He stopped for a second to look around and listen, then helped her through an overgrown trail, up a hill, and finally they reached a structure that made the earlier barn look like the Taj Mahal.
Two stories, with a smokestack that went up about twenty feet, the building looked like it had been beaten with an anvil. The first floor was gray and black brick, covered in mold and filth, and the second-floor windows were nothing but gaping holes. Vines covered most of one side, and a tree had fallen into the building at some point and crushed part of the roof.
“Welcome to Salmon Falls Distillery,” Brock said dryly.
“We are not going in that building.”
“Okay, then we’re staying out here.” Mother Nature punctuated that statement with a crack of lightning that split the blue-gray sky with one long, bright white bolt that literally sent chills up Jenna’s arms.
With a soft scream, she grabbed on to him. “No,” she muttered, smashing her face against his chest just like she had the other night. Only this wasn’t nearly as…thrilling. “I’m scared.”
“Of the storm or the shelter?”
“Both.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him, both of them soaking wet. “I know how to get in the basement, which is as deep as the structure is high. We’ll wait out the storm there.”
The basement? Could this get any worse?
The next crack of lightning answered the question, and she followed him toward an ivy-covered wall. There, he shoved away some branches and leaves, revealing a sliding wooden door that he took her through.
She blinked at the darkness, broken only by a little bit of light coming from the second floor through rotten floorboards and a rusted staircase that was missing most of the treads. The walls were gray and moldy and featured a good amount of graffiti and were no doubt home to all kinds of critters.
“Come on,” he said, wrapping a protective arm around her. “Watch your step, but I know where I’m going.”
“You’ve been in here before?”
“The teenage trips to the falls might have included some grown-up version of hide-and-seek.”
“I’d rather die.” With the next bolt of lightning and damn near simultaneous thunder, she thought she might.
“I hid with a, uh, friend.”
She slowed her step and pushed back a strand of wet hair. “You brought girls here?”
“The more adventurous ones,” he said on a soft laugh. “But not nearly as frequently as Phillip, trust me.”
They made their way over deep cracks in the foundation, most of which were home to thriving weeds. At the stairwell, he stopped and looked down a good twenty or more steps.
“You think I’m going down there?”
“I think…” Lightning flashed, and a punch of thunder shook the whole building, perilously close. “It would be safer there than here.” He took her hand and started down. “It’s just a barrel room. Come on.”
Grasping his hand, she followed, squinting into the darkness as they descended into a room lined with whisky barrels and covered with dirt. When they reached the bottom, she realized just how buried they were, looking up at a filthy wooden loft that had to be twenty or more feet above them.
“That’s where they aged the whisky,” Brock told her, following her gaze, then he brushed off a barrel that had been cut in half and sat down, pulling her onto his lap. “There’s no safer place in a storm, I promise.”
But, oh Lord above, she felt anything but safe. The storm, the building, the man. Nothing felt safe.
He took the whisky bottle from her hand and set it on the ground as another deafening clap of thunder echoed above them. Automatically, she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against his shoulder. Any other girl would be thrilled to be smack up against this man with his wet T-shirt clinging to biceps and abs. Any other girl would be laughing at the adventure, straddling him with abandon. Any other girl would…not be Jenna Gillespie.
With each roll of thunder, she gripped tighter, too terrified to be ashamed of how she trembled and the tears she fought.
“Jenna,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “It’s just a storm.”
There was no such thing as just a storm. It was a dark, horrible, agonizing memory that flashed into her brain with the same clarity as each bolt of lightning.
“Aren’t you afraid of anything?” she asked.
“Heights,” he answered without hesitation. “Anything over ten feet makes me dizzy and sick and pretty much want to die.”
“Then you get it.”
He eased her back a little, searching her face, only inches away. “Bad experience?” he guessed.
She swallowed and nodded. “Really bad.”
“Want to tell me?”
Oh yes. She did. But up to that moment in her life, she’d never told anyone. Not even her parents. They’d just be riddled with guilt, and nothing could be done now to change what had happened. Plus, it sounded distant and ancient and as silly as the possibility that this building was haunted.
He put a warm, tender hand on her cheek, stroking lightly. “You can trust me,” he said. “Maybe it would help to talk about it.”
Maybe. Or maybe she could just cuddle closer into his sexy body and let that big strong hand find more of her to touch.
She breathed in at the reaction that thought sent through her body, and the move just pressed her more into his lap and chest.
“Tell me,” he urged, putting his lips over her hair as he whispered the words. “What happened? It always helps to talk about it.”
“When I was about six years old,” she said softly, a little stunned that the words were coming out at all. “A nanny locked me in a closet during a storm.”
“Ooof.” He grunted in disgust. “I hope she was fired and had her license revoked.”
“I never told my parents, but she left soon after, so it didn’t happen again.”
“Why didn’t you tell them?”
She thought about the question, one she’d pondered many times in the middle of the night, especially during stormy nights. “I didn’t think they cared.”
He just stared at her. “Your mother and father?”
“They both loved their jobs more than…”
“Than they loved you?”
She shrugged. “It felt that way to me as a little girl. In retrospect, it was stupid. But it left a scar, and I’ve been terrified of storms ever since.”
“You know what you need?” he asked, stroking his thumb over her jaw.
Yeah, that. She needed that. “Therapy?”
“A new memory involving a storm.”
“We could get drunk on Willie’s whisky.”
“Or we could get drunk on…” He slid his thumb under her lip and started working his magic there, drawing her lip open and touching the inside, stroking with a finger that she already knew could make her scream. “Each other.”
“We already made a memory in a storm.” As protests went, it was weak. And so was she.
“Let’s make another one.” He closed the space between them, lightly brushing her lips with his, then adding pressure to intensify the kiss. Instantly, heat coiled through her, traveling up her back just like that lightning, crackling over her skin, setting off sparks in her head and thunder rolling way, way lower.
Oh yeah. This was already a good memory.
With a groan of pleasure, he shifted her on his lap, sliding his hand down her throat and over her breastbone.
“Your heart’s racing,” he murmured, dragging his mouth over her jaw and throat.
“And my head’s light.”
“See? Drunk,” he teased, sliding his thumb down the V-neck of her collar, then plucking the wet cotton off her skin. “And soaked.”
“Mmm.” She pulled back enough to see him, to thread her fingers into his wet hair and ruffle it. “David in the Rain.”
He lifted his brows in question
.
“That’s what I was calling you in my head that night. In the cab and the bar. David in the Rain.”
“We’re good in rain, you and me.”
She smiled and kissed him again. “You could make me forget all the bad stuff.”
“Oh yes, I could.” He slipped his hand under her T-shirt, his palm searing her back as he rubbed up and down.
Underneath her, she could feel him grow harder, making her want to rock her hips and give in to the need deep inside her. Silently giving him permission, she arched her back, inviting his touch, offering access to her throat and breasts.
He took it. He thumbed her nipple to a painful, tender, aching point that felt attached to every nerve ending in her body. She kissed him again, letting their tongues dance and curl around each other, the only sounds their tight, short breaths and the blood pumping in her head.
“You don’t need that fake whisky,” he murmured into the kiss. “Just this, Jenna.” His hips rose and fell, inviting her to slide her leg over him and wrap her thighs around him.
His hands were everywhere, hot and sweet and talented, on her ass, up her back, into her hair. She bowed her back and closed her eyes, hearing a whimper from her throat collide with a deep groan from his.
As he eased her top higher, she opened her eyes, looking straight up, lost and dizzy and disoriented as he slid his hands under her bra and made her bite her lip. Her gaze landed on the loft high above them, the three or four feet of rotten wood planks holding what looked like half a dozen whisky barrels.
“Your top is soaked.” He reached behind her to unclasp her bra as she caught sight of something…familiar. Something out of place. Something upside down. She blinked as her night vision kicked in and let her read the words.
Was that the barrel-and-thistle logo that was on all things Blackthorne?
She frowned, squinting into the darkness, barely able to make out the words that seemed to be branded into the wood, also upside down. Did that say…
“Wait. Stop.”
His fingers froze as they spread over her breast. “Okay,” he said in a raspy voice. “Second thoughts?”
She straightened and turned around to read the words from the right direction. “Do you see that barrel?”
He choked a soft laugh. “Not exactly looking at the scenery, Jenna.”
“Well…I think you might want to.” She pointed to the words and logo. “Up there. The barrel in the back.”
He inched to the side so his gaze could follow her finger. “I see about seven of them, and I promise you there’s no whisky in them. If you’re dying to drink from that bot—”
“Read it. The one in the middle.” She looked at him, narrowing her eyes, while that little buzz of excitement she got when something that felt like a good story thread tugged at her gut.
Silent for a moment, she watched as he scanned the area in the filthy loft, as interested in his reaction to what she’d just read as what it meant.
“I don’t see…” He blinked. His jaw clenched. And he mouthed the words she’d struggled to read upside down. “Platt Blackthorne Distilleries. Contents: Platt Gold Whiskey.” His face screwed up as if something was wrong in the universe, and it wasn’t that whisky was spelled with an e. “What?”
He eased her off him without taking his eyes off the offending words. She went easily, getting to her feet and snagging the wet T-shirt he’d just taken off her.
Silent, moving as if he were wading through molasses, he took a few steps, staring up at the loft. There were wooden two-by-fours nailed to the wall as steps, but the first six or seven looked like they’d been ripped away.
“Holy hell,” he whispered, going closer, his head all the way back as he looked up. “There is no way—”
“That’s your logo.”
“—that I’m going up there.”
“I will,” she said, coming closer. “I’m not afraid of heights.”
“I can’t even watch you go up there,” he said, walking to the wall to eye the two-by-four rungs that led up there, the first one much too high to reach from the ground.
“But…Platt Gold?”
He flinched as though the violation of the brand name actually hurt him. “I guess if I…” He grabbed an empty barrel and rolled it closer. “If I stood on this, I could reach that rung and climb.” He snorted. “Or I could put a gun to my head and be happier.”
“I swear I can do it,” she said.
She saw that vein in his temple pulse and his Adam’s apple move as what she suspected was a surge of Blackthorne pride ran through him. “I’ll try.”
He hoisted himself onto the empty barrel and reached the bottom “rung.” There, he pulled so hard, Jenna could see his muscles bunch as he swung up and got his footing.
“Be careful,” she muttered, pressing her knuckles to her lips as he managed to get up a few more rungs, and his head cleared the loft.
His response was a slow, ragged breath as he kept his gaze locked on the offending barrel. “Son of a…it really is our logo.” He grabbed the edge of the loft and hoisted himself again, but as he did, a loud crack echoed, and the board he held splintered off, hanging by a nail.
“Brock!” she screamed as he dropped, dangling with a tenuous grip. Swearing hard, he grabbed another piece of wood and saved himself from falling.
“It’s not worth it,” she said, knowing how much that had to have shocked the system of a man who hated heights.
For a long moment, he said nothing, but after a sigh, he started to lower himself back down. “Yeah. You’re right.”
When he got to the ground, he stood still, his face bloodless, but his eyes sparking with fury and fire.
“The storm’s over,” she said softly.
“Good. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“You think this place is haunted?” she said, desperate to lighten the moment.
“I think…” He stabbed his fingers into his hair and dragged his hand through it as he stared up at the loft. “Some things are better left alone.”
Which would be the opposite of what Jenna thought, but she didn’t want to stay in this place or put him through one more moment of personal misery. So she followed him back to the stairs, and with the storm subsided, they found their way to the road where he’d left the Range Rover.
It wasn’t until they were almost back in King Harbor that Jenna remembered the bottle of whisky she’d left on the floor.
Chapter Fourteen
“Nothing? Not a single appearance in any file anywhere of the name Platt?” Frustration and something that felt a lot like a kick in his ass tightened Brock’s voice on this, the tenth call he’d made on the drive home from Salmon Falls. And who could blame him? Every single attempt to get to the bottom of this had come up with nothing.
Next to him, Jenna had been listening to the conversations on the speakerphone, quietly tapping her cell phone, no doubt doing her own online search. Then John Rand, the top attorney at Blackthorne Enterprises, had called back.
“We can do a digital search all the way back to 1989, Brock. That word or name doesn’t appear anywhere,” John told him.
“What about the non-digital files? The older files that haven’t been digitized?” He flipped that piece of the puzzle around and around, but it didn’t fit anything. None of this did.
The possibility that his great-grandfather really had stolen the recipe for Blackthorne Gold? Or…Platt Gold. With the logo Brock revered stamped right on the barrel?
“Anything over thirty years is in storage,” John said. “Of course, we could arrange to go through it, but fair warning, it could take months.”
“Months?” He shot a look to Jenna, who made a face that reflected his frustration. For different reasons, of course. He was sure she didn’t care about the history or the brand or the whisky in a barrel, but she could have a decent story on her hands.
“There were a lot of files sent directly to King Harbor,” he added. “Before my time at
Blackthorne Enterprises, but I do know that there were several containers of private documents and files that were your, uh, father’s. If memory serves me, they were transported to the family estate in Maine not long after he passed.”
“That’s what Phillip said. Okay. And, John, if you find anything, anything at all with the name Wilfred or Roger Platt, any Platt, let me know ASAP.”
“Sure thing, Brock. You want me to alert Trey or Graham?”
Not until he got to the bottom of this. “I’ll handle that.”
“They’ll both be up there soon for the Founder’s Day stuff,” John added. “So if I find anything, I can save the messenger costs and have them bring it.”
Founder’s Day. When the Blackthorne Gold float went up and down the middle of King Harbor with…pride. And the Platt name had been…buried in the basement of an abandoned distillery?
“Sounds good, John.” After he signed off, he heard Jenna sigh.
“Find anything?” he asked her.
“Not a word about Platt Blackthorne Gold. Do you think you could find those files of your father’s?”
“That’s where we’re going next.”
Not half an hour later, Brock led Jenna to the back staircase behind the kitchen, grateful that no one had been around when they got back to the estate. At the top of the third flight was a plain wooden door that most people wouldn’t even notice, but Brock knew exactly where it led.
Taking Jenna’s hand, he opened it to a plain set of wooden stairs. “These are a little steep,” he warned, hitting the switch for the overhead light. “And the third one has a creak that will make you think you’re going to fall through, but you won’t.”
She laughed. “You do know your way around.”
“I played hide-and-seek in this house on every rainy summer day from the time I could count to ten. Logan always went up here because there’s a door in the attic that leads to the widow’s walk, and he knew I’d never go out there to get him.”
“So you’ve always been afraid of heights,” she mused.
“That’s not why I quit today. The floorboards…” At her look, he had to laugh. “Okay, it’s partially why I quit.”
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