Chapter 21
Burrowed deep in his blankets, Mark drifted in the current of a dream. He and Meri were holding hands in the center of a sumptuous showroom, surrounded by shoppers in various stages of the purchasing process . . . some holding be-ringed hands aloft for the stones to catch the light, others bending over polished showcases, still others conversing with helpful sales associates. He had just drawn her in for a kiss—
Ping! went his phone, inches from his ear.
At the second text notification, he recalled what day it was: Monday, the day he could finally confirm to his aunt that all systems were go for a Merlot St. Pierre launch! He stretched with sleepy satisfaction before fumbling blindly on the bedside table. When his fingers landed on his phone, he sat up, squinting in the early morning light at the tiny lettering.
From Meri. See attached. I can’t do this. I’m sorry.
He opened the link to the Jumbotron video of Merlot and himself kissing at yesterday’s game. Rubbing his eyes, he scrolled down to the accompanying text from a top NorCal gossip site. As the story sank in, the trajectory of his sweet dream peaked short of its zenith and fizzled like a dud firecracker.
Who is Merlot’s mystery man?
Has Napa wine princess Merlot St. Pierre found her Prince Charming? Merlot was photographed Sunday in the arms of this anonymous ’Niners fan at Levi’s Stadium.
Merlot, youngest daughter of Xavier St. Pierre, is the striking brunette who until recently was enrolled at Gates College of Art and Design in San Francisco. Sources say she left without finishing.
Mr. St. Pierre is as famous for his cult cabernets as he is infamous for his ever-changing cast of companions since the untimely death of his wife, Academy Award-winning actress Lily d’Amboise.
Merlot and her sisters, Chardonnay and Sauvignon, normally shun the limelight. On those rare occasions when they’re spotted out, their beauty and style inspire envy in women and admiration in men. The trio has been hidden away at eastern prep schools for the past decade while wine country residents waited patiently for them to mature and claim their rightful place in Napa’s aristocracy.
St. Pierre’s series of June dinner parties have been labeled the premier Napa rite of spring, blending colorful socialites and influential politicians, seasoned with a sprinkling of Hollywood. The fêtes have done double duty as contemporary cotillions, introducing the St. Pierre debutantes to Everyone Who Matters in West Coast society.
With any luck, American royal-watchers won’t have to wait until spring to find out who’s been sampling their favorite Merlot!
Mark scrubbed a weary hand across his weekend beard. Merlot was going to be a basket case.
Merlot! The orders! Gloria!
He sprang out of bed to find his feet confused on which direction to go first. To splash his face? Make coffee?
Call Meri.
***
“What do you mean, she doesn’t like the name St. Pierre?”
Aunt Gloria tossed her gold pen to the desk, rocked back in her chair, and made a valiant attempt at scowling, but her Botoxed brow wouldn’t quite go there. All it managed to do was form a bizarre contrast between the tight line of her mouth, the scorn in her eyes, and the incongruently smooth skin above them.
Mark had already braced himself for this reaction. He prepared himself for the ugly work of filling her in on the particulars. It wasn’t going to be easy. Gloria wouldn’t appreciate Meri’s reasoning. If he didn’t care for Meri so deeply, he wouldn’t appreciate it either.
“You told me this was a done deal! I canceled the Javits trip. Now what do you propose that we do?”
“Like I said. She wants to be known as Gilty, not Merlot St. Pierre.”
“ ‘Gilty,’ my rosy-red ass. What’s she have to feel so guilty about?” She reached for the pen, stroking it between the fingers of both hands. He knew Gloria. This was her cogitating expression. She wasn’t even seeing him—she was looking through him. Already calculating a way around this latest snafu.
Mark massaged the back of his aching neck. Even though he and Meri had gone through all this the day before with him taking the opposite side, he’d play devil’s advocate on Meri’s behalf this morning, against Gloria’s justifiable rampage.
“Says she doesn’t want to be identified with the wine label. Wants to do this all on her own.”
“Well, that’s patently ridiculous. Why didn’t you talk some sense into the girl?”
“Woman,” he corrected her.
He shivered. That had been no mere girl straddling his lap in that run-down Vallejo co-op. A vision of Meri’s sultry, heavy-lidded gaze during the peak of passion in a sepia-lit room popped into his field of consciousness. With some effort, he forced his attention back to the present.
“Try to look at it from her point of view. You’ve heard about her family scandals. They’re enough to embarrass anybody.”
Gloria waved him off with a glittering swoop of her hand. “I know, I know—even better than you. You were still a boy when the papers were full of Lily d’Amboise running off with that South American scoundrel. He was a vintner, too. Visiting the St. Pierre winery on business. They say he stole her away to his own estate, but that was simply to massage St. Pierre’s ego. She was a grown woman who made her own decisions. It’s not like she was kidnapped. They’d only been missing a day—word was the girls didn’t even realize she was gone—when his Ferrari went off that cliff.” Gloria tsked. “So sad. Walked away from those little girls without blinking an eye. But then, everyone said the St. Pierres had an unconventional marriage. Reportedly, Xavier did his fair share of running around, too.”
“Exactly. So although no one debates that the popularity of the wine is wholly justified, you can understand how her parents’ behavior would have affected Meri. Naturally, she cares more about her family than she does their business.”
“Yes, well, she can afford to, can’t she? Because of that business, she and her sisters are set for life.”
As are you and I, Aunt Gloria. Don’t forget. But Mark and his aunt had enjoyed all the advantages of a strong family legacy, minus the negatives that Meri endured. Granddad had led a quiet, law-abiding life. If he ever had crossed the line, it had gone unreported in the pre-social media era.
Gloria dipped her eyes, sending her hawk-sharp glare through Mark. “You’re right about one thing.” She drove her point home with the jab of the pen toward his nose. “Merlot St. Pierre is not a girl. She’s a woman. And if she wants to be a businesswoman, she’d better get over being hurt by Mommy and Daddy and start making some smart decisions.”
She wheeled her chair smoothly back into her desk. “Get Little Miz Gilty on the phone.”
Mark froze. An old-fashioned tongue-lashing from Gloria would only make things worse. He gulped and shook his head. “Won’t do any good. I’ve been trying all morning.”
Gloria looked at him askance. “She won’t even answer your phone calls?” She paused, frowning. “Why am I getting the feeling there’s more going on here than you’ve told me?”
Mark braced himself. “For starters, because I didn’t tell her I knew her real identity until after I slept with her.”
“You what?”
“Then, she found out you only signed her POs because she’s a St. Pierre.”
Gloria had risen from her seat. Now she was leaning over her desk, knuckles white against its edge, head thrust forward chicken-like from her neck.
“You’re sleeping with her?”
“Slept, not sleeping.” He cringed at how that came out. “It’s not what you think. I’ve been . . . seeing her.”
Gloria snorted. “For how long?”
Silently he counted backward, hoping if he thought hard enough he might be able to tack on a day he’d forgotten about. “Five days,” he said sheepishly.
Gloria fell into her seat with a clatter, shaking her head and fanning herself.
“It’s not about business. I—have feelings for her.”
She eyed him skeptically. “And you know this after five days?”
He had known three months ago, when he’d first laid eyes on that bracelet, that he shared something indescribably profound with its creator.
She opened her mouth to speak before biting her tongue, but not before Mark read her mind. If Merlot weren’t from a famous wine family, Gloria would be chewing him out yet again for his supposed poor judgment. Now all she said was, “I hope you’re going to use your head this time.”
He couldn’t expect the ice queen to understand. No wonder her own children had wanted nothing to do with the company if it meant having her for a boss.
“It doesn’t matter, and anyway, it’s between me and Merlot. We met, and there were—sparks. Mutual sparks.” Rubbing his damp palms against his cords, he turned away, circled her rug and returned to face her again. “We acted on it—for better or worse. But I dialed it back. This whole thing about her name came out and spooked her. Since then, I’ve been spending time with her as friends, getting to know each other.”
“In the hopes that she’d come around to our way of thinking?”
Mark nodded awkwardly. Let Gloria believe whatever she wanted. He knew what his true motives were—or lack of them.
“It was all good, until this came out, this morning.” He handed her his iPad opened to the stadium picture and story.
She snatched it from his hand, read, and sniffed. “Relationships are what make the world go around. It might not be fair, but there it is. Ironic, Merlot hasn’t figured that out yet. Most people would use a famous name to their advantage.”
“Yeah, well. I think she has figured it out, but she’s fighting it. It doesn’t strike her as fair. She has integrity. Believes in merit.”
“Merit! Merlot St. Pierre’s work has plenty of merit or I wouldn’t even be having this conversation. I’d be on the phone with one of our solid, dependable vendors, or that other girl—woman—I liked at the co-op. What was it that she calls her line? Something Spanish—and we could finally put spring to bed, instead of sitting here at this late date with a good chunk of your budget still uncommitted and an untried designer who’s pitching a hissy over acknowledging who her daddy is.”
But there was something his aunt was leaving out. And that was that Harrington’s wouldn’t survive another year with either its old vendors, or a debut collection of skulls. It could only stay afloat by making major bank.
Mark watched with growing apprehension the knotty veins on the backs of Gloria’s hands bulging and relaxing with her thought processes.
Finally, she let out a weary sigh. “Well, there’s only one thing to do, like it or not. I tried to give you some leeway, but we’re out of options. At this point, we’ll have to go with the skulls.” She slapped the iPad onto the desk.
A sour taste flooded Mark’s mouth, and his jaw clenched. He racked his brain in one final effort to save his partnership with Meri.
“What about the ad campaign?”
She hesitated. “We’ll let it stand. It’s vague enough to apply to any new vendor, thanks to your suggestion that we withhold names.”
Gloria’s laser vision bore down on him mercilessly, willing him to turn around, march down to his office, and fire off the POs to Rainn.
“Time’s a-wasting,” she said, twirling her pen.
Somehow, he managed to lift one foot, followed by the other.
He might be the founder’s grandson, but he wasn’t the majority shareholder. That was Gloria, even though lately she was off somewhere with her dull-witted CFO more often than she was in her plush office.
But Mark had had enough.
Dutifully, he fired off the hated e-mail to Rainn, then picked up his phone and punched in his lawyer’s number.
“Yeah, Mark,” said DeVon, his jovial game-day voice exchanged for the businesslike tone befitting the youngest partner at Jones, Goldberg and Sokolov.
“I need your help,” said Mark.
“Name it, brother.”
“We need to figure out how I can mount a coup d’état.”