The Vineyard of Hopes and Dreams

Love, aged to perfection

As a reckless teenager, Colby Malone made a catastrophic mistake. One he’s regretted every day since. So when Hayley Watson—the woman he’s never forgotten—returns to sell her family’s vineyard, he seizes the opportunity to make amends.

But she’s not making this easy for him. Hayley wants nothing to do with him or Sonoma, California. And the intense attraction between them? Yeah, she’s ready to ignore that, too. Colby must convince her to take a chance on him…on them. And what better place to do that than the land that sparked all their dreams of a future together?

Colby had to fight to keep his touch gentle

Desire dug its claws into him. He wanted…damn, how fiercely he wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her until the regret of the past and the question mark of the future both disappeared into the fire of right now.

He searched her face for a sign, and found it. Her eyes…they gleamed in the moonlight, shining with need.

“Hayley,” he whispered. And then, his nerve endings firing in painful anticipation, he lowered his lips to hers and reclaimed what once was his.

Her lips were hot and sweet, and they parted almost instantly, as they always had, welcoming him into the even hotter darkness of her mouth. He groaned, and took it all. His other hand went around her waist, and pulled her body into his, breast to chest, beating heart to beating heart.

She held back maybe three seconds, and then he felt her yield, and sink into him. Her hands rose and threaded themselves into his hair.

Hayley…

Dear Reader,

On a recent trip to California, my husband and I took a short tour of wine country. Like millions of other tourists, I fell in love.

A life in this serene, rolling landscape could be very special, I thought. Days spent in harmony with nature, coaxing rich purple, red and green clusters of sweet grapes from the earth, surely would be healing, soothing, good for the soul.

The story of Colby Malone and his high school sweetheart, Hayley Watson, is the fourth book dealing with this complex San Francisco family, and the one that I knew would be the most emotionally difficult to write. The tragedy of their young love, and the years of exile and emptiness that followed, would leave deep scars. It would take a lot of healing to bring them back to joy.

That’s when I knew that this reunion tale should take place against the peaceful backdrop of California’s Sonoma Valley. A vineyard that has fallen into ruin, and a pair of hearts almost as lost…both restored by the power of love.

I have loved getting your emails and letters about the Malone brothers! Please let me know how you enjoy this one. Stop by the website at KOBrienOnline.com or email me at [e-mail].

Warmly,

Kathleen O’Brien

The Vineyard of Hopes and Dreams

Kathleen O'Brien

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kathleen O’Brien was a feature writer and TV critic before marrying a fellow journalist. Motherhood, which followed soon after, was so marvelous she turned to writing novels, which could be done at home. A Floridian, whose soul thrives on the flatlands and sunshine of her native state, she believes there will always be a special place in our hearts for the sights, smells and sounds of the place where we were born.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER ONE

FOR THE MALONE family, party meant pizza.

Because the family business was a string of pizza restaurants, the three Malone brothers had more or less started eating it in the cradle. For as long as Colby could remember, the family had celebrated every occasion—holiday, birthday, anniversary, whatever—with platter after platter of Diamante’s signature hand-tossed Margherita pizza. Their kids loved it, their friends loved it. Even their girlfriends loved it, or at least pretended to. Otherwise, they became ex-girlfriends in a hurry.

The only time anyone refused Diamante pizza was when one of the Malone wives was pregnant. It was half joke, half legend in the family—for the Malones, morning sickness took the form of an extreme aversion to pizza.

But today, at his brother Redmond’s engagement party, Colby couldn’t eat a bite. That was a first. Also a first: the chattering of the family and the chaos of the children irritated him.

After the toasts were raised—California zinfandel for the grown-ups, and lemonade for the kids who had graduated from milk—Colby found himself standing slightly apart from everyone, in the shade of an old leather oak, watching the black shadows of clouds try to smother the silver fire of sun on the bay.

Every few minutes, he’d check his phone to be sure the party noise hadn’t drowned out the sound of its ringing. Finally, he put it on vibrate, then shoved the thing back into his pants pocket and cursed silently. That old bastard wasn’t going to call, was he? This was simply another of Ben Watson’s eternal manipulations.

After a few minutes, Colby saw Red lean down and whisper something to Allison. Then Red peeled himself away from her, something he rarely did, and ambled over to Colby.

Colby almost laughed at the casual air Red adopted. He’d used it himself a million times, to escape sticky situations, or to disguise his real intentions. At the moment, Red was obviously trying to hide the fact that he was worried about Colby.

“I’m fine,” Colby announced as Red drew closer. His voice sounded a shade too tight, so he added a smile. “What part of kid overload don’t you understand?”

Red laughed. “I hear you. Good thing the weather cooperated today. Where else could we have taken this thundering horde?”

It had been Nana Lina’s idea to make the party an afternoon picnic, at her Belvedere Cove house of course, where the grounds swept down to the bay and everyone had plenty of room to run and scream and play. The family had expanded like wildfire over the past few years. Kids everywhere now, and not one of them had a single quiet, obedient gene in his DNA.

Matt and Belle’s pair, Sarah and Sam, were miniature tornadoes, and had just about ensured the family was banned from any restaurant the Malones didn’t own. Red’s new fiancée, Allison York, had a little boy who didn’t walk yet, but crawled as if he had a jet pack in his diaper.

And of course David Gerard, who had become like a brother, had two kids. Colin, just turned three, never stopped talking and acted like a Malone even without the blood tie.

Ten minutes ago, Red had been trying to teach Colin how to burp the alphabet. Good thing David’s wife, Kitty, was busy tending their newborn, Tucker, and hadn’t noticed.

Colby was the only male in the family without an offspring. The only one who didn’t attend family functions accompanied by a U-Haul full of strollers, bouncers, pedal-operated zoom cars and dolls with glittering zombie eyes and high robotic voices.

Red leaned against the tree, the picture of innocence. After a moment of silence, as if the thought had just occurred to him, he spoke. “So. Did Watson call?”

“No.” Colby resisted the urge to look at his phone again. “They might not have let him out of the hospital today after all. That might have been wishful thinking. You know how he is.”

They all knew how Ben Watson was. An overweight drunk, who was closer to hitting seventy than anyone had ever expected him to be. A bad-tempered fiend who lived alone and didn’t do anything but watch his sweet little Sonoma Valley vineyard go to rack and ruin around him.

Well, over the past few months, he’d done at least one other thing. He’d pestered Colby, trying to sell him information about Ben’s daughter, Hayley, who had disappeared with her mother and sister seventeen years ago.

“He’ll call,” Red said softly. “If not today, then tomorrow.”

Damn it. Colby didn’t want pity. Not even Red’s. He was already regretting opening up about the whole mess. He’d coped perfectly well, alone, with Ben Watson’s first few calls. He’d even made an appointment to see the old guy—six appointments, in fact, over the past three months. Ben kept cancelling for one trumped-up reason after another.

Colby had finally called his bluff and told the old bastard to go to hell. But then, a week ago, Ben had phoned one last time, like a desperate poker player raising the stakes, going all in. He’d said he not only knew how to find Hayley, but he also had information about the people who had adopted Hayley’s baby.

That had come out of the blue, like a sucker punch. As soon as Colby could breathe again, he knew he had to talk to someone. Nana Lina was the obvious choice. She was the only one who had known there ever was a baby in the first place. But Nana Lina wasn’t strong these days. A year or two ago, she’d been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, A-fib, a heart condition that they were trying to control with medication.

But she still had mystery spells, days when she didn’t get into Diamante at all. They hadn’t yet been able to persuade her to consult another doctor. She said her regular internist Dr. Douglas was fine. It was nothing but the slowing down of age. Maybe she was right. She was almost eighty now.

Still, he wasn’t going to upset her with what might just be another false alarm.

And so he’d told Matt and Red instead, enduring their quiet shock as best he could. They’d both advised him to go see Watson, to get the information at any cost, and decide later what, if anything, to do with it.

Then Ben Watson had a heart attack, and he’d been in the hospital ever since. He refused to talk to Colby over the phone, refused to say anything until he was released.

Which was supposed to happen today. But even though it was nearly six o’clock, the phone still lay like a useless stone in Colby’s pocket.

“Why the hell can’t he just write a letter?” Red sounded irritable, defensive for his brother, as of course he would be. They’d been each other’s safety nets since they were orphaned as teenagers.

Shrugging, Colby tugged a leaf off the oak. Its brown center spread out in blotches of red and yellow, ending in green tips that he tore off with sharp twists, as if they were a surrogate for Ben Watson’s throat.

The smoky odor the leaf released smelled like every October of Colby’s life. This month, that smell, had always reminded him of Hayley. And if it still reminded him of her now, after seventeen Octobers spent with countless other women, he had a feeling it always would.

Red was still ranting. “Watson always was a control freak. Frankly, I don’t know how his wife stood it as long as she did.”

Colby made a noncommittal sound. He didn’t like to think about the years Mrs. Watson had endured in that mission-style vineyard house. Colby should have called the police. He should have guessed that those bruises Hayley always attributed to tussles with her younger sister must have been something more sinister. But he’d been a privileged eighteen-year-old from a loving family. He’d never seen domestic violence.

He’d been so lucky, though he hadn’t realized it at the time.

“I was just wondering…” Red glanced over at Colby. “I wonder if Ben even knows anything, really. I wonder if he’s stringing you along, enjoying getting your hopes up. And, even if he does, who says it really concerns you? I mean…at the time, you didn’t think the ba—”

“Allison is looking for you, Red,” Colby interjected before his brother could finish that sentence. He wasn’t going to consider the possibility that Ben Watson was lying. That the old man didn’t know where the child was.

That Hayley’s unborn child might not even have been Colby’s baby.

After carrying guilt around all these years, surely he wasn’t going to get this close to an answer, only to have it ripped out from under him, like some stupid cartoon character standing on a nonexistent ledge.

This week, waiting for Ben Watson’s call, had been difficult. He wanted to believe Ben had real information to sell. He had to believe it. He looked out at his family, spreading across the sloping green lawn, laughing, dancing, eating pizza… They all looked so damn contented. Even little Colin, who had eaten a slice too many and was holding his stomach and crying, was one lucky kid surrounded by love.

So many happy endings. And endings that hadn’t been easy to find. Once upon a time, David’s romance had seemed impossible, and Matt’s road had been pretty bumpy, too. And Red—well, that relationship was nothing short of a miracle.

So the idea that Colby might be able to atone for his one supreme sin, the idea that he might be able to salvage something from the wreckage his younger, arrogant, teenage self had created…

Was that so much to ask?

His hand went toward his pocket one more time. Just as his fingertips touched the metal, he felt it vibrate. As he pulled the phone out, he glanced up at Red, who frowned, obviously aware this might be the moment.

Colby answered it, angling his side to Red, away from the party, needing at least a fraction of privacy. He listened for a minute, then hung up with cold fingers.

Red leaned in closer, his voice tense. “What, damn it? Was it Ben?”

“No,” he said. He turned back to his brother, careful to keep his face expressionless. It wasn’t difficult, oddly, because everything in him seemed to have turned to stone. “No. It was Ben Watson’s vineyard manager. Ben is dead.”

IF THIS HAD BEEN A MOVIE shoot, Hayley Watson thought wryly, it would have been the perfect morning to film a funeral scene. Overcast, with silvery threads of far-off lightning in the swollen western sky. Theatrically dreary and bleak.

In the cold October breeze, a willow tree swooned against a nearby oak, whispering its grief. A wet, gray fog floated a few inches above the grass, swirling, dipping curious tendrils into the six-foot hole in the ground.

The hole where Hayley’s father’s casket would be lowered, as soon as this naive-but-well-intentioned minister stopped trying to put a cheerful spin on the brutal old devil’s life.

Hayley tried to listen, but the eulogy was pure fiction, and she felt as if she, too, were floating a few inches above it all. The mournful willow and the fingering fog reminded her of a ghost story her mother had read them one Halloween, long, long ago. The picture in the book had looked just like this cemetery. She and her little sister, Genevieve, had quivered with excitement, wiggling under the bedcovers, wondering what the ghost would do.

Then her father had burst into the house, red-faced and pop-eyed with wine. “Lazy bitch!” He’d grabbed the book and grabbed her mother’s arm. “I’ll give you something to be afraid of!”

Hayley shivered, as if she were ten again. As if her father were alive, instead of lying in that casket, the one he’d picked out in his elaborate prepaid package, bought a dozen years ago, indicating he’d finally started to realize he wasn’t immortal.

She tried to form a picture of how he must look inside it—burly arms folded, eyes closed, face molded into serenity by the mortician.

But she couldn’t see him. It had been too long. All she could remember was color, and sound and fear.

And then somehow, as if she’d gone into a fugue and missed the wrap-up, the service was over. The boyish minister had picked up her hand, but she couldn’t feel her fingers sandwiched between his two consoling palms.

“Ms. Watson. Hayley. I’m sorry I didn’t know your father better, but—”

Don’t be.

The words were on the tip of her tongue. But why say them? Why say anything except the most basic conversational conventions? She wasn’t here to make friends or right wrongs. She wouldn’t be attending this man’s church or seeking his counsel. She was here to sell the neglected vineyard, if anyone was dumb enough to buy it, pocket the money and go home.

Home to Florida, where she had a life, and new dreams. The best dream of all was waiting for her there.

“It’s all right, Pastor Donny.” He’d asked her to call him that. He must not realize how silly it sounded. “You did a wonderful job. It was lovely.”

He beamed. “Thank you. I’m sorry, too, that the day was so…” He waved at the restless trees, as if they were an added insult. “And the fog—if we’d held the service later in the morning…”

“It probably won’t lift before noon,” she said.

The sudden certainty shocked her. She hadn’t set foot in Sonoma County for seventeen years. She’d made a home an entire country away, in the flatlands of Florida. So why did she remember this fog so clearly? Why did she remember its tickling intimacy against her ankles? Why did she know, in her bones, that it wouldn’t disperse for hours?

“I guess not.” Pastor Donny shook his head. “Well, I should let you talk to your friends. I’m glad so many people came. It’s good that you’re not alone today.”

She heard his unspoken disapproval of whoever had let her make this trip alone. She wondered who he thought she should have brought. Her mother died several years ago. Just two weeks ago, she’d broken off her relationship with Greg Valmont, the only serious boyfriend she’d had since leaving Sonoma. Genevieve had recently been promoted at her CPA firm, and was working eighty-hour weeks.

After that, there was no one else to ask. The kind of life the Watson women had lived since they ran away didn’t exactly encourage intimate friendships. Her coworkers at the dress shop where she did the books would have been shocked to hear she even had family back in California.

She followed the pastor’s gaze toward the cluster of people who stood awkwardly by, clearly waiting to offer her their final condolences. She’d greeted them briefly at the funeral home, but the number had swelled since then. God knew who all had arrived while she was lost in thought.

When she’d decided to attend the funeral—and not just let the prepaid package carry on, like a bad play, without her—she’d known she’d have to cope with this.

So she put a smile on her face, just the appropriate amount of lip curve, and turned toward them. She’d practiced this expression in the mirror of the airplane bathroom a mere three hours ago. She wanted to convey gratitude, and a sense of the solemnity due at the burial of any human being.

Even Ben Watson.

But she had no intention of pretending grief. Her pride wouldn’t allow it. And besides, a few of these people undoubtedly already knew her story and were here purely for the lip-smacking entertainment of seeing how she handled herself.

She caught a glimpse of a small, thin man moving toward her. Roland Eliot—definitely not one of the gawkers. He had worked for her father since she was a little girl. When she’d arrived at the funeral home this morning, a full half hour late, she’d been shocked to see him here, waiting patiently with the others. She thought surely he’d retired or come to his senses years ago.

“Miss Hayley,” Roland said, his voice somber and his round gray eyes shining. “It is a joy to my heart to see you again. I thought I would never—”

“Roland,” she responded with her first real emotion of the day. The week. The decade? She reached out and hugged him. He smelled the same as ever, soap and earth. “It’s wonderful to see you, too.”

“This is my granddaughter, Elena.” With nudging palms, he ushered forth a preschooler who had black curls and his round gray eyes. She couldn’t be more than four. “Elena, this is Miss Hayley, the girl who sleeps in the treetops.”

The little girl’s eyes grew even wider. She nodded gravely, but she didn’t speak.

Hayley wasn’t sure she could speak, either. She had forgotten that Roland used to call her that. Suddenly she felt the wind in her hair, and the rough oak bark of her favorite perch against her cheek. She could almost see the blues and greens and browns of Foggy Valley Vineyard spreading out below her, the hills dipping and swelling and the rain on the green leaves sparkling under the summer sun.

She shook herself free of the trance. Old memories, even this one, were like ghosts. They would float in front of your eyes, and bring sights and smells and pains. But in the end, they were not real. Phantoms, with no more power than this fog.

“Would you come by the house and visit us later, Miss Hayley?” Roland’s face was more lined now, but as sweet as ever. “Later, when you’ve had time to rest? We could talk. Miranda has made a casserole.”

“Of course,” she said. “I’d love to catch up.”

Other people were waiting, so she contented herself with that. She pressed his hand and smiled her goodbye. And, touching his callused fingers, she felt a little stronger.

Over the next few minutes, she greeted half a dozen well-wishers. Some were vaguely familiar. Others were people who must have entered her father’s life long after she left it. She found her rhythm, and luckily everyone was on his best manners. No one asked overly personal questions. A couple of glances were full of pity, and she caught whiffs of the expected curiosity, but overall nothing she couldn’t handle.

Then she heard a voice so familiar it made her heart skip.

“Hayley?”

She looked to the left, and stopped breathing. She’d been doing so well. But now the facade of calm dignity fell from her shoulders like an unzipped, oversize dress.

There he was, the ghost of all ghosts, the man who had haunted her dreams for at least a decade—and still strolled into a stray one occasionally, even now.

Colby Malone.

A barrage of images assaulted her. Black-haired and blue-eyed. Expensive and dangerous and divine.

Seventeen years older, of course—thirty-five now, though it was hard to believe. But he was somehow shockingly the same. Tall, athletic, still not an inch of fat. Shoulders broader than before, broader than a dream could capture. The faint prettiness he’d possessed in youth had made way for a powerful virility.

“Hello, Hayley,” Colby said. His voice was deeper, too, more polished and yet more intense. And his jaw, though freshly shaven, hinted of a sexy stubble he’d have to work hard to repress.

He was, in some ways, a stranger. And yet, even under all this new virility, he was still the boy she’d known. He put out his hand. She twitched, as if she needed to avoid an invisible slap. A weak sensation passed liquidly through her knees—and her first truly coherent thought was, how could she ever have believed that what she felt for Greg Valmont was love?

Somehow, she held herself rigid. She was tougher than this. Naturally, she had considered the possibility of running into Colby Malone while she was here. But she hadn’t really believed he’d bother to drive forty minutes to attend the funeral of a man he had despised.

She’d told herself she would be fine, no matter what. She’d loved him, and then she’d hated him, and now she simply didn’t give a damn.

“Hello, Colby,” she said politely. She gave him exactly the same measured tone, practiced smile and cool hand she planned to give everyone here today. “How nice of you to come.”