Page 18 of On the Rocks

“You bet.”

“I keep hearing big things about this lab.” I hated to admit I was impressed so far, but I was really waiting to be wowed.

Janine smiled, and the elevator opened to a floor bustling with activity. It immediately reminded me of a beehive.

“Cora!”

I turned at the sound of my name, grinning as I spotted a familiar face. “Allie!”

She walked over. “I see Janine’s got you started on the tour. All finished with the mandatory stuff?”

“She means the boring stuff,” Janine stage-whispered to me. “And yes. She’s all yours.”

“Perfect.” Janine headed off, and Allie steered me into the chaos. “I thought I’d pop by to introduce you to the team you’ll be working with myself.”

“That’d be great.”

She led me past rooms filled with sleek, stainless steel workstations and equipment. There were technicians clad in lab coats bent over experiments.

“We obviously have multiple projects running at once,” Allie said. “To enhance flavors, refine production processes. All that good stuff. We’ve got tanks where different blends are monitored and tested for optimal taste profiles.”

The air smelled of fermenting spirits, and the hum of analytical instruments reached my ears. The buzz of excitement replaced the nerves in my gut.

“But this is where you’ll be working,” she said as we turned a corner, entering a large room. Off to one side was a conference table, the wall adorned with charts and graphs and tasting notes. “Morning, team.”

A group of people whirled around as Allie stepped forward, introducing me.

“I’d like you all to meet Cora Newport. You might better know her as the Masked Mixer. Cora, these are your product developers.” She started pointing out the team. “You’ve got Dorothy.”

“Call me Dot,” a petite, young woman said, rushing over, practically squealing. She latched onto my hand with both of hers. “Big fan. I mean, like massive. I’ve watched all your videos at least a dozen times. Maybe more than a dozen.”

“Reign it in, Dotty,” a man said, patting her on the shoulders. “Hey, I’m Javeed. Also a fan, though I’ll try not to make a big deal out of it.”

“And you’ve got Chris over there,” Allie said, pointing out a man wearing a massive pair of headphones. He had his back to us, hunched over the conference table, furiously writing in a notebook.

“He’s in the zone,” Javeed said, indicating the headphones.

“He is not to be disturbed when he’s in the zone,” Dot whispered.

Something must have caught his attention, because Chris looked over, his eyes widening, and he whipped off the headphones. “Was no one going to tell me she’d arrived?”

“You were in the zone,” Javeed said, making air quotations with his fingers.

“The zone can be disturbed for this.”

“Oh, sure,” Dot said, “but when the fire alarm is going off, it’s all, ‘Don’t bug me, it’s probably just a drill.’”

“Well, statistically, it most likely is a drill,” Chris reasoned, coming over to join us. “But how often does the Masked Mixer show up to our place of employment?”

“Now that introductions are out of the way,” Allie said, nudging my shoulder. “I guess you’ll want to see that state-of-the-art lab I promised you.”

I laughed. “I’m worried I’ve built it up too much in my head.”

“Only one way to find out,” she said, grinning. Dot, Javeed, and Chris led the way.

I followed them into the lab, and my jaw dropped. I was glad Aiden wasn’t around. I wasn’t sure I could have concealed my reaction, and he would have been a smug bastard about it. Everywhere I looked, there were more of those stainless steel workstations and high-tech fermentation chambers and precision-controlled distillation columns.

“The fermentation chambers are temperature and humidity controlled,” Javeed said.

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