A Taste of You (Bourbon Brothers)

by Teri Anne Stanley

  “You didn’t know. It was a lame reason anyway.” He sucked in some air. “The truth is, I’m an alcoholic, just like my father.”

  “Ah hell,” Brandon said, slumping back against the wall. “That’s all she needs.”

  “I know.” Nick nodded in agreement. “I’ve been sober five years, but…” He held his hands out. “You just never know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I don’t want to put anyone through the shit my mom went through with my dad. And knowing Eve’s dealt with it before…”

  “And hanging around the distillery probably isn’t the best for you.” Justin sighed and ran a hand through his short hair. “So why are you back, and why in the middle of the fucking night?”

  “I saw the video. If I hadn’t left before the last thing was done, it wouldn’t have happened. I can’t undo it, but I’ve got to fix what I can. I just can’t…” Was he man enough to say this in front of these two? “I’m not ready to see her again. It’s gonna hurt too much.”

  There was a beat of silence, in which Brandon and Justin exchanged a very brief, but apparently significant glance.

  Brandon grinned and reached to open the back door of the tasting center. “Come on, man. I think we’ve got some work to do.”

  “Hang on,” Justin said, holding up his phone.

  “You girls suck at watch-doggery,” Brandon said, revealing two giant, sleeping dogs just inside the door. One raised a head and woofed softly, then went back to sleep.

  Nick gathered his tools and followed Brandon inside.

  “Yeah, babe… No, it’s all good. Tell Eve we chased off some more kids… Yeah. I don’t think I’m coming home, though. Call me when you get back to our place and I’ll explain.” Justin tucked the phone into his pocket and rubbed his hands together. “Okay, Chief. What do you need us to do?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The crunch of tires on gravel woke Eve sometime between zero-dark-thirty and dawn. Who on earth was up and about this early? She prayed it wasn’t early bird drama-tourists.

  It was time to get up and face the day, anyway, so she stumbled to the window and pulled the slats apart. Red lights glowed as a truck disappeared toward the road. Well, whoever they were, they were done. She pulled on shorts, then fought her way into a bra and T-shirt, slid on her sneakers, and grabbed her planner from the kitchen counter. Finally, she opened the door to whatever was going to kick her ass today.

  She thought about going to see how her mom was doing. Brew them a pot of coffee to share and see if she could get her to participate in some problem solving. On second thought, it was probably just as well Eve find out how bad it really was on her own. Yesterday, she, Lesa, and Allie had managed to get the inside of the tasting center cleaned up with the help of a few distillery employees willing to put in a little overtime. Brandon and Justin, bless their hearts, had dropped everything and done communication control. As in, it was Justin’s job to communicate to any unwelcome guests that they were unwelcome, while Brandon answered the phone.

  There would be no tent. Unfortunately, her last hope had pooped out. She really didn’t know how they could hold the event inside, however. She didn’t know if there was enough crepe paper to cover the damage.

  Today was going to suck worse than yesterday, because she had this fiasco of a charity benefit to somehow pull off, but also she’d be dragging her mother through her worst fear—facing her friends and associates in person after her embarrassing day. But at least she had Eve and Allie to lean on, and that might help. All Eve had to do was hold herself together.

  But who was going to hold Eve together? She shook her head. Wasn’t self-pity something to be saved for late nights and boxes of pink wine? Well, at least there was a golf cart in the driveway, so she had a ride to the tasting center.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, with a side helping of lightning for emphasis. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  A horn honked, and Eve turned to see Lesa’s little car pull into her mother’s driveway. Brandon’s girlfriend jumped out and slid into the golf cart with Eve, a drink carrier full of coffee cups in one hand and a bag of something—pastry?—in the other.

  “Why so glum?” she asked. Eve waved at the dark sky overhead. “This weather. I have a feeling that it’s not the icing on today’s poop sandwich, but just another layer.”

  Lesa shrugged. “Rain used to get me down, but now it’s just weather. It happens.”

  Eve stared at her. Maybe it wasn’t a problem. For Lesa. She didn’t have the weight of her mother’s hopes and dreams on her shoulders. The wave of loneliness that had been lurking over her shoulder gathered itself and began to wash over her.

  But then Lesa’s expression changed. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she tilted her head. “You don’t know yet, do you?”

  “Know what?”

  She threw back her head and laughed. “Go! Get down the hill.” She pointed at the visitor center, which, Eve now realized, had lights blazing from the windows.

  She hit the gas pedal and ignored Lesa when she cried out, “Whoa!”

  The golf cart practically skidded to a stop at the front door and she was out of the seat and opening the door in less than three seconds.

  There, inside, she saw…she couldn’t believe it. The lights had been installed. There were counter-height tables with barstools filling the open space. And the bar. There was no sign of the black ooze that had contaminated the scene yesterday. Even the smell was gone. Oh, the bar! Rows of shot glasses filled shelves on one side of an enormous mirror, along with bottles of every brand of Blue Mountain—and Rainbow Dog—liquor that had ever been produced. Just like she and her dad had imagined all those years ago. The wood of the bar gleamed from the polishing it was receiving from Brandon and Justin, both of whom looked like, well, like they’d been up all night working.

  “Oh, you guys,” she breathed. “It’s done.”

  “Yeah. More or less,” Brandon told her, dropping the rag and stretching.

  Lesa handed him a cup of coffee and snuggled up to him for a hug before recoiling. “Ooh. You smell like you’ve been working all night.”

  He laughed and shrugged.

  “What do you think?” Justin asked as Allie came through the door from the gift shop carrying a spray bottle and roll of paper towels.

  “It’s beautiful. I can’t believe you guys did all this.” Eve was thunderstruck. The Blue Mountain Bourbon Boys were resourceful, but she had no idea they’d be able to pull off something this complicated in one night. They looked at each other, and then Brandon looked down while Justin busied himself digging through the bag of pastries.

  The bar—there was no trace of the ruined gunk from the day before. Either someone had found an alchemist to dissolve the crystallized mass of lacquer and unstain the destroyed wood, or it had been completely rebuilt overnight.

  Realization dawned. They hadn’t done this alone. There was no way they would even know how to do most of this.

  Nick.

  Nick was here. Her heart soared. He’d come back! She looked around for him. He—

  “He left,” Brandon said gently.

  “Oh. But…” Why? Why would he come back, do all this, and then just…leave?

  Well, she knew why he’d come back and do it. Because he was a good man. Even though he’d warned her he wasn’t sticking around and owed his father nothing, he cared about his work and wouldn’t want his name associated with the mess his father had left.

  But he wouldn’t stay. Not at her distillery and not with her. It shouldn’t hurt so much. She was resigned to the situation, she reminded herself. Her cell phone buzzed with her mother’s number on the display and she wished, more than anything, she could ignore it. She realized, perhaps for the first time ever, how much she resented the hell out of her needy mother.

  Today wasn’t the day to deal with her feelings. Instead she typed out a return message: Everything’s fine. Really fine, and hit send.

  “All righty, then!” She st
raightened her shoulders and let out a big breath. “I think we have a party to get through. Allie and Lesa, what happened to all of the raffle baskets you were putting together? Are they still at the Morgan’s house?”

  “They’re ready,” Allie said. “But are you okay? I know this has all been pretty crazy. Why don’t you go home and get a shower, have some breakfast”—she held up the last coffee and the donut bag—“and then rest for a little while before you get going?”

  “Nah. I’m going to go make sure Mom is functioning. I can shower later and rest when I’m dead.”

  “Who’s there?” A quavery voice called from the living room when Nick let himself into the kitchen.

  His dad sounded like an old man. Like he was eighty instead of barely fifty. Hard living was taking its toll. He’d been pissed off at Raleigh since he’d seen the video, but now all he felt was…tired.

  “It’s just me,” Nick said, trying not to step on Franklin on his way into the room. The dog jumped on him, then squatted right in front of Raleigh.

  “God damn it, dog!” Raleigh cursed from the couch, while Nick grabbed him up and ran for the front door. “Asshole doesn’t know how to behave.”

  “How long has it been since you let him out?”

  It looked like his father had lain down on the couch the previous morning and not moved a muscle since. Smelled like it had been even longer.

  “I don’t know, it hasn’t been—” Raleigh clicked the remote to check the time on the television, and cursed again. “Damn.”

  “How long, Dad?”

  “I don’t remember,” he muttered, slowly sitting up and groping the table next to him until his hand made contact with a beer can, which he tipped upside down into his mouth. Then he wiped his lips with the back of his hand and hung his head.

  Here they were. Again. “Raleigh—”

  “Don’t even say it.” He waved a hand in the air. “It’s just going to be the same thing. ‘Why do you do this to yourself?’ ‘Why can’t you stop?’”

  “Well?”

  “I tried to use a cheaper finish, which mucked things up. Then I tried to fix it, and that didn’t go well, and—” He hung his head.

  “All you had to do was stay sober long enough to clean up our tools and get the hell out of there. You promised.” The only thing Nick had asked of him since he’d been twelve, and once again, Raleigh let his disease beat back his desire to do the right thing. It was the reason Nick never made promises.

  Well, fuck that. Sometimes you had to come through for people you loved. Sometimes, you—

  His breath froze in his chest. Or maybe that was his heart, trapped, seizing because it knew, and Nick was trying to keep it locked up. He loved Eve. And he hadn’t been willing to come through for her.

  Oh, he’d done the good guy thing and finished the tasting center. But he’d done it because he needed to fix his mistakes to stay sober. And if he wasn’t sober, he was nothing. But then what? What did he have?

  He was so fucking scared of screwing up, he hadn’t been willing to take a chance on the one woman he’d been able to be himself with in his whole miserable life. Even without knowing he was an alcoholic in recovery, she knew who he was. And he knew who she was.

  Which meant that right now, right this minute, she was juggling six things with that stupid planner of hers in her right hand and her phone in the left, and her mother and her sister and that party… Well, at least she wasn’t going to be sitting around thinking about him.

  But what if he went and asked her to?

  To give him another shot.

  Franklin barked to be let back in, and Nick opened the screen for him. The little mutt scrabbled over to Raleigh, sat on his haunches, and barked at the old man. “Give me a minute here.” He ran a hand over his grizzled chin.

  “Does he need food? I’ll get it.” He needed to walk away from his dad and process his feelings.

  “No, he’s got all that shit. I’m talking to you.”

  “Okay.” Nick waited.

  “All right,” Raleigh finally said, putting his hands on his knees as though he planned to push himself to his feet.

  “All right, what?”

  “You seem to have it all figured out. Maybe I’ll give your thing a try.”

  “What thing?” Nick was completely lost.

  Raleigh waved a hand at him. “You’ve got your shit together. Hell, you even got the prettiest little gal in three states head over heels in love with you. Maybe if I do what you did, I’ll have a chance.”

  Realization dawned. “So you’re saying you’ll get some help? Check in somewhere and actually follow through with a program?”

  “I guess.” He tried to stand, but fell back against the couch. “Better hurry up and find me a rehab before I sober up and change my mind.”

  “I’ll do that. Just…sit back down.” He grabbed his phone and went into the kitchen to make some calls.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Thank you sooo much, Lorena,” Babs Howard cooed as she left. “I’m so glad you’re here today. Hold your head up, sister, and don’t let those assholes win.”

  Eve suppressed an eye roll, which she’d been doing all evening, as almost everyone addressed Lorena’s meltdown in overt or subtle ways—nearly everyone who gave Lorena an “atta girl” could also be overheard saying, “Can you believe she—”

  Her mother smiled graciously and nodded, as she’d done a thousand times today when anyone offered their support. Apparently kicking Raleigh had been seen by everyone—or at least all of Lorena’s crowd—as self-defense, and her outburst nothing more than truth. At least, that’s what they said to her face. Had she never told anyone where she’d come from? That she’d grown up in poverty and been a waitress in a biker bar before she’d married Jamie McGrath?

  There were no cracks in the facade Eve could see.

  Allie waddled from the gift shop into the nearly empty main room, rubbing her lower back. “Oh my God,” she said, as she waved good-bye to the last guest. “I’ve got how many more months of this to go? I need to be put on bed rest. Yesterday.”

  “You’d hate it, babe,” Justin said, dumping another handful of losing raffle tickets into the recycling bin.

  “And I’m not really sure who would take over your duties with the Jamie and David McGrath Foundation,” Lorena added. “Unless you plan to ask your sister, and she’s got enough on her plate.”

  Wow. Was that her mom defending Eve’s time?

  “After all, I was going to save this announcement for later, but I might as well tell you now. I’ve decided that we’ll be making this an annual event, and that Eve is to take over my position as CFO so I can devote more time to outreach.”

  So much for defending her time.

  “Evelyn, you should probably get your planner while we’re thinking about it.”

  She almost lied and said she didn’t have it, but no one would believe her. It was in her bag behind the gift shop counter.

  Eve went in to find it and saw the box of shot glasses sitting on the shelf behind the counter. Just like the ones she’d been counting the day Nick came in to ask her for tape. Remembered what had come next, their interlude in the supply closet. The brief flash of heat was followed by…emptiness. Damn. She’d never again get to see that smile of his shining down on her with that special little glint in his eye. Did she also have to give up that spark of spontaneity he’d left behind with her? That ability to take each day as it came and stop trying so hard to control the future?

  She pictured herself at forty, running around after her mother with her damned notebook, taking directions and— “No.”

  “Did you say something, Eve?” Allie stuck her head in the door. Something in her face must have alarmed her sister, because she came in and said, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Eve thought for a second and said, “Everything. But not for long.” With a flourish, she tossed the notebook into the tall trash can next to the cash register. She pus
hed past her sister—gently, because she wasn’t mad at Allie—and went back into the main room, where her mother blithely pushed buttons on the calculator she had next to a laptop and an old-fashioned ledger.

  “Oh, good. You’re back.” Lorena didn’t even look up. “Take a note about this—”

  “No.”

  The silence that filled the tasting center was so absolute, she could have sworn she heard Justin’s tattoos whispering to each other in shock.

  Everyone had stopped their cleanup activities and turned to stare at her.

  “What?” Lorena asked, incredulous.

  “I don’t want to be the CFO of the McGrath Foundation.”

  “Oh.” Her mother blinked. “Then what should we call your position?”

  “Nothing. Not for me. As a matter of fact, I’d like a little less responsibility from now on.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “Because I want to do something besides take care of shit that happened years ago that I didn’t have anything to do with.”

  The only gasp in the room came from Lorena, but Eve was pretty sure she felt a breeze when everyone else inhaled sharply.

  “What on Earth do you mean?” Lorena asked.

  “Everything you’ve done since Daddy died has been about making sure his memory lives on in some pseudo-colored facsimile of reality. Daddy didn’t give two shits about raising money for starving kids in Crockett County or Africa. All he cared about was this family, his girlfriend of the moment, and where his next drink was coming from.”

  Lorena stood, the color draining from her face. “How dare you talk about him that way.”

  “I dare because you won’t. You walk around pretending like he walked on water, and the rest of us tiptoe around trying to help you believe it. In the meantime, I managed to lose a perfectly wonderful man because he believes I’d choose this fricking distillery over him, and you know what?”

  Lorena shook her head.

  “I hate the taste of whiskey. Hate. It.”

  “Now she’s done it,” muttered Justin.

  Allie snorted, and Brandon sighed.