The Promise (Butler Ranch Book 1)
Page 24
“There’s something under the papers, Peyton.”
He took the papers out, and there sat an envelope with her name on it, and a ring box.
“Brodie, I…I can’t.” Peyton stood and backed away from the box. “I don’t want this.” Her eyes filled with tears.
“You should read the letter, Peyton. He left this box for you knowing you’d only see it if something happened to him.”
Peyton knew he was right. “Can you give me a few minutes?”
“I’ll check on the boys.” He picked up her phone and added his name to her “favorites” list. “You need me, press this, and I’ll come right back.”
Peyton threw her arms around him again, and kissed him. “I love you, Brodie.”
“I love you, Peyton.”
Brodie closed the kitchen door behind him.
Peyton pulled the envelope from the box, and held it. She knew Brodie was right. She had to read it, no matter how hard it was. She had loved Kade, and Kade had loved her. Now he was gone, and he wrote this to say goodbye.
My dear Peyton,
As I’ve asked that this letter to be given you in the event of my death. I understand it will be difficult for you to read, and I’m sorry.
There are things you need to know, about me, and about yourself, that are important for me to tell you. Things I couldn’t say when I was alive.
I knew my time on earth would be short. I always knew, from when I was a boy, and I accepted it. I also knew I’d die doing something I dedicated my life to, something I believed in, something bigger than me. To serve my country, to protect the rights and freedoms of those I love, was what drove me to keep going, keep living, and in the past couple years, to keep leaving you and the boys.
I want you to know I love Jamison and Finn as though they are my own flesh and blood, and when I’m gone, I’ll continue to look down on them, and you, and protect and love you.
I do love you, Peyton, but I realized that I’d never love you the way you needed me to. I knew I couldn’t ever give up the life I chose, even for you.
A few days ago, I found the ring my grandmother asked my father to give me before she died. He told me she wanted me to have it, and I’d know when I met the woman who deserved to wear it. You are that woman, Peyton, even though I am not the man who was meant to give it to you.
The love you deserve is so close. The man who truly deserves you, hasn’t met you yet, but you and he will meet soon. He will be the one who gives you this letter, and he will be the one who gives you our grandmother’s ring. Give him a chance, Peyton. I know he’ll love you in a way I never could.
I’m okay, my dear Peyton, and you will be too.
All my love,
Kade
Peyton felt for her phone, through her tears, and pressed the screen where Brodie showed her to. She set the phone back on the table, knowing he wouldn’t answer. Instead, any second, he’d come through the door, because she needed him.
Kade knew. Brodie was the man she was always meant to be with. He was the man she was meant to love and who was meant to love her.
She heard the door open, and felt Brodie’s arms around her. She leaned back against him, and felt his warmth flow through her body.
“He knew, Brodie,” Peyton said when she handed him his brother’s letter. Without reading it, he knew what she meant. So many of the dreams he had while struggling to stay alive after the plane crash, came flooding back to him. He knew what the letter said without reading it.
“She needs you, Brodie. You have to stay alive. Maddox and Naughton will find you, and they’ll take you back to Peyton.” How many times had he dreamt Kade saying those words? Countless.
He set the letter aside, and reached into the box. He pulled out the light green velvet box, the color of which reminded him of Peyton’s eyes. He had no idea what the box held, but he couldn’t overpower the need he felt to kneel before her.
“Peyton, you and I are destined to spend the rest of our lives together. I know it deep in my soul. I’ve never been so certain of anything. I love you now, and I’ll love you forever, until the end of time. Please marry me, Peyton.”
“Yes, I’ll marry you, Brodie. Yes, and love you forever—until the end of time.”
Brodie opened the box, and pulled out his grandmother’s ring. He slipped it on Peyton’s finger, and it fit as though it were made just for her. The center diamond was flanked by two rubies, and there was an inscription on the gold band.
“What does it say, Brodie?”
He turned her hand and read around the band he hadn’t set eyes on until moments ago.
“Love forever—until the end of time.”
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Also by Heather Slade
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If he wasn’t in someone else’s house, Maddox would put his fist through a wall. He’d put up with Alex’s shit for almost twenty years, and he was just about done.
He’d been done before, yet somehow he always circled around, and wound up right back where he was now.
Her latest? Offering to babysit her best friend Peyton’s kids at his house. His house. Not hers. His. As far as kids went, they seemed okay, but Maddox never babysat anyone’s kids, not even his niece, Spencer. His sister Skye never asked. She was too smart to consider leaving a child in his very incapable hands.
Alex had been avoiding him since this morning, when he tried to stop her from interfering with his brother’s relationship with her best friend.
She ignored him, as usual. And she was right, as usual. He’d been trying to get Brodie to pull his head out of his ass and fix things with Peyton for days, and in two hours, Alex managed what he couldn’t.
Now Peyton and Brodie were reunited, and about to leave for her house, while Peyton’s two sons were packing their stuff for a slumber party with Uncle Maddox.
That’s what Alex called him, and while it was likely Peyton and Brodie would be married sooner rather than later, especially given she was pregnant with Brodie’s child, wasn’t calling him the boys’ uncle taking things too far?
He followed Brodie and Peyton down the stairs, and carried her bags to Brodie’s truck.
Alex closed the door after Brodie helped Peyton inside, and rested her arm on the bottom of the open window. Maddox couldn’t hear what she said to Peyton, but he could see her eyes fill with tears. In all the years he’d known her, the only time he remembered seeing Alex cry before today was when her father died.
When Alex backed away from the truck, he was right behind her, and wrapped his arms around her waist. They waved as Brodie drove away.
“We need to talk,” he whispered in her ear. When she tried to escape his hold, he tightened his arms. “Uh uh, you’re not goin’ anywhere, Alex. We’re gonna talk.”
“No we aren’t, Maddox.”
“What’s this Uncle Maddox shit?”
“Seriously? It isn’t going to kill you to do something nice for your brother, especially with all you put him through.”
He let go and spun her around. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. You could’ve helped him, Maddox. Instead you played the almighty omniscient, telling him he had to figure things out for himself. Meanwhile my best friend was as heartbroken as Brodie was.”
“If I had to do it over again, Alex
. I wouldn’t change the way I handled it.”
“Of course not.”
“You can’t admit that if Brodie had gone in guns blazing, the way he planned to, he would’ve driven Peyton further away?”
“You could’ve told him how she felt.”
“No, I couldn’t have, because I don’t know Peyton the way you do. You may say it was that simple, but you know damn well it wasn’t.”
“It doesn’t matter. They’re back together now, and her boys, who happen to be my godsons, are standing on the porch of their grandparents’ house watching the guy whose house they sleeping at tonight argue with their Aunt Alex.
“I’m honored to be their aunt, Maddox. They’re amazing boys who are about to watch a shitstorm custody fight between their mother and a father they’ve never known. Do I want them to have a night away from all the crap that’s been going on in their lives? You bet I do. I’m going to make this the best damn sleepover they’ve ever had. If you can’t help me make that happen, at least stay out of the way and don’t spoil it for them.”
As much as he wanted to wring her neck, it was this fire in her he couldn’t resist. She’d stand up for the defenseless, soothe the pain of those who hurt, and fiercely protect those she loved. There were times he wished she loved him, but more often the idea that she might scared the living shit out of him.
When Alex walked over to where the boys waited, Maddox stayed where he was, and watched her joke and laugh with them. She had a smile that never failed to knock him on his ass. It had since the first time he met her.
Her long brown, almost black hair, hung straight today, the ends just kissing the curve of her ass—another thing about her that never failed to knock him on his.
She was wearing jeans, rolled up above her ankles far enough to show off her hotter-than-shit, red suede boots with the three-inch heels. The cream-colored, sleeveless, silk and lace blouse she wore was long in the back, but short enough in the front that when she stretched, Maddox caught a glimpse of her tan belly. Her eyes, the same color as her hair, danced as she talked with the boys.
Maddox joined them on the porch. “Ready, guys?”
Jamison, Peyton’s oldest son was ten. His brother, Finn, was eight. When he and his brother Kade were their age, they had their own ‘best damn sleepovers’—ones Alex couldn’t even imagine. They’d have fun, he’d make sure of it, the same kind of fun he and Kade used to have.
Peyton’s boys knew Kade. Before he was killed in Afghanistan on what was to be his final mission with Delta Force, Kade dated their mother. Maddox knew that even though they welcomed Brodie’s role in their mother’s life, they still missed Kade. How could they not? Kade was the coolest guy who every lived.
If Alex wanted them to have fun tonight, they sure as hell would. She might not, but they would.
Maddox loaded the boys’ bags into his truck, and told them to climb in the back seat of the big SUV.
“Ready?” he winked at Alex.
“What are you up to, Mad-man?”
“You’ll see, Al. You wanted fun, right?”
Oh, Lord. What had she started?
It had always been this way with them. She’d challenge him, and then he’d step up and blow her away. Maddox Butler was the least boring man she’d ever met, and the hottest. He’d rocked her world since the first time she laid eyes on him.
She was fifteen, he was eighteen, and it was more than his age that kept him off-limits. He was a Butler—an unmentionable name in the Avila home.
Even then Maddox was all man. Six feet three, with bright blue eyes that danced when he smiled, Mad always looked as though he knew something scandalous that no one else did. His dark hair was short when she first met him, but now he kept his head shaved, just like his older brother, Kade, had.
His rock-hard torso would rival any gym rat’s, but his body was that of a man who hoisted barrels of wine like they were ten-pound bags of potatoes.
His face was chiseled, rugged and weathered from days spent in the vineyard heat—his mischievous smile framed by a dark beard that hid the dimples she sometimes forgot were there. While the women in the Butler family were fair with vibrant red hair, the men wore their olive skin like a suit of armor. His happy trail of dark hair was perfectly placed, trailing down from his brawny neck, over his rough-hewn abs to his pelvis.
The full-sleeve tattoos on both of his arms married traditional tribal with Celtic designs, and stopped just short of his hands. Splayed, they could cover her ample breasts, their power seeping into her, driving her to the edge with little but their heat, and then be equally gentle when his calloused fingers rolled her nipples.
Alex sighed, knowing those hands would not cover her body tonight. Missing them, missing the fullness she experienced only when Mad’s body penetrated hers, was what kept her coming back to him, even when she knew they were destined to combust.
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