Long Shot

TURN THE PAGE FOR A SPECIAL PREVIEW OF THE NEXT HIGHLAND GAMES NOVEL BY HANNA MARTINE Coming in Fall 2014 from Berkley Sensation!

Whiskey shouldn’t be untouchable, relegated only to a certain social level of drinker, but that’s exactly what Shea and her bottles were today, hidden away in a too-fancy tent on a small rise overlooking the heavy athletic field. An actual velvet rope kept most attendees away from the fine brown whiskey she served, and no one could enter who wasn’t wearing a one-hundred-dollar yellow wristband. Ridiculous for this kind of festival, but that’s what the organizers of this Highland Games wanted: a special place to send their VIPs, and any other attendee willing to pay for the “privilege.”

Shea just wanted to talk whiskey. Just wanted to serve what she loved.

Two couples ducked out of the bright sun and came in laughing. The taller husband, the one in a plaid, short-sleeved button-down shirt, was holding a set of stacked, empty beer cups. A Drinker, Shea pegged him, come in here chasing the buzz. The other man, the one in a blue T-shirt, headed right for Shea, nodding as though they already knew each other. He was either an Assumer—someone who thought he knew a lot about the good stuff—or a Brown Vein—someone who really did know.

Of the women, one wore a red visor that parked itself around her ears and extended far over her face. The other had a short blond ponytail. Neither looked particularly interested in why they’d come in here, though all four sported wristbands.

Shea spread her arms across the table and gave them all a welcoming smile. Didn’t matter why they came in. They were giving the drink a chance, and educating newcomers was one of her favorite parts of her job. Sometimes it was the best kind of challenge, to win over someone who’d been skeptical—a Doubter—or who had cut their teeth at age fourteen on ten-dollar bodega whiskey they’d snuck from their parents’ liquor cabinets.

“So what do these get us?” Drinker waved his yellow wrist.

Always genial, always polite. “Tastes of three amazing whiskeys and a walk-through of each, by yours truly.”

“That’s a big deal, my friend,” added the other man. To Shea he gave a small nod. “Saw you on the History Channel the other night.” He didn’t mention which special.

“Yeah? That’s always great to hear. Glad you came by.” She turned to her artful setup of bottles and swung back around holding a tray of glasses, flipping each over to slide across the white tablecloth with practiced ease. One, two, three, four—

A fifth yellow wristband appeared at the elbow of the man she was leaning toward pegging as a Brown Vein. This new wristband wrapped around an arm that was crusty with caked mud at the elbow, the fingers and palm looking like they’d tried to be wiped clean, but black still clung under the nails. Shea followed that arm, which widened out significantly at the biceps, upward to take in the newcomer’s red-and-black-striped rugby jersey. His short dark hair was sweat-damp and stuck out all over the place, his cheeks sunburned.

“Hi,” he said. “Do you remember me?”

She blinked at him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the wives nudge the other.

Shea remembered regular faces, especially those who repeatedly came in to the Amber Lounge in Manhattan, but with so many tastings and events and interviews these days, transient people tended to dissipate from her memory.

Yet there was . . . something . . . familiar about him. Something about the off-center, bright-white smile against the tanned skin layered with sweat and specks of dirt. But she couldn’t place it right away, and there were four other customers who needed her attention.

“I’m sorry, I don’t.” She was careful to hold on to the genial smile.

“I’m Byrne.”

A little cocky of him, but not quite obnoxious, to assume that she’d remember him based on one name. She didn’t.

“Shea Montgomery,” she replied, using the moment to swivel back around, reset the tray, and grab the first bottle.

“Yes, I know.”

The sound of his laugh, soft and low, slid an invisible hand around the nape of her neck, took a light hold, then dragged itself down her back. A delicious shiver. This did not happen to her while she was pouring.

People laughed in her bar every day, in tones exactly like Byrne’s, and it never gave her that reaction. She shook it off and faced her tasters, holding the eighteen-year-old blend. She poured a shallow tasting amount in each glass, starting with Drinker and ending with Byrne, who pushed his glass a few inches closer.

“Last summer?” he prompted.

She made the mistake of looking up, of getting a good, long look at his eyes. An almost-powder-blue with a dark blue ring around the edges.

“Up in Gleann, New Hampshire,” he continued. “That cow took down your tent. Me and my team helped you clean it up.”

The bottle slipped from her fingers. Just a few inches, but it made a graceless clink on the table.

He had a crooked smile that layered a boyish tint over his confident, intense focus on her, and softened the way he pressed his hipbones right up against the bar.

And that was far longer a personal assessment of any taster she ever allowed herself. Time to move on.

“Oh, yeah. Now I remember.” Cool as the breeze, that was Shea.

She purposely left Byrne, stepped to the middle of her set of tasters, and poured herself her own tiny glass. “Are we ready, folks?”

Drinker held up the small, squat stemmed glass. “Why not the flat-bottom glasses? What do you call those again?”

“These are better for nosing the whiskey. Here, hold the base like—” She didn’t mean to look over. Habit, really, to take in everyone at the tasting table, to make sure she had their attention and that they knew they were important to her.

Assumer—for that’s what she knew the second husband to be now—was grasping the glass underneath, holding it in his palm like a bowl. But Byrne already had the base balanced lightly in his fingertips. Correctly. As he set his elbow on the bar, the whiskey in his glass was as still as a windless hidden lake.

She ripped her gaze from him and focused on the couples. “Hold it like this.” She showed them how to hold the base of the glass and not grip the bowl like a Viking. “What we’re going to do first is nose the whiskey three times, each time slightly longer than the last. One second, two seconds, three seconds. I’m going to count. Why don’t you all watch me.”

The women shared a glance and laughed, and Shea wondered how many of those empty plastic beer cups were theirs.

“One.”

Shea lifted the glass to her face, inserted her nose, and inhaled.

The couples followed suit, and displayed pretty much the range of reaction she’d expected. Everything from I Don’t Give A Shit Let’s Drink, to Ew This Is Disgusting, to dramatic, chest-pounding coughing thanks to inhaling too deeply and too long. Assumer’s expression said that this was nothing he hadn’t already known.

And then there was Byrne. Nose in his glass for about a quarter second longer than was necessary. Powder-blue eyes lifted just over the rim. Set solely on her. He was feeding her some serious energy. Shouldn’t a rugby player have released all that on the field? And shouldn’t a rugby player be able to read the defense correctly? Who did he think she was? That she’d ever been affected by flirting from the other side of the bar? This flat surface in front of her where she daily poured out her heart was No Man’s Land. Quite literally.

“Should be different the second time, now that you’ve got the shock of the alcohol out of the way,” she heard herself saying. “It should be sweeter.”

The corner of Byrne’s mouth twitched, a hint of that crooked smile, then he buried his nose in the glass again, following her movements to the letter. Concentrating. Not looking at her. Black lines of dirt settled into the deep grooves of concentration along his forehead.

On cue, Assumer started spouting off to his companions a list of all the things he smelled in the whiskey, and while there were never any right or wrong suggestions as to specific scents—it was an entirely personal experience—he was messing with her rhythm.

“And the third?” Byrne asked Shea, cutting into Assumer’s thesaurus recitation. Assumer shut up, throwing a glance over his shoulder at the rugby player.

“On the third nose,” Shea said, “you should smell some fruit, going deeper into the intricacies of the glass.”

Her tasters followed her movements.

“Byrne! You done in there yet? Come on, let’s go!”

Byrne turned to the sound of the chorus of male voices. Outside in the sun, the rest of his team, muddy and disheveled in red-and-black, beckoned to him, laughing. No other rugby players wore yellow wristbands.

Byrne acknowledged them with his glass, then tasted what Shea had poured.

The brown liquid disappeared slowly into his mouth. His jaw worked it over for a good four or five seconds. Biting it, chewing it. Savoring it, as it should be done. Then he swallowed it back, his throat working.

Exactly the way she was about to instruct her newbies.

Byrne lifted his eyes to Shea without a hint of pretentiousness or flirting. “Excellent, thank you.” Then, with a nod to the other four people, he swiveled and left her tent.

He had a long stride, masculine but oddly graceful. A leisurely confidence to his gait. He also had ridiculous legs, and she was annoyed with herself for noticing. They were tanned and thick and strong, a distinct pronunciation to his quads. Goddamn it.

Outside, she watched him wiggle off the yellow wristband in a way that would have the organizers rethinking their purchase next year, should they have seen that. Byrne went over to a group of middle-aged adults spreading out a blanket next to the flag rope surrounding the athletic field. He tapped a woman on the shoulder, said something to her, then when she smiled and nodded, he offered her his hundred-dollar wristband.

Then he pulled three more brand-new ones out of his shorts pocket and passed them out to the others. As one of the men reached for his wallet, Byrne waved off any sort of compensation.

The four recipients of the new wristbands slapped them on, and Byrne headed back to his team.

As he passed by the roped-off outdoor seating of the whiskey tent, he turned his head and immediately, instantly found Shea. Found her staring.

She quickly ducked her head and wiped off an already-clean section of her serving table. But not before she caught a final glimpse of that crooked smile, far too bright in the sunshine.

That crooked smile promised a lot. Things she hadn’t allowed herself, or been afforded, to think about in a long, long time. Things that hit her right where she hadn’t been touched in an embarrassing number of months.

It disturbed her, to become disarmed while in uniform, so to speak. It disturbed her more that the man who’d done it was a taster, and quite possibly a Brown Vein. An absolute no-no. He wouldn’t win, though. She wasn’t one to ever back down from a good challenge. He had to know that even though he’d caught her staring, and even though she’d looked away like a virgin schoolgirl, it didn’t mean he’d won, or that he’d gained any sort of ground with her. She had rules to uphold, a business reputation to maintain.

But when she looked up to tell him all that with her cool expression and Stay Back eyes, Byrne was gone.