“Right. The guy hasn’t made one move on me. He’s a friend. That’s it.”
“If he’s just a friend,” Lila said as Walker approached them, “why do you keep giving him a chance to make a move?”
CiCi couldn’t answer because Walker joined them near the door.
Lila shouted some instructions to the kids as they left, telling them they would review the information they had gathered in class on Monday. In a few minutes, the students were gone and Lila, Walker, and CiCi were walking back to the visitors’ center, which was crawling with tourists.
“Wow,” Lila breathed. “This place is crazy. I’d better go find Bo and see if he needs any help. I have a feeling I might be drafted into tour guide duty today.”
She thanked CiCi and Walker and was off toward the tasting room in an instant.
“Ready to get out of here?” Walker asked and pulled his keys from his pants pocket.
“You want to go?” CiCi asked with surprise. “I thought you loved this place like a second home.”
CiCi and Walker had talked enough with each other about their respective jobs that each knew more than a little something about the other’s position. And CiCi had heard Walker talk quite a bit about how to make bourbon and how much he loved it, so to hear him say he wanted to leave the distillery was surprising.
“I do,” he admitted, “but it still can get a little wild here. I like quiet places. They do exist, if you know where to look.”
“Like your happy place?”
“Exactly,” Walker said with a laugh.
They navigated their way through the tourists and out of the visitors’ center to the parking lot. Walker had CiCi to her driveway on Main Street in less than ten minutes.
“You have a really nice home,” Walker said as he walked CiCi to her front porch. “I’ve been looking for a house. Getting tired of the little apartment I’ve been renting on the south end of town.”
“I think there’s a townhome for sale where Brady used to live,” CiCi told him as she dug in her purse for her keys.
Walker shook his head. “I want a house. I want a yard, even though I know I’ll have to take care of it.”
This was a bit surprising. Most guys CiCi knew who were single wanted something simple, like an apartment or condo. Not Walker. How domestic of him.
CiCi mentioned to Walker she knew of a neighbor a few streets over that was getting ready to sell. “I’ll e-mail you her phone number if you’d like,” CiCi offered.
“Thanks, I’d like that.”
“So,” CiCi said decisively as she finally located her keys and pulled them from the depths of her oversized white leather handbag. “Same time next Saturday for lunch?”
She couldn’t believe she’d said it. Usually Walker was the one to make the next date—wait—these weren’t dates.
“No.”
“No?”
“CiCi, may I please take you to dinner? A proper dinner?”
She knew something like this was going to happen. Why hadn’t she been more prepared for this moment?
“That sounds like a real date, Walker,” she teased, trying to defuse the tension.
“Well, it would be.”
He was so earnest and just the tiniest bit needy.
Say yes.
No.
Wait.
“What did you have in mind?” she asked, trying to delay a decision. But as soon as the question escaped her lips, CiCi realized she was well down the road to accepting his invitation by asking whether he had a plan.
He did.
“I’d love to take you to the Old Talbott Tavern in Bardstown,” he said, hope blossoming on his face.
“That’s a bit of drive from here, isn’t it?”
“Not more than an hour. And I know the roads. I know Bardstown. Worked there for Heaven Hill and Barton. At this time of year, there will be plenty of light in the evening so we wouldn’t be coming home in complete darkness. What do you say?”
CiCi bit her lip, and her eyes darted around her small front porch. “Well, okay… but let’s make it the following weekend.” CiCi wasn’t ready for the Big Date yet.
“Two weeks from today? Sure.”
“But are we still on for lunch next Saturday as usual?” CiCi felt unreasonably guilty for delaying and wanted to cheer him.
Then it was Walker’s turn to be hesitant. “Next Saturday… something’s going on at the distillery. What is it?” he said to himself and struggled to remember. “Oh, yeah. There’s a group from the Kentucky Association of Distilleries that’s coming to tour the place. I need to be there for that in the morning, but I’d love to have lunch… as usual,” he added with emphasis.
And then they were at that awkward moment where something was bound to happen.
Walker took CiCi’s free hand—the first time he’d ever held her hand—and moved closer to her.
Here? Now? A kiss? Right here on her front porch on Main Street in front of God and everybody? These thoughts raced through CiCi’s mind as Walker came closer to her. But instead of backing away, she remained in place and slowly parted her lips.
“Hi there!”
CiCi snatched her hand away upon hearing the voice, and Walker took a step back from her. The mail carrier had interrupted their moment.
“Here ya go,” the carrier said. She handed CiCi a small clump of mail and was gone as quickly as she had come.
Within a few seconds, they were alone again on the porch, but the mood had irreversibly altered. CiCi’s eyes moved from Walker’s face down to the bundle of mail she held in one hand, and she immediately spied the return address of the piece of mail on top of the stack.
“Oh, shit,” she muttered.
CiCi dropped her purse and keys on the porch and thrust the remainder of her mail into Walker’s unready hands. She tore open the envelope, snatched the letter from inside, and quickly scanned it, fearing yet knowing what it announced.
“Great, just great,” she said through clenched teeth.
“What’s wrong?” Walker asked as he bent to retrieve a piece of mail that had been dropped when CiCi had foisted her mail upon him.
“State audit,” she groaned. “I’ve dodged this bullet for years. My time has finally come.”
“I take it this is an unwelcome development?”
“On the same level as the IRS picking through your tax returns,” she said, scooping up her keys and purse from the ground. “Except it’s the government auditing the government, if that makes any sense. State auditor does it all the time to various governmental groups and offices. Now it’s my turn.”
“You’ve never lived through one?”
She shook her head. “No. I remember my mom complaining about one a long time ago.”
“What’s the worst that can happen?”
“Oh, they discover money missing or misspent or any number of practices that they think are questionable or bad. It can be a complete nightmare, particularly for an elected official.”
CiCi thought back to a few local audits in the past several years. The local school system had been audited but had come through it relatively unscathed and with only a few suggestions for improvement. The most notorious local one, however, had been the audit of the previous sheriff, the late Fuzzy Davenport. The auditor’s report had raked old Fuzzy’s administration over the coals, finding all kinds of management problems and even missing money. The report had led to Kyle Sammons’s election as sheriff; in the aftermath of the scandal, Kyle had managed to oust Fuzzy from office, and Fuzzy had been a thirty-year incumbent who had expected an easy path to reelection.
“Sounds like you’re going to need an attorney.”
“Absolutely. And I have someone in mind,” she said as she stuffed the letter back into the envelope and put it in her purse.
Her hand free once again, Walker took it, and she immediately stiffened, thinking this was going to be the big first kiss.
It was.
And it wasn’t.
“No one’s done that in ages,” she said softly and with surprise.
“Too bad for them.” He kissed her hand again, gave her the mail, and smiled. “See you Saturday.”
CiCi stood on the porch and watched him as he pulled out of the driveway and left. Although she wanted to go back inside and work through what had just happened with Walker, she didn’t have the time for a hot little afternoon daydream. After dumping the mail on her kitchen counter, she picked up her phone and dialed Harriet Hensley’s cell number. CiCi had it in her phone because Harriet had been on the BourbonDaze committee the previous year.
“Harriet?” CiCi said when Harriet picked up on the first ring. “I need a lawyer.”
3
He was kissing her again. Her hand. So soft.
No, wait. Not just her hand. Her lips. Her cheek, then her neck, down to her bare chest.
Damn, look at her breasts. Perfectly plump and smooth. He swept a hand across one and dipped his head to the other where his tongue traced the outline of her areola, taut and waiting to be fully claimed by his mouth.
He heard her cry out as his hand moved lower and brushed the soft curls between her legs. His mouth still on her nipple, he dared to slip a finger into her folds and found her wonderfully wet and ready. And he was so hard. He wanted to plunge inside her at that moment, take her hard and fast and not look back.
“Walker…” she panted.
That was all the invitation he needed. She didn’t want to be stroked by his fingers any longer. She wanted his full length in her. She wanted him to claim her completely, and he was more than willing to fulfill her desires.
He knew it was now. He wanted her, and she wanted him.
He was so damned hard it hurt, and he wanted to burst inside her. Walker parted her legs as his mouth migrated from breast to lips then pulled back so he could see her face as he entered her.
CiCi’s eyelids fluttered as he slipped into her exquisite warmth. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders as he went slowly, fighting the primal urge to slam himself into her as far as he could go.
Her lips parted, and he claimed them. She moaned into his kisses, and he pulled away to see the look on her lovely round face as he sheathed himself deeper.
CiCi smiled and mouthed his name, but no sound came.
Then the face changed; the curly brown hair faded and reformed until it was long and red. The hands on his back became like claws as they pulled him closer. His sense of claustrophobia and panic multiplied as he fought to escape the grasp.
Walker bolted up awake in bed as the image of his ex-wife burned into his mind. He was hard as a rock and in pain, but not just the physical pain from his unrelieved arousal. He covered his face with his hands and took several deep breaths before throwing the covers off the bed and heading to the bathroom. He could at least get off in the shower to relieve himself—and he would be fantasizing about CiCi as he did it and not his ex, the woman who had crushed his soul.
* * *
“Mama, why are you crying?”
It was the only thing she could hear, the sound of her own voice. Her mother was sobbing, but there was no noise, only the image of the woman sitting in a chair, head in her hands, with her body shaking.
Her mother did not look up, did not respond. Was it because of Daddy?
Mama had started crying about the time he said he had to go.
“My little CiCi,” he’d said, patting her on the head before rushing out the door. She’d barely gotten a hug but figured he’d be back soon. She’d asked him to get her a coloring book at the grocery store, and he’d promised to bring one next time. But what had that meant?
CiCi went to the window and looked outside to see her father standing in the driveway, staring at the house, his hand on the car door. She waved, and even though she knew he was looking directly at her—he had to be—he did not wave back.
And then he disappeared. The landscape turned from a bright summer’s day to the golden hues of fall to the whiteness of a snowstorm to the jeweled tones of spring.
And CiCi stood by that window, waiting, wondering, hoping to see her father there again. She never did.
“CiCi, come away from the window,” her mother chided, and she jumped at the sound of her mother’s voice.
She turned, and her mother was there, tears shining on her face, looking the same as she did that day Daddy had gone to the store.
CiCi flew to her mother’s open arms and clung to her. Then the tears became her own, and she felt as though she were drowning, the two of them together, submerged by grief.
The alarm blared and she found herself clutching her pillow like a life preserver. Her jaw hurt; she’d been grinding her teeth again during the night.
And the pillow was wet but not merely with tears.
She’d thrown up in her bed, sickened by the misery of memory, by the memory of grief.
* * *
“I’m flattered you thought of me first,” Harriet said that Monday morning as CiCi entered Harriet’s office.
It was seven thirty, and Harriet had agreed to meet before the clerk’s office opened at eight. It was an easy trip to Harriet’s firm; it was right across the street from CiCi’s house on Main Street.
“Oh, yes,” CiCi said absentmindedly. She was still rattled by her dream from that morning. “And thanks for the early appointment,” she added, finally snapping out of her thoughts as she took a seat in a large blue wingback chair in front of Harriet’s desk. Harriet moved to a corner where a small coffeepot was situated and offered CiCi a cup of freshly brewed java. “No, thanks,” CiCi said. “I’m already on edge as it is.”
Harriet turned from the coffee and didn’t take any for herself. And instead of sitting behind her desk, Harriet took the seat opposite CiCi, giving the anxious Craig Circuit Court Clerk her full attention. CiCi appreciated Harriet’s attempts to put her at ease and knew she was in good legal hands. Harriet crossed her long, lean legs and squared her body to face her new and very nervous client.
“So why are you so worried? That’s the first question I have for you.”
“It’s an audit!” CiCi exclaimed, causing her curly brown hair to bounce in silent protest.
“Tell me the truth: is there a reason you’re worried? Something wrong, missing?”
“You mean that I know about? No. It’s not like I’ve knowingly done anything wrong. I haven’t dipped into the petty cash for bourbon balls or the occasional bottle of Old Garnet. Nothing like that. My mother taught me how to be the clerk, and that was to do it by the book. I might look kind of silly and flighty to some people, but when it comes to my job, I am a total hard-ass.”
“That little thing about releasing the video of Judge Craft a while back being the exception?” Harriet asked with a knowing grin.
“Well, it was an unusual circumstance, wasn’t it?” CiCi said defensively. “And everything worked out. Brady won the election, got Rachel to marry him, and that guy pled guilty at once. And no one from Judicial Administration ever said a peep to me.”
“Fair enough. So you don’t think anything is wrong. But you’re still worried, aren’t you?”
“Hell, yes! I’m afraid someone dropped something on me to the state auditor. Some political opponent.”
“Have you heard rumors of someone running against you?”
“No,” CiCi admitted.
“You like your job?”
“I love my job. I love the people I work with. I have bad days like anyone else, but I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”
“CiCi,” Harriet said, leaning closer, “if things are as you say they are in the Craig Circuit Court Clerk’s office, I don’t think you have too much to worry about. But I can’t guarantee a completely painless process.”
“I’ve heard so many lawyers say that I could scream.”
“But it
’s true. We don’t know what could be uncovered or what the auditors will find that they might think is the worst thing but you think is nothing at all. But I think you’ll be okay. I’ll notify the auditor’s office that you’re now represented by counsel, keep you informed, and let you know when the investigators will be down. From my experience, that should be in a few weeks.”
“A few weeks?” CiCi cried. “That soon?”
“That means it will be over quicker. Don’t worry,” Harriet assured her. She leaned forward and gave CiCi a little pat on the knee.
“Easy for you to say,” CiCi said before she laughed weakly and took her leave of her new attorney.
* * *
Walker hated meetings, as most reasonable people did. Thankfully, meetings at Old Garnet were few and far between. But that Monday morning he had a staff meeting with Hannah, Bo, and Goose, the relatively new director of security and groundskeeping. He was also another Davenport—a second cousin to both Hannah and Bo. Walker would be the only nonfamily member at this little get-together.
He wasn’t sure what the agenda was, but he didn’t care. The topics discussed rarely involved him, but as the master distiller, he felt obliged to attend. Bo and Hannah met with personnel and accounting people separately; they were actually on another part of the distillery grounds, on the second floor at the Old House. Walker was grateful that at least he didn’t have to sit through meetings where the mundane things of finance and who got fired were going to be discussed.
The meeting was in the usual spot, the small conference room next to the tasting room and off the main lobby of the visitors’ center. Walker hadn’t eaten any breakfast in anticipation of grabbing something at the meeting, and when he entered the small room, he was happy to see he would not be lacking for choice of goodies that morning. Against the far left wall was a table set with a tray full of muffins, bagels, and donuts (and he spotted the famous maple bourbon bacon donuts from Over a Barrel). There was also a full pitcher of orange juice and a large black carafe which he suspected to be filled with fresh coffee. He was the second to arrive; Goose was already present. He was sitting at the table, reading the Lexington newspaper and eating a bagel with coffee.
Bourbon Springs Box Set: Volume II, Books 4-6 (Bourbon Springs Box Sets Book 2) Page 3