18. Lindee
LINDEE
“Fix it! Now, please.”
Mikayla’s voice bounces off the old oak casks that line that hallway of the distillery rickhouse. She already sounds tense, and we haven’t even made our grand entrance into Spring Fling yet.
Oh boy…
I tighten my looped arm around Brandt’s and suck in a deep breath, trying to find…something. Comfort? Support? The ovaries to continue to walk in there and not turn tail to head back to my place? All of the above, I guess.
Placing his hand on my arm, Brandt gives me a little squeeze, providing exactly what I need. Something that is nameless and fleeting, while being easy and weight-lifting. Some weird magic that only he possesses.
We continue our way down the hall, stopping short of where Kyra is standing with her husband, Davis, in front of a panicked Mikayla. Rylan and his best friend, Declan, are off to the side, snickering. Oh…that ought to be good.
“I don’t know what I’m fixing,” Kyra responds, seemingly already out of patience.
“I don’t know what happened or which one of you did this,” Mikayla replies, holding her phone out and shaking it at Kyra. She throws a glare at the boys, who aren’t even trying to hide their amusement at her annoyance. “But there are dinosaur sex toys in my feed! Make it go away!”
The way she harshly whispers sex toys, as if we’re not all adults here or somehow might not know what a dildo is, might be the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time.
Unlike my brother, though, I’m able to stifle my laugh.
Barely. Either way, it’s enough that she doesn’t notice our arrival, still focused on trying to thrust her phone at our little sister.
“You must have clicked on something,” Kyra offers. “Or searched for…”
“I did no such thing!”
Another burst of laughter comes from the boys—this time Davis joining in—which earns all of them a nasty look. Don’t blame her there. If I were in her shoes, I wouldn’t find their amusement funny either. I am not in her shoes though, and this really is better than anything on TV at the moment.
“Try clearing your cache and browsing history,” Davis tries, managing to straighten up long enough to make the suggestion. “That should help delete whatever it’s pulling to make that suggestion.”
“Or you could take the hint the universe is giving you, Mickey,” Declan tosses out.
“Don’t call me that.” She sneers in his direction, as if that is somehow going to stop him from using the nickname she hates.
He’s done it for as long as I can remember, and I always figured at some point she would realize that he does it because she hates it.
But apparently not, because here we are in our thirties and it’s still going. “And just what would I do with that?”
“Want me to explain it to you?” Declan smirks, his dental ad perfect smile only adding to the effect. “I promise to go into great detail.”
“Ugggh.” Rolling her eyes, my older sister shoves her phone of Kyra, before turning on her heels and walking off. “Just fix it!”
Kyra looks around at all of us, shrugging. “I don’t know what she thinks I’m going to do.”
“At this point, I’d buy her a cockasaurus if I thought it would help,” Rylan comments.
“I’d go with the Tyrana-wreckapuss if I were you,” Declan tacks on, reducing them both to laughter again.
Next to me, Brandt breaks down, joining in with them. His laughter is deep and rich, filling me with a warm sensation not too dissimilar to when I take that first sip of Tennessee Trouble. The difference here is that I can listen to Brandt all night and not end up with a hangover in the morning.
Just potentially a broken heart later on…
“Brandt Rawlins!” Rylan exclaims, loud enough that I can promise that Mikayla heard it wherever she is in this hallway. The storage area we’re congregated in while waiting to make our entrance isn’t that big, despite the massive building, and sound carries like it’s an echo chamber.
“Hey, man.” Brandt unloops our arms, extending his hand to my brother. They shake hands, but in a relaxed way of two old friends rather than men who have only met once. That once being a rather tense business meeting. “Good to see you.”
“Same. Oh, I don’t think I actually introduced you at the Post,” Rylan says, pointing at his bestie.
At the Post? When were the three of them together at the Post?
“This is Declan Murry, our Chief Financial Officer and numbers wizard.”
“Hey, nice to officially meet you.” Declan shakes Brandt’s hand. “And before you ask, no, I’m not related. There’s no A in my last name. It’s just a coincidence.”
“One that made every teacher in our high school have to switch up their nice little alphabetical seating chart to separate these two so they didn’t goof off in class,” I say, helping bring Brandt into the fold. “And then this is Davis, Kyra’s husband and our local investment guru.”
“Hey,” Davis says, the guys greeting each other the same way as the others.
“So…” Kyra smiles mischievously, flipping her red curls over her shoulder. “Y’all here together?”
Thanks for that, Kyra.
I loop my arm back through Brandt’s and smile up at him. Right about now I should be feeling a mix of emotions, but there is only one. Happiness. Especially when he smiles back at me, waggling his eyebrows like he’s ready to shout all about us from the rooftops.
“We are,” I answer. “We’ve spent some time together while Brandt’s been in town, and I thought it might be nice to show him how a real brand throws a party.”
Brandt scoff laughs, shaking his head. “I deserve that…” he mutters, smile never wavering.
“Sweet,” Rylan replies.
Kyra gives me a look—one that is full of both pride and mischief.
She’s known for almost a week that I was bringing Brandt with me.
Hell, she squealed so loud when I told her I’m still surprised that she didn’t break glass.
On top of the excitement though, she knows how nervous I’ve been to soft launch this…
whatever it is. Relationship? Can we call it that?
It no longer feels like a fling, but that doesn’t make it a relationship.
“Okay, are y’all ready?” Mikayla asks, returning out of nowhere. She’s tugging on satin elbow-length gloves that match her midnight-blue dress perfectly, not paying attention to anything else. To anyone else it might come off as selfish, but I know her. She’s nervous.
When our parents turned Tennessee Trouble over to the four of us, we knew it was a big responsibility.
We’ve been preparing for this our whole lives.
None of us more than Mikayla though. This distillery is her life.
She loves it more than anyone I know—me included.
Keeping our traditions alive and well is the kind of thing that keeps her up at night.
Traditions like our grand entrance into Spring Fling.
It started as a joke at the first Spring Fling in the 1980s, when our father suggested that he and my mother enter the event doing the Hokey Pokey.
The way he tells the story, the idea came to him in the moment, and he laughed through the entire suggestion.
Until Howard Brennan, the president of the Ol’ Troublemakers that year, very seriously responded with “the chicken dance would be more appropriate for springtime.”
And thus, my parents entered the party doing the chicken dance. And have every year since, until last year when my siblings and I officially took on carrying the torch. Or, well, wing flapping if you will.
“Time to get this show on the—”
Mikayla stops dead in her tracks, frozen hand still tugging at one of her gloves. Her eyes go wide as the color drains from her face, and I don’t even have to guess what is going through her mind.
“What the fuck is he doing here?”
Right on time…
“Nice to see you again as well, Ms. Murray,” Brandt drawls without skipping a beat, turning up the charm.
Out of the corner of my eye I can see the rest of my family watching—waiting—to see how Mikayla reacts. Not that it will change their opinions. But it will without a doubt set a tone for the evening. Tension between the four of us is not the vibe we’re after. Ever.
“Brandt is my date for the evening,” I tell her, doubling down. Because why the hell not? I’m owning this.
She may be the oldest of the family and the CEO of the company, but she’s not the boss of me.
Even at work. We own equal shares of the company, so she doesn’t get to overrule my vote.
If there is ever an even split in opinion, Declan is our tiebreaker.
And she most certainly doesn’t get to tell me how to manage my personal life.
Not that that’s ever stopped her from trying.
“D-d-date?” she chokes, gaze flying back and forth between Brandt and me. “Wh…I mean…wh…”
Apparently I’ve rendered her speechless. That’s a first. One that feels damn good.
I stand a little taller, puffing out my chest, a newfound pride rushing through my veins. Next to me, Brandt straightens up as well, holding out his elbow to me. I take it, the emcee’s voice coming through the wall announcing our entrance and cueing the music. Leaving no time for an argument.
“C’mon, Mickey, they’re playing our song,” Declan quips, throwing an arm around her and directing her toward the door.
“Declan, I swear to God himself…”
“If you want, I’ll even sing the words.”
“Declan!”
I snicker, unable to hold back. The only person in the world who could distract Mikayla in this moment is Declan. Like the extra brother we never wanted, he knows how to get under her skin like no one else on this planet.
“I say this with all the confidence of a straight man,” Brandt whispers in my ear. “That might be the best looking man I have ever seen in my life.”
Laughter rises up in me so fast I almost choke. I was not expecting that comment.
“Well, he was the poster child for Tennessee basketball for a while. Probably could have gone pro if he hadn’t ruptured his Achilles senior year.”