One Love, Vol. 3 (Celebrating One Love)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Every time that large, colorful coin danced on Colton Kilner’s nimble fingers or flipped in the air above his head, Paisley Elderbach wanted to snatch it away from him and throw it into the sour mash. It could be the new whiskey flavor for Belle’s Medicinal Brewery: Cent-sational Spirits.

Flip. Flip. Flip.

He probably didn’t even realize what he was doing.

But that didn’t matter. The large office, more window than wall, let in sunlight that flashed on the coin.

Their desks were so close together in the cramped room that the movement caught her attention, every time.

And Paisley’s contract work was suffering because of it.

Her friend and boss was going to think hiring Paisley for the practice audit was a huge mistake if she didn’t finish.

Speaking of her friend and boss. Brandi gestured at her from outside and held up a red lunch bag.

Paisley gave her a thumb’s up, then picked up her tablet and got her own lunch from the desk drawer.

“Leaving again?” Colton drawled as she passed by his chair.

“Anything to get away from you,” she answered, infusing her tone with as much cheeriness as she could muster. She usually wasn’t this bitchy. Why did he have to be so… so…

Rude. And antagonistic. And have these amazing steel blue eyes, and smell so damn good all the time, like the sunny outside.

He flipped the coin, and she snatched it from the air.

He quirked an eyebrow and held out his palm. She examined the coin, a patriotic red, white, and blue design featuring an eagle with a parachute.

Now she felt even worse, taking his military challenge coin.

Army Airborne, she’d guess, based on the design and the Fury From the Sky slogan she glimpsed on the back.

She handed it back, then skulked to the small kitchenette and poured herself the last of the coffee before joining Brandi at the picnic table outside.

Needing more caffeine was a common theme on days spent with Colton.

Woods surrounded the whiskey distillery and the outbuildings of Belle’s Medicinal Brewery, hiding it from the main road.

It was that distance that let the Clayton family keep it a secret during Prohibition.

And that same distance that let Brandi keep it secret from other family members until very recently.

Paisley brushed her skirt under her knees as she sat at the picnic bench.

The salad she packed that morning now looked decidedly uninteresting, but she’d make do.

Besides, her focus should be on how to give Brandi semi-bad news.

The earthiness of malted grain permeated the air around her and helped her settle.

“Okay.” Paisley handed Brandi her tablet.

“Keeping track of your new wine business while dragging your old whiskey business into the twenty-first century had to be grueling. I’m impressed with how well you and Colton and your business manager did.

There are just a couple of issues with missing files and a handful of unaccounted-for bottles. Here and here.”

“The ATF won’t be happy with that.” Brandi shaded the tablet from the sun looming over her shoulder and studied the dates in question.

“Actually, it’s the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. And that’s why you hired me.”

“At least they’re all missing from around the same time frame. Get with Colton on tracking all that down.”

Yeah. She’d get right on that.

Brandi handed back her tablet. “Now the fun stuff. Anything exciting happen on your date last night?”

“Nothing worth writing home over. He was nice enough, but nothing to sneeze at.” She poured the rest of her dressing on the salad. “At least he didn’t drop overused lines to try to get me into bed.”

“ ‘I’m in this to find a relationship,’ ” Brandi quoted a mutual blind date and the way that she and Paisley had met. “ ‘If you’re here to hook up and then never talk to me again, I wish you well, but I’m not for you.’ ”

“What a liar.” Paisley shook her head.

Brandi crumpled her food wrapper. “Sebastien asked to take me to dinner tonight. Can you manage without me?”

That could mean anything from the best biscuits in their small Georgia town to flying in a private jet to an exclusive restaurant in New York City. Being with a prince certainly had benefits.

“I mean, you’re the one who will be dragged away in handcuffs by the TTB if we don’t get this sorted out.

” Paisley wagged her eyebrows while taking another bite of her salad, spearing the hearts of palm and the chicken.

This job was freelance, so Brandi got the discounted friends and family rate.

“We should be fine, since this is just a check to ensure accuracy and compliance rather than an official audit.”

She’d been hoping to wrap everything up quickly, not wanting to spend any more time around Colton than necessary. But considering the two women met when going out on blind dates, Paisley could only be happy that Brandi found her mushpuppy in her longtime friend.

Happy for Brandi, that is. Paisley was still looking.

“You’re the best.” Brandi chucked her trash at the wastebasket. Of course it went in. She played softball with unerring aim.

Brandi swung her leg over the bench and headed to the outbuilding that held the wine equipment while Paisley toyed with her lettuce.

Finishing her lunch meant going back into the office.

She could appreciate Colton’s hunky hotness and organized productivity, but damn, something about that man just rubbed her wrong.

But they had work to do. Together. She finished her coffee, then put her containers back into her bag. Taking one more breath of the malty air, she went back into the office.

Her first task after putting down her tablet was washing out her coffee mug. She’d left it on the counter just once before someone tacked a note over the sink about cleaning up after yourself. Courtesy of guess who.

She didn’t hear his approach with the water running, but the sudden rush of charged awareness told her he had joined her in the kitchen. She kept her eyes on the faucet.

“Great,” he muttered. “I hope I don’t have to put up another note.”

Now what? “I have some stickies you can borrow.”

“Don’t need them. I prefer regular paper like an adult.”

A drawer closed with more force than necessary, and Paisley gave him a quick glance. He’d taken out a measuring cup for the coffee grounds. Because someone finished the last of the pot without brewing a new one.

Paisley put her cup in the drain and quickly walked away.

* * *

Colton pressed a button combination on his game controller to jump over the monster coming at him.

He didn’t know what kugel was, but the creature made with noodles-like savage tentacles coming at his bulked-up avatar gave him a small clue.

He held up his matzo shield to stop from being pelted by raisins.

“Duck!” the laughing, feminine voice in his ear said.

He ducked just before some raw eggs flew over his head.

“Thanks, River.” He maneuvered his avatar to a safe spot under a makeshift shelter and got up to refill his water. RiverTree’s patchwork dress-wearing avatar joined him while the kugel monster paced a few steps in one direction, then the other, then back again.

“Before the kugel monster throws eggs, you should see a fake mustache twitching on the screen,” she said.

“Of course I should.” He settled himself on the faux leather sofa in his small apartment, then made his avatar rummage through his picnic basket to see what he could use to battle pasta.

This is what he enjoyed about online games.

First, the anonymity. He and River have been gaming buddies for years but didn’t know each other in real life.

Not their real names or the town they lived in or anything else except that they were both in Georgia.

But they were still friends, and ones that didn’t carry around baggage.

Second, he could play the shoot-‘em-up games or intense strategic ones, but he enjoyed stressless low stakes, like in Schlimazel Showdown. After ten years in the service and a divorce that seemed to last longer than that, he’d had enough stress to last anyone three lifetimes.

Here, no one depended on him for anything more than his skill with a game controller.

Which was good. He just picked up more work at Belle’s—work that required being closer to Paisley—and that messed with his schedule.

“The Kugel Kombat level is one of my favorites.” River’s melodious voice came through his headset. “The first time I came across it, I looked up a kugel recipe and made it. It’s a little weird having a sweet noodle dish, but it was pretty good.”

Colton wanted to joke about her baking it for him some day, but that wasn’t the aesthetic of their online relationship. He wasn’t ready to face the consequences if they met and it somehow went sideways.

“How did you know about the mustache?” he asked as his avatar juggled some raisins.

“I sacrificed myself so I could watch the screen instead of the game. When it showed up three times in a row, I knew it couldn’t be coincidence.”

“You didn’t stalk BootScoot’s videos to see how he conquered it?” Colton teased, referring to the top player of the game.

“Weelllll,” River dragged out, making Colton laugh. “Maybe I verified it after I figured it out. Oh, his latest video? He got those latkes mixed and cooking in, like, thirty seconds!”

“I bet he used store-bought shredded potatoes,” he said. “Did you get that new gaming headset? I can hear you much clearer than last time.”

“I did! Thanks for the rec. You can tell me how much better I sound while we take down this monster.”

“Let’s get ‘em.” Colton replaced his knife with a fork from his basket.

“Nice.”

The pasta massacre began, with Colton catching tentacles around the tines of his fork and twirling them while River hit the monster with blasts of cinnamon. After a ten-minute battle of noodles and chaos, the last raisin bullet fell harmlessly to the ground and Kugel Kombat was over.

“Who-hoo!” River cheered. “Score one for the good guys!”

Colton caught a glimpse at the time. A little after eleven. He had to hit the rack soon, needing a full eight hours to keep his guard up around Paisley tomorrow. “Before you go - how was the visit with your brother?”

She sighed. “My sister-in-law can’t understand how someone can be happy and single. Grace keeps telling me about coworkers’ brothers and friends’ cousins that she could set me up with.”

“You’re always going on dates.”

“I’m happy being single, but not staying home every night like you, wallowing in smug self pity.”

Colton had to laugh. His ability to pick up a woman was just fine, as long as they knew he wasn’t in it for the long haul. “You know that’s not it.”

“Okay, fine. I’m not desperate. If I find someone, so much the better. Being alone is better than using a dating app and being set up with some guy who asks you out as soon as you join. That way, no one has a chance to warn you off him yet.”

“Just dodge her setups like you did the eggs.” He toyed again with the idea of meeting in person. But no. Their platonic online relationship was one of the best relationships he ever had. Meeting would give it a completely different dynamic that would be hard to recover from.

“And get this,” River continued. “Grace is already pregnant. My mom flipped out. She’s in full baby fever mode. I’m getting ready for her to tell me to get inseminated so she can have more grandkids.”

“Sounds horrid.” He and his ex never had kids.

“Grace was pretty insistent about this one guy. I’ll probably go out with him to shut her up.”

“Here’s the secret, if you’re doing the boring dinner and a movie.” Colton got up and stretched his arms overhead, his back cracking in three places.

“Don’t?” River asked.

Colton laughed. “See the movie first. That way, if conversation runs dry at dinner afterward, at least you’ll have something to talk about.”

“Sounds like the voice of experience,” River said. “So maybe you aren’t wallowing every night.”

“Not interested.” Except in Paisley, but that was more of a challenge to his life than a passing interest. She probably left the coffee pot empty on purpose to get under his skin. His attraction to her didn’t make sense.

Paisley was messy. Not dirty, but chaotic and cluttered, especially for someone where organization was crucial to the job. How she kept track of everything was a fascinating study in contradictions that made his brain hurt.

“Trotter? Hello? These damn headphones,” River complained.

“I hear you fine.” Colton cleared his throat. “But I do have to go.”

“Good night!”

Colton disconnected, rubbing his ears after taking off his headphones. Paisley was a puzzle he couldn’t work out, but she’d be out of his life once they tracked down those missing bottles. A tickle in his gut said that wasn’t what he truly desired.