Page 171 of On The Rocks

“There you are.”

I turned to smile at Bells. “Hey. I was just hiding from Jessica. Every time she sees me, she makes me do a video for her like a trained monkey.”

She laughed. “She’s no joke. You should see her following me around during a wedding.”

“She’s…tenacious.”

“One word for it.” She laughed and fanned her face. “I hear you’re going to perform at the old shack.”

“Yeah, I wanted to do my part to lure people in. If I get any more bruises from training, Griffin is going to tie me to the bed.”

She gave me an arched brow with a wicked smile. “As if that’s a hardship.”

I cleared my throat. “Moving on.”

“C’mon, you never give any good details.”

“He’s your soon to be brother-in-law.”

“So, I see how hot he is. And those hands.” She pulled the material of her dress away from her chest. “Mama.”

“They are very talented hands.”

“See, I knew it!”

“Dexterity game is A-plus.”

“Now you’re just bragging.”

I laughed. “As if you have complaints.”

She shrugged. “Only every other day.”

“Speaking of Kain, I swear, we’re never going to start on the renovations. Your man is driving me crazy with all his changes to the plans.”

She nodded to the lemonade tent that we had set up in deference to the heat. I could definitely go for one of those. “Try living with him. Our house might never get finished because he keeps coming up with ideas to make it better.” She drew air quotes around the words. “Even though he hates it when his clients do that to him.”

“This client isn’t.He’sthe one doing it.” I smiled at the guy working behind the vat of lemonade. He was also peeling apart wrist bands for the next day’s tickets. “Two, extra ice.”

He nodded. “You got it.”

We took our lemonades over to the shack where there was a bit of shade. “But there’s one change I am excited for.”

Bells stepped over one of the benches of a picnic table, her hands around the sweating cup as she sat. “Tell me.” She leaned forward to drink deeply from her straw.

“I want to make a mini stage for some local music when there isn’t a concert. It’ll be covered like a pavilion, I guess is the best word for it. But it’ll be part of the taproom so we can close it in when there’s weather.”

“For your rockstar boyfriend?”

I laughed. “Something like that. I think Bridger will bring a whole lot of people in too. I’m going to see if he’s interested in signing on to be like our in-house band. Until he blows up, anyway.”

“You really have been thinking this through.”

I nodded, taking a quick sip of my drink. Then another because damn, it was hot. “We’re also going to extend the patio out to do more outdoor seating.” I blew out a happy breath. “It just kinda of fell together. I wish it hadn’t happened this way?—”

Bells grabbed my arm. “What’s done is done. You’re just moving forward. And maybe it’s the shakeup we needed for the orchard, anyway. This place is growing every year.” She turned in her seat to look at the stage that had doubled in size from the first shows years ago.

“Those Manning men know what they’re doing.”

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