Page 11 of The Barista's Beloved

“Sitting outside eating out of little foil packets is a whole separate kind of experience than the one Frankie’s offers.” Ben laughed. “There’s room in the world for both.”

“I agree, but I’m still not telling Max we came here.” Maeve popped the last bite of her taco into her mouth.

“What, you think I’m tattling? I don’t have a death wish.” Ben handed her a napkin from the pile he’d been holding down with his thigh to keep them from blowing away.

“Do we need to swear a vow of secrecy?” She wiped her hands.

“Definitely. Might need to make up a special handshake, even.” He finished his own taco and cleaned his hands. “So what’s your exciting news?”

She’d texted him a message that was mostly exclamation points when she’d left the office. “You won’t believe this. It’s the coolest thing ever.” She dug into her purse, found the magazine, and then handed it to him still folded over.

He uncurled the pages and stared. “This is you.”

She nodded. “Yep.”

He read the title. “Whiskey Times?”

“It’s the biggest industry publication around. They sometimes feature a couple of distillers and do interviews. My dad’s been in it a few times.”

“Not on the cover, though.” It was a question, but he didn’t make it sound like one.

“Not on the cover,” she agreed, satisfaction sweeping through her again.

His grin took her by surprise. She’d been running into him all over town, and as they’d talked about everything from their embarrassing friends to their childhoods, it had been easy to make herself forget just how attractive he was. Now, she felt her stomach twisting as a shot of pure arousal hit her straight in the pit of her belly.

She took a slow breath and returned his smile. Friends. We’re friends. He doesn’t do relationships, and I don’t do one-night stands, and even if I did I wouldn’t want to ruin this… what is this, anyway?

She had to train her body to think of Ben the way she thought of Max. Brotherly friendship. Her libido, unfortunately, wasn’t getting the message. Why Ben’s good looks did things to her insides that Max’s dark handsome features didn’t was beyond her.

“This is really amazing,” he was saying as he flipped through the article. “You give good interview.”

She swallowed, trying not to think about giving good anything. “Thanks. I’m really excited.”

She watched his face as he read, enjoying the play of his mobile features. He frowned thoughtfully, chuckled once or twice, and squinted as though he were looking for something. “Hey, you don’t say why you named your whiskey Whitman’s.”

She smiled. “It’s because of a quote.”

“By Walt Whitman, I have to assume.”

“Good guess.”

“It was a real stretch, let me tell you. What’s the quote?”

She looked out at the sky, the sun glowing above them from behind a few perfect wisps of cloud. “Simplicity is the glory of expression.”

“What’s it mean?”

“To Walt Whitman, or to me?”

“Well, he’s dead, so…”

She laughed. “Iain read it in one of his university classes and he printed it out and brought it home for me. I would stare at it as I was learning about distilling from my ‘da, and think that I wanted to try something … simpler. Every expression—that’s like a product line for us—is an opportunity to refine and get better. And sometimes it felt like my family’s idea of getting better was to keep on doing the same things that had worked for generations.”

“So you wanted to go simple?”

“I wanted my whiskey to be beautiful in its simplicity.” She remembered the long days of doing things her father’s way, and the secret hours working with Iain to develop their own expression. And the fight afterward. She wasn’t going to let that memory cloud her success, though. She was on the damn cover.

He flipped the magazine back over and stared at her picture again. “So now that you’re a cover girl, what’s next?”

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