Tangled Vines (10 page)

He glared across the room at her. It made him sick with disgust to see the way people fawned over her. She was a cold, heartless bitch.

Lies. Her whole life was one lie on top of another. To her, family meant cheap labor. And that nonsense of hers that she had kept the winery going during Prohibition by making sacramental wines was another invention. As for that false image she projected of a woman faithful to her husband's dreams and his memory – did she think he'd forgotten the sight of her with her lipstick all smeared and her blouse unfastened, exposing her breasts? Or the way she had bent down to him, gripping his arms, her eyes blazing: “You must never say anything about this, Gil. Not to anyone. Not ever. Do you hear me?”

He nodded stiffly, jerkily, just as he had done then, those same hot feelings of shock and betrayal sweeping through him. He hadn't said a word. And he hadn't forgotten.

“I see Sam standing over there by himself,” Clay remarked idly. “I think I'll go say hello to my dear cousin.”

“Right,” his father replied gruffly and lifted his glass again.

Sam stood next to a gilded Louis Quinze console table, one hip leaning against a corner of its marble top. His jacket was unbuttoned, a hand buried in a side pocket of his trousers, negligently holding the jacket open.

He noticed Clay slowly but steadily moving in his direction and took another sip of the beer he'd been nursing most of the evening. It was stale and warm, but he continued to hold it, his glance flicking to Clay with disinterest when he reached him. They had never been close, or even friendly. Sam didn't pretend it was otherwise.

“I saw you were alone and thought you might want some company,” Clay said in greeting, his mouth curving in a smile.

It was a smile that could charm and capture a woman without effort, Sam knew. And he also knew that his cousin had all the scruples of a tomcat.

“You thought wrong,” he said and let his gaze drift over the room. He caught a flash of gold and focused on it.

It was Kelly Douglas. He'd seen her when she first arrived at the party. She had been impossible to miss in that dress of gold-filigree lace. It would catch any man's eye the way it softly molded her small breasts and hinted at the slenderness of her waistline, then stopped short a little below mid-thigh, celebrating the length of her long, shapely legs.

“An unusual woman,” Clay remarked, following the direction of his gaze.

Sam threw him a glance, his mouth slanting in a dry smile. “Don't tell me you struck out with her,” he taunted, having witnessed the meeting between Kelly and his cousin from across the room.

Clay gave him an amused look. “I haven't even stepped up to bat yet.” He studied him for another long second. “Are you still upset over that little incident with your wife? Sorry Adrienne is your ex-wife now, isn't she?”

His marriage to Adrienne Ballard had ceased to exist, in everything but name, six months after the wedding, long before he had surprised her with Clay in what could be euphemistically described as a compromising position. But the incident had certainly done nothing to promote any feeling of closeness to his cousin.

“You haven't changed a bit, Clay.” Sam set the pilsner glass on the marbled table next to a trio of equestrian figurines of Kangxi porcelain. “You have such class. Such low class.”

Clay just laughed. Sam held his gaze for a long second, then moved off. He preferred to choose his own company.

Hugh shifted closer to Kelly and murmured near her ear, “Now for the third member of our triangle, Baron Fougere. Mention his library at Chateau Noir and he'll be a fan forever.”

Kelly smiled to herself. This was hardly the first time Hugh had coached her, feeding her pertinent tidbits of information before introducing her to some important personage. Not only did such coaching give the illusion that she had personal knowledge of the individual, creating a favorable impression, but it also provided a topic of conversation so that neither party had to resort to such mundane subjects as weather.

When she was presented to the baron, her first reaction was a vague disappointment. Emile Gerard Chre-tien Fougere did not match her image of a French aristocrat. He had all the accoutrements of one – the signet ring; hand-tailored evening dress; shoes of the finest leather; manicured nails, lightly buffed. But it stopped there. In his fifties, her own height, on the stocky side with thinning hair, he had the staid and solid, inwardly absorbed look of an academe. Kelly realized Hugh's reference to the baron's library should have been her clue.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mademoiselle Douglas.” He greeted her with a preoccupied courtesy, the line of his mouth curving without managing to break his sober face. Kelly wondered how many had mistaken his distracted air for aloofness.

“The honor is mine, Baron Fougere,” she insisted, then added, “and New York's.”

He nodded with a trace of vagueness, then, almost belatedly, remembered the woman at his side. “Forgive me, my wife, ‘Baroness Natalie Eugenie Magdalene Fougere. Mademoiselle Douglas. And you know our host, Monsieur Townsend.”

Kelly turned toward his wife, a slim, petite woman, easily twenty years younger than her husband. “I'm very happy to meet you, Baroness Fougere.”

“Natalie, please.” Her smile was bright and quick, like her eyes. Her hair lay darkly on top of her head, exposing small and dainty ears with diamond-and-ruby pendants. A love of color was obvious in her gown of metallic silk chiffon in a swirl of rainbow hues. “We are in America. It is not the place for titles. May I call you Kelly?”

“Please.” It was impossible not to like her. And impossible not to see the stark contrast of natures in husband and wife.

“Your city is a most fascinating place,” she told Kelly. “It must be very exciting to live here.”

“At times,” she admitted. “Is this your first visit to New York?”

“I have been here twice before, but there is so much to see and do, I could never tire of it,” Natalie Fougere declared, unaware that the baron's attention had already wandered. But Kelly was.

“Nearly everyone feels that way – New York may tire of you, but you never tire of it,” Kelly replied, and the baroness laughed in delighted agreement, the sound like musical notes on a scale, all light and airy. The baron glanced at her in his grave, absentminded way, having heard none of the exchange.

“That is an excellent – how do you say? – bon mot, Kelly.”

“Merely an observation from one who lives here,” she corrected, then turned to include the baron. “I'm told, Baron Fougere, that you have an outstanding library at Chateau Noir.”

His eyes lit up at the mention of it, his expression becoming almost animated. “It is true the collection holds many fine and rare first editions. But the credit is not mine. They are books acquired by my family over the years. Over the centuries. The library is a source of great enjoyment to me.”

He went on at length, referring to works by some of the world's greatest writers and philosophers. A few of the names and titles Kelly remembered from her college days, enough that she was able to respond with some display of intelligence.

“You must come to Chateau Noir so that I may show you the treasures of its library,” the baron stated in a tone that made it sound like a command.

Before Kelly had a chance to respond, Gil Rutledge walked up and laid a friendly hand on the baron's shoulder. “Emile,” he said in greeting. “I see you have met the very charming and attractive Miss Douglas.”

“Indeed I have.”

Gil flashed a smile at Kelly. “Did the baron tell you that he was still in short pants the first time we met?”

Kelly tried, and failed, to imagine this scholarly-looking man before her as a very young boy. “No, he didn't mention that.”

“It was back in ‘forty-five,” Gil recalled. “The war in Europe was over and the first atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan only the day before. I was a young second lieutenant, stationed in France at the time. I had a month's leave coming and Emile's grandfather graciously invited me to spend it at Chateau Noir.”

“The ‘forty-five Chateau Noir,” Hugh murmured almost reverently. “That is a truly noble wine.”

“I am proud to say I was there for the birth of it,” Gil declared. “Even as it fermented, one could sense the future greatness of it. Several years later when the wine was released, Emile's grandfather very generously sent a case to me. A memento of my visit to Chateau Noir, he called it. I still have a few bottles left. I assure you they are reserved for very special celebrations.” He turned to Emile. “Perhaps we will have an occasion to open one in the near future, Emile.”

“Perhaps,” he replied and added nothing more.

Clay Rutledge observed the initial meeting between the baron and Kelly Douglas. His attention centered on her in absent appraisal and he continued to stand by the gilded console table. The faint thinning of his lips was the only outward sign that he was still smarting from the cut Sam had made in parting.

When his father joined them, Clay's glance drifted to him. There was nothing his father wouldn't do to steal this deal from Katherine. Years ago Clay had learned that his father lived for only one thing – besting Katherine in the wine business. For as long as Clay could remember, she had dominated their lives, both before and after she had thrown his father out of the company and his young family out of the house. He had come to share his father's hatred of her.

The baron's wife laughed at something Kelly said, drawing his glance. Clay studied her in quiet speculation, watching her smile fade, replaced by a look of polite interest as her husband took over the conversation. She was the baron's second wife. Considerably younger than Fougere, she needed brightness and drama in her life and, Clay suspected from previous meetings, yearned for an ardent kind of affection her husband was far too sedate to show.

He thought of the merger his father wanted so desperately. It was a thing that could be attacked on two fronts. While his father worked the business angle with the baron, he would use his persuasions on the baron's wife.

Clay waited until Kelly and Townsend had moved on to another cluster of guests, then wandered over to join the baron and his father. After an exchange of greetings, he chatted with the baron a full minute or more about the wine auction and the vertical selection of Bordeaux vintages donated by Chateau Noir. Then, with a slight turn of his head, he glanced at Natalie Fougere, giving her a faint smile, a nod, and nothing more.

The baron divided a blank glance between them, then roused himself as if suddenly reminded of his manners. “You have met, non?” he inquired of his wife.

“Yes.” She smiled slightly. “On two or three occasions.”

“This makes the third, I believe,” Clay inserted smoothly.

“We have attended many social functions. It is difficult to remember,” the baron offered in excuse.

“I understand.” Clay nodded.

Gil said something to the baron, claiming his attention. Clay moved to the side, as if to avoid intruding on their conversation, and held Natalie's gaze, returning its veiled inspection. There, in the hollow of her throat, he saw the rapid beat of her pulse and knew he had stirred her. Instinct and experience told him the best method of approach: dark and serious, saying more with his tone than his words.

“Are you enjoying your stay in New York?” he asked.

“It is an exciting city. Do you not find it so?” She continued to watch him, her expression composed to show a mild interest in the conversation – and him.

“If you are lonely and bored, it makes very little difference where you are.” Clay kept himself perfectly still, everything about him showing the intensity of restraint – his stance, his voice, his look.

“I would think a man would find many enjoyable diversions here,” she replied, almost casually.

“Perhaps I wish for things that can't be.” He looked directly into her eyes. “As you do, I think.”

Her eyes widened slightly. For an instant she was completely engrossed with him, her control slipping briefly to let a warmth and a hunger show before she recovered.

“Many would wish for the things I have, Monsieur Rutledge.”

“Of course,” he said, and turned back to his father and the baron without pressing her further. He had aroused her interest. For now that was enough. Tomorrow he knew the baron had a meeting with Katherine. And he also knew the baron never took his young wife to such business appointments. Which meant she would be left to her own devices. Or to his.

Kelly slipped into the softly lit library. After more than an hour of circulating among the guests, smiling and chatting, she needed a break. She had never been comfortable at large social gatherings like this one. At least, not as a guest.

She crossed to the window with its view of the Empire State Building, and the more distant twin towers of the World Trade Center. She opened her gold evening bag and took out a cigarette, lighting it.

“Haven't you heard? Smoking can be hazardous to your health.”

With a faint start, she turned to face Sam Rutledge, her pulse skittering in reaction, all her nerves swimming to the surface. He lounged in a taupe-and-white-striped chair, the lamp beside it unlit. She noticed the faint curve of his lips and the tanned skin taut across his facial bones.

Snapping her bag closed, she blew the smoke at the ceiling. “So are eggs, prime rib, sticky doughnuts, and walking along city streets after dark.” With effort, she managed an easy smile.

“You left out alcohol.” He swirled the beer in his pilsner glass.

“If you listen to all the health experts, the list is endless.”

“True.” He rose from the chair and wandered over to stand by the window, his body angled toward her.

She wished he had remained in the chair. She was tall, but he was taller. She was usually eye-level with most men, but with him, she had to look up. She didn't like that. She felt a hum of tension and fought it.