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“That’s a plantation full all right.”
“Oh, that’s not all.”
“No, who else besides your mom and dad?”
“Don Raul and Doña Emma Navarro.” She rubbed her thumb along the back of his, and he smiled at the soft caress. “My paternal grandparents Jorge and Isabel. They still work a bit, but in a reduced capacity considering their age.”
“And your other set of grandparents?”
“Hector and Pabla Solano. He’s a prominent lawyer and my abuela entertains. They live in San Diego, so I’m vested in two countries and hold dual citizenship.”
“Bilingual too.”
She nodded. “You speak Spanish?”
“I do. French and a smattering of German.”
“Cosmopolitan man.”
“And you’re a coffee sommelier who is savvy enough to negotiate terms for real estate and set up a headquarters in San Diego. The Gaslamp Quarter is an excellent choice, by the way. Plenty of pedestrian traffic, especially now that the city created the promenade and closed the area off to vehicles.”
“My thoughts exactly. I’ve got some properties to look at when I pass back through San Diego. I have to stop in to see my grandparents.”
“If I’m available, I’d love to take you out.”
She tilted her head and smiled. “Of course. Maybe you could even meet them.”
“Maybe.” He snuggled closer to her, bringing her hand to his mouth and kissing the back. “So, tell me about this sommelier job. What exactly do you do?”
“It’s a basic and extremely important process. I taste and vet the coffee before it’s made available to consumers.”
“Did you learn this all from your family?”
“Most of it. I did go to school for food science at UC Davis, and I have a Masters in Coffee from the University of Florence in Italy.”
“A Masters of Coffee? That’s something new.”
“I learned a lot. A sommelier has to know about bean origins, the roasting process, brewing process, how to distinguish aromas and flavors and how to describe them, how to experiment with blends effectively, and food pairing opportunities. We use something called the cupping process to taste, evaluate, and score our coffees. We want to sell the best possible product to our customers.”
“I like your commitment to it all, including your family. I understand how important family is, but what did you mean about your dad finally trusting you and letting you expand the brand? You have the expertise and the job title, one he obviously approved of. Why would trust be an issue?”
“My father has the burden of running La Buena Tierra, and it’s a heavy burden with all the family tradition on his back. He needs to make the right decisions, and sometimes that pressure gets to him. I can’t fail this. My family’s reputation, livelihood, and honor rests on doing a good job, promoting the right image.”
Buck thought about his dad and all the lessons he’d learned from him. Buck’s sense of his own self had been built mostly by his tough-as-nails grandfather. He had been stoic, a cowboy through and through, and he didn’t suffer fools or cowards lightly. He barely even acknowledged the death of Buck’s uncle who had been kicked in the head by a horse when Buck had been five. He’d seen the whole thing, and sometimes, even now, he had nightmares. His uncle’s death was devastating not only to the family, but Colton was his favorite uncle, taking him under his wing to learn the ropes, spending hours with him in understanding and performing the required skills. It had left a great hole in his life when he’d died.
“That sounds like an excuse, Mari. You seem to know what you’re about. Why doesn’t he see that?”
He caught her off guard. It was evident that she was harboring some anger at his words, but she cut off her reaction, evening out her voice. “Family is all there is. We are an extension of it. My father is exacting and demanding because he has to be.”
His immediate thought, one he didn’t voice because she was already on edge and he was still navigating this interesting, blossoming relationship, was that it sounded like she was brainwashed into thinking that she was nothing but a nondescript cog in the wheel of the family, that she had no independence from that entity, when what he saw was a vibrant, confident, capable woman. “It’s not what I see,” he said, unable to be completely silent. He also noted just from observations that when someone got a little too close to the truth, a person could get very defensive. Because he understood, he cut her some slack. It had nothing to do with his protective instincts for her, or the memory of how he’d been a vulnerable little boy to his grandfather’s exacting and demanding ways. Nope, he didn’t freaking do vulnerable.
He got it now, and he got it as a child, but in a more subtle way. He sensed what his grandfather wanted him to be and to rise to that expectation had been a very painful process, but deep down, it had been a survival strategy.
And she looked too damn good. He’d been in lust before and had even come close to falling a few times in his life, but he’d never once had the urge to take it any further. Bedroom, hell yes. Shower, for sure. A public place now and then, definitely. But, in the end, the need to get back to his own personal space always beckoned far more strongly than the desire to share space under one roof with someone. He chalked this up to it being a great adventure with great sex, even when he knew it was more, something he didn’t want to acknowledge twice in one day.
The awkward silence that had lasted all of a few minutes ended when Mari asked, “What was it like growing up on a ranch in Wyoming?”
“Long days, good, filling food, antics, riding, roping, calving, branding.”
