The Bourbon Thief(101)

“You tell me what happened to Tamara, and you come back to bed with me and stay there until morning.”

“It’s almost morning now.”

“An hour will suffice.”

“I like that you care about Tamara,” Paris said. “It does you credit.”

“I’m trying to buy your body with a bottle of bourbon.”

“I would have thrown it in, anyway. Call it gift wrapping.”

“We have a deal?”

Paris turned her hand in his and they shook on it.

“Deal,” she said.

“Tamara?”

“After.”

“You are torturing me.”

“Consider it payback for history.”

He was white. She was black. And she was right. He had no answer to that but to place his hands on her neck, pull her to him and kiss her mouth. Apples and licorice.

McQueen had said “until morning” and “until morning” he lasted. When it was over and the sun returned, he watched Paris rise from the bed. She zipped her dress up by herself and he wondered if every woman he’d ever assisted with that task could have done it themselves, too? One less reason for men to be in the world if women could zip their dresses up all alone.

“You want your ribbon?” He dangled the scarlet bit of silk from his fingers.

“You can keep it,” she said.

“I don’t keep trophies from the women I sleep with.”

She reached for the ribbon and he pulled it back.

“You’re worth making an exception for,” he said. “And I get the feeling I won’t be seeing you again. Will I?”

“Would you want to even if you could?”

“Are you going to steal any of my other bourbon bottles?”

“I might. You have an excellent collection.”

“Come back and drink it with me. It will be nice to share them with a connoisseur.”

“I might see you again. Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll let the Fates decide. Until then...” She slipped her feet into her high heels and gave him a lady’s curtsy. She held out her hand to him and he kissed the back of it.

“You have given me a strange and memorable night,” he said.

“You have given me exactly what I came for. And came for. And came for...”

“You can come again anytime.”

He followed her down the stairs to the living room and extended his hand to her, giving her the bottle.

“All yours,” he said. “Virginia Maddox didn’t own the bottle. She couldn’t legally sell it. I couldn’t legally buy it.”

“You’re out a million dollars.”

“A night with you—best million I ever spent.”

“Only a million for a night with me. You got a bargain.” And then, without a hint of reverence for the last known bottle of Red Thread in existence, she plucked it out of his hand and dropped it down into her purse.

“What are you going to do with it?” he asked. “Drink it? Save it? Pass it on to your children someday?”

“None of the above.”

“Then what?” he asked.

“The answer to that question wasn’t part of our deal.”

“No, you’re right. It wasn’t. But Tamara...she was part of the deal.”

Paris nodded. “Yes, she was.”

“So what happened to her?”

“Funny you ask about her and not Levi.”

“You can tell me about him, too, if you want.”

“No, he’s another story.”

“Tamara was just a girl, a girl my daughter’s age.”

“A girl who killed a man, eloped with her brother and brought down a bourbon dynasty.”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t an impressive girl.”

Paris grinned. “That she was.” She looked past him and away. What she saw he didn’t know, but he would have given anything to see through her eyes.

“Tamara died in her husband’s arms,” she said.

McQueen’s head dropped back. He swore.

“She died in his arms twenty-three years after the night Red Thread burned.”

McQueen’s head snapped up again.

“What?”

“Tamara didn’t die that night. But she did miscarry. It might have happened, anyway. Women lose pregnancies all the time. But after all she went through...you don’t have to blame the angels for that. You can blame the shock and taking an ax to a hundred barrels of bourbon, inhaling that poisoned air.”

Relief so potent it could have been a hundred and fifty proof hit him in the gut. He hadn’t given a damn about the pregnancy, only the girl.

“But she lived. She survived all that?”

“She did. Barely. She bled a lot and had to go to the hospital. And she had to stay at a different hospital for a long time.”

“A different hospital? She was committed?”

“Rich women don’t go to mental hospitals. Rich women go on vacation.”

“But she wasn’t pregnant anymore. I assume she and Levi got divorced and she remarried eventually?”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you said she died in her husband’s arms.”