Angels' Share (Bourbon Springs Book 3) Read online

  Chapter 2

  “I’m getting the roast beef sandwich with the bourbon au jus sauce, and a fountain drink,” Lila said, and maneuvered around Bo until she stood between him and the cashier. “Put his lunch on my ticket, too—whatever he’s getting.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Bo snapped.

  “Yes, I do, because I’m hungry and want to sit and eat,” she snapped back, not looking at him and handing the money to the clerk.

  While Bo was putting his wallet in his pocket and gathering his food, Lila moved away and, she hoped, out of sight before he could thank her. But her hopes of dining in peace were dashed when he appeared at her table right as she was about to tuck into her sandwich.

  “Yes?” she said, and frowned, hoping to shoo him away with her most grumpy look.

  “May I join you?” he asked.

  “Can’t you find another place?”

  “Actually, no,” Bo said. “This is the only seat left.”

  Lila looked around the deli and found every available seat taken except the one directly across the table from her.

  “Sit,” she said wearily.

  “Thanks. And thanks again for paying. I’ll pay you back.”

  “Forget it.”

  It was an awkward meal, since she was sure he full well knew what she was doing in town that nasty morning. She caught him stealing glances at her as she did the same to him, as she wondered whether to speak and risk starting yet another argument.

  Lila hadn’t seen Bo in a few weeks, but he looked better. He seemed to have gained a little weight (she observed he’d lost some late in the summer when she understood he’d been estranged from Hannah), and he’d gotten a haircut, which had moderately tamed his thick black hair. Lila strangely felt self-conscious suddenly and ran a few fingers through her overgrown pixie cut, although her short blonde locks almost immediately tumbled back down across her forehead.

  Annoyed by her circumstances, Lila decided to make Bo share her irritated state.

  “Hannah came by my house this morning,” Lila said. She picked up her sandwich, dipped it in the sauce and took a bite. It was almost as delicious as the look of astonishment on Bo’s face.

  “Hannah’s back?” he said. “I didn’t know.”

  Lila nodded, chewed and swallowed. “Apparently came straight to my place first. Kyle was with her, of course,” she added. His mouth was so agape Lila could see his lower teeth.

  “Can I guess the topic of conversation?” he said after he recovered, and took a bite of his sandwich, leaving a gooey cheese trail between his mouth and the remaining portion of the sandwich as he pulled his hand away.

  “You don’t need to guess,” Lila said, looking up at him as she picked up her drink.

  “How’d it go?”

  “She apologized to me—let’s see, how’d she put it?” Lila said, and looked upwards as she tried to remember Hannah’s choice of words. “Oh, yes, she apologized for having such an idiot for a brother.”

  “Excuse me?” Bo asked, anger in his voice.

  “Her words, not mine,” Lila said. She crossed her short thin legs, picked up her drink, and wrapped her arm around her body, tucking her hand under the arm of her long green sweater. Lila was amused at his peevishness; it took the edge off her own.

  “Any other names she called me?”

  “No, but she did say she was going to try to talk you into dismissing the lawsuit,” Lila revealed, and put down her drink.

  “She doesn’t have any say in—”

  “I know, Bo, I know,” Lila interrupted him. “I’m just telling you what she said. I don’t believe for a second she’ll actually be successful.”

  “I’m sorry, Lila,” he said. “I’m sorry I filed suit, but I need an answer.”

  She bristled at his words, feeling they rang false, and knowing they shouldn’t be talking about the lawsuit.

  “Well, I’m sure we’ll get one, whether we like it or not.”

  “I—I don’t know how to put this, but I hope that, well—”

  “Are you really about to tell me that you hope we can still be friends after all this?” she asked him, her eyes wide.

  “Yes.”

  “Bo, you want to take my land, part of my home—something that belongs to me. You might as well be trying to take the very food from my mouth and clothes from my body as far as I’m concerned. And if you end up getting what you want from some judge—which I seriously doubt will be the case—I find it really hard for me to see a way we can be friends under those circumstances. Neighbors, acquaintances? Yes. But friends? No.”

  “And what if you won? What if you end up on the right side of the law?”

  “Same answer,” she snapped, but he thought she sounded less than convinced. “Look, we shouldn’t be talking. We shouldn’t even be sitting here together like this.”

  Lila pushed her chair away and started to get up from the table, hoping other patrons had left so she could sit elsewhere.

  “Why not? We don’t have to talk about the lawsuit. We don’t have to talk at all.”

  She was already standing but looked down and saw the hurt on Bo’s face in light of her words and her departure.

  “I—I do wish things were different,” she admitted, and looked down. “But—”

  “Just sit with me. That’s all I’m asking you.”

  Lila knew his request was reasonable, and that’s why it also seemed dangerous. She saw in Bo’s eyes that look she had only briefly spotted once when they’d had lunch at the distillery. She wasn’t quite sure what to call it, but at its core was simple, visceral need, that same primal need that stirred in her when she looked at Bo Davenport. And that knowledge scared the shit out of her. Because she didn’t need involvement, couldn’t fathom going there again, couldn’t bear the loss if everything went wrong. Because if life had taught Lila McNee anything in her thirty-some-odd years, it was that she was on this planet to suffer the loss of almost everything she held dear.

  Except her land. But now even that was threatened by the man in front of her.

  Lila found herself unable to refuse his request and sat down again. She didn’t look at him and he continued to eat, although she could tell he was glancing at her almost every minute. She picked at the remains of her sandwich and finished her drink until Bo was nearly done with his meal. Feeling like they’d finally come to a natural parting point, she rose, collected her trash, and began to leave.

  “See you later,” he said, and gave her a pleasant smile.

  She stood. “That’s guaranteed.”

  “It is?” he asked, surprise in his voice.

  “Yeah, you made sure of it. Because I’ll see you in court,” she said sadly and left without a backward look at him.

  “Well, you are,” Hannah said calmly but insistently as she sorted the mail that had piled up for her in the two weeks she had been gone.

  Bo returned to the distillery that afternoon to find his sister returned from her honeymoon and in fine form. After revealing he’d run into Lila in town and she’d told him about Hannah’s morning visit and her comments, Bo took issue with her apology to Lila. He specifically called Hannah out on calling him an idiot. But instead of getting an apology from his dear sister, she barely batted an eye and casually defended her disparagement of his acumen.

  “Lila also claimed that you were going to talk me out of going ahead with the lawsuit,” Bo said, and took a seat in front of Hannah’s desk. Behind her and out the large windows a chilly rain fell. The limbs of the trees along Old Crow Creek were nearly stripped bare, and there wasn’t a hint of color in his view, except the dull grays, ochres, and somber blues of a brutishly cold day.

  Hannah tossed a large stack of unwanted mail into the trashcan under her desk. “I’m going to give it my best shot.”

  “What kind of person drops in on a neighbor after returning from a two-week surprise honeymoon?” Bo asked, changing the subject very deliberately.

  “Not me,” H
annah said. “Because she’s actually my friend. And I’d venture to say that she’s not exactly your neighbor, either, is she?” Hannah asked with raised eyebrows.

  “Well, she is quite the pain in the ass, that’s true enough,” Bo said, and slipped down further into the comfy wingback chair in front of his sister’s desk.

  The new chairs were a great improvement to the old rickety wooden things that had been in there until about a month ago, when Hannah had returned to Bourbon Springs, ready to return to work and get on her with her life. Upon assessing the comfort level of her office at that time, Hannah had found it sorely lacking, and had ordered the two new chairs (color: garnet) and a small couch (also garnet) which was set back against the wall opposite the windows. Then within weeks after her homecoming and reconciliation with Kyle, she and her beau eloped; the new furniture arrived two days later. Bo was left to deal with the furniture deliveries and running the distillery on his own in her absence. That wasn’t such a big deal since he’d been more or less doing the same since his father had died a few years earlier. But Bo had missed his sister during her honeymoon, as he had when she had left Bourbon Springs for several weeks in the late summer and into the early fall. He was glad she was back—even though Hannah was an even bigger pain in the ass than Lila.

  “Not what I meant, Bo,” Hannah said and kept tossing pieces of junk mail into the wastebasket. “She’s now an opposing party in litigation you’ve brought against her, and, like I said, she’s my friend. As for what she is to you—well, let’s just say it’s obvious she’s not merely your neighbor.”

  “You’re crazy,” Bo said, and sat up in his chair. He knew his denial was weak, especially as it coincided with the sudden and inconvenient recollection of the image that had quite clearly flashed into his mind during lunch when Lila had casually mentioned taking the clothes from her body to explain the level of offense the lawsuit caused her.

  “Maybe so, but I ain’t blind, brother,” Hannah said. “But whatever,” she added before Bo had a chance to issue a denial. “What you need to do now is dismiss the lawsuit.”

  “Why the hell would I want to do that?”

  “Because suing her was a bad move.”

  “And why is that?”

  “You could lose, you could win, and you could piss off Lila forever, regardless of the result you get.”

  Bo stood. “All arguments I’ve heard before,” he said and moved to leave.

  “I have two more,” Hannah said as she tucked a long strand of her blonde hair behind and ear. Bo could tell her locks had gotten significantly lighter during the two weeks she’d spent in the sun on the Hawaiian beaches. “You get a result you both hate.”

  “What are the odds of that?”

  “Pretty good, I’d have to say,” she told him. “Judges like to be seen as reasonable. They often say if neither party likes their decision, it must be the right one.”

  “I’m willing to take that risk,” Bo said dismissively. “So what’s your last argument?”

  Hannah’s stare could’ve bored a hole straight through his chest.

  “You’re going to break her heart.”

  “How’s that?” Bo asked, a little angry now.

  “If you get what you want, you will shatter that woman,” Hannah said, rising from her desk and slowly approaching Bo. “She feels like that land is the only thing she has left in life, and she might be right. You know what her life has been like over the past two or so years?”

  “Yeah, I know, I know,” Bo said. “But even you just said I could lose.”

  “And you’d still break her heart.”

  “How?”

  “Because then you wouldn’t be able to stand being near her, knowing she won, that she has something you so desperately want but can’t have because she won’t give it to you. Who wants to be around that person? No one, that’s who.”

  “So what?” Bo said. “She can barely stand to be around me as it is, so I can’t see how not being around me at all would be such a horrible thing for Lila McNee.”

  “Yeah, I know you can’t see it,” Hannah said, and nodded. “And that right there’s your problem. And hers, too, for that matter.”

  “So what do you suggest I do?”

  “I’d dismiss the lawsuit before she files a counterclaim against us. I’m sure Jon has mentioned it to you.”

  “Yes, he has,” Bo admitted. “But I’m comfortable with the risk.”

  Hannah shook her head in exasperation and laughed. “You won’t be when you see it.”

  Chapter 3

  Bo had to get away from the office, away from Hannah, and away from anything remotely related to that stupid piece of land and Lila. Fortunately, he had an appointment to meet Walker Cain, the new master distiller at Old Garnet.

  Bo found Walker in the distillery next to the massive teardrop-shaped copper stills, watching admiringly as the liquid affectionately nicknamed white dog surged through the small, locked glass-enclosed structure called the proof box adjacent to the stills. This crystalline liquid was the product of the distilling process before it was placed into the new charred oak barrels and aged a minimum of two years to become straight bourbon whiskey. Clear as rain, the taste kicked like a mule.

  “Everything under control here?” Bo asked with a smile.

  Getting Walker Cain as the new master distiller had been a masterstroke of good outreach and good luck. Bo owed Walker’s status as an Old Garnet employee to Hannah; she had recruited Walker when the previous master distiller had retired earlier in the year. Walker was young enough to stay with Old Garnet for a very long time and build on the great reputations both he and Old Garnet already enjoyed. He had been sought after by other, larger operations but Hannah had correctly heard that he had no interest in the big conglomerates. When she had met him over the summer and raised the possibility of coming to work at Old Garnet, Walker told her he was eager for the chance and had always revered the brand. The problem was that Hannah didn’t have the authority to offer him the job. But after Bo rescinded a job offer he’d made to someone else, they contacted Walker after Hannah’s return to work at the distillery. Walker immediately accepted the position once he was assured Hannah was back in the picture.

  “Everything is absolutely perfect,” Walker said. He closed and locked the proof box, then walked outside with Bo.

  The inside of the distillery at that time was exceptionally warm and humid from active fermentation and the steam-cleaning of one of the mash tubs. Despite the cold weather, Walker said he needed to get out of the building for a breath of fresh air, and the two men exited the main distillery and emerged into the drizzly November afternoon. They fell into step with each other and walked along a limestone-paved path to the first rickhouse, a rectangular, four-storied limestone structure that housed by Bo’s conservative estimate about $30 million in aging bourbon. And this was the smallest rickhouse on the property. There were dozens more, the largest standing along Ashbrooke Pike.

  “So,” Bo said as the two men entered the building and were immediately surrounded by a forest of stacked barrels reaching the ceiling in a maze of levels and racks, “got an idea to share with the boss?”

  Walker had contacted Bo a few days earlier and said he wanted to talk about the process. This intrigued Bo, and he wondered if Walker was going to try to shake up the way things had always been done at Old Garnet. Because if that were the case, Bo was going to have a problem with it.

  Walker pretended to look behind Bo. “Boss? I didn’t see Hannah with you,” he joked.

  Bo laughed in spite of himself. “She’s back, you know,” he reported, and said that Hannah had returned that day and was in the office to check her mail. “But what’s on your mind? You’ve got me curious and worried.”

  Walker, a muscular man of about six feet tall with brown hair, leaned against one of the myriad barrels. “I’m trying to think ahead, Bo, trying to look into the future.”

  “That’s all we do around here, isn’t
it? Wait for the future to be able to open one of these?” Bo tapped on a barrelhead, producing a satisfying thunk.

  “I don’t think we should just be waiting for it, I think we need to start thinking about it in a different way.”

  That sent the hairs on the back of Bo’s neck to standing straight up. Walker did want change. “Not sure I follow you,” Bo said, and pretended to be interested in the cobwebs on a nearby barrel.

  “I want you to think about making another product here other than Old Garnet,” Walker said.

  “I don’t want to—”

  “Just hear me out first, OK?” Walker said, interrupting him.

  Bo stroked his chin and felt a long strip where he’d failed to shave. Great. He’d gone around all day looking like that. His next thought was that Lila had probably seen the proof of his ineptitude right on his face.

  “Go for it,” Bo said when he realized Walker was waiting for him to give the go-ahead to speak.

  “I’d like to produce a premium version of Old Garnet,” Walker said rapidly. “I’ve got some vague ideas for a new mashbill.”

  “Premium? But we’re already a premium bourbon,” Bo countered.

  “Yes and no,” Walker said. “Old Garnet is a legend, no doubt. And that legend has been burnished to a high shine over the past decade or so. You owe a lot of that to Barnes,” Walker said, referring to the recently retired master distiller. “But our operation is big enough to produce another product and to produce an even better bourbon,” Walker averred.

  “But people associate one product with us. That’s our brand,” Bo said.

  “People can associate more than one product with this place,” Walker said. “We’re one of the few distilleries that produces only one thing. And in this day and age, I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing, Bo. You need to diversify, just a little. The Old Garnet brand can easily attach to another premium bourbon produced right here,” Walker said, and pointed down.