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Ned kissed her.
Hud looked at Iris with a frown.
“I have no idea what they’re talking about, but, um, don’t do something stupid. I know the NFL is looking at you, Hud, and…” She gave him a small smile. “Please, don’t screw it up.”
Could be too late for that. “Just be here when I get back, okay?” He headed to the door.
Ned followed him but stopped at the door and looked at Shae. “You too.” He walked out behind Hud.
“Gulag?” Hud looked at him.
Ned met his gaze. “NFL?”
“Probably not.” He opened the door and stepped inside. “I’ll let you know after we find this guy.”
* * *
The air smelled of storm.Brisk, a little feral, haunting, the wind shivered the trees and surrounded the field, and Garrett Marshall grabbed his gimme cap before it dislodged from his head.
“Let’s get a move on, Joe,” he said, leaning up from his shovel to cast a look over the vineyard to his second-oldest son, Jonas, working some ten rows over.
Jonas, dressed in a canvas jacket, wool hat, and gloves, lifted his hand in acknowledgment. “I’m starved!”
“Mom will have breakfast ready when we get inside,” he said and used his shovel to lift a pile of mulch and drop it on the root bed of the La Crescent vines that stood in sturdy rows that covered nearly an acre of land.
Not backbreaking work, but tedious, and what a blessing to have Jonas and Fraser working with him on a project that usually took a couple weeks. At this rate, they’d have the fields bundled up for winter in a week.
Then he’d work his way across the fields, pruning, taking his time, evaluating each vine even as winter cast upon them. More tedious work, but it gave him the chance to inspect the spurs, choose the right canes to cut back, leaving two healthy buds on each cane.
Now the rows resembled scarecrows, one after another—gnarled, dry vine with gnarled, dry arms stretching across wires three and five feet tall, one to the next, about five feet between each rootstock. And they needed bedding down for winter.
Which, if he didn’t hurry, might be upon him before he wanted.
The sky hung low and dour, the cloud cover so thick it blotted out the sun. The early winter breezes stripped the rest of the leaves from the maple and cottonwood edging the property, and this time of year, everything waited, breath held, for the first snow to turn the land to grace.
The hum of the four-wheeler made him look up as he reached the last of his row. Fraser, towing more mulch from the supply barn in the attached wagon. He stopped, pushed up his baseball hat. He wore a slight beard, a flannel shirt under a grimy vest, and on his uncasted hand, a glove. “You sure you’re not doing damage to your hand, Fraser?”
“New cast, Dad. Extra sturdy. Besides, I can shovel with one hand.”
Once upon a time, Garrett had dreamed of all his sons joining him at the winery, working alongside him like he had his father, in those last days.
But he’d never wanted to put expectations on them, tie them down. And look at what they’d accomplished. Fraser and Ned, SEALs; Jonas, with his PhD in atmospheric science; Iris, one of the few female officials in professional football; and, well, he couldn’t wait to see what Creed wanted to do.
Although his youngest son had saved a princess, so there was that.
He couldn’t have been prouder of his brood, especially when Fraser got off the four-wheeler and came over. “Dad, it’s getting cold out. You go in. I finished my section—I’ll get this.”
“I got this, son. But see if you can finish up the patch beside the barn. They’re younger and need a little more babysitting. You’re pretty good at that.”
Fraser grinned. “If you’re referring to Pippa and Imani, I’m not sure I’m the one babysitting.”
“Pippa is pretty bossy. But you two seem to have worked out the kinks.” He liked how the royal bodyguard from the House of Blue in Lauchtenland had smoothed out Fraser’s rather sharp corners, his rough edges.
Put a light back into his eyes that hadn’t been there after his captivity this summer.
“Yeah. She’s probably watching us right now on the security system.”
Probably. Fraser had wired up the entire house and the surrounding property to be cast to video screens in Garrett’s office. Er, former office.
