Too Close to the Sun Read Free Page B

surprised
to see how much traffic there was even at noon. He had plenty of
time, though, since the party didn't start till seven and from here
the drive home took only an hour and a half.
    Besides, he'd get there when he got there.
The party was more for his mother than for him, anyway. The
important business started the next day, when he got down to
running Suncrest.
    He tugged on the drape cord to shut out the
view. "Your winery is how big?" Ariane was behind him all of a
sudden, pushing her boobs into his back and reaching around his
belly.
    "Big." Max turned to face her. "More than a
hundred thousand cases a year." At least that would be true once he
was in charge.
    Ariane grabbed him lower, holding his gaze.
Her eyes sparkled. "C'est tres, tres grand."
    He harrumphed. "No kidding."
    "You're very rich?" She pronounced it reech but he got the point.
    "Tres," he told her. And just wait
to see how much richer I'll be this time next year.
    Oh, he had plans. Big plans. Suncrest would
really be on the map once Max Winsted was at the helm. No more
treading water like it had been under his mother's management. Of
course, what else could you expect from her? She didn't have a
practical bone in her body. And while his father had been an
excellent businessman in his day, he'd been old-school. Too
cautious. Too plodding.
    "What types of wine"—Ariane was kissing his
neck now, her left hand still working its magic south of the
equator—"do you make?"
    "You know what?" He wasn't interested in wine
talk at the moment. "Let's go over there."
    He pushed her back toward the bed, where she
didn't need one single s'il vous plait, mademoiselle to whip
off her skirt and lean back giggling against the pillows, five feet
six inches of living, breathing, willing French female. Who, thanks
to Max Winsted, was about to have the best time of her entire
life.
     
     

Chapter 2
     
     
    The sun was setting as Max Winsted's
homecoming party began. Gabby took up a position on the pebbled
path that curved in front of Suncrest's rustic sandstone winery
building and did her best to play hostess. She'd never been too
keen on the social aspects of the wine business, but having to
pretend to be enthusiastic— when secretly dying inside—was a new
exercise in painful.
    "Rosemary, Joel, wonderful to see you." She
grasped the hands of the newest arrivals and puckered up to repeat
the air kisses she'd spent the last half hour producing.
    "You must be so pleased Max is taking over."
Rosemary Jepson, with her husband a longtime Calistoga vintner, was
a rail-thin bottle-blonde who rivaled Ava Winsted for Most
Glamorous in the Over Fifty category. "If he's half the vintner his
father was, he'll really give us a run for our money."
    Not much chance of that , Gabby
thought, but she forced a smile and tossed out her line for the
evening. "It certainly marks a new era for Suncrest. We're so happy
you can celebrate it with us."
    "Where is the guest of honor, anyway?"
Rosemary Jepson's blue eyes pierced the crowd with the laser focus
of a party expert. "I don't see him."
    "He got caught up in a meeting in the city
that ran long." Gabby hated to lie, but that was the excuse Mrs. W
had ordered her to deliver, as none of them actually knew where Max
was. "Something important came up suddenly and Mrs. Winsted asked
Max to handle it. We expect him to arrive shortly."
    The older woman's brows arched, as if she
were deeply impressed. "How very ambitious of him," she purred, "to
handle important business his very first day back." Then she
abandoned Gabby to follow her husband into the crush of the
party.
    The chattery, wine-sipping throng was grouped
around two soaring date palms, their trunks wrapped for the
occasion with tiny white lights. Between them hung a banner
spelling out BIENVENU, MAX! in red, white, and blue, colors as
patriotic in France as they were in America. To the west, the sun
hung low over the Mayacamas Mountains, burnishing the sandstone
winery a honey gold