Kathleen O'Brien: 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 KOBrien@aol.com.

Warmly,

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.