Drowning in Fire

by Hanna Martine

  He did that thing she hated—cocking his head and making a face like she’d been the one to do the confusing thing, that her emotions and actions were wrong and how dare she not realize this. He opened his arms, gesturing to the tent. In one hand he waved a program for the games.

  “Saw your picture in here. Came to do the gentlemanly thing and say hello.”

  “No, I meant what are you doing here, at the Highland Games? You never used to let me be involved in stuff like this.”

  He made an indignant sound. “That’s ridiculous.”

  It was very true. Every time something with the NYC Scottish Society had come up and she’d expressed interest in going, he’d book something else for them to do. Something obnoxious and lavish on the opposite side of the globe. And she’d gone with him without argument. Stupid girl. Stupid, spineless, clueless girl.

  But she wasn’t that person anymore, and she supposed, when it came down to it, she had Nathan to thank for that.

  “You know,” he said, “I really did just come in here to say hello, see what you’re up to.” He swept his eyes toward the apex of the tent, then brought his stare back to her—the one that had leveled her that very first night so long ago, when he’d picked up a twenty-two-year-old Shea as she’d been bartending. “Surprised to see you here. You don’t belong behind the bar anymore. Don’t you have employees?”

  He would never understand her, what she truly wanted, why she’d left him. She sighed and uncrossed her arms. “Why did you come in here, Nathan?”

  “Uh.” He actually had the acting chops to look sheepish. “I miss you?”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “It’s been a few years. Maybe I went about things the wrong way. Maybe things have changed.”

  “Nothing’s changed. Believe me.” At least not with him. The man had sprung from humble beginnings, but his sprint up the New York City real estate ladder had wrung out his humanity.

  “Shea.” He shook his head, looked at the ground, and she saw he had a heck of a lot of silver in his hair. He would be approaching fifty by now. “Listen, when you’re done here tonight, why don’t you come over? We could have a quiet drink as old friends. I built a new house over on the beach—”

  “Ah, I get it now. You got dumped.”

  “No. That’s not it.”

  But the slack of his mouth told the truth.

  “She’s coming back,” he added hastily, after she raised an eyebrow at him.

  Shea laughed and turned around to her precious bottles, the lovely things that had given her courage and purpose, and had finally allowed her to ask for the divorce. “New houses on the beach. Yachts in Greece. Those things don’t impress me, Nathan.”

  “They used to.”

  Boy, he climbed all over that one fast.

  She faced him, stared him down. “I was young and dumb.”

  The sheepishness and humble pie died. Just vanished from his face. His posture straightened and tightened.

  “You know,” he said, “Shea Montgomery served on ice doesn’t taste very good.”

  “You don’t like strong drinks. You like them all watered down.”

  He considered her with that flat stare she recalled too well. “I’ll never get why you changed.”

  “I know, Nathan. And that’s the sad part. Enjoy your new house.”

  His nostrils flared. “I will. Enjoy your . . . bar.”

  Bar said, of course, like she owned a whorehouse.

  “I will. Because it’s mine. And it’s more than you ever let me have.”

  He opened his mouth to defend himself, to say something awful like “I let you have everything. I gave you everything,” but she held up a hand to inform him of its senselessness. Because when she’d left him, she’d made it a point not to take a dime from him; he had nothing to throw in her face.

  “Have fun at the games,” she said as pleasantly as possible, knowing he wasn’t going to stick around now that she’d shut him down. He’d come here specifically to hunt. She was a conquest, a trophy. Today, like all those years ago, he’d been hoping to tranquilize her, chain her to his side again, maybe strip off her personality and free will like he’d cut the skin off of his prey. Once again, he hoped to hang her in his new house for people he didn’t care about to look at and make comments about how well she reflected on him.

  As expected, Nathan turned and left.

  • • •

  Whiskey shouldn’t be untouchable, relegated only to a certain social level of drinker, but that’s exactly what Shea and her bottles were today, hidden away in this too-fancy tent. No one could enter the velvet rope who wasn’t wearing the yellow one-hundred-dollar wristband. Ridiculous for a Scottish festival.

  Shea just wanted to talk whiskey. Just wanted to serve what she loved.

  Two couples ducked out of the bright sun and came in laughing. The taller husband, the one in a plaid, short-sleeved, button-down shirt, was holding a set of stacked, empty beer cups. A Drinker, Shea pegged him, coming in here to chase the buzz. The other man, the one in a blue T-shirt, headed right for Shea, nodding as though they already knew each other. He was either a Hot Air—someone who thought he knew a lot about the good stuff—or a Brown Vein—someone who really did know.

  Of the women, one wore a red visor that parked itself around her ears and extended far over her face. The other had a short blond ponytail. Neither woman looked particularly interested in why they’d come in here, though all four people sported wristbands.

  Shea spread her arms across the table and gave them all a welcoming smile. Didn’t matter why anyone came in, when it came down to it. They were giving the drink a chance, and educating newcomers was one of the favorite parts of her job. Sometimes that was the best kind of challenge, to win over someone who’d been skeptical—a Squinter—or someone who had cut their teeth on whiskey by sneaking their parents’ ten-dollar plastic-bottled swill bought at the corner bodega.

  “So what do these get us?” Drinker waved his yellow wrist.

  Always genial, always polite. “Tastes of three amazing whiskeys and a walk-through of each, by yours truly.”

  “That’s a big deal, my friend,” added the other man. To Shea he gave a deep nod, lips pursed. “Saw you on the History Channel the other night.” He didn’t mention which special.

  “Yeah? That’s always great to hear. Glad you came by.” She turned to her artful setup of bottles placed under the large banner with the Amber Lounge logo, and swung back around holding a tray of glasses. She flipped over each to slide across the white tablecloth with smooth, practiced ease. One glass, two, three, four—

  A fifth yellow wristband appeared at the elbow of the blue-shirted man she was leaning toward pegging as a Brown Vein. This new wristband wrapped around an arm that was crusty with caked mud. The newcomer’s fingers and palm looked like he’d tried to wipe them somewhat clean, but black still clung under his nails. Shea followed that arm upward, which widened out significantly at the biceps. He wore a red-and-black-striped rugby jersey, soaked with the efforts of a recently completed match. His short dark hair was sweat damp and stuck out all over the place, his cheeks sunburned.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the wives nudge the other.

  “Hi,” Rugby said. “Do you remember me?”

  His eye contact was so strong she swore it might have been the source of gravity.

  She blinked at him. She remembered regular faces, especially those who repeatedly came in to the Amber, but with so many tastings and traveling events and interviews these days, transient people tended to dissipate from her memory.

  Yet there was something . . . familiar about him. Something about his off-center, bright smile set against the tanned skin layered with sweat and specks of dirt. But she couldn’t place it right away, and there were four other customers who had paid nicely for her a
ttention.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t.” She was careful to hold on to her genial smile.

  “I’m Byrne.”

  A little cocky of him—but not quite obnoxious—to assume that she’d remember him based on one name. She didn’t.

  “Just Byrne?”

  “Just Byrne.” The smile widened, tilting even more to one side. Holy crap.

  “Shea Montgomery,” she replied, using the moment to swivel around and choose the first bottle.

  “Yes. I know,” said Just Byrne to her back.

  The sound of his laugh, soft and low, slid an invisible hand around the nape of her neck, took a light hold, then dragged itself down her back. A delicious shiver. This did not happen to her while she was pouring.

  People laughed in her bar every day, in tones exactly like Byrne’s, and it never elicited this severe a reaction. She shook it off because she had to, and turned back around to face her tasters, holding the eighteen-year-old single malt. She poured a shallow tasting amount in each glass, starting at the far end with plaid-shirted Drinker and ending with Byrne, who pushed his glass a few inches closer to her.

  “Last summer?” he prompted.

  She made the mistake of lifting her gaze, of getting a good, long look at his eyes. Almost powder blue with a navy blue ring around the rim.

  “Up in Gleann, New Hampshire,” he continued. “That cow wiped out your tent. Me and my team helped you clean it up.”

  The bottle slipped from her fingers. Just a few inches, but it made a graceless clink on the table.

  That damn crooked smile layered a boyish tint over his confident, intense focus on her. He pressed his hipbones right up against the bar. She guessed he was just over six feet, and built exactly like a rugby player should be.

  And that was far longer a personal assessment of any taster she’d ever allowed herself. Time to move on.

  “Oh, yeah.” Cool as the breeze, that was Shea. “Didn’t you guys win the tug-of-war?”

  “So you do remember.” Spoken all drawn out, packed with suggestion.

  He was acting way too encouraged, so she shrugged. “That’s about all. Did you win the rugby tourney, too?”

  “Nah. The tug-of-war must’ve gone to our heads.”

  “Or maybe it was the whiskey,” called Drinker, way too loudly, with an obnoxious eyeball at Shea. Drinker’s wife poked him.

  Time to shut down the personal angle.

  She purposely left Byrne, stepped to the middle of her set of tasters, and poured herself her own tiny glass. “Are we ready, folks?”

  Drinker held up the small, squat-stemmed glass. “Why not the flat-bottom glasses? What do you call those again?”

  “These are better for nosing the whiskey. Here, hold the base like—”

  She didn’t mean to look over at Byrne again. Habit, really, to take in everyone at the tasting table, to make sure she had their attention and that they each knew they were important to her.

  Hot Air—for that’s what she knew the second husband to be now—was grasping the glass underneath, holding it in his palm like a medieval goblet. But Byrne had the round base balanced lightly in his fingertips. Correctly. As he bent forward to set his elbow on the bar, the whiskey in his glass remained as still as a windless, hidden lake.

  She ripped her gaze from him and focused on the couples. “Hold it like this.” She showed them how to hold the base of the glass and not grip the bowl like a Viking. “What we’re going to do first is nose the whiskey three times, each time slightly longer than the last. One second, two seconds, three seconds. I’m going to count. Why don’t you all watch me as you do it?”

  The women shared a glance and laughed, and Shea wondered how many of those empty plastic beer cups had been theirs.

  “One.”

  Shea lifted the glass to her face, inserted her nose, and inhaled.

  The couples followed suit, and displayed pretty much the range of reaction she’d expected. Everything from I-Don’t-Give-A-Shit-Let’s-Drink, to Ew-This-Is-Disgusting, to dramatic, chest-pounding coughing because she’d inhaled too deeply and too long. Hot Air’s expression said that this was nothing he hadn’t already known.

  And then there was Byrne. Nose in his glass for about a quarter second longer than was necessary. Powder blue eyes lifted just over the rim. Set solely on her.

  Shouldn’t a rugby player be exhausted after being on the field? Because he was feeding her some serious energy. And shouldn’t a rugby player be able to read the defense? Because she was throwing up some big blocks and he was trying to charge right through them. Did he think he was the first guy to give her The Eye from the other side of the bar? This flat surface in front of her was No Man’s Land. Quite literally.

  One mistake in that regard had been enough for a lifetime, thank you very much.

  “Should be different the second time, now that you got the shock of the alcohol out of the way,” she heard herself saying. “It should be sweeter.”

  The corner of Byrne’s mouth twitched, a hint of that crooked smile, then he buried his nose in the glass again, exactly matching her movements. Concentrating. This time not looking at her. Black lines of dirt had settled into the deep grooves of concentration along his forehead. Damn it. Why had she noticed?

  And what position did he play?

  On cue, Hot Air started spouting off to his companions a list of all the things he smelled in the whiskey, and while there were never any right or wrong suggestions to specific scents—whiskey was an entirely personal experience—he was messing with Shea’s rhythm.

  “And the third?” Byrne asked Shea, cutting into Hot Air’s thesaurus recitation. Hot Air shut up.

  “On the third nose,” Shea said, “you should smell some fruit, going deeper into the intricacies of the glass.”

  Her tasters followed her actions.

  “Byrne! You done in there yet? Come on, let’s go!”

  Byrne swiveled to the sound of the chorus of male voices. Outside in the sun, the rest of his team, muddy and disheveled in red-and-black, beckoned to him, laughing. No other rugby players wore yellow wristbands.

  Byrne acknowledged them with his glass, then took a perfect taste of what Shea had poured.

  The brown liquid disappeared slowly into his mouth. His jaw worked it over for a good four or five seconds. Biting it, chewing it. Savoring it, as it should be done. Then he swallowed it back, his throat working.

  Exactly like how she was about to instruct her newbies.

  Byrne lifted his eyes to Shea without a hint of pretentiousness or flirting. “Excellent, thank you.” Then, with a nod to the other four people, he left her tent.

  She watched him go. In her mind she was holding one of those giant cartoon mallets and was racking herself on the head, but she watched him anyway.

  He had a long stride, masculine but oddly graceful. A leisurely confidence to his gait. He also had ridiculous legs, and she was annoyed with herself for noticing. They were tanned and thick and strong, with a distinct pronunciation of his quads. Might as well have rugby player tattooed down the side of them.

  Goddamn it.

  Outside, she watched him wiggle off the yellow wristband in a way that might have the organizers rethinking their purchase next year. But instead of rejoining his team, Byrne went over to a group of middle-aged adults spreading out a blanket next to the flag rope surrounding the athletic field. Out in the grass, the sheaf toss was starting. Byrne tapped a woman on the shoulder, said something to her, then when she smiled and nodded enthusiastically, he offered her his hundred-dollar wristband.

  Then he pulled three more brand-new bands out of his shorts pocket and passed them out to the others. As one of the men reached for his wallet, Byrne waved off any sort of compensation.

  The four recipients of the new wristbands slapped them on, and Byrne went over to h
is team.

  As he passed by the roped-off outdoor seating of the whiskey tent, he turned his head and immediately, instantly found Shea. Found her staring.

  She quickly ducked her head and wiped off an already-clean section of her makeshift bar. But not before she caught a final glimpse of that crooked smile, far too bright in the sunshine.

  That smile promised a lot. Things she hadn’t allowed herself—or been afforded—to think about in a long, long time. Things that hit her right where she hadn’t been touched in an embarrassing number of months.

  It disturbed her, to be disarmed while in uniform, so to speak. It disturbed her even more that the man who’d done it was a taster, and quite possibly a Brown Vein. An absolute no-no.

  He wouldn’t win, though.

  He had to know that even though he’d caught her staring, and even though she’d looked away like a shy virgin at a bachelor auction, it didn’t mean he’d won, or that he’d gained any sort of ground with her. She had rules to uphold, a hard-won reputation to maintain, and a business to keep at the top of the New York scene.

  But when she looked up to tell him all that with her cool, disinterested expression and Stay Back eyes, Byrne was gone.