The Secret (Butler Ranch Book 3)

by Heather Slade

  It didn’t matter what had happened last night at Jenson, he had to focus on the harvest here, or Butler Ranch would lose fruit when they could least afford to.

  Bradley climbed out of bed, stretched, and yawned. “I have to go get my clothes.”

  “They’re right here,” Naughton pointed at where he’d set them on the chair.

  She picked up her shirt. “I’ll just throw this on for now.”

  “Bradley?”

  “What?” She stood before him, naked, her shirt dangling on her finger. If only he didn’t have to pick today, but he did.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We’re picking.”

  “I’m picking.”

  Bradley, still naked, dropped her shirt on the floor and put her hands on her hips. “No, Naughton. We’re picking. I work for Butler Ranch, remember? If you’re worried about my aunt and uncle, I plan to go see them later this morning. In the meantime, we have fruit to pick, so I’m going to go to the winery and get my clothes.”

  Many wineries had locker rooms, with showers, off their main building, Butler Ranch included. After being in the field, picking all day, or even in the winery, clothes were often drenched in grape juice and caked with dirt. The locker rooms gave the workers a place to hose off their rubber work boots, change their clothes and either discard them, a common practice, or put them in tagged laundry bags.

  A service, much like a restaurant’s linen service, came in to collect the bags of soiled clothes and returned them the following day, after they’d been commercially laundered. In preparation for the harvest, Bradley had brought clothes from her aunt and uncle’s, and put them in her locker.

  Naughton walked over to where Bradley stood, picked her up, set her on the bed, and smiled. “I’ll go get your clothes, sweetheart. Locker number?”

  “Twelve, but I can go.”

  He leaned over and kissed her. “While I love having you naked in my bed, I have to draw the line at anyone else, here at the ranch, seeing what’s mine.”

  Bradley grinned. “Yours?”

  “That’s right, sweetheart. You’re all mine.”

  “What about you? Do I get to claim exclusivity rights too?”

  “Already granted, Bradley.” He narrowed his eyes and looked deep into hers. “I’m serious about this.”

  She sat up, leaning over to switch the bedside light on, and then rested back on her elbows. “Naughton, I—”

  He leaned forward again and covered her mouth with his, stopping her from saying another word. He pulled back and rested two fingers against her lips. “I’ll go get your clothes, and then we’ll talk. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  Bradley got out of bed, turned the water on in the shower, and opened the linen closet door, looking for a towel. She guessed the only shelf that looked as though things weren’t in their exact right place was the one that held the condom packets now on Naughton’s bedside table.

  She brought the soft and fluffy towel up to her nose and breathed in the scent that had come to represent Naughton to her. The linen closet, like the walk-in one in his bedroom, was lined with cedar, a scent that, to her, was all man.

  She dropped the towel, climbed into the steamy shower, and lathered her body with soap that smelled of sandalwood. This scent too was all Naughton—powerful and rugged, like the man himself. When Naughton’s arms were around her, she felt like that was exactly where she was supposed to be. He didn’t even have to be touching her, as long as he was near, Bradley felt safe.

  Having spent a couple of hours with Trey last night, the difference in how she felt was more pronounced. She’d never felt secure with Trey, that she could be herself or relax. She perpetually felt on edge. She hadn’t realized before how exhausting it was to be with him. Having overheard everything he’d said, made it obvious why she felt the way she had. He had never been interested in her; he’d only wanted her aunt and uncle’s land. She shook her head, wishing she’d never met Trey Deveux.

  She closed her eyes to concentrate on the feel of the water trickling down her body and let the steam of the shower soothe her. Even when the shower door opened, she didn’t startle. The hands that wrapped around her and covered her breasts, and the lips that kissed her neck were already familiar ones.

  “I hope you don’t mind, I made myself at home,” she said.

  “Mind? Never.”

  He turned her around, and she looked into his eyes. “Naughton, I—”

  “Shh.” He touched her lips with his finger. “Later.”

  She understood. All too soon, they’d have to step outside the world they’d cocooned themselves in last night, and face both what had happened at Jenson, along with whatever else Trey and Calder were plotting.

  “Where are we picking today?” she asked.

  “What’s left of the Sauv Blanc and the Chard. If we finish before dawn, we’ll move over to the smaller vineyards that are higher up.”

  “Marsanne and Roussanne?”

  Naughton smiled. “And Viognier.”

  She was about to turn the water off when Naughton gripped her neck and brought his face close to hers. “I need you to promise me something.”

  She nodded.

  “Let law enforcement do their job. Stay away from Trey.”

  When she tried to look away, his hold on her tightened. “Bradley?”

  “I know.”

  She’d gone to the ladies’ room last night, and then disappeared. Trey had to know she’d heard the conversation between him and Calder. What he would do next was anyone’s guess.

  The last thing she expected, however, was to see him outside Naughton’s door at three a.m.

  Naughton held the door open for her, but as soon as he saw Trey waiting in the darkness, he moved in front of Bradley, shielding her from him.

  “You’re trespassing,” Naughton snarled.

  “I need to talk to Bradley.” Trey tried to move around Naughton, but he cut him off.

  “Get off our land or I’ll call the sheriff.”

  “Hold on a minute—”

  “The sheriff it is.” Naughton was placing the call when Trey knocked the phone from his hand.

  “What’s going on here?” asked a voice in the darkness. It sounded so much like Kade that Naughton expected him to appear instead of Maddox when he walked closer.

  “Call the sheriff, Mad. We have a trespasser, arsonist, and thief on our land.”

  “Is that what you think?” Trey looked at Bradley.

  “Don’t talk to her, talk to me.” Naughton moved so Bradley was behind him. “Go inside, sweetheart.”

  Relieved when he heard the door open and close, Naughton reached down to pick up his phone.

  “I knew she’d be here,” Trey hissed.

  “Thanks, Bill,” Naughton heard Maddox say as he turned back around to face them. “Sheriff’s on his way.”

  “I need to talk to Bradley.”

  Naughton wanted to pound Trey Deveux into the ground, and he would before he’d let the bastard anywhere near Bradley. “You have ten seconds to get in your car and get the hell off our property,” Naughton seethed. He moved toward Trey, fists clenched.

  “I’ll leave, but this isn’t over.”

  “Sounds like a threat to me. Does it to you, Naught?”

  “Sure does, Mad. Maybe we should detain him until Bill gets here.”

  Trey stepped back to where his car sat parked, got in, and sped down the main drive, throwing stones and dirt behind him.

  Naughton heard his front door open and turned to speak to Bradley. “He’s gone.”

  “He threatened you. I heard him.”

  Maddox held up his phone. “The sheriff overheard it all. At the very least, we’ll get a restraining order in place. If he sets foot on Butler Ranch or Jenson Vineyards, Trey Deveux will find himself in county lockup.”

  Bradley shivered and Naughton put his arm around her waist. “You don’t have to be afraid of him. We have eyes and ears everywhere.
”

  None of them heard or saw the person standing in the darkness, close enough to hear every word they spoke. Yes, there were eyes and ears everywhere, far more than they knew.

  16

  At daybreak, Naughton called Bradley’s cell and asked her to meet him in the Viognier vineyards. Before she could tell Brodie where she was going, he held up his own phone.

  “I’ll drive you up,” he yelled over to her.

  Bradley hadn’t been without a Butler brother within twenty feet of her all morning. Maddox had led her to one of the Sauvignon Blanc vineyards first thing, while Naughton took a crew to another. As soon as Brodie arrived, he stayed with her while Maddox led another group over to the first Chardonnay vineyard they’d pick today.

  “It’s fine, Brodie. I can get there on my own.”

  “We’re done here anyway.”

  They weren’t, but close enough that the crew they’d been working with could finish on their own.

  “Where’s Peyton?” she asked, climbing on the back of the four-wheel ATV Brodie was walking over to.

  “At her parents’ with the boys.”

  “We’re all on edge, and I feel like it’s my fault,” she confided in him.

  “You didn’t start this, Bradley. Calder did, and from what I’ve heard, Deveux had a hand in it too. You’re an innocent bystander.”

  She shrugged. “Still.”

  Brodie shook his head.

  The words she had heard Trey say to Calder played over in her head all morning while she picked grapes.

  The land is worth it, always has been, particularly if we can add more along Adelaida Trail.

  She hadn’t let herself think about that part of what he’d said last night, but now, memories of things that had happened in the last four years came flooding back to her.

  Trey knew, when they met, that she had a tie to Jenson Vineyards. In the first few minutes, she’d told him she was Charlie and Jean’s niece. Had that been the only reason he’d pursued her all along? Was that why he had put so much pressure on her not to go back to Cornell for graduate school, and then earlier this year, pushed her to take a job with her uncle rather than accept an offer from a Napa winery?

  Keep your eye on the prize, brother. And she ain’t it.

  What a fool she’d been. No wonder she’d always felt like she wasn’t good enough for Trey because, in his eyes, she wasn’t.

  You have to work for Jenson. It’s your heritage.

  Had he realized the land would never be hers, so instead, sought to ruin her aunt and uncle financially and force them to sell? What else did he and Calder have planned? She knew they wanted more land on Adelaida Trail, and after the fire and what had happened last night at Jenson, Bradley believed there was nothing they’d stop at to get it. How many other wineries were they planning to target?

  “There she is.” Naughton walked over when Brodie stopped the ATV at the end of a row of Viognier. He kissed her cheek, and then looked at her hands.

  “Where are your gloves, Bradley?”

  She didn’t like to wear them when she picked for the same reason she’d never want to rely on machine harvesting. Grapes were fragile. If she touched each cluster with her fingers, held it in her hand, she could feel their weight and intuitively know whether it was heavy with juice or if a few of the grapes had been compromised. Subsequently, her hands were covered with scratches and cuts.

  Naughton brought her right hand to his lips and kissed each fingertip, and then her palm. “You wouldn’t wear them if I asked you to, would you?”

  Bradley shook her head.

  Naughton smiled and put his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s take a walk.”

  Brodie climbed back on the ATV and waved behind him. “Where’s he going?” she asked.

  “To call the harvest, at least for a few hours. It’s getting too hot to keep picking.”

  She agreed. Now that they were harvesting rather than salvaging grapes after the fire, what they picked and when wasn’t as urgent.

  “I thought we’d go see Charlie and Jean.”

  “I talked to Aunt Jean a little while ago.”

  “How are they doing?”

  “Okay. She said Uncle Charlie has been on the phone all morning, talking to the police and insurance adjustors. She told me the police didn’t have any leads on the guys who did it.”

  “I heard from Alex that Gabe and Joaquin felt pretty bad that they weren’t able to catch them.”

  Bradley shook her head. “I hate this.”

  “Me too, sweetheart.”

  “I asked, and my aunt said there really isn’t anything they need my help with right now.”

  “Are you ready for triage then?”

  “Does that mean we’re crushing today?”

  “Yep.”

  The last vestiges of sunrise could be seen on the horizon, but any fatigue she might have felt dissipated when she heard they’d crush today.

  Under normal circumstances, freshly-picked clusters of grapes would come into the winery to be sorted for quality. In France, that process was called triage, directly translated—selection.

  Bradley wouldn’t know until she got to the winery whether they’d sort what they’d picked a couple of days ago first, or keep that in cold storage. It would be up to Maddox to decide.

  Once he had, she along with several other workers would line both sides of a conveyor belt, and separate the good fruit from the inferior, removing unripe, diseased or damaged grapes, along with any leaves that weren’t weeded out in the field.

  In her last year at Cornell, the enology department had tested a system that was being used for triage in the Bordeaux region of France. The grapes still moved along a conveyor belt, but instead of human sorters, an optic sensor recognized any grape that didn’t have the desired size, shape, or color, and then a blast of air separated it onto another belt used for waste.

  Like machine harvesting, Bradley didn’t trust the optical system. She’d been on the team that evaluated the grapes that had been sorted out as inferior, and found there to be a high percentage of good grapes that were thrown out with the bad.

  However, when it came to crushing and destemming, Bradley was all for the modernized approach. The days of foot-stomping died out before she was born, and she was glad it had.

  After being sorted, the conveyor belt would move the clusters into large, automated crusher-destemmers, which would destem the grapes and then break the skins open, exposing the fruit’s juice and pulp.

  White grapes typically went directly from there into the press, which separated the juice from the skins.

  For red wines, depending on the varietal and the winemaker’s preference, the stems, seeds, and skins stayed with the fruit and were pressed off later, sometimes after a few hours, sometimes after as long as a month. The longer the stems, seeds, and skins stayed with the juice, the higher the tannins in the wine would be. Tannins were what gave wine like Cabernet Sauvignon its characteristic dryness.

  Naughton watched Bradley as she got lost in thought on their way back to the winery. He wished he could climb inside her brain and go for the ride her thoughts were taking her on.

  There wasn’t anyone he knew who worked in the wine industry that didn’t love this time of year. It was filled with worry, even without something as catastrophic happening as a fire. But it was also filled with excitement and joy. Every varietal they harvested had the potential to yield or become an integral part of a great wine.

  This time around, it felt different though. Year after year, he and his brother partnered in bringing in the harvest. Naughton grew the grapes, Maddox made wine with them. It was still exciting, still fraught with worry, still a magical journey, but having Bradley with him accentuated all of it. It was more exciting, more magical with her here.

  He’d noticed little things about her the last few days, like how she refused to wear gloves when she picked. He remembered the first day they met, and they walked through her uncle’s vineya
rds. Bradley’s fingers had trailed along the leaves and grapes. It made sense now that she’d want to touch them, feel them, know them, and learn from them.

  Last night her fingers had trailed along his skin the same way, as though she was learning the feel of him, inch by inch. He leaned over and kissed her neck just below her ear, and she stopped walking.

  “What was that for?”

  “Being you.”

  Bradley kissed him back, and when Naughton lifted her with his hands on her bottom, she wrapped her legs around his waist. That’s how Maddox and Alex found them moments later, with their mouths and tongues locked together.

  “Oh, Lord,” Naughton heard Alex say. As much as he didn’t want to release Bradley, he did. When she slid her way down his body, he wondered how angry Maddox would be if he whisked her away for an hour or so. As it was, he turned her to face them, her back to his front, wrapped his arms around her waist, and rested his chin on her shoulder.

  Alex climbed off the ATV and walked over to where they waited. “I was hoping to kidnap Bradley so she could help me with tomorrow’s dinner, but it looks like you’ve got your own plans.”

  Naughton smiled. “I do, but we’re both going to have to step aside and let Maddox take our girl.”

  “Who are you?” Alex teased.

  Naughton shrugged. He shocked himself, hearing his words come out of his mouth.

  “Why does Mad get dibs on her?”

  “Because more than anything, Bradley wants to get her hands on those grapes. Am I right?” said Naughton.

  Bradley turned around, kissed Naughton’s lips, and then eased out of his hold.

  “Sorry, but Naughton’s right. I know I offered to help, but—”

  “Stop, I was teasing. There’s little that could come between my Mad-man and me these days, except maybe if I stole you away during crush.”

  Naughton watched Bradley climb on the back of the ATV with his brother after Alex said she’d prefer to walk back with Naughton. He’d give anything to feel her behind him on his motorcycle, her body crushed against his while they explored the rolling hills of the wine country. It would be days before they’d be able to get away like that, but only hours until he’d have her back in his bed, and that was better than any motorcycle ride he could take her on.