Woods. Rivers. Native Americans. Wildlife.
His people had come from Pennsylvania through the Cumberland Gap two hundred and fifty years ago—and now, here he was, ten thousand feet up in the air, circling the city along with fifty other rich guys in their various aircraft.
Except he was not here to bet on horses, get drunk, and find some sex.
“May I refresh your No. Fifteen before we land, Mr. Baldwine? I’m afraid there’s quite a queue. We could be a while.”
“Thank you.” He drained what was in his crystal glass, the ice cubes sliding down and hitting his upper lip. “You’re timing couldn’t be better.”
Okay, so maybe he would be doing a little drinking.
“My pleasure.”
As the woman in the skirt uniform walked away, she looked across her shoulder to see if he was checking her out, her big blue eyes blooming underneath her fake lashes.
His sex life had long depended upon the kindness of such strangers. Particularly blond ones like her, with legs like that, and hips like that, and breasts like that.
But not anymore.
“Mr. Baldwine,” the captain said from overhead. “When they found out it was you, they bumped us up, so we’re landing now.”
“How kind of them,” Lane murmured as the stewardess came back.
The way she reopened the bottle gave him a clue to how she’d take down a man’s fly, her full body getting into the twist of the cork and the pop free. Then she leaned into the pour, encouraging him to check out her La Perla.
Such wasted effort.
“That’s enough.” He put his hand out. “Thanks.”
“Is there anything else I can get you?”
“No, thank you.”
Pause. Like she wasn’t used to being turned down, and wanted to remind him that they were running out of time.
After a moment, she kicked up her chin. “Very good, sir.”
Which was her way of telling him to go to hell: With a whip around of the hair, she hipped her way off, swinging what was under that skirt like she had a cat by the tail and a target to hit.
Lane lifted his glass and circled the No. 15. He’d never been particularly involved with the family business—that was the purview of his older brother Edward. Or at least, it had been. But even as a company outsider, Lane knew the nickname of the Bradford Bourbon Company’s bestseller: No. 15, the staple of the product line, sold in such tremendous numbers that it was called The Great Eraser—because its profit was so enormous, the money could eclipse the loss from any internal or external corporate misstep, miscalculation, or market share downshift.
As the jet rounded the airstrips for the approach, a ray of sunshine pierced the oval window, falling over the burled walnut folding table, the cream leather of the seat, the deep blue of his jeans, the brass buckle of his Gucci loafers.
And then it hit the No. 15 in his glass, pulling out the ruby highlights in the amber liquor. As he took another pull from the crystal rim, he felt the warmth of the sun on the outside of his hand and the coolness from the ice on the pads of his fingers.
Some study that had been done recently put the bourbon business at three billion dollars in annual sales. Of that pie, the BBC was probably upward of a quarter to a third. There was one company in the state that was bigger—the dreaded Sutton Distillery Corporation, and then there were eight to ten other producers—but BBC was the diamond among semi-precious stones, the choice of the most discriminating drinkers.
As a loyal consumer, he had to concur with the zeitgeist.
A shift in the level of the bourbon in his glass announced the descent to the landing, and he thought back to the first time he had tried his family’s product.
Considering how it had gone, he should have been a teetotaller for life.
“It’s New Year’s, come on. Don’t be a wuss.”
As usual, Maxwell was the one who started the ball rolling. Out of the four siblings, Max was the troublemaker, with Gin, their little sister, coming in at a close second on the recalcitrant Richter scale. Edward, the oldest and the most strait-laced of them, had not been invited to this party—and Lane, who was somewhere in the middle, both in terms of birth order and likelihood to get arrested at any early age, had been forced into the excursion because Max hated to do bad without an audience—and girls didn’t count.
Lane knew this was a really poor idea. If they were going to hit the alcohol, they should take a bottle from the pantry and go up to their rooms where there was zero chance of being busted. But to drink out in the open here, in the parlor? Under the disapproving glare of Elijah Bradford’s portrait over the fireplace?
Dumb—
“So y’all saying you aren’t going to have any, Lame?”
Ah, yes. Max’s favorite nickname for him.
In the peachy glow from the exterior security lights, Max looked over with an expression of such challenge, the stare might as well have come with sprinter blocks and a starting gun.
Lane glanced at the bottle in his brother’s hand. The label was one of the fancy ones, with the words “Family Reserve” in important lettering on it.
If he didn’t do this, he was never going to hear the end of it.
“I just want it in a glass,” he said. “A proper glass. With ice.”
Because that was how his father drank it. And it was the only manly out he had for his delay.
Max frowned as if he hadn’t considered the whole presentation thing. “Well, yeah.”
“I don’t need a glass.” Gin, who was seven, had her hands on her hips and her eyes on Max. In her little lace nightie, she was like Wendy in Peter Pan; with that aggressive expression on her face, she was a straight-up pro-wrestler. “I need a spoon.”