Free The Villa by Nora Roberts Page A

with what she considered heroic patience, "it's part of my job, and now yours, to help sell those grades to the consumer. The individual consumer and the big accounts. Hotels, restaurants. To pull in the wine merchants, the brokers, and make them see they must have Giambelli, or what will now be Giambelli-MacMillan, on their list. To do that, I have to sell the package as well as what's inside the bottle."
    "The packaging's fluff," he said, eyeing her deliberately. "It's what's inside that tips the scales."
    "That's a very clever, and subtle, insult. You get a point. However, packaging, marketing, promotion are what up the product on the scale to begin with. With people, and with wine. Let's stick with wine for the moment, shall we?"
    His lips twitched. Her tone had gone frigid and keen, a sure sign he'd indeed scored a point. "Sure."
    "I have to make the idea of the product intriguing, exclusive, accessible, substantial, fun, sexy. So I have to know the product and there we're on even ground. But I also have to know the account, and the market I'm targeting. That's what you have to learn."
    "Surveys, statistics, parties, polls, meetings."
    She reached over and patted his hand. "You'll live through it." She paused, slowed down slightly. "Do you recognize that van?"
    He frowned, squinting through the windshield as a dark, late-model minivan turned on the road up ahead into the entrance to Villa Giambelli. "No."
    "Cutter," Sophia muttered. "I just bet it's Cutter."
    "We could put off the trip to San Francisco and find out."
    It was tempting, and the hope in Ty's voice amused her. Still, she shook her head and kept on driving. "No, that would make him too important. Besides, I'll grill my mother when I get home."
    "I want in that loop."
    "For better or worse, Ty, you and I are in this together. I'll keep you in my loop, you keep me in yours."
     
    It was a long way from coast to coast. It was, in some ways, another world, a world where everyone was a stranger. He'd ripped out the roots he'd managed to sink into New York concrete with the hope he could plant them here, in the hills and valleys of northern California.
    If it had been that, only that, David wouldn't have been worried. He'd have found it an adventure, a thrill, the kind of freewheeling gamble he'd have jumped at in his youth. But when a man was forty-three and had two teenagers depending on him, there was a great deal at stake.
    If he'd been certain remaining with La Coeur in New York was what was best for his kids, he'd have stayed there. He'd have stifled there, trapped in the glass and steel of his office. But he'd stopped being sure when his sixteen-year-old son had been picked up for shoplifting, and his fourteen-year-old daughter had started painting her toe-nails black.
    He'd been losing touch with his kids, and in losing touch, losing control. When the offer from Giambelli-MacMillan had fallen in his lap, it had seemed like a sign.
    Take a chance. Start fresh.
    God knew it wouldn't be the first time he'd done both. But this time he did so with his kids' happiness tossed into the ante.
    "This place is in the middle of nowhere."
    David glanced in the rearview mirror at his son. Maddy had won the toss in San Francisco and sat, desperately trying to look bored, in the front seat. "How," David asked, "can nowhere have a middle? I've always wondered that."
    He had the pleasure of seeing Theo smirk, the closest he came to a genuine smile these days.
    He looks like his mother, David thought. A young male version of Sylvia. Which, David knew, neither Theo nor Sylvia would appreciate. They had that in common as well, both of them bound and determined to be seen as individuals.
    For Sylvia, that had meant stepping out of marriage and away from motherhood. For Theo… time, David supposed, would tell.
    "Why does it have to be raining?" Maddy slumped in her seat and tried not to let her eyes gleam with excitement as she studied the huge stone mansion in front of the