Chapter 32
Ash
“You know,” Luna says, chin propped on her knuckles, “most humans blink once in a while.”
“So do I.” I blink once, slow, smirking.
“But you’re still staring.” Her hand makes a small circle below her neckline, right where my gaze has taken up residence.
“Multitasking,” I say, and drag my eyes up to hers, slow. “Someone has to keep an eye on the most dangerous things in the room.”
She levels the librarian look at me over the rim of her glass, but the corner of her mouth has already lost the fight.
In my defense: the dress. It molds her breasts perfectly, and the emerald green against porcelain skin and ink-dark hair ought to come with a warning label. When she stepped out of our bathroom two hours ago, I swear she erased the English language straight out of my head.
I’ve recovered maybe half my vocabulary since. Inconvenient, given that tonight we need to sell a very rich man on our cider without ever once pitching it, and I’m going to need every word I own.
“Earth to Ash.” She’s smiling. “Anyone in there?”
“No.” There are lines for this. I know a hundred of them, and not one survives contact. “You’re the most breathtaking person I’ve ever seen.”
It comes out with no polish on it at all. Her breath catches, quick.
“Okay,” she says. “Well.” Her eyes travel down my collar, sweep across my shoulders, and snag on my hands before taking their sweet time coming back up.
It really doesn’t help that this place has no scent-suppressing diffusers (they see it as a part of the vibes).
“The suit is also performing,” she says, her voice dropping half a register.
“And if we didn’t have a billionaire to land tonight, I’d... ” She catches herself, biting her lip.
“Trust me,” I say, and I let my eyes finish her sentence for her. “Me first.”
Three tables away, Warren Holt is holding court.
He’s bigger than his photos. A heavyweight gone comfortable, with a watch that could refinance the orchard’s equipment and a laugh that screams wealth. Four guests orbit his table and laugh on cue. He’s telling stories, and I’d bet money they’re about his genius business discoveries.
I don’t take pitches, I take walks.
So tonight, Warren, we built you a walk.
Between Luna and me, in a silver bucket the Cormorant Room’s staff kindly provided, sits a bottle the place has never sold (with two empty, polished glasses beside it).
Dark amber, gold lettering on the shoulder.
Hollow Gold. Ours. The waiter who hauled the ice believes it’s an anniversary gift.
And the leather menu folder at my elbow is one page heavier than it’s supposed to be.
Luna’s eyes flick to Holt’s table and back.
“Ready?” she breathes.
I tip my head a quarter inch. “Let’s do this.”
“No. No, I’m not letting this go.” Her voice has climbed a notch, enough to carry a few tables while still sounding natural. We calibrated it this afternoon against the café noise. She was a frighteningly fast study. “You cannot seriously consider handing our cider to Meridian.”
“They’re the biggest distributor on the coast, Luna.” I lean back so the exasperation reads from a distance. “Four thousand stores. They’re offering to put our bottles in four thousand stores, and you want to tell them we’ll think about it.”
“Because they’d shelve us at ankle height, down with the bargain stuff.
” She bangs her first on the tablecloth.
“And they called us, remember? They need craft cider on their list to look interesting. We’re the ones who get to be choosy, and you want to give that up for the thrill of being everywhere. ”
“Being everywhere is the point of making cider,” I say.
“Cascadia would sell twice as many bottles at twice the price.” She leans in. “And we’d be the only cider they carry.”
“The only cider they carry, but we’d never be allowed to sell through anyone else again. That’s not a partnership, that’s a leash.”
“It’s a moat.” Her chin comes up. “It keeps everyone else out.”
A chair scrapes, three tables away.
I keep my eyes on Luna. Her pupils flare: incoming.
“Forgive me.” Deep voice, unhurried. Warren Holt stands at the end of our table, Scotch in hand, dinner jacket open. “I keep a strict policy about staying out of people’s arguments.”
A beat, while he swirls the glass. “But I make exceptions when both sides are wrong.”
Luna gives him two degrees of frost. “I’m sorry, wrong about what, exactly?”
“May I?” He’s already turning the chair.
There it is. I arrange my face into reluctant courtesy. “Please.”
He settles in, glass first.
“Meridian will put you in four thousand stores,” he says, “and bury you on the bottom shelf of every one of them, next to a house brand with an apple cartoon on it. Cascadia will make you precious, boutique, and permanently small. I’ve run distribution from both ends, and neither offer is a strategy.
One’s a burial, the other’s a terrarium.
” He takes his sip. “Which brings us to the only interesting question at this table. What in God’s name is the cider you’re talking about? ”
Right then, a waiter glides in on my blind side and reaches for the menu folder.
My lungs quit.
But Luna’s palm lands flat on the leather, easy. “Oh, could we get three waters when you have a moment?” She beams up at him. “And tell whoever chose tonight’s music they have excellent taste.”
The waiter glows, bows, evaporates. Luna didn’t hesitate for so much as a syllable. Damn, she’s good.
“We’re talking about this cider,” I say, reaching for the bucket. “Care for a taste?”
“I never say no to a hidden gem.” He parks the Scotch to one side and plants his forearms on the table, settling in.
I lift the Hollow Gold out of the ice, wipe it down, and pour two fingers into a fresh glass, slow.
Holt lifts the glass to the candle, checking the color. He noses it once, then twice, before taking a drink. The second sip chases the first before he’s even finished swallowing, his eyes closing as he savors it.
The table goes very quiet.
“Where,” he says, eyes still shut, “has this been.”
“Page two,” Luna says sweetly, and slides him the menu.
He flips the folder open, and there we are, printed crisp between the champagnes and the dessert wines, right at home. Hollow Gold. Dry orchard cider.
“They list it,” he says slowly, “and I have never tasted it.”
“To be fair,” Luna says, “it only went on the menu today.”
You can watch the whole story assemble itself behind his eyes in real time: the night he walked into his favorite lounge in the city and stumbled, personally, into a rare find.
Take the walk, Warren.
“Tell me everything,” he says, turning his chair another inch toward us. “Start with why I’ve never heard of you.”
“I’m sorry.” Luna sits back an inch, apologetic smile in place. “Who are you, exactly?”
For one second, the question just sits there. I’d guess nobody has asked it of him in fifteen years.
Playing hard to get, nice one. I keep my eyes on my glass so Warren won’t read the pride in them.
Then he laughs, short, and offers a hand across the table. “Of course. Forgive me, I got ahead of my manners. Warren Holt.” One beat, precisely timed. “Forbes ran a profile a few years back. The bars, the hotels. You may have come across it.”
“Oh.” Luna’s eyes widen on a small delay. “That Warren Holt.”
I take the hand. “Ash Miller. My partner, Luna Sae.” Her eyes flick to me at partner, one warm fraction of a second. “It’s an honor to have you at our table, Mr. Holt.”
“Warren, please. Mr. Holt is what my lawyers call me.” He picks his cider glass back up, settles deeper into the chair, and tips the rim toward the bottle in its ice.
“Now. This remarkable cider of yours. I want the story, all of it, from the first tree. Start with how something this good stays a secret.”
The honest answer is that we’re a few bad weeks from losing all of it. The answer jams behind my sternum, and my smile holds with nothing behind it.
Half a second. That’s all the silence she allows.
“Because until this year, we never needed anyone to hear of us.” Luna leans in, conspiratorial. “Every glass of cider in our town pours from our barrels. We sell out by Christmas without printing a flyer. Twelve hundred bottles this season, sixteen hundred if the late press behaves.”
Somewhere low in my chest, my Alpha gives a long, appreciative whistle. That’s our omega.
“Hm.” Holt’s thumb circles the rim of his glass. “And the orchard?”
This part is mine, and it costs me nothing, because every word of it is true.
Three brothers on land our family has worked for generations.
The hollow that goes gold for two weeks every October, when the sun drops low enough to come straight up the rows.
That’s the name, that’s the bottle, the whole valley poured out at once. I give it to him straight.
Holt listens with his elbows on the table, and, somewhere in the middle, he stops being a rich man being entertained, and the math starts showing in his face.
“What are your current offers?”
Everything in me goes quiet.
“With respect,” Luna says, unhurried, “those companies trust us to keep the details private, and we aren’t going to sit in a bar and gossip about their terms.” A small smile. “Besides, if we leaked them, what would that say about our character?”
The silence stretches one beat, two...
Holt barks a laugh loud enough to turn heads at his own table. “Touché. If you’d given me names, I’d have finished my drink and wished you luck with the apples.”
Luna smiles.
Holt sets his glass down and turns it slowly on the cloth, watching the gold move.
“Here’s what I know,” he says, finally. “This is best cider I’ve put in my mouth in ten years, which is saying something.
Now, I say your suitors had their chance and what they offer is obviously not working out for you.
But if you were to make a deal with me, I can guarantee you’d be very happy about it. ”
Neither of us speaks. I keep my face completely blank, and Luna doesn’t even blink, letting the silence stretch.