Distiller's Choice (Bourbon Springs Book 4) Read online

  DISTILLER’S CHOICE

  BOOK 4

  THE BOURBON SPRINGS SERIES

  A LAND OF BOURBON AND BLUEGRASS BOOK

  By Jennifer Bramseth

  © 2015 Jennifer Bramseth, all rights reserved

  DEDICATION

  To all the small towns in the Land of Bourbon and Bluegrass

  You inspire, welcome, and comfort me

  I am privileged to call one of you home

  Cover design by Kim Killion

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my family

  Thanks to the lovely folks at Four Roses

  Thanks to Anne and Linda at Victory Editing for throwing me a rope

  Thanks to Mary Jo T. for once again catching my goofs

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Cherry.

  Chocolate.

  Butterscotch.

  Had the next one been lemon? Or coconut crème?

  Definitely coconut crème.

  Walker remembered how a tiny shaving of toasted coconut had rested on CiCi’s upper lip for at least five minutes before he’d had the guts to tell her about it.

  Dutch apple.

  Blackberry and blueberry.

  Now pecan.

  Bourbon pecan, of course, her newly declared favorite. Made with Old Garnet. The bourbon he made just a few miles away.

  Walker swallowed hard and knew he was sweating.

  Just how many pieces of pie was he going to have to watch the woman eat before he got to kiss her?

  How many times would he have to watch her rake the tiny tip of her tongue across her lips to savor every last bite?

  Those lips…

  Full and plump. Usually twisted into a wry smile.

  Lips he still had yet to taste.

  And if he dropped his gaze from those lips, the next thing he usually saw was her chest. A very ample chest.

  “Which one is your favorite?” CiCi asked.

  “Sorry?” Walker asked.

  As he’d been watching her eat the pie, Walker had gotten completely distracted by a tiny crumb of crust which had nestled itself in the left corner of her mouth. It hung there, defying the law of gravity and completely torturing him.

  “What’s your favorite kind of pie here?” she asked again. Her tongue flicked the corner of her mouth, and the morsel upon which he’d been fixated disappeared.

  He picked up his glass of water, wishing he could dump it right on top of his head. Or in his lap. “I don’t know if I could pick a favorite,” he said, eyeing her. “It’s all good.”

  CiCi tilted her head and considered the bite of pie dangling on the tip of her fork. “It is hard to choose.”

  Walker sighed, thinking it really wasn’t so hard to choose.

  He’d already made his choice, and she was sitting right in front of him. CiCi Summers: Craig Circuit Court Clerk, goofball, his fellow BourbonDaze committee member. The voluptuous, luscious, curly-haired brunette whose hair color echoed the hue of Old Garnet bourbon.

  He’d made his choice, but Walker hadn’t really made his move…

  This was not a date.

  Yet there she was again, eating lunch with the man at what was becoming a favorite haunt for them, The Windmill, a diner north of Bourbon Springs best known for its pies and, recently, its milkshakes. The food itself was good, but when people thought of The Windmill, the first thought usually involved the dozen (at least) kinds of pie the place offered. It catered to the locals and the tourists coming through to tour the Land of Bourbon and Bluegrass.

  Her first shared meal with Walker—again, not a date—had been at The Windmill a few Saturdays earlier after they’d been at Old Garnet Distillery together. They were supposed to do some historical research with Lila McNee, a local high school history teacher who was now engaged to Bo Davenport, one of the distillery owners. Lila’s students were doing a history project for the BourbonDaze festival, and she and Walker—the Old Garnet master distiller—had volunteered to help. The whole morning had been a setup; Lila was supposed to meet them but had gone off on a picnic with Bo instead, leaving them alone.

  But after they’d done their work, the only thing the man had done was to ask CiCi to lunch.

  That had been his big move.

  And after lunch was over, he’d dropped CiCi back at her house without a hug or peck on the cheek. Totally polite, professional—and baffling. Not even a hand on the small of the back which happened to migrate a wee bit too low to one’s ass. Nope. No touching, except maybe a quick sweep of the fingertips across an arm or shoulder.

  But the looks he gave her sometimes made her hair stand on end and gave tiny thrills to other parts of her anatomy. Not that she’d admit that to anyone, including herself. Men were a risk. And she was traditionally risk averse.

  Yet Walker had kept asking her out to The Windmill—a safe, simple place that didn’t scream date!—and she kept accepting. So the chaste—and a tad frustrating—pattern continued. They had been to lunch every Saturday since, plus two weeknights—or was it three or four now? CiCi couldn’t remember. It was becoming a routine thing.

  And she liked it.

  She felt comfortable with Walker, friendly, happy. On some level, she supposed, she was happy he hadn’t made a move. That would complicate things when it happened. Not if but when. She could tell he was attracted to her—and she was still sorting out her own feelings for him in that area—and so she wasn’t sure what she’d do when he finally did make his move.

  Would she go for it?

  Or lapse into the let’s-just-be-friends speech?

  But if they were only friends, why did she keep saying yes to these little encounters at The Windmill? Was she leading him on? Only time would tell.

  She was already violating one of her cardinal dating rules—not that she was really dating Walker, she reminded herself. Nonetheless, CiCi did have a rule about dating divorced guys. She didn’t like to do it. Too much personal experience to cross that line. And Walker had told her he’d gotten divorced in the past few years. No kids or lingering attachments to the ex—or so he’d told her. But even if he was telling the truth, she had her rule and her reasons.

  But why she was overlooking it when it came to him—or was willing to overlook it should their relationship progress to more than pie and coffee at the local diner—was not something CiCi could easily explain to herself. She knew she was being a little hypocritical since she was divorced, but her rule had originated in part from that painful experience.

  CiCi ate her pie and considered her companion, whom she could tell was trying not to ogle her.

  He was good-looking. No debate there. Tall with thick, dark brown hair, Walker Cain was a very nice specimen. He was in shape and always nicely dressed in a collared shirt, like the bright blue polo he was wearing that day—never a T-shirt. According to what Hannah had mentioned to her once, he was older than she was—a little south of forty, perhaps—although he looked younger.

  But it was his good, mannerly character that had pulled her in. Walker had a nice, stable background. He spoke warmly of his parents, who were retired and lived outside Louisville. And he was a proud big brother to his sister Nina, who was an attorney for state government in Frankfort. He was at all times a gentleman—except for those occasional furtive glances at her curves.

  Plenty of women in her position likely would’ve tried to jump his bones weeks ago. But something held her back.

  That stupid thing called the past. Or issues. Or hang-ups. Whatever. All those words that were just another way of expressing something very basic and primal: fear.

  “I can’t believe you got c
alled for jury duty,” she said, smiling and shaking her head.

  “Can’t the clerk help a guy get off jury duty?” he joked.

  “No, I can’t and won’t. If you have a decent excuse—which I doubt you do—you can tell Rachel or Brady.”

  “Just teasing. I know it’s my civil duty and all that.”

  And he really didn’t mind the idea of jury duty since it would give him the opportunity to go to the Craig County Courthouse and perhaps see the lovely clerk on occasion.

  CiCi finished her pie, and Walker downed the last of his glass of water.

  He needed to do it today. Now, in fact. Just ask her out on a real date. Not to The Windmill, but a nice sit-down place complete with tablecloths and drinks. No more lunches. Dinner. Candlelight. CiCi. And no one else.

  “Well, we’d better get going,” CiCi announced as she finished the last of her coffee and looked at her watch. “Don’t want to be late and leave those kids out there at the distillery to drive Bo and Lila to distraction.”

  The chance was gone, and he grabbed his check.

  They even got separate checks, at her insistence. She wouldn’t even let him buy her a cup of coffee.

  CiCi did, however, let him pick her up and drive her to The Windmill. Not sure why she allowed this small concession, but it was nice to have her in his car. She always left it smelling so good. Something spicy and warm, yet sweet. Exactly like her.

  They paid and were soon in his car on the way to the distillery.

  It was late April in Kentucky: sunny, warm, perfect. Many of the flowering trees were still showing color, such as white and pink dogwood, and the fields were an explosive, exuberant, and frothy green. The trees were thickening into a myriad of deep emerald shades, and in scattered clumps Walker spotted one of his favorite flowers, dutch iris. Most irises exhibited that purplish-blue color, but Walker was excited to see a clump of yellow and purple iris, a rare combination, standing guard near a mailbox along Ashbrooke Pike. Underneath the mailbox was a broad puddle which perfectly reflected the image of the golden and purple flowers, creating the illusion of twice as many blossoms.

  When they arrived at the distillery, the parking lot was already full of cars and tour buses, and a steady stream of people was heading into the visitors’ center. Old Garnet was an extremely popular tourist destination in the area, and Walker had heard Hannah mention how the number of visits kept increasing every year. The Davenport family had expanded the visitors’ center a few years earlier just as national interest in bourbon—America’s native spirit, as proclaimed by Congress in the 1960s—began to reignite. Bourbon had always been popular and an integral piece of area tradition and culture, but over the past decade bourbon had become cool again.

  But any good Kentuckian would’ve told you bourbon never stopped being cool. People just forgot that fact for a while.

  Walker Cain had always loved it. He’d worked at a distillery since graduating from college and had worked his way up to being an assistant master distiller at one of the huge bourbon producers in the area. But it wasn’t enough. He’d always wanted to work for a smaller, older, and more close-knit place. Being offered the job in the past year as the master distiller at Old Garnet—in his opinion, a truly legendary brand—was nothing short of a miracle and a dream come true. And while many of his dreams had been crushed, to be able to claim just one for himself had made the turmoil of the past several years of his life a little easier to stomach.

  And now he had a chance—he hoped—to move even further away from the pain of the past with CiCi.

  “Not sure I’ve ever seen it so busy here,” CiCi said as Walker pulled into his designated spot in the visitors’ center lot at Old Garnet Distillery.

  “I have,” Walker said. “Last fall we were crazy with tourists, and Hannah and Bo said it will be just as nuts this summer. Glad I’ve got my own parking place.”

  They exited the car and stood and watched visitors moving in and out of the visitors’ center, a large oval limestone structure topped with a small transparent dome.

  “Where did Lila want to meet? Can we go on to the museum?” he asked.

  “Nope. She said she wanted to meet in the tasting room first. Kids were supposed to report there.” She checked her watch. “Still about half an hour until students are supposed to be here.”

  The grounds of the distillery were as gorgeous as the countryside through which they had passed to get there that day. Along both sides of the long, winding driveway leading onto the property, CiCi had spotted large clumps of irises and rosebushes, the latter flush with the first pink and red blossoms of the season. Surrounding the visitors’ center were more of the same plantings along with large terra-cotta pots full of freshly planted pink, purple, and white petunias and yellow and orange marigolds. Baskets full of purple petunias and already-bushy asparagus ferns hung from the porch across the front of the building. It was lush and welcomingly colorful, a little Garden of Eden in the middle of Craig County, Kentucky.

  As Walker opened the front door for her, CiCi took a deep breath and inhaled the incongruous yet pleasant mélange of scent: the spiciness of the abundant petunias along with the pungent, yeasty smell of the cooking mash in the distillery only a few yards away.

  The cavernous and light-filled lobby was full of people, as was the small café beyond and the gift shop to the left and next to the tasting room. The tasting room door was open, and CiCi motioned with her head for Walker to follow her. Once inside, CiCi saw Lila was already there, along with Bo, and they were clearing away the bottles of Old Garnet and putting them in a cabinet.

  “Early arrivals,” Lila said approvingly when CiCi and Walker entered the tasting room. “Good to be early for class.”

  “Why are you hiding your own bourbon?” CiCi asked.

  “Can’t have it around when the kids are here,” she explained and closed a cabinet door along the wall to the right. Lila turned around and tucked some of her light blond hair behind an ear and surveyed the room.

  Bo was moving around and collecting small clear glasses from around the U-shaped table that framed three-quarters of the space. “Just got done with a group tasting in here. The room is free until the next one in an hour.” He toted an armload of glasses to the bar sink over the cabinets where Lila had stashed the bourbon bottles.

  CiCi dropped her notebook and purse on the edge of the table and started to help Bo gather the emptied bourbon glasses. “I’ll give you a hand,” she said, and Walker immediately joined her. In what was probably a crime against all distilled spirits, soon all visual evidence of actual bourbon had been removed from the tasting room and it was ready for the students. Lila opened the small fridge under the sink and began removing the rectangular golden boxes CiCi knew contained bourbon balls.

  “Looks like we got here at just the right time,” Hannah said as she entered the tasting room, followed by Judge Rachel Richards.

  Both were dressed casually, and upon questioning by CiCi, Hannah revealed they were headed to Lexington on a shopping trip. “I need to get a birthday gift for Kyle,” Hannah announced.

  Hannah wandered to the boxes of bourbon balls and began to eye them appreciatively.

  “Those are for the kids,” Bo warned his sister, “although if Rachel wants one, she can certainly have as many as she would like.”

  Bo snatched one of the boxes Lila had taken from the fridge, took the lid off, and held the box in front of Rachel.

  “Oh, no.” Rachel held up her hands and backed away from the box. “Thanks, but… um… no.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Hannah asked and put her hands on her hips. “On the drive here from my house, all you could talk about was how much you loved them and had been wanting one for the past day and…”

  And then something exceptionally rare occurred.

  Hannah Davenport was rendered utterly speechless.

  Her mouth dropped open so far her lower teeth showed, her eyes grew wide, and she stared at Ra
chel, then pointed.

  “You! You!” she accused and became a little hysterical.

  “Damn,” Rachel muttered and laughed to herself. “Busted.”

  “No!” exclaimed CiCi, staring openmouthed at Rachel.

  “What’s going on?” Bo asked, looking from his sister and then to Rachel, who was smiling and blushing.

  “Silly man,” Lila said through a giggle and brushed past her fiancé on her way to Rachel.

  But Hannah got the first hug. “When? When? When?” was all Hannah could shout and ask as she threw her arms around her best friend.

  “The end of the year,” Rachel said as Hannah nearly choked her with the tight embrace.

  Hannah released Rachel, and then CiCi was there, bouncing on her heels in delight. “So happy for you!”

  Lila moved in for a quick hug. “You look great. How do you feel?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” Rachel replied, grinning broadly.

  “Could someone please tell me what’s going on?” Bo asked, still holding the box of bourbon balls.

  “Rachel’s pregnant!” Hannah, CiCi, and Lila said in unison.

  Chapter 2

  Placing the box on the table next to him, Bo moved toward Rachel and pulled her into a tight hug. “That’s wonderful! Congratulations!”

  “Brady and I weren’t quite ready to tell,” Rachel said, returning the embrace and shooting a scowl toward Hannah.

  Bo glanced at the box of treats. “Really think a bourbon ball is a risk?”

  “The way they spike them in this town?” Rachel asked. “Yeah, I’d say so.”

  “But a lot of the bourbon evaporates from the candy,” Bo protested, picking up the box.

  “Better safe than sorry,” Hannah chimed in, nodding along with Rachel.

  In that moment, CiCi glimpsed Walker, who was standing near the bar sink. He looked a little sad, and she figured he felt left out. Walker was still new to area and getting to know people.