The Promise (Butler Ranch Book 1)

by Heather Slade

  The Promise

  Heather Slade

  Butler Ranch Book One

  The Promise

  © 2017 Heather Slade

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 10: 1-942200-11-0

  ISBN 13: 978-1-942200-11-6

  Cover photo credit (c) Copyright 2016 Becky McGraw, Cover Me Photography

  Available from Amazon.com and other retail outlets.

  Contents

  Also by Heather Slade

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  About the Author

  Also by Heather Slade

  Untitled

  Untitled

  Also by Heather Slade

  Butler Ranch

  Coming soon

  The Truce

  Cowboys of Crested Butte

  Coming soon

  Fall for Me

  Acknowledgments

  It was a lightning strike. The perfect storm of inspiration. I hadn’t planned to start this series this year, but sometimes a story wants to be written whether you’re ready for it or not. It all started with an early morning trip to our small town grocery store, and five weeks later, I finished the first book in the Butler Ranch Series.

  These books are set in a place that is very dear to me, the Central Coast of California, specifically Cambria and the Paso Robles Wine Region.

  There was more than location that inspired me to write this book. I want to thank Becka Ramirez for helping me honor the real man behind one of the main characters, whose service and sacrifice is not known to many, although his countless acts of heroism meant many young Americans kept their lives, and we kept our freedom.

  Big thanks to Joy Dewhirst, Carolyn Hodges, Ashley Martin, Jacki Klimkowski, Kymberlee Bruton, Vicki Mynhier, and Erlinda Gonzales. These women are so different in how they read, and the kind of feedback they give me, but every bit of it is essential and appreciated.

  Special thanks, as always, to Carolyn Depew and Write Right Edits. I appreciate you and your work so very much. And finally, so many thanks to Becky McGraw—one of the most kind, generous, helpful, amazing women I’ve ever known.

  1

  She closed the car door, and zipped her jacket. The blue sky and bright sun were misleading. This close to the ocean, the wind could be fierce, even on the sunniest days.

  From where she stood in the gravel parking lot across the street, she saw a man walking toward her small town’s only supermarket. There was something familiar in the way he held himself. His worn barn jacket was taught across his shoulders, but hung loose over his narrow hips. Although his jeans were more metro than ranch, his boots were all cowboy, and so was his black, felt Stetson.

  Peyton took a deep breath. It wasn’t the first time her mind played this particular trick. She looked left and right once she got inside, but didn’t see the man who’d probably been a figment of her imagination anyway.

  Growing boys needed milk and orange juice, so before she’d even left the first aisle, her cart was half full. She was reading over her shopping list, on her way to the produce section, when her eyes met a pair of hauntingly familiar deep, blue eyes—eyes of a man she thought she’d never see again. Her disappointment was palpable as she scanned his face. The eyes were familiar, and maybe even the way he held himself that had her heart skipping a beat. But the man standing in front of her, whose eyes took in every inch of her in the same way her gaze traveled from his face to his hands, was not who she thought he was.

  He raised and lowered his chin, “Hey.”

  Peyton nearly closed her eyes. She knew the deep timbre of that voice intimately. “Sorry, you look so much like someone—” What could she say? Someone she used to know?

  “Yes,” he murmured.

  “Get that a lot?” She tried to laugh, but the pain she felt whenever she allowed herself to think about Kade Butler brought her closer to tears than laughter.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I’m sorry, you don’t what?”

  “Get that a lot.”

  “Oh…uh…well.” Her hands gripped the shopping cart handle, but before she could move it forward, he grasped the wire basket.

  “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Name’s Brodie. Brodie Butler.”

  Peyton closed her eyes just long enough that the tears she thought she held at bay flooded over her lids, and down onto her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, Peyton. I didn’t mean for it to happen this way.”

  “But you meant for it to happen?”

  “As I said, I’ve been looking for you.”

  It took a minute before Brodie recognized the woman standing in front of him. He’d only seen photos of her, and not very many.

  “Find Peyton,” his mother told him. “We need to give this to her.”

  “He’s been gone over a year, Ma, and you haven’t heard a word from her since the funeral.”

  “I don’t care, this belongs to her.”

  The “this” his mother referred to was a box of his oldest brother’s belongings that he’d asked their mother to make sure was given to Peyton if anything happened to him.

  “I have something for you,” he explained. “From Kade.”

  “No,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.” She left him and her grocery cart in the middle of the aisle, and walked out of the store.

  Brodie followed her outside, and watched as she crossed the street, and climbed into a little black BMW. He sat at one of the tables in front of the market, and waited to see if she’d drive away. He heard the engine start, but the car didn’t move. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees, weighing whether to stay or leave.

  It wasn’t as though she’d been hiding. She lived in a small house near Moonstone Beach in Cambria. Right after Kade died, Peyton spent a lot of her time in the guest house on her parents’ ranch. The boys still stayed there most weekends, when Stave, the tasting room she’d managed since she graduated from college, was open later.

  There were few secrets in Green Valley, where many families had owned their ranches and vineyards for generations. If Kade’s family was looking for her, she was easy to find.

  She’d heard stories about Brodie, but hadn’t met him until today. She wasn’t aware of his strong resemblance to his oldest brother. There were differences though. Brodie’s chiseled face, while similar to Kade’s, was thinner, more angular, with a dusting of scruffy facial hair. Peyton had never seen Kade without the dark, reddish brown goatee he kept neatly trimmed.

  She looked across the road, where Brodie waited for her. If he thought she would get out of the car, and walk back across the street, he was wrong. Whatever he had of Kade’s
, he could keep.

  No matter where she went, she saw him. That’s why she thought her mind was playing tricks on her again today. So often Peyton thought she saw Kade walking on the beach, or driving past Stave. She’d blink her eyes, and either he’d be gone, or she’d realize the person she thought was him, wasn’t. More memories? More things to remind her of her loss? No thanks.

  She’d come back to the market later, after she picked the boys up from school. Maybe she’d even let them pick out something for dinner they could heat up themselves, since cooking dinner at home was just one more thing that reminded her that the only man who had succeeded in convincing her to give love another try was gone.

  Brodie watched as Peyton backed up the car, and drove in the opposite direction, to the back exit of the parking lot. It would’ve been easier to go out the front, but then she’d be facing where he sat.

  He knew where she was going, but he wouldn’t follow. It wouldn’t be fair, especially since he’d seen firsthand how close to the surface her pain sat. He went back inside, and ordered a pastry and a cup of coffee from the bakery. Rather than sit and watch the cars go up and down the main drag of the village, he drove across the highway, parked alongside Moonstone Beach Drive, and watched the waves crash along the shore.

  There were several surfers out this morning, waiting for waves in the bone-chilling Pacific Ocean. Even in a full wet suit, Brodie wouldn’t have joined them. Maybe he would’ve ten years ago, but when he surfed now, he preferred the warmer water found a couple hours south, closer to Santa Barbara.

  “Don’t be such a pussy,” his brother Maddox said the first time Kade brought him along to their favorite surf spot. Kade smacked Mad that day, and told him to leave Brodie alone. He glared at Naughton too, daring him to tease their youngest brother.

  Kade was nine years older than Brodie, six years older than Naughton, and three years older than Maddox. Brodie was twelve the first time his brothers brought him along on the forty-five minute drive from their ranch on Adelaida Trail, over the rolling hills of Highway 46, to Moonstone Beach.

  “He watches, Kade, you don’t take your brother in when it’s nigh fifty degrees in that water.”

  Kade winked at Brodie. “Yes, Ma.”

  His brother had been home on leave for two weeks, and was flying out again the next morning. Brodie begged Kade to let him go with them that day. The words he spoke haunted him in the years that followed.

  “I never know if you’re coming back. You promised to teach me to surf. What if this is our only chance?” It made him sick to recall his callousness. He was only thankful his mother hadn’t heard.

  Kade joined the Marines right out of high school, eventually serving in one of the elite Force Recon companies. He’d gone on to be one of the few priors who also underwent Navy SEAL training, as well as attending Special Operations training in Fort Bragg—with the Green Berets. He hadn’t stopped there. Kade also earned a degree as a physician’s assistant.

  As one of only a handful of men with that level of specialized training, he became part of Delta Force, officially known as 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, the most highly-trained elite force in the US military. The Special Missions Unit performed various clandestine and highly-classified counter-terrorism missions around the world. His brother saved an infinite number of lives in his years of duty, but lost his own a year ago, on what was to be his final mission.

  The first time Brodie heard Kade mention retirement was after he’d been seeing Peyton for several months. For three years his rotation had been two months on, two months off. It became increasingly difficult for him to go back when his two-month leave came to an end. The mission was no longer his top priority, Peyton was becoming more important to him.

  Brodie scrolled through the photos on his phone, looking for the last one taken with all of his siblings. His father took it the Christmas before last. Two months later, his parents answered their door and heard the devastating news every parent with a son or daughter serving in the military prays they’ll never hear. Kade had been killed in action.

  Brodie thought about looking through the contents of the box his mother wanted him to deliver to Peyton, but felt as though he’d be invading their privacy.

  The cold wind stung his face with sand, and he buried his hands in his jacket pockets. It was a degree warmer for every mile between here and his family’s ranch, thirty miles inland, but today he welcomed the chill of the ocean air washing over him. It reminded him he was alive. His brother wasn’t, but he was, and that meant he had a promise to fulfill.

  “I gave him my word, Brodie,” his mother said when she asked him to find Peyton.

  Peyton looked up from her computer screen when she heard the back door open. “Hey, Alex.”

  Her best friend and marketing director for both the tasting room and the Westside Winery Collaborative, sat in the chair next to Peyton’s desk.

  “How are you not cold?”

  Alex wore jeans, with tan, four-inch heel boots, and a black, sleeveless, silk tank. “Hot Hispanic blood runnin’ through these veins, girlfriend.”

  “It’s forty degrees, the wind off the ocean makes it feel closer to twenty, and you never get cold. I’m always cold, even in the summer.”

  “No meat on your bones, that’s your problem.”

  “You’re such a hypocrite. You weigh less than I do. You always have.”

  Peyton and Alex had been friends since they were teenagers. Her parents became friends with Alex’s when they bought their ranch and decided to turn half of it into vineyards. Alfonso Avila, Alex’s father, sold Peyton’s dad rootstock, and helped him produce many fine wines through the years.

  She and Alex were scrawny “bean poles,” when they met—tall and lanky, before both their bodies matured and filled out. Apart from their stature, and thin, but curvy bodies, they were total opposites. Peyton was a green-eyed blonde, and Alex had long dark brown, almost black hair, and eyes that matched.

  “What’s with the scowl this morning?”

  “Sorry, it’s been a crappy day so far.”

  Alex checked the time on her phone. “Already? Everything okay with the boys?”

  “They’re fine, Auntie Alex. No, this has nothing to do with the boys.”

  “What then? Spill.”

  “I ran into Brodie Butler at the market this morning.”

  “Oh. Shit. I’m sorry, honey.”

  “I wasn’t very nice to him, and now I feel bad.”

  “I didn’t realize you knew Brodie.”

  “I don’t. Or I didn’t. He introduced himself.”

  “I know it’s hard to see Kade’s family—”

  “He said he had something for me. Something from Kade.”

  “Oh. Shit,” Alex repeated.

  “I left.”

  Alex nodded her head.

  “No, Alex, I mean I walked away. Right out of the market. Poor Louie probably wonders why I left a cartful of milk and OJ right there in aisle six.”

  “Not a big deal, Peyton. Seriously, forget about it.”

  “I’ll apologize to Louie later, but what about Brodie? I owe him an apology too.”

  “No, you don’t. What made him think confronting you in the supermarket was a good idea?”

  “He didn’t confront me. I don’t think he expected to see me there.”

  “You’re right. I’m sure he drives thirty miles out of his way daily, to go to a grocery store a tenth of the size of the store located less than ten miles outside the gates of Butler Ranch, because…I don’t know…Louie’s selection of Mortadella is better?”

  “You aren’t helping. I feel bad enough as it is, Alex.”

  Alex reached over and rested her hand on Peyton’s. “I’m sorry, honey.”

  “Tell me what I should do. I don’t want to call the ranch.”

  “Why not? Kade’s parents ask about you all the time. I’m sure they’d like to hear from you.”

  “No. I can’t.” />
  “Then I will.”

  “Would you?”

  Los Caballeros, the thousand-acre ranch owned by Alex’s family bordered the Butler Ranch. The Avilas and Butlers hadn’t always gotten along, but when Alex’s father passed away a few years ago, the longstanding feud between Laird Butler and Alfonso Avila had been set aside.

  “Of course I will. Do you want me to offer to take whatever Brodie wanted to give you?”

  “No! God, no. Just tell them…I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  “Can’t what? I’m lost.”

  “Whatever it is, I don’t want it.”

  “Peyton—”

  Peyton walked out of the small office before Alex finished her sentence. She didn’t want to hear it. It was more than that, she couldn’t hear it.

  When Alex followed, Peyton covered her ears.

  “Jesus, what are you? A ten-year-old? Stop this.”

  Peyton walked out the back door of the building, and got in her car. For the second time this morning, she ran away.

  Instead of going home, she parked her car near the trail that led down to Moonstone Beach. A good long walk on the beach would help clear her head, and then maybe she’d be able to find the grownup living inside her, and stop acting like the child Alex called her out as.

  Brodie saw the black BMW pull into the parking lot at the opposite end of Moonstone Beach. It was a common car in the little seaside village, but there was no mistaking the woman who climbed out of it. He watched Peyton take the steps that led from the asphalt lot down to the beach.