She went home as Bo had requested, but she got no sleep that night. For a very long time, she sat on her front porch in an old rocking chair with several layers of old quilts wrapped around her and gazed northward as the fire burned itself out. And while it was horrible to watch, there was still comfort in seeing the flames die since it indicated that no other rickhouses had caught fire. Lila wondered how long that was going to be a danger, but thought it had to be a good sign that at the height of the inferno, there had not been another explosion or series of explosions.
Lila texted Hannah after midnight, telling Hannah she was home and saying that she hoped she felt better. She had hoped Hannah might call with an update, but realized that if Hannah was still upset and unwell, she would be sharing her concerns with Emma, Bo, and Kyle. Lila felt just a little bit left out.
After three, Lila finally couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer and fell into bed with her clothes on. As her head hit the pillow, she wondered whether she shouldn’t have gone to Emma’s house instead of coming home. Emma had to be worried sick about what had happened and Lila had completely neglected to remember that Emma was home and alone. But before her pangs of guilt could get the better of her and stir her to get out of bed, Lila fell into oblivion, with the images of fire, rain, and darkness swirling in her mind as she drifted off into a fitful, restless sleep.
Lila snapped into consciousness from a dream she could not recall except for how utterly panicked she felt upon awakening. For a few moments, she could not fathom why she was in her own room and wearing the clothes she knew she had worn the previous night. After her mind adjusted to her circumstances, Lila rushed downstairs, flung open the front door and looked toward the distillery.
The sky was the color of dirty snow, ashen and dull, and from the distillery grounds into the air a thin, sinister trail of dense black smoke snaked upwards. It was cold, raw, and damp, and the air was filled with the aroma of bourbon and burning wood. Lila surveyed her yard and the surrounding area. Even though it had rained, there still was a discernible layer of ash or something oily on many surfaces. And this was the first time she’d been able to get a look at Bo’s SUV in the full light of day, even though it was a cloudy January morning and the sun’s light meager. The remains of the barrel were still on the SUV, as though it were perching triumphantly on top of a vanquished opponent. The vehicle had to be totaled; every window was demolished and it looked like part of the thing had caught fire at some point. How it hadn’t exploded was a mystery. Maybe the angels had paid a little visit to her the previous night since their own world had been so ruthlessly torn apart just up the road.
Lila patted at her pockets, looking for her phone. Realizing she had left it back up in her bedroom, Lila retreated indoors and back upstairs. Time to call Bo. He answered on the first ring, and sounded horrible.
“Lila?” he answered groggily.
“Did I wake you?”
“I wish,” he said, and she heard him clear his throat. “No sleep last night.”
“How bad is it?”
“Could be worse, a whole lot worse. We got lucky.”
Bo described how one rickhouse had apparently been hit by lightning—they weren’t sure yet—and had gone up in flames quickly. Once the fire hit the barrels, the place exploded.
“We’ve lost a big chunk of our inventory, not to mention a whole rickhouse. It was one of the biggest ones we had. I just hope insurance will take care of most of it. It’s been a while since I checked on that.”
“How are Hannah and your mother?” she asked, and mentioned how Hannah had gotten ill during a conversation.
“Sounds like my experience,” Bo said. “I called her, but she was nearly incomprehensible, so I talked to Kyle. He finally came to the scene at about midnight; he had to drive all over the county to get to us. I think he didn’t want to leave Hannah since she was so upset and sick, and I really wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d stayed home. The fire took a long time to burn out. Ashbrooke Pike is still closed.”
“I think you’re going to need a new vehicle,” Lila said, thinking about the wrecked SUV in her front yard.
“That’s the least of my worries.”
“Get some sleep. You can’t do anything if you’re so sick and tired you can’t think straight.”
“You sound like my mother.”
“She’s already given you this lecture, hasn’t she?”
“Did you two coordinate this attack?” he asked, and she was happy to hear the hint of amusement in his voice.
She laughed. “No, we’re just two women in your life who happen to care a great deal about you. Now get some sleep.”
“Could you please come over?” he asked. “I’m at home and I—I really need you right now,” he said in a thick voice.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Lila changed her clothes but didn’t bother with a shower before heading back to the distillery and to Bo’s place. Just beyond the entrance to the distillery, she could see the police roadblock on Ashbrooke Pike and wondered how long the road would be inaccessible. The road was the major north-south artery in that part of the state, and blocking it would divert traffic onto a plethora of small, narrow side roads and probably produce a lot of lost drivers on the back roads of Craig County.
When Lila arrived at Bo’s house, he was waiting for her with the door open, and he nearly crushed her in his embrace when she stepped foot inside his house. Bo smelled of bourbon—but it wasn’t his usual light scent. It was pervasive and overwhelming and mixed with that alien, smoky smell. She wanted to tell him to change clothes, but didn’t have the heart to say it as he silently led her to his bedroom and flopped onto his bed. He reached for her and pulled Lila down to him, spooned himself against her, and held her tightly by the waist. She stilled herself, knowing he needed her quiet presence, and sensed that he was asleep within seconds by the sound of his breathing. She put her hand over his and floated away into a much more peaceful and contented sleep than what she had enjoyed overnight.
Chapter 19
Bo looked at the documents scattered in front of him on the table. Hannah had told him what they meant, but he wanted to try to read and understand them for himself. But he might as well have been trying to read hieroglyphics.
He sat alone in the café at the visitors’ center eating a bagel and trying to comprehend what he understood about the insurance they had on the destroyed rickhouse and its contents. The coverage would cover the contents, but only just barely, and would allow them to rebuild a rickhouse, although smaller than what they had lost. Bo had been beating himself up for the past two days after he had talked with the adjuster and Hannah about the insurance claim; he should’ve listened to his mother last year and increased coverage, but he’d been a tightwad and said he couldn’t justify the cost.
Fortunately, the fire hadn’t halted production at the distillery. Every employee (almost every one of them a Bourbon Springs resident) showed up at the visitors’ center on Sunday morning—whether they were supposed to work or not—and asked how they could help. Bo told them that it was going to be business as usual and that production could continue. After he’d addressed the employees, he retreated to his office, shut the door, and cried for several minutes, overwhelmed by the spontaneous showing of support. It was the perfect example of what his father had always told him: Old Garnet and Bourbon Springs belong to and take care of each other.
Even though production could continue, it might have to be slackened; the persistent problem of where to put newly-filled barrels was now more acute. The rickhouse that burned wasn’t full—none of the rickhouses were at complete capacity—but with one storage area destroyed, there was going to be storage pressure on the rest of the facilities.
And so he was back to his problem—or obsession—of building a new one, and toying with the idea of raising the land subject again with Lila. He thought that maybe since she’d seen the destruction wrought by the fire that perhaps her attitude
toward building something between their properties might be changed. He knew it would be a risky move to take, but when Bo looked at his options, he felt a creeping desperation. With this loss, the production of Garnet Reserve was going to have to be postponed. And how would Walker deal with that? If Bo could show him that he was building, getting more space, expanding and looking to the future, Walker might not take the news so badly. If he couldn’t do that, Bo feared that they would be right back where they were a few weeks ago: dealing with the very real possibility that Walker would go to another distillery.
Talking with Lila was looking more like a necessity rather than a choice.
“Hey, man,” Goose said as he suddenly appeared at Bo’s table. “You doing OK?”
“Yeah, yeah, fine,” Bo replied, and sat up in his seat.
“I just called your name three times and you didn’t answer me,” Goose said.
Goose had been a hero the night of the fire. After the party was over and at the height of the storm, he had done a quick check around the grounds, eyeballing the buildings and making sure everything was as it should be. It had been during this little off-the-clock trip when lightning had struck the rickhouse, causing it to burn and explode. Goose had seen the strike and raised the alarm shortly before the explosion, thus ensuring no one was in the rickhouse and that distillery employees got off the grounds and to safety. He’d called the authorities, with the result that law enforcement and the fire department got to the scene in less than five minutes. Goose stayed all night at the scene, doing whatever Bo needed, such as talking with various officials and giving them information about the property. Goose had gone home only when Bo had gone home early on that miserable Sunday morning.
“Sorry, got a lot on my mind,” Bo said.
“I’ll bet you do,” Goose said.
Bo invited him to take a seat, but Goose declined, saying he needed to go meet with someone about some new locks on the doors of one of the rickhouses.
“Seen Hannah?”
“Yeah, she just walked in,” Goose said, and looked back out through the café toward the lobby of the visitors’ center. “Gotta say that she didn’t look so great.”
“She’s been really upset about the rickhouse,” Bo said. “Worried about the insurance,” he said, and pointed to the documents in front of him. “We have to talk about it today.”
Before leaving him, Goose asked Bo if he wanted him to tell Hannah that he wanted to see her, and Bo said yes. Within a few minutes after Goose’s departure, Hannah appeared.
Goose had been right. Hannah looked tired, despite her nice attire: a bright blue wool turtleneck over gray pants. A short string of pearls around her neck completed Hannah’s tidy look. But her face did not look so wonderful: despite her makeup, Bo saw the dark circles under her eyes and her face looked puffy.
“Still fretting over insurance?” she asked, and took a seat across the table from her brother.
“Yeah,” he said, and looked down at the papers.
After a short discussion about the insurance policy, he decided to bring up the issue of talking to Lila about selling.
“Don’t do it, Bo,” Hannah cautioned him, and checked the time on her phone. “It was a bad idea before the fire, and it’s still a bad idea. In fact, it’s a terrible idea because she’s likely to think that you’re trying to take advantage of your relationship to get her to change her mind.”
“But that’s not true,” Bo said testily.
“Doesn’t matter whether it’s true, brother,” said Hannah, and stood. “It’s what it will look like to Lila,” she said, and left him to stew in his own juices.
On Hannah’s way out of the café and back to her office, Bo saw her run into Emma. From overheard snatches of their conversation, Bo knew that Hannah had just informed their mother of his idea to talk to Lila again about the land. In short order, Emma was standing beside Bo’s table.
“Don’t,” was all Emma said, shaking her head and repeating the same thing Hannah advised. Emma stared at her son for a few seconds, but he did not wither under her gaze. “I’ll be in the gift shop if you want to talk.”
But Bo didn’t want to talk to Hannah or his mother. He wanted to talk to Lila, but he just didn’t know how to do it.
“So this is like a big-time date, right?”
Although they had been out to several restaurants together, Bo and Lila had not gone out anywhere fancy. So when Bo told her a few weeks after the fire that he wanted to take her to The Cooperage the next evening, a Friday night, she was pleasantly shocked.
“Yes, that’s the plan,” Bo said.
“And I assume your plans for the evening don’t necessarily end with a goodbye kiss on my front porch,” Lila teased him.
“You would be correct in that assumption.”
His plans thrilled her. Lila hadn’t been to eat at The Cooperage in years. It was only about a mile down the road south of her place, but it was expensive and she had no real interest in going there to eat alone. But more importantly than the treat of going to The Cooperage, Lila was aching to be with Bo. Since the fire, they’d only made love a handful of times. Even the morning after the disaster, when she’d gone to his house to comfort him, that encounter had amounted to no more than an hours-long cuddle and nap. And while that had been fine at the time (she was physically and emotionally exhausted on that morning, too), her body—that thing she still could not trust whenever she was near Bo—needed more. So a nice evening out followed by a nice, long night in sounded absolutely perfect to her.
It took Lila quite some time to find the right thing to wear, and she felt like a teenage girl unable to decide on her outfit for a first date. Part of her problem was that she didn’t have a lot of truly dressy items. Her wardrobe contained simple pieces which could be categorized as “business casual” and appropriate for school, with a few nicer items for the rare occasion where she had to look more businesslike. And she only had two dresses, a red one and a black one, both of which were a little plain but still classy.
She chose the black one. The neckline was just a little bit lower and the hemline a little bit higher, making it feel more appropriate for a big date. Miraculously, Lila found a pair of black high heels she didn’t remember owning. They were loose in the back of her closet, behind a box of old shoes, and covered in a thick layer of dust. After she cleaned them up, Lila slipped them on and they fit perfectly. How long had it been since she had worn these? She truly had no idea. They looked relatively new, used maybe once or twice. She stared at the mystery shoes, puzzling about their origin, when images began to flash into her mind.
She had bought these for a very specific purpose: her parents’ funeral. Then, a year later, she’d worn them to her husband’s service. Standing in the middle of her bedroom and looking down at them, she recalled how she had been presented with this nearly-same view as she’d stood beside her husband’s grave and had watched the casket being lowered.
No wonder she’d put the shoes out of sight. She reasoned that she had deliberately removed the things from her line of vision. Lila had wanted to forget.
She was about to kick the damned things off when Lila understood she’d actually achieved her goal. She had forgotten that she’d bought these shoes and worn them on those sad events. Lila was irritated at first by her inability to recall, and only then by the recollections themselves. The shoes were blameless, mere symbols of grief that she’d tried to put behind her. Instead of taking them off, she left them on, and felt happy and confident in wearing them.
Bo picked her up and his eyes widened when she opened the door.
“You look fantastic,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek.
“Keep talking,” she said, as he helped her into her coat.
“Maybe not.”
He spun her around and gave her a very long kiss, surprising her and making Lila wonder whether they could just eat in that evening instead of going to all the bother and expense of going to The Cooperage.
“Good thing I didn’t get here early and catch you undressed,” he said as she locked the door behind them.
“I’m not so sure that’s a good thing,” she said.
“You want to go back inside? Now?” he said. “I certainly wouldn’t mind a change in plans.”
“Too late. I’m all dressed up and ready to go,” she said, and put her arm in his as they descended the stairs of her front porch. “And I think it will be fun to make you wait.”
The Cooperage was busy, and Lila was relieved to learn that Bo had a reservation. After depositing coats at a cloakroom, they walked arm-in-arm toward the dining room entrance, where Bo gave the hostess his name and they were quickly led to a table at the window overlooking Old Crow Creek. It was probably one of the best tables in the house, although at that time of year and that time of the evening, the view was pretty dim.
“Reminds me of the distillery,” she said as she looked out the window and not at the menu in her hands.
“View from the café?” Bo asked.
“No, the tasting room,” she whispered.
Lila smirked at him, and saw him shudder in anticipation. This was going to be a very good night, she thought.
Bo ordered Garnet neat, while Lila had a glass of wine.
“I hope you don’t think I’m a traitor for not drinking Garnet tonight,” she said a little apologetically as she took the glass in her hands and brought it to her lips.
“Not at all,” Bo said, and raised his glass to her and then took a tiny sip of the very bourbon he had helped to craft. “Drink all the wine you want. But don’t let me catch you knowingly drinking any bourbon other than the kind that’s in this glass,” he said with a smile before taking another small sip.
“Sounds like you plan on sticking around if you’re going to keep such a close eye on my bourbon-drinking habits, Mr. Davenport.” She leaned forward on the table, deliberately pushing her breasts together to produce a nice view of her cleavage for Bo’s enjoyment.
Angels' Share (Bourbon Springs Book 3) Page 18