Pepper sipped, and from the corner of her eye saw Hannah bring the glass to her lips and pretend to taste.
“Whoa, that burns!” Pepper exclaimed. She put her half-empty shot glass on top of a nearby barrel.
“As it should,” Walker said with satisfaction. “It’s white and it has bite. White dog.” He raised his glass to his companions and sipped.
Hannah and Pepper thanked Walker for his hospitality and, after retrieving their coats, left the distillery. Once outside, Hannah begged off the rest of the tour.
“I’d usually take a guest down by Old Crow Creek and to the bottling house, but do you mind if we go back to the visitors’ center? I’m a little tired. That steam got to me.”
Pepper offered Hannah her arm and urged her to hold on. “Not a problem. Let’s get you inside and resting and we can talk some more. I’ll go get us some cocoa.”
Hannah patted Pepper’s arm as they strode back toward the visitors’ center in a little snow shower. “I think I’m really going to like having you as a neighbor.”
They returned to Hannah’s office, and Pepper offered to go the café. Hannah thanked her and excused herself once more to the restroom.
Pepper passed Bo’s office, and noted that the door was still closed. She could hear the two men talking, and smiled when she recognized the sound of Jon’s voice.
After quickly obtaining two paper cups of cocoa from the café line, Pepper returned to Hannah’s office. The warm cups felt wonderful in her hands; she was still chilly from being outside.
“So when are Harriet and Goose getting married?” Pepper asked upon walking into Hannah’s office.
But the chair behind Hannah’s desk was empty, and for a split second Pepper thought she’d entered the wrong office. A motion or soft noise to her right caught her attention, and Pepper looked down to see Hannah snuggled up and fast asleep on a couch, covered with an old afghan made of multicolored Granny’s squares.
Pepper crept to Hannah’s desk and put one cup of cocoa smack in the middle of Hannah’s blotter calendar. She then reached for her coat, which she’d thrown on one of the chairs, and retreated from the office, turning off the light and closing the door behind her. The door to Bo’s office was still closed and she could hear muffled voices and a little bit of laughter from within. With nowhere to go for the moment, Pepper draped her coat over her left arm and, holding her cocoa in her right hand, went back into the visitors’ center.
Aside from maybe half a dozen tourists, there wasn’t anyone in the lobby, and Pepper migrated to the center of the space to again examine the bourbon flavor wheel.
When she’d been at the distillery for the wedding, she’d heard people talking about it and had seen the mess, and had wondered what the final product would look like. It was truly a thing of beauty and symbolism; she spotted the little red circle in the middle of the wheel and understood its allusion to the Old Garnet brand. She had to bend a little to read the writing on the circle, but being a Bourbon Springs native immediately understood the Gaelic phrase, uisce beatha, without having to read the translation, water of life.
“Like it?”
Pepper looked to her right and saw Goose walking toward her.
“It’s wonderful,” she said. “So what are you doing here? I thought you and Drake were going out on the grounds.”
Goose explained that they had returned because of the snow, and nodded toward the front of the building. Pepper turned to see that it was snowing harder than it had been when she and Hannah had returned to the visitors’ center.
“Say, where’s Hannah?” Goose asked. Pepper explained she was napping in her office. “Napping? I’ve never known that woman to take a nap,” Goose said, scratching his head.
“Um, I think she had a headache,” Pepper said, trying to cover for her. She cast her eyes back to the front of the building where the snow showed no sign of letting up. “Looks like I need to get out of here.”
Goose nodded. “You should go while the gettin’s good, as they say. No need to tell you that Ashbrooke Pike can get really treacherous this far out of town.”
Pepper looked in the direction of the offices, wishing the door to Bo’s office would open and Jon appear before she had to leave.
“I thought Drake said he’d take Jon back to town,” Goose reminded her.
“Right,” she said, but cast her eyes about the visitors’ center for an excuse to linger. She found it in the form of the gift shop, which was practically in front of them.
“Say, do you sell bourbon balls in the gift shop?”
“Of course we do.”
She told him that her mother’s birthday was soon (which was true; it was the next week), and that bourbon balls sounded like a good gift idea. Ever the salesman for Old Garnet, Goose escorted Pepper into the gift shop and began extolling the virtues of other items, including bourbon fudge and bourbon pecan brittle.
Fifteen minutes later Pepper left the shop with two boxes of bourbon balls, some of the pecan brittle, and a magnet, a purchase which in retrospect seemed silly since she was not even in possession of her own fridge at that time.
Goose left, and Pepper put her purchases down on a bench outside the gift shop to pull her keys from her purse. She gave one last hopeful look in the direction of Bo’s office and then felt someone’s eyes on her. She turned and saw Drake standing in front of the entrance to the gift shop.
“Hi,” he said a little sheepishly. “Leaving?”
“Yeah. It’s looking bad outside.” She pointed to the still-falling snow just beyond the doors of the visitors’ center.
Drake looked like he was about to burst. His lips were pressed together and she could see a muscle in his temple twitching.
“Got a minute to talk?” He gestured to a bench which was at the far end of the visitors’ center opposite the offices area.
“Sure,” she said and followed him to a bench. She remembered the area as the spot where the giant Christmas tree had stood during Bo and Lila’s wedding.
Pepper sat, followed by Drake. He licked his lips and seemed to be struggling with what to say.
“Sorry if I snuck up on you like that,” he apologized. “I saw you going into the gift shop on my way back inside after the outing with Goose and I wanted to talk to you before you left.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you were waiting for me.”
As she slouched on the bench, an overwhelming sense of tiredness washed over her. She yawned and apologized to her companion. It had been an incredibly intense twenty-four hours: moving her mother and then becoming sexually involved with Jon. Now she’d just finished tramping around the distillery after a tour. Leaving—even without Jon—looked rather attractive to her in that quiet moment.
But Drake’s stare told Pepper that she wasn’t about to escape the distillery anytime soon.
“This is… awkward,” he started. “I’ve never had a conversation like this with a client.”
Crap.
Why was today the day Drake had to choose for true confessions? And hadn’t she made it clear that she wasn’t interested? Why was he doing this to himself—and her?
“Drake, wait—”
“Guessed it, haven’t you?”
“Let’s not go there,” she said.
“Too late for me.” He turned deep red as he looked at his clasped hands.
Drake leaned forward and rested his arms on his legs. He wasn’t facing Pepper and didn’t turn his head to look at her.
“Pepper, after we get the closing done, I’m not going to be able to do any more legal work for you. I can’t. You’re far too—distracting,” he said, taking a sideways look at her. “I’m sorry.”
“Drake—”
He turned, looked at her, and held up one hand. “Hear me out,” he pleaded. She nodded and fell silent.
“Did you hire me just so I couldn’t ask you out again?”
“Well, no,” she said, noticing that he’d phrased his question as to whether it had bee
n the only reason. “I had my reasons,” she said, being deliberately vague and guarded in her response.
“I’m just wondering if I should keep waiting or wondering or hoping.” He turned an expectant face to her.
Had she ever given this guy any signal that she liked him more than a passing or professional acquaintance? Pepper was dumbfounded because he clearly had it bad for her, and she’d had absolutely no clue as to the intensity of his interest in her.
“I’m not going to give you false hope, Drake. I’m—I’m just not—I mean I don’t think about you like that. I’m sorry.”
His jaw clenched a little and he nodded. “Thanks for at least being honest with me. I’ll be out of your hair as soon as the closing is done, unless you think I shouldn’t do it.”
She protested the idea, saying that she wanted him to complete the work on the closing, especially since it was almost done. Pepper wanted absolutely no more delays getting into GarnetBrooke.
“Jon gave you my message, then? No more postponements,” he said. “We’ll get it done within the month, I promise. The sellers are anxious for their money, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah, Jon told me yesterday.” She hoped the strange interview was coming to an end and moved to the edge of the bench.
“Pepper, again, I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing, Drake. You’re only being honest, and that’s something I’ll always appreciate and remember.” She offered him a very weak smile.
“Thanks, and I hope you’ll let Jon do your legal work now,” Drake added. “He told me what happened.”
“What?” she cried in panicked misunderstanding. “What did he tell you?”
“Uh—only that he made you mad when you called him about winning the lottery,” Drake said. “And he’s really sorry, for whatever that’s worth,” he added.
“Why did he tell you about that?”
“Well, he is my law partner now, and I’d never understood why you didn’t hire the guy. And I actually went to him about—well, what we discussed at first,” he muttered.
“So when did you two have this conversation about me?” Pepper didn’t like the thought of Jon and Drake talking about her, even if she was a client.
“Yesterday,” he confirmed. “And he is really sorry. He’s worried—and I am too—that the firm could lose you as a client because he doesn’t think you’ll let him do any work for you. That you’re still mad at him about the lottery thing,” Drake rambled.
He seemed increasingly unnerved by Pepper’s increasing agitation. But rather than shutting up, which was the reasonable thing to do, he kept on blabbing.
“Jon—well, he was actually the smarter of us,” Drake claimed. “He more or less said I should back off and leave you alone, as far as pursuing a relationship with you, which was obviously good advice judging from that look on your face.” He laughed nervously.
Although she had to admit the advice was good—bad business and ethics to get involved with a client—Pepper was far from amused.
Because Jon hadn’t told Drake the entire story—the truth—about exactly why he was advising his new law partner not to go sniffing around her door.
He’d tried to turn the situation to his benefit by warning away a potential romantic rival.
On the very same day he confessed his changed feelings.
That hot flush of anger—so similar to how she’d felt when her father had called—stole over her, sickening and enraging her.
Jon had claimed her but hadn’t bothered to tell Drake what he’d really done. I’ve known her forever! Me first! I call dibs, bro!
And what if she had been interested in Drake? What if she’d changed her mind since the last time he had asked her out? Jon had presumed to know what she wanted. The arrogance.
But the worst of it was that Jon hadn’t been honest with Drake.
So why should she expect him to be honest with her? How could she trust him?
Jon emerged from Bo’s office on the opposite end of the visitors’ center.
“Well, thank you for telling me all this, Drake,” Pepper said stiffly in her best schoolteacher voice.
She was on the verge of confirming the firm had absolutely lost her as a client, but thought the better of it. No use making Drake feel worse than he already did. He’d lost her as a client and as a potential love interest at a stroke. That was his reward for honesty, even though she felt a spark of irritation toward him for sharing his romantic feelings about her with Jon.
Then she again spied Jon across the lobby and felt nothing but anger.
“Could you please tell Jon that I’d like to speak with him alone over here?” Pepper rose, effectively ending the conversation.
Drake stood and started apologizing again, and Pepper had to firmly repeat her request that he fetch Jon for her. Drake did so, and Pepper watched as the message was delivered and Jon walked across the lobby to join her.
“Hey, you’d better get going. That snow is—”
“Drake just told me that you boys had a little conversation about me yesterday.”
Jon’s face registered surprise at the subject. “Yeah, he told me that he—wait—what did he tell you?”
“He told me he’s getting out of representing me after the closing, if that answers your question.”
“So he told you about—about how he—”
“He says that I distract him, but that’s not the most interesting thing he told me,” she said and cocked her head. “He said you advised him to stay away from me. You know, hands off.”
“Yes,” Jon said, looking at her with rising concern. “I thought you wouldn’t let me do any work for you. I figured you were still royally pissed at me, and I did tell him the whole story about how you’d called me with the news of your lottery win and I was an asshole.”
“But that wasn’t the whole story, was it? You had another reason for telling him to back off. Bet you didn’t tell him how your feelings for me had become more than purely friendly. Because he sure neglected to mention that part to me just a moment ago, if you did tell him.”
“Well, no, I didn’t,” Jon admitted and turned red. “But yesterday—Pepper—I didn’t even tell you what I was feeling until later that same day. How could I admit that to him?”
“But you told me you’d been feeling differently about me since Thanksgiving, Jon! And we even talked about Drake right before we—”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. Jon had revealed his feelings for her by confiding that he knew how Drake felt about her.
“Are you saying you think that I’ve—what? That I wasn’t honest with you?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying! And you weren’t honest with your own law partner!”
“Wait,” he stammered, “that’s not what—what—Pepper, I’m sorry.”
She had suffered mightily for the dishonesty of one man, and Jon of all people should’ve known she would not abide anything less than the truth at all times. She had every right to not only expect it from him as a lawyer but as her friend.
Now he’d failed her in that regard as a lover.
She started to shake and the tears came.
“So am I.” She choked and dropped her head to hide her face.
“Please, don’t tell me that—that—”
“Tell you that it’s over? Whatever it was that we had?” She shook her head and laughed bitterly. “I knew it was too good to be true.”
“It wasn’t just good. It was the best. You know that.”
“Well, whatever it was, it’s over.”
“Pepper, no….” He reached for her, but she shook off his touch.
“Nice while it lasted. In fact, it was so fast maybe it was just a dream.”
She fled from him, scurrying to the front doors and trying to hide the tears as she ran.
10
The horses were coming!
It was the day that the horses would finally arrive at GarnetBrooke and its pastures would once more be fil
led with thoroughbreds.
Well, two of them.
It was mid-March and Pepper had been ensconced in her new home for almost a month. The closing on GarnetBrooke had gone through without a hitch, unless she counted the sad looks Drake had given her throughout the transaction. He’d known it was the last bit of legal work he was going to do for her and would thereafter have no reason to regularly interact with the object of his affections.
Pepper had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the equine retirees, and because she had changed law firms (she’d hired a big firm out of Lexington), the transfer of horses from the other facility was taking a little longer than she’d originally hoped. Pepper realized that to receive any horses within a month of becoming the farm’s owner was remarkable, considering all the legal wrangling and logistics involved, but she was anxious for the rest of her life to begin.
It was a wonderfully sunny late winter day, a perfect day for old horses to find a new and permanent home. She sat in her breakfast nook overlooking her backyard, which blended into an endless sea of softly rolling fields. The spot in her large kitchen was one of her favorite places in her new home, a large but simple colonial structure. Although spacious and well-designed for living and entertaining, it was not in any respect a mansion or something like a manor house on a plantation. It was functional, comfortable, and, most importantly to Pepper, provided a spectacular view from almost every angle of her sizeable chunk of prime Bluegrass acreage.
Thanks to a moderate amount of warmth due to abundant sunshine in a robin’s-egg blue sky, the land was sparkling with color. The grayness of the winter fields was starting to surrender, albeit slowly, to the twinges of vibrant green, spreading in patches across the land. Pepper had been on the farm enough during her time as an employee to know just how gorgeous the place was, particularly in the spring when it looked like the Divine had personally touched every living thing to endow such intense and lush color. Now she had a regular front-row seat for that riotous and exuberant display of natural hues.
And she was going to have horses populating her backyard too.
Bourbon Springs Box Set: Volume II, Books 4-6 (Bourbon Springs Box Sets Book 2) Page 70