Chapter 7
When Bill’s phone rang, he automatically raised his head from his pillow and scrabbled for the glowing rectangle lying on his bedside table. He was used to getting work calls at all hours, but seriously?
He looked at the screen, then answered with a confused, “Sake?”
“Yeah. You can come get me?”
“It’s the middle of the night!” He was conferring with Russ Cross tomorrow. He needed sleep to be on his game.
Was that a sigh of impatience he heard?
“Either you can or you can’t.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Taylor won’t stop barking.”
Bill scrubbed a hand through his thick crop of short hair, trying to shift from dreaming to waking mode. His big meeting was in—let’s see—seven and a half hours. But whom else did Sake have to depend on?
Sighing, he swung his feet onto the floor. “Give me a chance to pull on a pair of jeans.”
Bill hung up and shook his head at himself. Name one other person he’d get up in the middle of the night for.
Six hours later, Bill stood buttoning up his white shirt, fresh from the cleaners. He peered down at a sleep-rumpled Sake, stretched out on his sectional, and wondered what his mom would think if she could see the sight of the unorthodox wine heiress in nothing but his T-shirt, one slender leg wound around the afghan she’d knitted for him, while at the same time he tried to ignore the effect that leg was having on him. He couldn’t afford any more distractions this morning.
He’d already fed Taylor, and lacking a backyard, taken her out for a short walk to do her business, all the while hoping that his morning routine—making coffee, showering—would wake Sake up. But she was out like a light. No wonder, after last night. He could have used a few more winks, himself.
On the coffee table, Sake’s phone buzzed. Bill checked the screen where it lay, then nudged Sake’s shoulder. “Wake up. Your father’s on the phone.”
“Nnnn.”
“Sake. It’s your dad.”
“Sake!” He picked up her phone, wrapped her hand around it, and went back to the bathroom.
“Hullo?”
As Bill tugged his tie this way and that in front of the mirror, all he could see in his mind’s eye was her outrageously sexy bed head. While he went about straightening the towels and yanking his comforter up over his pillows, he overheard Xavier St. Pierre ranting through the phone in his rapid Franglais.
When he returned to the living room, Sake had tossed off the afghan and was gathering her clothes from where they had been strewn helter-skelter during the wee hours of the morning.
His breath caught at the sight of her girlish curves bouncing beneath his T-shirt . . . her black panties peeking out from underneath.
“He wants me there, but I can’t have my dog with me, and now he’s all up in my grill about leaving in the middle of the night.”
Bill checked his watch as he slid into his loafers. “I was just going to wake you anyway. I gotta be at a meeting. Can you be ready in ten so I can drop you off first?”
It was raining again when Bill Diamond pulled up to Domaine St. Pierre, but just like before, he still insisted on walking Sake up the slick steps to the door, even though he was all dressed up for work. After he said good-bye to her and Taylor for the last time beneath the porch roof and she watched him drive away, she looped Taylor’s leash around the balustrade and sternly ordered her not to bark. She went in and stood very still, listening.
Incredibly, all remained quiet outside. Must have been the dark that had made Taylor act out before. Who could blame her? She didn’t know where she was or what she was doing here.
Sake wandered through the maze of rooms, following the sounds of life into the most tricked-out kitchen she’d ever laid eyes on. There, on the wall hooks near the door, dangled the sets of car keys Papa had told her about. Her gaze traveled over the tall glass-front cupboards, the polished copper pots suspended over an island, to Jeanne, stirring a pot on the flame of a six-burner AGA with a quad oven.
Jeanne startled when she saw Sake standing there.
“Where is he?” asked Sake, hiding her awe of the workspace, the primo equipment.
Jeanne countered with, “Where is the dog?”
“Don’t have a seizure. She’s tied out on the porch.”
“You will find your papa in his lab,” Jeanne said coolly. “Go out the front door and follow the signs.”
It was starting to sink in—this was really Sake’s family’s property, and she technically had the run of the place. Still, neither the gardeners nor the field workers in their rain gear and hats looked up when she and Taylor walked by. To them, she was still nobody.
She followed the signs to the lab. Behind a glass door sat Papa at a long white table, surrounded by the kind of odd-shaped cylinders and beakers she’d only ever seen back in science class at Bal High. The atmosphere was musty with the mysterious smells of grapes and earth.
“I thought we had an understanding, mademoiselle,” Papa said sternly, peeling off his reading glasses when she entered, tossing them on the table with a clatter. He sat back in his chair and pierced her with his eyes.
Taylor shook the raindrops off her coat onto the lab floor. The sound drew her father’s attention to Sake’s own stringy, wet locks.
“Where is your umbrella?”
Umbrella? Before she laid down cash money for an umbrella, there were about ninety-seven other things she needed first. But then, why would Papa get that? Under those preppy corduroys, he probably was sporting golden underpants.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Evidently I did not make myself clear when I told you that you needed to prove yourself for the next three months, here at home. Your home.”
“Swerve, okay? I don’t need to prove myself to you or anyone else. Just lemme and my dog go back and live our lives.”
“Is that really what you want? To return to the crétin who would have you still sitting behind prison bars? I happen to know what it is like to sleep in a prison cell. What kind of man would allow a woman—any woman—to spend a single second there?”
Sake started to make the excuse that Rico had been mad turnt that night when the cops came—but before the thought reached her lips, she was struck by the weakness of that argument.
“Answer me! What kind?” Papa’s eyes burned through her.
Sake couldn’t admit that Papa might be right. It was too hard to wrap her head around the concept that she might deserve better than Rico. So she responded in her habitual way, by lashing out in self-defense. “It’s my life. You can’t make me stay here!”
Papa jumped up from his chair so fast its front legs left the floor. “Go then!” He snatched up his phone. “Bruno, drop what you’re doing and bring the car around.” He stabbed a button to end the call. “Leave the credit card on the table.”
Sake swung her backpack around to land on the pristine table with a thud that rattled the delicate glassware and rifled through it until she found Papa’s card. Catching a glimpse of the bracelet on her wrist, she made another impulsive decision: she’d do him one better. She’d ungift Meri’s bling, too. Slipping off the bracelet and tossing it on the hard surface, where it gyrated with a high-pitched ring, gave her a warped sense of satisfaction. But mingling with the sense of martyrdom was a twinge of regret. That gold had looked so sweet next to her tats. Why couldn’t she just accept it at face value?