Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Myles
It had been a month since Tate and Teller’s visit, and I wasn’t in any better of a mood, but I’d evened out to a predictably shitty attitude I could moderately control.
I stood at the window, staring out for far too long every day. As long as I was lost in the scenery, I could let my mind roam. This was the only time I let myself wonder. About her.
Had she gotten over me yet? Was she making the stellar cocktails she was known for again? Had she gotten her marketing spirit back?
I turned just as a message popped up on my screen from Mrs. Crane. The marketing department sent some research samples for you.
It better be marketing materials. If they were running new cocktails past me, I might throw my laptop across the room. There was nothing that didn’t remind me of her.
I sat and pulled up the message from the head of marketing.
The body was filled with links. I trusted my marketing department, but I also wanted final say on who we advertised with.
My promo manager didn’t always know what I knew about people in the industry.
She didn’t have as good a feel for who would be a mistake to interview with and who wouldn’t.
I clicked on the first link. Our limited-time holiday whiskeys were getting stocked on shelves. We were booking promos for the next calendar year already, and she was especially working on St. Patrick’s Day. Green beer didn’t have to be the only drink people had that night.
A podcast started. Whiskey enthusiasts who traveled the country, touring and tasting at various distilleries, and then discussing the place and the product. I had given my marketing team approval to be featured as guests on podcasts. Not me. Never me.
I listened to part of the episode at double speed, then poked around their website, checked out upcoming guests, and listened to highlights of old episodes. On a notepad, I jotted down the name of the podcast under my approved column.
The next one I pulled up was a YouTube channel. I went through the same routine. New podcasts and channels didn’t pop up often, but if one did, or gained in popularity, my team was on it.
I jotted down a few more shows I approved of.
The next link had a note with it. We were invited as a featured guest. I clicked the link to a YouTube video, and a face popped up on the screen. My world skittered to a halt, and I stared, letting the webcast play in regular time. Wynn.
Light hair framed her face, and she was smiling, as beautiful and radiant as ever. The two male hosts said something that made her laugh, but I didn’t hear a damn word. I was intent on her reply.
“All of us know every aspect of the distillery, Matthew, from the cleaning to the distilling to the marketing.” She was smiling, but her eyes flashed. No one else would realize she was irritated. Matthew, the cocksucker, must’ve made some sexist assumption.
“But you don’t like getting your hands dirty?” This from the other guy. What was the jackass’s name?
She laughed, a fake, hollow sound. Again, no one would be able to tell but me. “If you knew my daddy, you’d know how funny that question is, Pete.”
“Speaking of your dad,” Matthew said, turning a little more serious. “I’m sorry to hear about his passing.”
“Thank you,” she answered, her expression galvanizing, like she’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry.
“Can you tell us the history of Copper Summit? Your grandfather started the distillery?”
“Making moonshine goes back a lot farther in the family, but my great-granddaddy started to sell it, and then he mastered making bourbon, and the Baileys never looked back.”
Pete held up a hand, speaking into his headset. “Now, it’s no secret you and your sisters are adopted. We read interviews where your father talked about family and the importance of giving back to the world. You grew up with several foster siblings, too, correct?”
She nodded, rolling her lips in. I leaned closer to the screen.
“Your brothers and sisters are all in the family business in some way?” Pete asked.
“We all have been, but two of my sisters have their own careers in other industries. They come and go as they like.”
Pete nodded. “How about those foster kids? Are they involved at all?”
Her jaw tightened for half a heartbeat. Again, I was likely the only one who’d catch it, an expert in all things Wynter Kerrigan. That jaw clench was for me. “No. Many of the kids were only with us anywhere from days to a couple years at the most.”
“And in the cases of the kids who were with you for a couple years, no interest?” Matthew’s question rang with sincerity. He wasn’t probing to be nosy, he was curious, as most people would be. My shoulders grew tight. Had he made the connection? Would it matter if he had?
“Well, yes, but to what extent, we don’t always know, and their privacy was and has always been important to the family.”
“Gotcha. Not every foster kid grows up to build a whiskey empire, right?” Pete’s laugh was obnoxious and oblivious.
Wynn’s placating smile was as empty as her laugh. She moved the topic toward everyone’s roles in the business.
I listened, avid, hanging on the moments she laughed and a real smile peeked through. When the episode wrapped up, I hit play again.
And again.
And again.
After the fourth round, I scrubbed my face and pushed away from the desk. I didn’t have a response ready for the marketing team. I hadn’t gotten through all the magazines they wanted to pitch an article to. I hadn’t gotten farther than Wynn.
What would it take to have her in my life?
A dangerous thought. An impossible one. If I didn’t have Gianna, I had Colorado.
This building. My brand. My products. The empire I was well on the way to constructing.
Foster House would be as big of a name as Jack Daniel’s and twice as philanthropic.
No one would know, but I would. I would know how wrong everyone had been about me and where I came from.
I would know I was not a piece of shit. That my presence in this world meant something.
And that my money could go toward decent, productive people.
I closed my computer and went to stand in front of the window. I really should be setting a timer for this shit.
My phone rang. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
Gianna was escalating. She was on the end of the line, probably ready to cuss me out again for being worthless and a regret.
The ringing stopped. Started again.
With an angry huff, I spun away from the window and grabbed the phone off my desk. Gianna’s number. As expected.
“What now?” I answered.
“I guess that answers my question,” a man said.
This was new. Gianna had never mentioned other men in her life. She never gave me details, no doubt because they would make me less likely to aid her. So why was a man speaking to me from her phone number? My body went cold. “Who are you?”
“Gianna’s son.”
I barked out a laugh. “Good one.” Yet…why wasn’t it possible?
Just because she’d never told me didn’t mean a damn thing.
Gianna was cunning and controlling, and she’d wield whatever information she had to gain an ounce of control, but usually for drugs.
My stomach roiled. This guy wasn’t her son. Was he?
“You know I’m telling the truth, but don’t worry. You continue on with your happy life pretending we don’t exist.”
“We?” Cold leeched farther into my veins. “Gianna never mentioned kids.”
“Don’t act surprised,” he said, his voice devoid of humor. “My brother and I are content to stay out of your life. But I have to tell you first that she’s gone. Overdose.”
“She’s dead?” The words overdose rang in my head. Gianna. Gone. Sometime during her incessant pestering, I had come to think of her as immortal. If a woman like her hadn’t perished from the way she lived by now, nothing could destroy her. She was the one who ruined everything.
I wasn’t prepared to never have her on the other end of the line tormenting me. I wasn’t prepared for the empty hole she’d left in my life. I wasn’t prepared to accept that after all she’d done to me, I might actually mourn her.
“Yes, Myles. Our mother is dead.”
Wynter
I woke up to buzzing. There’d been a storm last night that was moving southeast. The blankets over my head muffled the vibrating of my phone, but when I shoved them off and blinked at the screen, I saw a list of missed calls, all from one number.
Myles?
I sat up. He was calling me. After months of wishing to see his name flash on my screen, I was frozen. The phone buzzed again. I squinted at the time. It was one fifteen in the morning.
Confused, elated, and afraid I was dreaming, I answered. “Hello?”
“She’s dead, Wynn,” he slurred. “Fucking dead.”
Dread filled my veins. Had tough Mrs. Crane passed away? Or, and this was coldhearted, had the thought of finding a new assistant who could put up with him driven him to drink? “Myles, are you okay?”
“She’s dead.” He let out a caustic laugh. “I never thought she’d die. I didn’t even hope for it. But she’s dead, and god help me, I’m happy and sad and—I have fucking brothers I didn’t know about.”
Frowning, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. He wasn’t making sense and that wasn’t Myles. “I’m sorry—who passed away?”
“My mother.”
Oh. Oh no. Poor Myles. I didn’t know a thing about his mother. I had chalked his silence about her up to a premature death either before he’d been removed from his childhood home or shortly after. But she’d been alive until now? How close had they been? “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. She was an awful person who kept trying to get drug money from me.”
The phone calls and messages. His caustic mood afterward. He’d kept it all to himself.
“And she kept the fact that I have two brothers from me. Bitch.”
The recognizable sound of ice tinkling in a glass caught my ear. “Myles, are you drunk?” I knew the answer, but how open was he willing to be?
“Yep,” he said, popping the p. “I’m fucking wasted. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“You’re not like that.”
“I hurt you.”
A drunk Myles was still too aware to lie to. “Yes, you did.”
“She’d have made your life hell.”
“You don’t know that.”
A heavy sigh gusted across the line. “Yes, I do, Wynter Kerrigan. I know exactly how she fucks with people in my life.”
He didn’t elaborate. “And your brothers?”
“Want nothing to do with me. I don’t even know their names.” More ice tinkling. “I don’t know how old they are. We have to have different dads, I know that.”
Had his dad passed? But talking about his father wouldn’t help him in this state, so I stuck to what he’d called about. “Can you meet them? When’s the funeral?”
“She shouldn’t get a funeral. There’ll be no one at her graveside anyway unless they’re looking for money or drugs.”
“Where did she live?”
“Bozeman,” he mumbled.
No wonder he’d been uptight and looking over his shoulder when we’d gone shopping and out to eat. Hurt resonated inside me. He hadn’t shared his paranoia with me. I stuffed my emotions away. Tonight wasn’t about me. “Do you need to come back—for closure or—”
“No. I can’t come back. And I can’t be with you. God, it’s fucked up that I called.”
“Why—”
“I’m a mess. You have a beautiful life, and you’re too fucking good for me. Trust me. I grew up thinking I deserved better, but when it comes to you, you deserve so much better than me.”
“Myles—”
“I’m sorry I called.” The line went dead.
I let out an indignant gasp. Of all the…I let out a growl, then shoved my hair out of my face. A drunk and grieving Myles was alone, hopefully in his loft and away from the stairs, and he thought he didn’t deserve me.
What a stubborn fucking man.
So what would I do about it?