Bourbon Springs Box Set: Volume II, Books 4-6 (Bourbon Springs Box Sets Book 2)
Page 58
Miraculously, the group made it to the distillery without a tumble or misstep. Once inside, Rachel, Brady, Goose, and Hannah took a small elevator while the others walked up the stairs to the second level where the tops of the mash tubs emerged through the wooden floor. Hannah briefly returned to the visitors’ center and retrieved an old roll-up foam mattress from Bo’s office along with a few blankets.
“He used to sleep on this thing in his office before he got that pull-out bed and new couch. Not a hospital bed, but better than the wooden floor,” she explained as she arranged the foam mattress and then covered it with one of the blankets.
“Okay,” Goose said as Brady and Hannah lowered Rachel onto the mattress. She was across from a line of mash tubs and close to one of the bare interior limestone walls of the building.
“What next?” Brady asked and knelt beside his wife. He covered her with the other blanket and helped her with some breathing exercises.
“I’ll keep calling 911 to get someone out here,” Hannah said. She started to descend to the first floor with Walker, CiCi, and Harriet.
“Oh, no,” Goose said, grabbing Hannah by the arm. “I need you here with Rachel.” He turned to the other three. “Whose phone has the most power left?”
After some comparisons, it was discovered Harriet’s had the most charge. Goose directed her to keep calling 911 to see when an ambulance could make it to them and to monitor the weather situation.
“And you three,” Goose said, pointing to Harriet, CiCi, and Walker, “get downstairs. We’ll holler if we need you.”
Rachel let out another long wail that reverberated throughout the building. “I think I’m gonna have to push!”
“But why should I stay?” Hannah demanded of Goose in a panicked voice. “You expect me to deliver this baby? Just because I have a uterus doesn’t make me an expert at these things!”
Goose put a hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “Hannah, I need you to stay because you’re Rachel’s friend. She needs you. Hold her hand. Help her.”
“But—who is going to deliver this baby?” Brady asked, his eyes wild with fear.
“I’ve delivered a baby before. Just once. Out on the side of the road, years ago when I was a sheriff’s deputy. It’s not much experience, I’ll grant you that. But both mother and child were fine. So those are my credentials.”
“Well, cousin, looks like you’re our expert tonight,” Hannah said. She knelt by Rachel’s side opposite Brady.
Goose gave the signal to Walker, CiCi, and Harriet to get below, and they all immediately began to head down the stairs to the first floor. He then told Hannah to go find the nearest first aid kit, which he believed was in a closet between the mash tubs and the stills. When she inquired about the location of the night watchman, Goose reminded her that they’d told him to arrive later because of the shower. No way the guy could make it out to the distillery in the ice storm.
“It’s just us here tonight,” he said.”
Harriet huddled with Walker and CiCi on a bench on the first floor while Harriet called 911 and learned that an ambulance was at least an hour away due to the number of other calls and road conditions. The only good news came when Walker returned from checking the generator; it was working properly with no obvious problems. For the next long hour, they could hear Rachel’s cries as the contractions got closer and closer, along with Goose and Brady, both of them alternating turns on various phones to a 911 dispatcher who was talking them through the delivery process.
Harriet was filled with awe and fear. She knew it was extremely dangerous for Rachel and her baby and kept up a constant stream of silent prayers about the perilous situation. She was also filled with a new level of admiration for Goose. He’d completely taken charge of the situation and was now about to deliver Rachel’s baby.
“Okay, okay, here he—or she—comes!” Goose yelled as Rachel screamed from above, her cries echoing off the limestone walls.
“You wanted excitement?” Rachel screamed and grunted. “You got it, Brady Craft!”
“Not like this! Not like this!” he screamed back.
Walker, CiCi, and Harriet were no longer sitting on the long bench at the entrance to the distillery but pacing and on the verge of hyperventilating. It had been maddening to know what was going on upstairs and not be able to help. Rachel’s last cry made them all giggle and relieved the tension a little, but their laughter was stilled by Brady’s voice.
“It’s a boy!” he yelled.
At that moment, Kyle burst into the distillery with the EMTs and a stretcher behind him.
Hannah appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Too late, folks! She got the job done, but get yourselves up here and help her!”
Fifteen minutes later, the EMTs carried Rachel down on a stretcher, and Brady followed, his newborn son tightly wrapped in a blanket in his arms, with Goose trailing behind. Once on the first floor, Brady handed his son to his exhausted wife and kissed her on the forehead. Rachel could barely keep her eyes open, but she had enough energy to hold and adore her baby boy.
An EMT left to move the ambulance closer to the distillery entrance, and Brady turned to Goose and pulled him into a tight hug.
“Thank you,” he said in a strained voice.
Goose said nothing but hugged him back. Harriet caught Goose’s eye over Brady’s shoulder, and he finally smiled back at her.
The men released each other from their embrace.
“That middle name?” Brady said. “It’s yours. All yours. So—what is your name, anyway?”
Goose held up his hands and shook his head. “Judge, you don’t want it. Trust me.”
“What is it?” insisted Rachel.
“Marvin,” Goose admitted, and the judges exchanged a look of trepidation. “But I’d be honored if you gave him another name. My grandfather’s name, Elijah.”
“Jacob Elijah…I love it,” Rachel said, beaming at her son, “our most wonderful Christmas gift.”
“Then that’s his name,” Brady concluded, patting Goose on the back.
The EMT returned, having backed up the ambulance as close as possible to the distillery’s doors, and Rachel was whisked away with Brady following.
“I’m going to escort them to the hospital,” Kyle said. He gave Hannah a quick kiss. “Everyone needs to stay here for the night. Don’t try to make it home. The roads are a nightmare.”
As the distillery doors were closed behind them, Hannah stumbled to the stairs, where she collapsed into an exhausted heap at the bottom. Harriet and CiCi were immediately by her side.
“I’m going upstairs to clean up,” Goose told Hannah, and the two exchanged a knowing look. “I take it you don’t want to save any of those blankets or that foam mattress pad thing?”
“That would be a no,” Hannah confirmed. “Get rid of it provided you have the energy, which I sure don’t.” She looked at her cousin. “How do you even have the strength to stand? I’m wiped out.”
“Still have the adrenaline pumping through me.” Goose shot a glance at Harriet and started up the stairs.
Hannah turned and called to Goose over her shoulder.
“Elijah finally made it back home, didn’t he?”
Goose gripped the railing and remained silent for a long while.
“Yeah, he did,” Goose said, turning and nodding. A smile slowly spread across his face. “Home at last.”
Hannah popped up from her perch on the lowest stair and ran up the stairs to embrace him. After a long, tearful hug, Hannah held Goose at arm’s length.
“And this is your home too. Always know that, Goose.” And she pulled him into another hug as they both cried.
Despite Kyle’s admonition, Walker insisted on inspecting the parking lot to see just how impassable the roads were. He returned with the news that Kyle was right; there was no way to get out on the roads unless one wanted to risk disaster.
Hannah decided she’d bunk in Bo’s office on his couch, while Walker and CiCi
decided to stay in the distillery since it was warm. Although clueless about where they might actually sleep, they made their way upstairs and said goodnight after Goose gave the all clear on having the floor cleaned up.
“And as for you,” Hannah said, turning to Harriet, “Goose should just take you back to his place in the van or truck. If you run off the drive, you’ll still be on distillery property. Not nearly as dangerous as getting out on Ashbrooke Pike.”
Goose had just returned to the main floor of the distillery, passing Walker and CiCi on his way down the stairs. He pressed his lips together and looked unhappy at the suggestion.
“Look, whatever’s wrong between you two, put it aside for tonight. You both need to get somewhere warm and out of harm’s way,” Hannah said. “So go home and warm up. And while you’re at, it, kiss and make up. You two are pathetic. Work it out!”
And with that, Hannah grabbed her coat from a nearby bench and pushed out the front doors of the distillery, leaving Harriet and Goose alone.
“You don’t have to do it, Goose,” Harriet said. “I can stay here.”
“No, you won’t,” Goose insisted. “I’ll build a fire at my place—I hope the tarp didn’t slip off the woodpile in all this snow and ice. Come with me.” He offered her his hand.
Harriet looked down at the hand, hesitated for a split second, and grabbed it. She pulled him to her and kissed him. Startled, Goose didn’t kiss her back—but he also didn’t pull away.
“Sorry,” she said and broke the kiss. “It’s just that you were pretty damned amazing tonight, and—and I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” he said, staring at her. But then he released her hand. “The truck’s in the parking lot. Follow me.”
Harriet did and out the distillery’s doors.
She was glad he walked ahead of her so he couldn’t see her tears.
30
They traveled to his home in dark silence, almost skidding off the road at one point in the short but scary journey. The driveway on the distillery grounds was a sheet of ice underneath the snow, and every inch forward was a nail-biting experience. Once at his home, Goose kept silent and immediately began to build a fire.
And her anger began to boil.
She’d tried to do everything right by the distillery, by him. What had that gotten her?
Heartache.
Rejection.
Pain.
Maybe this was how he felt when it came to how he saw himself and his side of his family in relation to those who still owned the distillery. So he wanted her to feel that same sting of longing and otherness? Well, he certainly was successful on that point.
She was in pain.
Harriet huddled on his couch underneath the red and black afghan, wrapped tightly against the cold and Goose’s indifference. No longer possessed of the hope that they had a future together, she let her anger expand and despair spiral in the silence that was only punctuated by the crackling of the fire.
“I heard about Rob and Linsey.” His voice shattered the silence so abruptly she was physically startled.
“Yeah.” Harriet stared at the fire, and she felt like she did that night at Lila’s—cold and raw, both physically and emotionally.
“I know you represent her,” he continued. “An old buddy of mine from the sheriff’s department told me. Rob’s an idiot for letting Linsey go.”
“No disagreements here,” was all Harriet would say. It was the most she could say under the circumstances since Linsey was her client.
“I can’t believe him,” Goose continued. “I never would’ve guessed he’d do something like that. He was always such a straight arrow. But I had heard that in later years—well, he’d gotten a bit of a reputation.”
“Well, now you can do all that again, I guess,” she spat out, not looking at him and thinking of Linsey’s story of the wild exploits of the sheriff’s deputies.
“What did you say?”
“Nice to be free to go back to that kind of lifestyle, isn’t it?” she blurted before thinking. Harriet hurt, and she wanted him to feel it too.
“You—you think…,” he trailed off and stood. “Is that how you see me? Some guy who just goes from woman to woman?” His voice was weak yet edged with anger.
She cast him a sad look, then turned her gaze to the fireplace. “I don’t know what I see.”
Goose pulled his chair across the floor until it was directly in front of her. He straddled the chair, put his elbows on the tops of his legs, and looked right at her. His quick movement caused Harriet to draw the afghan around her even more tightly and to shrivel into the couch and away from him.
“Let me tell you something, Harriet Hensley,” he began. “I think we’re probably alike in more ways than you think. And I’m not the man you seem to think I am. I’ll prove it to you.”
“Go right ahead,” she snapped.
“Let’s do some math, shall we?”
“Math?”
“Yes, math. Numbers don’t lie, right?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Do you know how many women I was with from The Cooperage until we got together again?”
“I really don’t want to know,” she said and tried to turn away from him.
Goose reached, put his forefinger on her chin, and turned her face to his.
“It’s a number that will be familiar to you, I’m almost sure of it.” He withdrew his finger from her face, but kept it pointing upward and in front of her.
Her mouth dropped open as she realized what he was saying.
“That’s right. One. One other woman besides you in that time—in five fucking years, Harriet. That was it. And I’ll bet money that you were only with Mark during that same time, am I right?”
She couldn’t speak and he pushed away from the couch and stood.
“Care to venture a guess why there weren’t more? Or why it didn’t work out with the one?”
Mortified at her presumptions, she felt ill and ashamed at thinking so little of him.
But that was how fear and anger worked: they robbed one of hope, reason, and trust.
“Goose, I’m sorry, I—”
“You, of course. You. The memory of you. I kept looking for someone like you, someone special and warm and kind. And maybe I was also hoping on some level that it would be you someday,” he said, choking on tears and gesturing toward her. “I wasn’t hopping around from woman to woman anymore. Because as corny as it sounds, that night at The Cooperage changed me. You changed me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, rising from the couch. She wanted him, and wanted to be held by him.
But Goose backed away.
“And now you’ve shown me that you’re just like most people in Bourbon Springs. You think the worst of me, of what I am, of what I’m capable of. Just as prejudiced. Stuck in the past.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I am,” she admitted and let the afghan fall back onto the couch. “Fair enough on that. But you got one thing wrong. I didn’t change you, Goose. You changed. You chose it. I was just lucky enough to be there when it happened. Stop selling yourself so short.”
“How hypocritical can you get, Harriet? You just accused me of—”
“Yeah, I’m a hypocrite. But at least I’ll admit to that. But guess what? Maybe you are too.”
“Excuse me?”
“If I’m stuck in the past, stuck in my prejudices, then so are you,” she countered and squared her body to face him. “You can’t get over whatever wrongs were done to your family years ago. You’re so prejudiced you can’t even share an ice cream recipe. You’re suspicious of the motivations of Hannah and Bo because you’re seeing them through the lens of the past rather than the opportunities and hopes you have together for a future. And I’m not just talking about work opportunities if you manage to settle this dispute over the old deed. I’m talking about being a family. It can happen, Goose. We saw it! We lived it on Thanksgiving at Hannah’s house.”
“No, your past and your family’s past made you what you are today. What I’m saying is that it’s time to let go of whatever resentment holds you back.”
“You make it sound easy,” he said.
“Maybe it is when you consider everything you have to gain by letting go.”
Goose stood in the middle of the room, breathing heavily. Tired and cold, Harriet sat back down on the couch. It was chilly in his house with the power out, and she craved the warmth of the blanket once more.
For a few fleeting seconds, she thought the gap between them had been bridged. He took a step toward her, and she sat on the edge of the couch, ready for him to come to her, to return to her arms and her life.
Instead, he turned his back and started to walk away. As he reached the edge of the living room, she called out to him.
“Do you ever wonder what would’ve happened if Parker or George had just said sorry? Do you ever wonder how it could’ve been if one or both of them had simply forgiven the other?”
“We’ll never know that,” he said over his shoulder. “They never reconciled. Time ran out for them.”
She moved off the couch again, sensing his changing mood and her opportunity—perhaps her last—to reach him and make things right again. Harriet stood before the dwindling fire and stared at his back.
“But time hasn’t run out for us, has it?” she asked.
He took in a shuddering breath and refused to face her.
“I don’t know.” He quickly retreated to his bedroom before she could offer the apology that was upon her lips.
* * *
“BOURBON BABY!” proclaimed the headline in the Lexington newspaper a few days after Jacob Elijah’s unexpected arrival on the second floor of the Old Garnet Distillery. Once again, Rachel and Brady found themselves the subject of much unwanted attention and were minor celebrities. They naturally shunned the spotlight, choosing to spend time alone with their new son, and pointed to Goose and Hannah as the real heroes of the event. Bo and Lila returned from their honeymoon to a distillery overrun with more tourists than ever, as well as a very nosy press wanting to see the very place where the baby had been born.