Secret Blend (Bourbon Springs Book 1)

by Jennifer Bramseth

  When they entered the restaurant, the hostess overenthusiastically and chirpily greeted both of them, and recognized them by name.

  “Oh! That horrible thing you went through!” she said, leading them to a booth on the back left wall. “That was so—and the things you said about her—” The hostess looked at Rachel, but she couldn’t finish her thought, if indeed she had any remnant of one.

  “What was that about?” Brady asked as they slid into the booth and opened the menus the hostess had placed on the table in front of them.

  “She apparently heard about what happened the other day,” Rachel said, and smiled. “I think you have a groupie. She’s giving you the eye.”

  “Jealous?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “After what I heard you say in the courtroom?” she asked as she looked down at the menu. “Why would I be?”

  They ordered and noticed the waitress, a tall thin blonde with her hair in a tight ponytail, was alternatively nervous and giddy in their presence.

  “I guess a lot of people have heard something about the other day,” Brady said and ran a hand through his dark hair.

  They ate but kept seeing people looking at them. But instead of giving them the cold stares or smirks they had endured on their date at The Cooperage, the diners were smiling at them.

  “I thought we were over as an interesting bit of gossip,” Rachel said as she drank a cup of coffee after finishing her open-faced roast beef sandwich with bourbon sauce.

  “Maybe we never will be in this town,” Brady said.

  Lunch was over and the server brought the check; she was still in that happy-goofy nervous state, except her infection level had increased since her symptoms were more manifest. The server was bouncing on her heels, biting her lip, trying not to smile, and trying to keep her mouth shut.

  It didn’t work.

  “I’m sorry,” she gushed, “but I just have to say that when I saw you saying those things about Judge Richards,” and she put a hand on her chest as if to hold back her heart from bursting forth, “I’ve just never heard a man in public be that romantic. I mean, how lucky can a girl get?” she finished, and looked at Rachel.

  Rachel tilted her head in confusion.

  “Were you over at the courthouse on Monday to see what happened?” she asked.

  “Oh, no,” the waitress said, “I saw the video.”

  “The video?” Rachel and Brady said in unison, and then looked at each other, startled by the waitress’ answer and their simultaneous question to her.

  “Well, yeah, I saw it online last night,” the waitress said. “My best friend sent me the link and—”

  “The link?” Brady asked, a hint of dread in his voice.

  “Yeah, isn’t it crazy?” the server answered and waved her hand. “It’s viral.”

  “What are you talking about?” a wide-eyed Rachel asked.

  “Don’t y’all know?” the server asked, narrowing her eyes. They both shook their heads mutely. “Well, that video has been everywhere, let me tell you.”

  “Video? What video?” Brady asked.

  The waitress blushed and giggled. “Well, of you, of course,” she said, and poked his shoulder. “From the other day in court when that guy held you hostage and you said you loved her—” and the waitress gestured toward Rachel, whose jaw had dropped until it was slack.

  “There’s a video going around of that? But how in the hell—” he began.

  “Beats me, hon, but it’s out there. I mean, you two are the talk of Bourbon Springs—in a good way. You’re more popular now than the local teacher who won that reality show singing contest last week down in Nashville, that Mack Blanton guy. You’ve knocked him off whatever pedestal he was on, that’s for sure.”

  As the server blathered on about the fortunes of the singing star, Rachel pulled out her phone and checked her email. She’d gotten a few emails from acquaintances with links to some video. But since she’d gotten so many in a short time, she’d wondered whether someone’s email had been hacked or if it had been just a scam, so she hadn’t click on the links. Brady had reported having had the same experience. But neither had had any phone calls about it, probably because their numbers were private.

  Then she typed Brady’s name into a search engine on her phone.

  There were pages and pages of links to the video. She noticed that even a few of the local television stations in Lexington and Louisville, as well the newspapers in both cities, had posted the video on their websites. A few sites had adopted Brady as a romantic hero worthy of perpetual digital adoration. Brady had fans, it seemed, and both of them had various hashtags on Twitter. There was even a website devoted to her: rachelinaninstant.com.

  She dared to click on one of the video links that had popped up, and was immediately transported back in time two days and to when Brady was in the courtroom with that nutjob. The entire video was there, from when the guy had taken the gun from that stupid deputy until she’d entered the courtroom and flown into Brady’s arms.

  So thousands upon thousands of people had seen this.

  “How did this get out?” Brady asked her.

  “What do you know about this?” Rachel demanded, thrusting her phone into Sherry’s face after returning from lunch. On the phone was the video, at the point where Hanson had been bellowing at Deputy Carver for not bringing the bourbon.

  “I was wondering when you were going to find out,” she sighed. “I’ve been fending off callers for the past day or so now. I didn’t think you’d want to deal, and when you didn’t mention it, I sure as hell wasn’t going to bring it up.”

  “Deal? We’d liked to have known it was out there!” Rachel exploded. “Why didn’t you tell us about this?”

  “Because it’s not my story to tell, that’s why,” Sherry said, and stood. She scooped up a stack of files and handed them to Rachel. “Here,” she said, and dropped the files into Rachel’s arms. “Take these orders and go talk to CiCi. She’s the one who knows the story.”

  “As usual,” Brady muttered.

  They hadn’t even taken off their coats after returning from lunch, but they both turned around and immediately went downstairs to the clerk’s office. The greeting they received there was akin to the reactions of the diners and the hostess and server at The Rickhouse. Although no one directly addressed them as they entered and walked up to the public filing counter, Rachel and Brady were the targets of wary smiles mixed with giggling.

  “CiCi?” Brady called, craning his neck toward CiCi’s office and its open door. “We’d like a word, please.”

  A group giggle rippled through the clerks. When Rachel and Brady gave them looks that could be translated as seriously? they all turned their heads and went back to work.

  CiCi’s curls and then the rest of her head appeared from around her office door. “Hi, there,” she said, waving shyly.

  “Get over here, Madam Clerk,” Rachel commanded, and smirked. “Sherry said you have some news for us? News about why he’s suddenly news?” Rachel said, pointing to Brady who was standing to her left.

  CiCi bit her lip, slowly emerged from her office and walked toward Brady and Rachel.

  “Look,” she said, and held up both hands in front of herself as if to fend off a nebulous threat, “please don’t be mad at me, OK? I’ll admit that I did it, but I had no clue it would get out of hand.”

  “And just what was it that you did?” Brady asked, “Although I think I have a good idea.”

  CiCi stopped, closed her eyes and sighed.

  “After Brady escaped, I went upstairs to the courtroom to check on the docket sheets, the files, and the recorder. I was worried that something was wrong with it and that part of the video recording hadn’t been made of that hearing. The clerk in me was freaked out about that part. Was the record screwed up?” She stopped and rolled her eyes. “That possibility bugged me to no end, particularly since I knew that any video would be crucial evidence to whatever happens to that Hanson idiot.
So I went upstairs and after arguing with Kyle to let me in, he finally let me pass.”

  “How’d you talk him into that?” Brady asked. “The place was swarming with law enforcement.”

  CiCi grinned. “When he kept getting in my face, I said that he didn’t need to treat me like I was Hannah Davenport because I wasn’t trying to get under his skin, that I had a job to do, so he should shut up and let me pass. That did the trick,” she explained, and then winked.

  Rachel started laughing, but Brady only shook his head. Everyone knew that to say that there were unresolved issues between Hannah and Kyle was the understatement of the century. But Rachel figured that those issues were never going to be resolved—at least to Kyle’s satisfaction—because of one big reality: Hannah was married. And Kyle wasn’t the kind of guy who would go there or even try to go there just to set things right for himself.

  “But I take it that there wasn’t any problem with the video, was there? It did record?” Rachel asked.

  CiCi nodded. “I didn’t know that until I brought it back down here and checked it. And—well—then I had an idea to put it online. It’s a public record, after all!” she cried, trying to justify herself.

  That wasn’t a very good explanation. As CiCi had mentioned, the video was going to be important evidence in Hanson’s prosecution. By releasing the thing after the incident and having it get widespread attention, there could be problems in any subsequent prosecution. At a minimum, it was likely that Hanson would get a change of venue to another county; everyone in Craig County would know the story or have seen the video. But even getting a jury in another county could still be difficult because the video had already been so widely disseminated.

  “And you sent the link out to just a few people…” Rachel began.

  “And then the thing spread like digital kudzu,” Brady finished.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” CiCi wailed, waving her hands wildly. “But it was just the most amazing, romantic thing I’d ever seen! And then at the end when Rachel came out and you two embraced—” and CiCi got choked up.

  Rachel grabbed CiCi’s hand across the counter. “It’s OK,” she assured her.

  CiCi swallowed hard, and suddenly her tears turned into anger.

  “It’s just not fair!” CiCi cried. “After everything you two have gone through over the past few months—I guess I’ll have to admit I put the video out there to set the record straight. After Hannah and that acid tongue of hers told one side of the story, it just didn’t seem right that your side—the truth—wasn’t out there, and that people didn’t know it.

  “When everyone in the courthouse was watching on the video monitors, some of us were actually cheering because we knew that at least a little of the real story would get out. And then when I saw that the video recorder hadn’t malfunctioned and we had a recording of everything that had happened, something in my mind clicked and I went ahead and put it out there. I thought that maybe people here in Bourbon Springs would be interested enough to look at the video. So I sent out a few links to friends, and I think a few clerks did the same. I’m not apologetic for sending out the links, but I do apologize to you two if I’ve embarrassed or put you in a bad position.”

  They reassured her that they were not mad at her and returned to their chambers.

  “I’ll be glad when all this is over,” Brady said as they walked into Rachel’s office.

  Rachel pulled up the blinds, making her black pencil skirt hike up a little and her bright blue sweater stretch across her breasts.

  “I still don’t want to think about the election,” she said, and stood by the window, staring at the courthouse grounds. Below she saw one of the courthouse custodians using a leaf blower to clean out a flowerbed that was devoid of blooms and choked with fallen leaves.

  Brady walked to the window and took Rachel in his arms. “Look on the bright side,” he said as the sun suddenly emerged from behind a cloud and cast the room in a glowing, blinding light. “At least we’ll be out of the spotlight soon and can get back to being boring, normal, nearly-anonymous us.”

  She pulled back and gave him a quizzical look. “Have we ever been any of those things?”

  “Perhaps it’s time we were,” he said.

  “I don’t know if I want to be,” she said, and kissed him.

  Chapter 32

  Before Election Night, Rachel had fainted only once in her life.

  In high school, when she had been in the chorus, she got overheated in a long robe while at a singing competition and passed out.

  Then she lost it on Election Night when it became clear that Brady was going to win.

  Brady’s supporters had gathered informally that night at the bourbon bar at The Cooperage since Brady had no campaign headquarters, nor did the campaign have any money to rent a space to watch election returns. In fact, the idea of even getting together to watch election news that night had seemed silly to Brady, since he felt assured of the outcome.

  But Rachel had insisted they do something to mark the occasion. Going to The Cooperage on a weeknight and just sitting and eating in the bourbon bar with a few friends was not terribly objectionable, although he’d claimed he didn’t want to see the evidence of his election defeat splashed out on all the television screens in the bar.

  “You can always not look, you know,” Rachel had pointed out.

  But then the returns started to creep in.

  Brady was behind, but not by much at first. He’d told Rachel that he expected that as the evening wore on, Hannah’s lead would only continue to grow. He thus seemed content to sit in a corner and cuddle with her, eating a hamburger and sipping Garnet neat.

  But then CiCi, who had joined the gathering along with a few attorneys, Sherry, and at least one of the clerks and the sheriff, pointed out that Brady was catching up fast.

  And then he was even.

  And then he was ahead.

  Rachel hadn’t been drinking (she was the designated driver that night), but started to feel light-headed when Brady took the lead by a few hundred votes.

  “That’s enough right there,” the sheriff said. Kyle stood in front of one of the televisions near the bar with a glass of juice in one hand as he pointed at the screen with the other. “Hannah can’t catch up. I’ve seen enough elections in this county to do that math.”

  Five minutes later, the television stations announced that all Craig County precincts had reported, and that Brady had won by 205 votes. By that point, everyone in the little party was on their feet and looking at one of the screens. A little cheer went up, even from the bartender and the other bar patrons, as it became official that Brady had won.

  By the time Brady turned to Rachel, she was delirious with joy and her eyes were brimming with tears. He kissed her for quite a long time, prompting Kyle to cry, “get a room!” When they pulled apart, Rachel wobbled and fell unconscious into Brady’s waiting arms.

  “Damn,” Kyle uttered as he helped Brady and CiCi maneuver the insensible Rachel flat on her back into a booth. “You kissed her and knocked her out cold! What’s your secret, man?”

  CiCi laughed riotously, but Brady only grinned.

  “Like I’d share it with you, Sammons,” Brady said.

  “Oh, that’s not very nice,” CiCi moaned. “He really does need all the help he can get, poor dear,” she said, patting Kyle’s arm in feigned sympathy.

  “Shut it,” Kyle said to them both.

  CiCi didn’t notice the little shadow of regret that passed over Kyle’s face, but Brady did.

  “Sorry,” Brady said once CiCi was out of earshot. He was sitting with Rachel’s head in his lap, waiting for her to awaken. Kyle took a seat across the short table between them. “But if I do have any secret or bit of advice to share, it’s this: go for it.”

  Brady looked down at Rachel and brushed the hair from her face. Kyle nodded, and, apparently uncomfortable with the level of intimacy he saw between Brady and Rachel in just that little window of tim
e, stood, turned, and left them alone.

  “Easy enough for you to say,” Kyle said just loud enough for Brady to hear, then headed toward the bathrooms.

  CiCi returned to the table with a pitcher of water and extra glasses.

  “Thought this might come in handy,” she said as she began to pour.

  Rachel began to stir on Brady’s lap. “Did I really pass out?” she said in a weak voice as she looked up at Brady’s bemused face.

  “Yep. Makes quite a good story, don’t you think? Kind of like me finding you skinny-dipping?” he teased.

  “Like what?” CiCi asked.

  “A story you promised not to tell,” Rachel reminded him.

  “Never mind,” Brady said, his comment directed toward CiCi, and took a glass of water.

  Rachel put a hand flat against her forehead. “How lame was it to faint?” she grimaced.

  “It was cute,” he said, and tapped her on the nose.

  “Ugh! Cheesefest!” CiCi declared and started to leave them.

  “Wait,” Brady said, and asked CiCi to stay.

  Brady then helped Rachel move into a sitting position and CiCi pushed a glass of water across the table to her. After Rachel took a few sips and assured them she had recovered from her little “spell” as she put it, Brady looked back to CiCi and put his hand on top of hers on the table.

  “Thanks,” he said to CiCi, who looked surprised by his gratitude.

  “What did I do?” she asked.

  “You got me elected, that’s what.”

  Her brows came down. “By releasing that video?”

  “Sure,” Brady said. “There was no way in hell I would’ve won the race without that video getting out, although I’m still amazed that what I said to that crazy guy mattered to anyone,” he said.

  “It mattered quite a bit to me,” Rachel whispered, and put a hand on his leg.

  He gave her a quick kiss on the side of the head.

  “Cheesy, people,” CiCi said warningly.

  Brady turned his attention back to CiCi. “CiCi, if people hadn’t seen that thing, I would not have won the race. Simple as that.”