by Lila Monroe
My heart squeezed tight in my chest. Damn, but I had fallen into bed with a nice guy that night at the hotel.
“It was pretty obvious he was hung up on someone too,” Paige went on. “Then I saw you two together, and—well. I can put a puzzle together when it’s that easy.”
I was so relieved I couldn’t believe it; all the tension that had lived in my shoulders and back for so long had fled, and I felt like without it I might collapse. “Oh my God, Paige, I’m so happy I can’t even—and I’m so happy for you!”
“And Sergei’s been helping me get back into the art scene,” Paige confided. “In fact, some people want me to do a show at Blackbird, you know that little gallery downtown?”
“Do I know it? The place you’ve been pining to do a show at since you were seventeen? Of course I do!” I was so proud and happy I could burst. I wanted to grab her hands and swing her around in a circle. “Oh man, you are a superhero.” Then a thought occurred to me. “So wait, all that party planning and socialite stuff—”
“Oh, I’ve been having to do all that too,” Paige said. “You know Mom would’ve smelled a rat if I’d let any of it slide. And of course I’ll keep helping out with the Knox stuff even after I tell Mom; it’s the least I can do for you. Plus, I really love it. I do.”
“See previous statement about superheroics, times a billion,” I said.
“Thanks, Ally. I don’t always feel that way.” Paige’s lower lip wobbled slightly; her eyes took on the slightest sheen of unshed tears. “I’ve been under her heel so long, sometimes I forget that it’s actually my life. I let her take over. You were so smart to move out when you did, get yourself out from under her thumb. I’ve been thinking about doing the same. So I can start doing things my way.”
I restrained myself from leaping up and doing a victory dance; I didn’t want to scare her off. Instead I asked, “Are you moving in with Sergei?”
Paige shook her head regretfully. “No. It’s tempting—Lord, is it tempting—but I have to stand on my own two feet first.” She looked determined, and then she sighed. “It’s hard work, though. I’ve been looking at apartment listings, trying to work out a budget I can live on with my salary, but everything is so overwhelming.”
“I’ll help you!” I volunteered.
Paige’s face lit, then fell again. “But you’re so busy. I couldn’t impose.”
I took her hand and squeezed it. “Hey, anything for my big sister. Especially anything for a big sister like you.”
And then tears really did well up in Paige’s eyes, and she stood, pulling me toward her to envelop me in a great big bear hug that warmed me to my bones.
So that was one source of guilt resolved.
How much trouble could the next one cause?
(Ever hear the phrase ‘famous last words’?)
SEVEN
“How’s my favorite ad person?” Hunter asked, strolling onto set.
“Uh, I’m the only ad person you even remotely consider human,” I told him, trying to ignore how delectable he looked in a loose white linen shirt that set off his tan, and jeans that hugged his ass in all the right ways. “And I’m great! I mean, I’m being eaten alive by this schedule and judging by their hungry looks, possibly eventually also by the actors, but I’m great—”
“Excuse me!” Our director bustled up, a feisty woman with horn-rimmed glasses, short spiky blue hair, and the drive of Napoleon. “We still need footage of the distillery, and if we don’t leave now, we’ll lose the light, and of course the lighting people will do their best to fill it in, but artificial is never the same as—”
“Right, right,” I said. “Well, if you’re all ready, I’ll lead you there…”
“One minute!” She bustled off again, shouting for cameramen and personal assistants and lighting directors and sound guys.
Hunter touched my arm. “May I tag along?”
I raised my eyebrow in mock outrage. “On your own plantation? How dare you suggest such a thing!”
He laughed and linked his arm with mine, strolling along with me as the director corralled her minions and began to follow us to the distillery. On the way there I talked almost entirely to the director—scenes we should shoot, shots we should cut, lighting, color, camera angles—and yet I never lost track of the sensation of Hunter’s strong arm through mine, Hunter’s strong presence at my side. The heat coming off his skin, the heat coming through his eyes.
It was a sensation I believed I could get extremely used to.
As we strolled—well, as Hunter and I strolled; I don’t think the director was capable of less than a full-on bustle, and her assistants scurried after her—we passed some of her colleagues conducting interviews with the workers. One fellow, on the older side, self-conscious in his denim overalls, shuffled his feet and said to his interviewer as we passed, “Well, it’s the taste of the South and that’s no mistake.”
“Did you hear that?” I asked Hunter. “I love it; it’s perfect for a tag line!”
“I defer to your expertise,” Hunter said with a formal bow and a teasing smile.
“It’s certainly one possibility,” the director said grumpily. Earlier in the day, I might have taken umbrage at her tone, but by now I knew it was just how she communicated. Compared to some of the things she’d said earlier, this was practically a ringing endorsement.
“There it is, coming right up on your left,” I said.
“Yes, yes,” she said distractedly. “Good…”
As we reached the distillery, the director was frowning thoughtfully up at Hunter, clearly mentally checking off items on a list in her head. “We haven’t got footage of you yet, either,” she said abruptly. “We’ll need that. Bartlett, you got a recommendation for rooms we should use?”
I glowed a little bit inside at this acknowledgment of my understanding of her work.
“The cask room,” I said. “You’ll want to do it after anything that needs natural light, of course, but it’ll be easy to set up the main lights in there, and there’ll be a good color contrast with his outfit.”
Hunter fidgeted. “I’m not sure about an interview…”
“Don’t tell me you’re nervous,” I teased.
“You already have an unfair advantage over me with all your psychological advertising knowledge,” Hunter defended himself. “How can I just give away all my secrets?”
I raised an eyebrow, and trailed a finger down his chest. “Well, if you don’t tell me, I might just go…looking.”
“And is that supposed to be a disincentive?”
The director cleared her throat. “No need to be nervous, Mr. Knox. It’ll be a pretty standard set of questions. The history of the brand, the values, where you get your inspiration, that kind of thing. People will love it. The face of the Knox legacy.”
“That does sound easy,” Hunter agreed, not taking his eyes off mine. A warm smile spread across his face like honey. “There’s inspiration around me every day.”
And I grinned back up at him like a fool, and didn’t care who saw me. “I could say the same.”
#
Long story short, the shoot went great. Sure, we’d be single-handedly supporting some coffee plantation with the amount of caffeine the editing team ingested as they made visual poetry out of the raw footage, but damn, the raw footage in itself was beautiful. It seemed like every worker they’d interviewed had some surprisingly meaningful thing to say about the company and the bourbon and what both meant to them. And our director might have been gruff, but I would have taken a thousand times worse from her to get some of the shots she had captured—the casks stretching on like proud lines of soldiers, the wind ruffling the fields of wheat like fine-spun gold, the sun sinking over the horizon, turning the exact color of the bourbon as it poured out of the large copper still.
It was the afternoon now, and I personally thought we had enough footage to splice together the next Oscar-winning documentary, but our director was relentless, and insisted on one m
ore shoot: the stables. It was there that I was enfolded in a hug by none other than Homer from the bar.
“Well, there you are, girlie!”
“Homer! I’m glad I ran into you!”
A few days earlier, I’d been walking around with the director doing a preliminary look at the scenery, and been surprised to run into my drinking/crying buddy from the little dive bar—who, as it turned out, just dispensed homespun wisdom as a sideline, and spent the majority of his time breeding horses for folks all over the county, Hunter included.
“Well, what can I do for you fine ladies and gentlemen?” Homer asked.
“I need some action shots,” our director cut in. “Something dramatic, majestic. You got a good mount for Mr. Knox to ride?”
“Do I ever! Come take a gander at this piece of horseflesh, you ain’t never seen better—”
Homer began to lead them off to the stall with his prize stallion, a majestic coal-black beast with fiery eyes but a loyal heart. I was about to follow, when I heard a gentle whicker. I looked into the stall it was coming from, and saw the most beautiful horse I could have ever imagined.
Her coat was freshly brushed and shone like moonstone, her mane long and silver-white like my childhood dreams of unicorns. Her eyes were deep dark pools, and she clopped right up to the bars and gently lipped them, as if saying hello.
“Ah, I see I can’t keep the jewel of the crown away from you,” Homer said from behind me.
I started. How long had I been standing in one place, entranced by this beautiful mare? Hunter was already leading his horse out the door, and he grinned back at me with a playfully challenging air.
“Want to ride?” he asked.
I waved him off, shaking my head. “Nah, they don’t need footage of me.”
Hunter mounted his horse in one smooth motion, the muscles of his back rippling. “Your loss.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “The view from this angle is no loss at all.”
#
Hunter put on an excellent show. It was a good thing there were other professionals there, because there were several moments when I became too occupied with drooling to do a single damn thing. His glistening skin under the hot sun, the way his shirt stretched over his muscled torso, his firm but gentle hold on the reins…what can I say? There’s just something really hot about good horsemanship.
Even as everyone else wrapped up, Hunter seemed reluctant to leave. Finally, when it was just the two of us and one actor scarfing down the leftover sandwiches from craft service, I rolled my eyes and went over to him. “Come on, Hunter, we still need to sign the last of the paperwork.”
“It’ll keep ‘til tomorrow,” he said.
Despite his words, he had started trotting towards the stables, so I assumed he was going along with the plan when suddenly, he just stopped.
I stopped too, and looked up at him.
“Well, I don’t know what you’re looking at me for,” he said. “I’m the one waiting for you.”
“Waiting for me to do what?” I asked. “Develop telepathy?”
He grinned, and guided his horse in a quick little circle around me. “Come on, I saw you eyeing that mare. You had a horse phase as a little girl, admit it.”
“It was hardly a phase—” I started.
“There’s no shame in it. I understand most girls have a horse phase, or a wolf phase. Sometimes a dragon phase, is that true?”
“You know what’s not hot?” I shot back in my best monotone. “How well you know the psyches of little girls.”
He smirked. “Come on, Ally! Saddle up. You don’t know what you’re missing!”
“I do, actually,” I said, “but some of us have responsibilities—”
“I’ll show you the ropes,” he offered. “Take it nice and easy on you, I promise.”
Did he just…
He did just.
Oh hell no.
“Excuse me?” And with a raised eyebrow I walked into the stables and to the stall of that gorgeous mare, opened the door, and mounted her in a single smooth motion.
In fairness to Hunter, he was outside and didn’t see that, so it wasn’t entirely condescending when he started to try explaining how to control the animal: “Now, you want to imagine that your body and the horse’s are one—”
On the other hand, I’d never been much for lectures on subject matter I already knew, even from guys so hot they could make the sun explode.
So I cut the matter to the chase by running a ring around him and jumping three fences in a row.
You know, beginner stuff.
Then my mare and I galloped away, leaving Hunter in the dust, before wheeling to a stop atop the hill. I laughed out loud in exhilaration, the wind rifling wildly through my hair, the air muggy and hot and scented with ripe earth and pine needles and promise.
And why shouldn’t I be exhilarated? If Hunter knew anything about my mom, he should have realized that she would have insisted on a proper young lady having knowledge of the equine arts, a.k.a. horseback-riding lessons since I was three.
Hunter was currently at the bottom of the hill, gape-mouthed.
“What’s the matter, Richie Rich?” I called back. “Can’t keep up?”
He grinned a grin of pure joy, and spurred his horse after me.
EIGHT
The more time I spent here, the more gorgeous it grew.
Or maybe I simply noticed more details. The way the sun shone through the Spanish moss, more enchanting than any stained glass window in a cathedral. The brightly colored lizards that scampered up the trunks of oaks that had been saplings when Columbus first landed on American shores. The way the moss-covered rocks at the edge of the forest stream glistened like emeralds.
For the first hour that we rode through the forest, we had been competitive, each trying to ride faster, to jump higher, to make our way through thinner openings and trickier landscapes. But we had slowed down now, taking mercy on our mounts and relaxing in each other’s presence. We rode together in companionable silence, moseying along and taking our time to digest all the beauty around us.
Or in my case, the beauty next to me.
I snuck another glance at Hunter. His shirt stuck to his skin with sweat, and it made my mouth water as I imagined peeling that thin cloth away.
We were, in unspoken agreement, riding our horses as close together as we could without spooking them. I was close enough to hear each breath Hunter took, to hear each shift of his body in the fine leather saddle, to almost imagine I could hear each beat of his heart.
And I could smell him, too—that sweet clean sweat scent, and the faint lingering honey of his cologne, and the slight vanilla scent of his shampoo, and oh, the scent of him was driving me mad, the humid air bringing it to life even stronger until I could smell nothing else, until desire hummed like a song between my legs and I rocked myself unconsciously against my saddle.
I imagined riding along on the same horse with him, his firm body pressed against my back. His strong arms would encircle me, holding me safe. His warm breath would ghost along my ear, and then his soft lips would caress my neck, and I would feel his cock harden against me, and I would lean back into him and moan—
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Hunter’s voice broke me from my reverie, and I blushed, quickly looking away at the landscape to try to hide it.
“Yes, it is.” We had come to the edge of a sloping hill that gave a long view of nearly all of Hunter’s land, just in time to see the last bit of the sun slip below the lake, a faint memory of a glow still lighting that sapphire strip. “This place…every time I think I know it, it surprises me.”
Without looking away from the sunset, Hunter reached out and took my hand.
“This was my whole world when I was a child,” he said softly. “I thought Heaven itself could be no more beautiful than the land we had here, my family and I. Before they died, my grandfather used to take me fishing down by the stream, taught me how to watch f
or catfish and tickle their stomachs. My mother taught me to sail on that lake, how to taste the breeze and catch it, riding the power but not letting it overpower you. My father—” his voice caught slightly. “He liked to sit in the shade of the trees, and read Flannery O’Connor. Sometimes I walk by and I remember that so strong, it’s like I can still hear his voice.”
“You’ll always have those memories,” I said. I didn’t know if it was the right thing to say. I wanted it to be the right thing to say, wanted to comfort him, but there was so much I still didn’t know about Hunter, so much still to learn.
And I wanted to learn. I wanted to learn everything about him.
I wanted to give him the comfort he had lost, so long ago.
“But will I?” Hunter asked. “Oh, I know I can’t lose the land, and even if Chuck takes over the company he’ll have to lease the factory from me—but will the memories stay unsullied? Will I even deserve them if I let the company go?” His face twisted in what was almost agony before he twitched, shaking his melancholy off with visible effort. He turned to me, with a smile that was only a little strained. “But look at me, hogging all the good brooding for myself. Any dark secrets you want to get off your chest?”
It just popped out: “Well, I’ve secretly got the self-esteem of a red-headed stepchild from growing up in Paige’s shadow.”
I felt incredibly vulnerable as soon as I said it. I’d never stated it so baldly before.
But Hunter’s hand was warm in mine, and he didn’t pull away. He was there for me.
His brow furrowed. “I know your mother can be a trial. Has it been that bad?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. After awhile, anything can seem normal. It wasn’t ‘til I was in college that I realized that not every mother played favorites that way.” Now it was my turn to look off into the distance. “After that little taste of freedom, I couldn’t go back to the way things were before, all the little comparisons and slights and put-downs, never any praise no matter how hard I tried to be her. I had to be me. So I moved out of the house, and then I moved out of town.”