He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Loveliest setting for a SEAL boot camp I’ve ever seen, that’s for sure.”
“You run past the Hotel Coronado almost every day,” she teased.
“Sure, but you’re never there to watch me.” He winked. She wasn’t wrong. His base in California was next to prime real estate on the Pacific Ocean.
But he hadn’t been lying. This was…something else.
It was peaceful.
He didn’t have a lot of peace in his life.
The sprawling mansion was set back from the road by a long, dusty drive. Mick was standing in the garden out front, talking to a woman. Leaning in, smiling affectionately. When they parked, he waved, then wrapped his arm around her.
“Welcome to Villa Sucre. This is my wife, Cara Levasseur. She’s our resident historian. Another long story.”
Logan shook her hand, introducing himself and Tori, too. “Something about this place makes for complicated tales, huh?”
The historian’s eyes sparkled. “Yes, definitely. Come in, please. Everyone else is on the back verandah. We don’t get a lot of visitors, this is exciting.”
As they walked through the wide, sweeping central corridor of the mansion, Cara gave them a quick history lesson on the sugar mill, and a glimpse at the tussle over the deed that had brought her and Mick together in the first place.
“All’s well that ends well,” she said as she stopped in the dated kitchen and gestured to the back door. “Head on out. I’m going to mix up some rum punch and then join you out there.”
“Rum punch,” Logan protested as he found Brayden sprawled in a woven whicker chair. “I thought we were going to hit your obstacle course, my man.”
The woman curled up beside him laughed. “Some of us prefer to be spectators, and the rum punch is for us.” She stood and held out her hand. “Arielle, nice to meet you. Brayden’s been telling us stories about you.”
“That can’t be good.”
Tori laughed, and introduced herself. Then they turned to the last couple sitting on the other side of the door—and immediately recognized the American ex-pat from the market. The soap lady. Tori did a double-take. “Oh, hi!”
“Hello again. I’m Daphne Strike. I’m Will’s wife.”
“It really is a small world.” Tori grinned. “Who else is hiding here?”
Will laughed. “This is it.”
The conversation turned to catching up and reminiscing, but at the next lull, Tori leaned forward and asked Will about their executive training company.
“I work for a tech start-up in Atlanta,” she said. “Feel free to tell me not to be nosy, but I’m always curious about start-ups in other industries.”
“You probably know more about the proper ins and outs of starting a business than we do,” Will said. “But we’ve done okay. We’re running two or three training groups through a month, giving us time off to re-group and re-assess, do marketing in our down week, that sort of thing.”
They kept talking about the business as the group got up and headed next door, to where the executive training all took place.
And Brayden hadn’t been exaggerating—his obstacle course was a thing of beauty. Twice as long as the one on the base in Coronado, and probably easier to run, too.
“We needed to make it challenging enough for the urban warriors who have done things like Ironman, but still accessible for first-timers,” his friend explained. “So it’s actually three courses in one. A pro can do the whole thing, we can split it into a team event, with three tiered legs, or my favorite, is pitching a pro against a newbie, but on two different tracks. There’s a lot of lessons learned in that exercise.”
“Very cool.” Logan rolled his shoulders. “Shall we do teams today? Tori and I will take on anyone.”
“Whoa, I thought I was going to be on Team Rum Punch,” his best friend mock-protested. Then she winked. “Just kidding. Let’s kick their butts.”
Mick volunteered to be Brayden’s partner. “I can’t run,” he told Tori. “But I’ve got the fastest hand-over-hand time on the wall. Don’t think you’ll have any advantage over me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of assuming that,” she promised. “And I can run but the climbing will kill me.”
They all shook hands, then shouted at the same time, “May the best team win!”
