Private Player

“Oh sweetheart, that’s very kind of you. Zach, have you met Madison? Nathan, you’re in charge of introducing your guest.”

Zach glanced between Nathan and me. I stood and held out my hand. “I’m Madison, interviewing Nathan for the Post.” If I wasn’t supposed to let anyone know, Nathan had had a whole drive from London to warn me.

He frowned as if to say that my explanation didn’t tell him why I was here. Now I was in the Coves’ kitchen, at the beginning of a weekend with what was clearly a very close-knit family, I was beginning to wonder that myself. I’d thought it was a great idea to get to know the real Nathan, the person he was with the people who knew him best, but now I was here it seemed kind of silly. I was writing a newspaper article, not his biography.

“Excellent,” Zach said. “We can tell you all his deep, dark secrets.”

Nathan mumbled in the corner. “What, like how I used to beat you at every sport you ever tried?”

“I was thinking more about how you used to shit in the paddling pool,” Zach said.

Carole let out a whoop of laughter. “Every single time. You couldn’t help yourself. Not that I laughed when it happened. It was gross, Nathan,” she said, her face contorting as if it had just happened again.

“I was three years old. I’m not sure why we still need to bring it up regularly.”

Then another Cove brother burst into the kitchen. “I’m dying for a cup of tea.”

“Nathan’s on tea duty,” Carole said. “Nathan, you need to be introducing Madison.”

“Hi,” I said, bouncing to my feet and holding out my hand. “I’m Madison.”

“The journalist, right?”

This guy was completely and ridiculously hot. Tall, tanned, with a couple days’ worth of stubble, and the tousled hair Nathan had suddenly started sporting—except this latest Cove brother was blond.

“You’re right,” I nodded. “And of course I recognize you from your mother’s apron.”

“No one likes to talk about it, but I’m her favorite. She bought that apron herself.”

Carole flicked Jacob with a tea towel. He grinned then pulled out the chair next to mine and took a seat. “I have much to share about my brother.”

“Jacob,” Nathan growled from the other side of the kitchen.

“You told us we should be honest,” Jacob said. “And I have a lot to be honest about, my brother.”

It made sense that Nathan would have told everyone I was coming with him this weekend. But it was nice that he’d told his family to be honest.

“Dax has arrived. Jacob, can you go and help get his bags in?”

Jacob shot me a grin and bounded out of the door. “Dax is the baby. Mum always has us helping him. Even now.”

I started counting on my fingers—Nathan, Zach, Jacob and now Dax. That made four. We were just missing Beau, who I’d already met. “Is it nice to have all your sons home, Carole?”

“Delightful,” she said. “And very rare that they all have a weekend to get away. Shift work doesn’t aide family reunions, unfortunately. But it does mean that we rarely have a weekend by ourselves.”

“Don’t I know it.” An older man in a bright yellow dress shirt came into the kitchen. “I thought moving up here would mean my wine cellar would be safe.”

“Hey, Dad,” Zach said and pulled his father into a hug. “I see you took your happy pill this morning.”

“I tell you what would make me happy, son. My Argentinian Malbec being bloody well left alone.”

Nathan started to laugh while Carole rolled her eyes. “I bought our wine for tonight from Waitrose, if that makes you happy.”

“Sounds about right. I have five sons and not one of them brought a bottle of wine, am I right?”

Nathan offered his father a cup of tea but he waved it away and headed to the cupboard to pull out a glass. “Dad, say hello to Madison,” Nathan said, setting down a cup in front of me and taking a sip of the mug he carried in the other hand.

His dad snapped his head around and I again stood and offered my hand to Mr. Cove.

“You are very welcome to our home,” he said, clasping my hand in both of his. “Call me John. You may steal my Malbec. But you better be quick, because these boys of mine will have it first.”

“Give it a rest, Dad,” Nathan said, taking Jacob’s spot next to me. “Your Malbec isn’t that great.”

“We had that wine shipped over from—”

“Yes, they all know the story of how we found the vineyard.” Carole turned to me. “When Dax—the youngest—went away to university, we decided to go on holiday on our own for the first time in about a thousand years,” she explained. “We went to Argentina—”

“It was the holiday of a bloody lifetime,” Nathan interrupted, putting on his dad’s deep voice.