Neat (Becker Brothers, #2)(2)

Several chuckles rang out at that, group after group squeezing past me and lining up against the wall inside to wait for me to continue.

I found Noah as soon as the metal door clanged shut behind me. He had bright orange ear plugs stuffed in each canal and protective eyewear over his eyes as he worked on situating the staves of wood in the metal ring to make a barrel come to life. He glanced up at me, a mischievous grin on his face, but he looked back down at his work before I could give him a warning glare not to fuck with me.

He knew that today of all days was not the time to give me shit.

“Alright, folks,” I said, turning to face the group as they looked around. “Take it all in — this is where the real magic happens. If you recall the video we watched earlier, you’ll recognize these fine gentlemen behind me as our Scooter Whiskey barrel raisers. Every single day, this small team of four bring five-hundred Scooter Whiskey barrels to life.”

Noah, Marty, Eli, and PJ all waved from where they were working, offering the group welcoming smiles before their heads were down again, and they were back to work.

“Why can’t you take pictures in here?” one of the men in the group asked. From chatting with him on the walk over from the gift shop, I discovered that he was passing through with his wife and sister-in-law on their way home from a Thanksgiving visit to Illinois.

“Good question,” I said, pointing directly at him before I addressed the group. “We’re one of the last distilleries that still make their own barrels, and we don’t want our secrets getting out. Most get theirs from wineries nowadays, but we still take pride in making and charring our own — which is why with every bottle of Scooter Whiskey you drink, you get those familiar notes of vanilla and oak.”

Murmurs rang out, each family within the group leaning in to talk to each other as they looked around at the barrels with more admiration.

“And these four guys are the ones responsible for every single barrel?” a woman asked.

I opened my mouth to answer, but before I could, a hand clapped down on my shoulder, and my brother took over. “Yep. My team and I are here five days a week, and we each raise anywhere from one-hundred-and-twenty-five barrels to one-hundred-and-fifty barrels every single day. Which means we get about twenty-five-hundred barrels out every week.”

The crowd buzzed with a mix of ooh’s and ahh’s.

Noah grinned, and I couldn’t help but smile, too. I loved that I got to work with my brothers, that they were a part of my every day. Noah was older than me, but just a smidge shorter — which always ticked him off. I was lean where he was stout, and our hair was the same sandy brown — though mine was a bit longer. And Noah had Dad’s blue eyes, whereas I favored the hazel gold of our mother’s.

“That’s amazing,” the woman breathed, and her eyes fell over my brother, from his arms to his midriff and lower. “Explains why you’re built like an ox.”

She said that last part almost so softly that I couldn’t hear it, but I had — and I knew Noah had, too. If the poor girl had been a year earlier, she might have had a shot at ending her tour through town in my brother’s bed. But, as it was, his heart was tied up in a redhead currently stationed across the country in Utah doing her first year in AmeriCorps.

Ruby Grace Barnett — the mayor’s daughter who was supposed to marry someone else this past summer, but had ran way with my brother, instead.

Like I said.

Trouble.

Noah smiled, tipping his hat at the group before he turned. He squeezed my shoulder. “No pranks today, promise,” he said. “I know you’ve got plenty on your plate.”

My lips flattened. “Yeah.”

“Has she come in yet?”

“Right after this tour.”

He whistled. “Well, good luck. Come by my place later if you need a drink to decompress.” He squeezed my shoulder one last time before letting it go and heading back toward his station, and though my stomach was twisting violently again, I turned to the group, continuing on with the rest of my spiel about the barrels before I led them through the door again and back out into the cold November air.

We were just a few days past Thanksgiving, and Stratford was well into the holiday spirit. Christmas lights were strung from every building at the distillery, and the entire town was dressed in lights and garland to match. The tree in the center of town was large enough to see from the end of Main Street no matter which way you were coming, and with all that around me, I waited and waited for the holiday spirit to find me.

It hadn’t — not in years — not since my father passed away.

I inhaled the cool Tennessee air, the familiar scent of oak and honey wafting in on the breeze, but it did nothing to calm my nerves as I led the tour toward our final stop — the tasting. For the next twenty minutes, I’d be helping that group taste whiskey for what was likely the first time in their lives. Sure, they’d taken shots of whiskey, but they’d never stopped to smell it, inhale the special aromas, taste each flavorful note, and enjoy that familiar whiskey burn on the way down.

Twenty minutes.

That’s how long the tasting would last.

That’s how long I’d have before I’d be faced with the girl I’d been trying to avoid all morning, and for most of my life, if I was being honest.

Mallory Scooter.

Scooter — as in the name on the jacket I wore, the one in large letters on the building we walked inside, the one sprawled in the top right-hand corner of my paycheck each week.