“Either one of you happen to know what Alex’s favorite thing is to have for breakfast?”
“Junk food,” they answered in unison.
“Right.” Maddox laughed. “Cold pizza. I was thinking something more along the lines of waffles.”
“Waffles are good,” Finn murmured.
“But not as good as cold pizza?”
“Finn,” Jamison admonished. “Waffles would be great, thanks.”
“Waffles?” Alex stood behind Maddox, peeking over his shoulder. “Who’s making waffles?”
“I am.”
“You sneak out to the grocery store last night?”
“Didn’t have to. Ma dropped off breakfast fixins’ this morning.”
“You’re so spoiled.”
Maddox wanted to be mad at her, but when he turned around and she smiled at him, he couldn’t. Instead he swatted her bottom as he walked past her. “Come help me, woman.”
“So bossy.” She smirked at Jamison and Finn. “There might be some pizza hidden in the back of Mad’s fridge, if you’re brave enough to risk it.”
The boys climbed out of bed, and ran past Alex on their way downstairs. “Save me a piece,” she hollered after them.
They reminded her of how her two youngest brothers were when they were kids. Now they both towered over her, not that she saw either of them very often.
Three of her brothers still lived in Paso Robles. Gabe, the oldest, was the principal winemaker. Elias, less than two years older than Alex, oversaw compliance with licensing and labor, as well as being the secondary label winemaker. Joaquin, two years younger than her, was responsible for wine sales, and ran the tasting room.
Something was up with Elias. Every time she saw him lately, he seemed troubled. She tried to talk to Gabe about it, but he dismissed it and her as nothing but an annoyance. Maybe that’s what Eli’s problem was. He was tired of Gabe dismissing him.
Cristobal, second oldest to Gabe, was the chief medical officer for Geneco, a research-based corporation whose mission was to understand and influence the genetic basis of aging. The company was based in Palo Alto.
Her baby brothers, Salvador and Mateo, were PRCA team-ropers, on the road eleven months of the year. Like Jamison and Finn, they were two years apart. Sal was the header and Mateo the heeler.
If their father was still alive, he never would’ve allowed the boys to become professional rodeo cowboys, but according to the national earnings reports, both her brothers netted over a quarter of a million dollars in winnings, plus the money they made from sponsorships and endorsements. The wine business could be lucrative, but Alex doubted Sal and Mateo would’ve been pulling in that kind of cash if they still worked for Gabe at Los Caballeros Winery.
“Where’s Alex?” she heard Maddox bellow from downstairs, knowing it was meant for her to hear more than Jamie and Finn.
“Coming,” she answered, but not loud enough for him to hear.
It was the bacon Maddox threw on the griddle that he knew would entice Alex to the kitchen. Bacon had always been her weakness. He swore she could eat it every meal, every day. When she walked in, he handed her a plate. “Crispy today?” No one else he knew ordered bacon cooked a particular way based on her mood.
“No, thanks. Limp is good,” she winked.
God, what she did to him. If two little boys weren’t watching, he’d make her his breakfast. He’d never been able to get enough of her, not since the very first time.
Maddox ran into Alex everywhere he went the summer after she graduated from high school. If she was with her mother and father, or if he was with his parents, they’d ignore each other, the way their parents did.
If he was with Kade or Brodie, he’d ignore her too, which he knew hurt her feelings. But if he was with Naughton or alone, he’d talk to her. He’d kept his distance since they met three years prior, but now that she was over eighteen, there was no reason for him to keep doing so.
Temperatures in the summer months in Paso Robles averaged in the nineties, with many days over one hundred degrees. Maddox was at Lake Naco water skiing with friends when he saw Alex sitting on the beach. She was with her cousin, and was wearing the sexiest red bikini he’d ever seen.
Just as the boat Maddox was on pulled up to the dock, Alex walked into the shallow water near the shore. He watched her wade in, and when the water reached her waist, Maddox dove from the boat. She watched him go underwater, and didn’t act surprised when he grabbed her around the waist, slid his body up hers, and surfaced, their lips close to touching when he did.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, and her legs around his waist. Maddox grasped her bottom and held her close to him. “You feel me, Alex?”
“I feel you, Maddox. You gonna tease me like you did three years ago?”
Maddox laughed, but narrowed his gaze, staring into her brown, almost-black eyes. “You, little girl, were the one teasing me.”
“I haven’t been a little girl for a long time, Maddox Butler. In fact, I wasn’t a little girl the night you met me, and I can assure you, I’m not a little girl right now.”
“No, you’re not.” With her arms still clasped around his neck, Maddox leaned forward and kissed her. It had been three years since he kissed her the night of the county fair, but her lips felt the same as he remembered.
“You sure about this?” he asked. “You could get yourself in a lot of trouble.”
“Have you forgotten that I have six brothers, all who hate your family as much as my father does?”
“What are you saying, that I could be the one in trouble?”
She smiled and nodded.
“You’re worth it.” Maddox kissed her again, and then released her and swam away.
They saw each other every chance they had that summer. Sometimes they’d meet at the lake, sometimes they’d both ride out over the hills of their adjoining property, tether their horses, and spend hours under a sprawling oak tree.
He got to know the curves of Alex’s body that summer, but it wasn’t until they were both due to leave for college that lips and hands were no longer enough.
Maddox held back more than Alex, but the idea of leaving for college not knowing how it felt to be buried inside her, left him unable to resist any longer.
“I want you, Alex,” Maddox said one day as they laid on blanket under the oak tree. He started bringing one along a few weeks ago, around the same time Alex started bringing a picnic for them to share. “I don’t want to wait.”
Alex didn’t answer him with words, but when she slid her shorts and panties down her long legs, and threw them to the side of the blanket, he knew she didn’t want to wait either.
He took her virginity that day, and in hindsight, Alex took away any chance that another woman could ever satisfy him again.
“You’re deep in thought.” Alex regretted the words as soon as she spoke them.
“Thinking about us, Alex. That summer before you left for San Diego and I went back to Davis.”
She felt the heat flood her cheeks, remembering how crazy she was about him then, and how relentlessly she pursued him. She’d made up her mind that she was going to lose her virginity to Maddox before the end of the summer, and became obsessed with making it happen.
He reached around and drew her into him. “I want you just as much now as I did then. Maybe more.”
Alex tried to back away, but he held her close. She glanced over at Jamison and Finn, who were both absorbed in the latest “Fast and Furious” movie Mad must’ve downloaded for them.
“Knock, knock, anybody home?” Brodie walked in the front door and stopped to talk to Jamie and Finn.
Before she could wriggle away from him, Maddox planted a kiss on her that made her toes curl.
“Why do you fight me, Alex?”
“I don’t know.” It was hard for her to admit, and as she said the words, her eyes filled with tears. When he was like this, she wondered why she ever got mad at him, but then there were other
times that she wondered why she thought she liked him.
“Don’t keep fighting it. Let go, Alex.”
“I can’t.” Alex pulled away from him, and went into the other room to talk to Brodie.
“How are things between you and Peyton?” Alex asked Brodie, who looked at his phone before answering.
“She’s reading a letter from Kade.”
“Oh?”
“We opened the box together. There was a letter at the bottom.”
Alex followed Brodie into the kitchen where Mad was washing dishes from breakfast.
“I can do that,” she offered.
“How about you help?”
She picked up a towel and dried the dishes he set in a rack on the counter.
“She’s reading it now?” Maddox asked.
“Yeah. I wasn’t sure if you heard me. I didn’t want the boys to know, although I don’t know why not.”
“She’ll tell them when she’s ready. She doesn’t keep stuff from them, Brodie.” Alex hoped one day she’d be half the mother Peyton was, although she wasn’t sure she was ready for it yet.
When his phone buzzed, Brodie hurried out the front door without saying another word to her, Maddox, or the boys.
“That was weird.” Alex looked out the front window, and saw Brodie walk in the back door of the house he and Naughton shared.
“Think he’ll move in with her?” Alex asked Maddox.
“Don’t you?”
“Her place is pretty small. Just three bedrooms, which I guess would be okay. Although, I’m sure they’ll look for a bigger place eventually.”
If she were pregnant, and Maddox talked her into moving in with him, they wouldn’t live in a house on his parents’ ranch for the rest of their lives, would they?
It would be hard for Alex to give up the first house she bought on her own. She loved her little house near the beach, although she understood that Maddox would never feel comfortable in it.
Other than when he was at college, Mad never lived anywhere other than on this ranch. A little house in a neighborhood where you could practically reach your arm out the window and touch the house next door made him feel claustrophobic. She almost always stayed here with him. Sometimes it bothered her, mainly when she was irritated with him about something else. “Why do I always have to come to you?” she’d ask him.
“I’ll come and get you,” he’d offer.
“Why can’t you stay at my house?”
“You gonna be able to keep quiet, Alex? What will your neighbors say when we keep ’em awake all night?”
It was a lousy argument, but one she usually gave into anyway. She could count on one hand the number of times he’d stayed with her.
The front door flew open, and Peyton came inside followed closely by Brodie. When Jamison and Finn saw her, they both jumped up and ran to hug her. Alex watched Peyton squeeze them tight, and then kneel down on the floor. Alex joined them as Peyton lifted her left hand and pointed to the ring.
“Brodie asked me to marry him,” she said to the boys. “What do you think?”
Alex couldn’t hear whether they answered or not amidst the shouting and cheers. Naughton came in the front door a few minutes later, followed by Laird and Sorcha.
With all the commotion, it was easy for her to slip out the back door of Mad’s house and climb in her car unnoticed. She was far enough away that he couldn’t stop her by the time she saw him come out the back door.
3
She didn’t feel like going home yet. Maybe she’d stop at Los Cab, see her mom, and talk one of her brothers into going for a ride with her.
She purchased her four-year old gelding, Malachi, a year ago. He’d been ranch-bred, and had the sweetest nature. He willingly went along through the hills, creek beds, and even alongside the vineyards.
“Ah, mi amor, Mija.” Her mother stood and hugged her when she opened the front door.
“Hi, Mama.”
“Come and sit. What’s on your mind, Alex?”
“Brodie just asked Peyton to marry him.”
Her mother clapped her hands together, and looked up at the ceiling. “Praise the Holy Father,” she whispered.
“You sound like Sorcha.” Alex laughed. “I think she said the very same thing.”
“It’s a blessing, Mija. Don’t you agree?”
“Of course I do. I couldn’t be happier for Peyton. She’s so much better off with Brodie than she would’ve been with Kade, not that I wanted anything bad to happen to him.”
Her mother’s eyes grew dark, and she looked away for a moment. When she turned back around, she was smiling again.
“What was that?”
Instead of answering, her mother patted Alex’s hand and stood. “What can I get you to eat? Have you had lunch?”
She’d had breakfast, but she was hungry again. “Not yet.”
“Join me then.” Her mother motioned for Alex to follow her into the kitchen.
Alex sat at the table, and watched her mother pull things out of the refrigerator. She didn’t know what she was making, but whatever it was would be good.
The back door flew open, and Gabe came inside followed by Elias and Joaquin. “Hey, Al, what’s shakin’?” Joaquin leaned down to kiss her cheek.
“¡Por dios!” Her mother put her hand on her heart. “You startled me.” One by one, Alex’s brothers kissed their mother’s cheek and then went to the sink to wash their hands.
“What’s for lunch?” Gabe asked.
She waved her hands over the food. “This.”
“As if that’s answer, Mama” Elias smiled. “What are you doin’ here, Alex? Everything okay?”
“She doesn’t need a reason to come and see her madre.”
“Ow!” Eli jumped when their mother swatted him with a wooden spoon.
“I was on my way back to Cambria and decided to stop in and go for a ride. Any of you interested in going with me.”
“I will,” Eli spoke up. His expression changed when Gabe glared at him.
“Don’t let him intimidate you, Mijo,” their mother spoke up.
“Maybe a short one.”
Alex looked at her phone. It was almost two, and while Sam and Addy, their regular tasting room employees, would have everything covered, especially given this was the first weekday they’d been open in weeks, she still felt as though she should go in and see if they needed help.
“I’ll see how Sam and Addy are doing,” she said more to herself than to her mother or brothers.
Her phone buzzed, and she considered not looking at it. Whatever Maddox had to say wouldn’t be good. Instead the text was from Peyton.
Where did you go?
Stopped at Los Cab. Riding before I go to Stave.
Alex and Peyton had been running the tasting room they jointly named Stave, since shortly after they graduated from college. What had once been an adjunct tasting room for Wolf Family Vintners, had grown into a very successful outlet for all of the wineries in the Westside Winery Collaborative. In addition to co-managing Stave, Alex also served as the organization’s marketing director.
You didn’t say anything. You just left.
Had to get away from Maddox, she wrote, as though that would explain everything. Sorry, she added.
I have stuff to tell you.
Before Peyton got involved with Brodie, Alex spent almost every evening with her and the boys. Her first instinct was to tell Peyton she’d come over later, but it wasn’t that easy anymore.
How are you feeling? She asked instead.
That’s the news. Released from bed rest.
Seriously?
Yep. Brodie promised to bring me by Stave later.
You sure? Alex hoped so. She had stuff to tell Peyton, too.
She helped her mother clean up from lunch, and went out to the barn. She missed her horse, which was one big disadvantage of living in Cambria. There was nowhere for her to keep Malachi in town.
The contrast between Malachi’s
thick, black mane and gray coat was one of the reasons she’d bid on him at the auction, and kept bidding until he was hers.
It looked as though the guys who worked in the barns hadn’t groomed her horse yet, but Alex didn’t mind. She loved to groom Malachi herself, even though she wasn’t out here as much as she should be.
There was a certain peace that came with caring for her horse. While her brothers complained about having to work in the stables, Alex never minded it. She’d much rather be here than out in the vines.
“Hey, my sweet boy.” Alex ran her hand over his withers. Malachi turned his head and nudged her, and Alex stroked his face.
“Let’s ride, buddy.”
She was partway down her favorite trail when she felt lightheaded. “Better head back, sweet boy.”
Her stomach hurt, most likely because she wasn’t used to eating as much as she had between breakfast and the feast her mom put together for lunch.
“Short ride, I know, but I’m not feeling so good,” Alex said to her horse.
She got him settled, went inside to say goodbye to her mother, and got on the road.
When she drove past the gates of Butler Ranch, her stomach hurt worse, and by the time she got to Cambria, she wasn’t sure it was a good idea to go to Stave. Instead, she went home. If she was coming down with the flu, she shouldn’t be around customers.
Alex made it to her driveway, not sure if she had the strength to get out of the car.
Where are you? She texted Peyton.
Home. Be in soon.
Came home. Feeling sick.
Need anything?
Don’t want you to get sick.
She felt lightheaded, and let her eyes drift closed.
“Is she okay?” Alex heard Peyton ask. She opened her eyes, and Brodie was leaning down, his hand on her forehead.
“You’re burning up, Alex. Let’s get you in the house.”
Brodie reached in and lifted her out of the car.
“Brodie!” Peyton gasped.
“What?”
Alex saw Peyton shake her head, and motion at Brodie’s truck.
The Truce (Butler Ranch Book 2) Page 3