The Distiller's Darling (River Hill Book 2)

by Rebecca Norinne

  “I wouldn’t dare.” Tanya grinned at her. “I’m perfectly happy back here, out of the spotlight.”

  “Nice try,” Naomi muttered, then raised her voice. “Mom, don’t you think Tanya’s boobs look great in that dress?”

  Her mother’s eagle eye fastened on Tanya’s impressive cleavage. “Tanya, go talk to Dr. Mutternauer. He loves busty, unavailable blondes.”

  Tanya rolled her eyes. “That’s me.”

  “I’m going to make you a t-shirt that says Busty Unavailable Blonde,” Naomi said.

  “Oh, good, I’ll wear it to the kids’ soccer games.” With that, Tanya headed off to her target, an undecided Board member.

  Naomi would be glad when the hospital Board made their decision. The meeting to decide who would be the next Chief of Medicine at San Francisco General was in a few weeks, and as it got closer, her parents were getting more frenetic in their attempts to seal the deal for her father. Hence her presence here, at yet another charity gala. This one benefitted the city’s food bank, so she could hardly begrudge it, but she was definitely more weary of the parade of social events this year than she usually was.

  She loved her family dearly but had never managed quite the same amount of separation as Noah had from his. But then, his dream career fell right in line with what his family thought he ought to be doing. They’d just wanted him to do it for them, not himself. Naomi’s family didn’t think art was a real job. And if she wasn’t going to be a doctor or a lawyer, they would prefer she marry one.

  She suppressed a shudder. Marriage was the last thing she wanted to think about. Especially here. Right on cue, her mother tapped her shoulder. “Naomi. Avi Hershfeld is here.”

  “So?”

  “So, you should talk to him.”

  “You forced me to go on a date with Avi when I was sixteen. He groped me in the back of the car and then told me I should get implants like his sister.”

  “He’s a very successful entertainment lawyer now.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me at all.”

  “Well, what about—”

  Naomi turned to her mother, surprised by the sudden rage that was boiling in her belly. She’d been listening to the litany of available men in her parents’ circles for years. Why it was making her so angry today, she had no idea. “I’m not interested. I’m here to help Dad. I’m happy to help Dad. I want him to get what he wants. But why can’t you be interested in what I want?”

  Her mother blinked. “What do you want?”

  Naomi sighed. “Did you know that I just signed a lucrative contract with Z Gallery?”

  “Good for you, dear. What does that have to do with your relationship status?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, then.” Her mother heaved a small, satisfied sigh as though she’d won the argument. “When you find the right man, Naomi, you’ll know.”

  Naomi rolled her eyes. The hurt she felt whenever her mother showed she thought marriage was the only thing good enough for her daughter was an old, familiar ache. But she wasn’t going to resolve it here, in the middle of a crowded ballroom. She was pretty sure therapists didn’t make house calls, let alone gala calls.

  Although there probably were some pretty good psychologists in the crowd tonight. She eyed the people around her, wondering if she could trick somebody into convincing her mother to attend therapy.

  “Naomi.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I’m speaking to you, dear.”

  “Sorry. What?”

  “Can you ask your father what the name of that whiskey he liked at dinner last night was? I want to pick some up for his office.”

  “Brennan’s,” Naomi said without thinking. Her mother’s sudden silence made her realize what she’d just said. Naomi never—never—knew random trivia about her father’s alcohol preferences. She looked over at her mother, who was looking back at her with a raised eyebrow. “I mean, I think it was Brennan’s. I’ll, um, go ask him.”

  The very last thing she needed was her mother learning anything about Iain Brennan. The woman was a fiend with Google. Plus, Naomi had shut the door in Iain’s face and barely spoken to him for days. He was probably on his way out of town right about now.

  Her phone buzzed as she escaped from her mother’s orbit. She glanced down at the notification to see a text from Angelica. She grinned. Noah’s girlfriend was swiftly becoming a good friend, and she was glad. Thank goodness it hadn’t gotten awkward between them. The content of the text wiped the smile straight off of her face.

  Angelica had taken Iain shopping? To outfit the apartment above Max’s garage? What was happening? Was the man relocating to River Hill? She thought he had two months to get his sales deals in order for the new line of whiskey. She’d assumed that meant he’d be traveling up and down the coast, hustling. Or whatever one did to sell whiskey. Avoiding him was going to be a lot harder if he was staying around for another sixty days. On the other hand … he was only here for two more months. That was what he’d said, specifically. Then it was back to Ireland. Two months of fantastic sex sounded pretty damn nice.

  She flipped her phone over against her palm, running her thumb along the smooth case thoughtfully. Her last piece for Z Gallery was due in a similar timeframe. She’d need to supervise the installation and attend the opening. An easy out if he got clingy when it came time to part. Naomi let her lips curve into a smile. Maybe she could have her cake, and sleep with it, too.

  “Miss Naomi!” A familiar voice broke into her musing, and she turned with the smile still on her face.

  “Hi, Luis. I didn’t realize you’d be here.” She pursed her lips. “How silly of me. Of course you are.”

  Luis Montero was one of her father’s best friends. He was perilously close to being a celebrity chef, as his restaurants won as much acclaim as his high-profile relationships. She’d always adored him, and secretly wondered why such an interesting man seemed to have such a genuine friendship with her extremely boring father. When she’d been in her late twenties, Luis had finally let her in on some of the more hair-raising exploits the two of them had shared before Naomi and Jacob had been born. The friendship made a little more sense now, but she still couldn’t picture her father doing any of the things Luis had described. Or her mother, for that matter.

  She hugged the older man, then let him grasp her arms and kiss her cheek before pushing her back to look her over. “You have opinions?”

  “You’re a credit to your family,” Luis said.

  “Great. Just what I’ve always wanted to be.”

  He laughed. “I saw something about Z Gallery. Big time stuff, Miss Naomi.”

  “Thanks. I’m pretty excited about it.”

  “You going to make something for my next restaurant?”

  “I don’t know. Are you going to pay me for it?” she teased. He’d given her one of her first big breaks, displaying several pieces she’d created during her Tuscan phase in one of his popular restaurants. Sure, she wanted to make it on her own artistic talents, but she wasn’t opposed to a bit of nepotism when it benefited her career. Plus, she’d given them to him for free, and when the restaurant had closed a few years ago, he’d sold them for a tidy profit, something she was fairly sure he wasn’t aware she knew.

  “We’ll work something out,” he said.

  “What kind of restaurant are you opening next?” It seemed like Luis was always opening something. His restaurants were always successful, and he didn’t stick to one type of cuisine, something she appreciated.

  “My girlfriend calls it hipster comfort food.” His latest girlfriend was an actress on a TV crime drama. Naomi hadn’t met her, but Luis tended to have relatively good taste in women. Nearly all of his exes were still friends with him. If she were interested in having relationships, she might have asked how he managed it. Two months enthusiastically fucking Iain Brennan wouldn’t count as a relationship, would it? Nah.

  “We’ve got the design and most of the initial menu worke
d out,” Luis was saying. “Working on vendor agreements now. Gotta get the very best behind the bar and in our kitchen, you know? I’m trying to find all new stuff for this one, introduce people to tastes they haven’t had before.”

  Vendor agreements. Naomi opened her mouth, then closed it. Iain’s new whiskey was probably the sort of thing Luis was looking for. One word from her, and Iain would have a contract with one of the biggest restaurant owners in California. She could use her connections to help him. Just like her mother would for her father.

  Something uncomfortable squirmed in the base of her stomach, and she felt herself going cold. If she put in a good word for Iain right now, it could be a huge break for his career. But it would turn her into The Supportive Girlfriend. She wasn’t his girlfriend. She wanted him to do well in his chosen field, and she certainly hoped that his new brand succeeded. But using her social connections to make it happen for him?

  The idea made her faintly nauseous. It was the same feeling she got every time she stood at the door of her parents’ penthouse, waiting for her mother to open it and ask why she wasn’t married yet, or if she’d met the son of one of the members of the hospital’s Board yet.

  “I hope it goes well,” she blurted. “I’m sorry, Luis, I’m supposed to be asking my dad something.”

  She fled, leaving Luis alone. He’d cope. She, on the other hand, was in desperate need of some time to think. She found a bathroom and locked herself in, leaning against the door and closing her eyes.

  Why was nepotism fine for her own career, but bad when it came to helping Iain? She rubbed her forehead and wondered if she ought to see if any of the fancy psychologists hobnobbing in the crowd wanted to give her a freebie in the back hallway. She clearly had some issues to work out.

  And now, faint guilt was starting to overtake her. Sure, she’d been sleeping with Iain, and had extensive and fairly lurid plans to continue doing so, but he was also a perfectly nice guy. Noah, Max, Angelica, and her other friends all seemed to like him a lot, too. She could have done him the favor as a friend. Couldn’t she?

  Except asking for this particular favor in this specific crowd didn’t come off as friendship. It brought her dangerously close to Stepford territory. And she wasn’t going there. Ever.

  She sighed. She couldn’t handle helping Iain the way her mother would expect her to. A flicker of the white towels folded neatly on the counter by the sinks caught her eye. For some reason, her mind went back to her office, and the logo she’d sketched while she’d been pondering Max’s menus.

  Sometimes, when she was working out a design plan, she let her fingers draw whatever they felt like. It was the closest using pen and ink ever felt to working with clay, leaving herself at the mercy of whatever creative breeze the universe felt like throwing her way. That day, what had blown in was a logo for Whitman’s Revival, the W forming bold strokes accented by curving serifs that led into the dots of holly-like berries and quickly-drawn tiny sparkles and leaf shapes. It really was the perfect logo, evoking the nostalgia of handmade with some of the flavors that Iain had described to her.

  Maybe she could help him in a different way. She couldn’t bring herself to talk to Luis for Iain, but she could take the branding job he’d been trying to hire her for since he’d arrived in River Hill. Helping him with her actual skills was a far cry from begging her friends and family to play nice. Iain was a good marketer, a great salesman. With the right branding package, he’d meet his quota without even trying. And then she could sleep easy. Or not sleep, if her two-months-of-hot-sex plan worked out the way she was hoping.

  She pulled her phone out and fired off a text to Iain before she could rethink it. I’ll do your logo.

  12

  “Thank you for doing this,” Iain said, the pad of his index finger tracing over the design Naomi had created for Whitman’s Revival. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure I’d hear from you again. You kind of ghosted me.” They were in her kitchen once again, this time sitting across from each other at her table discussing the logo and branding package he’d just signed a contract to hire her to develop. Finally.

  He glanced up in time to catch her looking away guiltily. “Yeah, about that—”

  “I’m not asking you to explain yourself. I get it. We had some fun, and now it’s time to move on.”

  Naomi’s eyes came back around, the guilt replaced with what Iain thought looked a whole lot like contemplation. “Funny you should mention that.”

  “Funny how?”

  “I was thinking,” she said, her finger swirling a pattern on the table that separated them. “You’re leaving in two months, and it would be a shame if we didn’t spend that time ... hanging out.” Her eyes bored into his, as if daring him to misunderstand what she was inferring.

  His lips quirked up into a smirk. “Why, Miss Klein, are you asking me to fuck you senseless until I board a plane back to Ireland?”

  She tossed him a wicked smile full of promise. “You have to admit; we’re pretty damn good at it.”

  “The best,” he agreed. He felt his chest sawing in and out as his breathing became deeper and more labored. Iain couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt such heady anticipation. Oh, wait, yes, he could. It was that night in San Francisco when he and Naomi had practically run from that dive bar to his hotel. He’d been so ready for her that he’d ripped her dress off before the door to his room had locked behind them.

  “So, what do you say, Brennan? You want to spend the next sixty days seeing how many orgasms we can give each other?”

  That was all the invitation Iain needed. Abruptly, he stood, his chair scraping over the black-and-white-checked linoleum and then crashing to the floor. He stalked around the fifties-style diner table and fisted his hands in Naomi’s hair. He bent at the waist and let his lips hover scant centimeters from her parted ones. He could feel the warmth of her breath mingling with his own. “What do you say we get started on that now?”

  She licked her lips. “Yes, let’s.”

  Permission granted, Iain’s mouth crashed down onto Naomi’s with a fierceness he hadn’t anticipated. He knew he’d been craving another taste of her, but he hadn’t realized just how much until their tongues twisted and slid together. He groaned and took their kiss deeper. Naomi wrapped her arms around his neck and tugged him closer, as if she wanted to climb him like the oak tree in her front garden.

  They broke apart, and Iain sucked in a lungful of air. “Bedroom. Now.”

  She hopped up onto the table and shook her head. Reaching for his belt buckle, she said, “Kitchen. Now.”

  “So demanding,” he chuckled, letting her fingers work their magic. When she wrapped them around his cock and stroked upward, her thumb coasting over his crown, he hissed, and his head fell back with a moan. God, this woman knew exactly how to get him going.

  Naomi wrapped her long, lithe leg around his hip and tugged him forward. “I want you inside me.”

  All at once, realization hit, and Iain paused his forward momentum. Flattening his palms on either side of Naomi, he groaned—and not the kind that usually preceded having sex. “Shit, I don’t have a condom.” They’d used the one he carried in his wallet the last time he’d been here, and when she’d kicked him out afterward, he hadn’t gotten around to replacing it. Hadn’t seen the point, really.

  Naomi studied him intently for a few charged beats. “I don’t have any either. But I have an IUD, and I get tested three times a year whether I need to or not. I’m clean.”

  So was he, but … damn.

  Naomi’s words—her offer—rattled around inside his head. The only time he’d ever gone without protection was his first time. After which he’d spent two solid weeks convinced life as he knew it was over. It wasn’t until his girlfriend—who’d also been a virgin—had told him she’d had her period that Iain had been able to breathe again. He’d promised himself he’d never put himself through that again.

  But this was different. Wasn’t it?

&nbs
p; He and Naomi weren’t two awkward teenagers fumbling around in the dark while their parents had dinner upstairs, and he certainly wasn’t a two-pump chump anymore either. That had been the worst part of that whole ordeal; he hadn’t meant to come in Mary. He’d thought he had plenty of time to pull out once he’d gotten her off. That was the Catholic way, after all. Unfortunately, things hadn’t quite gone according to plan, and he’d been wrapping it up ever since.

  Could he do this? He trusted Naomi. And that was the craziest part of all. He did, absolutely. He hadn’t known her long, but he knew deep in his gut that she wasn’t lying just to get him to fuck her. Back home, that wasn’t always the case. His name—and the sizable fortune that went with it—was a hell of a motivator for a particular kind of person. Ones he usually tried to stay far, far away from.

  “Never mind,” Naomi said, breaking into his thoughts. “Forget I said anything.” She looked embarrassed by his silence, and Iain realized she must have taken it as rejection. She dropped her leg and tried to slide away.

  “Don’t move; I’m thinking.”

  She sighed. “Iain, if you have to think that long about whether or not you want to go bare, it’s not the right decision. Don’t worry about it. It was a dumb idea anyway.” Pasting a fake smile on her face—he’d seen her real one, and this wasn’t it—she tried to lighten the mood. “Let’s go in the living room. There are plenty of ways to get each other off without having sex.” She waggled her eyebrows, and he almost believed the act.

  But the thing was, he didn’t want her going down on him. Okay, sure. He’d love that—some other time. Right now, he wanted to make her feel good, and hopefully recapture some of the spark they’d lost.

  “I like you here just fine.” He nuzzled the spot just behind her ear that he knew turned her on.

  She let out a contented sigh, but her body remained tense.

  Time to turn things up a notch, Brennan.

  “On second thought,” he said, tugging her forward until her ass was almost off the table, “I like you better here.” He dropped to his knees between Naomi’s spread legs and raised his gaze to meet hers.