Praise for
VINTAGE
“A wonderful, intelligent blockbuster … I lapped it up!”
—Sophie Kinsella, New York Times bestselling author of Remember Me?
“A dazzling tale following three women and their insatiable need for glamour, power and survival. Prepare for lust, betrayal and strictly no moral fibre.”
—Heat, Top Ten Chart (UK)
“A return to the sex-and-shopping bonkbusters Jackie Collins is famous for and to be honest with you, this book’s a lot steamier than anything Collins wrote. Even though I know next to nothing about wine and champagne I still found this to be an enjoyable read.”
—Paper Cuts
“With three super-bitches slugging it out in the world of champagne production, this 21st-century bonkbuster is a great excuse to hole up with a glass of bubbly.”
—Eve magazine, “Must Reads” (UK)
“A clever homage to the ‘80s Jackie Collins-style bonk-buster … A sophisticatedly rendered novel—[Darling] makes much of the dirt necessary to make champagne fizz and there you have a metaphor for human imperfection. Great fun. Great sex.”
—Teletext.co.uk
“We hope Posh and Becks, who recently bought a vineyard, know what they’re in for, especially if running a winery has anything like the sabotage the three grape-growing glamours in this juicy read have to deal with.”
—OK! magazine
“As bubbly as a glass of champers.”
—Closer Magazine (UK)
“I was thoroughly gripped by the book … A very sexy fun read … I really enjoyed it and I was actually quite sad to turn the final page!”
—TheBookbag.co.uk
“Champagne, shenanigans, skullduggery and grand cru sex… Vintage has three heroines you genuinely care about, love-to-hate villains, and a parade of gossipy detail. Don’t wait for the beach to enjoy this fantastic beach read; open up a chilled bottle of sparkling wine and enjoy it now!”
—Hester Browne, New York Times bestselling author of The Little Lady Agency
“A terrific debut from Olivia Darling. The sex pops like champagne corks, the action races along. Pure vintage fantasy. I loved it.”
—Tilly Bagshawe, New York Times bestselling author of Adored and Showdown
VINTAGE
A Dell Book / June 2009
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either
are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2008 by Olivia Darling
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-76837-7
Published simultaneously in Canada
www.bantamdell.com
v3.1
To the man who inspired all my love scenes…
No, not you, dear. Him.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In Champagne the term “grand cru,” French for “great growth,” designates those vineyards considered to have the greatest potential for producing the very best wine. There are seventeen grand cru villages in the Champagne region. Le Vezy is my imaginary eighteenth.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PROLOGUE
Part One Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Part Two Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Part Three Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Part Four Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Part Five Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PROLOGUE
Champagne, France, twenty years ago…
Without dirt, there would be no champagne. As you hold your glass to the light and admire the pale golden fizz inside, consider this: a perfectly clean flute and your bubbly would not bubble. There would be no sparkle to your sparkling wine. Each glittering chain that rises to the surface originates from an imperfection, a minute blemish on the crystal, a fiber from a tea towel or a tiny speck of dust …
One last long string of bubbles escaped the girl’s mouth as she drifted gently to the bottom of the river. Her silky brown hair shimmered around her face like water-weed, veiling those lips whose last kiss still lingered in Chanel rouge on the rim of a tulip-shaped glass. Her eyes were closed; her lashes perfect as they rested upon her smooth white cheeks. As she settled onto the riverbed, the current moved the girl’s bare arms across her body, covering her beautiful breasts. Now she was a nymph, lulled to sleep by the waters of the Marne as it flowed south through the night toward Paris, opaque with the famous chalky sediment that made wine critics rave when they tasted it in a glass.
Nobody missed her yet. At the party in the house by the river, the wine was still flowing. The music was still playing. Young girls in tight dresses still laughed at jokes they didn’t entirely understand, to please older guys who might find them the rent on an apartment in the sixteenth arrondissement. A waiter opened a bottle of vintage champagne—Salon—the proper way, turning the bottle and not the cork. Not a pop. Just a sigh and a wisp of vapor. No drop wasted. With one hand behind his back and the thumb of his other hand in the punt—the dimple at the bottom of the bottle—he poured out two glasses for a pair of expensively dressed revelers. One glassful barely effervesced.
“Oh,” said the woman. “No bubbles. Is there something wrong with it?”
“Your glass must be too clean,” her companion informed her. “You need dust to trap the tiny pockets of air that catalyze the fizzing action.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She really did have no idea. This was her sixth glass of champagne that night and her
schoolgirl French was somewhat rusty. Though her accent improved with alcohol, her comprehension didn’t.
Her handsome companion looked deep into his own glass, considering the liquid inside as though examining the facets of a diamond.
“What are you thinking about?” the woman asked him.
She hoped that he was thinking about her naked. She wanted him to touch her. She wanted to run her fingers through his silver hair as he made love to her. Violently.
“I’m thinking that people are like champagne,” he said eventually. “Our flaws are what make us sparkle.”
“I think I know what you mean,” she said.
She touched the rim of her glass to his. He raised it in a toast.
“À nos imperfections,” he said. “To our flaws.”
PART
ONE
CHAPTER 1
Room 512, The Gloria Hotel, Hyde Park, London
An empty champagne bottle lay on the floor. A half-eaten box of Belgian chocolates scattered its contents to the left of the wastebasket. A dozen red roses dripped dying petals onto the dressing table.
“That … was … brilliant … ” Daniel sighed as he rolled onto his side in the big double bed.
Kelly Elson grimaced, then jumped up from the bed and went in search of a tissue, straightening her uniform along the way.
“Want me to do anything for you?” Daniel asked as she returned from the bathroom with a fistful of toilet paper.
“You don’t need to,” said Kelly.
“Good.” Daniel lay back against the pillows looking smug. He reached out and gave one of her nipples a tweak.
Kelly fought the urge to punch him.
Oblivious to her annoyance, Daniel nodded toward the bottle on the floor. “I’ll bring you some of that next time I see you. If you’re a good girl.”
“Thanks,” she said flatly.
Champagne.
Again.
“I don’t think anyone will notice if one little bottle goes missing.” He smiled.
Daniel Weston sold booze for a national wholesaler. He visited the Gloria Hotel once a month to sell his plonk to Montrachet, the hotel’s Michelin-starred restaurant. He liked to see Kelly after his appointments, if she could find an empty room. And he always brought along a little present. But it was never a bottle of vodka and some Diet Coke—something Kelly actually liked to drink. It always had to be some fancy wine with a name she couldn’t pronounce. Daniel was pretentious about wine. Always spouting on about it. Nose? Legs? What the fuck did that mean? Most of what he said went over Kelly’s head. Except for the words “methode champenoise,” which came to mind whenever she held Daniel’s cock in her hand and went at it like a Formula One racing driver shaking a bottle of Mumm Cordon Rouge. That thought passed through Kelly’s head again as Daniel squinted at the label on the empty champagne bottle. “Very nice,” he said. “This house used to be legend.”
“Uh-huh,” said Kelly.
“Bugger.” Daniel suddenly looked at his watch and jumped out of bed. “I should be at the Intercontinental in fifteen minutes.”
He gave his penis a perfunctory wipe and pulled his trousers up.
“See you next month?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He left the soggy wad of tissue on the bedside table like a tip. Next to the envelope he’d so neatly labeled with Kelly’s name.
“Thanks a lot,” said Kelly, counting out the five crisp tenners once he’d gone. She tucked the envelope into her pocket and surveyed the damage around her.
A patch of something unmentionable had dried into a patch the shape of America on the headboard. She would have to scrape that off. She got up, tugged her streaked brown hair back into a ponytail and pulled the dirty sheets off the bed. She threw the dying flowers that had been bought for someone else into the waste bin. She had just ten minutes to finish cleaning the room and get it ready for the next check-in.
Last of all, she picked up the champagne bottle that Daniel had so admired.
Champagne Arsenault declared the label.
“Champagne My Arse, more like,” she muttered.
Then, not knowing quite why she did it, Kelly tipped the bottle upside down and caught the last drip of golden nectar on her tongue.
Actually, that’s not bad, she thought. Not so bad at all.
CHAPTER 2
Nine o’clock on a Friday night. Madeleine Arsenault could think of far better places to be than sitting in a restaurant in London, no matter how many Michelin stars the chef had garnered with his nine-course tasting menu. It wasn’t that the restaurant itself was so bad. The space was wonderful. It had been decorated impeccably with the kind of clever lighting that took twenty years off the clientele. And situated as it was on the fifteenth floor of the newly refurbished Gloria Hotel on the edge of Hyde Park, Montrachet had an absolutely breathtaking view of the city. But Madeleine had her back to the view that evening. The privilege of having something beautiful to look at was reserved for her esteemed guests.
“The good news,” said her boss, Geoff, when he’d presented that evening’s date to her, “is that I’ve secured a table at Montrachet. The bad news … ”
The bad news was that Madeleine would be spending the evening across the table from Adam Freeman, of the investment banking division of the Ingerlander Bank. Quite the most unpleasant man in banking, if not a candidate for the most unpleasant man on earth.
“But I’m booked on the seven o’clock Eurostar,” Madeleine protested. She was supposed to be heading back to her family home in France for the weekend. “My father is unwell.”
“He’ll last another night,” Geoff insisted. “Tough as old boots, I thought you said. Get Tina to book you on the first train tomorrow. I want you at Montrachet with me, Madeleine. With the Ingerlander bid in place, Freeman’s arse is the one we should be licking.”
Madeleine winced.
“It’s OK,” said Geoff. “I don’t think he’s into that. But if he is … ”
Madeleine shook her head. “I pray,” she said to Geoff, “that it’s merely the language barrier between us that makes me think you’re saying something offensive.”
Geoff smiled. “Good girl, Maddy. Wherever I end up, I’m taking you with me, I promise.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Madeleine.
Geoff gave her a wink.
The news that Ingerlander Bank was launching a takeover bid had sent shock waves throughout the tiny Bank of Maine. Geoff feared for his job and well he might. He was closing on fifty. He had an expensive ex-wife, and two incredibly ungrateful daughters to finish putting through private school. Recently, he had been coloring his hair in an attempt to fool the Ingerlanders that he still had years before his sell-by date. Madeleine suspected he might even have had a shot of Botox in the crevasse between his eyebrows. It was going to take more than that, she thought sadly as she looked at him now.
Madeleine’s situation was altogether different. She didn’t have so much as a goldfish in the cool, white-painted Notting Hill apartment that had been her home for the past ten years. There were no other signatories on her credit cards. If she lost her job in the big takeover, would it be such a bad thing?
Possibly not, if remaining in her position meant that she would be working with Adam Freeman. He leered across the table at her as she settled into her seat. He was the kind of man you saw all over the City: tall and broad-shouldered but running to fat. Middle age wasn’t doing him any favors. His hair loss highlighted the softness of his facial contours. Chin blurring into neck. His personality didn’t make up for it.
Geoff was studying the wine list like a student looking for easy questions on a finals paper. He scratched the side of his face absentmindedly as he did so. Madeleine knew her boss well enough to know that meant he was having a terrible time too. Panicking.
“Better pick something good, Geoff,” said Freeman. “Could be the last time you get to wield the company credit card.”
Freeman’s cronies guffawed.
“Some champagne to start with?” Geoff suggested bravely.
“If you think you’ve got something to celebrate … ” said Freeman.
“Madeleine knows all about champagne,” Geoff added. Madeleine sighed inwardly.
“Is that so?” Freeman turned to face her.
“I grew up there,” she told him simply.
“Are your family in wine?”
“They have a place in Le Vezy.”
“That’s a grand cru village,” said Geoff.
“I know that. Worth a lot of money, land in Champagne,” Freeman observed. “I was thinking I might buy myself a château when I get my bonus.”
Madeleine nodded politely.
“I reckon I could make a pretty good wine.”
“It’s hard work,” said Madeleine.
“Madeleine got out as quickly as she could,” said Geoff. “For the easy life in the City.”
“At least you’ve got something to go back to,” Freeman told her.
A thinly veiled threat. Had Freeman already determined their fate? Geoff looked shaken. Madeleine merely raised her eyebrows.
Freeman plucked the wine list from Geoff’s hands and passed it to Madeleine. “You better choose,” he said. “Then we know who to blame if it’s shit.”
Madeleine took the wine list and began to read.
Beneath the table, Freeman’s hand crept onto her knee. Pitying his wife and three small children, Madeleine picked his hand up and let it fall back into his own lap without betraying the slightest hint that it bothered her. It didn’t do to show your emotions in this world.
However, Madeleine couldn’t help but blink when she saw the name of the bottle at the bottom of the list. “Clos Des Larmes.” It wouldn’t mean a lot to even the most passionate wine buff but to Madeleine…
“Excellent structure and finish,” claimed the sommelier’s notes. “Champagne Arsenault produced this single vineyard champagne only in the most exceptional years.”