Page 95 of Whiskey Kisses

I gaze up into his eyes, one clear and green, the other bloodshot, black and blue.

“Do you trust me?” he asks again.

“Yes,” I whisper, remembering the first time he asked me that. It was right before our first time.

“Good.” He kisses me. It’s been a couple of days since we reallykissed, and tonight he tastes like whiskey and true love. Because that’s what he is—my first, only, and truest love.

“Hey,” I whisper, catching his hand as he rises to go. “Have you spoken to Lucky lately?”

“I talk to him all the time.” He cocks his head. “Why?”

“Just something your mom said. I hope he’s doing okay.”

“Mm, you mean what happened with Bria,” he says quietly, running his hands through his hair. “And the baby. I think … he’s okay. They’re just processing right now.”

“Areyouokay?” I ask. It didn’t occur to me that he’d be sad, but of course he is. He loves Liam so much—he’d love any kid of Lucky’s.

Nodding, he leans down and brushes another kiss across my lips. “Trying to be. There’s a lot going on right now.”

There’s no way I can sleep after he leaves. My mind whirls with thoughts of my dad, Tristan, babies, the business.You ever hear anything about a silent distillery?His question from the other day floats up from the sediment of my mind, so I google the phrase. Huh. I could see my family having something like that. I reach for the documents on my nightstand, flipping through them. We were especially curious about the one with all the coordinates, so I pull up a maps app on my phone and start plugging them in. Some locations are unsurprising: my old house, the distillery as well as the adjacent plot of land, the warehouse over by City Market. One leads to a location on River Street that has no significance to me, but we can look into it.

The last set of coordinates, however, catch me off guard because they’re right here at Aunt Myrtle’s estate. I stare at the map on my phone, zooming in until a satellite image of this very house pops up. Interesting. Aunt Myrtle might not have gotten along with my father, and she lived quite independently of the distillery and what came with it, but she was still close to the rest of the family. She was still a Doyle. She grew up in that world, and she grew up in this very house, which has been in our family for generations.

Is that why the estate is included on this list of coordinates? I don’t even know where to start, who to ask. Daddy might not have even known about the coordinates—after all, they were buried within a sheaf of papers so old that I had to peel them apart, mindful not to tear the delicate, slightly mildewed paper.

Frowning, I zoom in a little more, scanning the bird’s-eye view map for clues. There’s the house, the garden and its little shed, and the old orangery in the woods out back, abandoned since the fifties. I used to love it, loved making believe in its sad, once-majestic grandeur.

I lie back against the pillows, finally feeling drowsy. It’s been at least a decade since I visited the orangery, but glimmers of memories flash through my mind like fireflies, just out of reach.

In the morning, after a night of restless, broken sleep, I arise and dress in the dark, not wanting to disturb Tristan. God knows when he finally made it to bed. Shrugging into a jacket, I let myself out into the backyard, my breath pluming in the freezing air. Leaves have been falling for the past couple of weeks, and some of the trees are nearly bare.

It would be easier to do this when the sun comes up, but with daylight comes the likelihood of people asking what I’m doing, and I’d rather look into this privately. So, I turn on my phone’s flashlight and walk toward the brambles at the back of the yard, which thicken into a tangle of woods beyond the property line. Shining my light around the ground, I find a stone pathway, barely discernible beneath the dense underbrush. Aunt Myrtle didn’t like me venturing back here. There were snakes, she warned, ticks and brown recluse spiders.

Hoping it’s too cold for critters, I push forward through the brush until I come upon the pale brick and glass structure. It’d been abandoned for decades by the time I discovered it as a kid, and now it’s even more decrepit, partly covered by briars, vines, and Spanish moss. Rusty iron framework surrounds the glass panes of arched windows that are all either missing or cracked.

Saying a prayer that I’m on the right track, I enter through a doorless entry flanked by stone pillars. I step carefully over the broken terracotta tiles that make up the floor, beaming the flashlight around until I spot a rickety wooden bench leaning against one wall. Pushing it aside, I squat down and open the floor hatch hidden beneath, revealing the steep, narrow steps that lead to the orangery’s cellar.

Once, when I was nine or ten, Mama smacked my backside for fooling around in here. I wasn’t supposed to even be in the orangery, let alone playing around the cellar, and she was terrified I’d topple down the steps and break my neck. I shiver, staring down into the inky depths. It’s pretty creepy, I must admit. But I’ve already come this far,and I need to check whether the contents below are what I think they are.

Holding my phone in one hand and a questionable handrail in the other, I begin my descent.Please, please don’t let there be any rats or snakes or bodies down here. After a minute, my sneaker hits more tiled flooring. I beam the light around the room, my breath catching when I spot the rows of wooden crates. Just like I remember. Heart pounding, I walk over and peer into the one I pried open with a hammer when I was a kid.

I’d been so excited to see what was in it, and then so disappointed to find nothing but a bunch of dusty, old bottles. I pull one of those bottles out now, carefully, grasping it by the neck as I blow it off. The label is faded nearly to the point of illegibility, but I can just make outGolden Stag Limited Batch #3. There’s no family crest, but I suspect that it’s exactly what we’ve been looking for.

The special edition whiskies of Doyle’s silent distillery.

By eight a.m.,I’m on my way to my attorney’s office downtown.

Tristan offered to take me, but I insisted on going alone—or with Timmy and Finn, the next best thing—since I’d be meeting Maribelle to discuss what we were going to do about the rest of Daddy’s estate. He didn’t leave a will, so things are a little hairy.

While it’s true that he didn’t leave a will and that it’s been problematic, I’m not actually meeting with Maribelle and my lawyer. Not today, anyway.

“You sure you’ll be okay?” Finn asks, parking outside the old, brick building that was once a textile mill but has been repurposed to house financial and law firms.

“Yeah, I just have to sign something. Shouldn’t take too long,” I assure him, climbing out of the SUV. Entering through the building’s double doors, I walk down the main corridor, bypassing a string of offices, and out to the street on the other side where Cole is waiting for me.

His navy blue truck looks brand-new, but he’s driven F150s since the day he got his license.

He looks around, briefly scrutinizing the building I just came out of, but when he sees that I really am alone, he smiles. “Evie,” he purrs, his gaze raking hotly over me as if he’s envisioning me naked.

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