The Villa

vineyard shivered and slept.
    This peaceful scene had helped spawn a fortune, a fortune that would be gambled again, season after season. With nature both partner and foe.
    To Sophia, the making of wine was an art, a business, a science. But it was also the biggest game in town.
    From a window of her grandmother's villa, she studied the playing field. It was pruning season, and she imagined while she'd been traveling vines had already been accessed, considered, and those first stages toward next year's harvest begun. She was glad she'd been called back so that she could see that part of it for herself.
    When she was away, the business of the wine occupied all her energies. She rarely thought of the vineyard when she wore her corporate hat. And whenever she came back, like this, she thought of little else.
    Still, she couldn't stay long. She had duties in San Francisco. A new advertising campaign to be polished. The Giambelli centennial was just getting off the ground. And with the success of the auction in New York, the next stages would require her attention.
    An old wine for a new millennium, she thought. Villa Giambelli: The next century of excellence begins.
    But they needed something fresh, something savvy for the younger market. Those who bought their wine on the run—a quick impulse grab to take to a party.
    Well, she'd think of it. It was her job to think of it.
    And putting her mind to it would keep it off her father and the scheming Rene.
    None of her business, Sophia reminded herself. None of her business at all if her father wanted to hook himself up with a former underwear model with a heart the size and texture of a raisin. He'd made a fool of himself before, and no doubt would again.
    She wished she could hate him for it, for his pathetic weakness of character, and his benign neglect of his daughter. But the steady, abiding love just wouldn't shift aside. Which made her, she supposed, as foolish as her mother.
    He didn't care for either of them as much as he did the cut of his suit. And didn't give them a thought two minutes after they were out of his sight. He was a bastard. Utterly selfish, sporadically affectionate and always careless.
    And that, she supposed, was part of his charm.
    She wished she hadn't stopped by the night before, wished she wasn't compelled to keep that connection between them no matter what he did or didn't do.
    Better, she thought, to keep on the move as she had for the past several years. Traveling, working, filling her time and her life with professional and social obligations.
    Two days, she decided. She would give her grandmother two days, spend time with her family, spend time in the vineyard and the winery. Then it was back to work with a vengeance.
    The new campaign would be the best in the industry. She would make sure of it.
    As she scanned the hills, she saw two figures walking through the mist. The tall gangly man with an old brown cap on his head. The ramrod-straight woman in mannish boots and trousers with hair as white as the snow they trod. A Border collie plodded along between them. Her grandparents, taking their morning walk with the aging and endlessly faithful Sally.
    The sight of them lifted her mood. Whatever changed in her life, whatever adjustments had been made, this was a constant. La Signora and Eli MacMillan. And the vines.
    She dashed from the window to grab her coat and join them.
     
    At sixty-seven, Tereza Giambelli was sculpted, razor-sharp, body and mind. She had learned the art of the vine at her grandfather's knee. Had traveled with her father to California when she'd been only three to turn the land of the ripe valley to wine. She'd become bilingual and had traveled back and forth between California and Italy the way other young girls had traveled to the playground.
    She'd learned to love the mountains, the thatch of forest, the rhythm of American voices.
    It was not home, would never be home as the castello was. But she had made her place here, and was content with it.
    She had married a man who had met with her family's approval, and had learned to love him as well. With him she had made a daughter, and to her lasting grief, birthed two stillborn sons.
    She had buried her husband when she was only thirty. And had never taken his name or given it to her only child. She was Giambelli, and that heritage, that responsibility was more vital and more sacred even than marriage.
    She had a brother she loved who was a priest and tended his flock