Page 44 of Bourbon and Secrets

Taking a deep breath, I move my hands to my hips. “You realize we don’t have a barn or the type of property needed to house a cow, right?”

Lily chimes in with, “Dad, we’re Foxxes. We can figure anything out.”

Touché.

My eyes close for a moment as I tilt my head back. “Using my own hype words against me should be against the law.” I point at her with a quirked eyebrow. When I look between my two girls, all I can think is, how am I supposed to say no to this?Fucking fuck.

I scrub my hand down my face.“Alright. Hal, I’m going to need a little bit of time to figure out how this is going to work.” I watch as Lark’s eyes water and a big smile takes over Lily’s face. “You mind if my girls find their way to your place daily to learn the chores that are needed to take care of her, and then I’ll work on making sure we give her a good home in a few weeks.”

“I think that would be a great idea, Lincoln,” Hal says with a relieved smile.

I clap my hands in front of me. “This is the last time you do something like buy an animal without me knowing.” I gesture to the cow being loaded back onto the trailer. “That’s a family decision. Something that’s living and breathing is not a curse purse purchase.”

Lark side-eyes Lily.

“No.” I point between the two of them. “Nooo. Nope. What’s that look?” I know this look—it means there’s more. And my girls are smart; they aren’t going to divulge information that might prolong whatever it is they’re doing. It’s like they’re waiting for another shoe to drop. Then it dawns on me—the brown and black puppy.Kit. “Dammit, you bought the dog too, didn’t you?” I deadpan.

“Kit,” Lily says. “Her name is Kit, and we adopted her. We knew you weren’t going to say yes right away, so we hid her in the barn next door. But then Faye found us.”

Lark chimes in, “And she said she’d look after her until...”

“Until when? Girls, seriously? You’re just folding animals into our lives without my knowledge. How did you see this working out?”

But it’s Lily who smiles and says with a shrug of her shoulders, “If you build it...”

“No. You talk to me, and then we figure it out. Together.”

Lily and Larkslam the truck doors as they hop out and run up the driveway to greet Julep and the elusive puppy named Kit. I breathe in the good of being around my family and then exhale the self-hatred for not paying better attention.Whose fucking kids buy farm animals or bring home a dog without them knowing?

I rest my head along the back seat—it would be so much easier if Liv were here. Doing this parent thing alone is really fucking hard sometimes. It’s the first time I’ve let myself think about having someone who’d do this with me. Laugh after a parenting fail and figure out a way to avoid this happening again.Listen to me freak out about how smart my girls are—they just swindled me, for fuck’s sake.

The open space surrounding Ace’s house is postcard Kentucky. Between the flat landscape and the wide expanse of paddocks that are peppered throughout the left side of the property, and then the massive white stables that take up space all along the right side, it’s clear that my brother has two very distinct passions: bourbon and horses.

Dusk colors the horizon with a splatter of deep oranges and soft purples.Beautiful. I exit my Jeep and watch my girls talk a mile a minute to Hadley, who must have just pulled in right before us. Griz sits in his spot on the porch laughing at the same sight. And just cresting the knoll that runs along my line of sight, I see two people racing toward us on horseback—it’s hard to make out who it might be other than a man and a woman. The sound of hooves hitting the earth is still quiet as I watch on, but it echoes loudly when I really focus on the riders. Neck and neck, my brother gets closer, and the smile on his face isn’t one I see too often.

A few feet behind him is none other than Faye.

My stomach sinks, realizing that she’s the one putting that smile on my brother’s face. I’m positive she’s not going to let up either.

“What the fuck?” Hadley says as she approaches my side, her hands on her hips as we both watch them streak by. They kick up the wind and whatever dirt had been settled along the pathway.

I give my best friend a glance. “Didn’t get asked to go for a ride?”

“Not the kind of ride I want.”

I bark a laugh and look down at her hair pinned up high with curls spilling all over the place. “You just get here?”

“Hadley Jean Finch, your favorite Foxx needs a squeeze,” Griz interrupts, sliding up next to us. She gives him a good hugand the old man eats it up. Wrapping her arms around one of his, all three of us watch Ace and Faye jump down from their horses and laugh about something.When the fuck did Ace get to be funny?

Hadley says, “Griz, are you inviting every pretty girl who rolls into town to dinner?”

He chuckles. “Stunning, isn’t she? I have a good feeling about her.” Looking at me over her, he says, “My grandsons might know a thing or two about bourbon, but they don’t seem to know what chemistry looks like...”

Maybe not what it looks like, but I know exactly what it feels like. I haven’t been able to shake it since she’s been back. He squeezes my shoulder and walks back toward the porch, yelling, “Might want to start going after the things you two want instead of just sitting back and waiting for them to miraculously happen.”

“Read the room, Griz,” Hadley says under her breath.

I give her a kiss on her head. “Heard you were dating the fire chief.”

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