If he missed that window of opportunity, however, it would shut forever and Prent had to wait the extra years.
And that window was closing fast. He turned thirty-four in six months.
While it would be great to beat the deadline and not have to worry about keeping his uncle satisfied for the better part of the next half decade, Prent was far more interested in simply getting married to Miranda. He knew he could’ve gone off, found some pliant and willing woman, and married her just to trigger the will’s terms. But in addition to the potential legal hassles, that would’ve meant pretending to love someone he didn’t.
Miranda was the only one for him as he had repeatedly told her for the past umpteen months. She didn’t know about the will’s provisions because she never had wanted to know about his financial situation. All the better because he was sure she’d hate the terms.
Prent stood at his office window with a mug of coffee, staring out at the Old Oak at the side of the property. The tree was supposed to be at least two hundred years old and was the cooperage’s symbol, incorporated into its logo.
According to Oakes family lore, the founder saw the tree as a sign he should establish his business there and bought the property for the good omen as well as the good wood. But after the purchase and the night before he planned to harvest the tree, the owner had a dream in which after he felled the oak his new cooperage failed. Thereafter, he didn’t touch the tree and the business thrived. The story went that the owner fully believed the tree and the business were tied to a common fate. Since then, either from nostalgia or superstition, the Old Oak had been carefully tended for generations.
Prent’s mind drifted to the night he proposed to Miranda under that old tree and how they had joyfully made love in the darkness under its boughs after she accepted and he slipped that ring on her finger.
Prent closed his eyes, and all the little details of that morning’s near-tryst filled his mind.
Damn, it had felt good to hold Miranda Chaplin in his arms again—the woman he still considered his fiancée. She hadn’t allowed him to even hold her hand since the day he’d jilted her, so to finally kiss her, to feel her lips, tongue, and body against his had been shockingly wonderful.
In the end, though, the experience had been agonizing because she’d pulled away.
He sipped his coffee, pondering how he’d spent twice as long trying to win Miranda back than he had courting her. With all that time to contemplate what had happened, Prent had discarded his original belief that falling in love had been a case of opposites attracting. As his heart healed and he earned what some would call maturity, he had come to understand that Miranda loved him for what she saw he could be—his potential.
Yet he had failed to live up to his potential on their wedding day, sending them into what seemed like a never-ending cycle of approach-and-avoid.
He hadn’t thought about another woman and was pretty sure she hadn’t dated anyone since they broke up. Today had been a major breakthrough. Her response to his advance told him almost everything he needed to know.
She still loved him because she wouldn’t deny it.
Why she still loved him was inexplicable.
Prent took one last sip of his coffee then sat behind his desk, expecting his uncle to call at any second, asking him whether he’d be at the weekly staff meeting. Kurt Oakes did that every damn week, knowing full well he’d be there. The only times Prent wasn’t present was when he was on buying trips out of state.
Instead of waiting for the call, Prent grabbed a notepad and a report about pesticide use problems on young trees and walked down the hall to the conference room.
“Decided to beat him here today?” cracked Minerva.
Minerva Buchanan, Commonwealth Cooperage’s most senior and reliable employee, sat at a long table sipping her coffee and nibbling a bagel. She had started as Ollie’s secretary and had worked her way over the decades into her own title and position, chief administrator, which meant she handled anything that Kurt and Prent wanted done and basically kept everything from falling apart.
She was a grumpy angel with short hair dyed a shocking shade of red, and Prent loved her like a second mother.
“I figured it would piss him off,” Prent said and winked at Minerva as he took a seat.
Prent dropped his calendar and notepad on the glass surface of the table, which was supported by six large barrels. The room had other barrel-related décor, such as a small table in the corner with a barrelhead top, and an entire wall was decorated with barrelheads, each stenciled with a different distillery’s name.
“Anything on the agenda I need to be aware of before he storms in here?” Prent asked.
“That clinic thing again. He’s gonna dump it on you to set up, so get ready.”
“But I’m supposed to go on three buying trips in the next month.”
“Yeah, but it won’t be bad. I’ll help. Not much paperwork because the state wants it to happen and the Davenports are hot to do it. They’re supposed to find us a doctor, so we don’t have to worry about that.”
The last thing Prent had heard about the possible rotating clinic was that the Davenports were eager to partner with GarnetBrooke and the cooperage, but they also were having trouble finding a doctor willing to undertake the task.
“Where the hell is the boy?” boomed Kurt’s voice from the office next door.
“It never crosses his mind that I’m here, does it?” Prent asked.
“Nope,” Minerva said, taking the last bite of her bagel. She wiped her fingers on a small paper napkin and looked at him. “How’s Miranda?”
“She’s good,” Prent said and opened his calendar to try to look nonchalant. But there was no hiding from Minerva.
“Did she like the roses?” Minerva asked. “I’m sure you went up to Bourbon Springs this morning, didn’t you?”
“How did you know—”
“Honey, I know what today is,” Minerva said kindly. “I helped you snag those barrels, remember?”
Prent sighed and nodded, recalling how he’d enlisted a giddy Minerva to help him find several barrels to use in a scavenger hunt proposal for Miranda. The final barrel had been under the Old Oak, with a dozen red roses in a vase on top, along with a deeply-charred barrel stave carved with his proposal.
“She liked them,” he said, not knowing quite how to describe his encounter with Miranda of less than an hour earlier.
Minerva smiled, and Prent appreciated her tacit support for his ongoing win-Miranda-back campaign. Of all the friends and family he had, Minerva was the only one to still give him encouragement to pursue his once and hopefully future fiancée.
While Prent’s mother hoped her son would reconcile with his fiancée, Davina Oakes had privately told him she believed his efforts were wasted. His uncle was indifferent to his love life as long as he wasn’t making an idiot of himself.
Only Minerva had quietly backed him over the past few years. She often gave him hints for gifts for Miranda or ideas about things to do for her. Minerva also had been the one to suggest that he show up at the Mack Blanton concerts over the summer in hopes of running into Miranda, and it had worked. They ended up going together a few times until Miranda put a stop to it, but he had managed to sit next to her during the season’s last concert.
Prent was torn from his recollections by the appearance of his uncle.
“Why the hell won’t Prent answer his damn phone?” demanded Kurt as he entered the room and stared at Minerva.
Kurt Oakes was a bear of a man, tall and heavyset and the same height as Prent. Kurt’s gruff, animal-like demeanor was enhanced by a full head of white hair with a bushy mustache to match. He was often red-faced due to bad temper, but Kurt did have heart trouble, which ran in the family. Childless and with few friends, Kurt had worked at the cooperage for over forty years. His institutional knowledge seemed vast—although he didn’t share it very often with his nephew.
“Because Prent happens to be here.�
� Minerva pointed across the conference table.
Kurt cast his nephew a glance and grunted in surprise.
“Didn’t expect that.” He threw a notepad and some papers on the table, closed the door, and then took a seat at the far end of the oval table. “Okay, first thing we gotta discuss is the holiday schedule.”
Prent knew that they wouldn’t so much discuss a schedule rather than listen to Kurt announce what he’d already decided about it. Prent had learned long ago that this was how his uncle operated, so he rarely said anything in these miserable get-togethers, which his uncle called staff meetings even though there were only three of them present.
“I plan to be around every day except Christmas and New Year’s Day,” Kurt announced and looked from Minerva to Prent. “What about you two?”
“Same here,” confirmed Minerva.
“The same,” Prent said. “Need to stick around here and get some stuff done before my buying trips next month,” he added.
“How many trips you have lined up?” Kurt leaned back in his chair, causing it to emit a very long squeak.
“Three.”
“So you’ll have plenty of time to handle the clinic thing with those Davenports.”
Prent smiled at Minerva, grateful for her heads-up on the subject.
“What do you need me to do?” Prent asked in a voice he hoped didn’t sound too annoyed.
“There’s a meeting up at Old Garnet next week,” Kurt said. “Bo and Hannah want to get this thing up and running as quickly as possible in the new year, but I doubt they have a doctor yet. Anyway, go up there, meet with ’em , tell ’em we’re on board and play nice.”
Kurt scribbled the meeting date and time on a scrap of paper and slid it across the table to Prent.
“I’ll be there,” Prent said, taking the note.
Kurt proceeded to talk about a few more things, but Prent tuned him out until Kurt said Minerva could leave.
“We need to talk about these buying trips,” Kurt said once Minerva had departed.
“What about them?”
“I know that we don’t see eye to eye on the economics of these buys you’ve been making over the year or so—”
“You call it economics, I call it quality issues. We can’t keep cutting corners like you want. Do you know how many problems we’ve had with barrels in just the past year alone?”
“What I know is how much money we run through with you as our main buyer,” Kurt grumbled.
“Unless you want someone else as your chief buyer, you’re stuck with me.”
The one area where Prent completely had the upper hand in their relationship was when it came to his skill in judging and purchasing quality oak. He was well respected in the industry, despite his checkered personal reputation.
“Just spend our money wisely, boy,” Kurt said. “Prices keep going up in the middle of this latest bourbon boom, and you’re hell-bent to buy the most expensive stuff.”
Prent stood and grabbed his materials from the table. “I’m hell-bent on keeping our standards up. I’m the one who has to go and deal with all those complaints about the barrels.”
“Yeah, and you love it. Gets you out of the office to go meet and greet and slap backs. Easy.”
“If you think dealing with an angry Hannah Davenport is easy, you’re nuts. That woman knows her wood and gets furious when we deliver a crap product.”
“She’s just some idiot who lucked into inheriting a distillery,” Kurt said.
“You’re the idiot for underestimating a Davenport,” Prent shot back.
“Well, good thing you deal with them rather than me, right? And since you love ’em so much, it can’t be very hard work, can it?”
“I’m so fucking tired of hearing you tell me I don’t work hard,” Prent muttered through clenched teeth.
“Where the hell do you get off talking to me like that?”
Prent stopped in the doorway, took a deep breath, and glanced over his shoulder. His uncle’s face was red, his frown intense.
“Not a very nice feeling is it?” Prent asked.
“What’s that?”
“Knowing that someone doesn’t give a damn what you think.”
4
Christmas with her family in Perryville proved to be a dull affair. Miranda spent the requisite two nights in her childhood bedroom, helped cook dinner, and outwardly put on a face of holiday cheer. She was happy to return to Bourbon Springs and even had a ready-made excuse for her departure, a meeting at Old Garnet to discuss the rotating clinic.
After Miranda had gotten the bad news about her rent getting jacked up, she had called Bo Davenport the next day and said she wanted in. She’d talked to her insurance carrier, and the company said her participation in the project would not be a problem because of some extra coverage she had purchased a few years ago.
If not for her financial constraints, she wouldn’t be part of the rotating clinic. But from her discussion with Bo, she quickly realized it would give her enough money to solve her rent problem and thus maintain her professional independence.
The problem was her schedule.
Getting to Old Garnet and GarnetBrooke for a few hours every week would take little time from her calendar, especially if she set clinic hours at the very beginning or end of the day. Both blocks of time would be ideal for distillery or farm workers who were on the job early and late into the afternoons and early evenings.
The issue was how to manage her time and set hours at Commonwealth Cooperage. Not to mention dealing with the weird complication of working in the same place as her ex-fiancé, who was determined to win her back.
If not for Prent’s likely presence that morning, Miranda would be looking forward to the breakfast meeting at Old Garnet. But she was certain Prent had jumped at the chance to be attached to the project since she was involved.
They hadn’t seen or spoken to each other since the make-out session in her kitchen a few days before Christmas. Prent did text her on Christmas Day to wish her a happy holiday, and she’d texted back so as not to seem peevish. Late on Christmas night, alone in her room and feeling edgy by being around her mother and sister so much, Miranda had almost called Prent just to say hello. She’d felt strangely lonely and wanted to talk to him. That had been a new wrinkle in her feelings for him.
The drive to the distillery was easy from her house on the northern edge of Bourbon Springs, and within ten minutes of leaving home, Miranda was walking into the visitors’ center. She was pleased that the trip took so little time since she expected that she would soon be making regular visits to Old Garnet as well as GarnetBrooke just across Ashbrooke Pike.
The interior of the visitors’ center was still decorated for the season, with a large cedar tree twinkling and looming over the far left of the space. Miranda inhaled, enjoying the mixture of the woodsy balm of the tree entwined with the pungency of alcohol. She walked to the center of the area, placed her purse and tablet computer on a small couch, and shrugged out of her parka.
Underfoot was the intricate, sprawling carved bourbon flavor wheel on the hardwood floor. She backed away a few feet to fully appreciate the design, which gave the impression of a glorious sun in midsummer. This illusion was made all the more real when the sun shone through the glass dome atop the visitors’ center, flooding the lobby with light so intense she was temporarily blinded.
Miranda stumbled backward until strong arms caught her before she tumbled to the floor. A flicker of physical recognition passed through her as she turned and came face-to-face with Prent.
“Thought that was you.”
Her breath caught in her throat.
Sporting neatly pressed khakis and a white button-down shirt under a classic camel hair coat, Prent looked exceptionally attractive. She licked her lips and tried to look away, but he moved toward her and directly into the shaft of light pouring into the visitors’ center from the dome above. The light caught his dark brown hair and made it glow like the amber-colored c
ontents of a bottle of bourbon.
Was this how it was going to be?
After their encounter in her kitchen, she’d reluctantly accepted that her feelings for him had intensified. But she hadn’t expected such a visceral response to seeing him again.
As she continued to gape, Prent’s expression changed from pleasantly surprised to something more inquisitive. To forestall his curiosity, Miranda turned and gathered her items from the couch.
“I think they said the meeting is in a room next to the tasting room,” she said, keeping her back to him as she put her parka over her arm.
“The meeting?”
“Hey there!” a voice boomed from the far right of the visitors’ center.
Hannah Davenport was briskly walking toward them. She hugged Miranda and then stiffly shook Prent’s hand.
“You two ready to get started?”
“Wait a sec,” Prent said, looking confused.
“Don’t worry about breakfast if you haven’t eaten already,” Hannah said. “We’ve got plenty of goodies in the room. Follow me.”
Miranda had never been in the conference room, which was a smaller iteration of the tasting room next door. A wall of windows looked out onto Old Crow Creek, but instead of a large U-shaped tasting table, a nondescript oval meeting table was in the middle of the area. In the far right corner was Bo Davenport, huddled and talking with Jon Buckler, Old Garnet’s in-house counsel. The men turned to give quick greetings as the trio entered before returning to their conversation.
Along a wall to the left was a table laden with a variety of breakfast items, and Jorrie Jones was hunched over it, putting a muffin onto a plate. Jorrie turned to greet Miranda, and the women gave each other a quick hug.
“I heard you’re engaged! When did it happen?” Miranda asked.
“A few days before Christmas.” Jorrie held out her hand to allow Miranda to examine the ring.
“And right here on the grounds,” Hannah said proudly as she joined them.
“You were watching, weren’t you?” Jorrie asked as Miranda continued to admire Jorrie’s ring.
Bourbon Springs Box Set: Volume III, Books 7-9 (Bourbon Springs Box Sets Book 3) Page 32