The Barrel House Series: Boxed Set: Bourbon Love Notes, Bourbon on the Rocks, Bourbon Nights, Bourbon Fireball

by Ryan, Shari J.

  "I’m here for the week. What else should I do?"

  "I don’t know. Go visit your family or something? Following me isn’t the answer."

  Ace is inspecting a new bottle of Quinn Pine as if he’s interested in the bourbon, which I know he isn’t. He can’t stand the taste, and he has made it clear many times through the length of our relationship, more so than I have ever shared my distaste for the liquor. "What can I do to make things right, Melody?"

  The badgering of these questions is becoming exhausting. I haven’t given him hope or the idea of there being anything he can do, yet, the question continues to spill off his tongue as if my answer will eventually change. "You can’t," I tell him, taking a split second to look toward the back of the store where Brett is focusing on the register’s computer.

  "Is he the boy crush?" Ace asks, nodding his head toward the back.

  I take the bottle from Ace’s hand and place it back on its display. "This is out of hand. I’m more than sure you are not here to purchase something, so do us both a favor and leave."

  "Both? As in you and your boy crush?" Ace continues.

  "I’m not continuing this conversation. You need to act like a mature adult and take no for an answer."

  "What are you saying no to?" he continues.

  "You—us—whatever it is you think you’re gaining out of being in this shop."

  "Actually, I heard Journey is selling her share of the business. I’ve been thinking about investing in a small business, and this might be a good opportunity for us, don’t you think?"

  I don’t know how he heard this information, but it’s unlikely Journey offered it up to him. "No, you’re not doing anything with this shop. It’s out of the question."

  Ace leans his elbow onto the shelf. "Yeah, but I don’t know if you have the say over this matter. Money is money, and it can create a lot of unexpected hurdles."

  "I can promise you, there is no amount of money in this world to convince anyone in my family to sell you a percentage of this business."

  "You’re right," he says. His smirk makes me want to slap him.

  Ace pushes away from the shelving unit and struts toward the back of the store where Brett is working. The thought of the two of them meeting makes my stomach turn. I want to run in front of Ace and push him out of the store before he does something stupid.

  "Mr. Pearson, how’s it going? We spoke on the phone earlier."

  "Mr. Leahman?" Brett questions.

  "Yes, sir," Ace responds.

  "Nice to see you. I wasn’t expecting you so early, but I have a few minutes to meet now."

  They know each other?

  "Now, would be great," Ace continues.

  What the hell is going on?

  "Absolutely," Brett says, checking the time on his watch as he continues to speak. I want to get his attention and tell him to stop without screaming like a child. He needs to know this man is my ex-boyfriend and has nothing but malicious intent.

  "I don’t think this is a good idea," I speak up. I’m not sure what they would discuss, anyway. Brett doesn’t own Journey’s share of this shop, nor has she made a final decision.

  "Is everything okay," Brett asks with a look of concern.

  "No.” I shake my head, wishing I could open my eyes wider while trying to tip him off, so he knows Ace is here to cause problems. "I didn’t know the two of you knew each other?"

  "Mr. Leahman is a good friend of your father’s and has some vested interest in the shop."

  "No," I say again, walking closer to the two of them. "Brett, this is Ace."

  "Ace," Brett repeats, pinching at the scruff on his chin. He takes a minute, but then I see a hint of irritation swim through Brett’s eyes.

  "Mel, can you watch the front for me while I meet with Mr. Leahman in the back for a few?"

  "Mel," Ace snickers beneath his breath.

  "Yes," I say, feeling sick to my stomach. I don’t know how Brett handles confrontation, but I know how Ace handles his anger, and the unknown is making my mind spin.

  "Come on back," Brett tells Ace, waving his hand toward the back door. He allows Ace to walk through the door first, and Brett offers me an unconcerned wink before following him.

  I tear my phone out of my back pocket and send Journey a quick message.

  Me: How did Ace find out you were selling your share of the business?

  It takes Journey the longest minute ever to type a response.

  Journey: I was on the phone when he showed up. Mom let him in, and he must have heard me talking in the family room.

  Me: Who were you talking to on the phone?

  Journey: The attorney handling Dad’s will.

  Me: Ace is planning to buy the shares out from you, or so he says. I don’t know how it all works.

  Journey: What the hell are you talking about? Where are you, and where is Ace?

  Me: At the shop. Ace and Brett are having a ‘meeting’ about this in the back room.

  The message Journey is replying to takes longer than my heart can stand. I’m sweating and panicking while I watch the back door, waiting for it to explode or something.

  Journey: Shit. I’m on my way. I’ll be there as quickly as I can. The roads are horrible. The attorney mentioned something about a potential auction for my shares if Bill wasn’t interested, and I repeated the statement. That must be what he heard. Mel, we need to talk about this. There’s more to this situation than you know.

  An auction? There’s no way.

  After a long few minutes, the back door opens, but not with a thrashing motion like I imagined. Brett and Ace are both laughing amid their conversation, which appears far too friendly for my comfort. "No worries at all," Brett tells him. "Thanks for the information."

  What information? "What did you do?" I ask Ace as he walks by.

  "Come on, Melly, everyone deserves the truth, don’t they?" Ace says, forcing a phony smile across his cosmetically enhanced veneers.

  "What truth? No words out of your mouth has ever been the truth," I say, loud enough for Brett to hear.

  "And you’re so innocent, aren’t you?" Ace rebuts.

  There is no way Journey will get here in time to help this situation, and I feel blindsided by Brett’s silence and the winning look on Ace’s face.

  "I don’t know what the hell you are trying to accomplish, but there is no chance in this universe you will have anything to do with my family business, and if it isn’t clear enough to you, I have no problem making it clearer."

  Ace places his hands on my trembling shoulders. "Take a deep breath. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, okay?"

  Brett presses his sleeves up to his forearms and walks toward Ace and me. "This isn’t the time to be discussing business," Brett tells him. "We’ll finish this conversation at a later time."

  "There is no conversation to continue," I say. "I don’t know what your meeting was about, but Ace will have nothing to do with this shop, ever."

  "I understand where you’re coming from, Melody," Brett says. I don’t like the way he says my name—it was cold. I also don’t like being in the dark from whatever they said in the back room, or how calm the two men are.

  "Get out of my store now," I affirm. "I don’t want to see you again. Ever. You better get this through your head this time."

  Brett takes my elbow and pulls me back a few steps. "Okay, okay," Brett says, trying to calm me down.

  "We can’t control everything, Mel, not always, babe," Ace says, dropping his hands into his back pockets before heading for the front door.

  I’m at a loss for words when the door-chime reverberates from the rattle. "What is that supposed to mean?” I ask Brett.

  "Something we need to discuss," he says, his face rigid and lacking emotion.

  22

  I’m furiously pacing, trying my best to catch my breath while Brett remains calm as I freak out. "How could you even entertain a discussion with him?" I ask Brett, realizing he most likely didn’t know who he wa
s before I introduced him as Ace.

  Brett folds his arms over his chest and pulls in a long inhale, then purses his lips to release his breath. "Can you calm down, please?" he asks, sounding detached from the situation.

  "Calm down?" I shout. "How? I don’t know what is going on right now, but you need to tell me what the two of you discussed in the back room. This isn’t fair."

  Brett closes his eyes and leans his head back, taking a moment to pause before responding. "He wants to buy Journey’s share and gift it to you, so you own the entire shop," Brett says.

  I take a long second to process his words, but I don’t need long to see right through the lie. "He would gift the share of the shop to me?" I ask. The pessimism written across my face should be more than clear.

  "Mel, the guy still loves you. He told me he would move back up here to be with you and get married, give you children; everything you wanted from him but didn’t get. He asked me to back off."

  My heart falls to the pit of my stomach while I figure out how to digest this load of crap.

  If he had asked me to marry him and wanted a family two years ago, I would have said yes, but not for the right reason. I was twenty-five and felt like I had been wasting precious years, investing myself in a relationship that should lead to marriage and a family. I knew if I started over, it might not happen at all. I haven’t been with Ace for the right reasons since shortly after we moved to South Carolina. It wasn’t like our relationship was toxic or abusive—we are two completely different people with opposite visions of the future.

  "I don’t want a life with him," I tell Brett. "Not anymore."

  Brett allows his arms to fall by his sides. "Look, Mel, I don’t want to be a factor in any of this between you both. I know you had broken things off before coming back to Vermont, but if I hadn’t stepped in, maybe you wouldn’t feel this way about Ace’s plans."

  Would I?

  "Maybe I wouldn’t be as confident about my decision if I hadn’t run into you, but honestly, even if I never see you again after today, I know what I had with Ace would never offer me a lifetime of happiness. That has nothing to do with you, Brett.”

  I can’t tell if Brett is trying to hide a hint of a smile or if he’s lost in thought with other concerns, but it feels like he’s staring right through me. "I don’t want him buying Journey’s share of the shop, even if he says he will gift it to me."

  Brett takes a few hesitant steps toward me, allowing me to see the flush of pink across his cheeks. "I think it’s something the two of you need to discuss." I don’t want to discuss a damn thing with Ace. I want him to leave me alone and go back to South Carolina, where I don’t have to worry about him lurking around the corners. "People go through so many stages of grief after losing a loved one. Hating those who are closest to you can sometimes be part of the process. You might feel something else after the pain settles."

  I don’t know what kind of wooing words Ace used on Brett, but I wish he believed me when I said I hadn’t been happy long before I found out about Dad.

  "Thanks for the tip," I say, shaking my head.

  "Look, I’m not trying to upset you or be too forward, but I have to make sure I’m not getting myself in the middle of anything here. I care about you and I feel so much pain for what you are going through, but I have to be careful, Melody. I just—I can’t pull Parker into a situation that could have a negative impact on her."

  A situation.

  Me.

  That’s what he thinks of me.

  "Wow.” I gaze past his shoulder because I can’t bear to look him in the eyes. "I have been nothing but honest with you, but I’m sorry for causing you a ‘situation.'"

  I know Journey is on her way so I brush past Brett to gather my belongings in the back room so I can leave with her when she arrives. It’s freezing and snowing out, but I’d rather stand outside than have to continue this conversation about my questionable future with Ace.

  I send Journey another text so she knows where to find me.

  Me: I’m out back, waiting.

  Journey: ?

  Me: Let’s just say guys tend to have another guy’s back in his time of need. And stop responding to me while you’re driving.

  Journey: I’m at the stoplight across the street.

  It’s about ten minutes of shivering beneath the heavy snowflakes before Journey opens the back door, finding me against the brick edifice. "I told you I was out back. Why did you park out front?" I ask her.

  Journey cocks her head to the side and loops our arms, leading us around the building to where she parked her car. "Get in."

  She left the car running and I couldn’t be more grateful for the heat roaring at me as I close myself inside her Jeep. "What did you say to Brett?" I ask, knowing it’s the reason she parked out front.

  "Nothing he didn’t already know," she says, pulling her gloves off.

  "What’s that supposed to mean?"

  Journey releases a huff before squeezing her hands around the steering wheel. "Mel, when you leave a relationship with no notice or warning, there will be side effects. I’m not taking Ace’s side before you go assuming anything, but he thinks you’ve lost your mind because of Dad. He’s sure you will accept a proposal, especially if it means you can stay in Vermont and have a family to follow. He was very convincing of this to Brett too."

  "Well, we both know it’s bull," I tell her.

  "Is it?" she asks. "Anytime I’ve spoken to you in the past year, you’ve said everything was great, and you thought Ace was planning to propose soon. Despite having a feeling you were lying, not once, did you tell me you were miserable—miserable enough to pick up and leave when tragedy strikes our family."

  "So, you are on Ace’s side, and Brett’s," I snap at her, slapping my hands on my lap.

  "No, I’m not on their side, but you need to have a civil conversation with Ace, alone."

  "He wants to buy your share of the shop so he can gift it to me. This doesn’t sound fishy to you?"

  "I mean—if you were to accept his proposal, no, it wouldn’t be fishy. Ace thinks you’re having a mental breakdown because of Dad. He’s fighting for you."

  I toss my head back against the seat. "Yet, it took Ace three weeks to fly out here to check on me?"

  Journey groans. "If I’ve learned anything about a man, they are great at obeying orders—especially when it’s in their favor. You told him you were going home, you didn’t ask him to come, and you said you needed to be with Dad. He listened."

  I’m shaking from fury rather than the cold, and I want to scream and cry to make my sister, of all people, understand the truth.

  Journey twists her head, peering in my direction, but past me out the window. With a squint, she points across the street. "Ace is in the coffee shop. Go talk to him. Go tell him what you’re feeling and clarify things; your grief isn’t playing a part in your decision."

  "The last thing I want to do is talk to him," I grunt.

  "He’s in a public setting. It’s not the worst situation, and I will wait here until you are ready to leave."

  I run my hands down the side of my face, feeling the heat burn from my cheeks into my cold palms. "You wouldn’t sell your share of the business to him, would you?" I need to know for my sanity.

  Journey’s lip snarls. "I’m not a moron, Mel. Unless you two are married, I wouldn’t consider something so ridiculous. Honestly, even if you were to marry him, I’m still not sure I’d consider something so ridiculous. Neither of you knows a damn thing about bourbon."

  Hearing her say this, gives me a sense of relief, but the pit in my stomach, knowing I have to go deal with this fallout once again is making me nauseous. "Fine, I will be back in five minutes.”

  "Mel, he needs actual closure. Don’t be a dick."

  Me, a dick? She does not understand what I’ve been dealing with these last few years. This is a consequence of hiding the truth about the reality of my picket fence dream.

  I open the Jeep do
or, look for oncoming cars and jog across the tire-flattened snow. I’m not graceful as I yank a chair out from the table Ace is sitting at, nor am I polite when I tear my snow-covered jacket off and slap it over the side of my chair.

  "What do you want?" I ask him.

  Ace and his somber look are doing nothing to pull at my heartstrings. I don’t know when my frustration for our relationship has become filled with this much anger and rage, but it has. "I want to make things right," he says, staring me in the eyes, something he has rarely done.

  "It’s—"

  "Let me talk," he says, calmly, appearing to control his anger. "I knew you weren’t happy with me. I knew you wanted commitment, and children, which is why we moved to the suburbs into a small community filled with happily married couples and their gaggles of children."

  "It was four years," I tell him.

  "We’re only twenty-three/twenty-four then," he says.

  I shrug. Age doesn’t matter to me. We were ready; living together, I was cooking, cleaning, and slaving over him like a 1950s housewife who also has a full-time career. "You never mentioned waiting because of age," I remind him. "Money isn’t an issue for you, obviously." He comes from money, took baths in money, ate from golden forks. Ace wouldn’t have to work a day in his life if he didn’t want to, but he does to keep his stature unquestioned. He wants people to think he earned his inheritance himself. "So, what other excuses are there?"

  Ace places his hands down on the table, they’re red and chapped—his skin is in shock from the climate change. "I come from a broken family—a family broken because money doesn’t bring people happiness as most think. With marriage comes expectations and separation of assets to protect myself in case of divorce. The thought of going through this, made me realize it would hurt you, and things would never end up in marriage between us, anyway."