by Lila Monroe
“Sweet baby Jesus, that’s creepy,” I muttered.
“I know, right?” a perky voice said. “Hey, you want some breakfast, or should I leave you to your safari?”
I whirled, and saw a plump young woman with a brilliant smile, her curly black hair barely tamed by a ponytail, and her friendly brown eyes sparkling with amusement. With her dark slacks and button down, she had to be a member of the staff. But which one?
“Sorry to spook you,” she said, stepping forward and offering her hand. “I’m Martha. I heard someone walking around and figured that this maze of a house had claimed its latest victim. If you need some provisions for your exploration, I can guide you to the kitchen. We’ve got pretty much every kind of breakfast food you could imagine, and a few you can’t.”
“I’ve got a pretty good imagination,” I said, shaking her hand. “But I thank you.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to imagine the things we keep on tap for the U.K. ambassador,” she said. “I’m going to go ahead and say one of them as a warning: fish paste. As in paste, made of fish. And gelatin.”
“Wow,” I said. “Warning appreciated. I’m a simple girl, though, so can I just get some bacon and eggs sunny side up?”
“That and a side of fruit, plus coffee that’ll put hair on your chest. Er, metaphorically,” she assured me. “I don’t think I caught your name…”
“Oh my goodness, that was so rude of me, I’m sorry,” I apologized. “Allison Bartlett, but please call me Ally. Very pleased to meet you, and not just because you’re offering me bacon.”
Martha led the way out of the room of stuffed animal heads, and I followed, trying to keep track of the route. I didn’t want to take a wrong turn when I was on my own and starve to death, after all.
“So, are you the cook?” I asked to make conversation.
“Oh, sweet fucking Christ on a cupcake, no!” she blurted, and then covered her mouth with her hand, giggling. “Sorry. I just had a vision of me trying to work a blender to make anything other than a banana daiquiri and it was absolutely horrifying. Nah, I’m Mr. Knox’s personal assistant.”
“Well, either way, you’re a lifesaver,” I said. “I feel like I could get lost in this place for days.”
“Yeah, Theseus and the minotaur had nothing on this place,” Martha agreed. “Last time the British ambassador was visiting, we thought he had left after an argument with Mr. Knox over the history of Scotch, but it turned out he had just taken a wrong turn in the library and gotten stuck in the greenhouse. Want me to make you a map after breakfast?”
“More than I’ve ever wanted anything else,” I assured her.
She grinned. “I have a feeling we’re going to be friends.”
#
“I don’t think I can take another bite, and that is a goddamn tragedy,” I said.
It truly was. The bacon was just the right mix of crispy and tender, seasoned with hickory smoke and honey, and the eggs were cooked perfectly, sprinkled in fresh-cracked pepper and with just enough yolk spreading from them to dip the bacon in. The bread was hot out of the oven and spread with butter from the plantation’s own cows, and over that Irish orange marmalade or blackberry jam from the cellar. The orange juice was just-squeezed, the pineapple just off the tree and bursting with flavor. The coffee tasted like what would happen if you caffeinated Heaven.
“One more bite,” I promised myself, and moaned in ecstasy as the piece of pineapple burst between my teeth.
And of course that was the exact moment that Hunter came in. When I was moaning like a porn star.
The universe hates me so, so much.
He raised an eyebrow. “That’s one way to enjoy breakfast.”
I raised my cloth napkin, pretending to wipe my mouth but mostly attempting to cover up a blush that was actively trying to make my face burst into flames.
It definitely didn’t help that he was wearing a tight T-shirt that clung to his sweaty, rugged frame like it couldn’t bear to let go. Not that I could blame it.
“Yes. Um. You’ve been working?” I asked, desperate to change the topic.
“Time and tide and distillery malfunctions wait for no man,” he said. “I’ve been up for hours. I was just going to grab a coffee and hit the sack for a quick nap, but I could give you a tour first if you want.”
Is it a tour of your bedroom? I thought but managed not to say out loud. “No thank you,” I said instead. “I’ll make my own way. I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”
Because if I took that tour right now, with him looking the way he did, I was definitely going to inconvenience the pants right off him.
“It’s no inconvenience,” he insisted. “In fact, I—” Then his eyes widened. “Oh dear. You’ve just saved me. I was supposed to join a conference call in fifteen minutes.” He bit his lip in a way that made me think several thoughts not even remotely fit for print. “You’re certain you’ll be all right on your own?”
“I think I’ll survive the wilds of your library,” I assured him.
He hurried off with a grateful smile. It was a relief, because I would definitely have jumped him if we’d spent any longer together. And I couldn’t risk my job for that.
Even though it would be so very nearly worth it.
#
After resisting the temptation that was Hunter in a tight t-shirt, I followed Martha’s map to the estate library, where I planned to spend the rest of the day. The building it was housed in was about half the size of the manor house, which is to say, about twice the size of any public library I’d ever been in. It was all wood paneling and lush carpets and wall-to-wall bookshelves that would have made the Beauty and the Beast movie drool in envy.
Thankfully, those bookshelves were full of the kind of primary sources I’d been unable to track down back in Washington, D.C., and I was able to spend hours poring over old journals, record books, and newspaper clippings in search of the most fascinating historical tidbits about the company. Those first-hand sources, including the diary of its founder, Hunter Knox’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather and great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, poor immigrants from Scotland who wanted a better life. They’d come to the United States where they’d worked hard to earn the capital to leave their employers and strike out on their own. Learning from both their roots and the rich bourbon culture of the South, they had worked together as equal partners to create a flavorful bourbon whose popularity swept the nation and went overseas, becoming so popular in Britain that both ancestors were very nearly knighted.
I thought about Hunter as a knight. Hunter, sweaty, in chain mail, valiantly rescuing me from a dragon. He’d unchain me from the rock where I’d been offered in sacrifice, his hands gentle as he stroked my chafed, raw skin—or maybe he’d leave me chained, those soft lips lifting in a wicked smirk as he bent to press them to the sensitive skin of my neck, his hand trailing up my leg—
No, no, no! Bad Ally! Concentrate on research!
Anyway, those first ancestors weren’t even the most remarkable thing. No, the true jackpot I stumbled upon was the way that the Knox family had always strived to do what was right. Ferryville, the town that had befriended them and offered them charity when they were poor, was raised up and revitalized by the Knox’s job-creating factory; the families that had sponsored their passage to America were sent enough money so that they could immigrate as well.
Furthermore, the Knoxes had used the company’s shipping needs as cover for the Underground Railroad, and after the Civil War, had bought up this very plantation, moving their headquarters from Ferryville to here in order to give paying jobs to newly freed slaves and newly discharged soldiers, helping the economy of the ravaged South recover. Though workforces were initially segregated, another ancestor, Alphonse Knox, was instrumental in creating the very first integrated workforce in the state.
Say, what would Hunter look like in Union blue or Confederate grey? Neither matched his eyes, but he would still look so sc
rumptious in a uniform, all buttoned up and proper, any uniform, and then I could unbutton it and run my hands down his chest and press myself up against him and—
Not the kind of planning you’re being paid to do! I reminded myself with a firm shake of my head. I forced myself to stop squirming in my seat, and pay attention to the record of one of Alphonse Knox’s impassioned speeches.
And all this was only the history of the company in the nineteenth century. I couldn’t take notes fast enough; how was none of this information common knowledge? If the company had maintained even a quarter of its philanthropic interests during the last hundred years, this was a goldmine of advertising catnip.
This was exactly the angle I wanted to work. Social responsibility was hot these days, particularly with the younger crowd that Knox needed so desperately to attract. I couldn’t just slap a social justice sticker on the label, though—that might have worked back in the nineties, but today’s young consumers had been burned before, and the Internet made fact-checking easy. I would have to back up my claims with solid proof, but in a way that didn’t make the company and the product sound boring, overly earnest, or self-congratulatory.
I certainly wouldn’t want Hunter to think I was any of those things, either.
I mean, for the good of our business relationship.
Could I do it? Could I get the company to back a cause both local and global in a way that wouldn’t be written off as cynical or dismissed as a media show? I jotted down a reminder to look up the current components of the packaging and see if Knox could start using anything more environmentally friendly. It joined a long list on my tablet with the rest of my ideas, notes, sketches, and first drafts of e-mails to my art partner. It made a beautiful addition, and made me feel incredibly productive.
This could work. This could really work.
I was so absorbed by the library and by my ideas that it wasn’t until my stomach gave a particularly painful rumble that I looked up and realized how low the sun had dipped in the sky. My stomach gave another rumble like it was trying to imitate Mt. Vesuvius, and then twisted painfully until I got the message. Well, with the map I could probably make my way back to the kitchen before I starved to death. Probably.
I packed up my things as quickly as I could and speed-walked out the library—
Right into the broad chest of Hunter Knox.
It was not quite the way I’d wanted to be sprawled across that muscular expanse.
“Just the lady I was looking to see,” he drawled in that gentlemanly tenor voice. “Though I confess I wasn’t thinking so up close and personal.”
It was entirely unfair how nice he smelled, like salt and spice, cedar and oak and clean sweet sweat. Without thinking, my hand opened, fingers spreading to stroke where they rested against the T-shirt over his chest…No!
I snatched my hand away, blushing.
“Uh. Why were you looking for me?” I asked quickly, trying to distract him from my accidental almost-groping. “Was there something you needed to tell me?”
“Indeed there was,” he said with a grin that told me he had definitely noticed that too-long touch, and hadn’t quite decided whether or not to let me off the hook. “I wanted to tell you that the cook has made her famous pork chops for dinner.” He offered his hand. “I was hoping that might tempt you to join me.”
Like that man needed to offer pork chops to be a walking temptation.
Too bad it was one I couldn’t give in to.
“My room has plenty of food in the kitchen, I don’t want to intrude—” I began, though I really did, in the worst way. But then my stomach rumbled like a dying bear, betraying me. I blushed so scarlet that the Red Sea would be a pale pink in comparison.
“Sounds like someone disagrees with you,” he said, eyes twinkling.
“Just my body,” I said. “It’s an idiot. I try not to listen to it.”
“Oh?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve found that my body offers excellent advice.”
Well, why don’t we reintroduce them and see if yours is a good influence, my mouth urged me to say. I bit it back down and said instead, as lightly as I could, “Care to trade?”
That was a mistake. He eyed me up and down, and I felt my blood heat up in some extremely inopportune parts of me.
“It is an excellent body,” he murmured.
He leaned forward, and for one second, I thought he was going to kiss me.
Then he linked arms with me instead. “Come on. Let your body lead you to some new experiences.”
When he put it like that, how could I refuse?
SIX
“And don’t come back here for thirty minutes!”
Turns out that those pork chops were still simmering, and the cook didn’t take kindly to two people standing over her shoulder drooling, even when one of those two people was a hunky guy with a body that belonged on the cover of Playgirl.
A blast of hot air accompanied us out of the kitchen doors, before the cool air-conditioning enveloped us once again.
Then I looked up at Hunter, grinning that easy grin with those perfect teeth and those golden eyes…
Yeah, suddenly all the air seemed very hot again.
“Sorry about that,” he said, grabbing my wrist and tugging me down the hall. I tried to concentrate on his words and not the gentle firmness of his hands. “She’s got a bit of a temper, and the whole kitchen is her sovereign territory.”
“I didn’t notice you disabusing her of that idea,” I pointed out.
His grin grew wider. “Because she’s entirely correct. I couldn’t microwave popcorn if you duct-taped the instructions to my face.”
I laughed, and let him pull me along. “So where are we going now?”
“Well, I can’t let my expensive new advertising consultant starve because of a territory dispute,” Hunter said dryly. “I’m going to have to take drastic measures.”
“Drastic measures?” I echoed sarcastically. “What, are we going to go shoot a bear? Because my shot would put you to shame, just warning you.”
He turned back towards me, raising an eyebrow. “You can shoot?”
“Since I was a teenager,” I said. “My dad used to sneak me out to the range; Mom never would have approved.” That was putting it lightly; if she ever found out, I would shortly thereafter be finding out exactly what it looked like when a human head exploded.
“Well, that’s good to know,” Hunter said. “But the measures tonight aren’t quite so drastic. I just happen to have a secret snack stash.”
I raised my eyebrow even though he had turned back away and couldn’t see it. “When did you turn into a teenage girl?”
And when had I decided it was a good idea to mouth off to my boss/client? I knew the words coming out of my lips weren’t appropriate, and yet somehow every time we talked, I just got more and more sarcastic. But it was either that or lust-struck declarations of wanting to be swept away in his arms, and I definitely couldn’t let those out. Unprofessional as my snark might be, at least it kept a tiny part of my dignity intact.
A tiny, tiny bit.
Meanwhile, Hunter’s shoulders had tensed. “Who says teenage girls are the only ones who get to have a snack stash?”
His voice was trying to be light, but there was a tension underneath.
Maybe I had gone too far with my teasing after all. “I wasn’t trying to say—” I started.
“There was a time in my life when I didn’t have any food at all,” he said, so softly that for a second I thought I had imagined it. “I feel…safer, knowing I have something stashed away. Just in case.”
What the hell? Hunter Knox had grown up the pampered scion of a wealthy family—hadn’t he?
I realized the assumptions I had been making, and I suddenly felt very small.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
He turned again, giving me a gentle smile. “It’s all right.”
He took my hand then, and my breath caught in my throat.
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“I’d better guide you the rest of the way,” he said. “It gets pretty cramped from here on out.”
He tugged gently on my hand, and led me down a narrow hallway, through a gap in the walls of stacked boxes emitting the soothing smells of chamomile and old cloth. He shifted so that I led, his warm hands on my shoulders steering me ably through the dark.
Such warm hands. Their heat radiated through my shirt, and I felt his breath ghosting over my ear, as if any second now he might lean down and—
“We import the tea from Singapore,” he murmured.
“Oh,” I whispered, shivering involuntarily. It was hard to think of anything else to say with my heart pounding so hard. Was I imagining the way his fingers tightened slightly on my shoulders? Was that a slight caress as his finger swept downward an inch towards my collarbone, rustling my blouse, or was I daydreaming?
Probably. I was definitely probably reading too much into it. I tried to even out my breathing, hoped he couldn’t feel me tremble under his gentle touch. I resolved to banish all thoughts of that night we’d spent together in my hotel room and focus on the business at hand, but the low throb pulsing between my legs was undeniable.
“Stop.” And his arm encircled my waist, sending a jolt through me as I stumbled to a halt, his strong body pressing up against mine, there in the half-darkness where no one knew we were, where no one would see if he were to pull me even closer, if he were to bend his lips to my neck, if his hands were to wander from my waist to my breasts or down my thighs—
He pulled away.
“It’s right here.”
It took several embarrassingly long seconds for me to realize that he was talking about his secret snack hoard.
I watched, squinting through the dimness, as he jimmied away the back of a cabinet to reveal a small tin, just starting to rust at the edges. Watching him, the careful care he took, the way his eyes lit as he picked it up, I was filled with an overwhelming gratitude for the trust he was showing me.
