Page 15 of The Barista's Beloved

She shook her head. “Oh, right! Apparently I talked a lot about distilling processes and maturation and all this other industry stuff without ever really plugging the distillery itself.”

Ben waved to Max as he followed Maeve out of the restaurant, blinking when they stepped out into the harsh sunlight of mid-day. He tugged his sunglasses from the neck of his t-shirt and settled them over his eyes. “I’m no expert, but it didn’t feel that way to me.”

She shrugged and rocked back on her heels. “Marketing is Iain’s thing, so he’s more sensitive to it than I am. I’m still shocked they chose to put me on the cover out of all the other badass female distillers they spoke with.”

Reflexively, Ben reached out to take her hand. Squeezing it, he said, “I’m not. And it’s probably because you didn’t drone on and on about Whitman’s that you made the cover. They wanted to profile the people—not the product. You done good, kid.” He should have dropped his hold on her, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Idly, he rubbed a path over the back of her hand with the pad of his thumb.

She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth, and her breathing grew ragged.

Ben took a step closer, just aching to tug her into his arms and taste that lip. But he couldn’t, so he stepped back and dropped her hand. “Anyhow, that’s just my opinion.” He focused his gaze over her shoulder instead of on her flushed, beautiful face. A beat of silence descended, and he didn’t know how to fill it. He was just about to turn and walk away—creating yet another awkward goodbye—when she sighed, pulling his attention back to her.

“So, about that tour?” she asked, her earnest gaze hopeful. She was a better friend than he was, it seemed. All he could think about was getting into her pants, but she was still willing to spend time entertaining him to keep him from being alone and bored.

It was probably a bad idea to spend any more time with Maeve today. He was already feeling confused about his burgeoning emotions and how to handle them. There was an increasingly real possibility that he’d do something he’d regret later—like pull her into his arms and ruin their friendship. But somehow, he still found himself saying, “Lead the way.”

* * *

Ben woketo the sound of glasses clinking somewhere off in the distance. He rose blearily up onto his elbows to try and get his bearings. From what he could tell, it was late. Very late. Across the small two-room apartment, Max was in the kitchenette mixing up something in a pitcher.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, tossing his legs over the side of the couch and sitting up with a groan. He really was way too old—and tall—to be sleeping on this small thing.

“Making sure you’re not hungover tomorrow.”

He pushed up off the sofa and made his way to Max’s side in a few uneven strides, sniffing the air. “With more booze?”

“Just a shot. It’s mostly tomato juice and tabasco. In my experience, this’ll either sober you right up or have you puking your guts out. Either way, you’ll wake up in the morning right as rain.”

Ben accepted the glass with some amount of trepidation. He didn’t feel particularly drunk, but he had an early shift at the coffee shop and he couldn’t afford to show up the worse for wear. He lifted the glass to his mouth and swallowed down Max’s homemade hangover remedy with a few deep swallows.

“What happened?” he asked, setting the empty glass down onto the butcher block counter. As he did, he caught sight of his legs. Legs, he was pretty sure, that had been covered in denim a few hours earlier.

“How much do you remember?”

Ben combed through his memories. There’d been that moment just outside of Frankie’s when he’d wanted so badly to kiss Maeve that he thought he might die of longing. Then they’d gone back to the distillery where she’d given him a tour. Afterward, she’d opened a few bottles of gin and had given him a lesson in how to properly identify which botanicals she’d used. And then, somehow, they’d moved on to pounding shots. She’d warned him it was a bad idea, but it seemed Ben was all about bad ideas these days.

“I’m an idiot,” he observed, stabbing his fingers into his hair and making his way back to the sofa. “What kind of a moron challenges a whiskey maker to shots?”

Max chuckled and plopped down across from him on the single chair the room could hold. “Apparently one who was trying to impress said whiskey maker.” He paused and caught Ben’s eye. “Maeve mentioned you being very adamant about that.”

“Impressing her?”

Max nodded, and his gaze turned speculative. “Apparently, you thought it was important to prove that you had redeeming qualities since you suck at making coffee.”

Ben groaned again and dropped his head back against the sofa cushion. Of course he’d said that.

Max coughed, and Ben brought his face forward again. “You might have also said you’d be happy to show her your other redeeming qualities—if you get my drift.”

“No.”

Max nodded. “That’s when she called me to come get your sorry ass. Said you were talking crazy, and she thought maybe she’d poisoned you.”

He remained silent, even though he knew Max was looking for some sort of answer to that. But what could he say?

“What are you doing, man?” Max’s voice was kind, but there was an underlying hardness to his question too.

Ben leaned forward and rested his elbows on his thighs, dropping his face into his open palms. After a few long seconds where he tried to figure out how to explain what he was feeling, he rolled his head to the side and angled a beseeching glance his friend’s way. He knew Max cared for Maeve like a little sister, and Ben sometimes wondered if he wasn’t trying to work through some of the guilt he felt for not doing enough for Isabella. But that was a problem for another day.

“I’ve got it bad, man.”

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