A Shot With You (Bourbon Brothers)

by Teri Anne Stanley

  “You’re a lily-livered chicken.” Grandpa told him.

  “Better than a kudzu-brained toad,” Brandon shot back, laughing, but the truth was, he was afraid to get burned again.

  But fear was never going to get him anywhere. If he’d let fear and shame run his life, he never would have managed to help Blue Mountain get where it was now, a rising force in the bourbon industry.

  “Possum hockey,” Grandpa spat. “I heard that Carlos’s deal with Big Bourbon fell through, and he’s back where he started. He might be willing to reconsider, if you do. You know as well as I do that this company is as solid as a rock. We can afford some speculation.”

  “I don’t speculate.”

  “I know.”

  Maude stood and shook, collar jingling and ears whapping.

  Mabel gave a soft woof to greet Grandma, who’d come out to stand behind Gramps.

  “Maybe you should give it a shot.”

  Maybe he should. Sitting here feeding the ducks processed cheese powder wasn’t doing anything for him or the environment. “Shit.”

  Grandma smacked the back of his head.

  “Sorry. But I’ve got to make some calls. Can I—”

  “Leave the girls here. Go.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Welcome home, Lesa.” Tia Rita bustled through the door of the Ruiz house carrying six tote bags of…what did she have in there, anyway? Food usually, but even her plump aunt didn’t need that much food for one day.

  “Hola, Rita. Cómo estás?”

  “I’m good,” her aunt said, hugging her. “I’m glad you’re home. Carlos has missed you. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. He said he had a meeting this morning.”

  “A meeting? How mysterious.” Rita began unloading grocery bags into the refrigerator.

  And it was. She’d been home for three days, and Papa kept taking off to go to meetings he wouldn’t tell her about. When he was home, he was greeting tourists and even participating in a few of the tours, which the guests loved. And he’d been asking Lesa’s opinion about some ideas he had for new bottles he was considering. Should they go with a cheaper bottle, and a fancier label? It would save money and appeal to new drinkers, but would they lose their existing customers?

  “He didn’t tell me where he was going, but I suppose it was to the bank.”

  She was afraid it might have something to do with the fact that Papa had been totally bluffing when he’d shown Brandon that proposal from the other distillery. He’d made it all up to get Brandon to come to his side of things. Well that certainly hadn’t worked out, had it?

  She’d come home to help Papa one more time—to convince him to do something differently before Pequeño Zarigüeya went under. She wanted to go to Brandon, but she couldn’t. Not until she’d made things right with Papa.

  The sound of a diesel engine grinding up the hill reached her ears, followed by the faint, tinny sounds of a mariachi band leaking from the windows of the bus. “Oh, here comes the next tour group.” She stretched her neck and prepared to get back to her old job. She’d agreed to stay a little longer, just until she could get someone else trained.

  A lizard dropped from the branches of a tree to snatch a flower from the plant at her feet. “Hola, Mabel,” she told it. “Where’s Maude?”

  Stupid. She’d named the lizards after Brandon’s dogs. They were unlikely to ever rub up against her to ask to be petted and didn’t greet her with whuffles and barks. Of course, they also didn’t chew up her accessories, either.

  The bus screeched to a halt outside of the gates of Pequeño Zarigüeya, and Lesa pasted on her best smile. She did love to introduce the tourists to her family’s tequila, and she was going to enjoy her job now, for as long as it lasted.

  “Hola!” she called out, shoving the squeaky gate open.

  The people filing off of the bus and into the courtyard were not like any resort or cruise ship patrons she’d ever seen. At least, not since she’d left Kentucky.

  “Hey, Lesa,” said Justin Morgan, turning to help his grandmother down the last step of the bus.

  “Um, hey, Justin. Grandma Morgan. Mrs. Morgan. Allie. Mr. Morgan, Grandpa Morgan…Mrs. McGrath. Eve.” She looked, but the sun glinted off the windows of the bus and she couldn’t see if anyone else was going to come out.

  The familiar pair of feet and black pants weren’t who she was expecting, though, since the first souls off were all from Blue Mountain. “Papa? What’s going on?”

  Papa avoided her gaze and stepped out onto the hot stone path, but he was smiling.

  And there he was. Her Brandon. Khakis and a polo shirt. That had a…was that an opossum? Yes. Instead of an alligator, or the Blue Mountain Bourbon logo, he had an opossum over his left pec. She checked. They were all wearing them.

  He approached her warily, but he needn’t have been worried. Her heart filled nearly to bursting when he reached out to hand her a shiny gift bag. She reached inside and pulled out her very own Pequeño Zarigüeya shirt.

  “What’s all this?” she asked.

  “Meet our new partner,” Papa said proudly. “Pequeño Zarigüeya is now part of the Blue Mountain family of distillers.”

  “This is what your meeting was?” It was a rhetorical question, but she was beyond words at the moment. She’d been expecting Papa to come home with an eviction notice or something, and instead he brought her—a family.

  He brought her Brandon. Who stood in front of her, a hesitant smile on his handsome face. That sweet little scar next to his mouth.

  “I was going to consult you, but then I decided to surprise you,” Papa said, sheepishly. “You have been so sad that I wanted to give you a gift.”

  “Uh…”

  “I know you promised your mama that you would help me with Pequeño Zarigüeya, and you only wanted to see Pequeño Zarigüeya successful so that you wouldn’t feel guilty leaving me to struggle alone. But I wanted you to stay, so maybe I didn’t try too hard to make things better, and I nearly lost you both because I didn’t trust you to make a good decision. Now you have a choice.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  But Tia Rita, who had followed Lesa outside to see what the holdup was, chose that moment to burst into tears, and Papa held his arms open to his sister, who blubbered on his shoulder like a toddler.

  …

  As Brandon took in the sight of Lesa, her hair pulled behind her head with a big turquoise clip, her shining eyes and soft, smooth skin, he was more certain than ever that he’d made the right decision. Even if she rejected him, he was doing the right thing.

  “I need to sample some of this ta-kill-ya right about now,” Grandpa said, shoving past him and grabbing Carlos by the arm. “We all need to be sure that this stuff you make here is the real deal.”

  With that, the whole Blue Mountain posse left Brandon and Lesa alone in the hot afternoon sun.

  A lizard shot across the courtyard.

  “Where are you going, Maude?” Lesa asked it.

  “Maude?”

  She grinned. “Yeah. She’s got a sister named Mabel. They keep eating Tia Rita’s flowers.”

  “That’s awesome.” Did that mean maybe she missed him, just a little?

  “Yeah. I thought it was kind of lame, but now maybe not so much?” Her black eyes sparkled.

  They were silent, and he just looked at her.

  He took a deep breath. “I’ve done a lot of thinking,” he began.

  “I’m sorry,” Lesa interrupted. “I’m so sorry for the way I did—what I did.”

  He nodded and prepared to eat some crow. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I didn’t mean to. But I knew your history with that woman, and I made you think that—”

  He shushed her with a finger over her lips, those beautiful lush lips. “It’s okay. You know what you made me think?”

  “What?” She was a little breathless.

  “You made me think that all work and no play makes f
or a boring Brandon. You made me think that it’s okay to take a chance now and then.”

  She smiled then. “You made me realize that caring about someone doesn’t mean you have to let them smother you.”

  They stared into each other’s eyes.

  “You are so wonderful,” she said.

  A grin crossed his face. She thought he was wonderful. But still. “So anyway, you have a choice now.”

  She shook her head, putting one hand up, as though to touch him, but then letting it fall again. “Papa just said so, too. How so?”

  “You can do whatever you want. Your dad’s comfortable with the agreement we came up with. Finally.” He rolled his eyes, which made her laugh. “It took a few meetings, but we decided that we’d accept a third ownership of Pequeño Zarigüeya in exchange for exclusive barrel rights and help with some of your infrastructure issues. And once Pequeño Zarigüeya is back on its feet, you can buy the stock back. Meanwhile, we share in the profits. If you agree, then we’ll sign the papers. Your life is your own. You can do all the traveling you want to do, and you don’t have to worry about your dad or Pequeño Zarigüeya.”

  He said that last bit with as much fortitude as he could muster. He felt like a damned bumper sticker on the back of a 1970s Volkswagen Beetle. If you love something, set it free…

  “This doesn’t sound like the decision of a careful businessman like you.”

  “I know. I don’t usually like risk. I’m not interested in wasting money on horses, cards, or zipline adventures designed to part me from my money. Turns out that I have a secret wild side.” He moved toward her, putting a hand on each side of her waist. “When I was with you, when you came to Blue Mountain, I felt really alive for the first time in years. Work wasn’t my everything.”

  “I—”

  He rushed on before he forgot what he wanted to say. “I’m not asking you to come back to me, to come live at Blue Mountain or anything else you don’t want to do. This investment in Little Possum is for me. I want to diversify, and I can afford to make some mistakes if it doesn’t work out. But I think it will. I have some great ideas. You don’t need to have anything to do with it, if you don’t want to. You don’t ever have to see me again. We need you to sign some papers at the bank because you’re the legal heir, and your father needs to know that you’ll be taken care of if something happens to him.”

  She smiled and took the hand that was shushing her into her own warm palms. “So I don’t have to come back to you for this deal to happen.”

  “That’s right.” He swallowed and forced himself to be still, not to drag her up against him and kiss the living daylights out of her.

  “And I don’t have to live at Blue Mountain.”

  “Of course not.” He hadn’t meant to say that part. She’d live there with him in his heart, he figured, for a long, long time, but—

  “I want to make sure that I’m not confused. My English seems to be failing me.”

  He snorted.

  “So I can come back to you if I want? And I can come to live at Blue Mountain?”

  His heart, already beating way too fast, sped up. “Uh, yeah. That’s what I’m saying. I don’t—I don’t want you to feel pressured, though. This”—he waved around him, indicating Little Possum—“this is purely business.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “If you’re going to be participating in a company that’s partially mine, I think I’d better come around and keep an eye on things.” With that, she slid her hands around his waist and pressed against him, looking up into his face.

  “Can I kiss you?” he asked, still a little uncertain if his brain was understanding what his heart and body wanted to be true.

  “Brank, if you don’t kiss me, I’m going to have to tell my Papa that you’re being mean to me, and he doesn’t like it when people mistreat his little girl.”

  When she called him Brank, he knew everything was okay. Okay right now and in the next few minutes after that. What happened later? He’d worry about that when later got there.

  After a long, slow kiss that promised more to come, Lesa pulled away.

  “So. What are we going to call this new entity? Blue Possum? Or Little Mountain?”

  Epilogue

  A pigeon snatched the piece of baguette that Brandon dropped on the ground and then flew away, only to be accosted by another, bigger pigeon.

  “They’re not being very nice to each other,” Lesa observed, sipping her wine. The Eiffel Tower over her right shoulder added just the perfect note to the prettiest picture he’d ever seen.

  “Don’t move,” he told her and grabbed his phone to capture the image.

  “You’re going to have to go somewhere and upload all of your data before you run out of space,” Lesa told him, laughing.

  Before he could snap the photo, his phone vibrated with an incoming call. He sighed.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that?” Lesa asked, rubbing her foot along his calf.

  He snorted. “I’m on vacation. Let it go to voicemail.”

  She snatched it from his hand and looked at the screen.

  “You better get this one.”

  He took it from her, and seeing that it was his brother—who never called anyone unless he was desperate—pushed the answer button.

  “Dude.” Justin’s voice was loud and clear over the thousands of satellite miles.

  Even clearer were the sounds of Mabel and Maude barking in the background.

  And then there was Allie. “Dammit, Justin, I don’t care what you have to tell him. Lie. Tell him Grandpa won the lottery and is threatening to buy the country club and turn it into a nudist colony. Tell him the still house blew up. Tell him—”

  “What’s wrong?” Brandon was on high alert. He and Lesa had been in France for three days, and he wasn’t ready to go home. To either of their homes. They were splitting their time between Mexico and the U.S. these days, and he was perfectly comfortable in either place, because he could work—and play—from anywhere.

  “Dude,” Justin repeated.

  “Dude,” Brandon responded. “What?”

  “I need you to come home and get these dogs. We’re done babysitting.”

  “Are they being bad? Just give them the remains of Lesa’s sandals. That usually settles them down.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what? Are they sick?”

  “No, It’s Allie. I mean…”

  “What’s wrong?” Lesa immediately keyed into Brandon’s mood and leaned in, trying to listen.

  “What’s wrong with Allie?”

  “Nothing. I mean—”

  “Justin. You’re freaking me out.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Allie said, obviously taking the phone from her husband because her voice was the clearer, stronger one.

  “I wanted to tell him,” Justin complained in the background now.

  “Tell me what?”

  “We’re pregnant.”

  Brandon dropped the phone, and Lesa scrambled to pick it up. She took over, getting the details from Allie while he stared at the birds, imagining his reckless, big, tough brother as a dad. Which would make him an uncle.

  He took the phone back from Lesa. “When is this going to happen?” he asked.

  “In about five months, give or take.” The excitement in Allie’s voice was infectious.

  “It’s a boy! A boy. Do you hear me?” Justin shouted in the background.

  “Yeah, bro. I think all of Paris heard you.”

  Lesa wiggled with excitement and hugged Brandon. “That’s so awesome! I mean, if it’s not going to be a girl, it’s good that it’s a boy, right?”

  He laughed and kissed her. “Yes, it’s good.”

  “A boy!” Justin was still hooting in the background.

  “God, Justin, it’s just a dick,” Allie complained.

  “But it’s a really good dick!”

  “Is everyone okay, then? Allie, you feelin’ good?” Brandon asked.


  “Yeah. I’m good. Tired. Which is why you’ve got to come get these dogs. They’re driving me crazy.”

  Brandon grinned. “I don’t know,” he told his sister-in-law. “If you expect any babysitting from us, you probably want to bank some hours in advance.”

  “Brandon, I think Maude’s in heat. You can come home and get her, or I can turn her loose. I saw the Beckers’ Chihuahua sniffing around her yesterday afternoon.”

  “Hey, babe?” He looked at Lesa. He could sit here and watch her feeding pigeons for as long as she kept rubbing her foot along his calf, but then again… “You want to see if you can get our flight bumped up a day or so? I think we need to get back to Blue Mountain.”

  “But the baby’s not due for months yet!” she protested.

  “Yeah…I have a feeling that if we don’t get a move on, there might be a few puppies arriving way before then.”

  “Let’s go. Now.” Lesa stood and began gathering their things.

  “You don’t have to break any speed records,” he said, rising more slowly. “I think we have time to pick up a few extra pairs of fancy gold sandals before they start teething.”

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  Acknowledgments

  Many, many people had a hand in this project. Fortunately, this isn’t an Academy Award speech, so I’m not going to get cut off by the orchestra…

  Thanks to Nicole Resciniti, for saying, “What about bourbon?” when we were brainstorming this series. And for answering all of my psychotic freak-out emails and texts with patience and kindness. You are the bomb.

  Everyone at Entangled, especially Liz and the Heathers for being so awesome and supportive. I love this job!

  Extra especially, Robin Haseltine, for the amazing editing marathon. I promise, I’ll throw no more babies out with the bathwater. Oh! And thanks for going to Cozumel on that cruise so you could tell me all you learned.