Page 24 of The Bourbon Bride

I wait at the valet for the car and smile when the Mercedes AMG G 63 rolls around the corner. It felt positively pedestrian and safe compared to his Maybach and Mercedes supercars, but it works for me as I have my own smaller, less expensive SUV, which really isn’t in the same category when compared to this high-end G-wagon. I cruise through Atlanta back to the house, singing along to the radio and feeling far better than I should for the events of the last twenty-four hours. Cerberus greets me at the garage door when I come inside with my bags.

“What does your daddy like to eat?” I ask him after taking my bags upstairs and changing into leggings and a soft, cream-colored sweater.

He tilts his head at me, and I laugh.

“Thanks for the help. Guess I’ll have to figure it out on my own.”

eleven

Hayes

I’vehadashitday. As promised, I traced the loose thread at the airport and had to fire a longtime employee because they got greedy and allowed someone where they had no right to be. I’m technically the CFO of Olympus International, but I’ve always been the one to carry out the hard decisions and punishments we put in place. It never gets easier having to let an employee go or shut down a business. I know what a job means to some and taking that away makes me feel heartless and cruel, even when it’s the best possible choice. We can’t have businesses hemorrhaging funds or employees who aren’t loyal.

Beyond that, I had to sit through hours of negotiations with a company we want to acquire in order to expand our precious metals mining capacities in overseas markets. We have mining operations throughout the world, but we saw a need to invest in the leading metals that are used in everything from computer chips to jewelry—platinum and palladium. Payton has led the negotiations up to this point on a few mines in South Africa, and he’s been working on this deal for months now, but pulled me in to secure the deal.

The fuckers are playing hardball, though, and aren’t giving up as easily as Payton had assured me they would. We’ve had to schedule more meetings this week to revise our contracts and meet certain demands while finding a way to get exactly what we want in the bargain. I was hoping this could have been finished today so I can focus on my next goal of a smooth rollout for phase two. That phase expands our business holdings to include the hospitality sector, which includes Paige’s daddy’s Xenios Group, among other small, privately held businesses. We want to corner the market on exclusive boutique properties, and the Fairchilds have the Eastern Seaboard locked down on that front. They’re the biggest hotel group we’re looking at acquiring, and everything hinges on their acquiescence.

All I want is to go home to my dog and have a glass of bourbon without interruption before I move on to getting Paige to fall for me. If I can work out the details of this marriage clause in her inheritance, maybe the hotels would come easier. So far, it doesn’t look like things would transfer the moment she is married, just that she has to be married in order to inherit the legacy. Small difference in wording, big difference in execution. Either way, I don’t think it would hurt to have her madly in love with me when I make the offer to her father for the Xenios Group.

Cerberus doesn’t meet me at the door when I walk into my house and I’m instantly on guard wondering what’s wrong. Has something happened to Paige? Could she have gone out with the dog and something, or more likely someone, have happened?

The smell of cooking wafting from the kitchen quickly allays those fears, as Cerb is likely right next to Paige where I want him, because that’s where the food is.

“Honey, I’m home,” I call out with a genuine smile on my face. I like the idea of coming home to someone who cares enough to cook for me. I’d never demand or even expect it, but this is an interesting change of pace from what I have available every week by the nutritionist who does my grocery shopping and stocks my fridge with professionally prepared food so I don’t have to.

I hear a clatter from the kitchen.

“Oh, damn!” Paige swears.

I think that’s the worst word I’ve heard out of her sweet Southern mouth, but I’m betting I’ll get a few more, eventually. I set my jacket on the metal banister of my floating staircase and head back toward the kitchen, following the noises coming from that direction. The sight that greets me has genuine belly laughter shaking my whole body in an instant. Cerberus’s normally sleek black fur is covered in flour as he licks up what I assume is a beaten egg from the slate floor. Paige is on her hands and knees, trying to beat him to the mess, but he keeps rotating his body to block her from his find.

“Cerberus, out,” I command. He leaves the mess on the floor and trots out of the kitchen to sit in the hall looking like a demonic ghost. I shake my head at him for being naughty, but watching him lick his chops trying to get the flour and egg mixture off his face is pretty hilarious and I laugh again.

“What happened in here?”

Paige peeks up at me from her knees, her hair falling down in dark ribbons around her face from the messy bun on top of her head. She blows a piece of hair out of her mouth and gives me a defeated look.

“You scared me, and I dropped the bowl of flour I was trying to throw away. Then I put my hand in the bowl of eggs and flipped it off the counter. Now I’ve got a dog ready to be baked into chicken cordon bleu and a mess on the floor.”

I cross the kitchen and grab a towel off the counter. I crouch down in front of her and pull her hand from the floor, taking her soiled paper towels and using mine to clean off her egg-covered fingers. Once her hand is clean, I pull her up with me.

“Forget the mess. It can wait. This can’t.”

I lean down and place my lips over hers as I hold her sweetly surprised face in my hands. What I meant to be simply a chaste kiss quickly takes a hot turn when she sighs against my mouth and opens her lips to flick her tongue out against mine. That’s all it takes to unleash every desire I have for her into the kiss, slanting my lips over hers and plunging into her mouth.

I pull back slightly as she stiffens, but she moves toward me for more and I comply. I worship her luscious lips, her tongue playing with mine curiously when I sweep through to taste her deeper. I let the kiss take on every strangled need I’ve felt for her in the past few days, taking a piece of what I’ve denied myself, and make sure she feels the intense appetite she stirs in me.

When I finally force myself to pull away from the hottest damn kiss of my life, her eyes stay closed and her lips are a reddened pout. Her eyes open lazily, a haze of lust settling over her face as she looks at me.

“Wow,” she manages in a husky whisper.

The sound of that one word has me dying to set her up on the counter so I can pull her against the erection that strains my slacks and dry hump her until she begs me to stop. The tone her voice takes when she’s turned on is my new favorite thing, and I want to hear her calling my name in that hot rasp.

“W-what was that for? You haven’t even had dinner yet, so it can’t be that I cooked for you.”

I lick the taste of her from my lips and swallow hard.

“Just how I wanted to say hello to you.”

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