Heard It Through the Grapevine Read online

  “I’m not so sure,” he said, wiping the perspiration from his face with a handkerchief. He was still bummed out from his disappointing performance. He kept scanning the crowd for Gina, but he didn’t see her near the barbecue, the big doors that led to the wine cave or near the group 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 as one of his cousins, accepted the bottle of win
e and acknowledged the applause of her relatives with an exaggerated bow.

  “You came in second,” Nick said to Josh as Frankie ran up and slapped him an exuberant high-five. “Where’s Gina?”

  Josh gestured toward the crowd. “She’s wandered off, I guess,” he said.

  “You did okay for your first time,” Nick said. “Here are a couple of T-shirts. See that Gina gets hers, will you?”

  As a new group of contestants climbed into the barrels, Josh looked down at his feet. They were purple. So were all the other previous contestants’, but they didn’t seem to care, so why should he? He scrambled down from the platform and took off in pursuit of Gina, whose ash-blond hair was highly visible near the food-laden tables. He caught up with her as she was piling barbecued ribs onto a plate.

  “Here,” she said, unceremoniously shoving the plate in his direction.

  “Nick said to give you this,” he said, handing her the T-shirt.

  She afforded him a grudging smile as she tossed it over her arm. “Thanks, Josh. Second place isn’t bad, you know, for your first grape-stomping experience.” Her gesture encompassed the abundance of dishes on the tabletop. “Please help yourself to the food. There’s Aunt Dede’s special penne-and-artichoke salad. She’s a caterer here in the valley and my mother works for her. Also, Claire—she’s Uncle Fredo’s daughter—made her prize carrot cake, and you might want to try that.”

  Josh set the plate of ribs aside momentarily so that he could roll his pantlegs down. Gina caught sight of the purple stains on the fabric.

  “Uh-oh,” she said with a grimace. “I’m sorry about your pants.”

  “Don’t be. It’s nothing a good dry cleaner can’t fix.” He picked up the plate and helped himself to Aunt Dede’s salad.

  “Try the bruschetta,” Gina said as they moved past the layered salad, the marinated mushrooms, the artichoke pie.

  “Hey, Gina, did you make your special mussels-and-tomato fettucine?” Rocco called from a table at the outskirts of the group.

  “Not this time. Too busy,” she called back.

  “Aw, that’s too bad. I’ll let you sit with us, but only if you promise to invite me over for it soon.”

  Gina glanced up at Josh. “Do you mind hanging out with Rocco? Or have you had enough?”

  Which was how Josh found himself part of another amiable family group. He met Gina’s vivacious cousin Bobbi, who said she’d served in the Peace Corps, and her husband, Stan, who owned a chain of fresh markets. He met Albert Aurelio, a salt-of-the-earth type who had married into the Angelini family and was now chief financial officer at Vineyard Oaks. When Josh’s plate was empty, he returned to the buffet table for more food and found Maren putting out bread and rolls that she’d baked herself, and later he listened with rapt attention as Gina’s cousin Carla, who was unmarried, talked animatedly about her career in public relations with the local winegrowers’ association.

  “Are you the one who made the carrot cake?” he asked her. “It’s the best I’ve ever tasted.”

  “No, that was Claire. She’s over there—the tall one with the long earrings. Don’t worry,” Carla said with a laugh. “No one could get all the Angelinis straight right away. A lot of people have the same name—for instance, Big Tony and Little Tony.”

  “I met them playing bocce,” Josh said, digging into the artichoke pie.

  “They’re not to be confused with Anthony Ceravolo, Rocco’s dad, who married Aunt Gianna and is sometimes called Tony. And of course Aunt Gianna is not to be confused with my cousin Gina, who brought you here, and neither of them should be mistaken for Jennifer Saltieri Thompson, who for some unimaginable reason is sometimes referred to as Jeni, with a long e. Oh, and Marcy, who is Little Tony’s wife, is expecting a baby girl in a few months, and she and Little Tony say that they intend to name their new daughter, guess what? Toni.

  “Of course,” she went on, “we have a Timmy and a Jimmy who are brothers. And Jaimie, naturally, doesn’t like to be mixed up with Jimmy. There’s Sophia, the grandmother of Sophie, and a Ronnie and a Donny, and Victorine, Vicki and Victor.”

  “Don’t forget Fredo and Fred, Emma and Emily, Suzanne and Susan, and Mia, whose middle name is Suzanne,” chimed in an older woman, who introduced herself as Audra.

  “Maren and Maureen,” contributed Carla. “Margo, Marco and Mark.”

  “Thank goodness for Teresa and Angelo Bono. They named their kids Zizi and Dodie. They’ll never get mixed up with anyone else.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on that,” said Gina. “Zizi and Dodie are only nicknames.”

  Audra frowned. “What are their real names?”

  “No one remembers, thank goodness,” Carla said with a laugh.

  Josh grinned, and all in all, by the time dinner was over, he thought he had never met more interesting people gathered in one place in his entire life.

  Night fell, and the party, with a final tired wheeze of accordions, was declared to be over by Fredo. Barbara, Nick’s wife and Gina’s sister, came over to their table and presented Josh with a Super Stomper Certificate in honor of his stomping grapes and attending his first crush. People lingered, gathering up their children, their strollers, diaper bags and wraps as they bade one another fond goodbyes. And before her parents came to carry her home to bed, Mia curled up on Josh’s lap and almost fell asleep.

  “I have to leave,” Gina said to Rocco after the Sorises had departed. “I’ll need to be up early to work in the herb garden in the morning.” Others were wending their way through the big oaks to their cars, and the cleanup detail was stashing containers of food in a van marked Dede’s Catering Service.

  “I should help fold the chairs,” Josh said, but when he offered, Rocco told him that it wasn’t necessary.

  “We’ve got things under control, don’t we, Frankie?”

  “Sure, Pop,” Frankie said with a jaunty grin. “Hey, Josh, how did you like crush?”

  Amazingly, he didn’t even have to think twice; Josh immediately gave it two thumbs-up, much to Frankie’s delight.

  “Now, Josh,” Rocco said in parting. “You get any extra time, drop by the house. I’ve got a bocce court in my backyard, and I’ll give you some pointers.”

  As painful as the bocce experience had been, Josh thought he never wanted to see another bocce ball or court as long as he lived. But he did want to see Rocco again, so he managed a halfhearted grin. “Will do,” he said before hurrying after Gina, who was halfway to the parking lot by this time.

  ONCE THEY WERE AWAY FROM everyone else, Gina was self-conscious around Josh, though she certainly felt more favorably disposed toward him since he’d made such an effort to fit in. She hadn’t expected Rocco to take to him so well, nor had she counted on her mother’s trying to make him feel welcome.

  Josh didn’t say much as they put up the Galaxie’s convertible top and got in the car. He tossed his shoes in the back seat; the night had never grown as cool as expected and he was still in his bare feet. As they headed down the long Vineyard Oaks driveway toward the road, moonlight dappled the car’s long hood with shadows and cast a silvery glow ahead. Gina sneaked a glance at his aristocratic profile and suppressed a grin when she saw that he was smiling. She wasn’t quite sure why she was glad that he’d enjoyed himself tonight; whatever vengeful feelings she’d nurtured since the Mr. Moneybags show seemed to have been crushed out of her as completely as the juice from the grapes.

  “Your niece is a charmer,” Josh said, apropos of nothing.

  “Which one? Stacey or Mia?”

  “Mia. I didn’t get too well acquainted with Stacey.”

  Gina smiled. “They’re both my sister Barbara’s kids. Stacey recently became a teenager, and she likes to congregate with her cousins at family events. Mia is my godchild as well as my niece. She’s great.”

  “Agreed. And Rocco is a character.”

  “As well as the worst practical joker in all creation.”

  “He’s the one who sent your applica
tion in for the Mr. Moneybags show, right?”

  Gina nodded and braked for a curve in the road, then accelerated. “That was only one of the pranks he’s played on me. It almost rivals the occasion when he got a realistic audiotape of a train wreck and called my aunt Linda from the station at about the time that the wine train with all its sight-seers was due to arrive. He told Aunt Linda where he was, then played the tape into the phone, and she started yelling for my uncle Tony to come because she was convinced the train had jumped its track and run over Rocco in the phone booth. She was glad to hear his voice reassuring her that he was unharmed.”

  “Doesn’t anyone ever get suspicious that he’s playing jokes?” Josh asked between chuckles.

  “No, since Rocco’s so unfailingly clever about it. None of us will ever forget the time he borrowed the spare key to Aunt Audra and Uncle Charles’s house and took about five of our male cousins over there. When Aunt Audra and Uncle Charles came home that night, they heard what sounded like a bunch of guys laughing and showering in their tiny bathroom. They didn’t know whether to call the police or what, but they finally recognized some of the voices and started pounding on the bathroom door. They discovered that Rocco and the guys had turned on the shower but were sitting around the bathroom fully clothed, making an unholy racket so that my aunt and uncle would think some strangers had broken in and were partying in their shower. And then there was the time—”

  Josh was still smiling. “Okay, okay, I get the picture. It’s all pretty funny, by the way.”

  “Not if you’re the butt of it,” Gina said emphatically.

  By the time she reached the highway, Josh’s laughter had abated and he appeared pensive. They were passing the water tower at the edge of the town limits before he spoke.

  “You’re lucky,” he said into the silence. “To have such a large family to care about you.”

  That he would feel this way surprised her, and she certainly wouldn’t have expected him to mention it. “I know,” she said. She tried to recall what she knew about Josh’s family from the résumé that had been handed out to all contestants on the show. A mother who listed “philanthropist” as her occupation; a father who was a director of a couple of big corporations. One younger brother and a sister whose ages she couldn’t recall.