A Taste of Chardonnay Read online

  At all four corners of the little town’s main intersection were Nomex-jacketed firefighters soliciting vehicles at stop signs. Hands waved dollar bills out car windows, depositing them in the boots held out by the firemen.

  There was an especially big crowd—for Calistoga, anyway—around one tall figure. Char could just see his helmet above the others’ heads.

  She edged closer. In the center of the throng, thrusting a microphone into the man’s face, Char recognized an attractive reporter from out of Santa Rosa. Calistoga was too small to have its own station.

  She walked to the edge of the tightly packed throng to better hear what was being said.

  “Folks,” the reporter said to her cameraman, “in case you haven’t been to the movies lately, this man dressed as a firefighter is none other than Napa’s own Ryder McBride. Ryder’s had great success with First Responder. Ryder, tell us what it is you’re doing out here on the streets of Calistoga today.”

  “I’m here on behalf of my favorite cause, the Firefighters’ Relief Fund. Every year, children and families struggle to recover from fires. Fires destroy our property and our lives. The Firefighters’ Relief Fund of northern California provides assistance to those families.”

  He was a great interview—natural and yet professional. He knew how to divide his attention equally between the reporter and the cameraman.

  “Ryder, I understand the FRF is one of the foundations taking part in this year’s mega-fund-raiser, the Napa Charity Challenge, sponsored by the McDaniel Foundation?”

  Someone jostled Char, forcing her a step backward. The movement attracted Ryder’s eye. From that instant on, he managed to continue answering the rest of the reporter’s questions with his usual charm, all the while maintaining steady eye contact with Char.

  “. . . the real story, and that is, that you’re actually an honest-to-goodness fireman?” the glamorous reporter asked.

  “Haven’t been able to volunteer down in Los Angeles. Work’s kept me busy lately.”

  He displayed a blinding grin. The onlookers smiled and nodded at one another, eating it up, as the interview continued.

  What timing he had. He knew exactly when to smile and when to appear serious. How to work the crowd and the reporter simultaneously. And to think, he was totally untrained. Or so the gossip said.

  “Ryder, tell us what you’re working on next.”

  Char watched, entranced. For once, she was the observer instead of the observed. Nobody paid the least bit of attention to her. All eyes were on Ryder.

  True, back east, at school, she was an unknown—at least until people found out her name. But here in the valley, Char was used to being the center of attention. It gave her an odd sensation, being in the background for a change. Pleasant, but odd.

  “I’m not here to talk about myself today. I’m here to bring attention to the needs of firefighters and their families . . .”

  If she’d had a white flag, she’d have waved it. Curving her lips into a line that was half-smile, half-smirk, she shook her head at Ryder in tacit surrender, turned, and walked back to her car.

  Ryder McBride had won the Battle of Calistoga today. Might as well head back south.

  Was this how he was going to the play the game? Use his celebrity and dress up in a fireman’s costume? He was going after the prize with double barrels. She’d better remember that.

  Later that evening, when the sun was almost below the horizon, an exhausted Char dragged herself on weary legs into the kitchen.

  Meri and Savvy swiveled on their stools at the granite counter where they were sipping wine and munching salads.

  “Where have you been?” Savvy asked casually between bites.

  “Out soliciting.” Char exhaled heavily as she climbed onto a stool.

  “How’d it go?” asked Meri.

  “Pretty good, at first. I started out in Yountville—got everyone in our favorite spots. Oils and Almonds donated a humongous gift basket. Then I went along the Silverado Trail and hit up La Maison de la Lune. They gave me a weekend package for two.”

  “Sweet,” said Savvy.

  “I stopped at every vineyard and tasting room, all the way up to Calistoga. You’ll never guess who I ran into there.”

  Char placed her hands on the counter and leaned forward for emphasis.

  “Firefighters.” She sat back to let that momentous news sink in.

  “Firefighters?” repeated Meri, showing a disappointing lack of concern. She took a big bite of avocado.

  “Firefighters! In uniform.”

  “Was there a fire up in Calistoga?” asked Savvy.

  Char sighed. Starting from the beginning, she filled them in on what she’d learned about Ryder McBride since last Friday night.

  “And best of all,” she said with a sarcastic grin, “guess who some TV reporter was interviewing, right in the center of town? So it turns out, along with being Hollywood’s darling, he’s an athlete, a student of sociology, and president of some firefighters’ organization. And he’s got firemen soliciting donations for the challenge. You should’ve seen them, looking all hot in their yellow jackets, working the street corners, holding out their boots for dollar bills. And being pretty successful, from what I could see.”

  “Clever. Please pass the salt,” said Savvy.

  “Do you realize what this means?” Char exclaimed.

  “I don’t see how it’s all that bad,” said Meri.

  “Are you kidding? Nothing could be worse!” Char said, exasperated. “What’s hotter than a movie star?”

  “Um . . . a movie star in a fireman’s outfit?” asked Savvy.

  “Exactly. Everybody loves firefighters. They’re big and they’re strong, and they save your house and rescue your kids and your dog. They’re sexy, too. Why do you think they use them on calendars? Ryder’s got a huge advantage in the challenge, right out of the gate.”

  “Is there any of that bread left from Bouchon?” asked Meri.

  Char threw her hands in the air. How could she make them understand how Ryder had sabotaged her cause?

  “Ryder might’ve gotten lots of small donations today. But I’ll bet one vintner friend of Papa’s can top that with one stroke of his pen,” said Meri.

  “Still, it’s the publicity. He’ll be the hot topic all over Calistoga tonight, and he’ll be in the papers and online, too.”

  “That’s pretty ironic, isn’t it?” piped in Savvy. “Out of all of us, you’re the one who’s always hated attention the most. And now you’re suddenly envious of Ryder’s PR.”

  Char sighed, and then Savvy scowled.

  “Wait a minute. You said there was a reporter up there?”

  “Sylvia Chen from KEMO.”

  “How’d she know McBride would be in Calistoga today?”

  Char paused and then it dawned on her. Ryder must’ve called the press, and then set up the whole colorful spectacle. The charming town square, the kiddie tours of the fire engine, and the rugged firefighters in uniform, holding out their boots.

  “Never mind,” said Savvy. “We’re just getting started. Here”—she slid the wooden salad bowl across the table—“eat something. Then we’ll think this through and regroup.”

  Char grabbed a brightly colored stoneware plate and deposited romaine onto it with silver tongs.

  As she ate, Savvy looked thoughtful. “I don’t get it. I mean, I get Ryder using his star power, but why cover up in a uniform? He’d be much more recognizable without that phony getup. Unless—do you think he’s actually a real firefighter?”

  “The reporter asked that question, but I was already on my way back to the car. I wanted to stop and hear his answer, but I didn’t want to let on how interested I was.”

  Savvy wiped her mouth with a linen napkin, smoothed it on the marble counter, and reflected.

  “If he’s a real fireman, that is pretty formidable. Maybe the department just let him wear the uniform as a costume. After all, Ryder’s helping their cause. Still,
I know something you have that Ryder McBride doesn’t.”

  Char raised an eyebrow in doubt. “Yeah? What?”

  “Us,” she said, still munching, indicating Meri and herself with a nonchalant wave of her fork.

  Chapter 16

  Sunday, June 22

  At church the next morning, Char and her sisters witnessed a revelation.

  Though they sat in their usual spot toward the left front, the rows around them were desolate. Only the few faithful who presumably hadn’t seen last night’s TV coverage of Ryder McBride, movie-star-slash-fireman, were in their corner.

  Most everyone else was jammed into the rear of the sanctuary, toward the right.

  It was amazing how quickly the tide had turned. He’d only been back in town a couple of weeks, and wham, everyone had Ryder fever.

  Meri raised an eyebrow at Char. “Looks like we’re no longer the cool kids,” she whispered.

  “Sometimes you get what you pray for,” Char replied.

  For years, this was what she thought she had wanted. The simple gift of sitting in public, in her hometown, and being treated like just another citizen.

  And now that she’d received that gift, she had strangely mixed feelings about it.

  The girls had always lived with a schizophrenic combination of attention and neglect. They were still dealing with their abandonment, in varying degrees. The day Maman had left had been the defining moment of their childhood.

  When the gospel reading was finished, Char settled in for the sermon. But as hard as she tried to concentrate on Father Ed, her mind kept going back to that terrible time.

  It wasn’t all that bad. That was the psychological Band-Aid she used when she allowed the memories to surface. It was her best defense against the feelings of resentment and loss that accompanied the flashbacks.

  Maman, sitting at her dressing table in a cloud of the bespoke rose perfume formulated for her and her alone, at a tiny boutique on the Champs-Élysées.

  Maman. How many times, late at night in the grip of homesickness, had Char’s dorm mates begged her to describe what it had been like growing up with a famous actress for a mother?

  A mental snapshot of Savvy, tottering around on Maman’s heels, while Char and Meri took turns with her silk bathrobe came to mind. They’d been pretending they were going to the awards ceremony, too . . . crowding around Maman in her white satin gown, who touched their noses with her powder puff and rouged their baby-smooth cheeks.

  “Maintenant, vous êtes très jolie. There. Now, you are pretty.”

  Char would try to explain that Maman was the same evocative combination of warm and cool, push and pull in private that she was on-screen, but that never satisfied them. Yet that was what made Lily, Lily: the aloof mystique that had won her millions of fans. She was like a promise for the future that inspired hope, but never came true.

  Up until the fatal crash days later, the girls hadn’t even been aware that she’d run away.

  At first, all they heard was a low rumbling among the staff.

  “Madame est parti avec l’Argentin,” whispered Jeanne, the cook.

  “It was the Argentine who took her,” the head housekeeper was overheard telling the au pair who had introduced them to this church where Char now sat—who’d in turn broken the bad news to the girls.

  Because Papa was off who-knew-where.

  Years later, from the safe distance of her school, Char pulled up the newspaper accounts on the Internet. She read that Xavier St. Pierre was initially “overcome with grief.” Apparently, too overcome even to tell his daughters that Maman was dead.

  How could he? she’d rationalized. The French didn’t subscribe to warm, fuzzy American ideas of child rearing. He’d never established a rapport with them to begin with. How could he be expected to start then—explaining the adultery and death of his beloved Lily—when he was in the throes of his own intense suffering?

  She knew it was ridiculous—the excuses left over from childhood that she still used to justify her parents’ behavior. They were the excuses of a little girl struggling to make sense of her world. Still, she couldn’t let go of them.

  While researching her father, Char also had found out that Lily d’Amboise had been a well-known French actress way before she’d gone to Hollywood. She’d been accustomed to being worshipped, catered to . . . adored. Within four short years, she migrated to a strange country, married, and produced three daughters in quick succession.

  Maman must have missed acting and all that went with it, because she wasted no time going right back to it. Never really even took a break except during the later parts of her pregnancies.

  People took care of Lily, not the other way around. Who could fault poor Maman for her lack of mothering skills?

  And while being thrust onto a plane with one suitcase apiece was initially terrifying, with hindsight it was probably a good thing Char and her sisters had been sent east. Papa wasn’t emotionally equipped to take care of them. And who knew how they’d have coped if they’d had to deal with the abrupt swing of the valley’s spotlight from their mother onto them—mere kids, still in mourning?

  As it was, they’d been immersed into highly structured—if separate—environments, far from the prying eyes of Hollywood and the wine coast. With hindsight, anonymity and some excellent guidance counselors had probably been their salvation.

  Not that it had been easy—far from it. Char recalled the “pleasures” of Hollyhurst Academy: tiny rooms; living by the bells, from the seven o’clock wake up to lights out; communal bathrooms. And above all, the loneliness of having to grow up without her sisters.

  But now they were together again. The chance to reunite was what had pulled the three back to the Napa mansion, to try to reclaim some semblance of family from whatever shreds were left.

  Char blinked and tossed her head. She’d just spent the entire Nicene Creed and the Lord’s Prayer reminiscing. Now Father Ed was calling them up to communion.

  When she returned from the altar, she watched intently as the rear rows trickled forward, waiting with everyone else to stare at Napa’s newest phenom.

  A core group surrounded him. An ordinary-looking middle-aged woman in a nondescript dress led, followed by a pixie-faced brown-haired girl—twelve, if her guess was right. Ryder must’ve looked just like that, once upon a time. And a pair of gangly teenage boys, obviously twins . . . tall, like Ryder, but still adjusting to their height.

  Ryder guided his little sister toward the priest, his hands resting lightly but protectively on her shoulders.

  Probably headed home to their one-story ranch to sit down to Sunday dinner, Char imagined. With a stab of envy, she could almost smell the aroma of roasting chicken greeting them as they walked in the front door. Add a father figure, and it was the kind of family she had always dreamed of.

  When it was Ryder’s turn, he crossed himself and sipped from the chalice. It was a cinch to read the thoughts of those communing after him. While they were still in the church parking lot, they’d be online, bragging about drinking from the same cup as Ryder McBride. It might even be enough to bring them back again next Sunday. That made her happy for Father Ed. God knew, he needed the numbers.

  On his way back to his seat, Ryder sought her eyes. Letting down her guard, she gave him an empathetic smile.

  So often, people lost sight of the humanity of celebrities. They became these icons of perfection that were either envied or vilified out of all proportion.

  Like Maman.

  Chapter 17

  Wednesday, June 25

  A half dozen of Ryder’s male teammates were pretending to retie their running shoes, while others made a show of stretching hamstrings. Their matching red Challenge tees made them stand out against the Pacific blue sky.

  Across the street, a bevy of toned women warmed up, too, the white jersey of their tees stretched over curves the men didn’t have. The interested glances flying back and forth energized the dry valley air.


  “You think I don’t know what you show-offs are doing, flexing your biceps like that?” Ryder kidded good-naturedly.

  “Let them go first,” laughed one of the younger men.

  “Forget it,” Ryder said with a knowing smile. “The only view we’re gonna be seeing is the Mayacamas. The race is Friday. Each of us can do our own fartleks once we’re warm. Run out to Mission Trail and back.”

  Then his peripheral vision caught Chardonnay St. Pierre approaching in a pair of shorts made from so little cloth they made his skivvies look like a stage curtain. From the looks of those quads, she wasn’t anywhere near as delicate as she’d appeared the night they’d met, when she’d been swathed in enough white silk to make a parachute.

  While his men ogled, he sauntered toward her.

  “Another coincidence?” she called.

  Hellcat. She drew a grin from him, in spite of himself.

  Something about her always put him on the alert. He searched her expression as the distance between them closed. The woman’s moods swung back and forth like a pendulum. What was he in for today?

  Her smile teased, but her eyes sparkled.

  He spread his arms in a fake protestation of guilt. “You caught me.”

  They came together on common ground in the middle of the road. She cocked a hip, hands propped on a narrow waist. Two coaches in full view of their teams, but out of their hearing.

  “You may find this hard to believe, but I don’t have spies watching to see when you’re going to run. I take my guys out four times a week, and this is only the first time we’ve run into Team Chardonnay.”

  “Second,” Char corrected him, raising two fingers.

  “I was by myself that day, remember?”

  Like the wind off the bay, her face and tone shifted without warning.

  “Your kid sister looks just like you.”

  Ryder drew a blank.

  “Church last Sunday?” She gave him a slanted look.

  He looked down and scuffed the toe of one sneaker on the blacktop.