“He can and he did. He’s giving us a jeroboam of Château Pétrus instead.”
She looked like I’d said he offered us a bottle of hemlock. “That Washington wine was the centerpiece of the auction. Without it, we’ll be lucky to fill the guest bathroom with whoever shows up.”
“I tried talking to him, but he’s made up his mind,” I said. “We’ll just have to live with it. Now we need to figure out how to let people know it won’t be part of the auction.”
Amanda threw herself back against the sofa. “We can’t do that! I’ve been calling and e-mailing everyone on the planet crowing about that wine, for God’s sake. We’ll look stupid saying, ‘Hey, guess what?’”
“We’ll look more stupid when people show up and we can’t produce it,” I said. “Not to mention how angry everyone will be. They’ll think we lured them into coming under false pretenses.”
She glared at me. “God, what a mess! Have you told Ryan?”
“I haven’t told anybody. Not even Quinn.”
“Quinn.” She tossed her head. “I heard a rumor about him.”
“Oh?”
“I heard Shane Cunningham’s hot new girlfriend is Quinn’s ex-wife.”
“From a long time ago.” At least she didn’t know about him showing up for work drunk.
“And he was drinking in Leesburg the other night. Got completely plastered.”
“We’re off the subject of the auction,” I said. “And Quinn’s love life is his own business.”
Amanda’s eyes narrowed. “Love life, huh? I thought they were divorced. Are you saying he’s still in love with his ex? How interesting.”
“Poor choice of words. Can we get back to the auction? I still think we need to tell people.”
“Before we do anything, let me talk to Sunny. She might be able to persuade Jack to reconsider.”
Sunny and Amanda were best friends. What did we have to lose?
“Good luck,” I said. “He wants me to bring the bottle over to his house tomorrow evening. Can you talk to Sunny before then?”
“Oh, don’t you worry,” she said. “I’m on my way to see her as soon as I leave here.”
We walked outside together. Amanda pulled out her car keys. “I’ll follow you out,” she said.
“I’m, uh, going to stick around for a while.”
She smiled. “Really? Seeing Mick? You two still together?”
“He asked me to drop by the stables, that’s all.” I hoped she’d leave it alone, but I was blushing.
“He’s quite a catch.” She climbed into the Range Rover. “I heard you stuck it to the Orlandos the other day when they came by and asked you to close your farm to the hunt. They’ve got their nerve. Good for you for telling them to go to hell.”
What, in my life, didn’t Amanda know about? One thing about a small town, we lived in each other’s back pockets—though that was part and parcel of the way people looked after each other around here. Neighbors who’d show up to help dig a garden, take down a tree, pull a car out of a snowbank, or drop off a meal because someone was ill. I knew I could never live in a big city where my next-door neighbor might be a total stranger. Maybe that was the problem with the Orlandos. They underestimated the bonds between families who had lived here since before the Civil War.
“I don’t like being pushed around,” I said.
She started her engine. “What did they say?”
“What you’d expect.”
Amanda’s glance flickered down at my cane. “You’re just like your mother, Lucie. She had guts, too.”
She drove off and I walked to the stables. Even if Amanda persuaded Sunny to talk to Jack, I still didn’t think he’d change his mind about the Washington wine. In fact, less and less did I believe he’d told me the truth about why he wanted it back.
The wind had shifted during the day bringing in cooler air that sharpened the sky to a lacquered cerulean blue I had not seen for months. The Indian summer heat was gone for good.
I liked the ordered serenity I felt each time I walked into Mick’s stables with their pleasant smell of hay and leather. His horses lived a regimented life—especially the ones being schooled. Ultimately, though, it was the animals that decided what they would and wouldn’t do, and the trainers knew better than to try to force them otherwise. Mick raised thoroughbreds, which he planned to race, some foxhunters, and two strings of polo ponies. To care for them, he had a staff of six grooms and exercise riders who reported to Tommy Flaherty, his Irish head trainer. Mick and Tommy had spent all spring and summer supervising the renovation of the farm’s sprawling network of barns, stables, run-in sheds, paddocks and fields, as well as the repainting of miles of post-and-board fences, which divided his land like a giant checkerboard. Now that the work was finished, the place looked magnificent.
I glanced at my watch as I walked into the main stable. Just past four-thirty. Feeding time. Tommy had a rule about not letting anyone in the barns until after four o’clock during the months the thoroughbreds were in training.
“These horses are athletes,” he told me once, in his lilting, musical voice. “They train hard, darlin’, and they need to get their shuteye. I won’t have anyone disturbin’ them.”
I checked first on my favorite—Black Jack—a thoroughbred whose glossy coat fit his name. His feeding tub looked full, but he still came to the stall window when I called him and nuzzled my hand, looking for an extra treat. One of the grooms pulled a carrot out of his pocket and handed it to me.
“Got any apples?” I asked. “He loves apples.”
“Give him an apple and he’ll drool all over himself. He’s just been groomed.”
“Sorry, buddy,” I said to Black Jack. “You heard what the man said.”
“And what would that be?”
I whirled around. Mick stood there, looking amused.
“That apples are off limits for Black Jack.” My face felt hot. I should have asked the maid to tell him that I needed to return to the vineyard after my meeting with Amanda. I should not have come here.
“We’ll make an exception for the pretty lady, all right, Jackie boy?” Mick nodded at the groom, who went to fetch an apple. “We’ll clean you up again after that messy apple, won’t we?” He rubbed Jack’s nose as the groom handed it to me.
“How’d your meeting go with Amanda? She’s running this auction like a bloody military campaign,” he said.
I fed Black Jack, holding the apple while he ate. Gentleman that he was, he avoided chomping on my fingers, though he enjoyed his treat with teeth-baring gusto and a glint in his lovely, liquid brown eyes.
“Jack Greenfield decided to withdraw the Washington bottle this afternoon. He wants to keep it,” I said.
Mick ran his hand down the horse’s neck, studying him. “Sorry to hear that, but it makes sense. The intrinsic value of that bottle is out of this world. I’m sure Jack reconsidered now that it’s getting so much attention.”
“It doesn’t make sense to me. Or the disabled and homeless kids who lost out.”
He stopped patting Black Jack and considered me. “I’m sorry you’re upset but you’re thinking with your heart, Lucie. Jack’s a businessman. I would have done the same thing.”
“Then you’re both cynics.” I walked down to the tack room, leaning on my cane, and found a towel to wipe the apple juice off my hand.
When I came back, Mick pulled me close and brushed a lock of my hair out of my eyes. “I’m not a cynic, I’m a realist. Have dinner with me tonight. I’ll cook for us. You’ll be dazzled by my culinary skills.”
“No.” I didn’t want him teasing me when I was angry. “No, thanks.”
“You have dinner plans already?” He cupped my chin so I couldn’t look away. “I thought not. It’s settled. You’re dining with me. I behaved appallingly the other night and I want to make it up to you.”
“Mick—”
“Please.” His voice was soft in my hair. “Say yes.”
I knew I would regret this. “All right,” I said. “Yes.”
I finished making the rounds of the stables with him before we went back to the house. Our last stop was the stallion’s barn and the stall which contained Dunne Gone, a bay with a white blaze on his face. Tommy was sifting through straw with a pitchfork, mucking the stall when we got there.