A Very Merry Bromance (Bromance Book Club #5) (50)

The relief in her eyes was as shocking as the way it affected him. He didn’t want to throttle her anymore. He wanted to hug her. And come hell or high water, he was going to get to the bottom of why she hated this house.





CHAPTER TWELVE


“Not gonna lie. I’ve had a lot of fantasies about taking you out on a dark country road.”

Colton peeled his eyes from the windshield to grin at Gretchen in the passenger seat. She’d picked him up at home in his own car with the joke, “Get in, loser. We’re going to meet my dysfunctional family.”

“It’s coming up,” she said, pointing to a small sign in the distance that said tasting room.

He turned into the parking lot of what looked like a historic farmhouse. He instinctively reached for the glove box to get his hat and fake glasses, but she was already holding them and passed over both with a smile. As they got out, she explained that the farmhouse and barn were mostly original but had been updated throughout the decades. A wraparound porch was decorated for Christmas in a rustic, homespun way. Rocking chairs and blankets. Real evergreen garland and old-fashioned lights. He started toward the porch and what appeared to be the front door, but she tugged at his elbow.

“This way.”

He followed her around to the side of the house, where she punched in a security code to a side door. From there, they entered what appeared to have been, at one time, a mudroom of sorts. The kind where a man might kick off his winter boots and wash up over a basin of water before going in for supper. The room had clearly undergone updates over the years—steel door and security system included—but it was too small and rough-hewn to have been anything other than the real deal. The walls were made of cold, gray stone, and the ceiling was low enough that Colton could’ve flattened his palms on it if he stood on tiptoes.

Colton glanced down at her. “Did someone actually live here?”

“Of course. This was my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s house.” She gestured with a tilt of her head. “Follow me.”

He followed her into a separate room, equally small and rustic, where a gray-haired security guard in a black uniform sat behind a tall, skinny desk. Gretchen waved. “Hey, Charlie.”

The guard brightened. “Miss Gretchen. Haven’t seen you in a month of Sundays. What brings you by?”

“Just showing a friend around.”

She looked at Colton with eyebrows raised, as if asking permission to introduce him. Colton nodded and reached over the desk to shake the man’s hand. “Colton Wheeler. Nice to meet you.”

If Charlie recognized Colton’s face or name, he showed no sign of it. “Welcome to the Homestead.”

“Charlie, you’ve been here how many years?” Gretchen asked, smiling warmly.

“It’ll be thirty-three years in April.”

Colton nudged her with his elbow. “Almost as long as you.”

Charlie’s smile spread into a broad grin. “Want me to tell your friend here about the time when you were four and came running in here to hide so you could eat the candy bar you’d stolen from the kitchen?”

“Absolutely not,” Gretchen said.

Colton crossed his arms. “Absolutely yes.”

“She was a tiny little thing. Bare feet and pigtails flopping around. I let her hide behind my desk and eat that whole candy bar.”

Gretchen shrugged. “The punchline of the joke, though, is that no one knew or even cared that I had the candy.”

“A rebel without a cause at four years old,” Charlie mused.

“I was a bit of a handful.”

“You were the joy of this place.” Charlie beamed. “Wish we saw more of you.”

After bidding him goodbye, Gretchen led Colton down a short, cramped hallway where the low din of hushed conversations greeted him and grew louder with each step. They entered what had clearly been a simple living room at one time but was now a gallery of sorts. The walls were lined with sepia-toned photos in carefully mismatched frames. A dozen or so people moved slowly to study each photo as they sipped samples of the whiskey.

No one paid them any attention as Gretchen brought him to a photo of a man in a black suit sitting at a table, his left hand wrapped around a plain brown bottle.

“The family patriarch.” Gretchen was standing close enough for their arms to brush. “Cornelius Donley. He came over just after the Civil War.”

“Donley, not Winthrop?”

“My great-grandfather only had daughters, and men didn’t leave their companies to women in the 1930s, so he left it to his oldest daughter’s husband, Samuel Winthrop. It’s been passed down through Winthrop men ever since.”

“Seems kind of sexist.”

“It is.” She pointed to another photo—this one of an image that appeared to be the inspiration for the company logo—a lighthouse on a rocky shoal. “Do you know what it means? The name of the company?”

He shook his head.

“It means ‘lone rock.’ The lighthouse is a real place. People started calling it Ireland’s Teardrop because it was the last thing people would see as they left Ireland for America to escape the famine.”

“Did Cornelius come over during the famine?”

“No, it was over by the time he came, but his family never recovered from it. After his parents died, he packed up his siblings and sold everything they had to pay for the trip over. He had one thing of value left to his name, a whiskey recipe.”