Lorena had thrown a fit—in the way only Lorena could. She completely shut down. Not that Justin blamed her. Dave’s dad had just died of self-inflicted drunk driving, leaving the distillery on rocky financial ground—that they were only just now digging out of—and then her only son was about to dive headfirst into a war that appeared like it might never end.
Justin felt sorry for Lorena. But he was protective of Allie, who wanted her mother’s approval more than she realized. Probably more than she wanted Rainbow Dog off the ground.
“What do you think you two are doing?”
He didn’t pretend not to know what she was talking about. “We’d drop-kick Blue Mountain into the future, if you’d let us. As it is, we’re going to get there on our own.” And they would. Even if Merilee had pulled a fast one and bailed—he was going to find out what was going on.
But Lorena was still at it. “With that—that—moonshine?”
He picked up his shot of tequila. “Rainbow Dog is hardly backwoods hooch. It’s good Blue Mountain white dog.”
“But Blue Mountain doesn’t sell anything younger than seven years old. This is a convention we’ve followed for as long as we’ve been in business. And even if we decided to release something younger, we certainly wouldn’t let it be anything that couldn’t be called Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. I’m surprised you’ve let her talk you into this. And David would have—”
He wasn’t going to play this game. “Dave was a big fan of the good old bourbons, but this is totally different.”
“That’s exactly my point,” Lorena said. “David wanted Allie and Eve to carry on the McGrath traditions, which is why he left his life insurance to them. Allie is using it to fund this ridiculous enterprise.”
The air left his chest in a rush. He realized he’d actually clenched his fist to his sternum. She’d used Dave’s life insurance to cover the deductible? What had she said when he’d asked her about it? She’d been saving for a while, she’d told him. He thought she’d meant she’d been saving money that her dad had left.
Lorena looked at Justin in triumph. “You didn’t know that? It wasn’t enough to drag him off to that godforsaken country and get him killed?”
The accusation from Lorena cut him deeper than she could possibly know.
Chapter Twenty-Five
After Lorena left, Justin moved to a booth in the bar so he could stare into his drink in peace.
So what if Allie had lent him Dave’s life insurance money instead of her dad’s proceeds? It made sense that she probably used her dad’s money to pay for college. Did it really matter where the money came from? He still needed to pay it back. Another debt he owed Dave…
“You look about a million miles away.”
Justin looked up at Merilee standing next to his booth.
He scooted over. “Have a seat.”
She laughed. “I’ll leave if Allie shows up.” But she sat too close.
“Oh. I wasn’t really worried about that,” he lied.
“Maybe you should be. She’s a little scary.” Merilee fake shivered, making her breasts shimmy.
“She’s something, isn’t she?” He smiled, in spite of his annoyance with her for keeping the truth about Dave’s money from him. “Who knew she’d grow up to be so damned perfect for me?”
“What were you thinking about so deep and heavy there?” Merilee asked.
“Actually, I want to know what we need to do to convince you to invest in Rainbow Dog.”
“I don’t want to invest. I want you to talk her into letting me buy it. And then I want you to come and run it for me.”
He reconsidered his plan to just watch the liquor roll around in the glass and thought about downing it. “Huh? No. That’s not the plan. This is Allie’s project. And I wouldn’t do that to her, even if I thought it was a good idea. She’d be devastated.”
Merilee shrugged. “She’s tough. She’ll recover.” She put her hand on Justin’s arm. She seemed a little desperate, still beautiful, but somehow…brittle.
“I saw you and thought about how life was back here, and what could have been… Why can’t it still be what could have been? What if we’d stayed together, stayed in the distillery business? We could do that now…”
Oh, hell. She was trying to get him to bail on Allie and stay in the booze business. There was no way he would hurt her that way.
“Hey, I’m flattered,” he told her, taking her hand off his arm and holding it.
She clutched at his fingers, smiling ruefully. “That’s what I thought. Thanks but no thanks, right?”
“Something like that.” He was glad this wasn’t going to be painful and messy.
“Well, I should get going. No hard feelings, huh?”
“That’s my girl,” he said, winking at her.
“I’m going to miss you when you go out West to do your smoke-jumper thing.”
He thought for a moment, about home, and Allie, and his options, and said, “You might not miss me too much.”
Merilee looked up then, and her eyes widened at something over his shoulder.
He turned and saw Allie leaving the bar. As she ran around the corner, he saw just enough of her face to identify tears.
…
Allie almost got out of the camper and on the road before Justin arrived. She suspected Merilee had seen her escape from the bar, but wasn’t sure until now.
Justin slammed through the door. “That cab ride cost me thirty-six dollars,” he ground out. “What. The. Fuck.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Allie stopped shoving clothes into her overnight bag and picked up her ancient backpack, grabbing toiletries and dumping them in.
“You left me at the fucking hotel. That takes a lot of nerve!”
Allie stepped out of the tiny bathroom and glared at him. “I can’t believe Merilee didn’t give you a ride. In her hotel room.”
He laughed, a harsh, bitter sound. “You’ve got to be kidding. Do you really think I would jump from your bed to hers?” He almost looked hurt. “What would make you think that?”
Allie remembered how he’d looked holding hands with his old lover. And how he’d sounded. That’s my girl. How many times had he said that to her? She’d managed to block out the generic expression somehow, convinced herself that she was special, but clearly she had been wrong.
You might not have to miss me too much. God, it sounded like he was going to invite Merilee to visit him in Firestud Training Camp. He’d never even mentioned the possibility to Allie. With Allie, it had all been, I can’t stay here.
She bit her cheek to keep from bursting into tears. “I’ve made a mistake. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you still had feelings for her.” Made a mistake by letting her heart lead her right back into being in love with him. Yes, she was in love with him, despite how hard she’d tried to keep her distance.
“Huh?”
”I saw you holding hands with her!”
“I was trying to figure out why she changed her mind about offering to invest in Rainbow Dog! I didn’t realize she thought I’d called her because I wanted to get back together.”
Allie’s brain squealed to a stop and shifted into low gear, turned, and began to gather speed again. “What did you do?”
“Shit. I…” He scratched through the stubble on top of his head. “I heard she was doing the venture capital thing. I called to ask her to come talk to you. Tried to call in a favor for old times’ sake, but I didn’t realize she’d take it the wrong way.”
The last weeks of I believe in you, Allie… Keep your chin up, Allie… You can do it, Allie… That was all complete and utter bullshit, wasn’t it? “You tried to set me up with an investor.”
“Yeah.”
“Because stupid little Allie can’t do shit on her own.”
“No—”
“You can’t be my lemonade stand hero anymore, Justin. Yes, you were my hero then, when you hung out with me and helped me with all of those crazy projects, but
even then, I knew those were kid things, it wasn’t real! This—Rainbow Dog—this is the real deal! At least—it was—to me.”
“I know it is, babe.”
“Then why did you think you needed to put in the fix for me?”
“Because I promised Dave I would help you, goddammit!”
“Dave—“ Her voice sounded so small, she stopped and cleared her throat, tried again, but it was no good. “Dave didn’t believe in me either?”
His silence was answer enough.
“Okay.” She picked up her backpack and started to sling it over her shoulder, but forgot that the zipper had broken sometime in 2008. Everything spilled to the floor.
He moved then, reached for her. “No. Allie. You’ve got it wrong.”
“I don’t think so.” She stepped around him and grabbed for her wallet and keys.
“Where are you going? You can’t just leave.”
“Yeah, I think it’s time. You can get this beast home when you’re ready, right? I’ll clean the rest of this shit up when you get the camper back to Blue Mountain. I’m taking your mom’s car.”
He was red-faced and sweating, so beautiful in his stupid desperation to be her hero—for Dave—that she was tempted to stay. But she wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
“What about Rainbow Dog? We’ve got a chance to woo a lot of people tonight, and I’m sure you’ll find an investor.”
“Don’t you worry about that, Justin. Your debt to my dead brother is cleared, and I’ve got an ace up my sleeve. You don’t have to stay around Blue Mountain one moment after the doctor clears you for takeoff.”
“That’s not what—”
She closed the door behind her and stumbled down the stairs.
Her eyes blurred as she tore out of the parking area, but she wasn’t crying. It was the pollen from those stupid pine trees.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Justin’s shoulders slumped. How had things gone so wrong? He slammed the door shut and clunked to the bed in the back room, which was still strewn with the contents of her malfunctioning backpack.
After everything they’d become to each other, how could she just leave like that?
He took his phone from his pocket and thought about calling to say…what, exactly? To beg her to come back? So she could accuse him of not believing in her? Or wreck her memory of her brother by making her think Dave didn’t have faith in her? Fuck. Way to go, dickhead. The one person in her family who had completely, wholeheartedly trusted Allie had just been tarnished, because Justin hadn’t been able to find the right words to explain things.
Well, maybe it was for the best. He’d believed all along, until the last few crazy, sex-soaked days, that he needed to stay away from Allie for her sake, if not for his own. He’d just proven that again.
He started to pick up the things she’d dropped on her way out. If he didn’t keep busy, he’d find himself in a bourbon-soaked nightmare before he knew it.
There was a notebook with a well-abused cover lying on the floor. He picked it up and flipped the pages idly, looking for inspiration in the scribbled notes inside.
The date at the top of a page caught his attention. What was this? There was a piece of computer paper taped to one page, and Justin recognized his own email address as the sender. It was dated eight years ago.
“Hey, Babe;
Thanks for the goodies. The guys think I’m the shit with a sweet young thing sending me stuff, along with such sweet notes. They’re all jealous.
Be my girl and don’t stop! Can’t wait to see you when I get home next month.”
Oh, fuck.
She’d embellished the page with little hearts all over the place, and the opposite page had all kinds of girlie shit like, “Squee!” and “OMG, I’m soooo in love!” written all over it.
Babe. Be my girl.
And then, a few pages later…
He’d had no fucking idea. He’d broken her teenage heart and hadn’t even known it was in his zone.
But Merilee had known about this crush. Seeing her with Justin, and hearing him use those bullshit force-of-habit terms… No wonder Allie’d jumped to conclusions.
Maybe he should just let her go.
She was wrong about Merilee. He liked Mer, but that attraction was long past. He was in love with Allie McGrath. He didn’t know how it had crept up on him so fast—probably because his defenses were down. But she’d sneaked over his fence and captured his heart.
And driven off with it into the night.
Because she was right about something. He hadn’t let Dave go. He was afraid to let go of the guilt. It had defined him for so long it was part of him.
It was probably good that she’d left. She’d be bummed out for a while. She might not ever forgive him. But that was better, wasn’t it? Her anger would protect her, keep her from letting his sorry ass back into her bed, from trying to save him.
God, the way she looked at him, the way her kiss, her hands on his body, everything about her brought him out of his own mind—he had so many fucked-up things swirling around in his head all the time, so many mistakes he couldn’t let go of. He wanted her, wanted to let her take away the rotten parts of himself.
When he got home, he’d make reservations to get out West, out of Allie’s sight so she didn’t have to deal with him.
As he lay back on the clean sheets and stretched out with his hands behind his head, he thought about that last night with Dave. How one lazy, selfish decision on Justin’s part had cost his best friend his life.
He closed his eyes, replaying that night—the explosion, the blood, the pain and fear on Dave’s face. His own panic, and his attempts to reassure his best friend that he was going to be okay, even though there was nothing but blood and gore where Dave’s legs had once been. “Hang in there, you’re going to be fine. You’re okay.” He’d repeated it over and over, even after it was clear that his best friend was gone, after they’d dragged Justin away from Dave’s body.
But as he drifted into sleep, he could swear he heard Dave’s voice. “Jesus Christ, Justin. I am fine now. You were right. I’m okay. Now it’s your turn.”
Justin sat up, gasping, sweat pouring from his skin. What was he doing?
He’d planned to leave Crockett County for as long as he could remember because—he just had. He and his dad had always fought over everything, while his dad and Brandon worked together like two perfect cogs. Their mother said it was because Justin and his dad were so much alike. As the younger stallion, Justin planned to leave the herd, but Clyde expected him to work for the distillery and stay forever. Which just made Justin that much more determined to leave.
But did he really hate the business? He thought about the whiskey he and Dave had made, the bourbon that was now called 8-Ball. They’d had a blast with that. And even before they were old enough to drink—the summers he’d worked in the bottling plant, putting on labels, filling cases of liquor, loading trucks. Helping little Allie McGrath earn spending money by holding a horse wash, for crying out loud. He had friends here, people who loved him, whom he loved. Memories. Good memories. More good than bad.
Would his life be better if he left? He’d be a stranger in a strange land if he left.
And he wouldn’t have Allie.
He grabbed his phone from the charger and checked to make sure it wasn’t too early. When his call was answered, he said, “Hey, Dad?” And for the first time in years, Justin told his dad everything. And his dad listened.
…
Allie had breakfast at a Waffle House outside Greensboro. She tried to do an old-fashioned newspaper crossword puzzle, just to have something to do besides looking lonely, but apparently failed.
“You okay, honey?” The gravel-voiced middle-aged waitress asked as she filled her coffee. “You look like you need a tall stack of chocolate chip pancakes.”
Why couldn’t she have gotten the younger waitress with the bad dye job and the bad attitude? She wasn’t up for a nice server.
&nbs
p; “Just a long night, long drive ahead of me.”
“Where you headed?”
“Virginia.”
“Big state.” The woman smiled, kindly, recognizing that Allie didn’t want to talk, but giving her a chance to change her mind.
What the hell. “I’m going to Arlington. My brother’s buried there.”
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.” She sat across from Allie. “Lena!” she hollered at the other server. “Come get this carafe. I’m taking my break.”
After Lena stomped over and snatched the coffee urn, Allie’s new friend said, “Iraq?”
“Afghanistan.” And along with the syrup on her pancakes, poured out the story of her family, her brother, her lover…
“He’s in love with you, sweetheart,” the older woman said finally.
“I don’t think so.” Allie pushed the last few bites of food around on her plate. “But even if that were true, he’s leaving. He’s always said so. He doesn’t want to stay at Blue Mountain. And there’s still the small matter of a few thousand dollars I need to come up with so he doesn’t have to stay.”
“I’d say that’s his problem. His half of the accident and all.”
“Yeah, I know, but…” Her heart clenched at the idea of Justin staying, of having to see him on a regular basis, knowing he was stuck there because she wasn’t able to get her business off the ground. She’d resent her business, he’d resent her, they would both resent anyone the other person ever dated…
“Nope,” she said. “It’s time to cut my losses and move on.”
…
Justin drove for several hours before stopping and making a few more phone calls and talking to his dad again.
While whistling to a song on the radio, he thought about his new job. He and his dad would butt heads now and then, but he felt good about it. He was skilled at getting stuff from one place to another, at making sure things ran smoothly. Well, as long as he didn’t count the whole Allie situation. He sighed. That one was going to be harder to fix. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take him as long to make up with her as it had with his dad.
Drunk on You Page 19
