Bourbon Springs Box Set: Volume III, Books 7-9 (Bourbon Springs Box Sets Book 3)

by Jennifer Bramseth

  Kurt took a step toward her, blocking her departure.

  “Haven’t you two figured out that your big chance to get at his inheritance is about to go out the window?”

  “We’ve never discussed his inheritance, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Kurt’s eyes narrowed as he considered her.

  “You really don’t know, do you? But maybe it’s time you learned the truth.”

  “And maybe it isn’t,” Prent said, striding into the room until he stood in the middle of the area.

  His clothes were drenched, as was his hair, and even at a distance Miranda could tell that he was under duress. Prent’s face, damp from the rain, looked puffy, and his eyes were noticeably red at a distance.

  “Where the hell have you been all morning? She said you’d be in soon, and here you drag yourself in at noon and—”

  “I’ve been to my attorney’s office, not that it’s any of your damn business.”

  “You mean it took the whole morning for you to talk about that kid of yours?”

  Prent shuddered, glanced at the floor and then to Miranda. He swallowed and looked to his uncle.

  “Not exactly.”

  She walked to Prent, seeing that his breaths were coming in great heaves, and wondered whether he was sick. Instead, Prent started to cry. She took his hand.

  “Tell me,” she begged, fearing that the grandmother had fled with the child.

  “I’m not… I’m not Peter’s father,” he said in a rough voice that betrayed he had been crying for quite some time before arriving at the cooperage.

  “Prent…” She threw her arms around him. He clutched her and buried his head in her shoulder.

  “He… he looked just like me,” Prent said between sobs. “I stepped up. I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to be a dad. How could he not be mine?”

  She had no balm for his wound and simply held him as he clung to her, weeping. Miranda couldn’t comprehend his loss: he’d suffered the stripping away of the happy and wanted expectancy of parenthood, as well as the knowledge that a former lover had cheated on him.

  “He’s not yours, and you’re upset about it?” Kurt asked in his typically tactless tone.

  Prent released Miranda and glared at his uncle, shaking in rage. He walked around her and faced Kurt, who remained by the windows.

  “I’m devastated, and you’re telling me I should be happy about it?”

  “Thought any reasonable person would be,” Kurt sniffed, then looked to Miranda and back to Prent.

  Prent clenched his hands into fists at his side as he looked down at his uncle. Miranda held her breath, praying she wasn’t about to witness anything more unpleasant than the continued argument. Finally, Prent turned his back, and Miranda exhaled as he walked toward her.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said, grabbing her hand.

  “You gonna marry her now so you can get your money?”

  Prent squeezed her hand as they walked to the door, but she stopped.

  “That’s the second time he’s said that. I want to know what it means,” Miranda said.

  “It’s nothing.” Prent tried to pull her from the room.

  “Nothing? Is that what you call it?” taunted Kurt.

  “Tell me what he’s talking about, Prent.”

  Prent dropped her hand and stared at the floor. “I thought you didn’t want to know about my financial issues.”

  “Since this seems to directly involve me, I want to know, especially since he keeps bringing it up as a way to torture and control both of us.”

  “You’d really change your mind about that and want me to tell you? And today—of all the stupid days?”

  Kurt laughed. “For a man who left this very woman at the altar, isn’t calling her out for changing her mind a bit of the pot calling the kettle black?”

  Miranda saw Prent’s jaw clench, and she put her hand on his chest as he took a step toward Kurt.

  “Don’t—”

  But her small gesture was quickly brushed aside, and Prent was in Kurt’s face in the next instant.

  “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” he screamed, causing Kurt take a step backward. “I am tired of you treating me like the fuckup I used to be! I am tired of hearing you complain about me, never listening to me!”

  “So get me out of your life for good! Walk away from the cooperage! Marry her if she’ll have you!” Kurt said, pointing to Miranda. “Then you’ll get all your damn money and you’ll never have to deal with me again!”

  “If you marry me you… you get all your money?” Miranda asked Prent in a shaky voice.

  Prent didn’t have a chance to respond.

  “That’s the way it works, honey,” Kurt said. “If he’s married for a year by the time he’s thirty-five, he’s rid of me. No one to watch out for all that money his dad left him, he gets it all, and can do with it as he pleases.” Miranda gaped, and Kurt pressed on. “Makes sense why he’s kept after you all this time, doesn’t it? Realized that his time was almost up. He needs you to get his fortune.”

  Prent spun on his uncle.

  “If I wanted the money, I could’ve found someone else to marry years ago. But she’s the one. Miranda’s always been the one for me. But you’d rather peddle lies about us than accept the truth that I love her.”

  Miranda teetered on her feet, overwhelmed by the revelation.

  “We almost got married and you never bothered to tell me that I was the key to your inheritance?”

  “I thought the money wasn’t important to you!” he snapped.

  “It isn’t, and that’s not the issue. The issue is the honesty. You didn’t tell me, and I was almost your wife. This wasn’t about your salary or how he decided to dole out money to you,” Miranda said, pointing accusingly at Kurt. “It was about the future—our future.”

  “See what he saved you from when he didn’t show up on your wedding day, hon? Saved you from being married to the likes of him, and can you imagine—”

  Prent turned on his uncle. His face was red, his lip in a sneer.

  “Even if I had shown up that day, we wouldn’t have gotten married!” he screamed in a voice Miranda didn’t recognize. “She told me that she wouldn’t have gone through with it! I wasn’t the only one with doubts and cold feet that day! She was smart enough to know that I’d do something stupid! She was smart enough not to trust an idiot like me! Is that what you wanted to hear? Does that make you feel better, knowing she was right about me?”

  Miranda stumbled backward and grasped at the examining table, nearly falling.

  “How… how could you…”

  His rage dissolved into desperation as he turned to her.

  “Miranda, I—I’m sorry,” he said, grabbing his head with both hands.

  “She was gonna dump you?” Kurt wheezed with malicious delight.

  Miranda swiped her purse from the counter and her rain jacket from a hook on the back of the door. She sprinted from the room with Kurt’s laughter following her.

  Prent followed her, calling her name, and grabbed her arm as she reached the middle of the hall.

  “I’m so, so sorry, Miranda,” he said, looking truly stricken. “I shouldn’t have said that. He just—he made me so angry—and I don’t know what to do sometimes when I’m around him.”

  Miranda jerked her arm from him, trembling and sick. She peered behind Prent, expecting to glimpse Kurt’s nasty, florid visage at the end of the hall but was relieved to see nothing. A huge explosion of thunder burst directly over the distillery, causing Miranda to jump.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” she said through tears.

  “Don’t go out in this, please.” He reached for her, but she backed away. “Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me with him.”

  “I’m going to Lila’s shower,” she insisted. “I’m expected.”

  “Please come home with me, away from this damned place,” he said, gesturing to the offices. “Please let me tell you why I�
�”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head and dashing to the door.

  Miranda heard his footsteps close after hers but still expected him to stay in the dry and safe confines of the office rather than trail her outside. Yet that’s just what he did, pushing out the front doors after her and standing by her driver’s side door in the pouring rain even as she started the car and tried to ignore him.

  With the rain and wind all about her, she couldn’t hear whether he was trying to say anything and could barely see him through the din and gloom of the storm. She fled, leaving him drenched and alone as another horrific burst of lightning and thunder tore open the skies.

  The drive back to Bourbon Springs was terrifying.

  The rain slashed across the landscape in sheets, making visibility negligible. Her continued crying made Miranda feel like she was drowning in a waking nightmare and that any second her car would spin off the road and into some flooded ditch.

  Maybe she could’ve come to understand why Prent had kept the details of his inheritance from her. It was certainly true she’d never wanted to know details about the money arrangements when it came to the Oakes family. She had been too hard on him about that secret and felt ashamed of her reaction.

  But Prent had revealed her worst secret—and to the worst person they both knew.

  How would Davina and Minerva react when they found out? No doubt Kurt would immediately go blabbing to them the first chance he got. Her relationship with people she loved and respected was about to be irrevocably altered because of Prent’s thoughtless slip in the heat of argument.

  If it had been Kurt’s intention for the past several weeks to break them up, he likely had achieved that goal. Prent needed to get away from that man for good—personally and professionally. He was toxic. Miranda had never seen Prent so possessed by anger. And it had been instigated by Kurt.

  If Prent couldn’t see that a happy future didn’t include being around Kurt, Miranda feared their relationship was doomed.

  And maybe it always had been she thought, the notion making her stomach turn.

  Maybe they were always destined for stupidity and tears and they’d only been fighting fate.

  Her phone rang, and she glanced at the screen as it rested on a console in between the front seats of her car.

  Prent was repeatedly calling. She didn’t answer since the rain required her full attention to the roads, but even had the weather been perfect, she wouldn’t have answered. Miranda didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to hear him excuse his behavior even though she realized that on some level she was being massively hypocritical.

  She had let the whole world believe she’d been the aggrieved party when he’d abandoned her and had only revealed the truth when they had recently reconciled. Prent had forgiven her, but she thought she had his tacit promise to keep her secret.

  Now she was running from him, perhaps as he had run from her that day—fearful and confused. She hadn’t even been able to bring herself to stay to console him in the wake of the news about Peter.

  By the time she arrived at Old Garnet, she was still trembling from the harrowing drive as well as the emotional fallout from the confrontation at the cooperage. Since she was already twenty minutes late, she didn’t have the luxury of sitting in her car for a few minutes to calm herself and wait for the rain to pass.

  After grabbing her shower gift and putting up the hood on her coat, she dashed from her car to the visitors’ center, where she found Hannah waiting for her at the doors.

  “We were getting worried about you,” a pale and serious-faced Hannah said, offering to take the gift bag from Miranda. “I didn’t try to call you because I figured you were on your way here and I didn’t want you to pick up the phone while trying to drive in that mess.”

  “Sorry.” Miranda handed her the bag. “I should’ve called.”

  “You should’ve stayed put.”

  “I really wanted to be here today for Lila,” Miranda said, knowing she sounded less than enthusiastic.

  Miranda took a few steps inside the building and heard voices and laughter coming from the tasting room, the site of the shower. But Hannah remained near the door.

  “Prent called,” she said, “said you wouldn’t answer your phone. He was frantic because—”

  “I’m sorry he involved you, Hannah,” Miranda said, dropping her head and sighing. “We had a fight and—”

  “Miranda, Prent called me because Kurt had a massive heart attack right after you left.”

  Miranda felt unsteady on her feet, much like she had back in Littleham during the height of the argument. Hannah took her elbow to steady her.

  “Where is he now? Which hospital? Ephraim McDowell in Danville? They have the best heart center for miles around,” Miranda chattered nervously and walked toward the door, knowing she had to leave. Even though she couldn’t stand Kurt, she knew that Prent needed her. They’d have to work out their problems later—if at all.

  Hannah pressed her lips together.

  “Kurt… didn’t make it. Prent said the EMTs got there too late.”

  Miranda clasped a hand over her mouth, horrified.

  By failing to take those calls, she’d turned her back on someone in dire medical need, and that someone was now dead. In running away from the cooperage, she’d run away from her responsibility and duty as a doctor.

  Her hand dropped as she finally spoke.

  “That's why he kept calling me. He needed me to come back and help… and I didn’t.”

  “Well, you were driving in one hell of a storm,” Hannah said as she helped Miranda to a bench. “You had no business being on the phone for any reason.”

  Miranda flopped onto the bench, leaned over, and put her head in her hands.

  “But the storm wasn’t the only reason I didn’t take the calls. We had a nasty fight before I left Littleham.”

  “Don’t start walking yourself down Blame Boulevard,” admonished Hannah as she sat and put the gift bag on the ground. “You wouldn’t have picked up that phone under any circumstances in that nasty storm, or even used your car to answer the phone. Even hands-free would’ve been too dangerous. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that a tornado ripped through somewhere nearby, considering how bad the storm was. We’ve got several trees down over the distillery grounds and poor Goose is beside himself that he can’t go out there and help because of his arm. Prent mentioned that the cooperage wasn’t spared, either. He said that the storm uprooted the Old Oak on the property. It crashed into the roof just after the EMTs arrived.”

  So the Old Oak was no more, along with Kurt.

  Along with what they had…

  Miranda bent over and began to cry.

  “I just left them there… I left… I ran away this time…”

  She felt Hannah put her arm around her.

  “I don’t know what happened between you and Prent, but Kurt’s death isn’t your fault.”

  “Then why does it feel like it is?” Miranda sniffed and sat up, looking at Hannah.

  Hannah licked her lips.

  “I’m trying to think of a tactful way to say that you’re being stupid, but I obviously failed.”

  Miranda laughed weakly, took a deep breath, and stood.

  “I’ve got to go. Did Prent say where he was?”

  “No, but he wanted you to call him,” said Hannah, standing.

  After Miranda told Hannah to give her regrets to Lila and Bo, Hannah gave her a hug, snatched the gift bag from the floor, and walked across the lobby toward the tasting room.

  As Hannah passed over the bourbon flavor wheel and disappeared into the doors opposite the front doors, Miranda wished she could go inside with her and experience the small community of friends and acquaintances she knew were in that room. She needed the cheerful presence of others at that moment but knew her duty resided elsewhere.

  Miranda sat again on the bench, holding her phone in her hand and staring at the black mirror of its screen. The outlin
e of her face, alien and startling, was reflected back to her, its darkness magnifying her pain and loneliness.

  She needed to make the call, knew it had to be in the next minute but felt cowardly, sick, and exhausted. This was how Prent must have felt when he’d left her at the altar. He’d failed to show up out of fear, which was not so far removed from how she had felt that morning—incandescently angry with Kurt, then with Prent. The feeling of complete helplessness was overwhelming, and for a few seconds she could not move.

  The lilting sounds of multiple familiar and happy voices floated across the lobby and broke the spell of paralysis. Miranda called Prent, not knowing what she would say.

  “Miranda,” he said in a tired sigh upon answering. “Thank God. Where are you?”

  “The distillery. Hannah told me about Kurt. Where are you?”

  “Home. But don’t try to come here. I’ve heard that Old Crow Creek has flooded the road at the county line.”

  She swallowed and paused.

  “What… what happened?”

  “After you left, I went back inside to my office, and he came in. I expected him to say something horrible, to keep up the argument. But he appeared in the door and grabbed the frame, then collapsed. I called 911 and then you, hoping to get you there first since you’d just left and I had no idea how long it would take to get an ambulance there in that storm. I thought since you’d just left, you might come back, but—”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, the tears and words flowing forth together. “I’m so sorry I didn’t answer.”

  “Well, that storm was nasty and—”

  “Prent, I can’t pretend that was the only reason or even the main reason I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to talk to you.”

  “I know, but that doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters a great deal to me. I’m a doctor, but I ran away from where I was needed.”

  “That’s crazy. You had no idea why I was really calling. You can’t blame yourself. Believe me, I know what it’s like to really run away. I know how that feeling tears at your gut, that you’re a coward or a fool. And you’re not either of those things.”