The Good Chase

by Hanna Martine

  She smiled with her eyes. Score.

  Drying her hands on her jeans, she reached out and grabbed the bottle. Holding it in one palm, she read the label, her head bobbing from side to side in a meh gesture.

  “It was a gift,” he amended. “You can’t insult me if it’s crap.”

  “It’s not crap.” She shrugged as she set it back on the table. “Just not remarkable. Marketing did an excellent job on it once the big conglomerate bought the distillery. Fairly widespread, easy to come by. A lot of people love it.”

  “You’re just not one of them?”

  “Perhaps I’m biased. I knew someone who once worked in that distillery over in Scotland, and the experience when the small place was bought out wasn’t the best.”

  Interesting.

  “You know,” she said, “I would’ve given you something better, a little more unique, if you’d come by my station today.”

  “You told me not to.”

  “No, I didn’t. I not-so-subtly, nonverbally told you that flirting with me in my place of business would get you nowhere.”

  “Ah.” He leaned a knee on the picnic bench. Closer to her. “We won the tournament, and the guys voted to come back to the campground to drink to victory instead of hanging out at the fest. I have to say I’m glad for that. We were surrounded by hundreds of bagpipes the whole day. It was awful. But it made me play better so I could get out of there faster.”

  She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Where on earth did this hatred of bagpipes come from?”

  “Undergrad at Boston College. I think they pass those things out to the locals at Starbucks or something.”

  “Well, I love them, and if you keep making fun of them I’m going to put you in a kilt and make you march around with the bands.”

  “No. Please no.”

  Her smile was incredible. Really, really incredible. And the way she tilted her head, the long stream of white-gold hair falling to one side, left him a little speechless.

  “You ever wear a kilt?” she asked.

  “No. No plans to, either. Ever.”

  Her eyes flicked down to his legs and she murmured, “Shame.”

  The hard part was making sure he didn’t look too smug or too excited. Then she seemed to realize that she’d spoken aloud, and bit the inside of her cheek before moving to the end of the table to close the little stove and unscrew the canister of fuel.

  A change of subject was due, because the last thing he wanted was for her to feel uncomfortable. He was enjoying this way too much.

  “Looks like you’ve done this before.” He gestured around the site.

  She wiped down the damp dishes and stacked them in a labeled plastic bin. “First time this year. I bought myself a big Christmas present last year and splurged on all this stuff.”

  “Did you just wake up one morning and think, ‘You know what? What I’m missing is more ice-cold showers’?”

  “I was thinking that I needed more run-ins with skunks, actually.” She peeked up at him as she slowly folded the layers of dish towels, but as she went on, she spoke to the cloth. “I grew up camping. They were my favorite vacations. Last year I was asked to be at the Gleann Highland Games at the last minute, and rather than stay somewhere an hour away, I borrowed a tent and some supplies and I fell in love with it all over again.” She made the final fold and looked up at him. “What about you? This your first time camping?”

  No. But his experience camping when he was young hadn’t been for vacation, and when he thought of tents, he didn’t have fond memories.

  “Yes,” he replied, and then inwardly kicked himself. This woman had spent her childhood outdoors and was clearly a woman with more facets than he’d originally given her credit for, but . . . the shame lingered. It glued his lips shut. And not for the first time, he hated how that made him feel.

  The fire released a loud pop, and Shea turned to slant a big dry log over the top of the burning ones. She definitely knew what she was doing, and he found that he really enjoyed watching her. It took his mind off the past.

  “So there’s no Scottish in you?” she asked.

  “Couldn’t say. Genealogy wasn’t exactly on my family’s to-do list.”

  “I know a little.” She poked at the fire. “What’s your last name?”

  “Byrne.”

  Setting down the long stick, she looked at him curiously. “Really? So what’s your first?”

  “My parents and sister and brother call me J.P., but they’re the only ones who do.”

  “Hmmm. J.P. Could stand for a lot of things.”

  “You’ll never guess.” Please, please don’t guess.

  “J.P. Byrne. You sound like a bank. Like the guy I saw last night.”

  He was confused. “Dan?”

  “No. You. Bespoke Byrne.”

  “Bespoke Byrne?”

  Was it his imagination, or did a slight chill suddenly fall over them? She’d been warming up to him, too. Ah, that must be it. The fact that it was going well was freaking her out. She’d bent her rule about flirting with guys she met while working, but now he got the distinct sense that her retreat had something to do with his job. Or his money.

  Then she gave another little shrug and it was gone, leaving him to wonder if it had been there at all.

  “Just something I do, give names to people,” she said. “You were Rugby to me at first. Then Rugby Byrne. Then, last night, Bespoke Byrne.”

  “Not Camping Byrne?”

  She twisted her face exaggeratedly as she assessed him. “No. You’re Rugby Byrne again. And for that, I’m glad.”

  He considered that, thinking he understood. “You know, I’m not anything like Dan. I mean, we have the same job at the same company, but all that showboating and drunken obnoxiousness, that’s not me.”

  She took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  “I’m kind of desperate to prove that to you. If you’ve changed your mind and want me to go, I will, but I don’t want to.”

  The next few seconds were endless. Then Shea sat down at the table, pulled his whisky bottle closer, and flipped her clear-water blue eyes up to him.

  “So,” she said, making his heart jump a bit, “do you really want to talk about Dan, or do you want to drink this?”

  He sat down probably a bit too fast, but it made her mouth twitch into a smile. Reaching into her plastic crate of camping stuff, she pulled out two metal coffee mugs, blue with white flecks.

  “Not exactly the fancy ones I had last weekend,” she said. “Or the ones I have at the Amber.”

  “I’ve never been there.”

  Her hand paused slightly as she pulled out the whisky’s stopper. “I’m starting to be glad about that.”

  “Yeah,” he said, blatantly staring. “So am I.”

  She poured a small splash into each mug and pushed his across the wood.

  “So what do I do?” he asked.

  She narrowed her eyes, and he thought that he was beginning to identify her more playful looks. “I saw you last weekend. You know what to do.”

  “Only because I watched a video online about it last summer and remembered.”

  “Last summer?”

  Wrapping his fingers around the mug as though it were coffee, he smiled at her over the rim. “After I met you.”

  “Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Well, I thought you might’ve been a Brown Vein.”

  He laughed. “A what?”

  “A Brown Vein. Someone who knows whisky so well it’s part of their blood.”

  “One of your names again?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Tell me some more.”

  “There’s a Drinker, and a Hot Air.”

  “Let me guess. Both of those were also part of my tasting group.”

  She grinned. “Y
ep. I’d call their wives Dates, people who are just along for the ride. And then there are Haters.”

  “Self-explanatory.”

  “Exactly.”

  This woman was intensely amusing. He could probably sit and listen to her talk all night. If there wasn’t something else he’d like to be doing with her, too.

  “You don’t think that’s a little snobbish?” he asked.

  She drew back a bit. “I don’t mean it like that. But it helps me relate to customers if I can get the labels right. I know how to approach them or how to tailor a tasting.”

  “Makes sense, then.” Swirling the mug, he looked at it as though it were glass and he could watch the whisky churn inside. “I think, if I had to choose, I’d pick bourbon over Scotch.”

  She pressed her elbows to the table. Her gaze turned inward. Dreamy, he’d dared to say. Her lips curved slightly upward. “I love bourbon, too.” Then she gave a little shake of her head. “My granddad didn’t, though, and he was the one who taught me all about whisky with just a y. Scotch whisky.” When he gave her a quizzical look, she added, “All other whiskey is spelled with an e-y at the end, except for Canadian whisky, which is just the y.”

  “Aha.”

  “He claimed the e-y stuff wasn’t rooted well enough, wasn’t historical, and I get where he’s coming from, but I don’t necessarily agree. I love it all for different reasons.”

  “Historical?” He shifted on the bench, trying to scoot closer and cursing the table between them. “Explain.”

  She gestured to his mug. “Okay, give it a nose.”

  He did, using the three-step process he’d found on the Internet, which seemed to have impressed her.

  “Smell that? Close your eyes.”

  He did.

  “Picture yourself standing in a green valley, where the rain is little more than a fine mist bringing out the scent of the grass. And as you’re walking along there’s an old stone wall that’s been there for centuries, and clumps of purple heather. It’s so quiet you can hear sheep and cows in the distance, but you can’t see them. If you’re near the coast, you can smell the salt in the air when the wind turns the right way. Along an old road there’s a pub with a thatched roof, and when you go inside, the place smells of peat fire and the polish they used on the wood bar just that morning. Everyone speaks in such a lovely accent, and as you sip their favorite whisky, you can taste their stories.”

  Entranced. There really was no other word to describe what he felt at that moment. Byrne didn’t want her to stop describing things, but she did. And when he opened his eyes, the look on her face told him she spoke from memory. It made him want her more, and he didn’t think that was even possible.

  She lifted her mug in a toast. “Now let’s drink.”

  Though he raised the mug to his lips, he didn’t take a sip. Instead, he watched her drink. The moment her mug went back, her eyes fluttered closed. She worked the whisky in her mouth, at the back of her jaw, chewing it, like the random guy on the Internet video had once instructed him. There was elegance to the way she did it, however. Elegance and . . . sensuality. She looked nearly orgasmic.

  Her throat worked, the whisky sliding down, and then she opened her eyes. She glanced at his still-full cup. “You didn’t drink.”

  I wonder why.

  “Sorry.” Act casual. “Was watching you to make sure I was doing it right.”

  She silently set her mug on the table. Licked her lips. “You do it right.” Then she hastily added, “I saw you, remember? Last week.”

  Was it only last week? It seemed like they’d been doing this dance forever.

  In the silence, in the stillness, just the flames behind her moved. Only the logs made sound as they popped and sizzled, and then came muffled giggles from the next campsite as a dad tried to wrangle his toddlers back into their tent.

  “You did skip out before I got to the tasting part,” she said. “Want me to give you the VIP tour?”

  “Please.”

  “Okay. Close your eyes again.”

  He grinned. “But then I’ll miss my mouth.”

  Jesus, her smile. A full-on, uninhibited, all-the-teeth, crinkles-under-the-eyes blast of one hundred percent beautiful.

  Holding her gaze, he slowly pressed the mug to his mouth and closed his eyes. Feeling a little like Luke with the blast shield down, he trusted in his Obi-Wan and tipped back his head, letting the whisky roll past his lips and settle in the back of his throat.

  “There,” she breathed. “Do you taste the sun on the fields of barley? The water from the lochs? The smoke from the ancient peat bogs? The people’s pride? The history?”

  He swallowed. This bottle was half-gone, having been drunk by himself and nameless others back in the city, and yet he’d never enjoyed it a quarter as much as he did just then.

  When he opened his eyes, she’d leaned back a bit, questioning him with a squint.

  All he thought was, if this was how she did tastings at the Amber, holy shit, no wonder that place was so popular and that she was such a hit.

  “I left out the part about the dirty men who work in the distilleries,” she said. “And how rank the mash smells.”

  “And I thank you for that.” But he still drank what was left in his mug, again tasting everything she’d just described.

  She laughed and turned sideways, throwing one leg over the back of the picnic bench. A water bottle sat at the far end of the table, and she unscrewed the cap to take a sip.

  He nodded at the bottle. “Don’t some people add water to whisky?”

  “You can.” She sipped the water again. “It cuts the alcohol and brings out the flavor. Want to try?”

  The easiest thing would have been to just reach across the six inches and take the water bottle, but Byrne’s life had never been easy, so why start now?

  He stood up and she eyed him questioningly. But he wasn’t leaving. No way. Not yet. Instead he walked around the table to her side. He straddled the bench, facing her. The fire’s heat coated the right side of his body. She sat so still that for a moment he thought that time might’ve stopped. Maybe he wanted it to.

  Taking the whisky bottle, he tipped a bit more into his mug. Shea was still holding the water bottle, and he asked for it with a lift of his eyebrows and a point of his finger. She answered with a nod but didn’t make a move to give it to him, so he reached for it. Slid his hand over hers. With the tiniest of gasps, she released the bottle.

  The first touch is always the best, and he let it sink in, let himself memorize how it felt.

  “Just a few drops,” she said, after clearing her throat.

  “Gotcha.” He did as the expert instructed. “Is that enough?”

  “Sure.” Though she hadn’t looked away from his face.

  Under the pretense of getting more comfortable on the hard wood bench, he inched closer to her. “Do you add water to your whisky?”

  She licked her lips. My God.

  “Sometimes.”

  Though he clutched the blue-and-white mug in his hand, it seemed nonexistent. Completely unimportant. The only thing he saw was Shea.

  “Aren’t you going to taste it?” she whispered.

  He was already leaning in. “Absolutely.”

  And then her mouth belonged to him, her sweet whisky lips impossibly perfect, their movement open and yielding. He sank a little deeper, and her mouth let him in. Cupping a hand around her neck, he couldn’t believe how soft her skin was underneath that fall of hair.

  God, this kiss. This kiss. A whole year of anticipation had been backed up behind it, and now the taste of her rocketed through his body. The delicious whisky taste of her.

  When she tilted her head more and he felt the smooth slide of her tongue against his, he made some sort of unintelligible sound. She smiled against his lips and pulled back. His ha
nd on her neck loosened.

  “I like that you’re here,” she said. “In this place. With me.”

  He nudged closer. Their legs touched. Where his whisky mug had gone, he had no idea. Didn’t care.

  “Not gonna lie,” he said. “I straight up want you.”

  A small line of conflict appeared between her eyebrows, but then it vanished as she touched his face. “I want you, too, but—”

  He strained for her mouth and kissed her again. Kissed away whatever but was about to come out. He loved the way her hand curled around his head.

  “—but I have those rules,” she continued, breaking away again.

  He groaned. “Right, right.”

  “I’ve been thinking, though.” A little tease of a kiss. A troublemaker’s gleam in her eye.

  “Yeah?” Suddenly he felt like a dog whose owner was dangling a leash by the front door.

  “About how I’ve already basically bent them. And how it might be fun to completely break them. Just for tonight.”

  “Yes.” He grabbed her around the waist and hauled her up against him. She was tall but also whisper thin, and she came to him fast.

  “But—”

  “No buts.”

  She laughed. “But all I have is the tent. I don’t do car sex. This is kind of a big stretch for me as it is.”

  “Tent sex sounds amazing. In fact, the thought of it really turns me on.”

  She still seemed a little worried. “I think there needs to be some sort of sign that I’m doing the right thing.”

  “How about this?”

  Now he had her whole body up against him as he kissed her, and he felt her everywhere.

  The hand on his head slid around so she had a death grip on his neck, while her other hand made a fist over the Wharton emblem on the front of his sweatshirt. Her mouth pressed harder onto his, and he wanted to tell her to go ahead and be as strong or violent as she wanted, because if she was going to stretch her rules for him, he wanted her to be as happy as he was at that moment.