Heard It Through The Grapevine. Pamela Browning
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of women she’d been standing with before.
Fredo stumped over, his white hair an aureole standing out around his head. “Come along, my boy,” he said to Josh. “I’ll show you where to clean up.” Josh followed him on a circuitous route along a well-worn grass path past the barbecue, the picnic tables and three or four kids playing with skateboards in front of the winery office.
“You know,” Fredo said as they washed up in the men’s room inside the small tasting facility, which held a bar and a few tiny tables, “it’s not the game that’s important, Joshua. It is the family, and that we play together as well as work together.”
Josh splashed water on his face. “That’s, um, good,” he said. He was surprised that Fredo was treating him as an equal, considering how everyone else deferred to him.
“My father, the first Gino Angelini, always held family to be more important than anything. This is the philosophy that we have let govern our family winery since we started it.”
“When we were in Scotland, Gina talked about her family a lot,” Josh told him. “The other women playing the game never mentioned their parents, brothers, sisters.” He hadn’t, either.
“Yes, that’s our Gina. She is named after my father and her father, too. Gino Junior was my elder brother. He died when Gina was twenty-two.” Fredo dried his hands on a paper towel and then handed one to Josh before clapping him on the shoulder. “Come, Josh. We must join the others. It is almost time for the stomping of the grapes.”
As they were making their way past the winery office, Fredo was distracted by questions from some of the children playing nearby, and Josh stepped to one side to wait for him. After a few moments, someone walked up behind him and gently put a hand on his arm. “Josh Corbett? I’m Maren, Gina’s mother.”
When he turned and looked into Maren’s face, he saw Gina’s delicate features, the same straight nose and high cheekbones. But where Gina’s eyes were dark, almost black, Maren’s were sapphire-blue, and her skin was ivory, not golden like Gina’s.
“I’m happy to meet you,” Josh said.
“And I’m glad to meet you,” Maren said, studying his face for a long moment.
“Aunt Maren, they’re pouring the grapes in the barrels,” Frankie announced as he bounded past.
“Is this the first time you’ve been to a crush?” Maren asked.
“Yes,” Josh said, scanning the group for Gina but trying not to be obvious about it. He spotted her setting food out on one of the tables, her breasts shifting gently against the gathered fabric of her blouse as she leaned over. She looked serenely at home in these surroundings, not at odds and edgy as she had in Scotland. Suddenly, she glanced his way and their eyes locked, stilling her laughter. A breeze stirred the leaves overhead, sending a romantic ripple of sunlight across Gina’s lovely face. In that moment his reason for wanting to come to the Napa Valley became perfectly clear: this trip, he admitted to himself for the first time, had little to do with writing an article about the Napa Valley and less to do with Starling Industries’ search for a winery; it had everything to do with Gina.
“Come, we should go watch the grape-stomping,” Maren said, appropriating his arm and leading him away. Reluctantly, he followed.
On a platform on the far side of the barn, men were dumping grapes into a row of twelve oaken half barrels. Fredo broke away from the children and mounted the stairs, first saying a few words to the group about being glad that everyone could be at crush, and then joining Josh and Maren as an accordion band began to play boisterous music. Josh noticed Frankie standing on the sidelines, tapping his foot in time to the beat and looking for all the world as though he wished he were playing with them.
Josh’s attention was distracted when he saw Gina walking toward him, her long hair swinging around her shoulders. “Hello, Uncle Fredo,” she said.
Fredo gave Gina an affectionate hug, his weathered face crinkling into a smile. “Not only do we Angelinis know how to grow grapes, Josh, we also understand how to grow beautiful young women, each as individual as a vintage of wine.”
“Uncle Fredo,” Gina protested with a light laugh, but whatever she might have said was cut off when Mia ran up, dragging Frankie along behind her.
“They’re going to start the contest! Whose team are you on, Aunt Gina?” Mia tugged excitedly at her arm.
“I—”
“Hey,” said Fredo expansively. “Why don’t you show Josh the ropes, Gina? Be a team?”
“But—”
“Oh, I think that’s a good idea,” Frankie said seriously. “You have very big feet, Josh. That’s important because the team that squashes the most juice out of the grapes in two minutes wins.”
“Frankie!” Gina protested. “Talking about the size of someone’s feet isn’t good manners.”
“That’s okay,” Josh said quickly because of the way Frankie’s face fell as a result of this rebuke. “I know my feet are big.”
“This grape-stomping is a tiring thing,” Mia grumbled. “You have to stomp and stomp and stomp.”
“It’s time for me to be out of here,” Maren declared with a half laugh. “I have to help in the kitchen.” She hurried off toward the entrance to the wine cave, where people were bringing out food.
Gina was trying to melt into the crowd, but some of her family members pushed her forward. “Go ahead, Gina. Go on,” they said.
Rocco dragged Josh along with him to the platform. “You can’t fully experience crush unless you stomp the grapes,” Rocco insisted, and next thing Josh knew, he was rolling up his pantlegs and his shoes were being collected by one of the Tonys, to put in a secure place where they would not be spattered with grape juice.
“I didn’t ask for this,” Gina said helplessly as they faced each other in one of the grape-filled barrels, which was barely large enough for two people to stand in. “I tried to get out of it.” She was so close that he could smell the heady fragrance of her cologne over the scent of the grapes.
“I’m glad you weren’t successful,” he murmured so that no one else could hear, and she glared at him.
“Okay, wait for the sound of the bell, and then you have two minutes to demonstrate your stomping skills,” instructed the person in charge, who Josh recalled was Gina’s brother-in-law and Mia’s father, Nick. “The idea is to crush as much juice from the grapes as you can. When I ring the bell at the close of your round, we measure the juice. The team that provides the most juice wins.”
“Wins what?” Josh asked Gina in a low tone.
“A bottle of wine, what else?” she said. She had hitched her short skirt even higher so that an expanse of creamy thigh showed.
“I’d like something more than that,” Josh muttered, and Gina’s eyebrows flew sky high.
Nick, who did not hear Josh’s remark, cleared his throat. “All right, contestants. On your mark, get set, go!”
The accordions struck up a frenzied melody. Gina said through gritted teeth, “Okay, Corbett. Move.” She’d done this before; he hadn’t. But he did his best, hating the way the grapes felt as they oozed up between his toes but liking the way Gina couldn’t avoid touching him as they jumped and squished and stomped and in general threw all decorum to the wind. Mia was right; this wasn’t easy. He grew tired long before the bell rang to signal the contest’s close, and when it did, he tried a sagging maneuver in Gina’s direction in the hope of bodily contact, but she was already stepping over the side of the barrel.
A hurried consultation ensued while the grape juice from each of the twelve barrels was measured, and then Nick declared, “The winners—Rocco and Jaimie!” Jaimie, who wore a silver tongue stud and had been pointed out earlier by Rocco