A Shot With You (Bourbon Brothers)

by Teri Anne Stanley

  “I’m sorry about your stuff. I can take you to Macy’s later and buy you new shoes.”

  Lesa snorted. “Oh, those old things? I bought them and only wore them once. They hurt my feet so much. I knew I couldn’t bring food for the dogs through customs, and what do dogs love more than shoes to chew on? And a girl has to have a purse that matches, doesn’t she?”

  Brandon wasn’t sure if the hysterical edge in her voice was because she was totally, completely lying—he’d never once mentioned his dogs to her—or because she was uncomfortable about what had just almost happened between them.

  It didn’t matter. He was ever so slightly in love, at that very moment, with his guest. Especially when she squatted down to give Maude a hug and didn’t back off when the beast emitted an especially aromatic belch.

  “So,” she said, looking up at him. “I need to change clothes and wash up, but I’m ready to see the distillery.”

  Brandon nodded. “I thought we’d go to the bottling plant and look at the used barrels first, since that’s probably the most interesting part to you, given the plans we’re making.” And because that was possibly the only part of the plant that was functioning this morning.

  …

  “Watch out!” Brandon pulled Lesa’s arm and guided her out of the way of a barrel of bourbon as it rolled along tracks and into the bottling plant of Blue Mountain Distilling.

  A burly man with a long scraggly beard tipped his imaginary hat at Lesa and gave the barrel an extra push through a low door and then bent to follow it through.

  Brandon led her into the building through a normal door, and Lesa’s senses were immediately swamped with the aroma of whiskey. “Whoa!”

  Brandon smiled, hands in the pockets of his ever-present khakis. “Isn’t it amazing?” He breathed in, and his firm chest in the gray Blue Mountain polo shirt rose, filled with the scents of his home. His pride was clear as he began to rattle off statistics about the numbers of barrels emptied to fill the bottles every day, how long different recipes were aged, and the process of moving the liquid from the barrel to the bottle.

  “You seem to know every detail of the business,” she observed.

  He shrugged like it was nothing, but then said, “I’ve made it my mission to understand where every cent goes, and why it goes there, and how we can get it to have babies.”

  She laughed, but was blown away by his dedication. “You’re not going to lose any of those extra cents either, are you?”

  A shadow crossed his expression, and she thought he had turned to granite for a moment, but then he smiled, and said, “Yeah, I’m not really big on losing money.”

  Lesa already doubted that she’d find the dirt Papa was looking for, and learning that Brandon was such a meticulous businessman firmed them up. Based on the way he’d greeted each of his employees by name, he was a good employer, as well. Papa would do well to take some lessons from Brandon about how to run Pequeño Zarigüeya, rather than try to find a hole to burrow a snake into.

  He led her to the other side of the room where empty bottles were moving around the machine that filled them with amber liquid.

  “We recently replaced the old conveyor system with this newer, faster version. We had to hire an extra few hands to help with the increased production—capping, labeling, that sort of thing, but our output has increased enough to cover the cost, and we’re actually up—”

  A loud crash interrupted his explanation, followed by a shrill squeal. The conveyor jerked to a halt.

  “What the hell?” He moved toward the source of the noise and found a man—Lesa thought his name was Caleb—squatting down and looking under a mass of metal, belts, and gears, waving away the stench of burning plastic. “What happened?”

  Brandon fell to his hands and knees and crawled under the hulking mass of smoking metal with Caleb.

  She could hear them discussing one thing that should have been attached to another thing, but couldn’t really pay attention, because Brandon’s pants were stretched across his incredibly fine backside. And then, suddenly, they weren’t. Right before her eyes, the tan fabric gave way, slowly coming apart from his waistband and over his right butt cheek, exposing pink and green plaid fabric.

  Pink and green boxers. How incredibly cute. Lesa hadn’t considered what kind of underwear Brandon might wear—her vacation-addled mind had been spending a significant amount of time wondering what he might look like without them on at all. But the boxers were…perfect.

  They went with his no-nonsense, conservative approach to life and business, but had a slightly whimsical edge, evidenced by the colors. Like a respectable family businessman who happened to own two ridiculously large, messy, loud dogs.

  The conversation going on at her feet ceased, and the men under the machine began to back out slowly. Brandon paused. He hesitantly reached back, and touched the seat of his pants—the now absent seat of his pants.

  “Damn!” he said, twisting to sit on the offending lack of fabric. And then, “Crap!” when he banged his head on the bottom of the conveyor system. He looked up at Lesa, embarrassment staining his cheeks, but he met her eyes with the calm dignity and professionalism she’d come to expect.

  “What’s the problem?” she asked. She should have been paying more attention to what he and the man were discussing. This was the kind of thing she was here to notice. What kind of problems were to be found at Blue Mountain, and how the staff dealt with them. Papa would want to know.

  He shrugged. “Broken belt to the drive system. Caleb can fix it. He can fix anything.”

  Well that was anticlimactic. No million dollar systems failure to write home about, thank goodness. She really wanted this deal to work. “Okay, then. What should we go see now?”

  He looked at his foreman, who shrugged.

  “Maybe we should try lunch now. After I go put on some new pants.”

  “You don’t have to change for me,” she said.

  Just a twitch at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes heated more than a fraction.

  Caleb cleared his throat. “I’ll just, uh, go find my toolbox,” he said.

  Chapter Seven

  The city of Tucker was college-town America at its finest, and Brandon hoped Lesa thought it was as cool as he did. A series of small businesses lined either side of a wide, brick main street, and banners hung from the light poles, announcing the spring activities at the university.

  Students wandered the sidewalks next to local residents, going in and out of the restaurants, boutiques, and bars.

  He found a parking spot on the street half a block away from his destination: The Jukebox Malt Shop.

  His grandpa had brought him here every other Saturday for years, buying him a chocolate malt and a cheeseburger that he still craved. Of course, half of the fabulousness then had been because he was getting to spend guy time with Gramps. Now it was because he wanted to show Lesa a slice of his personal history. Because it would sway her toward understanding how great the whole Blue Mountain experience was, not because it was about him.

  He called bullshit on himself. If he was perfectly honest, he just wanted her to like him and like the things he liked. Since the things he liked best were all associated with Blue Mountain, lunch in Tucker totally counted, he rationalized. And, he mentally continued, it would keep her from wanting to see all the parts of Blue Mountain that were, at that very minute, on the fritz. Like the still. And the roof. And now, the bottling machine.

  “I think you’ll like this place. Have you seen that show about the little dive restaurants? This is the one they should use as the gold standard. They always play oldies music, and they have the best cheeseburgers in the world,” Brandon said, pulling the front door open so Lesa could walk in in front of him.

  They were assaulted with full-blast, completely angry death metal—something about Jesus doing inappropriate things with the Buddha while Mohamed looked on.

  Lesa turned to him with a raised eyebrow. “This is traditional, huh
?”

  At least that’s what he thought she said. He had to read her lips.

  The music suddenly cut off, and a complaint rose from deep behind the cook’s window. “What the fuck, man?”

  “There’s old people here, dude,” said the pierced and tattooed kid behind the counter.

  Brandon looked around for the old people.

  Lesa laughed. “Amigo, if you think twenty-five is old, then you are going to be in a nursing home much sooner than you want to be.”

  The kid may have blushed under the black eyeliner that had run and now streaked across his cheeks, but Brandon couldn’t be sure.

  “Sorry, dude. I just started here.” He waved a bony arm around. “Sit anywhere you want. I’m Adam, and I’ll be taking care of you. What do you want to drink?”

  “I’ll have a cherry cola, please. Lesa?” Brandon ushered her to a table, and she slid into the seat.

  “I guess I’ll have the same,” she said.

  The kid—Adam—stood there, holding paper menus. “Uh, we don’t have soda here.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Because that shit, er, that stuff is really bad for you. Sir.” He pulled out his phone and tapped at it. “Here, look.” He thrust the phone toward them. “There’s like nine million pounds of sugar in one glass of pop.”

  Brandon looked at the graphic, with a baggie full of white powder on the table next to a can. He looked at Lesa, and shrugged. “Iced tea?”

  “Chamomile or Lemon Zinger?”

  “Do you have anything with caffeine?”

  “Dude.” The kid shook his head.

  “Water will be fine.” Lesa smiled and took the menus from the kid, handing one to Brandon. “How long has it been since you were last here?” she asked.

  “A little too long, apparently,” he answered.

  “Because I think we’re going to have a hard time getting a cheeseburger here.”

  The top of the menu had a red-highlighted note that read, “All of the food here is vegan, lactose-free, gluten-free, nut-free, and sugar-free, and prepared from locally sourced, organic, free-trade ingredients.”

  “I’m sorry. I really wanted to bring you to a good old-fashioned local restaurant, complete with heart attack and cancer-causing food. Do you want to go somewhere else?”

  She shook her head, corner of her mouth tilted up. “No, that’s okay. This is interesting, don’t you agree?”

  The woman did have some adventure in her. More than he did, but what the hell. He was still technically on vacation, where he’d promised his grandfather that he’d try to loosen up a little. He was more of a macaroni and cheese kind of guy than a wheatgrass drinker, but he was game, because she was game.

  Adam brought two glasses of water—no ice—and put them on the table. “What’ll it be?”

  “I guess I’ll have the farmer’s delight salad,” Lesa told him.

  “Me, too.” That sounded safe.

  Adam nodded. “Okay. We’re out of the vinaigrette dressing, though, because Shep—he’s the cook—saw something on 60 Minutes about how the mob is running the olive oil industry, and he’s boycotting it.”

  “Can’t you just use soybean oil or something instead?” Brandon figured Ranch dressing was out of the question.

  “Dude. You don’t want to eat too many soy products. All those plant estrogens will turn you into a girl.” He looked at Lesa. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

  She tilted her head in acceptance of his apology.

  “So what else do you recommend?”

  Adam took the menu from Brandon’s hand and looked it over. “I’m not really sure. Let me go ask Shep what we have. He’s taking a cigarette break. He’s totally hung over today, so he might not have gotten everything from the market.”

  Oh for chrissakes.

  As Adam shoved through the swinging doors to the kitchen, Brandon pulled out his wallet. Throwing a five on the table, he said, “How do you feel about McDonalds?”

  …

  Instead of Arches del Oro, Brandon took Lesa to a falafel stand. Middle Eastern food had yet to come to her part of Mexico, so this was exotic for her. They sat in the town square, on a bench under a water tower of dubious structural integrity.

  “Are you sure that thing’s sturdy?” she asked, looking up at the rusted underbelly of the tank.

  Brandon shrugged. “It’s been there forever. It’s probably not gonna fall today. Besides”—he looked at the legs of the thing—“if it falls, we’ve got a 90% chance that it’ll miss us and land over yonder.” He pointed at another bench where a young couple sat, side by side, engrossed in their respective phones.

  “Well that makes me feel better,” she muttered, taking a big bite of fried chick pea balls and pita bread. Amazing. Swallowing, she asked, “Did you really use the word ‘yonder’ in a sentence?”

  He grinned, causing her tummy to heat. Okay, it wasn’t really her tummy, but she was in public and couldn’t squirm. This man was really something. He was…genuine.

  Lesa had quickly realized that Kentucky—this part, anyway—was a lot fancier than she expected from watching the television show Justified. Here there were stone or white board fences, open grassy fields scattered with horses, and nice cars driving alongside pickup trucks down the highway. But Brandon was still as down home as she might have predicted.

  “My grandpa used to bring me to Tucker every other Saturday when I was little. We’d have lunch at the Jukebox, and then get ice cream from a guy who had a cart. I thought this was the coolest town in the world. I wanted to go to college here when I graduated from high school, because there were always guys playing Frisbee in this park, and I wanted to hang out with them.” He indicated a couple of men tossing a disc back and forth, while a lab mix dog lay panting on the grass between them.

  One of them wore a tie-dyed T-shirt and had a long gray ponytail.

  “I think that might be one of the original guys I thought was so cool.”

  She swallowed and asked, “Is this where you went to college?”

  He shook his head. “Nah. I got a full scholarship to Louisville, so I went there instead.”

  “Do you regret not going here?” Lesa asked.

  He looked around. “A little. It seems like a lot of people graduate and then stick around because it’s such a nice little town. But then, I can’t imagine staying here forever and not having moved back to Crockett County after graduation. Living in a whole new county—that might have been a little too much excitement for this homebody.”

  “Wow.” Lesa didn’t know what else to say. He was such a contradiction. So in-command, and sure of his place in life, taking charge of the situations that came his way—she’d seen that this morning when he’d dived right in to help work on the issue at the plant. Most other people would have been flustered and angry, but he just explained his solution and made other suggestions. Definitely large and in charge. But also willing to admit that he didn’t like to be adventurous.

  “What about you? Did you go to college?”

  “Not really. I started—two semesters. But my mother was sick…for as long as I can remember, really. She had leukemia. It was kind of…like she was always a little bit sick, but then she got better, so I started college. Unfortunately, that was just the calm before the storm. It came back, and it came back pissed off. So I quit school to take care of her.”

  “But what about—and I’m not judging, just asking—what about your father, and your Tia Rita? Couldn’t they help?”

  She shook her head. “Papa worked all the time. He thought if he earned enough money he could find a cure, I think. And Tia Rita didn’t move to live with us until after her husband died a couple of years ago.”

  “Oh, geez, sorry.”

  Yeah. So was she. She’d barely gotten a taste of life beyond Pequeño Zarigüeya, and she was still starving for more. She felt guilty, sometimes, for mourning her lost chances almost as much as the loss of her mother, but moving
home had felt like crawling back into an airless cave. No light, no freedom. And no high-class diploma. “I managed to get a degree online.”

  He shrugged. “Nothin’ wrong with that, if you learned what you wanted. Me, I learned how to come home and be a distiller’s son.”

  What she had wanted was to learn how to escape the tequileria. She hadn’t figured it out. “I think I’m about as different from you as it’s possible to be.”

  “How so?” He crumpled the paper that had wrapped his sandwich and stuffed it into the paper bag that sat between them.

  She suddenly felt guilty for not wanting to be like him. Someone who loved their home so much that they could never imagine leaving. “I want to travel. To see the world. When I was little, Mama and I would get books from the library and look at maps and talk about all the places we wanted to see. We were going to go to Italy, to Greece, Switzerland, then hop on a plane to China. All the places that weren’t Mexico.”

  “That sounds cool.”

  “Yeah.” She thought of her mother after she got sick, still looking at maps with her, even while she could barely sit up because of the chemotherapy. “She never got to go, but I told her I’d go for her.” After she made sure that Papa and Pequeño Zarigüeya were secure.

  He nodded, thoughtfully. “That cruise was the first time I’ve ever gone to another country. We’ve always taken vacations to all of the big American tourist places—Disney World, the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty, stuff like that, but I’ve always had just as much fun at Lake Cumberland with a houseboat full of friends for the weekend.”

  He was so…centered. Peaceful. It made her nervous. “Don’t you worry that you’d drown? That the houseboat would spring a leak and you’d wake up at the bottom of the water?”

  He grinned. “I’m a pretty good swimmer. And I maybe slept with a life jacket on until I was fifteen.”

  She laughed with him. His blue eyes sparkled in the afternoon light and met hers. The heat she saw wasn’t just a reflection of the noon sun. He was attracted to her, this simple, complicated man.