The Barrel House Series: Boxed Set: Bourbon Love Notes, Bourbon on the Rocks, Bourbon Nights, Bourbon Fireball

by Ryan, Shari J.

  The coffee shop is more coincidental, I think. I see a restraining order in my future, but when there’s a challenge in front of me, I don’t give up. I can’t. That’s quitting and I’m not quitter. Journey needs something. It might not be me, but it’s something and I need to figure out what it is—in case it is me.

  She’s inside, waiting in line, checking her watch. I wonder what she’s late for. Maybe a rendezvous with moi. I’ve read books about men like me, waiting for the woman in her favorite spot, but in the books, the main character will fall head over heels for the man who went out of his way to know the very spot, at the exact moment she will be there. It has to work.

  I wait for her to walk outside with the hot coffee in hand. I’m leaning against the brick wall of the cafe, acting casual as I scroll through my phone. “Hey stranger,” I say, trying to sound surprised to see her here, which is technically a surprise since I didn’t know for sure she would be here.

  Journey stops and turns toward the sound of my voice. She greets me with a smile. A smile. A real, genuine smile, like she’s happy to see me. “Brody,” she says, stepping in closer. “What are you doing here?”

  Do I tell her the truth or make this look like happenstance? “I could tell you I come here all the time, but I’m sure you would have seen me before. I was hoping you might be here.” There, that doesn’t sound psychotic or over the top.

  “That’s sweet of you,” she says. With a shy look playing through her eyes, she sweeps a strand of hair away from her forehead and takes another step closer, leaving us only inches apart. This is the part where she says something hot or I become covered with something hot—her coffee.

  “I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s not in a creep way, though. I just have all these questions, wondering what you’ve been doing these last fifteen years, and what you’re up to now.”

  “It sounds like you’re obsessing over me a bit,” she says sharply.

  The conversation has taken a sudden sharp turn into hot coffee over my head territory. “Obsessing? That word is a little strong, don’t you think?”

  “You’ve asked me out at least three times in the past two weeks. You’ve shown up at my father’s shop and have called me several times after I said I wasn’t interested. It sounds to me like you might have a problem hearing the word, no.”

  “I hear the word, no, all the time. I assure you, you’re wrong.”

  “Okay then,” she says, placing her hand on my chest. “Ask me if you can kiss me. Right here. Next to the coffee shop where people can see us out in broad daylight, acting like fools at ten o’clock in the morning.”

  This is obviously a trick. She just wants to reject me again. “I don’t want to hear the word no after asking if I can kiss you, Journey. I’m not the one who made the first move.”

  “Maybe if you had, things would be different,” she says.

  I’m doing my best to think as fast as possible, but her riddling statements are making my head hurt. She doesn’t want to say yes and doesn’t want me to ask. Is that the answer?

  She peers down at her coffee for a moment, then glances up at me. Her dark lashes flutter and her gaze locks onto my lips. I could be slapped right here in front of the coffee shop, on the street where people are driving by, or I could do what she is indirectly asking me to do. I think.

  Her lips are wet, parted, and a burn strikes from my chest down through my groin. Dammit, I need to kiss this girl. I feel like I’m about to jump off a cliff into what is most likely ice-cold water, but on the slim chance that the water is warm, I’m going for it.

  I lean down and cup my hand behind her neck and wrap my arm around the small of her back. I’m gentle so she doesn’t spill her coffee, but I touch her lips lightly, teasingly. “I’ve wanted this so badly,” I mutter against her mouth.

  “Me too,” she responds through a whisper.

  I taste the coffee on her lips, the sweetness of sugar on her tongue. There’s enough caffeine in this kiss to keep me going all day. Her arm loops around my back and her hand clenches at my fleece jacket. She fits within my arms as if she’s meant to be here. Her hair smells like a tropical breeze. God, she could be the end of me. When my lungs run out of air, I pull back just enough to inhale more of her sweet scent. “Could I take you out for dinner, please?”

  “No, Brody. You can’t,” she responds. “You will be late for school.”

  “What?”

  “Dad! My God. Get up. Why can’t you be a normal adult and set an alarm for yourself in the morning, so I don’t have to wake you up every day?” My heart falls to the pit of my stomach as I gasp for air, jackknifing upward.

  Holy crap. I whip my head to the side, checking the time. My alarm wouldn’t have gone off for another five minutes. “Hannah, I’ve had it. It’s six-fifty-five in the morning. You said you needed to be at school fifteen minutes early, so I switched my alarm clock to go off at seven to get you there on time.”

  “I told you I needed an extra five minutes,” she groans and stomps her foot.

  “What? No. No, you didn’t. You never said that. You’re making things up now.”

  “I said so as soon as I got into the truck after school yesterday. You must have been daydreaming about whoever you were just mumbling to in your sleep.”

  Shit.

  “Okay, you know what? This is out of control. If this boy is bothering you, I’m walking into school with you today and handling this crap myself.”

  “Dad! No. You can’t do that. You’ll ruin my entire life. Why would you even suggest such a stupid thing? Do you even love me at all? You just don’t get it. You get nothing at all.”

  Hannah trudges out of my room, slamming my door for good measure. I release the lungful of air I’ve been holding at the top of my lungs since she startled me awake. I run my fingers through my hair and the palms of my hands down my cheeks. The dream was a little too real. Journey still hates me and most likely always will.

  Unless, there’s something I can take away from the dream. Maybe, she doesn’t like questions that she can say no to. Maybe I need to be more forward and stop walking on eggshells around her.

  I grab my phone from the nightstand and type out a quick message to Journey.

  Me: I’m taking you out for dinner tonight. I’ll pick you up at six.

  I realize I don’t have her address, but it won’t be hard to get it with Brett following Melody around like a lost puppy.

  Journey: Sounds good, but who is this?

  She must be kidding. I entered my name and number into her phone, so unless she deleted the information, she knows damn well who this is. I’m not giving into her game since that’s all this is to her. I should walk away now before things get ugly. They may have looked good in my head overnight, but I have a terrible feeling about the way things might turn out if I continue this pursuit.

  As challenging as it is to put this out of mind for the moment, I jump into the shower and get myself dressed, presentably enough to work in the warehouse alone all day.

  Hannah doesn’t say a word throughout the entire ride to school and once again she asks me to let her out before the end of the looping line, so no one spots her stepping out of my embarrassing brand new truck. I don’t understand her.

  “Love you,” I shout as the door slams.

  I get a quick wave as she’s spinning around to walk off into the blaring sun.

  I close my eyes, pull in a deep breath and creep around the line so I can skip the nightmare of waiting here for twenty minutes as each kid departs from their parents’ vehicles. When I pull into the small parking lot behind the barrel warehouse, I step on my brakes before pulling up to my normal parking space. What the hell?

  I’m usually the only one here for the first few hours every day since it’s so damn early. I replace my foot on the gas and ease into the spot next to the one I like to park in. With a slight twist of my neck, I glance into the window of the car parked beside me. No one is inside. Am I seeing shit now?<
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  I step out of the truck, closing my door loud enough for anyone within a mile radius to hear. I turn the corner around the building toward the back entrance I use, finding my answer standing twenty feet away, holding two coffees. Dressed in black torn jeans, feminine combat boots and a long white blouse that highlights the darkness of her hair, Journey stares out into the street with an oversized pair of sunglasses covering half of her face.

  7

  “You know, it’s dawned on me … throughout my entire life, I have never stepped foot into your family’s barrel warehouse. Yet, you have been at The Barrel House so many times,” Journey blurts out as I approach her.

  “It isn’t much to look at in there, but I’m happy to give you a tour if you’re interested.” Without so much as a twitch in her expression, she steps away from the door, allowing me to unlock the place. “I’m a little surprised to see you here.”

  “I’m a little surprised you haven’t shaved,” she retorts.

  I can’t help but smirk while stifling a snicker. I flip the lights on, illuminating the four-thousand square-feet of flat space we own. Charred barrels line the four walls, which helps with the organization of rows with barrels in line to be pre-treated, treated, and stacked. “Wow, this place is much bigger than I thought,” Journey says, cranking her neck around in every direction.

  “Do you always assume everything is small?” I ask, arching my brow.

  “Depends on who I’m talking to,” she replies, giving me a once over. “So, can I smoke a barrel?”

  I take a seat on a rogue barrel that appears to out of place from whoever worked last night. “We don’t smoke barrels. We char them, but I’m happy to let you push the button if you’re that intrigued.”

  Journey narrows her eyes and pinches at her bottom lip. “I want to see how it works,” she says.

  I stand up from the barrel and walk toward the back end of the warehouse where we keep the flame retardant suits, and the rubber boots and gloves.

  “It isn’t a pretty job, just so you’re aware,” I say.

  “I’m not afraid to get dirty.” I’m getting the odd feeling she came here with other intentions besides watching me char barrels. I’d like to tell her about the dream I had last night, but I don’t want to ruin whatever is happening right now. Maybe my dream was a foreshadowing of things to come. I’ll go with it.

  I grab a pair of coveralls and toss them over to her, then nudge over a pair of boots and grab a pair of gloves. She hesitates after catching the items like she didn’t know I was serious when I told her this isn’t a pretty job.

  “If all you do is press a button, what’s with the getup?” she asks.

  “You’ll see after you press the button.”

  Journey unzips her knee-high boots and places them down against the wall. She hangs up her jacket next. I don’t think I realized how small she is until now. She was wearing a sweatshirt the night of the bake sale, and a loose coat the other day while snapping photos at The Bourbon House.

  Her sleeves inch up above her wrists as she shakes out the coveralls. Her wrists are the size of my thumb. I don’t remember her being so frail looking back when we were kids. She was always slim, but not like she is now. Not to mention the fact that we’re in our thirties and a slim physique is hard to hold on to as the years go by. At least for me it is. The gym and a healthy-ish diet might be the death of my sanity, but I refuse to give into age.

  I’m surprised when Journey pulls up the coveralls and steps into the boots. Everything is huge on her, which is adorable, but she rolls the sleeves and cuffs the pant legs before me a look like I’m slowing her down.

  I throw on my usual uniform, kick off my boots and trade them for the rubber ones. “Ready?”

  “I’ve waited my entire life to light something on fire. Let’s do this,” she says.

  She has way too much enthusiasm for Journey and for charring a barrel.

  “What are you up to?” I ask as I lead the way toward the charring area of the warehouse.

  “What do you mean?” she questions.

  “Well, you made it quite clear you weren’t interested in me, but now you’re sending me mixed signals, which leads me to the same question again; what are you up to?”

  Journey continues walking alongside me without offering an answer right away. What feels like an entire minute later, she responds with, “I never said I wasn’t interested in you. I only made it clear I wasn’t a fan of your beard or going out for dinner.”

  I digest her words, trying to understand what’s going through her head. “So, you don’t like beards or dinner. Is this a puzzle I’m supposed to put together?”

  “I prefer to be with people in their natural habitat,” she says.

  “You make it sound like I’m a bear you’d like to photograph in the mountains.”

  “Are you?” she responds.

  “A bear?” I twist around, continuing to walk backward while talking to her.

  “Does the word, bear, have a double entendre?”

  “I’m not sure,” she says.

  “Do you want to photograph me in the mountains, Journey?”

  “I’m not sure,” she says again.

  “What are you sure about?”

  “I want to char a barrel.”

  We arrive at the sectioned off area where we char the barrels and she slips the rubber gloves on, getting ready for whatever she thinks she’s about to do.

  “We need to set up the barrel before you can char one.”

  “I can do that. Which barrels do we start with?” She’s only five-foot-four and probably doesn’t weigh much more than a hundred and ten pound barrel, but she thinks she will move one from the stack and place it between the grips.

  “They’re heavy. Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” she says, clearly insulted by my assumption of her lack of strength.

  I point to the stack of barrels, the one where there are only two—one on top of another. “You can grab the top one of those and place it down in between the vice grips here,” I say, pointing to the charring mechanism.

  I watch as she makes her way over to the stack of barrels and tries to lift the top one as if it’s just a few pounds. She’s quick to realize it’s much heavier than she assumed it would be because she shifts the top one a couple of inches, wraps her arms around the middle and presses her knee against the bottom barrel. She moves the top one to the edge, so it’s teetering. I want to make sure she doesn’t break her body, but I also fear the thought of getting kneed in the balls if I try to help. Just in case, I take a few steps closer as she’s focusing on a plan to place the barrel down on the ground. She presses her knee into the bottom barrel again and arches back as the full weight of the barrel sits between her arms. The barrel slides down the length of her body before touching the cement floor.

  “I’m not going to lie. I thought the barrel would flatten you,” I say.

  “Thanks for the confidence.”

  “Well, I’m almost positive the barrel weighs more than you, so—”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  There I go again, saying something innocent that ends up being offensive. “I didn’t mean for it to be an insult,” I reply, questioning her response.

  She releases a huff of air and eases the barrel down to its side so she can roll it over to the grips. It will be impressive if she can lift the thing a few feet off the ground to place it on the charring rods.

  I feel bad when the barrel doesn’t move against her strain to lift it up. I know she’s trying to make a point, but I wish I knew why. “Mind if I step in?”

  Journey stands up and brushes her gloved hands off on the coveralls. “Okay,” she says. The word is full with the sound of defeat. When she takes a step back, I scoop up the barrel and place it down on the rig.

  “You make it look easy,” she says.

  “Years of practice repeating the same movements over and over will do that to you.”

 
; “And muscles, I suppose,” she continues.

  “Maybe a little of that too.”

  “I don’t like it when I can’t do something because of my size or weight. It frustrates me,” she says. The honesty is unexpected, but appreciated. “I’m not competitive, but I like to know I can handle whatever situation arises.”

  Am I the only one standing here with a dirty mind right now? Does she know what she’s saying because if she does, and it’s intentional, I would like to know.

  I clear my throat because I don’t know how to respond. “You can crank the vice grips,” I say, pointing at the wheel.

  She locks her focus on the green button to her left as she completes the process of securing the grips. “Now, I press this button and the machine fires up?” she asks.

  I lean over to check the grips to make sure they’re as tight as they should be. I can’t experiment with the safety of a flaming hundred pound barrel. She locked it in pretty tight though. So we’re ready.

  “You can hit the button,” I tell her, but put these on first. I grab a pair of goggles from the side table and hand them over. She places them over her head without arguing and I place a pair over my face as well. “Okay, now you’re all set.”

  Journey grins as she hits the green button and her eyes light up as the metal pipe shoots flames into the barrel. She’s a little too close for my comfort, so I take her arm and pull her back several feet. “How long does it take to char?”

  “About a minute.”

  Journey glances down at my hand still clenching her wrist and I release my hand. “It’s hot,” she says.

  “I’m hot?” I respond.

  She cocks her head to the side with a wry look pinching into her eyes and mouth. “Cute,” she continues.

  “I’m cute too?”

  Journey shakes her head, but the smile, even though it’s small, is still there. I roll my sleeve up a couple inches to check the time, knowing there’s only about thirty seconds left before I need to shut the machine down. I pull my goggles off and run my sleeve against my forehead. She removes her goggles too and takes a step toward me. “Brody,” she says.