A Shot With You (Bourbon Brothers)

by Teri Anne Stanley

  His acquiescent smile made her want to touch that little scar on his lip. With her tongue.

  “But what if you used a different kind of barrel? One that would meld the smoky-sweet Blue Mountain magic with your tequila, and make it into something that would get awards and orders from the finest establishments in the world?”

  Lesa was already interested in anything that rolled off this almost-country-boy’s tongue, but if he had an idea that might pull Pequeño Zarigüeya out of the red? Now she was very interested.

  Chapter Three

  Brandon threw the idea out to Lesa. “I think you should try aging your tequila in used Blue Mountain bourbon barrels. Giving your new tequila a few months in our oak is going to make it amazing.”

  The idea had been meandering around in his head before he’d even gotten here. Bourbon was the hottest drink around these days, but trends changed, and there was always room for one more hip liquor. Just like the stock market, diversifying their holdings was a good idea. He’d talked to the board of Blue Mountain—his father and his neighbor Lorena McGrath—about searching for new business partners. This might be the right thing.

  So he explained his idea to Lesa. Bourbon barrels, as a rule, were always built of new oak. But after they’d been used once, they were sold and repurposed, often by other distillers to age scotch, wine, tequila… There was also a very popular brand of beer that was held in bourbon barrels.

  Lesa had made a big deal about the costly French oak barrels they used for their Reposado, but after a quick Google search on his phone, Brandon’s opinion was that the barrels were overpriced, especially for the flavor they imparted. He could get Lesa’s family a much better deal, and it looked like they could use a good deal right now. He’d have to do some fancy dancing, if they were interested, because he had to make a contract decision about selling barrels to their regular wholesale buyer soon, but if it worked out, the deal would benefit both distilleries in a potentially big way.

  Lesa was listening and nodding her head. She tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear.

  “You look skeptical.”

  “Well,” she said, a charming blush staining her cheeks.

  “What?” He kicked the toe of her sneaker gently. When had he gotten so close to her? He caught a whiff of orange and lime, as though she were a human margarita. Would she taste like that…tangy, and salty, and sweet?

  He needed to back away from the temptation to find out. He was making a business proposal, not asking her out on a date. As he well knew, mixing the two was a bad idea. “Come on, what do you have against bourbon barrels? Is it because you’re thinking of a barefoot guy with a long beard, a shotgun across his knee, guarding a still?”

  She laughed. “No. I um…I don’t like whiskey.”

  “Well, well, well. You know what? I don’t like tequila, either.”

  She pushed at his shoulder. “I don’t not like it because I have hangover, ah, what’s the word? Flashbacks,” she teased. “I went to a scotch whiskey tasting a few years ago, and each version was worse than the last!”

  He understood. “You had scotch, not bourbon.”

  “But it’s all whiskey,” she argued. “And it’s like eating—drinking—burning dirt.”

  “Wow. That’s…descriptive. And wrong. Bourbon is a lot different from scotch. Yes, they’re both liquor distilled from grain. But bourbon has a higher percentage of corn, and it’s sweeter. Maybe you should give it a try before you dismiss it out of hand.”

  “Really? Too bad we don’t have any here for me to taste.” She raised an eyebrow and looked him over.

  He felt her eyes roam over his shirt, his pants. He stepped back, worried that her warm, coffee gaze would heat him up too much. Besides, he was talking her into trying bourbon, not him. “As a matter of fact, I do.” He swung his pack up and pulled at the drawstring. “You’re going to have to put your pesos where your mouth is, señorita.”

  “Oh boy.”

  He could tell that she knew when she was beat. He’d been a good sport about the tequila, she’d have to give his liquor a try. As he pulled the bottle free and worked at the seal, Lesa got a couple of glasses and sat sideways on the nearest bench. Brandon straddled the other end of the bench, facing her, and pulled a glass closer.

  Tipping the bottle, they watched the amber liquid splash against the bottom of the glass until there was an inch or so inside.

  Then he pushed it toward her. “Some people like a little ice, a little water, but if you’re really gonna taste it, then room temperature is best.”

  Lesa nodded and carefully picked up the glass. She leaned over, holding it as far from her body as possible, and delicately sniffed.

  “It’s not gonna bite you.”

  She looked up at him, raising an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

  He couldn’t quite answer, because her position had given him a distracting view—right down the front of her blouse. Fortunately he caught himself before she did, and turned to pull the other glass closer.

  “Oh no you don’t,” she said as he began to pour bourbon for himself. “You have to try the Special Reserve.”

  He looked at her, and the way she held his family’s pride and joy within kissing distance.

  “Fine.” He grabbed the nearby bottle of tequila and filled his own glass.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Ready.”

  They both took small sips, holding each other’s gaze. Brandon wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or the dark heat in her eyes that made him dizzy, but he found himself swallowing the entire contents of the glass.

  It really was pretty good. He detected the oak—that was as familiar to him as the scent of pine trees in the winter. But he was even more certain that using Blue Mountain barrels would make this liquor even better.

  She shot the remaining contents in one swallow, thunking her empty glass on the table. “This doesn’t taste as much like horse pee as I expected,” she gasped.

  Aaaand she was refilling their glasses, and he was drinking again.

  “So you’re the heir to Blue Mountain Bourbon.”

  “One of them. There are five—er, four of us. Kids of the current two families who own the business.”

  “Five, or four?”

  “Oh. Well, there were five of us, but David McGrath, the son of the other family, he was a marine and died in the Middle East.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” She touched his leg in sympathy. Though she removed it quickly, the heat trail from her fingers traced up his thigh.

  “Thanks. We miss him.”

  She brought the topic back on safer ground. “And where are you in line for the throne?”

  Brandon snorted. “It’s not like that. We each get a fourth. But I’m oldest.”

  “And is Brandon a family name?” Lesa sipped the bourbon, watching him closely.

  “Nope. But my middle name, Frank, is the same as my dad’s and grandfather’s.”

  “Brandon Frank Morgan.” She nodded. “Very…”

  “Boring?”

  Her smile grew teasing, sending tendrils of arousal along with the liquor invading his blood. “Ees Brrandon Frrank Morgan a dull boy?” Her accent was thickening in response to her rising blood alcohol level. And it was really freaking sexy.

  He cleared his throat. “It depends on your definition of dull.” Where was this going? He looked at the woman across from him and wanted to know what the taste of tequila in his own mouth would be like mixed with bourbon in hers.

  He couldn’t do this. He was supposed to be working. Wasn’t he? “So what do you do besides leading tours here?” Brandon asked. He found he wanted to know more about this woman with the saucy smile and the apparent ability to keep up with him at the bar.

  “Not much right now, but I aspire to be a professional gypsy,” she told him, taking another, slower sip of bourbon.

  “What, exactly, does that mean?”

  “I want to travel, to write about traveling, and then trave
l some more.”

  “So you don’t want to stay here and run the business?”

  She shuddered, but Brandon wasn’t sure if it was because of the gulp of whiskey she’d just swallowed, or because the idea of being a full-time distillery employee was abhorrent to her. That would be a shame. Brandon couldn’t think of anything he loved more than his work.

  “No. I…I’ve put in my time here. I want to come only occasionally to visit.”

  “Your parents would miss you, wouldn’t they?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Papa would prefer that I stay, but I—” She shook her head. “And my mother died a few years ago.”

  “That’s too bad. Your father hasn’t remarried?”

  She snorted. “He never leaves the distillery to meet anyone new.”

  She didn’t elaborate, so Brandon didn’t push, but he sensed there was more to the story.

  Quite the seducer, he was, bringing up sad stuff again.

  But she didn’t seem to be too bothered. She took another sip of her drink and said, “So. You want us to put a season’s worth of Special Reserve into your barrels.”

  Oh yeah. He was here to talk business, not autobiographies. But for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what his terms should be.

  Looking at her, he took another sip. And then another. She was right in front of him now. The warmth of her body next to him was as intoxicating as the liquor. Bending his head toward her, he lowered his mouth. Her face tilted up to his. He was going to kiss her. And she was going to let him.

  He—

  “Lesa!”

  They jumped apart from each other as an elderly woman, spewing rapid Spanish, came toward them. She asked a question, and Lesa put her hand over her mouth, but not before Brandon was able to translate the curse words she tried to muffle.

  The older woman threw up her hands and said something else, which had Lesa shaking her head and frowning. Then the woman—Tia Rita?—patted her on the arm and turned to go back toward the door. She looked at Brandon and shook her finger at him with a grin. He didn’t know what she said, but understood the universal language of “you’re a bad, bad boy.”

  “What’s wrong?” Brandon asked, as Lesa sat down on the table, staring at him with a guilty smile.

  “Well, I made you miss your bus.”

  “Oh, shit!” He started to move toward the door.

  “Don’t bother. They’re long gone.”

  He couldn’t believe that he’d spent so much time flirting with her. A quick glance at his watch told him that he’d have to find a cab quickly to get him back to the shuttle boat in time to get back on the cruise ship. “Any chance there’s a cab company anywhere close by?”

  She shook her head. “No. But I’ll take you. Or rather, I’ll get my cousin Raoul to drive you, and I will come, too. I want to get some things in town and it will save me a trip tomorrow”

  As much as the thought of spending another couple of hours in her company appealed to him, he couldn’t ask her to do that. “You won’t get back here until late, and you’ve got tours to give in the morning, don’t you?”

  “Actually, no I don’t. We’re closing for tours for the next few weeks because they are going to be replacing parts of the road to the city.”

  “Oh. Well.” Suddenly his missed bus had turned into good luck. “In that case, my only regret about missing the bus is that the boat will be leaving, and I won’t have time to buy you dinner when we get back to town.”

  “That is a shame.” And she did look disappointed. She stood, swaying for a brief second. “Come to the house with me, Brank Morgan. I mean, Brankon Frand. I mean—never mind. Come with me and I’ll get Raoul. You can meet my father and tell him your idea.”

  …

  Lesa’s head began to clear as she led Brandon into her father’s house. He had clouded her senses—and not just with the booze. He was sooo cute.

  As she held the door for Brandon, she hoped Papa had gotten dressed since she’d left him there this morning. The past couple of years had been hard on him. He’d been gone most of the time when she was younger—while Mama was sick, which was from as far back as she could remember until she died just a few years ago. Papa worked constantly, never home for Mama because he was trying to earn money to pay for a cure. Which hadn’t worked. And now the driven distiller of her childhood had been replaced by a bitter, grieving shadow—though he’d functioned. Then two years of bad harvests had put Pequeño Zarigüeya in the red. The difficulty had flipped a switch, and for a while, it seemed like he was back to his old workaholic self. But it was an up and down thing. Some days he worked with a desperation that frightened her. Other days, he seemed to have given up. Maybe this new barrel idea would drag him out of his current slump. He could get Pequeño Zarigüeya back on its feet, and she could leave with a clear conscience.

  “Papa?” she called, as Brandon followed her from the entryway down the hall.

  Watching television. Again.

  Papa was in his small, dark living area, where blue light reflected over the small man in his recliner. The house smelled of spices and despair, and the familiar claustrophobia Lesa felt in here reached out with its claws. There was a beautiful mountain vista just beyond the darkened curtains. Why didn’t Papa ever open the windows and let some fresh air and light in?

  It was a rhetorical complaint, so she didn’t voice it.

  “Hola, Lesa,” Papa said, looking away from the TV for a moment. He started to return his attention to his show, but then did a double take, sitting up and putting the remote aside. “Who is your guest?”

  “Hola, Papa. This is Brandon Morgan, from Kentucky in America. His tour bus left without him because we were talking about business.”

  And maybe almost kissing. He had been about to kiss her, hadn’t he?

  Papa jerked the recliner into an upright position and stood, a wide, bright smile spreading across his old face. He held out his hand for Brandon to shake. “Brandon Morgan. From Blue Mountain?”

  “Yes, sir,” Brandon answered. “You know of Blue Mountain Bourbon, then.”

  “Oh, yes. I have had many occasions to taste your family’s product. It’s fine quality.”

  When she snorted, both men turned to look at Lesa. “Sorry. Some, ah, dust in my nose.”

  Brandon grinned. She didn’t have him fooled. She’d liked his whiskey, in spite of herself.

  She waved at the men. “Go ahead. Tell him your idea. Papa, may I borrow the car keys?”

  “Where are you going?” Papa’s brow furrowed.

  “Brandon missed his tour bus, and he’ll miss his cruise ship if we don’t catch them in Puerto Vallarta. If it’s all right with you, I’ll get Raoul and we’ll drive him to the city.”

  “That is fine.” She listened to Brandon’s pitch as she dug through the mess on the end table for Papa’s keys. He rarely went anywhere, but still insisted on keeping his keys within arm’s reach at all times, wanting everyone to ask his permission to drive. Another weird quirk that chafed.

  Brandon explained the concept of aging tequila in used bourbon barrels, melding the exclusive qualities of both distilleries into a final product that would be exponentially better than it would be when aged in a run-of-the-mill barrel.

  Papa listened politely, but then said, “I don’t know. Even if this makes the best tequila in the universe, I have heard rumors about your company. There was a fire there, just last week, if I’m not mistaken. How do I know, if I buy your barrels, that you won’t have another fire, or some other catastrophe, and then I will be, how do you say it? Screwed.”

  “Sir, you have my word that we are solid. The fire in our rickhouse was a human error that won’t be repeated.”

  “You have disowned your brother?”

  Lesa listened to the interchange with surprise. For someone who barely left the house, Papa knew things Lesa would never have guessed. So just what had happened at Blue Mountain Bourbon?

  As though reading her mind, Brandon tur
ned to explain, “My brother Justin accidentally caught our newest aging warehouse on fire. Fortunately, the rickhouse had been nearly empty, and no stock was lost. It’s all good. Well. With the exception of making the ‘Happenings’ section in the Distilled Spirits Weekly blog.” To her father, he said, “No, sir, my brother is still part of the family. Accidents happen, and he is, more than anyone else, determined that nothing like this will ever happen again.”

  Papa harrumphed.

  “You’re welcome to come visit and see for yourself. Talk to my family and the McGraths, who are co-owners.”

  Eyes narrowed, Papa pointed at Brandon. “And there was that business several years ago with the other family. The McGrath man.”

  Brandon sighed. “I can assure you, sir. Since I took over Jamie’s position, we are in sound financial shape.”

  “No problems with, say, theft or embezzlement?”

  At this, Brandon’s shoulders stiffened. Through tight lips, he ground out, “We’re in good shape, sir.”

  “I don’t really believe this is a good idea.”

  The air blew right out of Lesa’s sails. Right through the living room and down the side of the mountain.

  “Papa, I really think this is a good idea. We should check it out.”

  Brandon looked from Papa to Lesa. “Like I said. You’re welcome to visit any time.”

  Maybe this was just what Papa needed to get over his depression. A trip to Kentucky.

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Can I talk to you?” Lesa tugged him toward the kitchen. “We’ll be right back,” she told Brandon.

  When they were alone, Papa said, arms crossed over his chest, “I don’t trust him.”

  “Why not?”

  “He wants to take advantage of us. He’s too shiny. Too perfect. An answer for everything.”

  Lesa almost pointed out that Brandon’s hair kept falling over his forehead, but didn’t think that’s what Papa meant. And her gut told her that this was a good plan.

  “You should go to Kentucky, since he invited you,” Lesa suggested. “You need a vacation anyway.”

  “I don’t vacation. Holidays are for the weak.”