4. Brodie

brODIE

A fter his morning run-in with Peyton at the beach, Brodie didn't feel like returning to the ranch. Instead, he drove down to Morro Bay and had lunch. After that, he hiked around Whale Rock Reservoir, managing to kill enough time that it was almost dark when he drove home. Through it all, he couldn't stop thinking about her.

Closing his eyes, he remembered everything about how she'd looked this morning. Brodie was surprised by how tall she was, five feet seven or eight, he'd guess. Her long blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail and away from her face, and her pale-green eyes reminded him of the sage that grew wild on the hills of Butler Ranch. She had on a heavy, gray sweater that stopped short of the black belt that looped through the worn jeans she had tucked into knee-high, black riding boots.

Right after Kade died, he'd found photos of her with his brother, on hikes with her boys, and kayaking. There was even a shot of her holding a surfboard, wearing a full-body, neoprene pink-and-gray wetsuit that covered every inch of her yet left nothing about her body to the imagination.

From those photos, he knew she was pretty, but in person, she was beautiful. Beautiful and badass. It was no wonder Kade fell in love with her. Any guy would.

Brodie pulled up to the ranch gates and waited while they creaked open. His father had them programmed to close each night at sundown and not open again until sunrise. Their phones could control them as well. Sometimes, he thought his father had missed his calling. The guy was as tech-savvy as anyone Brodie had known when he worked in Silicon Valley.

He parked his truck in front of the main ranch house, where he, his three brothers, and two sisters grew up.

Years ago, their father had added three Scottish-style stone cottages that were two-storied replications of the main house. Maddox lived in one, Naughton in another, and when Brodie returned to the ranch, following Kade's death, he moved into the third.

His sister Skye, who was two years younger than Brodie, lived in Paso Robles with her husband. Ainsley, the youngest Butler sibling, was completing her doctorate at Stanford.

When Brodie climbed out of the truck, he saw his mother and father sitting on the front porch swing.

"Is that my Brodie?" his mother asked in her thick Scottish brogue. Even in her late sixties, his mother, who had fiery red hair, was still a beauty. He and his siblings all shared her deep blue eyes that their father said reminded him of the sea.

The story was that she'd met Laird Butler when he was traveling around Scotland right after he graduated from college. They'd started dating at the beginning of his trip and were married three months later. Kade had once suggested their history was vastly different, and Brodie wished now that he'd asked what he meant.

"Yeah, it's me, Ma."

"Did you find Peyton, then?" she asked.

Brodie didn't want to tell her that he had and she'd refused to take the box, but his mother would know he was lying if he said otherwise.

"What's this?" his father asked.

"Nothing to worry about, Laird. Brodie was delivering something we found of hers."

Well, if his mother was going to lie to his father, maybe his lying to her wouldn't be so bad after all.

"Sorcha, you best not be meddling."

"O' coorse nae." His mother stood. "We'll talk after dinner, Brodie."

Before he could follow her inside, his father motioned for him to have a seat. Brodie sat across from him at the outdoor table where his mother and father often shared their afternoon tea.

"Tell me what this is about, Brodie."

"Ma asked me to deliver some things to Peyton Wolf that belonged to her, and some other stuff from Kade."

"Ah. You were unsuccessful, then." His da pulled a tobacco pouch from his pocket and filled his pipe.

"How'd you know?"

Rather than answer, his father lit the pipe.

"She wouldn't take it."

"I see."

"I don't want to tell Ma."

"Excuse yourself near the end of dinner. She won't bring it up in front of me."

"Thanks, Da." Brodie got a chill and shivered.

"Your ma made shepherd's pie. It'll warm ya." His father set his pipe on the porch rail and motioned for Brodie to follow him inside.

"I saw Peyton Wolf today," Brodie told Naughton later, when they were on their way to the cottages.

Naughton appeared to have heard him but didn't respond.

"She misses him."

"We all do, Brodie."

"How serious do you think she and Kade were?"

"No idea."

It wasn't unlike Naughton to be reticent. He always said he liked working in the vineyards because he preferred the solitude.

"Didn't you know her first husband?"

"Yeah, Cal Poly grad." Naughton shook his head. "Cheated on her before and during their marriage."

"That's right. She went to Cal Poly, too."

Naughton had graduated from the university in San Luis Obispo with a degree in viticulture, the science of grape growing. Brodie had followed their older brother Maddox to UC Davis, where they'd both majored in enology, the science of wine-making. He went on to get a Wine Executive master's, which combined enology and viticulture with business management.

"She was an ag-biz major though, more like what you do. Lang was a vit major, but he never took it seriously. Not even sure how the guy graduated."

He thought he heard Naughton say something under his breath, but didn't catch it. It sounded like his brother called Lang a dick.

"He and Kade got into it pretty bad one night."

That surprised him. Kade had been a big guy with a nasty scar that ran across his left cheek. It made him look like a bad mother. Because of his appearance, Kade hated going out to bars since, inevitably, some drunk asshole would pick a fight. Lang sounded like the kind of douche who would've been in his face.

"Older brother avoided the physical stuff, but he didn't hesitate to let Lang know exactly what he thought of him."

"What happened?" Brodie asked.

"He called him out as a loser and an asshole for abandoning his kids, and for what he did to Peyton."

That was the thing about Kade—as intimidating as he was physically, his unexpected intellect inflicted more damage than his fists. He was one smart sonuvabitch , and Brodie missed him so much he ached. He could only imagine how Peyton must feel.

"It wasn't long after that Kade told me they got Lang for not paying child support. Courts get after those bastards for shit like that," said Naughton.

"She's better off without him."

"Yeah, but Kade told me she didn't care about the money. What she cared about was her boys not having a dad."

Kade would've filled the role, and now he was gone too. Shit. No wonder Peyton didn't want his brother's stuff.

When Naughton went inside his place, Brodie kept going. It was damn cold, but he needed to walk off talking about Kade. How many nights had he done the same thing, wondering if his brother was okay?

All of them looked up to Kade; all of them missed him in their own way. In Brodie's opinion, there wasn't a finer man to emulate than Kade Butler.

He was forty years old when he died and, as far as Brodie knew, had never been serious enough about anyone to talk about marriage until he met Peyton. Maddox and Naughton hadn't been, either. Only Skye was married, and fortunately for the rest of them, she was pregnant with her second child. Her oldest was a girl, Spencer, and she'd recently found out she was having a boy. With one grandchild and another on the way, their mother had stopped nagging the rest of them as much.

Brodie had no idea what his next move would be, but he knew there would be one. Whether Peyton wanted his brother's stuff or not, there was no way he could stay away from her.

Cracking open a bottle. Wanna join me? read the message he received from Naughton when he was almost to the door of his own cottage.