The Sauvignon Secret by Ellen Crosby Read Free Book Online

old-money crowd, played polo with the lads, and bred some of the finest Thoroughbreds in the region, including a stallion who’d raced in the Derby and two jumpers whose riders earned ribbons in the last summer Olympics.
    I’d fallen hard for Mick. But it wasn’t long before I discovered the other women who also had him in their sights and Mick’s problem with fidelity and commitment. We tried for a while, but I never stopped wondering if anything, or anyone, would be able to satisfy his restlessness. So I left before he did, before he told me that I wasn’t the one, and now our relationship had evolved into that edgy ex-lovers’ place where temptation, lust, and I-can’t-do-this-again intersected. I coped by staying away from him as much as possible.
    What complicated matters, or made them more complicated, was that Mick had moved here a few years ago after growing bored with the successful pharmaceutical business he owned in Florida and selling it, with the surprisingly romantic idea of living the indolent life of a Virginia gentleman-farmer who raised horses and owned a vineyard. The horses were his passion, but he had long since tired of the tedium involved in growing grapes and impatient with the three-year wait before he could bring in his first harvest. He’d leaned on me for advice, and I helped him as much as I could—before, during, and even after our affair. Call me noble.
    Earlier this spring he tried to strike a deal with me after he lostnearly everything in a massive financial scam: I would buy his grapes outright, and Quinn Santori, my winemaker, and I would make his wine, bottled under a new label that included both vineyards. Then, two weeks ago, I found out he had earned back most of the money, as suddenly and spectacularly as he lost it, on a wildly successful IPO investment and a moribund real estate deal that finally paid off big. Now he was back in the game again: horses and wine. He was on the verge of hiring a smart young South African winemaker, but at least through this harvest he wanted to retain Quinn and me as advisers.
    Mick always phoned in the morning, usually after he got back from his daily hack, so the timing of his call wasn’t a surprise. But I knew, the way any woman knows after she’s slept with a man, that the undercurrent in his voice meant he wanted something from me, and whatever it was, I probably wouldn’t like it.
    “You’re right. It’s been entirely too long,” he said to me now. “I miss you, darling.”
    I’d guessed correctly. How big was this favor?
    I took a deep breath. “Like a toothache when it’s gone, sweetheart. What is it, Mick?”
    His laugh was too hearty. “You’re a cruel woman, Lucie Montgomery, stabbing a poor bloke through the heart.”
    “First I’d have to find it and don’t try to butter me up.”
    He laughed again. “God, I really do miss you. And you know what I mean. We were good together.”
    I shivered, grateful for the distraction of Frankie setting down a coffee mug in front of me.
    “Mick, I’ve got a million things on my plate—”
    “All right,” he said, “I’ll get to it. I’d like to bottle some wine right now.”
    I almost sloshed my coffee on the bar. “You mean buy someone else’s grapes? What brought that up?”
    I could hear his shrug through the phone. “Everyone does it.”
    It was true. Vineyards often bought grapes grown elsewhere and made wine they could then sell in their tasting rooms before they were able to harvest their own crop. It was a way of building a brand, and it helped financially during the lean years with no income tooffset the massive start-up costs of salaries, equipment, and root-stock.
    But his timing was odd.
    “Why now?” I asked. “We should have talked about this months ago. Harvest is only six, maybe eight weeks away.”
    “I can get a good deal on a couple thousand gallons from a terrific vineyard that’s cash-strapped,” he said. “A friend told me about it.”
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