“I know, he told me. I get that. In fact, I admire that he’s trying to protect what’s important to him—I have to or else I’m a hypocrite. But I don’t understand this need to expand, his insistence on where your bourbon is made.”
“Frankly, I think he’s an idiot. But he thinks that we need to expand to survive.”
“Do you?”
“Not in my opinion, but my opinion doesn’t matter because Bo is in control. Business is booming right now. We’re right in the middle of a new golden age of bourbon. Younger people are discovering it for the first time and older folks are coming back to it. Nostalgia or lost glamor, I guess. Bourbon is cool again. But that also means competition is fierce. Everyone is trying to increase production, and Bo doesn’t want to feel left out. I can’t blame him, I suppose. I just question his methods.”
“I don’t blame him for wanting to be successful,” Lila said. “I just wish things were different, and that we could’ve gotten off on a better note. When we reconnected after I moved back here, it wasn’t like he was knocking on my door and welcoming me back to the neighborhood. It was all about the land from the get-go.”
“I’ve threatened him within an inch of his life that if he breaks your heart, he’ll have to answer to me,” Hannah said. “Not to mention your cousin,” she added.
Lila laughed, and opened the car door. “I don’t think there’s any real chance of that,” she said, and exited the car.
Hannah put down the passenger side window. “I hope that’s true,” she said, bending slightly to talk to Lila through the car’s interior, “but for your sake more than his.”
Chapter 12
“No, I really—”
“Please, dear,” begged Emma. “No one should be alone at Christmas.”
How many times had she already heard that in the few short years she’d been without immediate family?
It was lunch during the school day and Emma had called on Lila on her cell, trying to persuade Lila to come to Christmas dinner. After Lila had declined the same holiday invitation from Hannah, she knew the matter would go up the Davenport chain of command. She had braced herself for the call, but nonetheless found herself withering under the aggressive politeness of the Davenport matriarch.
“I don’t know…”
“If you’re uncomfortable, don’t be. It’s not like you’re intruding. In fact, you’re family now.”
“When did that happen?”
“Well, you’re Hannah’s cousin-in-law, are you not?” Emma asked. You and Kyle are—what? Second cousins?”
“I guess that’s technically true,” Lila admitted. “But still—”
“Don’t tell me no today, Lila. Just tell me you’ll get back to me.”
“Fair enough, Mrs. Davenport,” Lila said.
“Remember, my name is Emma,” she said before she hung up.
Lila checked the clock on the cafeteria wall. Just a few more hours until the end of the day and then it was off to that stupid mediation session the judge had ordered. Lila had balked at attending, trying to reason with Drake that if they hadn’t been able to settle to date, why the hell did the judge think that by getting a third party to help them negotiate they could finally come to an agreement? It was a waste of time, and that was unforgivable to her. You can’t get time back. You can’t go out and buy it off a shelf or order it off the internet while you sit at home in front of your computer wasting the time already given to you.
Another reason she wasn’t looking forward to the mediation session was because she knew Bo would be there; the judge had ordered them both to attend and do their best to work it out. She would comply with the order, but doubted success. She had also decided it was not in her best interest to be around the man. Every time she was near him, he drew her in even more, making her forget her reasons for keeping him at bay. Lila knew that in the end she would disappoint Mrs. Davenport—Emma—because she had no intention of accepting the invitation to Christmas dinner. In the middle of a lawsuit, Christmas with the Davenports simply wasn’t a good idea—no matter how much she missed being held, kissed, and caressed by Bo.
Damn. Why do I have to think of him like that? Why can’t I think of the man who wants my land? Or the man who badgered me for months about selling to him?
That’s easy: I don’t want that man.
I want the man in the tasting room.
I want the man who kissed me down by the creek.
I want the man who nearly had his way with me on his couch…and what would that have been like…?
The bell rang and Lila snapped out of her naughty daydream. She hurried to her next class, blushing, irritated, and distracted, and hoping she could deliver a reasonably coherent lecture on the Spanish-American War.
Later that afternoon she sat across a broad wooden table in a conference room in the courthouse, trying her best not to look at Bo. It was the first time she had seen him since the night at his house when Hannah had unexpectedly dropped in. In fact, they hadn’t had any contact since their hot and interrupted encounter; she’d been too skittish to call him, and had ignored the handful of voicemails he’d left on her cellphone over the past few weeks.
To Lila’s surprise, Bo was wearing a suit that day, not just a pair of casual pants and a sports coat over them. He had dressed for the occasion and she had to concede that he looked pretty damn nice. Throughout the meeting, Bo alternated between clasping his hands on top of the table to flattening and splaying his palms against the surface. When he did the latter, Lila felt her pulse start to pick up as she imagined how it had felt to have those hands on her face, in her hair, and on her breasts.
“Hey, are you feeling OK?” Drake asked.
“What?”
“The mediator just asked whether you understood something,” Drake whispered in her ear.
“Sorry,” Lila said to Drake, then to the mediator. “I’m—uh—a little nervous, I suppose.”
The mediator went off into some speech about how there was no need to feel anxious or upset, that nobody was required to do anything except make a good faith effort to settle the case. During this little oration, Lila kept her eyes on the mediator, although she could feel Bo’s gaze upon her.
Two hours after they began, the mediation session was over. As Lila had predicted, nothing had come of it except a noticeable increase in her anxiety level. She didn’t remember reading how that was a side effect of trying to settle a case, but this was the first real case she’d ever had to deal with. As painful as her parents’ and husband’s estates had been to process, they were relatively simple affairs with no one on the other side trying to take something away from you.
After the session was over, Drake wanted to go back to his office and discuss a few matters, but Lila wanted to get away. Drake gave up trying to persuade her to come back and talk, and said he would email her in a few days with some information about what he thought would happen next in the case. Lila then raced home, hoping that she wouldn’t get a speeding ticket (how embarrassing would that be since her cousin was the sheriff?). All she wanted to do was get out of her clothes, fix herself a small meal, and curl up with a book. She wanted to forget, run away, or dig a hole and jump in. Whatever it took to get away from her problems, and she counted Bo amongst them.
When Lila got out of her truck after parking it at the front of her house, she heard a vehicle approaching, and turned to see Bo’s SUV nearing her home. Lila had time to escape inside but did not, knowing that if she tried to avoid him he’d bang on the front door relentlessly or park himself in her front yard for who-knew-how-long. She ascended a few stairs on the front porch and readied herself.
Bo exited his vehicle, slammed the door hard, and kept his eyes on her. “Why didn’t you even look at me today?” Bo asked, his tone a perfect mixture of anger and hurt.
She had a scowl ready as both greeting and an answer. “Where were you?” she snapped. “Did you come on my property and wait for me to drive by and then follow me all the
way back to my house?”
“Yes,” Bo said tiredly. “I parked next to that stand of trees,” he said, and pointed behind himself toward Ashbrooke Pike. “I trespassed. Guilty as charged.”
“Figured as much.”
“So will you answer my question?” Bo asked, and took a step closer to the house. Lila stood on the porch looking down at Bo, who was at the foot of the stairs.
“No. Now please leave.” Lila turned her back on him and walked toward her front door.
“So it’s not my imagination. You’re ignoring me.”
“Trying my best, Bo, but you’re on my doorstep barking at me, aren’t you?”
“I miss you, Lila.”
She was about to put the key in the lock but froze. She expected him to keep arguing, yelling, cajoling. Just like he’d done in the months and months leading up to the litigation.
Lila hadn’t expected him to be vulnerable. Sad. Needy.
Like her.
The keys slipped from her grasp and clattered on the surface of the porch. Lila didn’t bother to pick them up but instead walked back toward the stairs. He was still there, waiting for her, with a look on his face like he’d been abandoned.
“How can you miss me, Bo?” she asked. “We’re just—”
“Because I’m falling in love with you. Haven’t you figured that out?”
She gaped at him, wondering whether she had heard him correctly.
“How can—how can you love me?” she whispered. “I barely know you. I barely see you. We’re suing each other. We want very, very different things.”
“So? I can still love you. And I don’t buy for a minute we don’t know each other, that we don’t see each other. We’ve gotten to know each other quite well through all that arguing over the past year or more. And I don’t think the things we want are that different. In fact, we love the same thing—this place,” he said, and gestured to his right. Toward the springs. And the distillery.
She shook her head, thrilled and terrified all at once. “Bo, we can’t—”
“Don’t say it, Lila, just don’t even say it. Don’t tell me we can’t be together. And I won’t believe you if you tell me that you don’t care about me. I don’t expect you to say you love me, but I do expect you to be honest with me. And with yourself.”
“Bo—”
He edged closer to the stairs. “Anytime we’re together—alone—what happens? Tell me that.”
She knew what happened. She savored those memories. The feel of his lips, his body against hers. How he smelled of mash and bourbon and probably wasn’t even aware of how the spicy-sweet aromas had soaked into his skin, his hair, his very being. She swallowed and closed her eyes.
“OK, I can give you honesty—I owe you that. I won’t tell you that I don’t care. But I can’t tell you—”
“I’m still trying to change your mind.”
“I know.”
She descended a few stairs until she was one step off the ground. Even at that level, she was still about an inch or two below Bo’s eye line.
“If there’s anyone I could love after—after everything that’s happened to me,” she said, and the tears were flowing freely down her face, “it’s you, Bo. But just not yet. That’s why I couldn’t look at you today. That’s why I didn’t call you back. I’m sorry, but it’s all too much for me and too much is in our way right now.”
He beamed and looked deliriously happy as he took her face in his hands.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Why?” His happiness baffled her. Hadn’t she just told him that she wasn’t prepared to fall in love again?
“Because I know you just gave me the most you can and right now, that’s enough for me.”
He gently pulled her lips to his and she wrapped her arms around his neck. There they stood together, kissing and continuing to discover each other, as the unrelenting winds of December whipped around them and it began to lightly snow.
Chapter 13
Lila feared that it had been a mistake to arrange a distillery tour for her juniors, but the outing had been scheduled since before Thanksgiving and Lila knew that due to red tape at the school it would take months to re-schedule. Her problem was that she needed another chaperone for the trip; because of the number of kids, there had to be at least two. None of the parents could go, and other teachers were either needed in class or were taking time off to deal with holiday preparations. In a fit of desperation, Lila asked CiCi to help.
“The kids liked you a lot when you came to speak and I think they’ll actually listen to you if you tell them what to do,” Lila explained in a phone call.
“Sounds like they might be better listeners than my deputy clerks,” CiCi joked. “I’ll be glad to help. It’s not like I got a boss, except the voters. And besides, maybe I can do some Christmas shopping in the gift shop.”
“Just don’t do your shopping there for Hannah,” Lila joked. “She once told me she has so much Old Garnet paraphernalia that she might have to dedicate a whole room in her house to it.”
It was one week before Christmas when a solitary Craig County Public Schools bus rumbled onto the distillery grounds in the middle of a snowy morning. Lila wasn’t worried about the kids staying in line; these were her honor students, the best of the best, and the ones she would take to the springs once winter was over. There were only about thirty in the party, including Lila and CiCi, who was dressed in a most unusual manner.
“You look particularly—festive today,” said Lila to CiCi, looking her up and down after the kids had disembarked and were heading into the visitors’ center.
“Couldn’t help myself,” CiCi said, and looked down at her attire as she unbuttoned her coat.
CiCi was wearing a short red coat with high black boots and black stockings, along with a knee-length red wool skirt and green cardigan sweater. Around her neck was a black scarf with printed holiday motifs, and she had a candy cane pin on the lapel of her coat. Completing her ensemble was her red-and-green pointy-ended elf hat with small jingle bells on the end, with her curly hair sticking out from under the hat.
“So why the elf look?” asked Lila.
“Because it just doesn’t work for Easter,” CiCi deadpanned before bursting into giggles.
“Well, you do look really nice,” Lila said, and felt strangely underdressed in khakis and a simple red cardigan sweater under her parka.
“Actually, the getup is quite deliberate,” CiCi said. “I figured the kids would love it, despite the fact that they’re teenagers. They’ll hopefully think I’m funny and cool and not be little shits to me. And if I look like an elf and tell them to do something, maybe there will be some subliminal thing going on in the back of their little heads that whispers Santa’s helper—better be nice or I’ll end up on the naughty list.”
Lila was astounded at this clever line of thinking and was about to express her admiration but they had reached the visitors’ center. Lila wondered who the tour guide was going to be and thought it would probably be Hannah or Emma since the tour involved a school group.
Instead, Lila saw Bo standing in the middle of the visitors’ center as the kids gathered around him.
They caught each other’s gaze. He was still trying to change her mind, and this was part of his plan. Lila thought that if nothing else, she would have fun watching him try. She nodded to him, and he nodded back, and smiled.
Bo started the tour by welcoming the kids and giving a very brief rundown of how old the distillery was, and what they would see today.
“And whatever you do, listen to Ms. McNee, Ms. Summers, and myself. Don’t go wandering away. There are some hot and dangerous places in the distillery and you need to pay attention.”
The first stop was the little museum at the Old House, where the kids loved looking at the old advertisements and the bottles. Lila had called Emma to make arrangements for an extended time in the museum, and Emma had been delighted to shuffle the other tours to accommodate the grou
p. From the way Emma had talked, Lila had expected Emma to be the guide that day, but she should’ve known that Bo wouldn’t let the opportunity to be around her pass him by. Lila kept her distance from her would-be beau, and watched him as he moved amongst the kids, talking and answering their questions. He stopped long enough to laugh and comment on CiCi’s clothing as well as gossip a little bit about Craig District Judge Cara Forrest’s new baby boy, and finally made his way to Lila, who had remained near the door so she could keep an eye on all.
“How am I doing, Ms. McNee?” Bo asked in a whisper.
“So far, so good,” she said, and smiled. “But the day is young.”
“Are you coming to Christmas dinner? My mother and Hannah gave me specific instructions to get your answer since they’re off shopping together today in Lexington. And that answer was to be yes.”
“Later,” Lila said, and opened the door behind her to lead the class back outside and to the distillery.
He took the students to the mash tubs, most of which were full, bubbling, and frothing. Some kids thought the tubs were cool, but many pronounced them gross. When Bo told them that the process was very similar to baking bread, some refused to believe him until he gave a very brief explanation of the fermentation process.
“This way to the stills,” he said, and pointed over his shoulder and to the far left of the mash tubs.
To Lila’s amazement, the kids paid very close attention to Bo’s explanation about the process of how bourbon was made. But then Lila remembered that several of these kids were science nerds in addition to being history nerds. She could only lay claim to being a history nerd herself.
“Hey, Walker, come on up here,” Bo said, and waved to a dark-haired man who was one story below and walking through the barrel-filling area.
The man ascended a short set of stairs that led to the platform where the copper teardrop-shaped stills were located, allowing Bo to introduce Walker Cain, the new master distiller of Old Garnet. Bo explained that it was Walker’s job to ensure the consistent taste and quality of the bourbon.
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