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ChapterOne
Weston
My children were missing again.
Since it happened almost every day now that they were out of school for the summer, I didn’t panic. Well, not too much.
But as I left my brother Zach’s office and headed down the hall, in search of my aunt, I resisted taking out my phone and textingher. I’d even tried sending messages to my sister, Abby, but had yet to hear back, which meant I might have to bite the bullet and contact the woman I tried to avoid at all costs.
My gut said Avery and Wyatt were over at Emilia Mendoza’s place again.
Ever since my daughter had helped take care of the kittens Emilia had found in her barn weeks ago, she’d talked nonstop about Millie. Millie this and Millie that. As if the woman was some sort of hero and could do no wrong.
I still didn’t understand why she went by Millie instead of Emilia—or Emmy—like when she’d been younger. However, I’d left Starry Hills sixteen years ago with my new wife when Emilia had been almost nine and I’d been twenty. I’d returned home only twice since I married, and I didn’t really know who Emilia had become.
The first time I’d seen her again since she was a child, my brain had stopped working as I took in how fucking beautiful she was—dark hair, deep brown eyes, light-brown skin, and curves I never would’ve guessed she’d end up with as a grown woman.
Not that I had stood staring at her for long. Because Emilia had immediately opened her mouth, told me to go fuck myself, and we’d barely spoken to each other since.
If only my children would stop finding excuses to run over to her place—which bordered my family’s vineyards and winery—to play. Because whenever I saw Emilia, I invariably had dreams that night of her—under me, her wrists pinned above her head, as I fucked her hard.
She’d arch under me, tightly grip my dick with her pussy, before she’d moan as she came hard, taking me with her.
Even now, just remembering last night’s dream had me growing hard.
Stop it.She was most definitely off-limits. And not just because the rest of my family viewed her as a little sister. No, I’d learned my lesson about casual sex when I was younger. One night of fun had changed my life forever, and I wasn’t going to risk it again any time soon.
Find your kids and stop thinking about that woman.
As I approached the stairs, I spotted below my next youngest brother, Beck, smiling at his girlfriend.
Fuck.The pair were lovey-dovey as hell, and I had no desire to see it. I wanted to believe Sabrina O’Connor was different from my late wife and wouldn’t end up cheating on Beck or stomping on his heart. But my experience made me a cynical motherfucker.
As cowardly as it was, I went into the nearest room—the one my kids shared inside the big house at Wolfe Family Farm and Winery—and slipped out the glass door to the veranda that encircled the second story.
Leaning against the railing, I surveyed the land below, doing one last search to see if my twins were playing in the fields. Rows upon rows of leafy grapevines, still months away from us cutting the fruit that we turned into wine, were my current future. I’d spent the morning doing canopy management—cutting and trimming the leaves just right—but it looked different from up here. With the rolling hills in the distance, it looked like something you’d put on a postcard.
While being back in Starry Hills after so many years away was nostalgic, it didn’t inspire me as much as it did my brothers Beck and Zach. It was good to be home, but I didn’t feel like this was where I belonged.
Just like I hadn’t belonged at my in-laws’ place, back in the California Central Valley.
Pushing away thoughts of the past, I stood and crossed the veranda until I found the stairs to the ground below and descended.
As I turned the corner, I nearly bumped into the short form of my aunt Lori. She was barely five feet, her black hair mixed with silver, and her eyes a dark brown. She might have been in her sixties, but she was a force of nature—one that had kept my family mostly together after the death of first my father and later my mother.
Not wanting to think about how I’d missed my mother’s funeral thanks to my late wife, Andrea, I grunted at my aunt. “Have you seen Wyatt and Avery?”
Aunt Lori raised a dark eyebrow. “Hello to you too. How was your day? Isn’t the weather nice?”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t do small talk.”
My aunt sighed but then smiled. Taking hold of my forearm, she pulled me along to walk with her. I basically took baby steps to keep pace with her short legs.
She squeezed my arm before releasing it. “I’m just glad you’re back, West. I say it every day, but I’m going to keep saying it—we missed you.”
The thing about my aunt was that she ignored cues that you didn’t want to talk about something. When it came to family, she believed we should be forthright and honest and never hold back.
I shrugged. “I’m here now.”
