Twisted Vines (Closed)

[Miss_Vivi]

This thread is closed, however Vivi and LCN love fanmail.

Lauralei Cavanaugh eagerly scanned the reports, hardly noticing that she wasn't breathing, her eyes finally landing on the right company. Perfect white teeth sunk into her bottom lip as she contemplated those numbers. Quickly, she looked over the rest of the list and set it aside.

The chair made no sound as she swung it around and stared out at the city just beginning to twinkle in the early summer night. Her heels lay discarded under the desk, her assistant toiled noisily outside her door, ostensibly to garner attention and subsequently be sent home for the night. Lauralei, however ignored her, and the Iphone that lit up and buzzed across the desk, she stared at the early evening and didn’t see a thing.

The silence was interrupted by an extended sigh and the phone buzzing again, Lauralei pushed the chair back against the desk, reaching out to grab the phone, placing it delicately against her ear.

“Yeah, I got the numbers.” She barked without preamble.

“Our numbers look good, up from last quarter, growth with the new marketing, we just picked up another winery in Colorado, and I finally nabbed that French line we’ve been talking about.” Lauralei paused, listening.

“I don’t know what he’s planning. Yes, I know you’ve known him for years. Yes. Yes. I know what he’s capable of, but he’s not a magician. The grapes are making him money, but more can be made. Yes. But... no, wait.” Her free hand clenched into a fist as she was interrupted and the caller got louder.

“This is what you asked. I can. Yes. By the end of the quarter, I know he will agree. Okay. No. I’m not coming to dinner before the opening next week; I really don’t feel like playing family with you and Alicia, she’s the same age as I am, Dad. Fine, yes I will see you then. Bye.”

Pressing end was not nearly enough for her frustration, Lauralei threw the phone away from her, listening to it subsequently clatter across the floor, the noise drawing her assistant into the room.

“Ms. Cavanaugh?”

“Nicole, book a flight to Napa, book the return flight a week later, start the lawyers drawing up the paperwork for the Becker takeover, add in the clause that he’ll retain ownership of the house and tasting room, he supplies BnR with 10,000 bottles a year.”

She turned away from her assistant. She didn’t want to go to Napa. She wanted to stay in Los Angeles. But business was business and BnR wanted this winery, which meant she’d be on a plane tonight.

The flight itself was uneventful and she was quickly out of the small airport and off in her little rented convertible and into the winding roads of Napa. The setting sun, setting her black hair aflame, along the rows and rows of grapes, this is the part that she loved. She hated the pretension of wine, and the people who drank it, but she loved being here.

Lauralei loved small wineries, she loved acquiring them, she loved making them part of bigger company, she loved the hard working folks who ran these places and she loved the wines that came out for her company.

Ahead she spied the sign for Becker Family Wines, turning right and speeding down the long dirt road, leaving choking dust in her wake. She pulled up to the house and jumped out of the car, stopping to fix the strap on her heels which took her a minute while she cursed under her breath about expensive heels, which was interrupted by some laughter nearby. Lauralei looked up and immediately knew she was looking at the owner of this place.

She wanted to smile, but with her skirt hiked up and bent over her heel, she knew she looked like a fool. Quickly, she straightened and pushed her skirt down; she held out her hand and stepped forward.

“Mr. Becker? I’m Lauralei Cavanaugh. I believe you’ve spoken with my assistant. I’m so glad to finally meet you.”

Marcus Becker had the look of a man who was used to getting his way, all confidence and warm handshakes that made Lauralei want to bite her lip, which she narrowly avoided, that is until she met his eyes and promptly her upper teeth found her lower lip and sank into her flesh.

Damn.
This is going to be a long week.

 

[LeChatNoir]

Marcus Becker ran long, slender fingers through his closely cropped hair, feeling every fleck of gray as a five-pound weight. Scheisse. No matter how many times he stared at the numbers displayed on the sleek screen of his laptop, they didn’t get any better. Becker Family Vineyards was slowly sinking, and the bilge pumps only kept up with so much water.

It wasn’t that they didn’t turn out a good product. Their grapes were sought after by a number of top-shelf vintners, and the few estate-bottled offerings they pressed every year were favorites of many top collectors. The money flowed in, just as the grapes and wine flowed out.

Just not enough of it.

It wasn’t obvious yet, and the winery was in no immediate danger – they’d be able to make payroll, cover their expenses, and even put away a bit of money this year – but the writing was on the wall.

Every year, the expenses climbed, and there were only so many ways to defray the costs. He knew them all. Raised on the vineyard by his mother, Johanna – the daughter of the family’s patriarch, Erich Becker, who had brought the family over from Germany in the dark years before the Second World War. Erich, who had built the wine estate, turning it from barren hillside in the 1930s to an elaborately terraced gold mine, would have been proud of Johanna. She had been every inch his daughter; from her regal bearing to her iron control of the vineyard’s every working. Marcus had been raised on the land before going off to Stanford for his undergraduate degree, Northwestern for business school, and fifteen years in the corporate boardrooms of New York, doing battle with opponents every bit as pestilential as the Phylloxera louse that had eviscerated old-world grape stock years back.

Marcus had never expected to be called back to the family’s estate, not even after his mother had died when he was only thirty. That was to be left in the hands of his younger brother, Max, who had not only a green thumb, but also a whole green hand. Marcus was the steely-eyed one, the one who would be sent off to support the family indirectly, while making his own way in the urban boardrooms and money pits of the big city, seeing to the business end of things, while Max would take care of the growing of grapes.

But there had been that night. Early June. Four-thirty a.m., Eastern Time. His phone had buzzed insistently, five years ago last Thursday. He’d ignored it, only for it to buzz again, and again, and again. Max. His late grandfather’s prized Porsche. A curve on the mountain roads, taken a little too fast, after a little too much … social lubricant at a wine grower’s function. The whirlwind of too much adrenaline and too little information – meetings cancelled, airplane tickets purchased, hurried calls in airport concourses, voices hushed, discussions of trauma units, ventilators, and finally organ donations.

When the dust had settled, the condo in New York had been sold, the job with the investment firm resigned, and a new color scheme in place in the old bedroom in the house on the vineyard. The prodigal had returned, forty years old, and taken up the reins of the family business.

At the moment, it seemed that most of his time was spent chasing away the vultures. They had descended in huge black clouds, first when Erich had died, an old, dignified man’s death, slipping away in the night. Then, when his mother had passed, another darkling flight, as the big wine houses had gathered to fight over the spoils left behind in her wake. He had made it very clear, acting as Max’s agent, that there would be no sales, no walking away, no surrender of the family parcel. Beringer and E&J Gallo and Kendall-Jackson and all of the rest would just have to deal with the fact that the Beckers were going to hang on another generation. It was not for nothing that their family heraldry, brought proudly over from the Old Country, had prominently featured a badger. Stubborn creatures.

But now, after yet another death and yet another five years of rising costs and dwindling profits, Marcus wasn’t sure that they could continue to hang on as true independents. Their product was sought after by some of the greatest wineries in Napa, but it was growing increasingly expensive to produce. Something had to be done.

And then, one day, the call from BnR. A perky young voice, Nicole Davenport, the personal assistant to Lauralei Cavanaugh, already at the rather tender age of 28 a player in the international wine market. She was known for having a keen eye for wine properties, if not the greatest…bedside manner. Brusque, brash, thoroughly American. For all that Marcus was the second generation of Beckers born and raised in the United States, he had been raised in an Old World atmosphere.

An appointment was made for Ms. Cavanaugh, who would be “conveniently visiting” that part of Napa in just a “few days”, to “stop by” the Becker estate to meet him. He could almost hear the quotes in Nicole’s speech. It made him want to shower.

Now, finally, the appointed day had arrived. How to present himself? Lauralei was known as a woman who did her homework, and who meticulously researched the people she was to meet. She was, he was confident, already aware of his background, as he was of hers – top honors in school, a career clearly on an upward trajectory. So, no sense in trying to impress her with the suit and the gunmetal glasses. No, he would meet her as befit a Napa wine scion.

Clad in faded Levis, a denim work shirt over his spare torso and steel-toed boots on his feet, he stood in the doorway of the estate’s house to await his erstwhile “guest”. Arms crossed over his chest, his steel-gray eyes picked up the rooster tail of dust thrown up by Ms. Cavanaugh’s convertible as she took the dirt road just a bit too fast. It was a good entrance, played to the hilt – she was pretty, and knew it, displayed to advantage in the sporty convertible she was piloting into his driveway. He couldn’t help but laugh, though, as she alighted from the car, not to make an elegant sashay up his front steps, but to adjust the back of her expensive heels, which had apparently come dislodged in her enthusiasm to rocket down the dirt road in a car intended for hugging much more civilized curves. It couldn’t have been a smooth ride.

He stepped lightly down the stairs despite his boots, moving with the assurance of a man truly in his element. One long-fingered hand extended for a business-like handshake as he fixed a confident look on his face. “Good afternoon, Ms. Cavanaugh. I’m Marcus Becker. Welcome to the Becker Family estate.”

 

[Miss_Vivi]

“Good afternoon, Ms. Cavanaugh. I’m Marcus Becker. Welcome to the Becker Family estate.”

Lauralei shook the hand of Marcus Becker and glanced around at the house and farm, the grape leaves just beyond them waving gently in the late afternoon air.

"It's a beautiful place, Mr. Becker. I'm sure your family is very proud. And your wife? Will she be meeting us?" Lauralei gave the pretense that she hadn't done her homework, that she didn't know that he was the type of man who was married to his job. To every job that he had held. The dirt under his fingernails and dark tan skin were among several indicators that Marcus's first and only love was this farm. There apparently had been women, but no one who stayed, or at least that's what she had been told by the little shop keeper up the road.

He smiled and shook his head at her, with a look that pretty much told her he saw right through her little ruse. She smiled back just as confidently. The unspoken agreement between them being that it was better to just be honest with each other.

She turned away from her car and towards the field taking a few steps toward the rows and rows of plants that slipped and wove over the hills surrounding them. It was always breathtaking, this part, taking in the land around her. Lauralei noticed that Marcus matched her step, she didn't even look at him, her voice authoritative, but completely honest. She wasn't going to play with him, she didn't expect him to play with her.

"You're hemorrhaging money, Mr. Becker. You've got maybe two growing seasons before you're no longer solvent, and can't make payroll or bottling costs. You don't have much of a choice, but to accept. I could paint a pretty picture and dance with you, but I don't think you want that."

Finally she glanced over at him, the hard set to his jaw, the glint of anger in his eyes, he wasn't happy. Inwardly, she shrugged. She wasn't going to lie to him.

"Simply put, Mr. Becker you need me."