She rolled her eyes. “Because I finally tormented you into having sex with me. I’m glad we did it. It was amazing, but I don’t want you to feel obligated or anything.”
“If we’re going to discuss this now, you need to pour a couple of shots of Brown Dog in my travel mug,” he told her. “But I don’t think that will go over well with your potential investors.”
“Don’t be a dick,” she said, frustration clouding her eyes.
Shit. “You’re overthinking things.” He didn’t want her to be mad at him, but better mad than hurt, at least until he figured out his own head.
Allie snorted and put the car into gear. “I’m totally going back in time and falling for Brandon.”
Justin laughed, in spite of himself. Damn her, for being so fucking cute.
…
“Well, that was uninspiring,” Allie said after their second meeting of the morning. She was disappointed, but determined to be optimistic. They’d stopped for lunch at a Bar-B-Cutie outside Nashville. She bit into her barbecued pork sandwich and chewed.
Justin poked at his brisket and shrugged. “It was a definite conditional maybe,” he said.
“Not exactly something we can take to the bank.”
“Hey, they said they’d give you shelf space if you make it.”
“But they weren’t interested in making even a partial investment if it didn’t come with Blue Mountain Bourbon’s seal of approval.”
Again, the unconcerned shrug, which was starting to annoy her.
She huffed out a breath. Surely he knew what the stakes were here? If they didn’t get an investor, he was going to wind up throwing himself on the sword of his father’s mercy…or something like that…to help cover that deductible. She’d half hoped that he might change his mind—realize that he did love Blue Mountain and want to stay—but it was clearer by the day that there was more to Justin’s rush to leave than his alienation from his dad. He was home from the Middle East, but he still had a war to fight, and didn’t think he could fight it at home.
So why didn’t he seem so worried that they hadn’t found an investor for Rainbow Dog yet?
He scratched his chin. “I dunno, we can use that maybe from the last meeting as leverage for the next guy. Surely we can spin it into some sort of a ‘We’ve got several other distributors interested, if we can find terms that everyone’s comfortable with.’”
She grumbled, “Terms like ‘Give us anything, anything at all that will cover our costs just so we can get our product on the bottom shelf’?”
Justin laughed, the little lines at the corners of his eyes appearing for the first time that day. “If I didn’t know you better, I might think that was sarcasm.”
Allie slurped her diet soda. She put her chin on her fist. “I have to believe we can get this to work. People just have to decide that it’s hip.”
She thought about how to explain herself. At least they were talking comfortably again. She was kicking herself for what she’d said last night. Any way I can get you. Sheesh. Run away! Keep running! I’ll probably chase you, anyway!
“I gotta hand it to you,” Justin said, obviously unaware of her thoughts. “You charmed the socks off that lady at Liquor World.”
“Yeah, after she conned me out of three pints of free Rainbow Dog preserves to use in her Cooking With Booze demo.”
“Hey, if they order that from us, for all their stores? That’s a sale, and it’s not like it was expensive to make.”
Allie shrugged. He was right. The preserves weren’t preserves at all, not in the traditional sense. All she’d done was to take a jar of Sherry’s homemade jam, mix in some white dog, and put it in a different jar. Add a pretty lid on it and a clever label about how Rainbow Dog preserves went with anything…ice cream, corn bread, biscuits… All she had to do was figure out how to put it into pie, and she’d have drunken desserts from Cincinnati to Mobile.
It wasn’t exactly what she envisioned for her product, but as a side effort, it would be okay.
“Well, keep your chin up, babe. You’ll come up with something. I have faith in you.”
Huh. Even though he was either boiling or frigid in the nooky department, he did still seem to believe she could pull this off. That was huge.
“Where do we go next?”
Allie chewed her lip for a moment. Their next two appointments had canceled on them. One bar mogul, who owned four bars and restaurants in Nashville, had said he just didn’t see a market for raw bourbon, that he already carried a couple brands of moonshine. The other one had just left a message saying not to come.
Finally, she fessed up. “We don’t have anything else today.”
“Oh. Well, should we go back and pack up the camper and go to Memphis?”
“We can’t check in at the next campground until tomorrow. It was booked.” They were stuck with each other for the next eighteen hours or so, with nowhere to go.
“Want to go to a movie or something?”
Well, that was nice. At least he wasn’t suggesting that he catch a Greyhound bus back to Crockett County. “We should go back to the campground. I need to make some more calls, and I left the binder with the contact list in the camper.”
“Okay,” Justin said.
She thought he would have been more reluctant to go “home” with her with nothing planned for the day, but he was probably tired. That was fine; so was she. They could take turns napping on the big bed.
Allie couldn’t hope there’d be more going on in that bed than sleep, because everything about his demeanor screamed that last night was a one-off. He’d hang around until they got Rainbow Dog off the ground—or buried, because he’d promised. But then he’d go.
If for no other reason, she had to find some way to land an investor, so he could get out West, away from all the reminders of Dave, and move on with his life.
Chapter Eighteen
Justin was tempted to tell Allie what he’d done, just to get a spring back into her step. He’d made a few calls and put things in motion that would have her silent partner signed, sealed, and delivered in just a few days…but he really wanted her to have a chance to pitch the business plan in person to Merilee, so that Allie’d know it was her project—her work, her pitch, her business acumen—that sealed the deal.
They drove into the campground without speaking, slowly rolling past the other campsites. People were out and about, walking dogs, sitting and talking. A couple of guys tinkered with their bikes, tools spread out on a picnic table.
One of the guys hailed them. “Hey, have you all been in town?” he asked. “I promised Pinky I’d take him, and I can’t get this damned GPS to work. I know you just got back, but Justin, if you feel up to it, would you mind coming along and navigating? I promise we’ll only be gone an hour or two.” He winked at Allie. “I’ll have him back before you miss him too much.”
Perfect. He had a phone call to make somewhere Allie wouldn’t overhear.
…
“Hey, babe,” Justin said to Merilee’s voicemail forty minutes later. “It’s Justin Morgan. Just checking to make sure you’re going to be at On the Rocks next week. Be careful about calling back or sending texts. I don’t want Allie to know what we’ve got going on. I’ll try to catch you again later.”
He hung up and followed the guys into in the waiting area of a real, live, old-fashioned barbershop, where he spent the next hour listening to old men gossip.
He was having a surprisingly good time. At first he was annoyed that he’d been tricked into coming to a fucking barbershop, that the boys knew their way into town. He reminded them that he hadn’t lost his bet. Yet. But they assured him they just wanted his company. They’d been coming to this particular barbershop every year for the past twenty. It was a ritual stop on their annual pilgrimage. Apparently one of the guys didn’t get a single hair cut between visits.
“Although,” chimed in the barber, “every year when he comes in here, the job is easier, because there’s just not
quite as much to cut each time.”
The conversation turned to a few people who weren’t there. There was silence then, for a moment, the implication that they’d be seeing a new grave marker when they stopped at Arlington at the end of their journey.
It freaked Justin out how casually they discussed death. Like it was a relative they didn’t much like, but that they tolerated.
“Your girl says you’re stopping in DC on the way home from your booze festival gig,” one of the guys said.
Justin stiffened. “I don’t think so.” He shoved his overgrown bangs out of his eyes. The hair that Allie griped about.
“She seemed pretty set on it.”
He didn’t answer. Why she was so determined to push him into going to Dave’s grave was beyond him. He didn’t need to see the marker to know Dave was gone. But maybe it wasn’t for him at all. It was for her.
How had he managed to forget Dave wasn’t just his best friend? He’d been Allie’s big brother. And hell. Justin had lost him two years ago… Allie had lost him long before that, when he’d enlisted and left home.
She didn’t have as much crap hanging over her head, either. Didn’t have to know what those last minutes had been like for Dave, the part that Justin had played in the end…but shit. She would probably handle that better, too, and never need a VA shrink to tell her she had to deal with survivor’s grief.
Jesus. He was such a self-centered asshole.
The old marine slapped him on the arm and said, “You ready to hit the road home?”
“Just a minute,” Justin answered, then turned to the barber. “You got time for one more before you turn the closed sign around?”
Chapter Nineteen
Justin was embarrassingly nervous when he got out of the car. His nerves weren’t helped by the fact that he felt flushed to the roots of his hair, and those roots were pretty exposed right now.
Jesus. When he’d told the barber that he wouldn’t mind a regulation haircut, he didn’t mean the basic training version.
Afterward, he’d mentioned that Allie had had a bad morning, and that he’d been an asshole in general, and she was probably pissed off at him. So he’d been browbeaten into buying a conciliatory picnic supper, complete with wine and flowers.
Based on the look in her eye as she approached him, his last chance to stay out of Allie McGrath’s panties was about to be gone with the wind.
“Hey,” she said when she got to him. She wore jeans and a long-sleeved Blue Mountain T-shirt that complemented the green in her eyes.
“How was your afternoon?” he asked.
She nodded. “Okay.”
He wanted to push her hair behind her ear, but one hand was full of apology supplies, and the other was doing everything it could to hold him upright.
“Thanks for navigating,” the driver said, moving toward his wife, who was sitting at a nearby card table with a number of the other women.
“You’re welcome,” Justin said, not looking at him. He couldn’t stop staring at Allie. He didn’t know what had changed since he’d been gone. He thought maybe it was him.
“So…do you need help with your stuff there?” she asked.
“Oh! Yes. I, um, shit.” He handed her the bag. “I, uh, got you flowers. But you can kind of see that, I guess.”
“Well, I do see the flowers,” she said, reaching into the bag and pulling them out. She buried her nose in them, though she wouldn’t smell anything. They were some kind of chintzy daisy thing, and an artificial fluorescent color at that, but they were the only ones the grocery store had. “I didn’t want to presume.”
He said, “Well, I prefer roses, if I’m going to get flowers for myself, but I thought you probably preferred weird, mutant, semi-artificial flowers.”
She smiled, the heat in her eyes unmistakable. “I do now.”
He cleared his throat. “So, I got some food for supper, too. But I kind of need to take a shower before we eat, if that’s okay.”
Allie sighed. “I suppose it would be unpleasant for me to have to pick newly shorn hair shreds out of my food while you sit there and scratch all through supper.”
He drew a deep breath.
It was going to be okay. Whatever happened between them in the next few hours would probably be okay, because she was his girl. His Allie. They might be lovers, and if she hadn’t changed her mind, still wanted to be with him, even though she knew he was leaving to go out West and was okay with that, then he was all in. Or she might have come to her senses and realized what a head case he was and decided to back off. That would be okay, too. He hoped like hell she chose the first option.
She was the coolest, toughest girl he knew, and she’d be okay.
It occurred to him, as he waited for her to take the shopping bag inside and get his shower things for the camp facilities, that maybe Dave had asked him to look out for her not because she needed Justin’s help, but because Dave knew that Justin needed her. And not just in some freaky premonition-of-bum-leg kind of way.
…
He got his freaking hair cut. And bought flowers. Did that mean something? Allie felt like it meant something. Like he was apologizing for pulling away from her after last night. Either that, or he was conceding that she was the supreme goddess of karaoke and was too embarrassed to sing in public after his boasting last night.
But what if it meant more? Like, something romantic. She was obsessing, anyway, in spite of trying to keep herself busy unloading flowers. And the fancy cheese with even fancier crackers, and—oh, hell—wine and chocolates. There were some kind of sandwiches, wrapped in pretty paper, and gourmet kettle-cooked potato chips.
Allie dropped the pastry box back in the bag and ran to the little bathroom, where she combed her hair and took the world’s quickest sponge bath to be sure everything about her was fresh and clean. Not that she was expecting it to get there. More like insurance that it wouldn’t. Because, really. The likelihood of Justin finally deciding he wanted to get naked with her again was probably inversely correlated with the state of her hygiene. As in, he would only tell her he wanted her to take off her clothes if she was so dirty and stinky that he could be sure that she would refuse.
She shoved her jeans and T-shirt in the closet and put on a soft, clingy-knit sundress, then took it back off again, feeling like that was too desperate. Then put it back on. Looking nice would probably provide the same anti-Justin armor as bathing.
The door to the camper opened, and Justin began to make his slow journey up the steps.
She took a breath, stepping out where she could see him. With that short hair, his already square jaw was like steel, and his blue eyes glowed with a laser-like intensity. “God, you look handsome,” she blurted.
He just stared at her for a moment. His eyes traveled from her hair, which she automatically tucked behind her left ear, over her face, pausing at her lips, down the center of her body, lingering at her chest. Her nipples felt his gaze and swelled in response. She started to cross her arms over them, then stopped, and his mouth quirked, before his gaze dropped to caress her stomach, hips, thighs, finally resting on her feet, causing him to grin widely.
“What?” She looked down. “Oh.” She’d left on her “My sock” and “My other sock” socks. Which had a big hole in one toe.
“You look really pretty,” he said, and there was more in his eyes, something he probably wasn’t quite ready to say out loud. Which was fine, because she wasn’t sure she was ready to hear it.
Allie nearly wept. As it was, her heart hiccuped before beating a little harder and faster than usual. “I feel like this is kind of a date, or something,” she said, then wanted to kick herself.
To cover her awkwardness, she took his toiletry bag, the one with the condoms in it, and tossed it into the bedroom, on top of his seabag.
But he nodded when she turned back to him. “Yeah. I uh, I kind of do, too. Feel like we’re dating.” He approached her, slowly, warily.
“I won’t bite y
ou,” she said.
“That’s a shame.”
It took a good two-tenths of a second before she was up against him, her arms around his neck, lips pressed to his. Her mouth opened under his, tongue slipping out to taste his; the textures and heat made her knees go weak. He wrapped one arm around her waist, pulling her against him, nibbling at her mouth, his lips and teeth and tongue devouring. She tried to reciprocate while running one hand through his stubbled hair, afraid if she let him go he’d disappear.
Turning with him, she pushed him down onto the couch, stepped out of the way of his bum leg, then looked down into his serious blue eyes, so full of…want.
She took his remaining crutch and leaned it against the wall. After a deep breath, she pulled her dress to the tops of her thighs. His eyes went to the juncture of her legs, and his lips parted, tongue sliding out to lick his bottom lip. Inelegantly, she climbed over him, a knee on either side of his legs. His hands immediately spanned her waist, pulling her down against his crotch, his hard length pressing against her core, right—oh God—right there.
Her whimper echoed his sigh when she writhed against him. Swollen and wet with need, almost exactly where she needed to be, she stared down into his widened blue eyes.
She didn’t kiss him again, not just yet. She reached for the hands that curved around her hips and moved them up, over her rib cage, to her heavy and achy breasts, which were in need of a man’s touch. This man. He finally pulled the straps of her dress down and cupped her, licked one nipple, then the other. Then took the first into his mouth, pulling strongly.
An exceptionally strong tug on her nipple had her grabbing his shoulders and arching against him, crying out for more.
He was aligned so closely that even through layers of fabric, she had to move only a few millimeters to feel the head of his cock press against her clit, enough to send waves of electric heat from her head to her feet.
“Oh, Jesus, hold still,” he said.
“But I need…you in me, now,” she said, hearing the desperation in her own voice.
“Fuck,” he said, and moved his hands off her breasts and pushed her away from where their bodies met. “No—”
Drunk on You Page 14
