Soon she was on her back again, Mack and the heavens above her.
With simple yet quick movements, his jeans were soon completely discarded to one side, leaving him nude yet her clothed below the waist.
But not for long.
His kisses began at her temples, trailing along her cheeks, chin, and neck, as he wriggled the last bits of clothes from her body. As his lips traveled lower, so too did his hands, and then they were completely skin to skin, entangled, breasts against chest, his length pressed against her stomach.
Mack’s mouth found her nipples again, and she shuddered, then cried as he moved his hand lower to her center. His fingertips brushed and teased until he slipped one finger inside her and his thumb stroked her clit. Moaning, she arched against him, eyes closed, although she sensed him hovering over her, gazing at her, and taking in the sight as he pleasured her.
This bliss continued until his hand migrated to her inner thigh. Jorrie opened her eyes to see Mack’s head lowered between her legs, and her head dropped back in anticipation and surrender.
His tongue moved slowly, mercilessly along her core, and his thumbs gently stroked the sensitive part of her upper legs. Soon she was panting, whispering his name for release, but his tongue continued the pattern until he slipped two fingers inside her.
Gently pulling her clit into his mouth, his fingers moved faster until her orgasm hit her so hard and suddenly that her knees were drawn together as she held Mack’s head between her legs in what had to be an uncomfortable grip.
Shattered and spent as the last spasm of ecstasy left her, Jorrie collapsed with a long sigh. She was vaguely aware of Mack kissing her breasts, neck, and lips before pulling her to him. They dozed for a while, the soft hoots of a nearby owl their lullaby.
She opened her eyes to see him smiling down at her as he stroked one cheek with his thumb.
“That was certainly a nice performance,” she whispered.
He laughed and kissed her quickly.
“And that was just the warm-up act, Ms. Jones.”
After some more kisses, Mack reached for his discarded jeans and pulled out a familiar-looking packet. Grinning, he held it above her in invitation.
“I’d like to watch instead,” she said.
“Just a little naughty. I like it.”
He tore open the packet, fell onto his back, and rolled the sheath along his length. He gave himself a few strokes before she interrupted him.
“I think that’s my job.”
Her hand replaced his. Mack closed his eyes as Jorrie pumped him lightly while she bent to spread kisses across his taut and heaving chest.
“Jorrie…”
Her name on his lips was the best thing she’d heard all night. No music, no lyrics would ever sound as sweet.
But before she could appreciate any additional sounds she caused him to make, Mack had swept her hand away and flipped her onto her back.
Again at his mercy, she awaited his touch but sensed him hesitate.
His expression was that same mixture of desire and wonder she’d seen in him before their clothes had been discarded. Bared to each other, not in the physical sense but their hearts open, they stayed that way for several moments before he moved to kiss her. He seemed shy, and as their lips met, Jorrie felt him tremble.
Or maybe she was trembling. She couldn’t tell.
He moved on top of her, stroking her wetness briefly before slowly slipping into her. Jorrie’s hips moved to meet him and he groaned, his head falling to the curve of her shoulder. Now as one they trembled as they fought to remain still, consumed by the moment and each other. Jorrie finally moved slightly, merely to kiss Mack’s temple, and her small gesture roused him.
With Mack taking the lead they found a rhythm, tentative and slow at first. When she wrapped her legs around his waist to draw him closer, Jorrie thought she’d made a mistake; Mack immediately stilled, and she thought he was very close. Instead, he smiled, moving in slower, shallower strokes that had her sighing happily and climbing toward that peak with him.
A few more thrusts and she was there, this climax not nearly as explosive as the first he’d given her, but longer and ultimately more satisfying. As she ground against him to extend her pleasure, Mack came, his roar of contentment rending the otherwise still night.
Mack rolled away wordlessly and she buried her head against his chest. His breath in her ear was the last sweet music that swept her into sleep.
12
Mack thought he’d pay a heavy price in fatigue after such a wonderful night, but half an hour before his alarm went off, he bounded out of bed.
He was in that buzzed-up zone between sex and love, with all his hormones still firing and demanding the presence of the object of his ardor, Jorrie.
Barely sleeping the scant hours he’d been home, Mack had repeatedly replayed their night together—the sounds, the sensations, the emotions. They’d made love three times through the wee hours of the morning on the banks above Old Crow Creek, each coupling better than the last.
He’d already started writing more songs about Jorrie in his head, and even before he got in the shower, Mack had scrawled several lyrics on the back of an old catalog, which was the only piece of paper he could find in his room.
He arrived at the bottling house half an hour early and had even had enough time to stop at Minnick’s to pick up a box of donuts for his coworkers. Mack took a moment to eat a donut in the empty bottling house, happy to sit on an old barrel in the corner and enjoy the quiet of the morning before the work began. He was wondering whether any of his coworkers—other than Sims—had attended his concert.
To see Sims at the concert with Gary, who had never expressed any interest in music, had been quite the shock. Mack hadn’t shared his background with his summer school students; he didn’t want to be seen as talking about his glory days, so he’d kept that part of his life from them.
Maybe that had been a mistake.
He was, after all, a musician and a music teacher at heart. Yet he didn’t want to be accused of getting off subject, particularly with a group of at-risk students who were in summer school to learn about things other than music.
Mack had been even more surprised to learn that the reason Gary had been at the concert with Sims was because Sims was dating Gary’s grandmother. Gary had told him she wanted to attend but was ill. Sims had been his usual unpleasant self, and Mack figured it was for the doubly irritating things of having to deal with a teen as a favor to his girlfriend and for taking said teen to see Mack, a subordinate he disliked.
He was mulling over these strange developments when none other than the boss himself appeared in the door of the bottling house, at the opposite end of the building. Sims looked shocked to see him, and his face initially registered something close to concern.
Then Mack held up the box of donuts.
“Fresh from Minnick’s,” Mack said as cheerfully as he could.
Sims declined and looked Mack up and down.
“I thought you’d be late today, what with your big concert last night.”
Mack was a little unsettled at the thought of getting into any kind of unpleasant conversation with Sims while they were alone. He deliberately took a very big bite of his donut and shrugged, hoping that Sims would go away.
But Sims apparently sensed his hesitation. He took a step toward Mack and started laughing.
“You really think you’re something, don’t you?” Sims spat. “Singing again on a big stage like that—you like that, right? But it’s not Nashville, is it?”
Bo Davenport then appeared in the doorway where Sims had entered. He locked eyes with Mack, his mouth open when Sims spoke up again, unaware of anyone behind him.
Mack was about to point out Bo’s presence but Sims didn’t give him the chance.
“I thought it was so fucking funny that you had to come back here with your tail between your legs and beg for work because you couldn’t make it. But now you got those Davenpor
ts to somehow set you up and—”
“That will be enough!”
Bo’s voice boomed through the nearly empty bottling hall., the force so strong it rattled some of the bottles.
Bo strode toward Sims, a murderous look on his reddened face.
“How dare you speak to another employee like that! You will apologize to him now.”
Sims paled. “Mr. Davenport, I—I had no idea…”
“Of course you had no idea I was standing behind you. Otherwise I doubt you’d think you could get away with verbally abusing a subordinate.”
Mack had been around Bo Davenport enough to know that he wasn’t an angry man prone to outbursts. So to see one of the distillery owners get so upset was a remarkable and upsetting thing.
“Look, he was just joking,” Mack said, strangely feeling sorry for Sims. “It’s okay, really.”
“No, it’s not,” Bo said and shot a hard look at Mack. “I heard what I heard.”
Mack saw Sims swallow and look at the ground.
“I’m—I’m sorry, Mack,” he said.
“Good,” Bo said. He pursed his lips and turned his attention to the bottling supervisor. “Sims, come with me now.” Bo gestured toward the door, indicating that Sims should lead the way out of the building.
Mack held his breath as he watched them cross the room and leave. The only good thing about the entire confrontation was that at least there hadn’t been anyone else around to witness it. If there had been an audience for Sims’s humiliation, the inexorable retaliation would be all the worse.
Because regardless of the ass-chewing Mack suspected Sims was getting at that very moment from Bo Davenport, Mack knew that there would be hell to pay.
In the next fifteen or twenty minutes, after the other workers had arrived, Sims would return in high snark and make the rest of the day miserable for everyone, but especially for him.
But an hour later, Sims was nowhere to be seen, nor was he back by lunchtime.
Then Bo reappeared in the bottling house entrance and gestured to Mack, who was packing filled bottles into boxes.
“Meet me in my office during your lunch break?”
It was phrased as a very polite question, but Mack understood it as a command.
Mack nodded and quickly refocused on packing, but Derrick broke his concentration.
“Where the hell is Sims, man?” Derrick said, working on the labeling line with Laura. “I saw him when I was coming in today—but he was headed away from here with Bo. What gives?”
“Not really sure,” Mack said and continued to pack.
At lunch, Mack slipped away to Bo’s office in the visitors’ center, leaving the rest of his coworkers eating lunch at the picnic tables around the side of the bottling house. He felt he was being watched and turned to see Derrick and Laura looking at him worriedly, but he gave them a wave, hoping to reassure them.
Was he in trouble?
Had Sims brought up some little infraction or violation of company policy against him in some lame effort to divert Bo’s attention? Mack had dropped a bottle or two recently, and Sims had accused him of sloppy work even though the incidents had been nothing more than typical accidents.
Mack entered the side door of the visitors’ center and slowly walked down the hall to Bo’s office. Out in the main lobby, dozens of tourists were milling about, gazing up at the painted murals in the dome or looking down at the bourbon flavor wheel. A few inattentive people bumped into each other as they tried to examine the object of their curiosity. Then a tour guide passed him, a score of people trailing behind him.
“First things first,” the young man said. “All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon. So when you’re talking about bourbon, get that straight first. If you go into any liquor store around here and ask what the difference is between bourbon and whiskey, the clerk is rightfully going to look at you a little funny. So what’s the difference? First, the mash bill or the recipe for a bourbon must contain at least fifty-one percent corn… then placed in a new oak barrel, charred on the inside…”
Bo’s office door was closed, and Mack knocked lightly. He immediately heard a voice from within telling him to enter.
Once inside, his stomach turned over.
Bo was behind his large wooden desk in front of the far windows, and Hannah and Goose were sitting together on the small couch to the right against the wall.
Why were three of the distillery owners there? Why did they want to meet with him?
If they were going to fire him—which was what seemed likely—how could the concerts continue? He’d be out of a job and—
“Mack, sit, and try not to look so freaked out,” Goose said.
Goose smiled, put a hand on Mack’s shoulder, and pointed with the other hand to the chair in front of Bo’s desk.
Mack did as he was told and sat, and Goose took the other chair in front of Bo’s desk.
“Oh, goody,” cooed Hannah.
Mack turned around to see Hannah kicking off her shoes and putting her legs up on the small couch. “Now I can stretch out,” she said, sighing.
Bo cleared his throat, and Mack immediately gave him his full attention.
“Mack, on behalf of Old Garnet, we all want to apologize to you,” Bo said.
“You want to what?”
“We want to apologize for what Sims said to you,” Goose said.
“And I can’t believe that what I heard this morning was the first time he treated you that way. Am I right?” Bo asked.
Mack avoided eye contact with anyone but knew that in doing so he’d given them his answer.
“Bullies don’t just pop up,” Goose said. “I should know. I’m a reformed one.”
“Who said you’re reformed?” taunted Hannah.
“Hopefully, you,” Goose shot back.
“We don’t know how long you had to deal with Sims’s abuse, Mack, but we figure it’s at least been since you returned to work here a few weeks ago. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want, and we understand. But again, we’re sorry. We’re a family here—and I’m not just referring to my own blood relations in this room. I mean that. Old Garnet is, I would like to think, a very special place to work. We’re not such a big operation that we don’t know each other, and I will not tolerate someone treating another employee like Sims did today. None of us will.”
“Thanks,” Mack said. “But—I guess I will have to say that after what happened today, I don’t know if it will make anything better. Sims—well, when I came back to work here a few weeks ago, I found him to be the same guy I knew when I worked here years ago. I know he had a hard time with his wife’s death, but he’s—”
“If you’re worried that he’s going to abuse you again, or that he’s going to retaliate, forget about it,” Hannah said from behind.
“But how can you be sure that—”
“Because Sims is no longer an employee of Old Garnet,” Bo said.
Mack blinked in shock.
“You—you fired him? Because of me?”
“He is no longer employed here,” Bo said, repeating what Mack realized must have been the agreed-upon line amongst the owners. “But if we did fire him,” Bo continued, “it was not because of you, Mack, but rather because of what Sims did himself.”
Mack sat back in his chair, stunned. He looked from Bo to Goose and then Hannah.
These three people were the best bosses anyone could ever hope to have.
“So, with an opening suddenly having developed for the part-time bottling manager,” Goose said, looking at Mack and smiling, “we were wondering whether you’d be interested in the spot.”
Sims fired and he gets his job?
And last night he got to sing before an adoring crowd and make love to Jorrie for the first time?
It was suddenly the most perfect weekend of his life.
Mack looked at all three owners, his eyes landing on Bo.
“But I just started a few weeks ago. I don’t
have nearly as many years in as some of the other people out there.”
“You’ve got prior bottling experience, plus a college degree,” Hannah said. “No one else in the bottling house has that kind of educational background, and that’s part of the job requirement for part-time bottling manager.”
“Wait—it’s part-time, but doesn’t that mean responsibilities during the week?” Mack asked. “I’ve already got a full-time job this summer, and have one lined up for the fall as well.”
“We know,” Bo said. “We just want you as the weekend manager. We’re going to hire some additional help to support the weekly bottling line now that Sims is gone. So what do you say?”
“I accept,” Mack said.
Bo, Mack, and Goose all stood and shook hands. Mack then went over to the lounging Hannah and offered his hand.
“Oh, stop that,” she said and held her arms wide for a hug.
Mack leaned over to hug Hannah and laughed.
“Guess the heat wasn’t too much for you last night,” he said as they broke apart. “Glad to see you there.”
“Wouldn’t miss the first concert of the season,” Hannah said. “Hope to see as many as I can before the baby arrives.”
Bo told Mack that Jon was waiting in his office a few doors down and needed to speak with him about what had happened that day.
“When you’re done with all that, Goose and I are going to take you back to the bottling house, announce Sims is no longer employed here, and introduce you as the new manager.”
Mack nodded and thanked them, but lingered in the door for a moment, suddenly realizing Lila, another owner, had not been present for the meeting.
“Just curious—since three of the four owners showed up—is Lila good with this too?”
“You are a perceptive sort, aren’t you?” Hannah asked as she looked up at Mack from her couch perch.
“I don’t mean to be nosy. Sorry,” Mack said.
“We called her and told her what was up,” Bo assured him with a smile. “She’s home sick, that’s all.”
Mack left and went to Jon’s office, where he found the attorney waiting for him. Mack had to provide Jon with a written account of the incident, and Jon asked him about other verbal abuse. He confirmed that Sims had taunted him over the past few weeks, although the incident earlier that morning had been the worst of the lot. Jon also instructed Mack not to discuss with other employees what had happened and not to speak with Sims.
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