In the visitors’ center parking lot, Goose had said good-bye, handed Harriet her backpack, and she’d grunted a parting word.
And then she was gone.
How were they going to do this now? Work together on this application after—
The door opened and Harriet stood before him.
He could’ve been looking at Harriet as she’d walked down the aisle as Linsey Steele’s maid of honor five years ago.
The face was shrunken, gray and impossibly tired. No smile.
And since he was a lot closer than he had been at that wedding, Goose could see Harriet’s eyes. Very red.
She must have the cold from hell.
He felt incredibly guilty. He shouldn’t have insisted on going to find the still site.
Harriet glimpsed the bottles and nodded at them. “Just hand those over, I guess.” She was wearing a royal-blue Kentucky zip hoodie and black sweatpants. Her long black hair was up on her head in some kind of twist, held by a negligently placed clip which looked to be in danger of tumbling from her locks at any second.
He surrendered the bottles to her. “I’ve got something else. Courtesy of the master distiller himself.” He pulled the flask from his back pocket.
“What’s that?” She briefly turned to deposit the bottles on a table inside the foyer.
“Let me inside and I’ll tell you.” Seeing her again had changed his mind. He wanted to talk to her and apologize.
“Please just give it to me. I’m not in the mood for games.” Harriet put her left hand on her hip in the classic pose of irritated impatience.
He looked at that hand and noticed—nothing.
Harriet’s engagement ring was gone.
She saw him gaping and quickly put her hand in her pocket.
“Did you lose your ring in the creek?”
“No, didn’t lose it. In a perfectly safe place. And you were about to leave or give me that damn flask.”
He held the flask in front of his face, but out of her reach.
“This is Garnet Center Cut.”
“That—wait—you can’t get that in a store yet,” Harriet stammered.
“You know about it?”
She nodded. “CiCi told Rachel and me about it. Said that Walker had given her some in a personalized flask.”
“Well, this isn’t personalized, but it is straight from Walker Cain,” Goose assured her.
“But why would he give me something so unique? He barely knows me.”
“I think that he was trying to help make amends, along with Hannah.”
“Make amends? For what?”
“For me taking you out on some crazy lark and causing you to fall into the creek and catch a cold.”
“I don’t have a cold.”
“But I thought you were sick,” Goose said.
“Yeah, I am,” she said without further explanation.
Harriet held out her left hand, a demand for the flask. Her right hand, resting on the doorknob, sported a gold ring with a pearl. In addition to that ring, she was wearing small diamond stud earrings as well as a gold chain with an H letter charm around her neck.
She’d bothered to put on all those other pieces of jewelry but not—
“May I please have it now?” she asked.
Goose took the flask and put it in his back pocket. “Not until you tell me where your engagement ring is.”
She slammed the door in his face, and Goose had his answer.
But he was also up shit creek.
He had been sent there by Hannah—his boss, he sometimes had to remind himself, and not just family—to make nice with Harriet and deliver tokens of bourbonish esteem. He couldn’t leave until he’d delivered the Center Cut because Hannah was going to pepper him with question after question about whether Harriet was feeling better and what she’d thought of the gifts.
He knocked on the door instead of using the doorbell.
“Harriet, I’m sorry. Please let me give this to you.” He waited. Nothing. He knocked again. “Hannah will want my head on stick if I can’t tell her that I gave you all the bourbon.”
Harriet cracked the door open slightly, and he noticed she’d put the chain up.
“So hand over the bourbon,” she said.
“Are you okay?”
Between the few inches that formed a gap through which a small portion of Harriet’s face appeared, he saw her chin wobble.
“No,” she admitted.
He was about to say something—Can I help you? What do you need?—but she shut the door again.
Then he heard the chain rattling as she unhooked it, opened the door, and held it wide for him to enter. Wordlessly, he stepped inside, and Harriet closed the door, grabbed the bottles from the table, and retreated into the darkness of her house.
Goose followed her into a dim kitchen. On the left was a messy living area where pillows were tossed about, newspapers were scattered over the floor, and a pizza box rested atop a coffee table.
And he saw an empty box of tissues on top of the table behind her couch. As Goose’s eyes adjusted to the limited light, into focus came a myriad of crumpled tissues sprinkled in various places such that they could have been fluffy little mushrooms that had formed in the murkiness.
After putting aside the bottles on her kitchen counter, she looked at him expectantly. “Well, can I have it now?”
“Huh?”
“That flask, Goose. I want the flask.”
He’d almost forgotten he was holding it. Goose walked to her kitchen counter and presented the flask to her.
She reached above her into a cabinet, pulled out a glass, and looked at him. “Join me?”
“No, I have to go back to work.”
She placed the solitary glass on the counter and then picked up the flask and examined it.
“From the gift shop?” she asked before unscrewing the cap. “I’m sure I’ve see these in there.”
“Yep. And now you have your very own,” he said and unzipped his jacket. He wasn’t sure how long he was going to stay, but with the blinds and curtains all drawn, her condo had a stuffy, closed-in quality that was uncomfortably warm.
Harriet waved the flask’s opening under her nose, inhaled with appreciation, and smiled. She poured about a jigger for herself, cocked her head and considered her glass, then added another splash of bourbon before nodding and replacing the cap.
Harriet took the glass, swirled the contents, and drew in a long, deep breath over it as though in meditation.
Then she threw back the entire thing.
“I’m not going to tell Walker you did that,” Goose said.
“I guess I missed that day of bourbon theology class where you’re told you can only sip the stuff all the time,” she sniped. “And you can at least tell Walker it made me happy, which, considering the circumstances, is really saying something.” Goose looked around nervously at the debris of grief littering her condo. “Figured it out, have you?”
“Yeah,” he said, his eyes coming back to her face. “I’m afraid I have.”
12
Harriet shoved her glass aside lest she be tempted to pour some more for herself. She’d had her tipple.
For the morning.
Harriet wasn’t a big drinker. Sure, she loved her Garnet like any good native of Craig County, but that didn’t mean she regularly polished off bottles of the stuff. In fact, her own bottle of Garnet had lasted the better part of several months.
But this day was the Monday after she’d broken her engagement with Mark.
She hadn’t lied to anyone about being sick.
Because she was sick at heart.
She looked at her wrecked room, leaned over her kitchen counter, and told Goose to pull up a barstool on the opposite side. He slowly took his seat, looking appalled at the situation into which he had walked: the ongoing emotional fallout of her broken engagement.
“After our little adventure on Friday night, I came back here, and Mark was waiting for me,�
� she said.
Goose stood. “Harriet, I really don’t want to hear about this.”
“That’s odd, since less than forty-eight hours ago you were openly speculating about what you’d do if I weren’t engaged.”
“Look, I’m just here to deliver some bourbon, some good wishes, and to tell you that Hannah wants the boundary issue to get nailed down so we can proceed on that application. And now I really need to go,” he said and headed for the front door.
She trotted after him, catching him in the foyer.
“I meant everything I said on Friday night.”
He’d been reaching for the door, but his hand froze in midair at hearing her confession.
“So did I,” he said, “but I had no idea—I mean—I didn’t want you to—” He shut his eyes and shook his head. “This doesn’t feel right.”
“Then you need to hear what happened.”
“No, I don’t. I really, really don’t.”
He reached for the door, but she moved in front of him and physically blocked his retreat.
“Yes, you do, because it just might make you feel a little bit better.”
“About what?”
“About what happened on Friday night. About being here right now with me.”
“And telling me details of how you broke your engagement is going to do that?”
“I hope so.” Goose gave no response or protest, and into the abyss she plunged. “When I got back here on Friday night from our little escapades, Mark was here, waiting for me. He saw I was soaked and got mad.”
“I guess I’d be mad too if I saw you come home in that condition. I’d be worried sick about what had happened to you.”
She smiled. What a difference between the two men had been revealed in one comment.
“Not Mark. He was mad at me for breaking a date to ‘go on a hike,’ as he put it. He didn’t kiss me, didn’t hug me. Not one expression of concern for my bedraggled state.”
“You had a date with him on Friday night?”
“We did but moved it. I told him I had business at the distillery. He wasn’t happy about it, bitched and moaned about how he hadn’t seen me. But I reminded him that he’d not seen me for weeks because of all the work he’d been doing getting ready for a big trial he has early next year. He didn’t like that, but the truth was he expected me to be there precisely when he was ready. But he’d been putting me off with all kinds of excuses. So when he’s available, I tell him I have something to do and he gets mad. Like my schedule, my law practice, isn’t as important as his.
“We made arrangements to get together on Saturday night, so I thought he understood Friday wasn’t going to happen. Wrong. He showed up here anyway, unannounced, and furious I was all wet and tired. Guess I didn’t meet his expectations by being immediately ready.”
“What kind of idiot would’ve blamed you for what amounted to getting caught in a bad storm?”
“My ex-fiancé, that’s who,” she said. “He always felt entitled to my time on his terms. To hell with my schedule or what I needed to do,” she grumbled. “Although he hadn’t had been able to spare the time to kiss me or touch me or make—”
She stopped before admitting that she hadn’t made love to Mark in nearly two months, but she’d let enough slip to make Goose’s face turn purple. And she certainly wasn’t going to tell him that since midsummer she’d suspected Mark of having an affair with his co-counsel on his big case, a fellow attorney in his office he’d talked about just a little bit too much whenever they had managed to steal time together. During one recent telephone call, she’d thought he’d initially mistaken her for someone else—someone with whom he was on equally intimate terms—but she’d tried to explain away the strange conversation to simple confusion. Harriet understood litigation was time-consuming, but Mark’s increasing unavailability and emotional distance over the past several months could not be completely attributable to the demands of that jealous mistress—the practice of law. She wondered whether Mark’s unhappiness with the change from a Friday to Saturday night date had stemmed from the fact that he’d had plans for Saturday night—plans that involved a flesh-and-blood mistress rather than his fiancée.
“Anyway, we hadn’t seen each other in weeks and he thought I just should’ve dropped everything to be with him. I was upset, and that made him all self-righteous. We got into a full-blown argument about everything. The time we never spent together anymore. The wedding date. Where to live. Where I was going to work. He still expected me to move to Lexington, abandon my practice here, and sacrifice my new partnership status at the firm. Said he’d already put a down payment on a house in Lexington, although he knew I wanted try to find a place to live between Bourbon Springs and Lexington. But he’d just gone off on his own without consulting me.
“So I broke it off. I was the one to tell him it was over. He’d emotionally abandoned me; he was a stranger.” She turned away, her gaze unfixed. “This was a long time coming. I wish I’d had the guts to have seen it months, years ago.”
“Me too,” Goose said.
His words brought her back to the moment, pulling her from bitter recollections.
Goose slowly bent to kiss her, and her mind told her to pull away, dodge him, run. She’d just broken up with a jerk, Goose worked for a client, and—
And then his lips were on hers and he was pulling her to him.
Goose put one hand on her face and the other around her waist as he slowly pressed her against his body. She could tell he was deliberately holding back; his lips were sweet and light and demanded nothing but the taste and feel of her own. His erection pressed against her, and Harriet’s breath caught not at the sensation or awareness that she’d aroused him so quickly, but at the knowledge this man had been inside her, at the recollection of how he’d made her feel and how he’d treated her, and at the understanding he wanted her again.
Had it really been over five years since it had been this good?
Yes, it had been that long.
Because unlike her ex-fiancé, Goose Davenport was no stranger.
His hand moved down her back to her ass, where he squeezed and caused Harriet to instinctively shift against him in appreciation. Her slight movement made Goose’s kiss a little more insistent, but she welcomed and understood his desire; she had experience with this guy. She knew he wanted to take her to some other room, throw her down and make love to her—or just take her right there in the foyer against the wall.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he pulled away first, and she was shocked by his look of complete mortification. Goose backed away from her and held up his hands as though a criminal caught in the act.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said, shaking his head and not looking at her. “That was wrong and cheap of me. You just broke your engagement, and I had absolutely no right to do that. I can’t believe I—”
“No, Goose. No apologies necessary. Neither of us should feel bad about that kiss.”
He swallowed hard. “So why do I feel like I crossed a line?”
“You didn’t cross a line as far as me being engaged, if that’s what you’re worried about. Like I said, things with Mark hadn’t been great for a long time. You saw all those used tissues back there?” She waved a hand behind her, and Goose nodded. “It’s true that I’ve cried a lot over the past few days. But I can’t say I was sad because I lost Mark. I was sad I’d lost all that time with him. That I’d spent so many years with that man only to have it dissolve into a fight about him, and getting what he wanted. I cried because I felt I’d wasted my time. That made me sad—and fuming. So I’m not going to feel guilty about kissing you now that I’m almost free to do it again.”
“Almost free?”
“I can’t—we can’t—if I’m going to be representing the distillery in any way, we can’t get involved. At least not yet.”
“Wait a minute. How can this be like it was five years ago, Harriet? You’re not representing the distillery—or are y
ou?”
This was where they got into a very gray area. But even the best lawyers could get in a shitload of trouble for screwing up in a gray area.
“I’m working with you on the application, and even though it’s not technically legal representation, the ethics rules don’t allow me to simply take off my lawyer hat to make things more convenient for myself. And now Hannah wants me to do title work on the property. That’s legal work. No doubt about it.”
“So what are you saying?” He took a step toward her, and she was surprised to see he was angry. “That we still can’t do this? That we’ll never be able to do this as long as I’m working at Old Garnet and you’re doing legal work for the distillery?”
“I’m asking whether you can wait a little longer, Goose. Until the application and the work we’re doing on it is completed. I can’t risk anything unethical. Especially now.”
“Why now?”
“Because now that Mark is out of my life, I’m definitely staying here in Bourbon Springs. I’m going to try to buy out Bruce Colyard with Jon Buckler. It’s our time. But Bruce won’t sell if he thinks there’s even a whiff of something wrong attached to anything I’ve done.”
“So you want me to wait?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure I can do that.”
“What? Am I not worth it?”
“I never said that, Harriet. You’re worth that and the world, as far as I’m concerned,” he said, and she beamed at him. “But how the hell can we work on anything together like this?”
“Like what?”
His eyes narrowed, and his gaze was scorching. “Feeling like we did at Lila’s house.”
“I can wait for you, if you can for me. I don’t want a repeat of last time. I don’t want to walk away from this again.” She allowed herself to touch his cheek before slowly withdrawing her hand.
He nodded and broke into a grin. “That’s all I needed to hear. You know I’ll wait for you. I’ve already waited five years.”
Bourbon Springs Box Set: Volume II, Books 4-6 (Bourbon Springs Box Sets Book 2) Page 42