Page 40 of Kilt Trip

“I hate kickbacks.”

“Of course you do. Look, whisky is an enormous industry here. This is a great idea.”

“No.”

Addie lowered her voice like she was talking to a scared child. “It was one risk that didn’t pan out.”

“And cost me everything.” Logan pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“That’s a tad dramatic.”

“Jack and Reid left the business after that.”

“Oh,” she whispered.

“Reid realized how much he wanted to work in the whisky industry—he’s in a master’s program in Edinburgh right now and fixing up a distillery our grandfather inherited somewhere along the way. If I’d tried harder or known more...he would’ve loved running those tours. And we’d still be together like we’re supposed to be.”

“Would he have left eventually?” Addie spoke the question that snaked through Logan’s mind on quiet nights. Maybe.

Reid had spent his summers tinkering in the dilapidated distillery on the coast, only joining them on the tours after their grandfather passed. Even before he was old enough to drink, whisky had been in his blood.

Maybe there was nothing Logan could have done to make him stay. “I don’t know.”

He stared at the dim stairway light, hand gripping the rough edge of the carpeted stair. He’d never questioned if Jack and Reid wanted this as much as he did. Their future had always felt certain to him.

“And Jack?”

Jack. His leaving hurt even more. He had no burning desire to do something else, just a desire to not work with Logan. “It must have been the out he was waiting for. He said he couldn’t stand being on the road so much, and even though he’d taken on more of the business side, he never loved it.”

“It’s hard traveling for work. I have one close friend in Boston, and we get along because we both travel all the time. She gets the lifestyle. It’s not for everyone.”

Logan twisted the leather band around his wrist.

Addie sat up, reaching for him. She rested her hand lightly on his arm, her light pink fingernails curving toward his skin. Her thumb tracked slowly back and forth over the sensitive crook of his elbow, sending his pulse skittering. “I know what it’s like when someone who’s supposed to be there for you isn’t.”

When he met her gaze, her eyes were soft, but he could tell by the set of her jaw, the tightness in her shoulders, that while she empathized with him, she wasn’t giving him an invitation to dive into her past.

“It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have made them stay—shouldn’t have made them stay—if that’s not what they wanted.” She squeezed his forearm, not letting go. Addie was the last person he expected to comfort him, and also the only person who’d lightened this weight he carried. A glimmer of truth rang out in her words, and some of the tightness in his chest receded.

But he still couldn’t forgive himself for wrecking their family business. He couldn’t afford to branch out, to risk what was still intact. “I can’t live with myself if I destroy what we’ve built. Please don’t go to my dad. My tour is this week. Give it a fair shot.”

Addie twisted her necklace around a finger, lips pressed to one side. “Okay.”

14

Addie dragged Frank over the uneven sidewalks on the way to Logan’s tour and checked her text from Marc. Any updates?

A chill settled on her like the numbness of a foot asleep, promising the sting of pins and needles. For so few words, there sure were a lot of lines to read between.

She hated when he skirted the periphery of micromanaging, even if she should have sent a progress report by now. Should have made progress by now.

The wind pulled a strand of hair from her braid, snapping it across her face so it stuck to the corner of her mouth. Addie yanked it away and blew out a breath.

She’d told Logan she’d give his tour a chance, like he’d done for her. After Hogmanay at Gemma and Neil’s, Logan had joined her at the Loony Dook. She’d borrowed a flamingo floaty Elyse inexplicably had lying around, and Logan had surprised Addie by showing up in a costume. Granted, he’d dressed in a sheep onesie—complete with a bell around his neck—just to taunt her, but he’d still jumped into the freezing Firth of Forth with her and come up whooping like the rest of the Dookers.

She’d even snuck in a ghost tour after all. Since Logan only corrected the guide twice when the stories got sensational, Addie considered it a win. There was really no way she could skip out on his tour now, especially after he’d shared his family’s traditions and the reasons Jack had left the business. The way Logan’s shoulders had curled in, his voice turning raspy when he’d talked about Jack damn near broke her heart.

But she couldn’t mend the brothers’ relationship or change the past. Her job was the only thing she had control over. Sentimental stuff was very moving—but in this case, it was moving money out of the corporate bank account. The Heart couldn’t go on much longer with half-filled tours.

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