Burn for You

My eyes widened. “I thought that stuff was an urban legend!”

Jackson moved from the doorway to the large marble island in the middle of the kitchen and set the bottle and glasses down. He’d removed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt. I still couldn’t get over how different he looked, though his hair was trying its hardest to return to its former state of disarray. Several unruly dark locks flopped over his forehead in an appealing, boyish way.

He said, “It’s an orphan from one of only a few dozen barrels made with this particular mash bill. An experiment that was ended when my father opened the barrels after ten years and declared it shit. The rest of the barrels were sold to a competitor for blending, but one was misplaced, found in the back of the rickhouse a few years ago. Turns out the mash bill was perfect, but it needed a lot longer to age than the other recipes.”

I heard my mother’s voice telling me, Some caterpillars need more time to turn into butterflies than others when I asked her why, at fifteen, I didn’t have boobs like all my friends. Like the Heritage 30 Year, I was a late bloomer.

It was both strange and strangely comforting to find I had something in common with a rare, expensive liquor.

Jackson uncorked the bottle, poured a precise measure into each glass, and put the corked cap back on. He picked up one glass, swirled the bourbon, sniffed it, and then held it out to me.

“Tell me what you smell.”

Unsure if this was a test of some kind, I set down the sponge I was holding, walked over to him, took the glass, held it to my nose, and inhaled. Aromas of caramel, toasted oak, vanilla, maple, dried apricots and lemon zest filled my nostrils. My eyes drifted shut in bliss. I said, “I smell heaven.”

Jackson chuckled. When I opened my eyes he was smiling. “I thought heaven was a library filled with every book ever written.”

Surprised he’d remembered that comment, I smiled back at him. “You have to have something good to drink while you’re reading a good book, Mr. Boudreaux.”

His smile slowly faded. He took up his own glass and lifted it to his mouth. He kept his gaze on me as he took a sip, swallowed, then set the glass back down. He slowly licked his lips and then said huskily, “Jackson.”

Hell’s bells, the man should work as a phone-sex operator! That voice!

I cleared my throat. “Right. Jackson. Sorry.”

“Have I said something to offend you again?” he asked.

I blinked. “No. Why?”

His gaze dropped to my cheeks. “Because your face gets flushed when you’re mad.”

“Or embarrassed,” I corrected. “I get it from my father’s side. You could always tell when he was feeling something strong because his cheeks would go red as Rudolph’s nose.”

Jackson let that bizarre admission hang between us for a moment, watching as the flush spread from my cheeks and down my neck. Then in a low voice, he asked, “Why would you be embarrassed that I told you to call me by my first name?”

Gee, let’s see, it could be that your porn actor’s voice could induce spontaneous orgasms in women who remember what sex was like, or that you have this dominant way of giving orders that I’m starting to find less annoying and more interesting, or that watching you lick your lips has set off a nuclear detonation between my legs.

Instead of saying any of those insane thoughts aloud, I simply threw my head back and chugged the bourbon in my glass. “Whew!” I exclaimed when I was finished. “That possum’s on the stump!”

Jackson slowly raised his brows.

“It means it doesn’t get any better than that,” I said hastily, feeling like a class A idiot.

Jackson said, “I know what it means. I’m just wondering what’s got you so riled up.” Then he stared at me, his eyes burning like blue blazes.

I stammered, “I—I’m uh . . . tired. I get kinda loopy when I’m tired.”

Dear God, if you will please help me out and grant me the power of invisibility or cause my sudden death from something quick and painless, I’d be much obliged.

But God was probably having much too good a time watching me squirm to grant my wish. I stood there looking at Jackson while he looked back at me, neither of us saying anything.

He tipped his head back, exposing the strong column of his throat, and drank his bourbon. I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed, and imagined God was a teenage girl giggling madly as I felt the heat in my face and neck spread all the way down to my chest.

I reached for the bottle and poured myself another glass. I downed that one, too, coughing at the end because, although the bourbon was hands down the best I’d ever had, it was meant to be sipped slowly, not inhaled. Fumes seared my throat.

“Smooth,” I said, eyes watering, and laughed.

Jackson cocked his head and stared at me. He asked, “Do I make you uncomfortable?”

Maybe I should just fill the sink with water and stick my head in it, I thought, desperate for some way to escape. At the moment, suicide wasn’t out of the question.

I looked over Jackson’s shoulder. “Have you seen Rayford anywhere? He said he’d drive me home.”

“No. And that was the worst segue I’ve ever heard. So I have to assume the answer to the question you avoided is yes. My next question is, why?”

Lord, he was direct!

I blurted, “You’ve made me uncomfortable since the first moment I met you,” and instantly wanted to punch myself in the face.

When his face darkened, I added, “But tonight’s the first time that it’s not a bad kind of uncomfortable.”

Unblinking, he stared at me. Thump, thump, thump went my heart.

His voice thick, he asked, “What kind of uncomfortable is it, Bianca?”

Oh dear.

Have you ever stood at the edge of a high cliff and looked over?

When I was little, my father took us to see the Grand Canyon. Being the curious child I was, I wanted to get as close to the precipice as I could. So when my mother turned her attention away for a split second, I scurried under the wood barricades, ran right up to the rocky lip of the canyon, and stared down.

With wind whipping my hair away from my face and dirt shifting uneasily under my feet, I was terrified. And exhilarated. And strangely certain that if I leapt off and spread my arms, I’d be able to fly. There was something magical about my terror, something that made my heart soar even as it stole my breath and froze my blood to ice.

That’s the exact sensation I had gazing into Jackson’s blue eyes as he waited for me to answer his question.

He must have seen it in my expression, because he carefully set his glass down and stepped toward me.

THIRTEEN

JACKSON

“I should be going,” Bianca said abruptly, sounding like she just remembered she’d left the stove on at home.

I stopped dead in my tracks, disappointment cutting through me like knives. I’d mistaken her look for one of lust. I’d obviously been projecting my own feelings onto her, because judging by her wide-eyed, panicked look at my approach, I’d seriously miscalculated what was happening here.

She was just being nice, while I was being a creepy, pervy, wildly inappropriate douchebag who couldn’t keep his boner in his pants.

What a fucking idiot.

“Of course,” I said, mortified. “It’s late. I won’t keep you.”

Blood pounded in my temples. I stepped back quickly, dragged a hand through my hair, and took a steadying breath.