His hangdog appearance didn't help either. Balding, stoop-shouldered, and naturally woebegone-looking, with dark, droopy bags under his eyes, he was nobody's idea of the driving force behind a burgeoning and aggressive coffee empire. The fact was, amazingly enough, that he didn't even like coffee and wouldn't have been able to drink it if he did because the acidity gave him gas, or so he claimed.

Rudy's father-Nick's much-loved, long-dead kid brother, Jack-had been a vintner in California, and Rudy had grown up at his father's small winery in the Simi Valley. From the beginning, wine had been his passion, or the closest thing to a passion that he'd ever had. He had majored in enology at the University of California's Davis campus and returned to manage the winery's production process, expecting to take over the business eventually. But his father, drowning in debt, had sold out to one of the conglomerates that were then gobbling up the vineyards of the Pacific coast.

Shattered, Ruby had fled California for Tahiti, seeking a job with his uncle. The always-generous Nick had come through, putting him to work on the plantation (and, by the by, bailing his father out of his not inconsiderable remaining debts). Hardworking and intelligent, Rudy had learned the coffee business and had eventually taken over management of day-to-day operations. Later, when Brian Scott had arrived on the scene with a sackful of ideas for improvement and expansion and a knack for implementing them, Nick had asked Rudy to return to the States to see if he could turn the struggling Caffe Paradiso enterprise into something worthwhile. And here he had been ever since, successful beyond Nick's dreams, let alone his own, but in his heart of hearts never ceasing to regard coffee as a poor substitute for his beloved wines.