he'd gone.

“He went to the doctor. Nothing serious. To check his blood pressure.”

He already knew the gist of what Padre would say. There were only so many ways to say no. But he couldn't put off Sauvignon much longer.

It was lunchtime when Padre finally pulled up the lane. At the table, while Madre related the latest news about Esmerelda's kids in detail—Lily had gotten an A on her first-grade science project, Jenny had fallen off her bike and brush-burned her knees—the men listened and chewed their sandwiches. When the meal was over, they returned to separate areas of the field.

Once the lettuce had been weeded, he took a break from the vegetable gardens to check on his lavender experiments. He was cutting a stem from a specimen of Lavendula Goodwin Creek Grey when his father ambled over. “So? Have you given any more thought to that offer?” he asked, sniffing the cutting's pungent scent.

“I have plenty of good food to eat, a comfortable home, and a fat wife.”

“That's your answer?”

“Anything more than that only invites
envidia.”

“Envy.”

“Undeserved good fortune often ends with something bad happening.”

“Like karma?” He tossed the sprig of Grey and went on to the next variety.

“I've seen it happen again and again in my life,” warned Padre. “There is only one more thing I want before I die. What every man wants.”

A grandson.
Esteban had been hearing that all his adult life—more, since Esmerelda had birthed her third daughter. Even if his sister in Santa Rosa did someday produce a boy, the kid wasn't likely to return to Napa to farm. Esmerelda's husband was a teacher, so it was pretty much a no-brainer. Their kids would be the first in the Morales bloodline to go to college.

“You want your grandson to be legitimate?”

Padre crossed himself. “You have to ask me such a question?”

“That's not happening anytime soon. I don't even have a prospect.”

“You go out enough. Open your eyes! There are
chulas
everywhere.”

“None that I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

“Maybe you should stop playing with flowers and find one. I'm not getting any younger.”

“I'm only twenty-seven!”

“I married your mother when I was eighteen, and good thing I did. It took us another fourteen years until the Lord gave us a son.”

Esteban knew the story by heart. In their quest to conceive a boy, his parents had visited dozens of doctors, even a few
curanderos
—folk healers—in the years after Esmerelda came along.

If Padre was so glad to be in America, why did he cling so hard to the old ways? Getting tied down with a wife and kid was the furthest thing from Esteban's mind. When he wasn't trying to find the best strain of lavender for the Morales farm's micro-climate, he was into hiking and diving with Tomas and George and the rest of his crew. And Padre didn't know how right he was: there
were
women everywhere. Esteban didn't do too bad with them, either. In fact, his record was pretty impressive, if he said so himself. No reason to limit himself to just one.

Deep down, he knew what was really bothering his father.

Where Padre came from, infertility was an embarrassment, a real threat to a man's
machismo.
Padre worried he might have passed down what he considered his inadequacies to his son. That Esteban was like lavandin—a mule. A hybrid. Unable to reproduce. He was anxious to be proved wrong.

But Esteban was getting sidetracked. He still had to tell Sauvignon
something
.

 

Bodega was hopping.

“Isn't this better than staying home, waiting for your phone to ring?” asked Meri, seated next to her.

It had been one long, agonizingly slow week, waiting for Esteban to call. Her whole career depended on Mr. Morales's decision.

“You can't work twenty-four-seven,” Meri said. “No harm in one glass of wine at the end of the day.”

“Look who's talking about not working,” Char retorted. “The successful jeweler who's branching out into—”

Intent on advising Savvy, Meri interrupted Char's accolades. “Keep your eyes open. Who knows, you might even
meet
someone.”

Savvy rolled her eyes.

“Stranger things have happened,” Meri said.

Had it come to this? Was her baby sister really coaching her on how to pick up men now? She wasn't dumb. When—
if
—Savvy ever had time to spare for a man, she could find one herself.

Down the bar, a familiar cellar master from another winery waved and Savvy smiled back.

She had to admit, this spot was unique. Tourists considered the Italian restaurant a can't-miss wine country dining experience. At the same time, the locals knew it as a hangout for everyone from the lowliest picker to the most illustrious winemaker.

“If I ever become a barfly, this will be my bar of choice,” said Meri. “It's a Stan-free zone. Here, I feel like I'm either
well-
known or
un
known.”

“Stan-free?”

“Stalker-slash-fan.”

Savvy jumped a foot when her phone vibrated. She grabbed it from where she'd placed it on the bar, within easy reach.

“Hello?”

“This is Esteban Morales.”

The classy surroundings filled with satisfied murmurings faded away. All that existed was his voice. She clutched her phone closer to her ear.

“Hi! How are you?”

“Good. I have an answer for you.”

After a week, now Esteban didn't mince words.

“Do you want to meet somewhere?” she asked.

“Where are you now?”

She blinked the restaurant back into focus. “Bodega.”

“See you in ten.”

Her pulse leapt. She found herself second-guessing her customary little black dress and worrying about whether her lipstick was smeared from the two sips of wine she'd drunk so far. Char and Meri were conversing with someone at the other end of the bar. She slid off her stool and went to the ladies' room to spray on a little more Miss Dior before he arrived.

 

Even with their backs to the door, it was a cinch picking out the St. Pierre heiresses, lined up like a row of Easter tulips at the bar: same size and shape, different colors, delicately sipping wine from balloon-shaped glasses. One chestnut-colored twisted knot, one sizzling blond, and a brunette with jelly-bean streaks. Hair color aside, all three were cut from the same mold. Lay a level along the head of the one in the middle and the arc would be perfectly centered.

What was it about them that had that cluster of men in slim-cut suits without socks jockeying for position? There was no obvious sign of wealth, no come-fuck-me clothes. Maybe it was their tall, slim bodies. That air of confidence without cockiness. Whatever it was, what everyone said was true: those three
were
God's gift to Napa. At least, on the outside. He still didn't trust Savvy's motives.

There were no seats left at the bar, yet one glance at Esteban cruising toward the French twist and the competition parted like a dust devil in a cornfield. Size mattered.

Behind Savvy's nerdy glasses, her eyes widened with appreciation at his clean jeans and fresh shirt. If he saw her a hundred times, he'd never get used to those specs. To cover up a face like that was just wrong. They were a barrier between him and those liquid brown eyes, that flawless skin. Those plump lips . . .

“Hell-o?” she trilled, arching a brow.

“Hey.” If he was going to be hanging with a woman like her, he'd better up his conversational game
.

The bartender asked what he was drinking. When he leaned in to be heard above the din, the heavenly scent of lily of the valley, warmed by her blood, assaulted his senses. He'd already come to associate the scent of roses with her, but this one wasn't bad, either.

“The usual. Draft.”

“Well?” She couldn't wait another minute. “What did your father say?”

“It's like I told you. We have no interest in selling our land,” he said, one hand on his beer—a welcome reward after a hard day in the fields—the other resting on the back of her bar stool.

“What
exactly
did he say?”

He tried and failed to drag his eyes off the sight of her rosy fingertip, tracing the rim of her wineglass. “You have to understand who he is. Who
we
are.”

“So tell me.” She swiveled her stool until her knees bumped against his hip. On his other side, the crowd hemmed him in.

He inhaled to get ready for his speech. “Everyone's a farmer, down in the Michoacán. My father grew up raising avocados, garbanzos, lemons, corn—you name it. There's nothing he can't grow.” Except, maybe lavender. But it wasn't Padre who was messing around with that. Padre was too practical . . . or was sane the better word?

“Padre brought us here when land was still dirt cheap. For years, we helped his uncle work his farm, and in return he left the property to us. But even though Padre's a citizen now, the way he lives his life is still like it was in the Michoacán. The biggest difference is here, he can make a much better living.”

Sauvignon listened intently. “What about you?”

He studied her face, looking for the meaning behind her words. “What do you want to do with your life?” she repeated.

He swigged his beer. That kind of impractical, philosophical question was only pondered by people like her. He glanced over at the men with fifty-dollar haircuts hovering around her sisters. People of privilege.

“Farming is in my blood.”

“That's not what I asked.”

He laughed drily. “Kind of alien to me, that anyone can do whatever he wants with his life.”

“Why is that?”

He thought for a minute. “It's not just what I want. There are other people to think about. Like my mother and father.”

“I'm sure your parents want you to be happy.”

She didn't get it. That farm was Padre's identity. Without it, he was nothing. He'd be wrecked if his only son gave up on it, after he'd devoted his life to nailing down a piece of the American dream for him. “Maybe what's best for my family
is
what will make me happiest.”

“Say you didn't happen to like farming. What would happen then?”

“You don't do it because you like it,” he explained. “You just do it. For the people you love. Who love you.”

“So, it's about honor.”

“You could call it that. I call it doing what's right for the people you care most about.”

She shrugged. “Whatever. It's not like you
have
to do something other than farm.”

But the reality was that Esteban couldn't imagine a life without his hands in the dirt. “I like growing things.”

“So, you see yourself walking in your father's footsteps? Farming the same patch of land he did for the rest of your life?”

When she rotated back toward the bar to retrieve her wine, her knees brushed against his fly this time, prompting his eyes to move downward to her skirted thighs. He took a long pull on his beer and tried not think about what they looked like naked.

Concentrate.
He
did
have a dream—even if Padre thought it was harebrained. What if he confided in her and then failed to achieve it? She would know. Even if he ran into her fifty years from now,
she would know
.

This conversation needed to be over. She was the enemy. Letting her in was too hard . . . in so many ways. He was only going to have one beer with her, say what needed to be said, and then be on his way. Even now, his friends were waiting for him at a bar in town. Her prodding questions brought his deepest desires uncomfortably close to the surface, kindling something powerful. Or maybe it was her knees rubbing against his
verga
.

“You really want to know?”

She lifted one slim shoulder. “You've got to have dreams. Otherwise, what's the point?” she asked, with all the self-assurance money could buy.

“Easy for you.”

In a snap, her smile faded, eyes filled with resentment.

“Sorry. That wasn't fair.”

“Seriously? No one just wakes up one day, and bang, they're a lawyer. You can't
buy
a passing grade on the bar exam.”

“I said I was sorry.” He was really fucking this up. She angled back toward the bar, robbing him of her attention . . . leaving him desperate to win her back. Which made no sense whatsoever.

“I have this idea to start a lavender farm,” he blurted. As soon as the words left his mouth he felt stripped naked before God and the public. He looked around to see if anyone else had heard.

Sauvignon merely sipped at her drink and thought. Judging by the non-effect his revelation had on her, he might as well have asked her to pass the Sriracha. He tilted his empty glass, wishing there were still beer in it. His mouth felt like Death Valley.

Thankfully the bartender chose that moment to reappear. They had good help in this place.

“Another draft, Esteban?”

The fact that the bartender knew his name got her attention. He nodded yes to the beer, then, with another cocky impulse, turned to her and asked, “You hungry?”