“Oh, yeah, Olivia.”
“Don’t stop,” she gasped. “Please. Don’t stop, I’m so close.”
The shock in her voice was everything he needed to refocus. This was about her. Not him. This was about the beautiful, lush woman beneath him realizing she was worth every effort. He thought briefly about the lineup for the previous match, with the youngster from the minors anxious to take his place. But it wasn’t enough.
“Olivia,” he commanded. “Let go. Let it take us both.”
Her eyes opened and her gaze landed on him. The intensity in them was more than he could deal with. Her mouth opened into an O of surprise, as her body clenched and bucked against his. His name fell from her lips as she tightened around him, and he felt his own orgasm barrel through him.
And as he gained his breath, his face pressed against the warmth of her neck, he lamented that, like a well-played hockey game, their time was running out.
3
Olivia sat back in her office chair and wondered how the heck it was the middle of February already. It had been dark when she’d dragged her butt out of bed to get an early start on the day, and it was still dark now. The distillery was silent. Jake, her older brother and master distiller, hadn’t yet made it in to start the first run of the day. And she hadn’t heard the playful early morning chatter of Emerson, their company CEO and eldest sibling, and Connor, her partner who was currently acting as a catchall for distribution and supply chain while building his own consulting business; Olivia could hear them each day when they came up the stairs to the offices on the mezzanine that overlooked the copper stills.
How much had happened in the seven months since her father had died from a heart attack in the office down the hallway?
Her mother dying so long ago, when Olivia had been eleven, had left a mix of memories of a woman who used to love dancing in the kitchen and decorating for Christmas in mid-November. But their father’s death had been so visceral, it had felt as though a piece of herself had died. She missed the smell of his dark roast coffee, and the way he whistled to songs on the radio rather than sing along.
Then there had been what followed.
There was a saying about everyone getting their fifteen minutes of fame. But Olivia was adamant that an amendment should be made. Everyone would get their fifteen minutes, but it was fifty-fifty odds as to whether you got fame or infamy.
Hers had been infamy.
Hers had been the face of Dyer’s Gin Distillery that had taken the fall.
And while she loved Jake and Emerson, she hated that they had remained reasonably unscathed while she had been left bedridden.
In what world was it fair that an act of God, an uncontrollable summer storm, could be held so viciously against her. She looked at the online ratings for the distillery.
Yup. Still two stars.
That was the metric that she wanted to increase. It was the first thing that popped up when anyone searched for the distillery.
And it had been trashed by one particular groom.
Robert Harding.
He’d rallied people online to spam all the review sites about them with terrible comments. Vile, horrible things that weren’t true. Trolls had gotten involved. It had shifted from the distillery to her. Deeply personal and graphic things that had bled onto her personal accounts.
The thought of the man’s name made her shiver.
When her father had called her at two in the morning to tell her that the events hall had been devastated, her first thought had been Robert and Gina’s wedding. The hall had been completely set up. All the flower arrangements that had been made by Gina’s aunt were in place, given the building would be cool overnight. All the tables were set. All the wedding favors placed upon each individual setting. The place cards that had been handwritten by Robert’s niece were in place.
Poor Gina.
Olivia had called every major hotel within the city to see who might be able to host their event. There had been one less than stellar venue with space big enough available. But she’d put them on notice that the room might be needed. She’d also made a backup plan to host a scaled-down version in the distillery tasting rooms, but Gina and Robert would have had to cut fifty guests from their list.
Using her public relations undergrad degree, she had pulled together a crisis management plan for Gina and Robert’s wedding, the distillery, and future brides and grooms.
At six in the morning, she’d called Robert with a plan. It hadn’t helped that the man clearly had a hangover from hell, but it hadn’t gone well.
Olivia scoffed at the turn of phrase.
“Hadn’t gone well” was an understatement of fairly epic proportions. He’d raged. Shown up at the distillery to check the evidence of destruction for himself. Perhaps calling the police wasn’t her father’s smartest move, but it was Robert’s own fault he had gotten arrested instead of leaving like they’d asked. When Robert had gotten so angry and frustrated that he’d lashed out and hit the police officer, they had no choice but to detain him. And that detainment had made him miss his actual wedding service.
That was the day anxiety and fear and depression had taken over her life. It had started small. Reluctance to communicate with the families. Feeling ill at the idea of coming into work. Dreading Sunday evenings. And then, one day it felt impossible to move. While her head had screamed with all the things she needed to do, she couldn’t get off the sofa. Worry turned into negative self-talk, dread had turned into numbness as she closed herself off from the reality of it all.
Her father had staged the intervention, by which point she didn’t have the energy to care about what happened next.
Even though she knew the cause of the poor reviews, it didn’t make it any easier to fix it. But if she could somehow raise those stars, if she could flood the sites with positive ratings and lift the average, she was certain she’d feel better about herself.
She heard laughter and quickly switched tabs on her browser so her sister wouldn’t see what she was looking at.
“Morning, Liv.” Emerson dropped a box of cinnamon rolls on the desk. “I made too many for breakfast, thought you might have skipped it since you said you were coming in early.”
“Thanks. They look great,” Olivia said. Smelled great too. But the twenty pounds she’d gained in the last year were still sitting at her hips and round the tops of her arms that she kept covered. Her efforts to make a dent in them were doing nothing more than keeping her weight exactly the same.
So, no matter how mouthwatering the buns were, she’d practice a little bit of self-control and stick with the yogurt and granola she’d brought from home.
Emerson flicked her pin-straight hair over her shoulder. “You’re welcome. Where are you at with the social media plan for the renovation?”
The renovation would start in the summer. Just a few more months until the distillery could finally step out of its current production constraints. It was a gamble, but they were all on board to extend and rebuild the damaged event venue and turn it into the new distillery. Then, they’d convert the old distillery into the new event venue. It meant production could continue for pretty much the whole renovation.
“I’ve got the project timeline from the architect and blocked out the key phases. I’ve set up time over the next few weeks to get into each area of the distillery to set up shoots for all the before videos and photographs. Jake is taking a bit of persuading to appear in any of them, though. So if you feel like kicking his ass for me, that would be awesome.”