I point at his empty plate. “That burger you just ate? They should have stopped cooking it three minutes before they did. If they had, then the sriracha would have blended with the burger juice better and brought out the creamy contrast of the avocado. Which was an hour overripe. And I could tell that just by looking at your meal. You don’t even want me to go into detail about my own.”
He gapes at me. “Are you serious right now?”
“Very. I’ve always had the ability. It’s been honed, obviously, but I can’t turn it off, I can’t ignore it, and I wouldn’t even if I could. Why do you think Northwood will never let me leave? I can both find new brands and perfect his own creations until other products can’t compete. I am without equal.”
“Shouldn’t you be working in some world famous restaurant or something? Hell, shouldn’t you own a world famous restaurant or something?”
I shrug. “Too boring. Maybe one day I’ll try something like that but I’ve never had much interest in the art of food preparation. It’s too fleeting. A couple of minutes, couple of hours, and then it’s gone. Anyone can become exceptional at making a dish they can prepare a hundred times over in a single night.
“But alcohol? Doing it right takes years, just to create a single batch. There are multiple stages to getting it right. You could screw up just a single one of them and not even know it until years later. Mastering distilling takes a lifetime. I’m far more interested in that.
“Sure, Northwood can be a dictatorial ass. And sometimes he does things that are too questionable for my liking. But he gives me absolute freedom in my work, and he trusts me completely. If I bring in this deal for him—Old Abe’s, I mean—he’ll finally let me run my own subsidiary. I’d have my own brand, Nate. To run completely on my own, with products entirely of my own choosing.
“I can’t get that somewhere else. He’s been dangling it in front of me for years. It’s my greatest career goal. The only one, really. I’m not going to give up that opportunity by going somewhere else. I’ve earned it many times over. I deserve it. So like I said, if he wants me here a month, I’m here a month. Even if it means I have to deal with this thing between us.”
“This thing? You make it seem so dirty,” says Nathan, a twinkle in his eye.
I roll mine. “Something tells me you’re okay with that.”
“I am A-OK with that, actually. Totally on board.”
I snort and drop my gaze from his, debating whether I should add the last part, the most astonishing thing about all of this. Feeling his stare on me, I glance back up at him.
Oh, fine.
“And for some inexplicable reason,” I say slowly, “your bourbon is the best I’ve ever tasted in my life.”
Chapter Twelve
Nathan
After the most interesting lunch I’ve had in quite some time, Jude and I return to the bar. I need to prepare for the evening crush and catalogue the inventory I got in last Friday.
One might think that bars on Mondays would generally be deserted, but it can be surprising how many depressed, overworked souls roll in after the first workday of every week. Today should be no different.
Jude, apparently uncomfortable after her confession that my whiskey-making skills are utter perfection, requests the presentation I had originally intended to give to Northwood before he insisted on something a little more casual. Something about familiarizing herself with every aspect of my brand. I email a copy to her and she disappears off into the back room.
After a couple attempts to coax her out of the room end in failure, I give up—for now—and return to my work. I loathe doing inventory with a fiery passion. There’s no greater torture on this earth. Getting it done as quickly as humanly possible is the only way to survive it. Silencing my phone, I shove it into my pocket and get to work.
Sometime in the early afternoon, a siren goes streaming past the bar. I step outside in time to see Ovid’s only fire truck careening down the road. Way in the distance, I see a smudge of smoke ascending into the sky.
Well, that does it. The bar will be absolutely slammed later. Whenever there’s actual firefighting to be done, all of the boys end up here, since it’s the only place in town to blow off steam. I’m more than okay with the bump in sales I’ll receive, but firemen tend to get a little rowdy after life-or-death events.
Another thought occurs to me. Scotty’s going to be an absolute bear later. I love my cousin, but Scotty King, Ovid’s fire chief, is a bit of a stickler when it comes to rules. Disobeying Smokey Bear’s fire safety code tends to get him a little hot under the collar. It’s practically guaranteed that he’ll be in here later, grumbling about dumbshits as he downs his whiskey and then heads home.
Sure enough, by nightfall, the bar is packed. I call in an additional bartender to handle the crowd so I can finish inventory, which is taking longer than usual because every time I reach the middle of a case, the mental image of Jude on that barstool flashes through my head and I lose count.
It doesn’t help that the bar keeps getting louder and louder. The noise suddenly reaches a fever pitch. Disgusted, I abandon the whole endeavor. I’ll finish later, when there’s some semblance of quiet in this place. Apparently, the entire town has decided to extend the weekend another day.
I head into the bar, passing close enough to a trio to overhear part of their conversation.
“Do you know what he said? Screamed it to her in front of the whole cafe.”
“He did not. That boy. Imagine the rudeness.”
“That’s what happens when you grow up without a strong parental influence, you know.”
I roll my eyes at the three old biddies with their heads together, gossiping like their lives depend on it. While their choice of meeting place is rather odd—these three usually congregate outside the church more often than anything remotely approaching a bar—their incessant gossiping is de rigueur. I pity whatever poor soul they’re discussing. Usually Alice would be right in the thick of—
No. Not now. I don’t have time to grieve. Not with a packed bar. Not with this strange current of energy rippling through the place. Would it be so much to ask just to get through the rest of the day with little drama? I’ve already had more than enough today to last a month.
“I just can’t believe he’d do such a thing. Poor Andrea. That Axel. He should know better. And now with this fire—”
“What did you just say?” I roar. The three women stare at me, eyes wide in surprise and also excitement. The entire bar falls silent.
Ignoring the rest of the room, I stalk over to the women. In a much quieter voice, I say, “Now, y’all delightful ladies wouldn’t happen to be talking about my dear brother, Axel, would you?”
They blink at me, obviously unsure how to handle my calling them out publicly. The thing about Ovid is that everyone—even the very people who claim not to be—are terrible gossips. If anything of importance actually happens in this town, virtually everyone will hear about it within the day.
The unspoken rule, though, is that you don’t gossip about an individual in front of him—or his family.
I stare them down until one of them breaks.
“Dear Lord, Nathan. Are you telling me you haven’t heard? But surely … I would have thought surely someone had told you,” Susan Meyers says, her words dripping with sincerity but her eyes sparkling in delight at the juicy bit she can hold over me.
How do I not already know about whatever this is? Oh shit. I put my phone on silent hours ago. Pulling it out of my pocket, I glance at the screen. It takes every ounce of willpower not to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing my shock. It’s littered with messages, missed calls, and texts. Even a couple emails. All from my various brothers.
“What the fu—”
The bar door flies open, banging against the wall. The sound echoes off the walls like the report of a rifle, unreasonably loud in the deathly silent bar.
Scotty King enters, looking decidedly haggard despite his relative
youth. People actually surge away from him as he makes a beeline straight toward me. His men come streaming in behind him, looking as if they’ve come straight from the fire itself. Smoke and ash smudge their faces and clothes. A few of them even look like they got just a bit too close to the flames, judging by their singed and overly-red faces.
When he arrives at the bar, Scotty just stares at the man in the stool across from me, completely expressionless. The guy instantly leaps off the stool and dissolves into the crowd, his unfinished beer forgotten.
Okay, that’s more than enough of this bullshit. I slam my fist down onto the bar, glaring at the lot of them. A few people actually jump at the sound. “Go back to your evening, you gossiping morons.”
Everyone assembled returns to their conversations, this time much more quietly. Many act like they’re lost in conversation, but I catch more than one person sending sneaky looks my way.
It’s not just Susan and her friends who know. They all do. What the hell did I miss while in the supply room?
“Care to put me out of my misery, here?” I whisper to Scotty as I pour him a double shot of whiskey with a splash of water.
Scotty snatches the glass away from me almost before I’ve finished pouring. He takes a long drink, wincing as the liquid burns down his throat. “So you don’t know. Noah said that would be the case. When he heard I was on my way over here, he figured I might as well tell you myself,” he finally says, rubbing a temple.
“Tell me what?”
Scotty starts rubbing both temples, then lowers his hands, palms extended toward me, as if struggling to summon words. “Axel’s farm had a fire today.”
“What!”
Scotty flinches. The rest of the bar falls silent again. “Oh, fuck off,” I snarl, not bothering to see if they actually do. “Scotty,” I growl, “you’re not actually telling me my brother’s—my family’s— farm was the source of the fire I saw earlier today? And you’re especially not telling me that I went an entire day without anyone telling me, right?”
“Dude, man, your brothers have been calling all day. It’s not our fault you can’t answer your phone.”
“Well, someone should have shown up!” I snap. “Is it—tell me it’s not completely gone. Is the house still standing? The orchard—”
“It’s okay, Nathan. The house is fine. A few rows of trees were taken out, but the house is fine. Most of the orchard survived, but a good portion of the producing trees are gone forever. We were incredibly lucky. If Montgomery hadn’t showed up with his tanker, I suspect the fire would have been out of control by the time my men got there.”
“You weren’t there? What, you thought the familial bond didn’t require your presence?”
“Don’t you start with me,” he snaps. “I’ve already had to deal with Axel for the last few hours—and he’s bad enough on a good day. I wasn’t in town. Had to attend a county meeting for fire chiefs. By the time I rushed back, they’d already put out the fire. Believe me, I wish I’d been there.”
“How the hell did this even happen?”
“One of the new employees didn’t properly put out his cigarette. You know how dry it’s been. It didn’t take much. The kid just sat through one hell of a grilling. Not to mention the fury Axel rained down on him. A damn shame, but looks like the whole thing was nothing but simple negligence. Or rampant stupidity, which is what Axel’s calling it. Damn paperwork,” Scotty adds under his breath, taking another swig of his drink.
I pour myself a drink. Usually, I try to stay relatively sober when I’m working the bar, but I’ve voyaged far past the stage of giving any fucks. Scotty clinks his glass with mine.
“Is that it, then? Oh, come on. There can’t possibly be more,” I say when I sense Scotty’s hesitation.
“Axel ran into Howard and Andrea at the cafe. Let’s just say he didn’t take it well. Couldn’t handle it that she was talking with the foreman he fired. So he fired Andrea on the spot. Right in front of the entire room.”
“He did not. He did not fire Andrea. He shouldn’t have even fired Howard!”
“Well, as of a few hours ago, neither of them work for King Farm any longer.”
I slam my glass down. “This can’t be happening. I must be hallucinating. Fire, firing, and Alice? All in one day? Has my world decided to implode or what?”
“Oh, hey, I was sorry to hear about Alice,” Scotty says quietly.
“Yeah, I sure was too, when I found out about it this damn morning.”
Scotty winces.
I rest my forearms on the bar, suddenly exhausted. “Well, at least this day can’t possibly get any worse, right? Surely I’ve used up all the bad karma I must have accrued. It has to be clear sailing from here on out.”
“Uh, I wouldn’t be too sure of that.”
“Why the hell not?”
Scotty nods toward a group of men in the corner. “Because that’s the guy who started the fire.”
Chapter Thirteen
Jude
I spend the afternoon reading the presentation Nathan had intended to give us. It’s surprisingly thorough. More evidence that he’s not quite the irresponsible guy I originally thought he was a week ago. And while that’s great for NBI if we decide to distribute his product, it’s not great for me.
Because it makes me like him more.
The more time I spend around Nathan, the more his dirty sense of humor gets to me. Seemingly each additional hour I spend with him tempts me more to hop back on that stool and take him for another ride. And we’ve both agreed that would be a terrible idea.
But that was when I believed he ran from responsibility. When he was just a bartender, and I was just some girl he met in a bar. Those days are over. And we have another twenty-nine to go.
I sigh, the words on the slide I’ve been staring at for the last five minutes blurring together. This is pointless. Not only have I gone over this presentation twice already, the bar is getting so loud it’s hard for me to concentrate, even all the way back here in the back room.
That damn poker table certainly doesn’t help, either. Every time I look at it I’m forced to remember Nathan’s words and how very much I’d like him to act on them.
Enough. It’s getting late, and I have to drive all the way back to Savannah. I’m going to order some bar food for the road and get out of here.
But when I head out into the bar, I grind to a halt in surprise. Whoa. Is this what Mondays are like in Ovid? So much for those famous Southern dry towns I’ve heard about.
My eyes narrow. What’s with the weird vibe? The place is packed and everyone keeps looking over at the bar. I follow their gaze. Nathan is hunched over the bar, his face haggard as he talks to a man in a fire chief’s uniform. Is this about that siren I heard earlier? I sidle up to the end of the bar, hoping I can overhear their conversation.
“You aren’t going to kick him out?” the fire chief says.
Nathan shrugs helplessly. “I can’t. Neither he nor his friends have done anything wrong.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Well, they haven’t. Not yet, anyway. You know I need to be impartial here. The minute I start kicking out random people is the day someone gets it into his head that there really should be another bar around these parts. I rather like my monopoly, thank you.”
“I think today, of all days, no one would blame you.”
“What’s with you, Scotty? Your brother’s the sheriff. You’re the fire chief. Between the two of you, y’all should have some pull. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you,” Nathan snaps.
Scotty grumbles something into his glass that sounds suspiciously like “Nathan King making sense? Wonders never cease.”
I have to agree with him there.
“You asshole!”
A man suddenly launches himself at a group of men who must be firefighters, if their ash-smudged faces and uniforms are any indication. They wrestle the guy to the ground, grinding his face into the floor and shouting various insul
ts at him about how he deserved to lose his job for starting the fire in the first place.
Oh shit. That siren I heard was for a huge fire? One bad enough to get this kid fired for starting it? No wonder the bar’s packed. They’re all here to watch the showdown.
The boys sitting with the kid leap to their friend’s defense. I watch in fascination as the firefighters throw down with the fire starters. It’s horrible, but I’ve never witnessed a bar fight before and the sheer violence of it shocks me. Within seconds, it’s complete pandemonium. Chairs and tables go flying. Drinks stream across the floor.
Anyone who didn’t see the writing on the wall and already left surges away, granting the brawlers an open space for battle. A trio of old ladies clutch their purses in shock and skedaddle right out of the bar, squawking the entire time about degenerate youth. Three separate skirmishes break out, men rolling across the floor as they try to land any punch they can. Actual blood soon stains the floor.
I’m too riveted to move.
“Aw hell. Call my brother,” Scotty cries before throwing himself into the fray.
“Already on it,” Nathan says, phone to his ear. “Get your men over here!” he barks, then tosses his phone near the cash register.
He leaps over the bar, shoving a few gawkers out of the way. Grabbing the nearest body, he wrestles the guy to the ground and onto his back.
I cry out as the guy lands a punch to Nathan’s face. Blood streams from the corner of Nathan’s mouth as his fist connects with the guy’s nose, who counters with another hit to Nathan’s jaw. Roaring in fury, Nathan slips his arm under the guy’s neck, tightening until he finally relents. Nathan shoves him back against the floor, then climbs to his feet.
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