At this point, Walker turned away and drew in a deep breath.
“Hey!” CiCi cried and kicked him. “You’re not watching!”
“Do I have to?” he cringed.
“Yes, if you have hopes of getting an invitation to go upstairs with me tonight.”
After devouring the pecan, CiCi then held the bourbon ball around the flattened bottom of the candy and popped it into her mouth and sucked it like a lollipop without a stick. It was a tricky maneuver to pull off because the chocolate coating began to melt on her hands. Eventually, the operation simply became too messy, and CiCi put the whole thing in her mouth and slowly chewed until it was gone. After sweeping her tongue across her chocolate-glazed lips, she smacked them and looked at her chocolate-smeared hand. Catlike, she licked her hand clean while watching Walker watch her go through her little ritual.
“Done?” he asked in a tiny, desperate voice. “Please tell me you’re done.”
“Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever made a man beg before—and I wasn’t even trying.”
“Like hell you weren’t trying!”
He lunged for her but CiCi hopped up off the couch and evaded his clutches.
“As a matter of fact, I’m not done,” she announced haughtily and glanced at her empty glass. She snatched it from the table before them. “I want a drink of water.”
And she left the room and disappeared into the kitchen as Walker rose and followed closely behind.
“Got you now,” he murmured.
Remembering how Walker had pinned her against the sink the night of their date at the Old Talbott Tavern, CiCi anticipated his strategy and didn’t go to the sink. She filled her glass from the fridge dispenser and stood by the table. Not easy to trap your woman against that curved surface.
But she saw he was going to try.
Walker moved toward her, but she took a few steps to her left and effectively put the table between them.
“What do I have to do to catch you?” he asked as they circled the table in a clockwise fashion.
She put down her glass of water and continued to walk around the circumference of the table, remaining equidistant from her pursuer, then stopped and allowed him to come to her.
“You don’t have to catch me, Walker.” She pulled him so close their lips nearly touched. “You already did.”
This was the kiss for which they had both been waiting all evening—hell, all week. This was the kiss that started their night, the kiss that cast the spell.
Damn, did it feel good to be with him after so many days apart, and she was ready for him to take her. CiCi’s head fell to one side, and Walker’s lips traced gentle kisses along her collarbone and up the front of her neck to her chin, then her lips.
But he soon broke the kiss and stepped back.
“So I’ve caught you?” he asked, looking mildly confused.
She took a step toward him, smiling. “Yes.”
“Then it’s your turn to catch me,” he said, racing from the room and up the stairs.
CiCi froze in shock at Walker’s sudden departure, then nearly bent over double into laughter before dashing from the kitchen after him.
The edges of CiCi’s consciousness began to nudge her awake, and the first thing in her mind was a question.
Why did it smell like mash in her house? It wasn’t that close to the distillery but…
Her eyes flew open, thinking she had been dreaming of Walker and the scent that traveled about him—the yeasty fragrance of the mash. Smelling like that was a job hazard if one was a master distiller. Not that she minded the aroma—she loved it.
But Walker wasn’t next to her in the bed. Had he left? It was early, but he wasn’t the kind of guy to spend the night and then leave without saying good-bye.
CiCi sat up in bed and sniffed.
Something was cooking.
Walker was making breakfast!
After a hurried trip to the bathroom, CiCi threw on a robe and rushed downstairs to find Walker cooking bacon; that was the smell she’d associated with the mash. It could sometimes seem smoky as well as yeasty—rather like the faint scent of frying bacon or ham baking as it wafted upstairs from a distant kitchen in a large, rambling house.
He’d made bacon, scrambled eggs, and biscuits (refrigerated from a can) and was plugging in the coffeemaker as she walked into the kitchen.
It was ridiculously, insanely, wonderfully idyllic.
Handsome man in her kitchen who’d just spent the night in her bed making her feel all kinds of good in all the right places.
And he was making breakfast without request or complaint.
Oh, I could get used to this.
She stared at him, lips parted. Part of her wanted to blurt out that she loved him, and the other part wanted to rip off her robe and his clothes and have him take her right there on the kitchen table.
“You okay?” he asked, noticing her staring at him.
“Yes, fine.” She blinked and shook her head to clear away the cobwebs. “Tired.”
“I should think so.”
“But you look all bright-eyed and bushy tailed.” She went to him and kissed him on the lips. “How’d you manage that?”
“I slept well.”
“You slept?” she laughed. “I don’t remember that part!”
Had it been a weekend morning, CiCi knew they’d end up in bed again, probably spending most of the day there and eventually winding up in the shower together. Oh, that was a day to look forward to!
The summer before them promised so much fun: if they weren’t at her house, she thought, they’d be spending summer evenings, nights, and mornings at his new home just a short walk away.
But could she do the walk of shame in her own neighborhood on Main Street in Bourbon Springs? This was going to require some thinking. Maybe she could figure out a back way to and from Walker’s house. Like slipping into the bushes on occasion should she be spotted? Wearing camouflage? Digging a tunnel between their houses?
Crap, who was she kidding? Can’t hide that kind of thing in Bourbon Springs. And Walker was going to have to leave soon. At least his car was in the garage with the door down. But that didn’t mean his departure would go unnoticed. Her neighbors had eyes. And she bit her lower lip, wondering how good their hearing happened to be. Because one of the bedroom windows had been left open overnight, and she and Walker had gotten rather noisy during the wee hours.
During breakfast, they discussed Walker’s move. His mother and sister would be down to help, but he didn’t think his father would be with them. He seemed tense when he talked about his family and didn’t have much to say about his visit with them on Sunday afternoon. His anxiety transferred to her; CiCi had been around him enough to start getting a proper sense of his moods. She wondered whether he’d mentioned they were dating, but intuited it wasn’t the time to ask that question.
It was the end of a special evening and morning together, and CiCi found it difficult to part. But as she watched Walker leave, she was comforted by the thought that they were enjoying more and more of these special times. She arrived at work sleepy but contented, happy in the knowledge that the memories of the past several hours would sustain her through a likely drowsy day.
Her choice of attire reflected her anticipated mood: she was wearing a bright yellow skirt and matching white and yellow blouse with little daisies all over it. She was the sun which had fallen to Earth and had decided to flit around the Craig County Courthouse for no good reason. She was happy, giddy.
In love.
The deputy clerks noticed her mood and smiled at her, but no one said anything beyond asking how her weekend went. And while she could honestly say she was tired, an expected and unsuspicious response the Monday morning after BourbonDaze, that answer didn’t quite mesh with her loved-up demeanor that morning.
But then that thing called reality came along and swept happy notions from her mind like an eraser moving across a board.
Harriet called arou
nd nine, after CiCi had downed two cups of coffee and was feeling her typically perky self.
“Saturday? Of all days? Are you serious?”
“I’m sorry, CiCi,” Harriet said. “I tried to talk them down, but I wasn’t dealing with my contact in the auditor’s office. It was someone else. A real hard-ass.”
Harriet had just delivered CiCi the very unwelcome news that the auditor’s office had decreed that the entire civil file room, which contained every record for every open civil case in Craig Circuit Court, had to be cleaned, reorganized, inspected and approved. All because during the auditors’ most recent incursion into CiCi’s world, they had apparently gone into the file room, found an undisclosed number of misfiled records, and that had triggered a full filing-room cleaning party and reorganization.
And it had to be done as soon as possible, which meant over the long weekend.
So much for helping Walker move and meeting his family.
“They hate me, don’t they? They actually hate me! What did I do to these people—and for that matter—who are these people? Did I flip one of them off one day when they cut me off in traffic or take the last donut out of a box at some meeting?”
“Nothing like that,” Harriet assured. “They’re equal opportunity assholes.”
“But won’t moving all the files make it more likely that files will end up getting misplaced?”
“I brought that up. It didn’t matter.”
Harriet explained that on Saturday, one person from the auditor’s office would be present while CiCi and at least two other deputies or others of her choice reorganized the file room under the auditor’s representative’s watchful eye.
CiCi fretted that she wouldn’t be able to get anyone to come in to help her, but she had an idea, provided that her two proposed helpers were available and amenable to her request for help.
“They don’t have to be deputy clerks?”
“No, but the auditor’s office has to approve them.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem,” said CiCi, the wheels of her mind spinning.
Chapter 23
Walker usually looked forward to weekends, but not so much this one.
After CiCi had told him that she wouldn’t be able to help him move because of the audit, he was left to rely on the good graces of his mother and sister for assistance to supplement the small professional moving crew he’d hired. At least his father wasn’t coming down. They hadn’t spoken since their argument, and Walker wasn’t ready to deal with his dad yet. If his father had decided to come down to Bourbon Springs, it would’ve been a completely winless situation. At some point, they would’ve fought again, and CiCi’s presence or absence (take your pick, didn’t matter) would have been contemptuously noted by the elder man.
The movers were done within a few hours, and he was in his new home opening boxes, cleaning, and organizing well before lunchtime. CiCi had said she’d call when finished with the file room from hell, but by the time noon rolled around, he had had no texts or calls from her and began to realize it was unlikely she was going to get away from the courthouse any time soon. He hoped she’d be able to escape by the end of the day because the plan was to meet at the distillery for a late tour led by him, followed by dinner, most likely at The Windmill.
“She’s not gonna call?” Nina asked as she opened a box on top of Walker’s kitchen table and marked in a scrawled hand in black marker plates.
“Probably not.” Walker explained CiCi’s task at the courthouse as he continued to open other boxes stuffed with kitchen-related paraphernalia. “I’m worried about her. The audit’s got her stressed out.” He checked his phone again and saw he’d had two calls, but from a number he didn’t recognize so he ignored it, figuring that if CiCi wanted to contact him, she’d text.
“Why don’t you walk over there and get her?” Nina asked.
“Courthouse is locked, and if she’s not calling, she’s busy. Besides, she’s got two very capable helpers, so hopefully they’ll get the job done quickly.”
“Who are her helpers?” Nina asked.
“How in the hell did I ever let you talk me into this?” Brady asked CiCi as they stood in the doorway of the civil filing room.
“I didn’t. Your lovely wife did.”
“Yeah, my lovely wife who’s not here to share in this misery,” Brady said, pulling up his T-shirt to wipe his brow. He was sweaty from all the file moving and because the air-conditioning in the courthouse had been turned down due to the long holiday weekend.
“Your lovely pregnant wife who is at this moment carrying your child and resting comfortably at home on a hot day,” CiCi reminded the good Judge Craft.
Unwilling to rope her underpaid deputies into a thankless task on a long holiday weekend, CiCi had recalled that Brady had said to ask if she’d needed any help with the audit. She had taken him up on that offer by asking him to be there and help with the filing room cleanup that Saturday. Her thought had been that the auditor wouldn’t be as likely to be a complete bureaucratic nitpicker if a judge were around.
Wrong.
The judge’s presence did nothing to alter the general demeanor of the assistant auditor, whom she recognized as one of the minions that had descended upon the courthouse the day of the Big Stink. The auditor was wholly unimpressed by Brady’s identity. Nor was he visibly perturbed when the sheriff showed up. Kyle Sammons was the other helper CiCi had called to her aid.
The entire file room had been divested of every court record, then they’d cleaned (not that great, but enough to say they’d done something), and now it was time for the files to be returned to the shelves. Brady and Kyle, bless ’em, had moved almost every box. CiCi had moved a few boxes but had to stop because she was starting to have cramps. Between the audit and BourbonDaze, she’d suffered increasingly painful cramping episodes; too much stress and work was not conducive to keeping the condition at bay. Brady and Kyle had seen her distress, told her to take it easy, and had the boxes moved in no time.
The auditor gave the all clear, and the men began moving the boxes of files from the hall outside the clerk’s office back into the filing room as CiCi immediately got to work on getting the files back on the shelves. The auditor made absolutely no move to help them, claiming that he could not do so because regulations didn’t allow it.
“Walker chose a hell of a time to move,” Kyle grumbled, wiping the back of his neck with a bandana.
“He’d already picked his date when they dumped this little project into my lap,” CiCi explained and looked around to make sure the auditor was not in their midst. “At least he’s doing something that has a purpose. This is a complete waste of time.”
She wished she were with Walker to experience the excitement he was feeling as he moved into his new home. And she was so anxious to meet his family. Instead she was stuck doing the public’s business by cleaning out a file room.
Walker surely was having a better day than she was.
“Damn!”
He’d missed the last step coming down the front steps of his house and was sprawled on the ground, his knee and arm badly scraped.
Nina and Evelyn helped pull Walker to his feet, and his mother immediately started asking whether he knew where a first aid kit might be.
“Just unpacked it and put it in the bathroom and—ow!”
He’d tried to put his weight on his left ankle and cried out in pain.
“You’ve sprained it.” Nina sighed and had Walker put his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s get you inside.” Evelyn nodded in agreement with her daughter and went ahead of them to get the first aid kit.
Nina deposited her brother on his couch in the middle of the living room next to the kitchen, and their mother returned from the bathroom with a box of bandages, cotton balls, and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.
Walker held his left leg straight out and tried to rotate his ankle. But he winced as he did it. Likely sprained.
Now what?
There were still boxes to open and unpack, and stuff to get out of his car and the small trailer he’d rented to supplement the moving van and keep his moving costs down. It wasn’t fair to make his mother and Nina try to move that stuff. He knew they couldn’t.
His mother attended to his knee while he dabbed at his arm. She then handed the box of bandages to him and went to the kitchen to wash her hands.
“If you can’t walk, how are we gonna get this move done?” Nina asked, stuffing a pillow behind his back.
“You’re going to have to call someone for help,” his mother declared as she returned to the living room.
“Bo, Hannah, Lila, and Goose are all busy at the distillery,” he said, “and Brady and Kyle are helping CiCi at the courthouse.” Walker pulled out his phone. Nothing from CiCi.
“We need help, Walker. Or can you leave that rented trailer full for a few days?” his mother asked.
“No, gotta return it tonight or I’ll pay a huge fee.”
“There has to be someone else we can call,” Nina said. “What about Jana?”
“Good one, sis,” he joked.
“She’s serious, Walker,” his mother informed him. And the two women, one on each side of him, gave him the same look.
“First, I’m not calling her over to my new house,” Walker said, thinking but not saying aloud especially since my girlfriend hasn’t even seen my new place. “Second, Jana’s probably as busy as everyone else at the distillery.”
“What time does she get off work?”
“On Saturdays, I think the last tour starts at three,” Walker said. “But that doesn’t mean—”
“Call her,” Evelyn demanded. She pointed to the cell phone Walker still held in his hand. “Or call this new girlfriend of yours and see if she can help.”
Distiller's Choice (Bourbon Springs Book 4) Page 21