The Senator’s Daughter (17 page)

The tour continued with a visit to the wine-making area, where tall, round, stainless-steel tanks awaited the juice of this year's harvest. Each time Andre scrutinized Sylvia with one of his appraising looks, Lyle wanted to deck the man.

Yet he couldn't help but admire his antiques and his acreage. All the while, Andre continued to chat, pointing out everything from how the grapevines trained to run laterally along suspended wires to pointing out the volcanic stone pillars that held up the underground cellar.

When he pushed open the door to his laboratory, the big room reminded Lyle of high-school chemistry—stone-topped counters, gas jets, deep set sinks, and glass beakers—with a snap of fingers, he recalled the name for the ones with the narrow necks: Erlenmeyer flasks.

Sample bottles filled with water covered one countertop.

Andre gestured toward them. “Once a week, we send the water from Lava Springs that we use in wine making down to Palisades Pure Water for chemical analysis. Their atomic absorption spectrophotometer can detect impurities in the range of parts per billion.”

“Bacteria?” Lyle inquired.

“Metals. Chromium, lead.”

“Why would the spring water have chromium?” Sylvia looked puzzled.

“Why not?” Andre waved his arm up toward the higher mountains. “There could be any number of heavy metals, zinc, even mercury.”

“But it only takes a tiny trace of mercury and they close off fisheries,” she said.

Andre nodded. “It takes only two parts per billion in drinking water to trigger the mercury alarm.”

Sylvia put up a hand. “Why do you have to keep checking? If there haven't been any heavy metals, why would they suddenly appear?”

“That's a question I do not know a lot about. But people with the United States Geological Survey, as well as Buck, tell me we have to keep on top of the water chemistry in case things shift around in the earth.” He frowned. “Frank Fiamma down at Palisades Pure tells me that the Old Faithful Geyser has been going a lot longer between eruptions than its usual forty minutes. He and Buck both say that in the past, that has predicted a significant earthquake within two days to two weeks.”

Lyle's stomach tightened.

Turning away to hide his reaction, he noticed an apparatus on one of the stone counters. A black plastic box with a hinged lid was open to reveal a metal cage framing one of the sample bottles. Uncapped, the bottle's mouth pressed against a round of mesh fabric membrane.

Memories of chemistry lab and of other visits to wineries didn't conjure up any ideas. A small metal plaque indicated that the manufacturer of the black box was Eco-osmotics.

“What's that do?” Lyle asked.

“Just some test equipment.” Andre lifted a small device from a counter. “This refractometer is used to measure Brix, the sugar content of the grapes.”

Lyle's antennae went up at what looked like a diversion. For whatever reason, the naturally voluble Andre did not want to show them the black box.

“The refractometer is seldom used here,” Andre went on. “Any winemaker worth his or her salt can tell by tasting when the grapes reach the ideal Brix.”

Andre took Sylvia's arm again and Lyle wanted to knock him down on the scrupulously clean tile floor.

O
n the driveway in front of his mansion, Andre looked at Sylvia in a way that left no question as to his desire. If it had come her way before she planted a kiss on the man standing beside her, she might have gone for it.

“Sylvia.” Andre took both her hands.

Where he touched her, there was no magic, while merely standing close to Lyle made her stomach do funny things.

“It would be an honor if you would stay for dinner. My chef can prepare whatever you desire, and we will share a bottle of my best Chardonnay.”

His invitation clearly excluded Lyle.

If Andre knew who she was, he must be playing some kind of game. If he didn't, he was hitting on a poor girl who made beds for a living, no doubt expecting that for the price of a visit to the castle he'd have her.

Trusting her gut, she withdrew her hands from Andre. “It's kind of you, but I need to be getting back … to work.”

Andre affected sadness. “Then I will have to persuade Buck to give you some time off.”

She refused to rise to that. “Thank you for showing me … us … around.”

“Yes.” Lyle stepped forward.

The two men shook hands.

“Actually,” Lyle said, “I came up here from the City with the idea of seeing you. Your rent-a-cop said you were out earlier today.”

Sylvia thought Andre tensed. “He told me you were here yesterday, as well.”

“I was waiting to see you drive up,” Lyle said, “but you must have come in on the helicopter I heard.”

Andre's face went stony. “I am afraid Luigi was mistaken. I was here all the time.”

Sylvia's instinct for untruth, honed on the dating scene, set off alarms.

Lyle must have noticed, but he ignored Andre's explanation and made an appointment to see him Monday—Andre professed to be tied up tomorrow.

Then she and Lyle were walking away from Villa Valetti. Though they were at least six feet apart, Sylvia almost believed she could feel Lyle's heat, as though she stood near a furnace. The hollow place in her suggested she was about to give a public speech or had jumped off the high dive.

It wasn't too late to turn back and accept Andre's invitation. It might look funny, but it was doable.

“Don't even think about it.” Lyle's voice was soft, but she heard steel in it.

She kept walking, trying her yoga breathing from the abdomen.

Neither of them spoke while they passed Luigi in his guard shack and started down the road. The sun was low in the western sky.

Lyle stepped out into the vineyards and stopped between the rows where the shadows were deep and bluish. Sunlight caught him from the torso up, illuminating his red shirt, turning his hair to spun gold.

Sylvia met his gaze. “How did you …?”

“What in hell…?”

“…find me?”

“…are you doing here?”

Talking over each other, her dark eyes met his. The blue had darkened to indigo, and she sensed the anger he restrained. If she hadn't trusted him to keep it in rein, she might have been frightened.

“I didn't find you. You heard me say I came up here to see Andre.”

“It's hard to believe you'd show up here on a fluke.”

“Believe it.”

“What if I don't?” Her fists went to her hips.

“Fine.”

God, he looked magnificent in the autumn sunlight, a Norse god come down to a mountaintop. Sylvia's breath caught and she couldn't say another word.

Lyle continued to stare at her as though deciding. “Do you have any idea what you've done to me these last weeks?”

“Done?” she managed.

“I've been worried sick about you.”

She felt as though his words hit her in the chest. “Worried? You don't even know me.”

His expression shifted to something that looked like pain. “I thought I did, but that goes to show you can't base your opinion of someone on how they kiss.”

Lyle marched away, while the lowering sun went behind a cloud.

What a fool he'd been to think he had the inside track to the real Sylvia Chatsworth. She was nothing but a spoiled rich bitch, out slumming with her “job” at the Lava Springs Inn. And lying about what she'd been through to Buck and Mary Kline, pretending to be a battered woman on the run.

He should leave. Come back Monday to meet with Valetti.

Striding out with his long legs, his heels sinking into the soil, he headed for the inn. He'd grab his bag, check out, and be back at his loft in time to meet Cliff for a stiff martini.

No, the first thing he had to do was phone Senator Chatsworth and tell him where Sylvia was. In fact, he ought to stick around a few hours and give her father a chance to run up here and surprise her. That way, Lyle would be sure to get his money.

Still in the plot of Sangiovese, he pulled his cell from the holster at his belt.

No signal.

He'd call from the inn.

Sylvia watched Lyle go in disbelief. A moment ago, she would have sworn he cared, the way he lashed out at her for putting him through hell.

Watching his strong thighs pump and his broad back recede into the twilight, a sharp stab went through her. If you couldn't tell a man or woman from their kiss, then why did it seem to be a universal litmus test?

In seventh grade, when earnest Harold Lowenstein had walked her out beyond the softball field and planted a squishy one on her closed lips, he'd struck out. Her senior year in girls' school she'd dated blond quarterback Steve Austin from the public high school and wondered if she loved him … but because his kisses didn't make her feel the way she did when she fantasized about the ideal man, she'd moved on.

With Lyle, she'd been shocked to her bones by the heat of their kiss. She had thought it meant something.

So, was she going to stand here like a lump and let a man, the mere thought of whom could turn her inside out, walk away without a fight?

When Lyle reached the border between the Sangiovese and the Chardonnay, he heard the soft pounding of footsteps. Before he could turn, he felt his forearm grabbed and yanked to spin him around.

Sylvia held on, panting from running, her face flushed. She lasered him with a look that could only be described as dangerous, as evidenced by the strength with which she'd changed his direction. “This is crazy!” she cried.

“Pretty much,” he agreed, having distanced himself with his decision to make the call.

“You're saying you came up here to see Andre on business and just happened to check into the place I've been staying. You didn't know I was here.”

“That's what I said.”

“But that's so …”

Preposterous.
Yet, as soon as the word popped into his mind, he thought of another. And couldn't help but put it out there. “Romantic?”