As we pulled away from each other, our gazes shifted between our eyes and lips.
“Yeah, I think we have some serious trouble in our futures,” I teased, and we shared a laugh.
CHAPTER NINE
Cohen
The following few weeks flew by. I’d been involved in a business before, but nothing close to a distillery. While I was good with numbers and big-picture ideas, I definitely needed Brody’s help with the nitty-gritty specifics. I was shocked and pleased that he’d suggested we work together, even though it was kept on the down-low. Seemed Big Daddy really would lose his shit if he found out—and I swear I was never going to get over someone’s actual father being called that.
Porn daddy? Yes. Biological big daddies were totally new.
Isaac and I had worked day and night making plans, setting up services, figuring out what the fuck we were doing. When they could, Brody and Walker would sneak away and spend evenings with us at the house or in the distillery. I was learning that while they knew whiskey in a way I wasn’t sure I ever would, they struggled with the business and marketing aspects, but any time I tried to bring it up, Walker would interrupt the conversation and steer it back to us. Obviously, that O’Ralley brother was a little more cautious in letting us know the ins and outs of their brand.
Not that I could blame them, because apparently, I came from a whole line of criminals—well, my grandfather and great-grandfather, at least. Outside of the prohibition years, I doubted the O’Ralleys could say the same.
I shook my head, not wanting to focus on what I’d learned in the journal. It was much easier if I concentrated on what I could change—getting Mitchell Creek off the ground again, continuing what my father had tried to do, and, you know, not be a criminal.
About a week ago, I’d found the key to the locked room tucked away in a box in the attic. When I unlocked it, I’d been surprised that it was just an empty room with a desk, like maybe there had been an office there at some point. Somehow I thought it would be full of answers or proof of dubious behavior. The truth was much more boring.
I plucked another nail from the counter I was working on in the tasting room and got busy again.
“Cohen! They’re delivering the new machine!” Rusty shouted from the other side of the distillery, interrupting my hammering. He was just another way Brody had saved my ass lately. They knew each other, and Rusty used to work for my dad and knew the ins and outs of Mitchell Creek better than anyone. He’d been looking for a job and had been eager to jump in and help us get stuff figured out. He was about ten years or so older than me, and he was good people. I liked him. We sat around and shot the shit every once in a while.
“Be right there,” I called back.
“I’ll deal with it,” Isaac answered. Sometimes it felt like I’d been given a lucky extension of myself in Isaac.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I was not only out of my league, but dealing with a whole lot of confusing stuff going on in my head. I closed my eyes, saw bits and pieces of journal entries I’d read over and over in my dad’s messy handwriting.
Handwriting that looked like mine.
Without, you know, contemplating the fact that I was closing my eyes and hammering at the same time, I swung the damn thing. It connected, making pain shoot through my thumb. “Motherfucker!” I cried out. It immediately started to throb, and ridiculously, the first thing I thought was, Oh, great, Brody’s never going to let me hear the end of this.
First, attack of the killer raccoon, and now this. He and Walker already liked to give Isaac and me shit because we were city boys who stuck out like a—Goddamn it. He was going to make a sore-thumb joke. I knew it.
I tossed the hammer onto the counter and rubbed a hand over my face. I was tired as hell. I hadn’t been sleeping the best. I was off my game, which was totally unfamiliar territory to me.
“Hey,” Isaac said as he entered the room. “You look tired.”
“I am.” It didn’t matter that weeks had gone by. The journal was weighing on my mind every hour of every day.
“Why don’t we cut out early today? Rusty is leaving. We can spend an evening not thinking about the distillery. Maybe go grab some food and have a movie night?”
The truth was, I didn’t know if I had the energy for that, and the thought of heading into town was draining. Every time I was there, I heard a different story about my family or me. “I like the cutting-out-early part, and the eating-and-hanging-out part.”
“So all the parts that don’t include going into town?” Isaac asked.
“That’s about right.”
“Deal.”
We finished at the distillery, locked up, and headed back to the house. Isaac ordered a pizza and teased me about my thumb before I went to take a shower. Then we ate dinner together, and he asked me what I wanted to watch, but nothing was sounding good.
“I know what you need.” Isaac plucked my phone from the arm of the couch and unlocked it.
“Wait. What are you doing?”
His fingers started moving over the screen.
“What are you doing?” I asked again.
“Texting that super-sexy O’Ralley brother you want to bang to come hang out with you.”
“What the fuck, Isaac.” I leaped toward him, but he moved too quickly, the twinky little thing. I went after him, and he ran around the living room with my cell in his hand. Finally, I caught him, wrapped my arms around his waist, and tugged him to me just as my phone beeped.
“Goddamn you.” I jerked my phone out of his hand.
I read the text Isaac sent as me, then Brody’s reply.
Hey. Can you come over tonight? Just you. I thought we could…hang out. Bring whiskey!
Um, yeah, sure. I can do that. Let me shower. Be there in about forty-five minutes.
“You fucker!” I told Isaac.
“You can always tell him it was me playing a trick on you.”
But I didn’t, and I wouldn’t. He knew that as well as I did. Brody intrigued me—this guy who said he was straight but kissed me the first night we met. Who brought us almond milk and helped us out even though most of his family would be pissed. The guy who broke down our door to save us from a killer raccoon, then showed up first thing the next morning to fix it.
The guy I kissed in my kitchen yet hadn’t had my hands on since.
“So…I’ll stay in my room tonight. I’m gonna take a bubble bath, do an exfoliating face mask, and probably watch some porn. Have fun.” My annoying best friend waved at me and went for the stairs.
But the truth was, I couldn’t really be mad at him. I was having a shitty day, so it wasn’t like drinking with a gorgeous man, whom I did, in fact, want to bang, would be a hardship.
I went to the kitchen, grabbed two glasses, and headed out back to the screened-in porch. Like everything else in the house, it had been cleaned while it sat empty, waiting for me to arrive. There was a table, along with a weather-resistant couch and two chairs.
And then…then I waited.
It was definitely less than forty-five minutes later when I heard Brody’s truck pull up. I left the porch and walked around the side of the house to signal to him where I was. It was evening, the sun just beginning to set in the distance, all bright reds and oranges, trees dancing in the light breeze. I tried to pay attention to that rather than ogling the sexy man who stepped up beside me.