“My boys are with my parents. I thought I might try to sneak in a ride before I go into Stave.”
A ride sounded really good. He couldn’t remember the last time he saddled up and threw a leg over. But, he knew better than to ask to join her. Without it needing to be said, he had no doubt that Peyton wasn’t ready for him to meet her boys.
He laid a napkin on the ground in front of them and pulled out the muffins. He smiled at the look of anticipation on Peyton’s face. Her appreciation of the taste and smell and texture of food was one of the things that had attracted him the first night they met.
“Go ahead.”
“You go first.”
“Same time.” He counted to three and they each reached for a muffin. Peyton took a bite and groaned, reminding him of the sound he’d made the night before, tasting the food at Stave.
“I guess you were hungry.”
Peyton smiled, looking him up and down like he’d done to her. “Very.”
Kade could’ve sat under the tree with her all day, but after twenty minutes, he stood, brushed himself off, and helped her up. He held her hand a little longer than necessary after she was on her feet. “I don’t want to waylay you from your ride.”
She looked at the ground and then off in the distance. “Thanks for the muffins.”
“Thanks for joining me.”
“Kade?”
“Yeah?”
Peyton shook her head, talking herself out of whatever she was going to say. “I’ll buy you a glass of wine the next time you come in. Actually, warm ollalieberries call for a bottle.”
“I’ll take you up on it as long as you agree to share it with me.”
She motioned back toward the market. “I should get going.”
Kade wanted to pull her in his arms and give her the kiss he knew damn well she wanted, but he didn’t want the first time his lips met hers to be in the middle of a park in a place where every single person who walked by, knew her. Most probably knew him too, or of him anyway.
“I’ll see you later, Peyton.”
She waved as she walked away.
He took his time walking back to Moonstone Beach, lingering on the wooden boardwalk that stretched the length of the drive. There weren’t many surfers out this morning, even though the waves looked good. He shivered with the thought of how cold the water must be. There was a time that no level of frigid temperature would’ve stopped him from paddling out on his board.
At almost forty, two years shy anyway, he’d gotten soft, something he’d never admit to his brothers in arms. Seventy-two hours ago, when he was in the soaring temps of the desert, he would’ve given anything to be able to jump into the icy cold Pacific Ocean. Tomorrow, he’d quit being such a pussy and get out there; today he needed to go and see his parents.
The drive over the pass on Highway 46 was one of his favorite in the world. The rolling hills, dotted with murky green oaks, were covered in what his father always referred to as “California gold.” Another ten miles and vineyards would replace the honey-colored grasses.
The views from the summit went south beyond Morro Rock and north to Hearst Castle.
His grandfather, Broderick Butler, emigrated from Scotland in his early twenties and settled in this area, where he found work as one of several hundred craftsmen hired to construct what Hearst referred to as La Cuesta Encantada—Spanish for “Enchanted Hill.”
There, Broderick met his wife, Kade’s grandmother, Analise, a seamstress who also hailed from Scotland.
The two scrimped and saved until they had enough money set aside to purchase the ranch land further inland from Hearst’s spread. That land was passed down to Broderick and Analise’s only son, Laird—Kade’s father.
It had been Laird’s dream to retire and concentrate solely on making wine. Kade remembered hearing his parents talk about it when he was a teenager. Even then he doubted his father could give up his “day job.”
Burns, as those in the intelligence community knew him, was the preeminent authority on tradecraft—the techniques, methods, and technologies used in modern espionage. Kade’s mother wasn’t the housewife and stay-at-home mom most of their neighbors believed she was either. Sorcha was a former MI6 agent who’d infiltrated the Provisional Irish Republican Army, better known as the IRA. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d heard the story of how she was at the Oxford Street bus station on Bloody Friday.
Kade had five siblings—three brothers and two sisters—all younger than him. It made him sad to think that he was the only one of the six who knew their mother’s and father’s real back stories. Given that his father was still active, Laird believed it too dangerous for anyone outside the intelligence world to know what he did or the importance of the work he and his wife did in that community.
As far as what his next two oldest brothers, Maddox and Naughton believed their father had been a winemaker and vineyard manager just like they’d become.
Maddox was renowned in the area for the traditional wines that came out of Butler Ranch, but Kade knew he wanted to experiment with new varietals, new techniques. Their father found his brother’s ideas “too risky” when the entire family relied on the income their tried-and-true vintages brought in.
The truth was, neither Kade nor his two sisters relied on any income from the ranch. What would have been their share was always put back into the vineyard’s working capital without their three brothers’ knowledge.
Kade would love to see what Maddox could do if he had his own land, his own grapes. As brilliant as Mad was with making wine, Naughton was equally accomplished at growing the grapes that went into it. He was known in the industry as the vine whisperer. Drought, pest infestation, whatever else plagued the vineyard, Naught figured out how to overcome it. Vineyard owners around the world begged Naughton to
