Johnny
The Due North Tasting Room hadn’t been part of the plan when I started the distillery—it had seemed like a silly extravagance, nothing necessary—but it had ended up becoming an important part of the business.
People didn't want to come all the way up to Michigan; they wanted to stay in their fancy penthouses or visit nightclubs with a view.
That was fine by me, if it meant they kept paying.
The tasting room was in a ritzy strip of bars and restaurants in River North, upscale, exposed timber and brick with leather furniture and a small bar.
I'd hired Sloane Maitland to handle the events side of things about two years back, when it became clear that running a distillery and running a social calendar were two entirely different skill sets.
Sloane was good at her job in that slightly terrifying way event planners usually were—organized to the point of clinical, never flustered.
She was thirty-two, short and curvy, and shocked damn near everyone she met with how she managed to command a room anyway.
She was waiting when I got to the tasting room, tablet in hand, reading glasses on, standing in the middle of the main floor. Sloane barely looked up over the tops of her glasses, then back at her tablet.
“You’re late,” she said.
“People keep telling me that.”
“Because it’s unusual,” she said. “And you’re distracted—I watched you ride by the parking garage twice before you remembered where you were going. Getting senile already?”
I snorted and shook my head. “No, Sloane. My brain is functioning just fine. And maybe I just thought you could handle Dean Russo on your own.”
“He likes you better,” she said, moving to the bar to put her tablet down.
“Because he knows he can haggle with me,” I said, joining her and putting my bike helmet next to her tablet.
“Because he likes you,” she said. “We keep clients because the clients who want to work with you get to work with you. It’s how we stay in business.”
“I’ll trust your judgment on that,” I said.
I went around the bar and pulled out a bottle of the Reserve batch, already open and breathing. We only kept a limited stock here; most of the time it sat empty, outside of events and the rare launch party for a new batch. “Want one?”
“Yes please.”
I poured two, then glanced over at the door.
“He should be here in…what? Five minutes?”
“Mmhm.” Sloane looked up at me, eyes narrowed. “Seriously, there is something different about you today. I can’t place it.”
I hummed, trying to write it off. Couldn’t possibly be the fact that I’d spent the night with Poppy last night; afterglow wasn’t a real thing, right?
“You got laid,” Sloane said with a short laugh. “Holy shit.”
“You have no way of knowing—”
“You have a hickey on your neck,” she said, pointing.
I reached up, finding the spot tender, and Sloane laughed louder.
“My god. Aren’t you like…sixty?”
“I’m forty-five.”
“Too old for hickeys.”
“Nobody’s too old for hickeys.”
“Debatable.” She picked up her glass, clearly delighted by this turn of events. “Who is she?”
“Nobody you know.”
“Obviously nobody I know, I don’t know anyone who could give you a hickey and survive the experience.” She took a sip of her whiskey, hissing out a breath as she swallowed. “But…you actually had a successful date with that matchmaking thing? You gonna settle down and start having kids?”
I gave her a look.
“You are,” she said. “Well—tell me about her.”
“This is really none of your business.”
“It becomes my business when you’re running late for meetings and distracted,” she said.
“I’ll try to be less distracted, then.”
The bell over the door chimed and we both turned to see Dean Russo walking in, wearing a perfectly tailored suit, his black hair smoothed back with not even a single strand out of place.
“John,” he said, crossing the room and shaking my hand with a firm grip. “You look well.”
“You too.”
“And Ms. Maitland,” Dean said, reaching out to shake her hand too.
She took it with a deeply professional smile and a nod; didn’t show even a little bit that she didn’t like him.
It wasn’t a matter of anything personal…
she always just said that he was stiff around women, like he didn’t quite know how to be anything but overly courteous.
“We can take a seat by the fireplace if you’d like,” Sloane said. “Talk details, guestlist, et cetera. Would you like a glass of whiskey?”
“Of course,” Dean said. “Thanks.”
I poured him a glass, then brought my own over with his as I joined them in the sitting area by the fireplace. The flames crackled, light glancing off the shiny black leather every so often.
Dean took the glass, settled back in the chair with the ease of a man who'd learned to make himself at home in any room, and did the thing he always did — turned the glass, looked at it, sipped before speaking.
"Changed the finish," he said.
"Six more weeks in the secondary barrel."
"Better." He set the glass down. "The holiday event is confirmed on our end. Eighty guests, private buyout, same format as last year."
"We can do that," Sloane said, already making notes. "I'll send over the updated proposal by end of week—we've made some changes to the tasting flight structure I think you'll like."
Dean nodded at what Sloane said, then turned to me.
"Same setup as last year work for you?"
"Sloane runs the events," I said. "If she says we can do it, we can do it."
"Right." He glanced at Sloane briefly, then back to me. "The guestlist will be similar—mostly private clients, few government contracts. Security-adjacent crowd, they know their whiskey."
"We'll tailor the flight accordingly," Sloane said. "I was thinking we open with the small batch, move into the Reserve, finish on the single barrel. Gives the evening a shape."
Dean considered this, directing his response at me. "That work?"
I kept my expression neutral. "Sloane's call."
A beat. He looked at her, slightly recalibrating, like he'd only just registered that she was the one who'd made the suggestion.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m…being rude.”
Sloane looked up from her tablet. “You’re fine.”
She didn’t deny it.
I watched and didn’t interrupt.
“I keep redirecting to John when you’re the one running the meeting.” He said it plainly. Therapy talk—I could spot it from a mile away. “That’s a habit I’m working on.”
Sloane considered that.
“I appreciate it,” she said…then immediately moved on. “The flight structure I proposed works well for your guests. They tend to appreciate the progression.”
“Talk me through it,” Dean said.
This time, he looked at her when he said it.
That was progress.
Sloane walked him through the flight, the party, the guests and setup. Dean listened…asked good questions, pointedly directed them at her. I sipped my whiskey and watched, thinking about my own journey.
We all had steps to take. All had to grow before we were ready.
I hoped I was finally ready and that I wasn’t going to let Poppy down.
By the time they’d covered catering, setup, and the question of whether to add a second pour station—they did this every year, always landed on yes—Sloane had everything she needed.
She stood, shook Dean’s hand, said she’d have the proposal by Friday, and left just as efficiently as she did everything else.
Dean watched her go.
“She’s good,” he said.
“She’s excellent,” I said. “Has been since day one.”
He nodded, then picked up his glass and settled back into his chair—loosening up, which he did every time we met and all women left the room.
I refilled both our glasses without being asked.
“How’s business?” I asked.
“Good. Busy.” He turned the glass. “Government contracts picked up this quarter. I’m not complaining.” A pause. “My therapist says I should allow myself to complain more.”
I smiled. “Therapy, huh?”
He eyed me. “Been through it yourself?”
“I couldn’t have adjusted to civilian life after being inside a decade without talking to someone professional about it,” I shrugged. “Nothing to be ashamed of.”
Dean nodded.
I wasn’t sure if he was convinced.
“Started about eighteen months ago,” he said. “My sister basically staged an intervention. She said I was—her exact words were ‘emotionally unavailable in a way that’s starting to affect the people around you.’” He said it like it was true, not insulting. “She…wasn’t wrong.”
“I have a sister kind of like that,” I laughed. “Not by blood—but a sister anyway. And yeah, she’s usually right.”
"She's also been married twelve years and has four kids and thinks everyone should have what she has." He turned the glass. "I don't disagree with her. That's the part I can't explain to most people."
"What part?"
"That I want it." He looked at the fire.
"Men my age, my background—you're supposed to want to be out.
Building the empire. Accumulating. The family thing is supposed to be secondary, something you get around to.
" He paused, brow furrowed. "I don't want to get around to it.
I want it now. I've wanted it for fifteen years and I've been putting it in a box because nobody I met wanted it back the same way. "
I thought about Poppy saying three sounds okay with her head on my shoulder in the amber light.
"I know what that's like," I said.
He smiled slightly. “You met someone.”
“I did,” I said, then met his eyes. “You should reach out to Bloom Matchmaking. Sophie Bloom…she’s good. Their system works.”
“Really,” he laughed. “A matchmaker? My sister would never let me live it down.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Go anyway. The intake process alone is worth it.”
“How’s that?”
“You realize some things about yourself,” I said. “She’ll help you understand your strengths…your weaknesses. And sometimes she knows what you need and it’s not what you would ever expect.”
“So she’s a witch.”
I snorted. “The algorithm is, at least.”
Dean laughed. “Makes it worse, you know. My mother would say that God makes matches, not computers…but she’d also say I’ve been picky for too long and I should have listened to her about Maria Castellano back in 2009.”
“Should you have?”
“Absolutely not,” he laughed without hesitation. “Maria Castellano wanted a husband who came home at six and coached Little League. Nothing wrong with that. Just not me.” He paused. “That’s the thing. I know what I want—I’ve always known. I just haven’t found someone who wants it back.”
“Then tell Sophie that,” I said. “Exactly like that. She’ll know what to do with it.”
He peered at me.
“You trust her,” he said.
“I trust the system.”
“That isn’t as ringing of an endorsement as you think it is.”
“Believe me or not…” I shrugged. “Up to you.”
He nodded slowly, turning his glass one last time.
"I'll think about it," he said.
Which from Dean Russo meant he'd already decided.
I'd learned that about him over three years — the thinking about it was just the last step before the doing, the brief pause where he ran the decision through one final check. He didn't deliberate publicly. By the time he said anything out loud, the conclusion was usually already reached.
We finished our whiskey. Dean stood, straightened his jacket with the automatic precision of a man who'd worn a uniform for a decade and never quite stopped, and shook my hand.
"Good whiskey," he said.
"Always is."