But just the two of them working together on a project?
How was she supposed to work with the man as though nothing had happened? How was she supposed to forget?
Harriet’s heart knew the answer.
She couldn’t forget. She didn’t want to.
* * *
Pie time!
It was late Friday afternoon and CiCi was walking home from the courthouse, feeling silly and happy.
Walker was coming over with dinner, planning on stopping at The Windmill on his way back from work. Her only request was that he bring bourbon pecan pie, should they have it.
They did.
In fact, he brought an entire pie.
“Well, that’ll last about a day around here,” she cracked as he placed the pie on the kitchen counter.
Walker was selling his house and moving in with her in anticipation of getting married. He was in a transition state, living some at his own house but spending a lot of time—and a considerable number of nights—at CiCi’s home. As a result, they ate together almost every night. They had even started going to the grocery store together.
It was nice, she thought. Content. Sweet. Settled.
And the sex was so fucking hot.
CiCi was looking forward to ending another evening in bed with Walker, but her immediate concern, past the surprisingly good Swiss cheese and roast beef sandwich Walker had procured for her enjoyment, was the pie.
She hastily consumed the sandwich (she’d had only a packet of cheese crackers for lunch) and was soon ready for dessert.
“Let me get it,” Walker offered and began to clear away the trash from their meal. They were eating outside on her back porch. The early fall evening was warm, and the setting sun filled the sky with a luscious, glowing orange-and-pink mixture.
“If you insist.” She picked up her glass of bourbon, swirled the contents and took a sip. “Just don’t skimp on the slice. Give me a good chunk.”
Walker promised she would be pleased, retreated indoors for a few minutes, and soon returned with slices of the pie for both of them.
“I think you’ll say I didn’t skimp,” Walker said as he put the piece of pie in front of her along with a fork and napkin.
Upon first glance, it seemed to be an average-sized slice of pie, not generously indulgent. CiCi picked up her fork and was about to plunge it into the treat when she saw a flash of light.
She dropped her fork.
Nestled amongst the large pecans on the top of the pie was a princess-cut diamond solitaire ring. The band was channel-set with small round garnets.
CiCi covered her mouth with both hands and stared at the little treasure, then looked up at Walker in a state of complete surprise and joy.
“I take it you like it?” he asked and laughed.
She nodded mutely, removed her hands from her face, and gently tugged the ring from its position; it was partially covered in the gooey sweetness of the pie.
Walker reached for the napkins. “Here, let me wipe it off.” He held out his hand for the ring.
“No way!”
She took the ring and put it in her mouth, carefully licking it clean with her tongue and enjoying watching Walker watch her as she did so.
“You’re wicked, you know that?”
“You put the ring in the pie! What did you expect?”
“Give it here,” he said after she’d removed the goo from the ring.
She did so, knowing he wanted the honor of putting the ring on her finger. Walker slipped it on, a perfect fit.
He bent to kiss her, and then she held out her hand to admire her new acquisition.
“How’d you get the size?”
“Took one of yours from your jewelry box,” he admitted.
“I didn’t even notice.”
“It’s easy now that I’m around so much.” He took his seat next to her as CiCi considered her slice of pie. “Something wrong?” he asked. “That is your favorite dessert, right?”
Wordlessly, CiCi grabbed her pie plate, rose from the table, and reentered the house. Walker followed with his own plate, eating as he walked. CiCi put her untouched (except for the ring) piece of pie on the coffee table.
“I want something else for dessert,” she declared.
Walker had just stuffed a bite into his—well, pie hole—when CiCi licked her lips, signaling her desire.
Seeing recognition of her intentions flash across his face, CiCi laughed and ran deeper into the house and up the stairs. Quickly swallowing his bite, Walker dumped his plate and fork on the table and ran after her, eager to taste on his fiancée’s lips the tiny bit of pie she’d savored from her engagement ring.
BITS ABOUT BOURBON
Four Roses Distillery
The Old Garnet naming myth is explored and explained in this book, and I freely admit that I took Four Roses’ naming legend and adapted it for my own purposes. More on that in a bit.
Four Roses, a member of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, is one of two distilleries in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky (the other being Wild Turkey, featured in the back matter of ANGELS’ SHARE). The distillery sits along its water source, the Salt River, several miles south of town. It is very easy to find, with quick access off the Bluegrass Parkway. The distillery, built in 1910, is a National Historic Landmark and is famous for its design, Spanish Mission Style. The building is a very distinctive yellow.
The distillery has gone through several different names, including the “Old Prentice” moniker (and now you know where the hero in Book 8 got his first name). Tour guides still tell the story that the distillery and bourbon got its name when a long-ago owner fell for a local belle and asked her to marry him. She said she would wear four red roses to an upcoming ball if her answer was yes. She did appear with those roses, they married, and the Four Roses legend was born. The four-rose motif is found on the bourbon’s label (at least three different expressions), on the distillery buildings, in advertisements old and new, and within the visitors’ center itself (fresh long-stemmed red roses are plentiful in the gift shop).
On the tours, Four Roses gives generous samples of their three expressions, and you get to keep the glass—with four embossed roses in the bottom of the glass.
My favorite expression of Four Roses is the Single Barrel. High rye, but extremely smooth. The tour guide called Single Barrel “your all-day Sunday sippin’ whiskey.”
One interesting fact about Four Roses is that its facilities are split. The distillery is in Lawrenceburg, but bottling is done at Cox’s Creek, in Nelson County—and very near one of the real “Bourbon Springs” sites I’ve found on a Kentucky map. Tanker trucks take bourbon from the distillery to Cox’s Creek. If you take the tour at one location, your ticket is good for another sixty days to take the tour at the other location.
Also, Four Roses’ rickhouses are unique in that they are all single story. Thus, no center cut; all barrels tend to age at the same rate with some variation between barrels at the edges of the rickhouse to those in the interior. But that variation is not nearly as marked as the multistoried rickhouses of almost all other major distilleries.
“Booker’s Babies”
Booker Davenport, Bo and Hannah’s grandfather and creator of the “Booker’s Babies” or wedding bourbon, is named in honor of the late, legendary Booker Noe.
Booker Noe was a direct descendant of Jacob Beam and Jim Beam (Booker’s grandfather), and a sixth-generation Beam family member to head the Beam bourbon dynasty. Many credit Booker for creating the market for small batch bourbon.
Lucy Dant
The bride of the founder of Old Garnet, her last name honors an old bourbon-making Kentucky family, the Dants. Here are a few pictures of antique Dant bottles at the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History in Bardstown, Kentucky.
Old Garnet/Woodford Reserve
In this book, we learn a little more about bourbon history and the history of Old Garnet. In the scene with Hannah and Jana, Hannah recounts her family’s history in the
whiskey business and mentions that the Davenports began commercial distilling in the 1840s. Some of the oldest distillery buildings at Woodford Reserve date to this time, so I used the same time frame to create a little more of the Old Garnet backstory.
Jana Pogue
Jana’s last name is a shout-out to Old Pogue Distillery in Maysville, Kentucky. Old Pogue is on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail Craft Tour.
Maysville, formerly known as Limestone, sits on the Ohio River in northeast Kentucky. Limestone was a port through which many a barrel of whiskey passed as it was shipped out of the Commonwealth and down to New Orleans. Many of those barrels were stamped “Old Bourbon County Whiskey,” thus leading to one theory about how bourbon whiskey got its name.
My Old Kentucky Home State Park
This place is not a myth—it really does exist, and you can visit it. During the summer months, it is difficult to see from the road due to the trees, and it actually does sit on a hill. As mentioned in the back matter of ANGELS’ SHARE, Heaven Hill (the Bourbon Heritage Center), is located a few miles south of My Old Kentucky Home.
The Old Talbott Tavern
The Tavern dates to the late eighteenth century; it is so old that Lincoln supposedly stayed there as a child when his parents came to town because of a land-dispute lawsuit. Yes, I’ve had the pot roast and the bourbon bread pudding—and they are wonderful (the hot brown is good as well). On the website for the Tavern, you can read about ghostly encounters. There have been sightings of the ghost of Jesse James.
Four Times Up the Stairs
Yes, I know that this book contains four instances where someone runs up the stairs in CiCi’s house to the bedroom (CiCi does this three times, Walker once). It was deliberate.
Why four times? Because this is the fourth book in the series.
The Spring at the Waterfall
The spring at the waterfall—the proposal site in the book—was inspired by the real spring which feeds into Glenn’s Creek behind Woodford Reserve. It was this spring which lured Elijah Pepper to the property in 1812, and you can see the rippling of the spring as it flows into the creek. There is a waterfall along this part of the creek but farther downstream.
BourbonDaze/the Kentucky Bourbon Festival™
BourbonDaze is but a pale imitation of the Kentucky Bourbon Festival™, held every September in Bardstown, the Bourbon Capital of the World™. As I write this, I am making plans to attend the 2015 KBF. The five-day event features bourbon tastings, luncheons, dinners, lectures, museum and distillery tours, and a pancake breakfast that is not to be missed.
Why is KBF in September? Because that’s Bourbon Heritage Month in Kentucky!
KEEP CALM
The KEEP CALM AND DRINK BOURBON glasses are not a figment of my imagination. You can get them at the gift shops on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, and you can see one on the Pinterest board for this book. The servers at the Old Talbott Tavern also wear T-shirts bearing this saying.
Playlist
Distiller’s Choice
Miss Chatelaine and The Mind of Love by k.d. lang (from the album Ingénue, 1992)
Moonlight Swim by Elvis Presley (from the album Blue Hawaii, 1950)
Don’t Dream It’s Over by Crowded House (from the album Crowded House, 1986)
The Look of Love by Chris Botti and Chantal Kraviazuk (from the album A Thousand Kisses Deep, 2003)
Take Me Home by Phil Collins (from the album No Jacket Required, 1985)
Playlist on the book Pinterest board and my website
About the Author
Jennifer Bramseth is the pen name of a practicing attorney in Kentucky. She lives within minutes of several legendary bourbon distilleries and her house is next to a major horse farm. She enjoys her Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey with water and ice.
Goodreads
Find my Pinterest board for this book—see the series logo, logos for Over a Barrel, Old Garnet, and lots more
For more information
@jennbramseth
jenniferbramseth
greetings.jenniferbramseth.com
[email protected]
Copyright ©2015 Jennifer Bramseth
All rights reserved
No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotation in a book review.
Created with Vellum
Cedar and Cinnamon
The Bourbon Springs Series, Book 5
Happy Repeal Day!
December 5, 1933
The End of Prohibition
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Anne and Linda at Victory Editing
Thanks again and again to Mary Jo T. for catching my errors: you are a gem
Cover design by Kim Killion
jenniferbramseth.com
1
Five years ago…
She was her best friend’s maid of honor.
And it sucked.
Harriet had been so looking forward to her best friend Linsey’s wedding. A great chance to come back to Bourbon Springs before she started her new job, her new law practice, her new life back home. Good-bye to Frankfort and her mind-numbingly dull job in the state auditor’s office. Harriet thought she’d never return to Bourbon Springs to live and work.
But the tug of home on her heart and soul was simply too strong.
She’d explained that to Cameron and thought he understood. A fellow attorney in her office, they’d fallen in love over the past year, and he was going to join her at her new firm in Bourbon Springs. No proposal yet, but if he was willing to move to little Craig County, where barrels of aging bourbon outnumbered the human population by a very wide margin, getting engaged had to be the next step.
But his next step had been to dump her right there on the steps of the state capitol on the most glorious April day imaginable.
They’d gone outside to eat lunch together as they often did when the weather was nice. The front steps of the capitol had a sweeping view of the broad avenue down to the Kentucky River, and the street was lined with wide medians planted with a sea of yellow and red tulips. The cherry trees had been in bloom, and their full blossoming resembled clouds of pink fog which had descended upon the capitol grounds.
Harriet had sensed Cameron was uptight and had finally asked him what was wrong after they’d eaten their sandwiches and were sharing her homemade bourbon and chocolate chip cookies. Maybe that had been the thing that had attracted him to her. She made some damn fine cookies. Or maybe it was just the bourbon. Coming from Bourbon Springs, Harriet Hensley knew her stuff, and her home was never without a bottle of the finest, that being Old Garnet Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.
It had all come tumbling out with that one simple question.
He didn’t want to leave his job, Frankfort, everything he’d worked for (he’d only been there two short years) and move to Craig County. He wanted to stay, and he was keeping his job.
“I’m sorry, Harriet.” He stood and ran a hand through his short wiry red hair. “I can’t do it.”
What she’d heard was I can’t do it for you.
And that was it for them.
So she was back in Bourbon Springs, alone but not alone. Because she was Harriet Hensley, former Miss BourbonDaze, valedictorian of her high school class, voted most likely to succeed, and daughter of the soon-to-retire county school superintendent. Everyone knew her, admired her, liked her, and considered her if not a friend then a good acquaintance.
Big fucking deal.
Because she’d felt like a failure the previous day as she’d crossed the county line with her car full of her stuff, ready to move into an apartment rather than the rental house she and Cameron had picked out together.
Nonetheless, it was wonderful to be home for good in the middle of spring.
“Better you found out now rather than later,” had been her father�
�s wise pronouncement on her former almost fiancé’s lack of dedication to her.
So.
New job.
No guy.
Whatever.
She was angry, anxious, and, yes, horny. She wanted to blow off some steam and get the resentment, hurt, and frustration out of her system. She wanted to want someone and feel wanted in return, if only for a night. And while she usually wasn’t the kind of gal to go for that thing—casual, recreational, or, in her case, therapeutic sex or hookups—Harriet had also never been so brokenhearted, so low, so completely devastated.
She’d thought Cameron had been The One.
What a bunch of bullshit that idea turned out to be. And not just that Cameron had been destined for her. She questioned the whole soulmate-The One-destiny thing in general now.
If it happened, it happened. But she’d be damned if she’d go looking for it again.
Time to start anew at home and have some fun in the effort. Harriet just needed to make sure to find a guy for a tryst who wasn’t local.
Bourbon Springs Box Set: Volume II, Books 4-6 (Bourbon Springs Box Sets Book 2) Page 32